Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Madame Za-Za . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she tutted, ‘that’s enough about you. What about your Nemesis?’

  ‘I’ve let you see – and hold – my hand, madam,’ he said, ‘let that be enough.’ There was no way he intended the old lady to see and hold his nemesis as well.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘the leaves,’ and ferreted for a cup.

  ‘I told you . . .’

  ‘What you told me in the balance of things against the dark forces is quite irrelevant,’ she interrupted. ‘Take heed of the gyppo’s warning and shut up.’ He was pleasantly surprised to find the old clairvoyant using a chipped, handless thing of vaguely Metropolitan pattern. She turned it sharply upside down on a saucer and another chip flew off. Then she closed her eyes and rotated the cup, first clockwise, then the other way. In the greenish candlelight she looked quite dead.

  ‘There!’ she pitched forward so that her sharp nose was an inch or so from the wet tea leaves. ‘Hydromancy,’ she purred. ‘It used to be oil or molten lead, but in a wooden caravan that’s asking for trouble. One’s Line of Life becomes measurably shorter just before a caravan fire, I can tell you. Of course, that does open the door for pyromancy, but it’s costly in terms of caravans. My personal favourite is haruspicy.’

  ‘Harus . . .?’

  ‘Muckin’ about with bird entrails. I used to do that until Dr Marvo and his Miraculous Mynahs complained about it.’

  ‘The miners complained?’ Lestrade was confused. ‘Were you working underground?’

  ‘No, no,’ Madame Za-Za explained. ‘Quite openly and above board. You can’t get the entrails these days. Ooh, dear.’

  ‘What?’ Lestrade’s nose-tip joined the old clairvoyant’s.

  ‘See that?’

  Lestrade peered closer.

  ‘That’s a sugar lump, that is. Or what’s left of one.’

  ‘What does that prove?’

  She smiled and patted his cheek. ‘That you’re a sweetie, sonny. But here,’ the smile had gone and her left eye twitched, ‘here is a wire.’

  ‘A wire?’

  ‘A high wire,’ she nodded, ‘in a circus.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I see a letter,’ she whispered, ‘a letter “N”. Upper case.’

  ‘Napoleon,’ he muttered.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ She looked up.

  ‘Never mind,’ he answered.

  ‘It’s just that the great Mademoiselle Lenormand was imprisoned by that little corporal for cartomancy.’

  ‘I didn’t know that was illegal,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘She had a session with Napoleon’s brother-in-law, the cavalryman Joachim Murat and he cut the unlucky King of Diamonds four times, one after the other. She told him he’d die by firing squad.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Can you doubt it?’ she asked.

  He leaned back. ‘Well, then, he said, trying not to accept any of it, ‘what of my future?’

  She looked again, the eyelid flickering. ‘I see two young men,’ she crooned, ‘one will die with a broken neck.’

  ‘And the other?’

  She looked into his anxious, dark eyes and the teeth struggled into view between her thin lips. ‘No,’ she said, ‘better you don’t know.’

  He stood up sharply, old Mr Za-Za rocking as Lestrade’s boot hit the table. ‘How many hands have you read?’ he asked.

  ‘Thousands, sonny,’ she said.

  ‘Let me put it another way,’ he leaned across the table to her, ‘whose hands haven’t you read, here in Sanger’s circus?’

  ‘Um . . . let me see. Maccomo – for all his airs and graces, he’s a savage at heart. Won’t let me touch him. Prefers the bone-throwing, like the Aborigines. Then there’s . . . Lady Pauline – old Nell’s a funny one and no mistake. That vet bloke says he’s a scientist and won’t have any truck with it. And that American sharpshooter’s always wearing gloves or his hands are full of guns, so that’s hopeless. And as for Stromboli, well . . .’

  ‘Stromboli?’

  ‘Aloof bugger, that one. Always the same, these augusts. Think they’re something special. Live on their own. Who sees them practise for the ring? Who sees them without makeup? Who knows who they really are?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ Lestrade nodded and, picking up his bowler, the one spattered with tea-dregs, made for the door. ‘Who indeed?’ And the long-eared owl in the caravan corner suddenly twirled his head through three hundred and sixty degrees and hooted sharply ‘Who?’

  ‘Of course,’ Madame Za-Za folded a cloth over her late husband, thereby extinguishing his flame, ‘I’ve done the Boss’s hand countless times. And every time I get the same thing. He’s goin’ to be hatcheted to death in 1910 as sure as my name’s Za-Za.’

  It was the next morning, as the late May sun crept over the green fields of Derbyshire, that they found her. She lay sprawled in the growing corn, behind a hedge, not far from the horse-lines, her face blue, her tongue protruding like some grotesque gargoyle. Around her wrinkled throat, a wire cord had bitten deep into her mottled flesh and her lips peeled back from her irregular teeth. A silver trail of saliva had trickled from the corner of her mouth to the red and black check of her clown costume.

  Above her, when Lestrade arrived, still in his shirt-sleeves after a sleepless night in a kipsey-sack, her husband and her brother-in-law stood motionless, each of them lost in his thoughts. Each of them alone in his silence.

  ‘Lister,’ Lord George Sanger motioned the sergeant aside, ‘we can’t go on,’ he said. ‘I know,’ he raised his hand against Lestrade’s silent protest, ‘but it’s Mary, Mrs Whamsical Walker, the wife of the clown. The nicest, kindest soul in the circus.’

  ‘He’s panicking,’ Lestrade muttered, watching as the circus folk gathered in silent horror around the cold corpse.

  ‘Who?’ Sanger asked.

  ‘The murderer.’

  ‘He’s panicking?’ Sanger thundered. Frightened faces turned to them. He moved Lestrade further away, where the liberty horses munched their morning hay. ‘For God’s sake, Lestrade, look at them. They’re all terrified. I’ve got to stop it now.’

  ‘One more night,’ Lestrade begged. ‘Make a speech, increase their wages, do what you have to, but give me one more night.’

  Sanger looked at him, this green detective who had stumbled so amateurishly into his circus all those weeks ago, bringing death with him.

  ‘And do one thing more,’ Lestrade said. ‘That act you’ve planned – the Prince Imperial against the Zulus.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘When are you putting it on?’

  ‘Tomorrow night. We’ve . . .’ he glared at the body and the figures kneeling beside it, ‘we were to have begun rehearsals this morning.’

  ‘Bring it forward,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Forward?’

  ‘To tonight,’ the sergeant nodded. ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘Well, I . . . I suppose so. Why?’

  ‘I want the Prince Imperial caught by the Impis. I want a dramatic death in the sawdust ring. Who’s playing His Highness?’

  ‘Dakota-Bred,’ Sanger told him. ‘Oh, I know it won’t appeal to the purists, but he’ll look the part in uniform with a false moustache.’

  ‘Very well,’ Lestrade nodded.

  ‘But why . . .?’

  ‘Trust me, Boss,’ the detective said. ‘After tonight, I think all our troubles will be over.’

  Whamsical Walker sat on the edge of the ring, a bouquet of feathery flowers in his hand. Across the sawdust from him, his twin brother was idly twirling a mop, dripping with soapsuds. Between them, like the ringmaster or an even more unlikely referee, stood Sergeant Sholto Lestrade, Metropolitan Police.

  ‘This makes it all very difficult,’ he shouted, ‘asking questions in public like this.’

  Above him, to the odd cry of ‘Hoop-la’ the Buttresses flew gracefully, twisting in mid-air as they dallied with danger and defied
death (at least, that was what their poster said). A small army of aproned women clattered through the rows of seats with feather dusters, riggers hauled on wires and ropes and checked their anchorings. The Chesterfield Rose Growers Society were having a field day shovelling up elephant dung from all parts of the ring.

  ‘We can’t help that,’ called Whimsical. ‘We’ve got work to do. Mary would have wanted that.’

  ‘Ask him,’ his brother shouted. ‘Ask him “How does he know what my wife would want?”’

  Lestrade turned to his right, fuming. ‘He says . . . No!’ he threw his bowler down in the tan. ‘I’m not playing this silly game of yours any longer. This is not Joseph Lister, writing for the Graphic. This is Sholto Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, conducting a murder inquiry.’ He closed his eyes as the pin dropped from his lapel to thud softly into the sawdust.

  ‘Bloody ’ell,’ he heard a wistful French voice above him as a Buttress flew past, his wrists bandaged.

  A whistle escaped from the chief shoveller of the Rose Growers, to whom the announcement also came as something of a surprise. No one else commented, least of all the pelican that was crossing.

  ‘At least,’ Lestrade implored, ‘will you move nearer to me? I shall have no choice in a minute but to arrest you both for obstructing the police in the conduct of their inquiries.’

  At first neither clown moved, then Whamsical padded over on his giant shoes, fell face forward, did the splits on his way up and stood at Lestrade’s elbow.

  ‘Look at him,’ sneered Whimsical, ‘can’t bloody help himself.’

  ‘Always the true professional,’ Whamsical countered.

  ‘Mr Walker,’ Lestrade said.

  ‘Yes,’ the brothers chorused.

  ‘No,’ he turned to his left, ‘Mr Whamsical Walker. When did you last see your wife – alive, I mean?’

  ‘Last night,’ the clown said, not taking his eyes off his brother’s. ‘She lay beside me in the caravan. Like a dove taking her rest.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘We’d been to pay our respects to Fearless Fortescue. We must have turned in just after midnight.’

  ‘Where was ’e?’ a muffled voice called as the swinging Buttress swung again. He was hanging upside down from the safe, strong hands of the catcher, letting his fingertips brush the net above Lestrade’s head.

  ‘Who?’ Lestrade shouted.

  ‘You,’ all the Buttresses and the clowns chorused.

  ‘This is ludicrous!’ Lestrade had found the end of his tether.

  ‘No, it is not,’ the Buttress assured him. ‘Last season we ’ad ze night off, on ze Boss. It was ’is treat. We went to see zis play at ze Ambassadors in London. In zat play, ze policeman done it.’

  ‘What about you?’ Lestrade turned his investigative attentions to Whimsical. ‘When did you last see your sister-in-law?’

  ‘Earlier than him,’ he jabbed a mean finger at the loose-jacketed, battered-hatted shambles in front of him, ‘on account of how I sleep this side of the curtain and they sleep the other.’

  ‘Would it have been possible for her to have left the caravan without you noticing?’

  ‘Of course,’ Whamsical interrupted. ‘My brother has all the observational powers of my bow tie.’

  ‘And,’ Whimsical shouted, his eyebrows leaping in all direction, ‘because there is a side door. She needn’t have passed me at all.’

  ‘Everyone has passed him,’ Whamsical sneered. ‘Much as you and I, Mr Lestrade, pass water.’

  ‘Ask him,’ Whimsical jabbed Lestrade painfully in the chest with his index finger, ‘ask him why he hasn’t spoken to me in fourteen years. Go on, ask him. Go on.’

  Lestrade looked resignedly at the other one. ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I believe you heard the question, Mr Walker.’

  ‘I may have,’ Whamsical said, ‘but it’s irrelevant. He knows why.’

  Lestrade found himself falling in reluctantly with the rhythm. ‘He says you know why.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes!’ Whimsical guffawed, ‘I know why. But I want to hear it from his lips – via yours, of course.’

  The Buttresses had stopped hoop-la-ing and flying and the dangling one just dangled, while surreptitious riggers and cleaning ladies edged closer, hoping to solve the fourteen-year-old mystery.

  ‘All right,’ Whamsical shouted, throwing his hat to the tan so that it joined Lestrade’s. ‘All right. I’ll tell him. It’s because one night in 1865 – it was a few days after Mr Lincoln was shot – I came home from a hard night in the ring to find my caravan windows steamed up.’

  ‘I had the flu!’ Whimsical bellowed, his knuckles whitening.

  ‘You had my wife!’ his brother screamed.

  ‘Liar! She was mopping my brow.’

  ‘Brow? Brow?’ Whamsical was beside himself, as well as Lestrade. ‘So! So! You were lying upside down in bed, were you?’

  ‘Upside down! You suggestive bastard! I don’t stand for innuendo of that sort!’ and he swung with his left fist. The brother was faster and darted back and it caught the luckless Lestrade square on the jaw. The next thing he knew, the ring was reeling and two clowns were kicking each other with their outsize feet and rolling around in the sawdust, swatches of orange and blue hair flying in all direction.

  The detective toyed with breaking them up when the tears had left his eyes and his vision focussed. Then he thought – why? From nowhere, Sanger’s circus folk, acrobats and tumblers, poured into the ring to watch the show. Ever enterprising, George Sanger went among them with his hat held out, nobbing like a good ’un.

  ‘Hey!’ Lestrade had stepped back from the battling brothers and was calling up to the Buttresses. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the dangling one. ‘Get up on the net.’

  ‘The net?’ Lestrade looked at it. The thing was head height. The thing was bouncy. The thing had great big holes in it. Such was the way with nets. He felt himself lifted on the shoulders of two hefty riggers and caught the ropes desperately. He was still teetering on the edge, trying to get his balance, when a strong pair of hands caught his wrists and he was whisked, struggling and kicking, into the air.

  Terrified, he shut his eyes. His life flashed before him. The buttons flickering on his old dad’s police tunic in the firelight; the kind, red hands of his mother, silver-frothed with soapsuds. The mutton-chop whiskers of Mr Poulson, he of the Academy for the Sons of Nearly Respectable Gentlefolk. The long, dangling sausages of old Mr Culloden, the Butcher who had given him is first job. And the ripped corpses and eyeless men and the capital letter ‘N’.

  ‘Struggle and I will drop you,’ he heard a voice say. His eyes flashed open for a second. A darkly handsome face, surrounded by a white cap was smiling at him. But it was upside down. In fact, the whole world was upside down. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew it would be a mistake. But he did it anyway. He looked down. Miles below him, it seemed, a circle of circus folk were dithering, unsure whether to watch the kicking, gouging clowns on the floor or the dangling detective in the air. The net seemed the size of a penny red and every few seconds the wind rushed through his nostrils and dried out his eyes and his stomach bobbed level with his moustache.

  ‘What was zis word?’ the Buttress asked. ‘Not merde by any chance, was it, Monsieur le Strade?’

  ‘You’re French?’ Lestrade was excelling at small talk, bearing in mind he was thirty feet up inside a canvas bag being supported by a man no heavier than he was whose feet were hooked precariously on a bar of wood slung from two pieces of rope. He’d never put so much faith in hemp before in his life.

  ‘So are all ze greatest trapeze artistes,’ the man said. ‘Ze great Leotard – also I would not personally put my trust in a man whose name is synonymous wiz vest.’

  ‘The wire,’ Lestrade gasped, ‘the wire that killed Mrs Whamsical Walker.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘It is trapeze wire,’ breathing was very difficult for him.

&nbs
p; ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’ He felt his heart jump as the Buttress let go of his left hand. Now he was right way up again, but hanging at a precarious angle.

  ‘Er . . . given the situation,’ Lestrade hissed, ‘I suppose I’m asking you.’

  ‘Louis!’ the Buttress called, ‘zis man ’as a question to ask you.’

  ‘Louis?’ Lestrade repeated.

  ‘My brozzer,’ the Buttress said. ‘Ze best catcher in ze world. When we were in Sussex last season, ’e was voted ze best catcher in Rye, but zat is doing him down.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lestrade gasped, still swinging by one arm. ‘Talking of down . . .’

  ‘All in good time. Louis is a very common French name, Monsieur Le Strade. It is a corruption of Clovis, ze ancient Frankish kings of France.’

  ‘And he can tell me about the wire?’

  ‘’E is in sole charge of it. Now, if you want an answer to your question, bring your loose arm up, slowly.’

  Lestrade did. And the Buttress caught it.

  ‘Bon. Bon.’

  The last thing Lestrade wanted now was a sweet. He just wouldn’t have been able to do it justice.

  ‘Now, I am going to accelerate. As we gazzer speed, you will feel razzer as a train must feel as it reaches top speed on its way to Brighton.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Ze object of ze exercise is to let go of my arms at ze end of ze swing and swap over to Louis.’

  ‘Let go?’ Lestrade’s voice was barely audible.

  ‘But of course. If you don’t,’ the Buttress warned, ‘you will be strung across ze ceiling like a elastic band. Zat would not be good. You cannot change ze laws of physics. One of us would snap.’

  Lestrade was sure of that and he had no doubt about which one.

  ‘Of course,’ the Buttress began to thrust with his legs so that each swing took him further, carried Lestrade faster, ‘Louis will have to make a grab for your feet.’

  ‘My feet?’ Lestrade gasped.

  ‘But of course. Unless you’d prefer to try ze somersault?’

  ‘Somersault?’ In a flash it came to Lestrade. The gypsy’s warning of the night before. He saw through the red mist of panic the evil old face of Madame Za-Za and heard her chilling voice rasp out, ‘I see two young men. One will die with a broken neck.’