Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

‘So what did you do, you and your Jim?’

  She stood up sharply. ‘That’s a very indelicate question, sergeant,’ she said, ‘and I positively refuse to answer it. Let’s say it’s all still possible even in the twilight of one’s years.’

  ‘I see.’ Lestrade knew a brick wall when he met one. ‘How long did he stay?’

  ‘Until half past five. My wretched alarm didn’t go off and we overslept. Jim had to hotfoot it before the girl woke up.’

  ‘But he mistimed it?’

  ‘Clearly.’ She pursed her shrivelled lips. ‘The girl saw him.’

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Minogue,’ Lestrade rose with her, ‘can you vouch for Jim Crockett’s whereabouts the whole time that he was in the house?’

  She blinked. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Only . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Except that you can’t suspect my Jim. He’s as gentle as a lamb. And I’m sure I locked the front door again when I let him in. Yes, I’m sure of it.’

  Cabs weren’t plentiful in Sheffield, not at that time on a Saturday afternoon anyway, so Lestrade was grateful to recognize on the driving board of a trap, Samson, Sanger’s new rigger.

  ‘Mr Lestrade,’ he called, hauling on the reins, ‘come aboard. Making for the circus? I’ve just been on an errand for the Boss.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mr Samson, I hope you’ll keep my identity a secret.’ He straightened his bowler as the pony jolted forward. ‘You appreciate the delicacy of the situation?’

  ‘Oh, of course, of course,’ the ex-sailor grinned, ‘but I wonder if you do?’

  ‘If I do?’ Lestrade turned to him.

  ‘Hey up, Jocasta!’ The pony swung to the left at the touch of the whip and the rigger brought the trap round under a stand of elms. They were on the edge of the city, the clanging of steel like a distant peal of bells in some mad belfry. He hauled on the reins and wrenched on the brake.

  ‘The other night, when Lord George Sanger blew the whistle on you, Ollie Oliver was talking about two men dead. That’s Atkins and Hughie the dwarf.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Since then, it’s doubled. The Brodies down within twenty-four hours of each other.’

  ‘That’s right again.’

  ‘How many more are we talking about?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  Samson lit a cigar and put his feet up on the board. ‘All right,’ he sighed, ‘if you’re going to play it cagey. What about the man on the moor at Ilkley – wi’out an ‘at and wi’out a face? The dead Lieutenant of Artillery and the deceased Inspector of the Metropolitan Police?’

  Lestrade felt his hackles rising. ‘Who are you?’ He turned to face his man.

  The rigger chuckled. ‘John Samson,’ he said. ‘My friends call me Delilah, but I’d rather you didn’t noise that abroad.’

  ‘Circus rigger?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Samson blew rings to the budding branches above his head.

  ‘Ex-sailor?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘What ship?’

  ‘The Belinda Leigh. Port o’ London to Rotterdam. Her Captain is a Mr Meecham. Her First Mate Tom Jackson. She was built at Jarrow on the Tyne in 1865, displaces 40,000 tons . . .’

  ‘All right,’ Lestrade said. ‘You’ve convinced me. But how do you know so much about my cases? Unless . . .?’ His heart froze. For a moment he panicked, clutched his pocket convulsively, sitting on the board of a pony-trap at the edge of Sheffield with a glib, cigar-smoking murderer.

  Samson laughed. ‘Unless I’m the man you’re looking for? No, Lestrade, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m just a man with a message.’

  Lestrade looked at the dark eyes, the lantern jaw. ‘You mean you’re Unitarian?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m a detective – like you. Well, not quite like you. For a start, I earn a day four times what you do in a week and for afters, I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘I’m happy for you,’ Lestrade said. ‘Who are you working for?’

  ‘The Highest in the Land.’

  ‘The Queen?’ Lestrade was impressed.

  ‘Do listen, Lestrade,’ Samson said. ‘I said the Highest. The Jew at Number Ten.’

  ‘“Old Clo”?’

  ‘The same. He knows you, Lestrade. Speaks of you; not highly, I’ll admit, but with a certain fondness. Actually, I owe George Sanger a favour. I’d only got a bad photograph of you to work from and Dizzy was right – you do look different with a moustache. I wasn’t quite sure it was you at first, but when Lord George obligingly introduced you, well . . .’

  ‘One handle deserves another,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it does. My name is Steele. Oliver Steele. Steele and Steele, Private Inquiry Agents. Tell me, have you heard of a chap called Sherlock Holmes?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Lestrade said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. There’s a rumour in London that this deranged amateur is trying to muscle in on us professionals.’

  ‘I thought we were the professionals?’ Lestrade said.

  ‘After your performance?’ Steele scowled. ‘Good God, man, do me a favour.’

  ‘Are you serious,’ Lestrade asked, ‘about Disraeli knowing me?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Said, if I remember right – “He’s an idiot, but a persistent one”.’

  Lestrade looked a little crestfallen.

  ‘Cheer up, Lestrade,’ Steele ordered. ‘After all, bad publicity is better than none at all. I don’t suppose the Prime Minister, responsible as he is for most of the civilized and an extraordinarily large bit of the uncivilized world, knows the name of many sergeants of police.’

  ‘Yes,’ the professional detective reconsidered. ‘I suppose I should be flattered. But why are you here?’

  ‘To take you home,’ Steele said. ‘After all, you have been a teeny bit naughty, you know. What my friends in the East End would call “doing a runner”.’

  ‘Hardly that,’ Lestrade told him. ‘I had merely gone underground in pursuit of my inquiries.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be ordered to do that?’ Steele asked, ‘by a superior, I mean?’

  ‘There wasn’t time. Men were dying.’

  ‘Well,’ Steele clamped the cigar between his lips and took up the reins. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Home,’ he said. ‘Back to dear old Lunnon town. You’ve got some explaining to do.’

  Lestrade held his rein arm. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’

  Steele let the reins fall loose, grinning. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I hoped you’d say that. I must admit I was surprised when the old Jew asked me to find you and bring you back. But I was even more intrigued when I got here. How much headway have you made?’

  ‘First, tell me why the Prime Minister wants me off this case. You have to conceive it’s a little peculiar.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but then it’s a little peculiar you’re looking for.’

  ‘Er . . . no,’ Lestrade frowned. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘Any idea who your man is?’

  ‘Yes. I’m on my way to arrest him now.’

  Steele’s prow-like jaw sagged a little. ‘You are?’

  ‘Of course. Ironic, really, isn’t it? When he killed in the full glare of the naphtha it was as though he was invisible. But in the cramped confines of a lodging house, somehow you can’t miss him.’

  ‘Who?’ Steele shrieked. ‘Who is it, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Jim Crockett,’ Lestrade announced.

  ‘The lion tamer?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Balderdash!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If Crockett’s your man, I’m the Emperor of Japan.’

  ‘We’re bound to have our professional differences, Your Omnipotence,’ Lestrade bowed.

  ‘All right,’ Steele was an indulgent man, up to a point. ‘All right, you tell me why Crockett.’

  ‘The oldest proble
m in the book,’ Lestrade said, pulling out a cigar of his own. It was his last and his wages had all but gone, but the case was over and he could afford to be generous to himself. ‘One of the many problems incoherent in murder cases – how to get in and out of a murder scene without being seen.’

  ‘Somebody saw him?’

  ‘As a matter of face, no – not exactly. But I have it from the lips of Mrs Minogue herself – she’s the landlady – that he arrived at twelve thirty and was seen leaving at five thirty.’

  ‘When did the Brodie girl die?’

  ‘About two, I estimate.’

  ‘Who let Crockett in?’

  ‘Mrs Minogue.’

  ‘And do we know where he was between those times?’

  ‘Apparently with Mrs Minogue, though she was rather cagey about it.’

  ‘So we only have her word?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s plausible enough,’ Steele stroked his powerful chin. ‘What about motive?’

  ‘Mad as a snake,’ Lestrade shrugged. ‘I don’t know. All I know is that he had opportunity.’

  ‘So did the others in the house. What about the weapon?’

  ‘Bowie knife, thrown at her head.’

  Steele winced. ‘Knife thrower, is he, Crockett?’

  ‘Well, no, but . . .’

  ‘Come on, Lestrade,’ Steele emptied his boot of llama droppings. ‘You’re clutching at straws, man. Take my word for it, Crockett’s not your man.’

  ‘Really?’ Lestrade sighed. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me why.’

  ‘Certainly.’ Steele obliged. ‘How tall is Crockett, give or take?’

  ‘Er . . . oh, I don’t know, six foot two, three.’

  ‘What does he weigh, would you say?’

  ‘Er . . . seventeen, eighteen stone.’

  ‘His beard – is it real?’

  ‘His beard?’ Lestrade had had several close shaves recently. ‘I suppose it is – although in the circus . . .’

  ‘Nothing is quite what it seems. Yes, I know.’ Steele nodded. ‘But I also know that James Crockett is not the Prince Imperial.’

  Lestrade wondered for a moment where his companion had escaped from. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Let me take you back,’ Steele said, resting his hands over his knees, ‘to the first murder – the man without a face at Ilkley.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘The clues you found there . . .’

  ‘A handkerchief . . .’ He remembered the other handkerchief, the one Emily Clare had given him, still tied around his wrist under the cuff.

  ‘. . . with a letter “N”. “N” for Napoleon.’

  ‘Napoleon,’ Lestrade repeated. So Emily had been right.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘An Albert watch. With an inscription.’

  ‘An inscription that said “Remember Eylau”.’

  ‘You’re remarkably well informed,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘It’s my job,’ Steele told him. ‘Eylau was one of Napoleon’s battles, 1807 is memory serves.’

  Emily was right again.

  ‘And the third clue?’

  ‘Er . . . a letter, written in French.’

  ‘Precisely. By a mother to her son – to a little boy called Louis. Only the little boy had grown up. He had become a soldier in the British Army. He had trained at Woolwich – The Shop – and she warned him to beware the Alpine Club because it was too dangerous. The mother was Empress Eugenie and the son was Napoleon Eugene Louis Bonaparte, the Prince Imperial.’

  ‘You mean . . . the body below the Cow Rock was the heir to the throne of France?’

  ‘No,’ growled Steele, ‘but that’s what you were supposed to think. Unfortunately, with you on the case, there wasn’t much chance of that. Our friend made the basic mistake of assuming that the British Police are halfway intelligent.’

  Lestrade ignored him. ‘So who . . .?’

  ‘Who killed the Prince Imperial? No one has . . . yet. It’s going to be a bit of a race, Lestrade, between you and me, to see who does it first.’

  ‘What? Do you mean . . .?’ Realization was beginning to dawn.

  ‘Exactly. The Prince Imperial has lost whatever slight hold on reason he might once have had. Not much of a head start, poor bugger, a grasping Spic of a mother, a father half-adventurer, half-daydreamer. And the poor little bastard given the Legion of Honour when he was two days old. It’s a lot to live up to.’

  ‘Then . . .’

  ‘He’s not in South Africa, before you ask,’ Steele said.

  Lestrade hadn’t intended to.

  ‘He jumped ship, as it were, even before he got on the train. Vanished for a while, but obviously had made his way north. We know he was at Ilkley because that’s where he hacked a passing labourer to death with his Royal Artillery sword and took his identity. He knew people would come looking for him. He hoped to shake them off for ever by dying. But there was a problem there. He has one of the most ordinary faces I’ve ever seen, but somebody will recognize him – Jaheel Carey, for instance, his ADC. So he picked off a passing labourer who bore a passing resemblance to him and bashed his face to a pulp for good measure. Then he planted the obvious clues – the handkerchief, the watch, the letter. Then he joined the circus.’

  ‘And that’s where Lyle recognized him.’ Lestrade kicked himself metaphorically.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The day before he died, Lieutenant Lyle went to watch the circus. They were at Harrogate then, coming out of winter quarters, taking men on. Of course he recognized him. They’d been at Woolwich together. That’s why he couldn’t believe it. What was it he said – “They’d never allow it”? Well, of course they wouldn’t. The very idea of the Prince Imperial working for a circus is impossible. What a superb hiding place.’

  ‘All right,’ Steele agreed, ‘so Lyle had to die. He killed both men the way he had been taught – the cuts of the German Schlägerei, the student duel, as popular in France as it is in Germany. Of course, your inspector was different.’

  ‘You know about him too?’

  ‘Of course, Lestrade,’ Steele sighed. ‘I’m a detective. I tend to detect.’

  ‘But Heneage was harmless,’ Lestrade told him. ‘Couldn’t investigate a rice pudding.’

  ‘Yes, but the Prince Imperial didn’t know that. He probably panicked. Realized that here was an officer from Scotland Yard on to him.’

  ‘So he killed him.’

  ‘Yes, he’d already dropped the sword. Stashed it somewhere, I shouldn’t wonder. And then his mind began to work. With that curious brilliance sometimes found in the insane, he hatched a wicked plan. Why not kill Heneage with a weapon that would point to somebody else being the murderer? He’s been doing it ever since.’

  ‘The ankus pointed to the elephant man, the Sultan of Ramnuggar.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘The live ammunition in the pistol to Dakota-Bred Carver; the acid of sugar in the ether bottle to George Sanger; then of course there was the tangled web of the Brodies, what with her persuasions and so on.’

  ‘He hoped you’d go for the Spaniard.’

  ‘Which I nearly did. But why kill Lucinda?’

  ‘Because she knew something would be my guess.’

  Lestrade remembered it all too well. How she had lost her temper and stormed from his room, taunting him with what she knew. But he wasn’t telling Steele that.

  ‘So the Prince Imperial isn’t Jim Crockett?’

  ‘Of course not. The ginger beard’s no fake. The height. The weight. It’s all wrong. This man is elusive, but he’s not a master of disguise. Crockett’s been with Sanger for years. Our man has arrived recently. And all I’ve got to do is see three more people.’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘You forget, Lestrade, I know what the Prince Imperial looks like.’

  ‘What?’

  Steele laughed. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I’m not handing him to you on a plate. I�
��ve come too far and worked too hard for that. Just leave the crime solving to me, Sholto, m’boy. You’re in over your head. By tonight, I’ll have met everyone in this damned freak show. Take my word for it, there’ll be no more murders in the sawdust ring.’

  ❖9❖

  O

  liver Steele sat in the chair, upright, rigid. His shirt and jacket hung in threads, draped around his body, and his boots were ripped and twisted. His face was as black as any nigger minstrel’s and his teeth bared in a permanent grin. His scalp was dark and devoid of hair and across his chest were deep lacerations, blacker than the surrounding skin that exposed a grey-looking rib on one side below his heart. His knuckles were a deathly white and across his arms and shoulders reddish-brown tree-leaf mottling had left their mark.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Lestrade,’ Sanger whispered, his terrified voice hardly audible. ‘Nothing human could have done that.’

  Lestrade muttered, ‘Here’s another fine mess you’ve got yourself into, Oliver.’

  Nathaniel Isinglass was a little the wrong side of forty. The fact that his spectacles slanted across his face betrayed the dismal truth that he had ears at different levels. He was also a martyr to asthma and years of getting his head down in wet kipsey-sacks and facing the lashing rain of the road had done nothing for him. He was the boffin of Sanger’s Circus. Rumour had it that he had a degree in science from Leyden University, where they had lots of jars. He sat in Sanger’s wagon that night, shaking his head and doing his best to breathe now and then.

  ‘Nat,’ Sanger was saying. ‘Nat. What went wrong?’

  The boffin shook his head again.

  ‘Here.’ The Boss shoved a large brandy under the man’s nose.

  ‘Thanks, Boss,’ Isinglass gulped at it.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Sanger muttered.

  ‘I have.’ Harry Masters stretched out his booted legs. He had been on the road in search of camel fodder for two days and it had taken its toll on his nether limbs. Indeed, below the waist, he was quite dead.

  ‘Where?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Saarland, on the German border. I saw a man killed by lightning. Damnedest thing I ever saw.’

  ‘What happened?’ Sanger asked.

  ‘Actually, it’s not all that uncommon,’ the vet began to lever off his hunting boots. ‘Between eighteen and twenty persons each year are killed in England from lightning bolts. Not to mention animals. It depends on all sorts of things, of course – the intensity of the charge, what the unfortunate is wearing, where he is standing. And on the size of the individual. A sheep, for instance, is more likely to die than a man. Wham! Instant navarin of lamb.’