The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade Read Online Free PDF

that silence was bliss. A grim butler met him at the door and showed him into the tiled entrance hall. His policeman’s eye took in the aspidistrae, the elegant sweep of the staircase, the portraits of the Hurstmonceux, fathers and sons in their hunting pinks. A row of hushed, frightened servants, stiff in their starched white aprons lined the passageway. They were unsure how to behave to Lestrade. They knew he was a police officer and why he was there, but many of them had never seen an officer from Scotland Yard, a man in plain clothes. Some of them curtsied, others followed him with their eyes.
    The butler threw back the double doors. Lestrade blinked in the bright electric light which flooded the table. He looked down at the body. ‘Ruined the baize,’ he murmured.
    ‘Will that be all, sir?’
    ‘Yes. Would you ask Sir Henry to join me here?’
    The butler vanished. Lestrade gave the body a cursory examination. Cause of death he assumed to be severe lacerations and shock. Or blood loss, he mused, as he turned the matted head to find the jugular ripped. Of his clothes, only the mud-caked hunting boots remained unscathed. This was messy, a sticky end, even for a country squire of Hurstmonceux’s reputation.
    ‘McNaghten?’
    The voice made him turn sharply.
    ‘Oh, I expected Assistant Chief Constable McNaghten,’ said the voice.
    ‘Inspector Lestrade, sir.’ ‘At your service’ sounded too deferential. ‘Sir Henry Cattermole?’
    The voice brushed past Lestrade and looked down at the corpse on the billiard table. ‘Yes, I’m Cattermole.’
    ‘Assistant Chief Constable McNaghten was unavoidably detained, sir. He asked me to give you his regards. I shall have to ask you a few questions, sir.’
    Cattermole had not taken his eyes off the body. ‘Come into the library,’ he said. ‘I can’t look at him any more.’ Lestrade followed him across the hall. Servants and butler had gone. The library was typical of these country houses, wall to wall with leather-covered books, which no one had read.
    ‘Cognac?’
    Lestrade accepted the proffered glass. ‘In your own time, sir.’
    Cattermole quaffed the brandy and refilled.
    ‘Freddie Hurstmonceux was a bastard, Inspector. A professional bastard. Oh, not in the sense of lineage, you understand. They don’t come with bluer blood.’
    ‘I found it rather red, sir.’ Lestrade could have kicked himself for the tastelessness of that remark.
    ‘No, Freddie deserved this. Or at least, I’m not surprised by it.’
    ‘Could you tell me what happened, sir?’
    ‘He was out hunting. We all were. Freddie loved having open house and riding to hounds with his cronies. They all hated him, but he exuded a certain raffish charm. Anyway, we’d got a view and the hounds were off. This was in the Lower Meadow and Freddie, as ever, was off in hot pursuit. Whipping his hunter unmercifully.’
    ‘He didn’t treat horses well?’
    ‘Horses, dogs, people. He didn’t treat anything well. I’ve seen him whip a horse to death.’
    ‘You didn’t stop him?’
    ‘Damn it, Lestrade. What business is it of yours?’ Cattermole paused. Then, more calmly, ‘You don’t cross a man like Freddie.’ A long pause. ‘Well, he came through the thicket ahead of me, away to the left. Barite Cairns and Rosebery were with him, but as he topped the rise he must have left them behind. Ploughed fields there of course, tough going. Freddie was a better rider than any of them. By the time I got to the rise, all hell had broken loose. The hounds set up the devil of a row beyond the wall. I thought they’d got the fox. They were tearing, limb from limb, howling and yelping. But Bertie and Rosebery were galloping down there, taking the wall and laying about them with their crops. It was obvious something was wrong. When I got there it was all over. The dogs were being hauled off and I could see it wasn’t a fox. It was Freddie.’
    Cattermole buried his face briefly in his hands. Lestrade