Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What’s your tipple, Joe? You look like a brandy man to me.’

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘Mine’s sherry wine,’ she smiled at him. ‘Oh, purely for medicinal purposes, of course. My lungs,’ she wheezed, gripping the banister, ‘. . . old Doctor Proctor said I should really be in Switzerland with my lungs. Still, what did he know? They struck him off in the end.’

  ‘They did?’ Lestrade had never known stairs go on for so long.

  She paused and closed to him. ‘Little girls,’ she whispered.

  ‘Ah.’ That said it all.

  ‘This,’ she held up the lamp to another portrait on the second landing, ‘is Mr Ledbetter, my third husband. German silver.’

  ‘That’s what he made?’

  ‘No, that’s what killed him. He was an extremely careless man and would drink cocoa at his work place. I warned him. I said, “Charles, stick to alcoholic beverages” I said. “It’s a lot safer in the end.”’ She checked herself expertly as her carpet-slippered foot stumbled on a loose stair-rod.

  ‘And here we are.’ She stood at last on the third landing.

  ‘My room?’ Lestrade hoped.

  ‘No,’ she held up the lamp to yet another portrait. ‘Mr Carpenter, my second husband. Optical instrument maker.’

  ‘Deceased?’

  ‘As a dodecahedron. The diphtheria carried him off. Had no resistance, you see.’ She tapped the glass. ‘He didn’t imbibe. Of the temperance persuasion.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ Lestrade shook his head.

  ‘This is your room.’ She flung open a door. ‘No visitors, please, Joe,’ she warned. ‘I run a respectable establishment. I know some of these showgirls.’

  So did Lestrade.

  ‘Mr Slingsby wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘Mr Slingsby?’

  She led the way into the tiny garret room, the one with the appalling, peeling wallpaper, and put down the lamp before a portrait above the bed. ‘My first husband.’

  ‘Diphtheria?’

  ‘Wallasea.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘He’s living in Wallasea – and in sin – with a Mrs van Houten. She is of Dutch extraction. We have a lot of Dutchies in Sheffield on account of the excesses of the Duke of Alva back in the olden days. You might say Mr Slingsby is living with his dear old Dutch.’

  ‘And Mr Slingsby wouldn’t approve . . .?’

  ‘Under his own roof, no. Under Mrs van Houten’s roof – well, that’s another matter.’ She tapped him viciously on his lapel, so that the pin fell out again. ‘But that’s men for you. Breakfast’s at seven sharp. The Girl Who Does will knock you up with hot water at six. Sure I can’t tempt you?’ She wobbled the glass under his nose.

  ‘Thank you, no,’ and he closed the door.

  ‘Good night, Joe,’ she called.

  God, apparently, was love. Or so it said under the ghastly portrait of Mr Slingsby. Lestrade hauled off his jacket and climbed out of his trousers. There was no wardrobe, so he folded them as well as he could over the chair. The bed left much to be desired – for example, a pillow – and his head crashed back so that he found himself staring up Mr Slingsby’s fiercely flaring nostrils. Even so, the mattress was marginally preferable to the hard ground under a kipsey-sack and he sank gratefully on to it. The rain stung the little window that looked out on to the sleeping city. From where Lestrade lay he could see the scaffold-shrouded cathedral of St Peter and St Paul where they had just started work on a new nave. Beyond that, the city slept. And so, after a while, did a sergeant of detectives.

  Was it a dream, he wondered for a moment? That soft hand stroking his chest, the heady perfume filling the room. He felt the soft ripeness of her breasts, the flat expanse of her stomach, the gentle pressure of her thighs. His hand roamed upwards over the smooth flesh to the stubble of her upper lip.

  He sat bolt upright, banging his head on the sloping ceiling.

  ‘Good God!’ he shouted, then disappeared below the covers. In the dark tent of the blankets, he heard her say, ‘At last! At last!’

  Then he was out on the threadbare carpet, shivering in disbelief. ‘Madam,’ he whispered.

  ‘Dorrie,’ she reminded him. ‘I’m so glad you decided to stay at Mrs Minogue’s.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ He leaped for his trousers.

  ‘Do you know what it’s like to be a freak,’ she asked, sitting up, her breasts draped over her knees.

  ‘Well, the chaps at the Yard . . . in Fleet Street, used to say . . .’

  She dashed across the room to him. ‘I don’t care what they said. To me you’ll always be normal.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’

  ‘Kiss me, Joseph.’

  ‘No . . . I . . . it’s late.’

  She pinioned his arms and he was just grateful that she was not Tinkerbelle Watson. ‘It’s never that late,’ she said. ‘Hold me!’

  ‘I . . . can’t actually move,’ he realized.

  ‘Sorry,’ and she let him breathe again. ‘We have passions too,’ she assured him breathlessly. ‘It’s not all just taking our clothes off for money and letting people stare at us. I’m sorry I called you a Maryanne. It obviously wasn’t true.’ She glanced feverishly down at his manhood.

  ‘But Mr Slingsby,’ Lestrade hissed in desperation.

  ‘Who?’

  He took her hand, as much to keep it out of his fol-de-rols as anything else, and led her to the bed – a dangerous move, but he was up to it. ‘Mrs Minogue’s first husband.’ He found his Lucifers and lit the lamp. The glow lit Dorinda’s naked body, her gorgeous shoulders, her ripe, pert breasts, her carefully macassared beard.

  ‘He looks a miserable old sod,’ she muttered.

  ‘Quite. And I have been assured by Mrs Minogue that I am allowed no visitors.’

  ‘It’s only a portrait,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, but is it?’ He lifted the lamp to illuminate the old skinflint’s features. ‘Look at the eyes.’

  She did.

  ‘They sort of . . . follow you round the room, don’t they?’

  ‘Do they?’ She squinted at it.

  ‘Take my word for it. Tell me, Dorinda,’ he took her hand again, ‘aren’t you cold?’

  ‘No,’ she shuddered. ‘I’m hot.’ She wrapped her leg round his.

  ‘Stand here,’ he said, dragging her sideways and placing her carefully in a draught. ‘Now?’

  ‘Well, it is a bit chilly here,’ she conceded, standing alone again.

  ‘That’s Mr Slingsby.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That cold sensation. Cold to chill you to the marrow. Cold from the grave.’

  He saw Dorinda’s eyes flicker in the flame.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have you stayed here before?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she told him.

  ‘I have.’ He became serious, watching the leaping shadows in the corner, ‘and I begged not to be given this room.’

  ‘Why?’ she frowned, the hairs on her upper lip bristling uncomfortably.

  ‘Him.’ Lestrade barely mouthed the word. ‘Mr Slingsby.’ He closed to her, watching her nipples stiffen in the draught from the window. ‘He went of the diphtheria, these twenty years ago.’ He put his lips against her ear lobe. ‘But he’s still here. He’s here now. Watching us. Watching you. Listen . . .’

  In the corner, the pin dropped from his lapel.

  ‘. . . You can almost hear him . . . breathing.’

  But Dorinda wasn’t listening. She’d snatched up the frothy nightdress she came in and leapt from the room, leaving her heady perfume and a small beard-trimming razor in her wake.

  Lestrade heaved a sigh of relief, locked the door and went back to bed.

  He heard the clock strike the hour. Two. That loneliest of times. The dark before the dawn when men’s hearts beat empty at doorways and knives come out. He heard a rustling sound. It came from the corner of the room. His eyes
were open. He was awake. By the dim light from the window he could make out a female form, undulating out of a tight-fitting costume. He didn’t move. Not even to pinch himself.

  ‘Why don’t you put the lamp on,’ a soft voice purred, ‘if you want a better look? And you do want a better look, don’t you?’

  She swayed towards him, peeling a spangled vest over her bare shoulders, shaking her long, blonde hair across her breasts. He fumbled for his matches, rattling the chimney of the lamp in his panic. He’d locked that door. He knew he had. The glow fell on the undeniable charms of the luscious Lucinda and she was indeed as leggy as they said. Her nether limbs went up in fact to her . . .

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lestrade felt it best to interrupt his own train of thought.

  ‘What they pay me for,’ she said, running her elegant fingers over her body. ‘Showing myself.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Oh, I know. Dear old Lord George would have you believe that people come to marvel at the dancing, the grace, the speed, the skill. I suppose some of them do – the women, the little kids, the old men. But the young men, the able-bodied – anything between fifteen and sixty, shall we say – they come to look at what you see before your eyes. Only they never manage it, do they? Never quite see what you’re seeing now. In the circus, nothing is quite as it seems.’ She kicked off her high-heeled boots and stood naked before him. It was turning into one of those cases.

  ‘How . . . how did you get in?’ He had to clear his throat several times.

  ‘Through the door, silly.’ She pulled back the coverlet. ‘Oh, dear, do you always wear trousers in bed?’

  ‘Only on Mondays,’ he said.

  ‘Well, then’ she said, tugging at his belt, ‘it’s Tuesday now.’

  ‘But I locked the door.’

  ‘Prestidigitation,’ she murmured. ‘Any circus person worth their salt can pick a lock. How do you want me?’

  ‘Back in your own bed,’ he said firmly, shaking his head to clear the spell of her. ‘What would Mrs Minogue say?’

  ‘Sanctimonious old hypocrite.’ She sat on the bed beside him, running her hands over his chest. ‘She’s just miffed ’cos she didn’t get here first. Lift your bum.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So that I can get your kicksies off.’

  Lestrade was desperate. ‘What would the Spaniard say?’

  ‘You couldn’t pronounce it,’ she giggled. ‘But I am not any man’s plaything. At the moment he shares my act and my bed. Nothing is for ever. Make love to me.’

  ‘Er . . . I . . .’

  ‘You know you want to.’ She was as expert with someone else’s buttons as she was with her own, patting his manhood approvingly.

  ‘There’s something you should know,’ he said.

  ‘That you’re a copper from Scotland Yard? I know.’

  He gulped.

  ‘That you’re investigating the murders in the show? I know.’

  He gulped again.

  ‘That you’ve a body like a whip.’ She fell on him. ‘I know.’

  ‘No.’ He pulled her hair until she sat up. ‘No, I mean I am not as other detectives.’ Further denial seemed useless. His hand fell on Dorinda’s razor on this bedside table. ‘This,’ he waved it at her, ‘this is just for show. As a matter of fact . . . I was rather admiring that fetching little chemise you were wearing. You haven’t got one in powder blue, I suppose?’

  She sat upright, straddling him so that her breasts stared down at him. ‘What are you saying?’

  He looked up at her, pursing his lips and arching his eyebrows. ‘Nature played a cruel trick on me, Mrs Brodie. Here you are, in your prime, no doubt. And I,’ he sighed languidly, ‘simply could not rise to the occasion.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ she said coldly, ‘because there are things I could tell you. Things you need to know.’ And she cocked a supple right leg over his head and cartwheeled across the floor to her pile of clothes.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she tugged on her chemise. ‘And I don’t have a powder blue one.’

  He clawed his way out of bed, fumbling with his fly buttons. ‘What things?’ he repeated.

  ‘Things!’ she shouted.

  He caught her firmly by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Three men from the circus are dead,’ he growled, ‘and I don’t know who’s going to be next. Now if you know anything, tell me.’

  She wrenched herself away from him angrily, spinning back as she reached the door. ‘I know who I saw by Alistair’s swords, by the cabinet he used in the ring.’

  ‘Who?’ Lestrade shouted.

  She looked at him, the woman spurned. She drove her powerful arms into the sleeves of the bolero jacket. ‘A better man than you could ever be,’ she hissed. ‘A real gentleman.’

  He closed to her. ‘You do realize that this real gentleman could have killed your husband, don’t you?’

  ‘Life’s too short, Lestrade,’ she scowled, ‘and by morning this feeble imposture of yours will be over. I shall take great delight in telling everybody who you really are. See how many murderers you can catch then, Mr Scotland Yard!’ And she slammed the door and was gone.

  Was it the thud that woke him? Or the scream? Either way, as the cathedral clock struck the hour of six, he was sitting bolt upright again with yet another lump on his cranium from that damned ceiling. Instinctively, he checked the bed beside him. No one, with or without a beard. No naked girl in the corner either. He rolled sideways, narrowly missing the guzunda and poked his head around the door. A slip of a thing in an apron was rushing along the landing below and heads were appearing at doors and up the stairwells.

  There was a loud slap as the screaming girl collided with the less-than-sobering influence of Mrs Minogue’s right hand. ‘Stop that, gel,’ Lestrade heard her hiccough. ‘Come and have a sherry wine. It’ll soothe your nerves.’

  He dressed in seconds and with shirttails flapping, dashed along the landing.

  ‘Mr Lister,’ it was Dakota-Bred, buckling on his guns, who found him first. ‘What the Sam Houston is going on?’

  ‘I hoped you’d know,’ Lestrade said. ‘I heard a scream.’

  ‘It’s the Girl Who Does,’ Lord George hurried past them both, still in dressing gown and smoking cap, his curlers dangling over his shoulders. ‘Coming from Lucinda’s room.’

  ‘What’s the trouble, Georgie?’ Lady Pauline’s grizzled old head popped out of the necessary office. Without her veil she could have turned the morning milk.

  ‘Probably just a mouse, Nell, my love. Go back to . . . er . . . sleep.’

  Dakota-Bred let out a long, low whistle. With the instinct of a man used to danger, his pearl-handled .45 was already in his hand, nudging Lestrade’s elbow.

  ‘Do you mind?’ the sergeant gingerly moved aside the dark steel muzzle.

  On the bed under the window lay the naked body of Lucinda Brodie, her blue eyes crossed and staring sightlessly up at an ugly knife that jutted grotesquely from the centre of her forehead.

  ‘That’s a beauty,’ the cowboy had spun the revolver back to its holster and crossed the room in a single stride.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ Lestrade shouted and shut and locked the door. He crouched beside the bed. The girl’s hands had clutched the sheet convulsively and her mouth was open, her teeth clenched. The blood was a dark mask over her once lovely face and flecks of it had splashed into her hair and over her breasts. Lestrade looked at the coverlet. It had been pulled back around the girl’s ankles and there was no blood on it. He looked at her body, her arms rigid in rigor mortis, her legs splayed.

  ‘Hey!’ Dakota-Bred grabbed Lestrade’s hair and pulled him up. ‘What kinda pervert are you?’

  ‘I am Detective Sergeant Lestrade of Scotland Yard, cowboy. Let go of my hair or I’ll break your arm.’

  The cowboy did. ‘Y . . . You’re a copper?’

  Lestrade smoothed down his parting, suddenly aware of the hammering at the doo
r.

  ‘Dakota-Bred? Lister? Let me in. This is my circus.’

  And over Sanger’s voice they heard another. ‘And this is my house.’

  Lestrade flicked the key. Mrs Minogue took one horrified look at the corpse on the bed, then at Lestrade, his shirttails dangling. She swung her hand up and brought it down on the sergeant’s neck with a force surprising in a middle-aged dipsomaniac. He lolled back alongside the leggy, no-longer luscious Lucinda.

  ‘When you spoke of Mrs Minogue’s Barnsley Chop,’ Lestrade winced, trying to get some sensation back into his left shoulder, ‘I thought you were referring to her culinary expertise.’

  ‘That too.’ Sanger passed the man a brandy, marginally stiffer than Lestrade’s neck. Or the corpse on the bed.

  ‘How long have I been out?’

  ‘About an hour,’ the showman told him.

  ‘Now, keep still, Mr Lestrade,’ Lady Pauline was applying a hot poultice to his ruptured tendons. ‘This always works on my lions, but you’ve got to give it time.’

  ‘What did she hit me with? A poker?’

  ‘Just the side of her hand,’ Sanger said. ‘I wish I’d known about that, years ago. She’d have been great in a sideshow, splitting bricks.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lestrade staggered to his feet, ‘as opposed to shitting bricks, which is what I nearly did – begging your pardon, Lady Pauline.’

  The old Lion Queen dropped her poultice back into the bowl. She patted his cheek. You look after yourself, sonny,’ she said, ‘there’s a maniac loose, you know.’ She looked at Lucinda, shook her head and walked away.

  As the door closed behind her, Sanger moved from his place lolling against the wall. ‘She’s taking this pretty bad, Lestrade,’ he said. ‘What’s going on? Can you see a pattern in this madness?’

  Lestrade grimaced as he hauled his shirt back on. His left hand dangled uselessly. ‘She’s trapped a nerve,’ he winced.

  ‘She’s got one, certainly,’ Sanger said. ‘That’s what I like about old Kindly – why we keep coming here whenever we’re doing the northern circuit. Doesn’t suffer fools gladly, doesn’t Mrs Minogue.’

  ‘Has anybody called the police?’ Lestrade looked at the dead girl.