by M. J. Trow
‘Like a crate of rattlers,’ Burke nodded.
‘Are they all here?’
‘Sure. They all stayed on after Bill’s last show. I’ve just come over to take ’em home.’
‘Bill?’ Dew asked.
‘Buffalo Bill.’ Burke frowned, appalled at the ineptitude of the British police. ‘Prince of Plainsmen. He tamed the West single-handed.’
‘Yes,’ said Lestrade. ‘Constable Dew here did much the same thing to Shepherd’s Bush a few years ago. I’d like to talk to Old Birdie first. Can you point us in his direction?’
THE DIRECTION IN WHICH Old Birdie lay took the policemen and the showman through a labyrinth of alleyways and cattle pens where great shaggy buffalo stood stamping and steaming in the evening. Long before they had reached their destination, a dingy little shed marked with a single star and the legend LITTLE MISS SURE SHOT, Lestrade had put both feet right in it and Dew was careful to sit upwind of him.
One by one John Burke sent the men to them, beginning with the father of the dead woman. Old Birdie still carried himself erect, for all his years. Only the eyes betrayed his age and a certain stagger in his step. He stood in that little shed at Earls Court, before Lestrade and Dew, in the yellow-braided jacket and forage cap of the Light Cavalry.
‘State your name,’ said Dew, today playing the role of the nasty policeman.
‘Sergeant 1209 Bird, William, late Eight Royal Irish Hussars, sir.’
‘At ease, Sergeant,’ Lestrade said. He had worked with old soldiers before, on the Brigade Case. He knew they had their pride and they still responded, after all these years, to the old commands. Bird’s shaky old nether limbs slid apart and he locked his hands behind his back. ‘It’s about your daughter, Mr Bird,’ the Inspector said.
‘She’s dead, y’know,’ the old soldier said, staring straight ahead.
‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Lestrade. ‘We’re from Scotland Yard. How did you find out about your daughter?’
‘Wolfgang told me, sir.’
‘Wolfgang?’
‘Captain Bruno. Proper gen’leman he is. Unlike some of ’em around ’ere,’ and the old man spat into a pile of sawdust in the corner. ‘’E went to see ’er in the morgue this morning. I couldn’t bear it. Seein’ her . . . like that. It’s not decent.’
‘We have to find out who murdered her, Mr Bird,’ Lestrade said. He had a daughter himself. Little Emma. Not quite two. He wouldn’t want to see her . . . like that either.
‘I know who murdered her,’ the old Hussar said.
‘Really?’ Lestrade and Dew exchanged glances. ‘Would you care to tell us who?’
‘That damned Rusky, that’s who.’
‘Er. . . you’ll have to forgive us, Sergeant,’ Lestrade humoured him. ‘Which damned Rusky?’
‘That bloody Cossack; that Bogdanovitch. Son of a bitch, more like. I haven’t forgotten the Charge, y’know.’
Who had?
‘Damned Cossacks. Killed my horse, they did, old Daisy. Or was it Buttercup? Ah, the old memory isn’t what it was.’
‘How old are you, Mr Bird?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Sixty-three . . . I shouldn’t wonder,’ the old soldier said. ‘Took me prisoner, y’know.’
‘Who did?’
‘The Ruskies. That bloody general of theirs. That Liprandi. Know what he arsked me?’
‘No.’
‘How much bloody rum I’d had that morning – the morning of the Charge. And me a lifelong teetotaller. If I’d ’ad me health and strength I’d have put one on him, I tell you.’
‘You didn’t have either?’
‘Either what?’
‘Your health and strength?’
‘Lord love you, no. I’d ’ad cholera something dreadful. What with that and the lance in me buttock.’
The policemen glanced at the man’s buttock.
‘Still rolls to the left when I canter.’ He slapped his haunch.
‘So you think Bogdanovitch killed your daughter?’ Lestrade thought it best to keep the old boy to the matter in hand.
‘Stands to reason. ’Ate us, they do.’
‘The Ruskies?’
Bird nodded. ‘Sneaky bastards wear grey, y’know. I tell you, sir, never trust a man in a grey uniform. Look at that Robert Bloody E. Lee.’
‘Is he another Russian, sir?’ Dew whispered to Lestrade out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Let it go, Walter.’ The Inspector patted his shoulder. ‘Would you like to sit down, Mr Bird?’
‘No thank you, sir.’ The old Hussar straightened. ‘Hi’ll stand hif it’s all the same to you.’
It was. ‘Tell us about your daughter,’ Lestrade said.
He smiled and a single tear rolled the length of his battered cheek. ‘She were a good girl. Or so they said. I never believed ’em, mind. Pure and innocent she were. That’s why ’e killed her.’
‘Oh?’
Bird nodded. ‘I saw it in Turkey,’ he said. ‘Blokes queuing up for the ’arlots. If they saw a girl who wouldn’t let ’em, they’d call ’er heveryfink under the sun. She wouldn’t let that bastard Cossack ’ave his end away with her so ’e killed ’er.’
‘I see. When did you see your daughter last, Mr Bird?’
‘Jane? Ooh, must ’ave been larst week some time. She come ’ere regular – just to see ’er old man.’ He smiled affectionately. ‘A Hannie Hoakley.’
‘A Hannie Hoakley?’
‘It’s what we in the show call a season ticket. Yellow thing looks like it’s been shot full of ’oles.’
‘Where is Mr Hollander?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Kensal Green.’
‘The cemetery?’
Bird nodded.
‘When did he die?’
‘Who said ’e was dead?’ Bird asked. ‘’E cuts the grass up there, that’s all. They’re hestranged.’
Lestrade could see that. They didn’t come any hestranger than this lot. ‘Where did she live?’
‘Thirty-one Quex Road.’
‘Kilburn,’ said Dew, whose knowledge of such things was encyclopaedic.
‘How well did she know the others here – in the show?’
‘Scarcely at all,’ said Bird. ‘Major Burke, ’e’s a proper gen’leman ’e is, for all ’e’s a bloody Yank. ’E looked after ’er.’
‘Indeed?’ Lestrade glanced at Dew. ‘Tell me, Mr Bird. Did your daughter have any enemies? Anybody who would wish her ill?’
‘Nah.’ The old man didn’t have to think. ‘Little Janey was always very popular. Just like ’er mother, Gawd rest ’er. Specially with the lads. Hever since she used to go into the bushes with them at home in Kilburn.’
‘How old was she then?’
‘Eight. ’Ad a passion for nature, she did. Used to take the older boys into the bushes to show ’em birds’ nests and that. Knew all about the birds, did my little Janey.’
‘And the bees?’ asked Dew, although perhaps it was not his place to do so.
‘Good Methodist stock we are, us Birds,’ the old soldier said. ‘She was a saint, that girl. A bloody saint. Now, if that’s all, gentlemen, I’ve got things I’ve got to be a-doing.’
‘Yes, of course, Mr Bird,’ said Lestrade. ‘What is it you do here, exactly?’
‘I parades with the Union Jack, sir,’ the ex-Sergeant told him. ‘For all it’s a Yankee show, can’t ’ave them bloody Stars and Stripes all over the bloody shop. Back in ’87 I used to re-enact the Charge, but there was six of us then. The other five have cocked their toes up since and my buttock ain’t what it was. I just walks round with the flag now.’
‘I can’t think of a finer calling, Mr Bird,’ said Lestrade. ‘Thank you for your help.’ And the old man saluted and saw himself out.
DEW HAD BARELY HAD time to lick his pencil when a dapper little beau sabreur bounded in. He was easily twenty years younger than the old Hussar, with a cheeky upturned moustache and the sky-blue jacket and kepi of the Chasseurs d’Afrique.
‘Messieurs,’ he bowed, ‘the Comte de la Warre, at your service. ’Ow may I ’elp?’
‘You called at the Old Montague Street mortuary earlier today?’ Lestrade asked him.
‘Oui.’
‘To identify a woman called Jane Hollander, nee Bird.’
‘Oui.’ The Frenchman threw his scabbard and sabre over the arm of a chair in the corner and threw his buttocks in seconds later. Clearly they were made of sterner stuff than Sergeant Bird’s for he scarcely winced at all.
‘What was she to you?’ Lestrade inquired.
‘’Ow you say, she was my common-law wife.’
‘For how long had this been the case?’
‘Nearly three years.’
‘Your common-law father-in-law seems blissfully unaware of the fact,’ Lestrade pointed out.
‘Pah!’ the Frenchman laughed. ‘’E is, ’ow you say, a few troopers short of a squadron, n’est-ce pas?’
‘So you’ve been with the Wild West Show for three years?’
‘Oui,’ said de la Warre, ‘I ’ave said so. Do you doubt my word? Ze word of an officer in the glorious Cavalerie de la France?’
‘No, no,’ Lestrade assured him, not at all pleased with the gleam in the man’s eye or the man’s sabre. Cutlass drill was all a long time ago and Walter Dew was a slouch. ‘How often did you and Mrs Hollander . . . I mean . . .’
‘Monsieur,’ the Frenchman stood up, his spurs jingling with umbrage, ‘a Frenchman takes ’is pleasure where ’e will. I was a young man at Mars-la-Tour. Having scattered that damned Bosch cuirassier regiment, I took a girl behind a ’edge.’
‘Really?’ asked Lestrade. What with the young Miss Bird’s proclivities, there was an awful lot of hedging going on, one way or another. ‘Where was the regiment, all this time?’
‘Looking on. Applauding.’
‘Hmm,’ Lestrade mused. ‘Weren’t you people beaten at Mars-la-Tour?’
The Frenchman turned an unusual shade of cerise, not at all at odds with his sky-blue. ‘A gross slur,’ he said. ‘German propaganda. I thought you wanted to ask me about Madame ’Ollander.’
‘Indeed,’ said Lestrade. ‘Constable Dew and I are looking into her murder.’
‘You need look no further,’ the Comte said.
‘Oh?’
‘Hauptmann Wolfgang Bruno is your man.’
‘He is?’
Dew added another suspect to his already bulging pad.
‘Mais certainement. The Bosch bastard is my inferior in everything. ’Orsemanship, swordsmanship, panache. ’E envied me my little Janey. I ’ave of course sworn to kill ’im.’
‘Of course.’ Lestrade’s eyebrow rose just a little. It would take some doing to remind these foreigners that Earls Court was actually on British soil and that British law did not look kindly on affairs of honour.
‘Consumed with jealousy, ’e chose ’is moment to choke the life out of ’er. But fear not. ’E will be impaled on my blade by sunset. So, if you will excuse me . . .’
‘One more thing, Comte,’ Lestrade said. ‘When did you see Mrs Hollander last, apart from this morning at the mortuary, I mean?’
‘Ooh, you ’ave me there.’ The Frenchman screwed up his little face. ‘It would ’ave been last Tuesday, I think. I ’ad the night off from restaging the rout of the Prussians at Jena by Marshal Murat of blessed memory and I visited ’er in Kilburn.’
‘Quex Road?’
‘Ze same.’
‘Why did you refer to her as Mrs Hollander rather than the Comtesse de la Warre?’ Lestrade asked.
The Frenchman chuckled. ‘Please, monsieur. I am a member of an old aristocratic family. It would be improper. A bientôt, messieurs.’ And he clicked his heels and left.
TALKING OF HEEL CLICKING, no sooner had the door closed on the policemen than a large, square-looking horseman with a razor-cropped haircut and wearing the attila of the Seventh Rhenish Hussars stood before them, doing just that.
‘Er . . . Hauptmann Bruno?’ Lestrade guessed.
The German bowed fiercely as though his neck had snapped.
‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘In a chair vere a Frenchman has sat?’ The Captain raised a sabre-scarred eyebrow. ‘I vas a young man at Mars-la-Tour. I don’t sit down with Frenchmen or in chairs zey hef vacated.’
‘I see,’ said Lestrade, rapidly wondering what sort of show Buffalo Bill and John Burke were running here. ‘I understand that you had . . . er . . . a relationship with Mrs Jane Hollander.’
‘Yah. Zis is correct. She vas my wife.’
‘You were married?’
‘Zere vas no religious ceremony. But ve shared ze conventions of ze marriage bed.’
‘We are making inquiries into her murder.’
‘Goot. You hef saved me ze trouble of coming to Zcotland Yard.’
‘We have?’ Lestrade smelled confession.
‘Your murderer is zat damned frog who just left.’
‘It is?’
Dew sighed and turned over another page in his notebook.
‘Of course. He knew zat Frau Hollander and I were betrothed. He could not bear to be beaten. Rather ironic, zat, isn’t it, in an army zat von its last battle forty years ago?’
‘You . . . er . . . haven’t any plans to fight him, then?’ Lestrade ventured.
The Captain looked askance. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I did not come down with ze last shower of rain. I know zat duelling has been illegal in zis country since the thirteenth of Elizabeth. Besides, ze Frenchman is a mere lieutenant. I cannot fight someone of a lower rank. It zimply is not done.’
‘But he is a nobleman,’ Lestrade pointed out.
‘If ’e is a nobleman, I am a Dutchman, as ve zay in Alsace-Lorraine.’
‘And when did you see Mrs Hollander last?’
‘Ach, zere you hef me. I believe it was last Zursday.’
‘You went to Kilburn?’
‘Nein. She came to see me here at Earls Court.’
‘I see. Well, thank you, Captain,’ and Lestrade made a point of taking the man’s hand.
LESTRADE HAD NEVER seen a Cossack before. Dew had never even seen a man from Lancashire, but then he was a particularly parochial policeman.
The Russian appeared eight feet tall in the long, cartridge case-embroidered khurtka of those regions pleasantly watered by the merry Don. His beard reached to his waist and he seemed to be bristling with weapons at every orifice.
‘Do you speak English?’ said Lestrade slowly and steadily.
‘Of course,’ the Cossack said. ‘At school in Minsk I learned three languages.’
Lestrade shrugged. So much for Burke’s assessment of this monosyllabic moron. ‘We are investigating the murder of Jane Hollander in the early hours of this morning at or near Blackfriars Station.’
‘Tragic,’ the man nodded slowly.
‘What was she to you?’
‘A pleasant diversion, tovarishch, nothing more.’
‘She was not your common-law wife, then?’
‘Good God, nyet. If Mrs Bogdanovitch found out, there’d be hell to pay’
‘So how did you know the dead woman?’
‘Intimately,’ the Russian said. ‘In my country a mistress is dandy if the wife is not handy. But another wife, albeit common-law, would be defying the laws of nature and of God.’
‘I see.’ Lestrade tilted his bowler to the back of his head. ‘And who do you think killed her?’
The Russian shrugged this time. ‘Obviously, that senile degenerate, her father.’
‘Ah.’ All par for the course so far. ‘And why do you assume that?’
‘Inspector,’ said the Russian. ‘We Russians are a deeply moral people. In the snows of the Urals if a father discovers that his daughter is promiscuous he takes her into the forest and leaves her to the wolves.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. East European folklore is full of such stories. Take the Grimms.’
Lestra
de would rather not. ‘So, to you, this is perfectly natural.’
‘Perfectly. Justifiable filicide.’
‘But the Metropolitan line is hardly the forests of the Urals,’ Lestrade commented.
‘This is true, tovarishch, but then you have no forests to speak of in this little country, do you? Old Birdie obviously spoke as he found.’
‘I see,’ Lestrade cleared his throat, ‘well, thank you . . . er . . .’
‘Colonel,’ beamed the Cossack, ‘I outrank all these expatriate reprobates, but I’m not one to boast of these things.’
‘You’ll be here if we need you?’ Lestrade checked.
‘Of course. I have to do the pursuit over the Beresina again tomorrow. How we’ll keep the water frozen in this weather I’ve no idea.’ He looked at the darkening sky through the small window. ‘Ah, to be in St Petersburg now that April’s there.’
IT HAD TO BE SAID THEY missed the clatter of booted spurs on the hard ground beyond the door. Had Burke gone home? Forgotten to remind the last witness? Or had he lost patience waiting? Dew flexed his throbbing fingers and soothed the writer’s ridge of hard skin that had formed along them. He fumbled with his lucifers to light the oil lamp on the table.
Lestrade peered silently through the window at the last of the sun’s rays gilding the Great Wheel. He was in a world of his own watching Old Birdie at a treadle whetstone, sharpening his old sabre. Across the stadium from him, Lieutenant Comte de la Warre had hung his braided jacket on a pole and was advancing on it sword in hand, posturing before it as if warming up for a duel, moving in slow motion, as though in a dream.
Dew’s scream therefore brought the Inspector jarring back to reality. The Constable dropped the match and the lamp and kicked over the table.
‘For God’s sake, Dew!’ Lestrade snapped. ‘You’ve seen a mouse before, surely?’
But it was not a mouse that moved soundlessly into the fading daylight. It was a figure the height of a man, with a dark face shrouded in fur and horns and feathers trailing to the ground. Two parallel white lines were painted across the bridge of his aquiline nose and down his gaunt copper cheeks. A necklace of bears’ teeth rattled on the bone breastplate as he folded his arms across his chest.
