Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Bloody ’ellfire!’ shouted Egbert, for whom life on the farm would never be the same again. He stared at the phenomenal frontage of Tinkerbelle Watson, still muttering ‘Bloody ’ellfire. Bloody ’ellfire’. More importantly, the eight jailers were rapt too, their faces pressed to the bars at the windows.

  Even so, it was a routed trio of showmen who came back a few minutes later.

  ‘All right,’ snapped Sanger, ‘so they’ve got nine blokes in there. How was I to know? And how was I to know the ninth bloke was a bloody Maryanne, with no interest in naked women whatsoever. Put your clothes on, Tink,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll catch your death. Jim, nob.’

  And the lion tamer nobbed, while the time was ripe. He snatched the Stetson from the head of Dakota-Bred and went among the sizeable crowd, hoping for pennies.

  ‘Come along now, gentlemen,’ he said, genially. ‘You’ve had a sight for sore eyes this morning. It must have brightened your way to work. Come along, now. We need to buy this lady a new corset. And you, sir,’ he slapped a hand on young Egbert’s shoulder, ‘for a mere twopence, you can have her old one.’

  It wasn’t working. Clearly miffed that Bendy Hendey had thrown a blanket over Tinkerbelle, the crowd began to move away.

  ‘All right,’ sighed Sanger. ‘Plan C.’

  Without warning, the lion tamer lashed out with his fist at the nearest labourer, sending teeth flying into the morning. Dakota-Bred brought his head up under another’s jaw and Hendey twisted aside from a retaliatory blow before pirouetting forward to land a well-timed kick on his man’s head. Suddenly, there was a battle going on on the little green outside the courthouse. Most of the locals made a beeline for Tinkerbelle, to see if she needed rescue. It turned out she didn’t and she cracked together the skulls of her first two saviours.

  ‘Plan C involves you,’ Sanger shouted to Lestrade. The sergeant jumped down from the gig, ready to mix it with the roughs. He didn’t like the look of their hob-nailed clogs at all and he’d left his brass knuckles in his Donegal.

  ‘No, no,’ Sanger dragged him to the lee of the building. ‘You get in there and get my man out. We’ll be all right out here. How you do it is up to you, but I’d keep my back to the wall, if I was twenty-five and single.’

  Lestrade ducked a flying fist and dashed into the building.

  ‘Who are you?’ a rather dapper young constable asked him, a natty little cerise cravat slung nonchalantly over his collar numbers.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Lestrade,’ Lestrade said, ‘Scotland Yard. You’re holding a man I need to take with me.’

  As they spoke, the counter swung up and eight burly constables rapidly arming themselves with cutlasses, clattered past them. ‘Can you ’old t’fort, Annie?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Oh, aye, lover,’ the young man minced. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Annie?’ Lestrade cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ the young man twinkled. ‘It’s just a nickname. My real name’s Peregrine. What do the lads call you, on your Force, I mean?’

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Lestrade, vaguely horrified.

  ‘Look, er ... I hope you don’t mind my saying this, only it is a little unusual for a Metropolitan detective to turn up unannounced in his shirt-sleeves. Especially when we’ve just ’ad a bribe offered us to take that particular prisoner, rapidly followed by a full frontal attack on this very desk.’

  ‘Can you wonder you’ve been offered a bribe?’ Lestrade spread his arms, while thinking on his feet. ‘My coat, hat and jacket were ripped from my person on the street outside. What kind of police station are you running here? I’d been led to believe that Wakefield was top-hole.’

  ‘Oh, it is, sergeant, it is, I assure you,’ the constable patted the detective’s hand in a flourish of civic pride. ‘Look, I’m sorry. It’s a very strange morning, this morning. As soon as I got up, I said to Fat Tom, I said . . .’

  ‘Fat Tom?’

  ‘He’s my . . . friend. “Fat,” I said, “I feel one of my heads coming on. It’s goin’ t’ be one of those days.”’

  ‘About the prisoner?’

  ‘Oh, Oliver,’ the constable shuddered. ‘Not my type at all.’

  ‘On what charges is he being held?’

  Both men glanced out of the high barred window as the din of battle redoubled outside.

  ‘Distributing filthy pictures,’ the constable said. ‘Charges brought by the Reverend Hale of Purston Jaglin. Mind you, he’s as mad as a snake. Look, I hate to ask you, sweetie, but do you have a teensie-weensie bit of identification? I wouldn’t ask, only . . .’

  ‘In my coat,’ Lestrade shrugged. ‘The one ripped off my back under your very nose.’

  ‘Oh, quite, quite,’ the constable sympathized. ‘Well, we’ll say no more about it, shall we? Do you want t’other bloke as well?’

  ‘T’other bloke?’ Lestrade found himself lapsing.

  ‘Aye. T’Reverend Hale brought in both blokes. Both of ’em passing out these filthy pictures. Is that why you want Oliver?’

  ‘Er . . . yes, that’s right. You . . . er . . . you haven’t got an example of these filthy pictures, have you?’

  The constable shuddered. ‘In t’safe, lover,’ he said. ‘I tell you, I went quite cold when I saw ’em. I certainly wouldn’t let Fat Tom see ’em. Well, we are the guardians o’ t’nation’s morals, aren’t we?’

  Lestrade had never looked on his role in quite that way, but he hadn’t time to argue semetics. He peered out of the window while the constable wrestled with the safe’s combination. Crockett, Dakota-Bred, Hendey and the girl were hemmed in by an increasing mob of yokels and boys in blue. At the back, skirmishing around the line like a terrier at the ankles of a bull, Sanger gave more than he got and waded in again.

  ‘Look at that,’ the constable threw the pictures down in disgust, having held them at arm’s length. They were posters for Sanger’s circus.

  ‘These are posters for Sanger’s circus,’ Lestrade said. Such perspicacity had earned him the metaphorical stripes of a sergeant of detectives in only four years.

  ‘Ah,’ smiled the constable, ‘that’s where they’ve been so diabolically clever, lover,’ he lisped. ‘And what t’Reverend spotted straight away. Look at that!’ His trembling finger pointed to a rather bad painting of Angelina Muffett, baguetting on the saddle of a Lipizzaner. ‘A painted, naked woman,’ the constable shuddered. He closed to Lestrade. ‘Performing with an animal.’

  ‘Er . . . oh, quite, quite,’ Lestrade said, ‘but this is nothing in comparison with the stuff he’s been peddling in London.’

  ‘Ooh, no,’ the constable shook his head in disgust. ‘Don’t tell me they do it on bicycles as well. By t’way,’ he closed to his man. ‘Do you know anything about this circus?’

  ‘No,’ Lestrade lied. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ the young man said. ‘I just wondered if they had any daring young men on flying trapezes, wearing very tight clothing . . .’ and his voice trailed away.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Lestrade smiled, ‘in the circus, nothing is quite what it seems.’

  He always felt guilty, in the years ahead, that he had left Sanger and his people to fight it out. The showman didn’t mind. He’d clashed with the authorities before. He even introduced it into the show later as ‘The Second Battle of Wakefield’. True, three constables ended up in hospital and there was a bit of damage to the cathedral windows, but, unlike the upright constables who guarded Wakefield jail, the magistrate before whom Sanger appeared the next day was understanding itself. Especially when Lord George emptied the contents of his hat on the man’s desk and threw in Tinkerbelle’s discarded corset for good measure. All the showman got was a caution – and he was that already.

  Four men sat in Lord George’s caravan the next night and smoked cigars. The rain drummed on the roof and Lady Pauling had put her teeth in the glass and gone to bed.

  ‘I can’t get over that old bastard Hale,’ Sanger said, pouring everyb
ody their second glass of brandy. ‘Fancy trying that old one about the filthy pictures.’

  ‘You could have knocked me over with huge ticket sales when he made a citizen’s arrest,’ Oliver said. ‘Especially as I thought he was chained to a wall in Wakefield Asylum for Incurable Curates. How did you get us out, Mr Lister? You never said.’

  Lestrade looked at Sanger’s agent – a neat little man in a screaming check, his thumb and index finger worn smooth by years of pinning up circus posters and greasing the palms of local authorities.

  ‘Oh, years of experience,’ he said. ‘You’d be amazed what working for the Graphic does in the corridors of power.’

  ‘Mr Samson,’ Sanger said, ‘it was good of you to come to Ollie’s rescue.’

  ‘Well,’ the fourth man said, blowing smoke up to the cherubs, ‘It’s not every day you see two clergymen belabouring a chap around the head. I mean, fair play and all that.’

  He was a good-looking man, with black hair, dark, sparkling eyes and a jaw like the prow of a ship.

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘Me? I’m a rigger looking for work.’

  ‘A what?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘I rig wires for the trapeze,’ Samson explained. ‘I was about to introduce myself to Mr Oliver here when the thunderbolt of Purston Jaglin struck.’

  ‘The ways of the Lord are strange,’ pondered Sanger. ‘Who were you with?’

  ‘A couple of years with Clarke’s,’ said Samson, ‘but I am rusty, I’ll admit. Did a turn before the mast last year. Round the Horn.’

  Sanger shook his head. ‘It’s beyond my ken how people can do that,’ he said. ‘Not much of a sailor myself, despite my old dad and Trafalgar.’ He suddenly stooped and hurled a silver-painted cudgel at Samson, who caught it deftly and slipped it quickly to Oliver, who did likewise. The agent hooked it under his arm to Lestrade and it dropped loudly on his feet.

  Sanger smiled broadly. ‘Looking for work, then, Mr Samson?’ he asked.

  ‘I was down to my last tanner,’ the rigger-sailor told him. ‘It could have been downright embarrassing if the Yorkshire Constabulary hadn’t offered to find me a bed for a couple of nights.’

  ‘Good,’ the showman said. ‘We’ll try you out in the morning. You’d better ride south when you’re rested, Ollie. Something tells me we’ve outstayed our welcome in Wakefield.’

  ‘What’s going on, Boss?’ the agent leaned forward.

  ‘How d’you mean?’ Sanger lit a new cigar.

  ‘I heard about Joey and Huge. What’s the score, Boss?’

  ‘You know circus, Ollie,’ Sanger said. ‘Accidents will happen.’

  The agent gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘I’ve been on the road with you for eight years, George Sanger. Before that, I did ten with Wombwell’s. If it weren’t for this leg of mine, I’d still be up there on the silver wire, you know that. People don’t die of accidents like being shot dead with blanks and drinking pump water that shrivels their insides to seaweed.’

  ‘You’re very well informed,’ Lestrade observed.

  ‘It’s my job,’ Oliver told him, limping across to the window. ‘There’s wiremen out there, trick riders, lion men, cudgel men, elephant men, riggers, acrobats, freaks and labourers. Nearly three hundred people on your payroll, Boss, and they’re being picked off one by one. How long before you do something about it?’

  Sanger looked at the three faces in front of him. Yes, he’d known ‘Ollie’ Oliver for years. Outside his Nell, Major John, his brother in Birmingham, Jim Crockett, Maccomo, the Walker brothers and a few dozen others, there was no one he trusted more. He looked beyond the agent to the dark camp through the window. Nearly three hundred people – a caravan nearly two miles long on the road. Family. His family.

  ‘I am doing something about it,’ Sanger said. ‘Mr Samson, you’re new to Sanger’s circus, so I’ll take a chance that you’re pure as the driven snow. I know I can trust you, Ollie. Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Lestrade of Scotland Yard.’

  There was an expectant hush in the Big Top. The naphtha lit a handsome young man in sequinned tights, one of those, no doubt, about whom the young constable in Wakefield had been enquiring – he who was unlike other constables. He wore a white shirt with lawn sleeves and while one arm was extended to his left and the drum roll thundered from the orchestra pit, the other held the blade of a swept-hilt rapier, its pommel wobbling in the air, its tip against his lips.

  ‘Hoop-la,’ called his luscious, leggy assistant and the drum stopped with a clash of cymbals and the blade came down. There was a gasp of horror from the crowd. People were on their feet, shouting, crying. Children screamed.

  The young man in the centre of the sawdust ring staggered, the rapier somersaulting out of his mouth, blood spraying in an arc from his throat. His knees buckled. His hand went out for a moment to his luscious, leggy assistant and he died.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Lord George Sanger shook his head. He suddenly looked older than his fifty-three years and tired and ill. ‘Nell, my love, how’s luscious, leggy Lucinda taking it?’

  ‘Lying down, as always,’ the Lion Queen scowled.

  ‘Not tonight, surely?’ That, to Sanger, was unbelievable too.

  ‘I’d better go and bed down the lions. Jim’s in no fit state.’

  Lestrade tipped his bowler as the old girl made her exit. What was left of Alistair Brodie lay in the Props Wagon, his spangled tights brown with dried blood, his shirt ripped back where Sanger had rushed to try to revive him.

  ‘Not in all my born days have I seen anything like it,’ the showman muttered, his eyes bright with tears. ‘Two, two of my people to die in my arms.’

  ‘Couldn’t be suicide, could it?’ Masters the vet asked, almost apologetically.

  ‘Shut up, Harry,’ Sanger growled.

  ‘Well, could it, Lister?’ the vet persisted. ‘You seem to have experience of these things. I remember a captain in the 47th fell on his sword after a particularly vicious game of bridge one night. I blamed his partner, of course.’

  ‘In my experience,’ Lestrade said, ‘suicides do the deed in dark corners. They die in their beds in that loneliest of hours between two and three. Those who advertise it don’t want to die at all.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Masters nodded. ‘A sort of cri de coeur.’

  ‘Well, Harry,’ Sanger reminded him, ‘early start in the morning. We’ll need to put out in Sheffield.’

  ‘Yes,’ the vet sighed. ‘I think we’re all put out enough at the moment,’ and he clattered away to check the horse-lines.

  ‘Put out?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘We’ll be staying in Sheffield for three nights,’ the showman told him. ‘In that situation, the artistes find what lodgings they can in the town. That’s called putting out. If you take my advice you’ll make for Mrs Minogue of Effingham Street. Does the meanest Barnsley Chop in the world, I shouldn’t wonder, though how I can even mention food at a time like this, I don’t know.’

  Lestrade mechanically checked the wound again by the flickering oil lamp. Outside a rising spring wind was rattling the caravans and making the great beasts restless. Circus folk sat in their wagons or huddled in their kipsey-sacks and watched each other. The big cats could smell fear on the wind. Alistair Brodie’s throat was sliced perfectly in half – his windpipe by the sword divided. Apart from the look of agony on his pale, handsome face, it appeared for all the world as though he was a subject for the surgeon, an example for eager, fresh-faced young medical students to profit by.

  ‘Why is Jim in no fit state?’ the detective asked, ever the picker-up of unconsidered conversations, especially other people’s.

  ‘Jim virtually brought the boy up,’ Sanger said. ‘His own mother died in the same epidemic that took Little Angie’s parents.’

  ‘His father?’

  Sanger shrugged. ‘Second Battalion, Grenadier Guards, if my memory serves me aright. Always very accommodating, was Liza Brodie.’

&nbs
p; ‘Scottish?’

  ‘That persuasion, certainly. I never enquired too deeply. Well, when you’ve got a wife that wrestles lions for a living, Lestrade, you don’t really feel inclined to look at other women.’

  ‘So Brodie had been with you all his life?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sanger perched himself on a bed of flats across which painted elephants scampered, trunk to tail. ‘Circus-bred, through and through.’

  ‘How long had he had the sword act?’

  ‘About three years. Before that he was a rigger – fixed the wire for the trapeze artistes. Billed himself more recently as the Great Bolus. Lucinda provided the glamour.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Lestrade remembered. ‘Luscious and leggy.’

  ‘Most people found her so.’

  ‘What did Harry Masters mean – suicide?’

  ‘Man’s an idiot.’ Sanger’s face glowed orange and sinister as he lit a cigar. ‘Oh, I’d offer you one, but there’s no smoking in this wagon. What he knows about animals’ workings I could write on a pin-head. By the way, Ollie tells me Howes and Cushing have got the Pin-Headed Man. I’m bloody furious about that, I can tell you. I suppose Masters is talking about Henrico.’

  ‘Henrico?’

  ‘El Magnifico – the Magnificent.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘A bit of this, a bit of that,’ Sanger winked at him. ‘But mostly he throws knives at the luscious Lucinda – and that’s not all.’

  ‘What else does he throw at her?’

  ‘No, I mean, he is familiar with the sleeping quarters of her caravan.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lestrade’s ears pricked up. ‘How long has this been the case?’

  ‘Nearly a year.’

  ‘Did Brodie know?’

  ‘Unquestionably.’

  ‘And what was his attitude?’

  ‘He was furious. They had a fight.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Nearly a year ago.’

  ‘And since then?’

  Sanger shrugged. ‘Since then, they’ve all rubbed along, so to speak. But there was no love lost. Rumour was that Lucinda was going to leave Alistair and run away to the circus – another circus, that is.’