Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Out of the question!’ the manager stood his ground.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said the blonde, ‘Sergeant Lestrade has some questions, I believe, that he did not have a chance to put to me earlier.’

  ‘That is correct, Miss Clare. Or should I say, Miss Rudding?’

  The women looked alarmed. The manager looked askance.

  ‘Thank you,’ the blonde pushed him gently out of the door and locked it.

  ‘Jane,’ the brunette said, ‘some water from the washstand. Mr Lestrade may bleed to death.’

  ‘A mere technicality,’ Lestrade said, but he was grateful all the same to collapse into the rattan chair.

  ‘I’m sorry about our little subterfuge,’ said the dark lady, untying Lestrade’s improvised bandage, ‘I couldn’t face any more questions today. Jane suggested that she take my place, especially since you Yard men would not know us apart. The Maitre d’ was kind enough to help.’

  ‘It could be described as hindering the police in the course of their inquiries,’ Lestrade said.

  She looked deep into his eyes and something leapt within him. Searing pain tore through his leg as he jerked violently.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping the blood with the handkerchief. ‘You really should let us cut those off.’

  ‘Miss Clare,’ Lestrade’s eyes widened, ‘apart from the propriety of the situation, those trousers cost me three and tuppence. The tear can be mended,’ his eyes widened still further, ‘that is, if it’s the trousers you’re talking about.’

  She smiled, the first time he had seen her smile. It was, he was sure, the most beautiful of the sights in Harrogate. ‘How did you find out?’ she asked.

  ‘First,’ he told her as Miss Rudding brought the water, ‘Miss Rudding was wearing coffee, days after her fiancé was murdered. I know this is 1879, but there are limits.’

  ‘Very shrewd,’ Jane Rudding said, handing her companion a flannel.

  ‘Second, Inspector Bottomley showed me the locket found on Lieutenant Lyle. It bore Miss Clare’s name and what I took to be a lock of her hair. It was dark.’

  ‘Well,’ she shook her long tresses free of her shoulders, ‘it was a silly schoolgirl prank that we played and we’re sorry for it. I’m ready now, sergeant.’ She wiped his sweating face and stood up, while Jane took away the bloody water. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I understand that Lieutenant Lyle went out on the day of his death to see the circus leave?’

  ‘He told me he was going at dinner the previous night, yes.’

  ‘You dined here at the hotel?’

  ‘In the Sun Room, yes.’

  ‘Was the Lieutenant his usual self?’

  ‘I think so. In fact, he was very excited.’

  ‘Excited?’

  ‘Yes. He said he’d seen an old chum with the circus. Or thought he had. He couldn’t actually believe it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He didn’t say. I remember . . .’ her face twisted in concentration. ‘I remember he said it couldn’t really be he.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. At that stage the fish arrived and we changed the subject. Do you remember, Jane?’

  ‘He didn’t give me a name, darling. But I remember he said “It can’t actually be he” and I asked why not. And he said “They’d never allow it”.’

  ‘“Never allow it”?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘What did he mean by that?’

  Miss Rudding shrugged. ‘Perhaps that’s why he went back to the camping ground that morning. It was early, before breakfast, I believe. Perhaps he went back for another look at his old chum.’

  There was a thunderous knock at the door.

  ‘Oh,’ said Miss Rudding, ‘that’ll be that perfectly foul idiot of a manager – and your superior, I shouldn’t wonder, Mr Lestrade. Mr Lestrade?’

  But the sergeant wasn’t receiving any more visitors. Was it the heady perfume of Miss Clare? The effect of swinging a sabre? Or the excruciating pain from the sword slash to his left leg? Whatever it was, he toppled backwards on to the bed and all the lights went out.

  ‘Outrageous!’ was the first word that Lestrade heard. It was also the second. It might have been the third, but it was masked by the slamming of a fist on a desk. The sergeant sat bolt upright, wincing anew as he remembered his left leg. He dispensed with the ‘where am I?’ question, for he recognized his rather dingy little room at the Royal, the one they reserved for gentlemen’s gentlemen, the one he shared with the disapproving Lisbon. The next question was superfluous – ‘who are you?’ It was perfectly obvious. Across the table from him stood Inspector Heneage, the muscles of his jaw flexing, blinking in fury. And ‘what happened?’ was totally redundant. Lestrade remembered all too well.

  ‘Breaking and entering,’ Heneage snapped. ‘Destroying an ottoman worth eight pounds, fourteen shillings and ninepence ha’penny. Bleeding all over a carpet and rattan chair, the cost of cleaning which will be a week’s wages for you. Those are the indictable offences. Then there is the wilful disobedience occasioned by you interviewing Miss Clare, expressly contrary to my instructions.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘That is precisely the point, Lestrade,’ Heneage interrupted. ‘I. This monstrous ego of yours. May I remind you that you are a sergeant in the Detective Department of the Metropolitan Police? At the moment, that is. I am an Inspector. As such, I outrank you a hundred to one. To say nothing of the obvious disparity in our intellects. I have a degree, Lestrade – something to which you could never aspire.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘What stage have your inquiries reached?’

  ‘The inquiries you ordered me not to make, you mean?’

  ‘Causticity will not endear you to me, Lestrade. Have a care. You are within a whisker of losing your metaphorical stripes.’

  ‘You mean, apart from the fact that Miss Clare and Miss Rudding changed places?’

  ‘An understandable subterfuge,’ Heneage dismissed it. ‘What else?’

  Lestrade steadied himself on his elbow. ‘Both men died by the same method, sir,’ he said. ‘The cuts to the body.’

  ‘Yes, yes. We know all that. Did you disobey orders and offend two charmingly genteel young ladies to ascertain something we already knew?’

  ‘The other common feature, sir, is the circus.’

  ‘Circus?’

  ‘Lord George Sanger’s circus. It wintered in Yorkshire, near Ilkley. It moved to Harrogate to recruit and now has moved on.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. But Lieutenant Lyle went twice to see it limbering up on the Stray. According to Misses Clare and Rudding, he recognized an old friend there.’

  ‘There? You mean, on the Stray?’

  ‘With the circus itself, I understand.’

  ‘You really believe that there is a connection?’

  Lestrade shrugged. ‘It’s a good place to start,’ he said.

  ‘Very well,’ Heneage crossed to the door. ‘That’s what I shall do.’

  ‘If you’ll give me a minute, sir. I’ll just get my leg into action,’ he flexed it painfully.

  ‘I have no need of you or your leg, Lestrade. Were it not for Miss Clare’s intervention, I would have suspended you without . . . what do you call that stuff . . . wages? I would have suspended you without that indefinitely. As it is, Miss Clare interceded.’

  ‘That was very kind of her,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Uncommonly,’ Heneage agreed. ‘And as it is, I am sending you home. This room is paid for until tomorrow. Thereafter you will vacate it and travel back to London by whatever means at your disposal. You will report to Mr Vincent himself and prepare to receive whatever the Director deems it fitting to throw at you. Understood?’

  ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘Oh, no, Lestrade. You’ve conflagrated your maritime conveyances. It is all far too late.’

  ‘Don’t go to the circus alone, sir,’ Lestrade warned.

  ‘I went often as a c
hild,’ Heneage told him. ‘I believe I can manage now.’

  ‘As a child, you weren’t chasing a murderer, sir,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘And I don’t believe I am now,’ Heneage told him, ‘but I know that the ethos of the department implies that no stone shall be unturned, so I am prepared to follow this unlikely lead.’

  ‘But how will you find it?’

  ‘A two mile convoy on the road?’ Heneage swung open the door. ‘Come, come, Lestrade; as I may have told you earlier, I have a degree.’

  Emily Clare thought she recognized the limping man with the rain driving through his Donegal and bouncing off his bowler. He seemed to be making his inquiries in the usual way, in the ticket office at Harrogate station, side entrance. What she hadn’t seen was that he had tried the main entrance in order to have a roof over his head, but a revolving door had got him back. Had she been a trained detective, she would have noticed he was limping on his right leg, not the result of a sabre-slash but a dastardly and unprovoked assault by a door jamb.

  ‘Mr Lestrade?’

  ‘Good morning, Miss Clare,’ he tipped the sodden rim of his hat.

  ‘Are you leaving Harrogate?’

  ‘By the next train,’ he told her.

  ‘Can your enquiries be complete?’ she asked.

  ‘No, madam, I have been ordered south by the Inspector.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Let’s just say I am rather persona non regatta at the moment.’

  ‘If it’s that business in poor William’s rooms, I shall speak to Inspector Heneage at once.’

  ‘I fear he too has gone,’ Lestrade told her, ‘in search of the circus.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘You poor man, you can’t possibly manage that heavy Gladstone. I will fetch a porter. But first you must let me buy you a cup of tea. Just the thing on foul mornings such as these.’

  ‘Look,’ the wizened little operative behind the grimy glass rapped on the counter, ‘do you want a bleedin’ ticket or don’t you?’

  ‘My good man,’ Miss Clare pressed her nose to his window, ‘you are addressing a Detective Sergeant of the Metropolitan Police.’

  The operative was unmoved. ‘Well, fan my fly-buttons,’ he growled.

  Lestrade was contemplating adding to his list of misdemeanours by putting one on the operative when Miss Clare led him away to the warmth and snuggery of the station tea rooms.

  ‘I am making arrangements,’ she told him over a steaming brew. ‘Poor William will be taken the day after tomorrow. The funeral will be at his home on Thursday.’

  ‘Where is Miss Rudding?’ he asked.

  ‘Sending telegrams,’ she said. ‘William’s commanding officer has expressed a wish to attend with a contingent from his company. Riderless horse, reversed boots in the stirrups, all the paraphernalia of death. I suppose you see it every day, Mr Lestrade.’

  He nodded, gazing into the patient, dark eyes. Eyes a man could drown in. ‘Some days,’ he told her.

  She closed to him, her hand for moment on his. ‘Will you find him, Mr Lestrade?’ she whispered. ‘The man who did this?’

  He pulled his hand back, suddenly afraid of the emotions within himself. ‘Yes,’ he vowed, ‘I will find him.’

  She smiled, then whipped out a pretty lace handkerchief. He thought she would cry, but she held it at arm’s length. ‘For you,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a handkerchief,’ she told him.

  ‘Yes. No. I mean . . .’

  ‘Do you read the Romances, Mr Lestrade? Sir Walter Scott?’

  ‘As a child I always had my nose in a book,’ he told her, ‘but that was because I rather liked the pressure of the pages on my nostrils. I got over it. You’re not referring to the Walter Scott who wrote “Ear Lobes and Their Place in Modern Detection”?’

  ‘Er . . . I don’t think so,’ she smiled. ‘Castle Dangerous, Ivanhoe. Stirring tales of derring-do. In most of them, a knight errant vows to carry out some fine tasks for a lady, to do her some inestimable service. She in turn gives him her colours, to wear on his sleeve as he champions her in the lists.’

  Lestrade was listing quite badly that morning, what with sabres and revolving doors.

  ‘Of course . . .’ she began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Of course, in Scott, the lady’s colour is a love token,’ she said. ‘But my love has gone. Taken from me.’

  Instinctively, he gripped her hand, ‘I will find him,’ he said, looking into her eyes as he tucked the handkerchief into his cuff.

  ‘I know,’ she said, closing her eyes briefly at his touch and the earnestness of his promise. ‘I know.’

  ‘Now,’ he broke himself free of spell that bound them both. ‘One good handkerchief deserves another. Does the initial “N” mean anything to you?’

  ‘Napoleon,’ she said.

  ‘Napoleon?’ he sat up, frowning.

  ‘Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French. Monsieur l’Escargot, my tutor, allowed himself to become quite boring on the subject.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes,’ she poured a second cup for them both. ‘You see, Buonaparte, like poor William, was an officer of the artillery – though not, you understand, ours. But he was a self-made man in unstable times. He rose from the squirearchy of Corsica to become the greatest general the world has known. The letter “N” was his trademark, so to speak. He had it embroidered on his slippers, engraved on his glass goblets, branded on to the withers of his army’s horses.’

  ‘And sewn on to his handkerchiefs,’ Lestrade nodded, suddenly understanding.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he forgot his painful legs in the excitement of the moment. ‘Does the name “Louis Eylau” mean anything to you?’

  She shook her head, ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Louis of course is a popular French name. Eylau is a place.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘The site of a battle, I believe. I don’t remember exactly which campaign; Monsieur l’Escargot had me reciting lists of them.’

  ‘So,’ Lestrade snapped his fingers, ‘“Remember Eylau” doesn’t mean a person; it means remember the battle.’

  ‘Er . . . what is the significance of this?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he told her. ‘This Lescargo, did he teach you French?’

  ‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘he did.’

  ‘Marvellous. What does the word “epicierie” mean?’

  ‘“Epicerie”? It’s a shop. A sort of grocer’s, I suppose. Why?’

  He looked at her. For six years he’d been a policeman; a detective for four. All his training had been ‘give nothing away. Reveal nothing’. He could see the fierce old Scots face of Dolly Williamson now, his sidewhiskers glowing in the eerie firelight of his grate at the Yard. He could hear the creaking leather of his voice – ‘A detective, laddie, should be like one of the three wise monkeys. An average detective hears all; a good detective sees all; but a great detective does all that and keeps his bloody mouth shut.’ In a single second of madness, Lestrade broke every rule in the book, ‘I have reason to believe,’ he whispered, checking that no one in the station tea room was too close, ‘that your intended died by the same hand as another, whose body we found at Ilkley, not three days since.’

  She blinked at him. ‘Who was this man?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘We christened him Louis Eylau because he carried a pocket watch with the inscription in French “Remember Eylau” and a letter, also in French, which was addressed to Louis and appeared to be from his mother. That letter mentioned the shop.’

  ‘The shop,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes. “Epicerie”. You said it meant shop. So did Inspector Heneage.’

  ‘Yes, but was it shop or The Shop?’

  It was Lestrade’s turn to blink. ‘There’s a difference?’

  ‘Yes. Did the word epicerie appear in the middle of a sentence?’

  Lestrade racked wh
at passed for a brain. ‘At the end. Why?’

  ‘Did it have a capital “e”?’

  He shut his eyes and chewed his moustache. If only he hadn’t let that idiot Heneage take the damned letter with him, ‘Yes,’ he blurted, ‘yes. It did.’

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ she said. ‘It’s not any old shop, Mr Lestrade. It’s The Shop. William was always talking about it. It’s the cadets’ nickname for the Military College at Woolwich, where they train officers of artillery and engineers.’

  ‘Is it?’ Lestrade still chewed his moustache. ‘Is it indeed?’

  ‘So this Louis Eylau was an officer of artillery too, like William?’

  ‘It would seem so,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Miss Clare, when was your intended a cadet at Woolwich?’

  ‘Er, let me see. He obtained his commission in February 1877. That means he joined in the spring of ’75. Does that help?’

  Lestrade struggled to his feet and took her hand, ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but it can certainly do no harm. Please excuse me, Miss Clare – I have to send a telegram. But rest assured,’ he patted the handkerchief at his wrist, ‘I will find the man responsible.’

  His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge was wearing his other hat that afternoon, that of the Colonel of His Own 17th Lancers, the rather natty one with the silver battle honours and drooping white swan’s feathers. He was less than his cheery self. That confounded idiot, Drury Lowe of his regiment, had sent him another ridiculous despatch from the Seat of War in Natal. Just because Cambridge was Colonel of the Regiment, that didn’t mean he wanted to be kept informed every time a horse of the 17th farted in the lines.

  He fidgeted with his pouch belt and got his thumb jammed into his pricker chains – always a trial for a cavalry officer. Mr Snowdon, the Photographer Royal, peered at him from behind the black hood. ‘Do we have a problem, Your Royal Highness?’ he ingratiated.

  ‘You may,’ His Royal Highness blew through crimson cheeks, ‘I however do not.’

  ‘Could we move our mameluke a teensy weensy threat to the left?’

  Cambridge slid the sword sideways.

  ‘Oh, dear. No, the light is flashing on our fly buttons. Better move it back again. Now, chins up. Just a feather. That’s it. Watch the birdie . . .’