Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘I thought you were the police,’ Sanger said.

  ‘No, I mean the local police.’

  The showman shook his head. ‘Mrs Minogue won’t hear of it. It would ruin her reputation. Number 86 – Home to the Stars. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Number 86, Home Where You Might Get Stabbed To Death loses an edge, don’t you think?’

  Lestrade had to concede that it did. ‘So we keep this one in the family again, do we?’

  ‘Look, Lestrade,’ Sanger laid a hand on his bad shoulder and watched his man turn a whiter shade of pale. ‘Oh, sorry. My people are dying. Lucinda is the fourth. And she’s a woman.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lestrade could not fail to notice. ‘Yes, she is. Who covered her up?’

  ‘Lady Pauline and Mrs Minogue. They said it wasn’t decent.’

  Lestrade looked with annoyance at the corpse. ‘And they put her arms like that, across her?’

  Sanger nodded. ‘It wasn’t easy,’ he said. ‘She’s gone as stiff as a wagon board.’

  ‘And they took out the knife and cleaned her up, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. Did they do wrong?’

  Lestrade sighed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, they didn’t do wrong. Where’s the knife?’

  He watched as Sanger pulled it from his pocket. The hilt was of ebony, ridged for a firm grip and the blade broad and single-edged.

  ‘It’s a Bowie knife,’ the showman told him, ‘and before you ask, both Dakota-Bred and Henrico el Magnifico carry them.’

  Lestrade felt the weight of it in his hand. Suddenly, without warning, he threw it at the headboard. It hit it and plopped onto the bloody pillow beside the dead girl’s head.

  ‘Hmm. Not a throwing knife, then?’ he said.

  Sanger crossed to retrieve it. ‘Ordinarily, no. It was invented by Colonel Jim Bowie. I expect Dakota-Bred can tell you all about him. Legend goes that Bowie’s brother lost some fingers in a hunting accident, so he designed a knife with a crosspiece to prevent the hand from slipping. No, it wasn’t designed to be thrown. But . . .’ he crouched silently, his right arm snaking out to the horizontal. The weapon hissed through the air and its murderous tip bit deep into the headboard.

  Lestrade blinked in disbelief. ‘Don’t move,’ he said. He wrenched the knife free and placed the tip into the dark, puckered hole between the girl’s eyebrows, bruised now and shiny. Her eyes had swollen and the colour had gone from her cheeks.

  ‘That’s it,’ Lestrade said. ‘That’s where the murderer stood when he killed her. Just where you’re standing, Mr Sanger.’

  ‘From which you deduce?’

  ‘That our murderer is strong – but we already knew that. He is an expert with a throwing knife. And . . .’ he turned to the showman, ‘the luscious, leggy Lucinda was offering herself to him when he killed her.’

  The Girl Who Does sat in the little cane chair in the kitchen, not far from the black-lead stove which filled most of her waking hours. She was barely sixteen, Lestrade guessed, by her pale face and willowy form under the grubby apron. Her cap had slipped on the skew and she was rocking gently from side to side, looking at him as though from a long way away and she was giggling as she spoke.

  ‘No, sir,’ she said, ‘I live in. My room is along under t’stairs.’

  ‘And what time did you turn in last night?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘’Bout midnight,’ she told him. ‘I ’ave t’ be up by five t’ get t’breakfast things on and t’hot water.’

  ‘Which order do you do the rooms?’

  ‘I start at Mrs M’s and go on up t’attic.’

  ‘So mine would be the last room you’d get to?’

  ‘’Appen,’ she hiccoughed.

  ‘Except that this morning you didn’t get beyond the third floor.’

  ‘Nay.’ Her face darkened at the memory of it, but Mrs Minogue leaned over and poured her another sherry wine so that she was all right.

  ‘Tell me what happened?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Well, I got t’ room, y’ know, t’one with . . . her . . . in it. I knocked.’

  ‘You always knock?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mrs Minogue interrupted. ‘I told you, Mr Lister, I run a respectable establishment.’

  ‘Quite,’ he smiled icily at her. So respectable was Mrs Minogue’s establishment that two women had inveigled their way into his room and one of them had been stabbed to death in the space of six hours. He himself had been temporarily incapacitated and the entire domestic staff were well on their way to becoming paralytic. So much for Victorian values. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well,’ she gulped gratefully at the amber nectar, ‘I remember t’door was open, like. Not on t’latch.’

  ‘Ajar?’

  ‘Nay, thank you, sir,’ she raised her glass. ‘I’m all right for t’moment.’

  ‘You went in?’

  ‘Aye. She were there . . .’ her eyelids flickered, her knuckles whitened on the glass. ‘. . . On t’bed. Dead.’

  ‘You knew she was dead?’ Lestrade checked.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ the girl shuddered. ‘She were starin’, like, at t’ceilin’. Her eyes were crossed, like she ’ad a turn. An’ that knife thing, stickin’ in ’er ’ead. Fair gave me t’willies, I can tell yer.’

  ‘You screamed?’

  ‘Did I?’ she frowned, looking to Mrs Minogue. ‘I don’t remember anythin’ else until Mrs M were slappin’ me round t’head, offerin’ me a drink.’

  ‘Which you took?’

  ‘Nay,’ the girl straightened. ‘I’m of t’Methodist persuasion. I don’t touch a drop.’

  ‘Quite,’ nodded Lestrade. ‘On the stairs. In the kitchen. Did you see anyone else as you delivered the hot water?’

  She thought hard. ‘Nay,’ she shook her head.

  Lestrade leaned back. It didn’t surprise him. It would have been too simple if she had.

  ‘Only that big tyke.’

  He leaned forward again. ‘What big tyke?’

  ‘That tyke wi’ t’beard.’

  Lestrade blinked. ‘You mean Dorinda, the Bearded Lady?’

  ‘Do I?’ the girl frowned at her glass. ‘Mrs M,’ she said, ‘this medicine for soothin’ t’nerves. What’s it called again?’

  ‘Sherry wine, dear,’ the old girl told her.

  ‘Aye. Does it make yer see things, like?’

  Lestrade looked at the patroness, as intrigued to catch her answer as the girl was.

  ‘Only after a prolonged dose of treatment, love’ she said. ‘Things like mice and cockroaches.’ She looked coldly at Lestrade. ‘So they tell me, anyway.’

  ‘But I see them anyway,’ the girl said.

  ‘Not in this house, though,’ Mrs Minogue was quick to assure Lestrade.

  ‘Oh, aye . . .’ the girl began.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Lestrade cut in.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you ask if sherry wine makes you see things?’

  ‘Well, this tyke I saw, t’one wi’ beard. Didn’t look like a woman.’

  ‘Big?’ suggested Lestrade.

  ‘Like t’barn,’ the girl explained.

  ‘No one of that description is currently staying at my house,’ Mrs Minogue assured them both. ‘You can’t have been properly awake, girl.’

  ‘But I were, Mrs M,’ the girl was quietly adamant before she slithered to the floor. ‘I were.’

  By mid-afternoon, when most of the circus folk had gone to the Big Top to practise and Lord George Sanger was already making arrangements with Ollie Oliver to move south to Chesterfield, Lestrade had pieced together the movements of the night. On the wall of his garret room, next to the reminder that ‘As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap’, he had stuck a plan of the house, hastily sketched by Mrs Minogue, anxious as she was to keep the lid on the melting pot that was ‘Duntentin’.

  Anyone had access to Lucinda Brodie’s room, at any hour of the night, for she never locked it. All the gents at number 86 bore witness to the fact that her caravan door was always open too
. Lord George Sanger had gone, perfect commanding officer and father figure that he was, to break the news to Henrico el Magnifico and the Spaniard had wept copiously all over him, then gone out to the practice ground and thrown his deadly knives into the heart of a wooden, painted man. Time after time, the razor points had bitten into the wood, until the whole area around the heart was chewed and ripped. Nearly two miles away, Detective Sergeant Lestrade had the same target in mind. But who? Who was the flat, wooden man with the painted face? The face in the crowd?

  He went through it again, for the umpteenth time that day. George and Pauline Sanger were in bed on the first floor. He said she was snoring; she said he was. They had heard movement, about midnight, but assumed it was Mrs Minogue, locking up. Why should either of them have crept from the double bed, risking the creak of a floorboard, the rattle of a doorknob, to hurl a Bowie knife into the head of a girl who had never harmed either of them? And the Sangers had a point.

  The great Stromboli had been asleep on the second floor. That put him nearer to Lucinda’s room and since he was alone, he had no alibi. The man knew Lestrade’s secret. He made no bones about the fact that he went down to the kitchen at nearly two in search of a drink of water. No, he had seen nothing. On the first floor he had heard communal snoring coming from the Sangers’ room.

  Dakota-Bred Carver had the room along from Lestrade’s. He had been up oiling his guns until well past midnight; then he had thrown his blanket down on the floor, rested his head back on his saddle, lowered his Stetson over his eyes and gone to sleep. As was his custom, he was up at four and strapping himself into his chaps. He had not left the room, however, the whole time. Not until he heard the girl scream. And then he had come a-running, carrying iron.

  Major John had been up most of the night – a combination of the accounts he had to work on and the probable effects of Mrs Minogue’s dumplings. His was the room on the third floor back, but he had spent much time passing it. On his many comings and goings to Mrs Minogue’s usual office on the second floor, he had seen quite a few people wandering about. One was the Girl Who Did. She seemed to be in a trance, floating in her nightdress along the first landing, carrying an empty bowl and muttering ‘hot water, hot water’. What time was this? Lestrade had asked. Around one, perhaps a little later. The dwarf had led her gently back to her own room, near the kitchen, kicking aside the mice and flicking the odd cockroach off her bed. Was it then, Lestrade wondered, that she had seen the bearded man? Major John had a face like a baby and anyway, not even in the wildest stretches of sherry-induced exaggeration could he be described as big. Indeed, unless the Girl Who Sleepwalked had glanced down, she wouldn’t have seen him at all.

  Another apparition the little accountant had seen was Dorrie, the Bearded Lady. She looked furtive, he said, and had a high colour. She seemed to be making for the attic and when she saw him, claimed that she had put her razor down somewhere and was looking for it.

  Yet a third was the deceased herself, the wife of the Sword Swallower, mistress of the Knife Thrower. She too had been moving in the general direction of the fourth floor, about an hour after Dorinda. She looked more luscious and leggy than ever. When she saw the dwarf, she winked, patted him on the head and said she was off for a tumble. The little accountant noticed that during his interrogation, Lestrade did not once ask him who with.

  Dorinda herself wasn’t speaking. Yet Lestrade knew full well where she had been at least at certain times during the night. Then of course she had an alibi. And anyway, the corpse had told its own tale. Given the late Lucinda’s proclivities, it didn’t seem likely that she would have lain on the bed, naked and ready, for another woman, albeit a rather follicularly advantaged one. Her caller – her killer – had been a man. A man she knew. A man for whom she was prepared to lie naked and exposed. A man who had crept to her room, announced or otherwise, and who had enough expertise to throw the knife that killed her at about two o’clock. This he knew from the stiffness of the corpse. At that time, he was sure that one person and one person only was in the clear – and that was a Detective Sergeant of the Metropolitan Police.

  ‘You’ll have a sherry wine before you go?’ she asked him, resting her carpet-slippered feet on a pouffe.

  ‘Thank you, no.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ she said, ‘and I thought you Fleet Street men liked your liquor. I’m sorry about clouting you, by the way, Joe. It was shock, I suppose. No one’s died under this roof since Mr Minogue – and never by a knife in the head. It’s not a very nice way to go, is it, duckie?’

  No, it wasn’t. ‘That’s all right,’ Lestrade said. ‘The feeling’s nearly come back to my arm, now. And the neck muscles are relaxing.’

  ‘Ah, good.’ She refilled her glass. ‘That’ll be Lady Pauline’s poultice. What a wonderful woman.’

  ‘Indeed. And talking of women, how long has your girl been with you?’

  ‘The Girl Who Does? Ooh, she’s been a-doing now for . . . ooh, must be three years.’

  ‘And she lives in?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Her father kicked her out, the drunken old sot. Beat her something cruel, he did. Well,’ she shook her head, ‘that’s the drink for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Lestrade, ‘shocking. Do you trust her?’

  ‘With my life.’ The landlady was solemn.

  ‘With your secret?’

  She straightened. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Did you know the girl walked in her sleep?’

  ‘I believe she does, yes. What has this to do with a secret?’

  ‘She said she saw a bearded man.’

  ‘Dreaming,’ Mrs Minogue dismissed it. ‘If memory serves me right, of the men staying here last night, only you and Lord George have moustaches. The others are clean-shaven. She must have seen the Bearded Lady.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ Lestrade agreed. ‘But there is another possibility.’

  ‘Oh?’ The landlady reached for her decanter. Lestrade risked all by gripping her arm.

  ‘What time did you say you locked up?’

  ‘At midnight, Mr Lister,’ she said. The ‘Joe’ had vanished from her conversation. ‘I told you that. The girl saw me do it.’

  ‘And someone else saw you unlocking again less than half an hour later.’

  ‘What?’ She wrenched her arm from his grip. ‘Who saw me?’ She was standing now, shouting. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about murder, Mrs Minogue,’ he said flatly. ‘And about a murderer you let in at approximately twelve thirty this morning.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ she snapped. ‘I let no one in.’

  ‘You did,’ Lestrade insisted. ‘What he did between twelve thirty and two I have no idea, but perhaps I can guess that to a woman who has worked her way through four husbands, the wee wee hours of the morning must hang heavy on her hands . . .’

  ‘How dare you!’ The deadly hand was raised again. This time, Lestrade was faster and he caught it on his forearm before swinging backwards and slapping the old girl across the head. The glass fell from her hand. Her teeth flew across the carpet and she lay, sprawled and beaten, in the recesses of her sofa.

  Lestrade crouched beside the couch. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t normally hit women. But you, madam, are an accomplice to murder.’

  She looked at him through terror-struck eyes. ‘You’re no newspaperman,’ she hissed.

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘I am Detective Sergeant Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Now you tell me about the bearded man.’

  She relaxed and sighed and he let her sit up. He even poured her another glass to replace the one she’d dropped. He stopped short of retrieving her teeth. There were some things even policemen didn’t do. Even in 1879.

  ‘Who saw me?’ she asked after a moment’s composure.

  ‘No one,’ Lestrade said, returning to his chair. ‘I made that up.’

  The look on her face was a picture. For a moment, he thought she’d go for him again, but she subside
d. ‘Very clever,’ she said, ‘but isn’t that what they call entrapment?’

  ‘Mrs Minogue,’ Lestrade leaned forward. ‘Lucinda Brodie is the seventh victim of a madman I have been chasing for over two months. I have to stop him before he claims an eighth. If you like, I’ll hand you, your house and your fancy man over to the Sheffield Constabulary. By the time you get out of jail, “Duntentin” will have fallen into rack and ruin. And you won’t find an admirer then.’

  Secretly, although he was far too kind to say so, Lestrade was astonished that she had an admirer now. Still, perhaps the man was visually disadvantaged – that would explain it.

  ‘Very well.’ She’d thought it over, raising her glass for him to fill it. Lestrade had never met a chain-drinker before. ‘Your wild guess was very accurate, Mr Lestrade. I let in my gentleman friend at just on twelve twenty. He’s ever so punctual when he’s in town.’

  ‘He is a regular visitor?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  She looked quizzically at him. ‘I regret I cannot tell you.’

  ‘And I regret that you must.’

  ‘He is not, I suspect, unknown to you.’

  ‘That narrows the field only a little, madam,’ he told her.

  ‘Very well. He is James Crockett.’

  ‘The lion tamer?’

  ‘A lion tamer, certainly. I understand that Lord George has several – Maccomo, the blackamoor – and that’s not particularly easy for me to say; then there’s Fearless Fortescue and Lady Pauline, of course.’

  ‘So Crockett . . .’

  ‘Pays me a visit whenever the circus comes to town.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he stay here?’

  Mrs Minogue looked horrified. ‘Please, Mr Lestrade. What would people think?’

  ‘But surely,’ the sergeant said. ‘One more guest among several. Dakota-Bred was an unattached man last night, as was Major John. As was I.’

  ‘Yes,’ she scowled. ‘But one of them is a dwarf and the other an American. And the third – I thought and was led to believe – a newspaperman. No one would imagine that a lady of my refinement would . . . with them. But a full-blooded male like my Jim, well . . .’