Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘So do you,’ the sergeant said, ‘and it was Sloth I rode, not Champion.’

  ‘Well, can you wonder at it? Two deaths in a week. It’s not natural. What’s going on, Lestrade?’

  ‘It’s as I told you, Mr Sanger. There’s a maniac here in your circus and I don’t know where he’ll strike next.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s a man?’ Lady Pauline appeared from behind a bead curtain with two steaming mugs of tea. ‘Fire that down your clack, Mr Lestrade. You look like you need it.’

  The sergeant eased himself down beside the fire and let the warmth of the mug seep through to his blue fingers. Obviously, the Boss had confided to his good lady lion tamer Lestrade’s true identity. It was only a matter of time, of course.

  ‘Tell me about the Ether Trick,’ he said.

  Sanger sat opposite him. ‘That’s a secret,’ he said.

  ‘It’s because somebody’s keeping secrets that people are dying,’ Lestrade shouted; then calmer, ‘look Mr and Mrs Sanger, I could stop this circus now. In my capacity of a Detective Sergeant of the Metropolitan Police, I could close you down.’

  ‘But . . . the season . . .’ Sanger protested.

  ‘Exactly,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘You’d lose a fortune, I know. And for that reason, I’m prepared to let you go on – for now. But you’ve got to be totally honest with me. How is the Ether Trick done?’

  Sanger thought for a moment, glancing from Lestrade to his wife and back again. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘but you must promise me, Lestrade, that this will never leave these four walls. I’d be drummed out of the Showman’s Guild.’

  ‘You have my word,’ Lestrade promised.

  ‘All right, then. I’ve been doing this one way or another for over thirty years. It all started in the ’40s when anaesthetics were a new thing and Doctor Simpson was making a fortune out of giving them to the Queen – God Bless Her.’

  Lestrade raised his mug in a loyal toast while Lady Pauline saw to the more comestible sort for breakfast.

  ‘I hit upon the idea of putting a boy to sleep on stage, using ether. But the trick was, he was in mid-air. More recently, I took to using dwarfs – more of a crowd puller and you don’t get the cruelty people on your back. As yesterday’s events prove, there’s no complaints authority about misusing a dwarf. Anyway, Hughie, same as always, stood on stage. He appeared to be free-standing, but in fact he was resting on a steel frame hidden by a curtain. I came on with the little bottle of ether – which was actually pump water, by the way – and went through the patter. You know, bit of mummery about the miracle ether, etc. and then I poured some on to a pad. That pad then went over Hughie’s nose. Now, usually, he’d pretend to fall asleep, go rigid and there he’d be, apparently sleeping soundly, resting on his elbow only, his body and legs stretched out. Actually, of course, his feet were supported too. It was all the rage at the Egyptian Hall for years.’

  ‘And yesterday?’

  ‘Well,’ Sanger’s face darkened as he took his wife’s toast and dunked it into his tea, ‘yesterday followed the same routine. But as soon as Hughie touched the pad, he fell off the pedestal and started writhing around. I thought he’d got cramp, or something ... until I saw the blood. He was sicking up blood, Lestrade. I’ve seen some sights in my time, but that ... By the time I’d got up on stage, the poor little bastard was dead. What was it? Did I kill him?’

  ‘Let’s say you fired the shot,’ Lestrade said, ‘but you didn’t load the gun.’

  ‘You mean, like little Angie?’

  ‘Exactly. Who puts the pump water in the bottle?’

  ‘I do,’ Sanger said.

  ‘And did you yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From that time until you used the bottle, was it ever out of your sight?’

  ‘Er . . . yes. Yes, it was. It was just there.’ He pointed to a sideboard’s surface.

  ‘For how long, would you say?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. An hour, perhaps more.’

  ‘Ample time,’ said Lestrade, ‘ample time for anyone to have entered this wagon and tampered with it. I take it the wagon was not locked.’

  ‘No,’ said Sanger, ‘it’s always open house. Wait a minute . . . you were here, Nell. Did you see anybody come in?’

  ‘I wasn’t here much longer than you, George.’ She dropped the bacon into the sizzling fat. ‘No one came in while I was here.’

  ‘What did you mean, Lady Pauline?’ Lestrade asked. ‘A minute ago, when you said “Are you sure it’s a man?”.’

  ‘Well,’ the Lion Queen fanned the smoke away from her face. ‘I don’t know, really. I don’t know much about murder, but I do know the killer avoids doing it himself. That’s rather cowardly, don’t you think? Rather like a woman?’

  George Sanger chuckled. ‘That’s richer than you know, Mr Lestrade, coming from the bravest woman ever to put her head in a lion’s mouth. Go easy on the bacon, pet. I’m not ever so hungry this morning.’

  She teased his ringlet round the curlers. ‘Poor Georgie,’ she cooed. ‘Mr Lestrade?’

  ‘I could eat a horse,’ he said and nobody had any doubt which one he meant.

  In the caravan of the clowns, the Walker brothers were putting on their makeup.

  ‘I tell you, it’s him,’ Whimsical Walker insisted. ‘It’s that bloke from the Graphic. He’s doing the murders.’

  ‘He says “It’s that bloke from the Graphic”,’ Mrs Whamsical was brushing a bright blue wig that looked like an old one of Disraeli’s.

  ‘Tell him,’ Whamsical was painting the white line around his lips, ‘that that, as usual, is cobblers.’

  ‘He says “That’s cobblers”, Whim,’ his sister-in-law relayed the message.

  ‘Yeah,’ muttered the elder brother, ‘that’s what he always says. But I’m right. You see if I’m not. We had no trouble at all till he come here. Now folks are droppin’ like flies. Tell him.’

  ‘“Folks are droppin’ like flies” he says, Wham.’

  ‘I know they are.’ Whimsical hauled on his outsize red and green check trousers and hooked the braces over his shoulders.

  ‘He knows that, apparently, Whim,’ his brother’s wife told him.

  ‘Well,’ Whimsical stood up to have the blue wig put on. ‘I’m not answering any of his bloody questions. Calls himself a newspaperman. I’m not talking to him at all.’ And he clattered out of the wagon.

  ‘He’s not going to talk to him, Wham,’ Mrs Whamsical précised.

  Whamsical Walker pressed the catch that made his hair stand on end. ‘That’ll make a change,’ he muttered.

  Mrs Whamsical stuck her head out after her retreating brother-in-law. ‘He says “That’ll make a change”, Whim,’ she called.

  The wagons rolled south-west towards Wakefield, Lord George Sanger, as always, at their head. They had not heard from Mr Oliver, the agent, for over twenty-four hours. Even so, the assumption was that Wakefield was booked and ready and the world was Sanger’s oyster – the smoking one, of course.

  It was just as they rattled into Purston Jaglin under a leaden sky that the balloon went up. There was a ripping sound and a roar and a giant elm crashed across the road, causing Sanger’s skewbalds to rear and buck. Old waggoner that he was, he held them fast and spoke soothingly to them, while Lestrade, on the board beside him, wedged between the Sangers, as it were, allowed his heart to descend again to its usual place. As they watched, a sturdy frame with a shock of wild, white hair clambered through the still-quivering branches of the fallen tree and stood on top of the trunk.

  ‘Repent ye, Sanger,’ the apparition screamed, ‘and turn ye again.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ the showman moaned.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Lestrade asked him.

  ‘I am the Reverend Zephaniah Hale, Priest-in-Charge of the parish of Purston Jaglin. And you are trespassing.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ said Lestrade in admiration. ‘I didn’t know voice-throwing was one of your many accomplishments, M
r Sanger.’

  ‘I thought he was away,’ the showman muttered, lighting a cigar, his fingers still threaded through the reins.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We met four years ago. Since then – and before that, I gather – he’s been in and out of madhouses. To say he’s as insane as a snake is an insult to my reptiles.’

  ‘Reptile!’ roared the clergyman, his collar-end flapping in the morning. ‘You are ambassadors of the Evil One. You will not set your cloven hoof in my parish. Tell him, Overmantle.’

  A tall, rather gormless young man with thick spectacles and a silly way of carrying his head clambered through the undergrowth. Like the vicar, he wore a billowing cassock and he was carrying a piece of paper. He read from it, intoning as though from a psalm. ‘The Ether Trick,’ he whined, ‘an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Herbert Overmantle, his curate. You’d think the odds against having two loonies in one church were fairly long, wouldn’t you? I’d like five minutes with their bloody bishop.’

  ‘The Intelligent Pigs,’ the curate moaned on. ‘Bestiality at its very worst.’

  ‘Women!’ Hale roared, pointing at the Lion Queen. ‘Cavorting in states of nakedness that would put Gomorrah to shame.’

  ‘Shall I hit him with my whip, Georgie?’ Lady Pauline asked out of the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Let’s see how it goes, Nell, my dove.’

  It was as well Sanger waited, for as they watched, smocked labourers, with varying degrees of hatred written on their faces, began to muster on each side of the road, flanking the fallen elm. They carried scythes and pitchforks that glinted in the sharpening light.

  ‘Do you get a lot of this?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Now and again,’ Sanger told him. ‘Used to be a lot more in the old days, of course. Some of these bumpkins see a trained animal and they imagine it’s witchcraft. God knows what they’d say if I showed them Madame Za-Za.’

  ‘The Pig-Faced Woman,’ Overmantle intoned, ‘scoffing at the Lord’s handiwork.’

  ‘And women!’ Hale bellowed. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  ‘We just want to pass through,’ Sanger called to him. ‘We won’t be putting on a show in Purston Jaglin.’

  ‘No,’ Hale thundered, ‘you certainly won’t. Neither will you go on to that Sodom of the South Riding.’

  ‘Wakefield,’ Sanger explained to Lestrade.

  ‘Really?’ the sergeant said. ‘I had no idea.’

  Sanger rolled his eyes skyward.

  ‘You can’t just roll in ’ere,’ a labourer growled.

  ‘Thank you, Thwaite,’ the vicar stared him down. ‘Leave the verbal assassination to me, will you? You haven’t the wit for it.’

  ‘Sorry, your ’oliness.’ The labourer acknowledged his place.

  ‘Snakes,’ intoned Overmantle, still reading from his list.

  ‘Now the serpent,’ the vicar boomed, ‘was more subtil than any beast of the field.’

  ‘Ah, but the chimpanzees are smarter,’ Sanger smiled, between puffs. Behind him, wagons were rolling to a stop. The lanky Dakotan, in wide-brimmed hat and chaps, reined in his quarter-horse alongside Sanger.

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ he tilted back his head. ‘A welcomin’ committee. Would you like fer me to shoot his eyes out, Boss?’ he asked.

  ‘I think Lady Pauline asked first, Dakota-Bred,’ the showman said. ‘Ride back a bit and tell everyone it’s elevenses, will you? Oh, and get the elephants up.’

  ‘You are spies,’ Hale roared. ‘To see the nakedness of the land ye are come.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Sanger said, ‘talking of spies, have you seen a Mr Oliver, my agent?’

  ‘Aye, an ’e won’t be botherin’ anybody for a bit,’ the loquacious labourer shouted.

  ‘Shut up, Thwaite!’ Hale rounded on him. ‘Sanger, you are a boil breaking forth, with blains. Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.’

  ‘What if we go round?’ Sanger asked the priest. ‘Skirt the parish?’

  ‘A trespass upon the Lord’s holy ground,’ Hale counted. He jumped down from his tree-pulpit. ‘I know thy pride, Sanger, and the naughtiness of thine heart. Turn your wagons around.’

  Sanger handed his reins to Lestrade. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘this has gone far enough. I haven’t used my fists on a man since I was a lad, but buggered if I can think of what else to do.’

  Before Lestrade could stop him, as the circus folk formed a semicircle at his back, Sanger had leapt down from the wagon, stroking his skewbalds as he passed them and stood before Hale, a good head shorter than the deranged vicar of Purston Jaglin.

  ‘I warn you, Sanger,’ Hale snarled at him, ‘I boxed for Toynbee Hall. Put on the whole armour of God, lads,’ he roared to his parishioners, then pulled back. ‘Herbert, hit him.’

  Sanger stepped back too, pirouetting out of the way. He needn’t have bothered, because the yard of pump water that was Herbert Overmantle didn’t move. The parishioners closed ranks a little.

  ‘Prepare to receive cavalry!’ bellowed Hale, ever a student of General Jacob Astley whose armies had clashed through his parish three hundred and fifty years earlier. It was cavalry of a rather different kind that the men of Purston Jaglin had to face, however, and the Reverend Hale would have done better to have studied Hannibal. Sanger twirled round, pawing the air with his fists rather as Lestrade had seen the tic-tac men do at racecourses. From nowhere, the ground shook and the teacups in Sanger’s wagon rattled. There was an involuntary trumpet and the elephants came forward at the gallop, ears flapping, trunks swaying, eyes flashing.

  ‘Mother of God!’ gulped Overmantle and turned to hack his way through the branches of the elm.

  ‘Let your loins be girded about!’ Hale roared and rushed after him. For a second, perhaps two, the parishioners stood their ground, gripping their assorted weapons, then they broke and ran, clutching their smocks and hats as they disappeared across country.

  The Sultan of Ramnuggar, bouncing with ease on the back of the lead elephant, whistled and shouted something incomprehensible and the great beasts wheeled and halted, splashed with the mud of South Yorkshire.

  ‘There’s a story for your paper, Mr Lister,’ the elephant man called, and he leaned down, clapping his hands over his animal’s ears. ‘Be sure to spell Elvira’s name right, won’t you? She’s very sensitive.’

  And so they got to Wakefield. And the cry went up ‘All hands to the tilt’ and the great canvas giant spread, red and white, brightening the dull spring day. Then the Parade and the dazzle. But there were no dwarfs to throw. No cudgel man balancing his balls in the air. Like the true professionals they were, Sanger’s people went through their paces. The Walker brothers and Stromboli were never funnier, sliding about in gallons of custard, hurling buckets of confetti, roaring with umbrage as their Shetland-drawn carriage fell to bits. The crowd roared with them in pure delight and gasped in horror as the Flying Buttresses went through their death-defying routine of leaps and whirls on the high wire. And the whole presided over by Lord George Sanger, resplendent in his hunting pink, cracking his jokes along with his whip.

  Night came to the circus and in the damp stillness, while a camel farted on the wind, the clown Stromboli came to visit a little kipsey-sack tucked out of the wind under a props wagon.

  ‘Were you asleep, Mr Lestrade?’ he asked.

  The sergeant jerked upright, clouting his head on the axle shaft. ‘Lister,’ he said. ‘Lister.’

  ‘Look,’ Stromboli lit a pipe from the embers of the fire. ‘We’re two men light as it is. Don’t you think you need a little help?’

  Lestrade looked at the face under the makeup. ‘Don’t you ever take that off?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘but only on Sundays. A true august never appears in public without makeup. He lives for his art. As, I suspect, do you.’

  ‘Ah, the newspaper business,’ Lestrade beamed, nodding sagely. ‘Yes, yes.’
/>
  ‘How is old Winkworth these days?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Winkworth,’ the clown repeated. ‘The editor of the Graphic – Archie Winkworth.’

  ‘Oh, Archie,’ Lestrade bluffed. ‘Oh, he’s fine. Fine.’

  ‘Got over his old trouble, then?’

  ‘Well,’ the detective was in uncharted waters, ‘you know how it is.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Stromboli, his own face grim under the grin of the greasepaint. ‘I know exactly how it is. Archie Winkworth is editor of the Sketch. The editor of the Graphic is Rufus Murdoch.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So, Mr Lestrade, couldn’t we learn to trust each other, you and I?’

  The sergeant knew when the game was up, when the writing sparkled in fireworks on the wall. ‘How do you know me?’ he whispered.

  ‘The ears of a clown,’ Stromboli waggled them backwards and forwards.

  ‘Do you always snoop outside the Boss’s caravan?’

  ‘Except on Sundays,’ chuckled Stromboli. ‘I’m a deeply religious person.’

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Circus people aren’t stupid. They’ll jump to it sooner or later.’ The august offered his briar to Lestrade.

  ‘No thanks. I’m trying to give them up.’

  ‘You’ll get nowhere with them,’ Stromboli said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Circus folk. They’re a clannish lot. They won’t tell you anything.’

  ‘But you’re circus folk,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Not this circus,’ Stromboli told him. ‘Until this season, I was with the great Circus Rentz in Germany.’

  ‘What brought you over here?’

  ‘Let’s just say Mr Sanger made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. But there’s something you should know, about circus folk, I mean.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘They’ll pull together for the public. Today on the road, for example. If Sanger hadn’t sent in his elephants, they’d have died to a man fighting the yokels. But that’s the exterior – the front.’