Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘And the other?’ Lestrade heard himself shouting.

  ‘That’s right,’ the Buttress had already let go of him, ‘zat’s what I told you. He’s my brozzer. Over to you, Louis!’

  Lestrade didn’t hear the ‘Merci, Jean.’ He didn’t hear the horrified gasps from the ground. He didn’t see the Walker brothers stop thumping each other to join in the clapping. He certainly didn’t feel Louis Buttress’ hands, strong and safe, catch him round the wrists, or the net as he bounced harmlessly into it. All he knew was that he couldn’t walk as he was lowered gently to the sawdust. His legs had turned to jelly.

  Around him a throng of excited circus people clapped and slapped his back and whistled.

  ‘A Triple, Lister,’ George Sanger was beaming, ‘You’ve done a Triple.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lestrade said. ‘I’d hoped, what with these brown trousers . . .’

  ‘It’s only been done once before,’ the showman said, taking his hat off to the detective, ‘five years ago in Paris, Lulu did it.’

  ‘But that was into a net,’ Whamsical panted, ‘not to a catcher.’

  ‘Pity it doesn’t count,’ Whimsical was waggling a loose tooth.

  ‘Doesn’t count?’ Lestrade had not known fame for many seconds. He was beginning to enjoy it.

  ‘He’s right,’ Sanger nodded ruefully. ‘You’re not one of us, Lister.’

  ‘Lestrade,’ the entire crowd, including the still-swinging Buttresses above put him right.

  ‘You don’t have a Showman’s Guild card. They’d never accept it. Of course, if you joined and tried again . . .’

  ‘No!’ A little falsetto perhaps. ‘No,’ Lestrade baritone again for the sake of his honour. ‘I’ll ask Monsieur Louis my questions some other time.’

  And then, fourteen years on, Sanger’s people saw an extraordinary sight. Two clowns, two brothers, wandering from the sawdust ring arm in arm.

  ‘Come on, Wham,’ Whimsical said. ‘Let’s say our goodbyes to Mary, shall we?’

  ‘Yeah, all right, Whim.’

  He would ask the eldest Buttress his questions later. When the dust had settled. When he felt stronger. Once his heart was back in place and he’d changed his trousers. It was the middle of the day. Spring had come at last, rather more in the form of summer. The circus lay dumb in the heat, the elephants and horses flicking away the flies with their tails. Chesterfield children ran barefoot through the llama straw, giggling and curious. Miss Stephens rocked gently on her chair, waiting. Always waiting.

  Lestrade left his bowler on the stage where Huge Hughie had died. He took an empty paper bag one of the children had left, the one they’d brought buns in for the elephants, and he held it to him. The cages were still in the midday, the only sound the soft snoring of the cats and the only movement the languid flick of a tail. His hand trembled on the bolt. Crockett would be along in a minute to feed them. In the far corner, an adult male padded to its feet at his approach, keening the wind. It lowered its massive head, raking the huge pink tongue over the rubbery black lips. Its white whiskers curled.

  A second’s snick of the bolt and he was inside, wondering what was worse, this or the flying trapeze. But there were no Buttresses now. No safe, strong hands. No welcoming net. Only the naked power of the jungle. Only the breath of death. They were all watching him now. All on their feet, ears twitching. They were hungry. But this was not their feeder. Fortescue they knew, by his smell. Fortescue they had killed. And Crockett they knew, although he was a lion man and never ventured into the tiger cage alone. Maccomo, the black man, he of the red-veined eyes that never blinked, they knew him too. But this human was new. He smelt . . . different. Hostile. Strange. And he was afraid. They smelt it on his sweat. They saw it in his eyes.

  He watched the big male prowl to his left, a smaller female to his right. That only left the four in the centre. And the fifth, leaner than the rest, creeping between them. One snapped at him, ears flat, eyes flaring, teeth bared. He ignored the slur but it padded forward. Forward. Towards Lestrade. The eyes were golden in the massive tawny head, ringed with white. He saw the nose, dribbling pink. The jaws agape. Desperately he tried to remember Lady Pauline’s words. Stroke them. Feed them. Tickle them. Grab their noses and lips. Stick your head in their mouths. But above all, no sudden moves. No loud noises. Even as he thought it, he raised the bag in both hands, curling it softly at the open end. He blew into it, gently. So gently. Then his left hand closed it shut, trapping his breath.

  The tiger in the centre was crouching now, its eyes staring into his soul. His hands parted, as though in prayer. Then he slammed them together and the bag burst. As though a shot had been fired, the centre beast sprang, leaping off the powerful hind legs and clawing for his face. There was a crash of gunfire and Lestrade went down, his world full of weight and fur and muscle and sinew. Blood trickled slowly over his face. He couldn’t move his leg. A five hundred pound male tiger was lying on it, dying, its claws still deep in his calf.

  The cage door clanged and Harry Masters stood there, a smoking rifle cradled on his arm. ‘Now, Barabas,’ he said softly as a second tiger lowered itself for the pounce, ‘you are a rotter.’ He straightened in front of Lestrade and the dying tiger, smiling like a death’s head. ‘Lister,’ he said, keeping his tone level, ‘can you move?’

  ‘Er . . . I think so.’ Lestrade felt as though he’d lost his leg.

  ‘Then slide your way backwards. You’re an earthworm, all right? Lumbricus lumbricus. Move any faster than that and you’re a dead man. They can smell your blood and I’ve only got one shot left.’

  Circus folk were hurtling from everywhere to the animal cages, checking their stride as they reached them, suddenly aware of the situation, not daring to disturb the moment.

  ‘Jim,’ Sanger was there too. ‘Get in there.’

  ‘They’re tigers, Boss,’ Crockett whispered. ‘I’m no good with tigers.’

  ‘Maccomo,’ the showman murmured, his arms outstretched to hold his people back. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Still mourning, Boss,’ someone told him. ‘Out by the campfire. He hasn’t moved a muscle in twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Lady Pauline, then.’ Sanger was desperate. ‘Has anybody seen my wife?’

  ‘Barabas,’ Masters was crooning, dropping slowly to his knees. ‘Barabas.’ The beast could not return his stare. It blinked, licked its lips and the vet planted a huge, wet kiss on its nose. Then he rose slowly to his feet and edged backwards, still covering the crawling Lestrade with his body and his rifle.

  Somehow the sergeant managed to fumble with the bolt as the cats came over to sniff and maul their dead cage-mate. Masters pushed him through the rest of the way and slammed the gate as all the living tigers launched themselves on to the dead one, ripping and clawing it to pieces. People fell around Lestrade, gripping his leg, staunching the blood, catching his tongue before it fell back into his throat.

  ‘Harry,’ Sanger caught the man’s hand, ‘whatever I’ve thought about you in the past, I take it back.’

  The vet smiled.

  Sanger looked at the unconscious detective and the appalling massacre that was going on in the cage. ‘That’s Bahadur,’ he said. ‘I intended to shoot him myself this morning. What with Mary Whamsical and all, it went right out of my head.’

  ‘Talking of out of his head,’ Masters said, unloading the rifle, ‘what was Lister doing in that cage?’

  ‘Lister?’ Sanger said. ‘Oh, no. There’s something I’ve got to tell you, Harry.’

  ❖11❖

  H

  e awoke to the sound of bugles in the afternoon. From the window of Sanger’s caravan he caught the lance pennons flutter and shift, saw the blue and white of the uniforms and heard the jingle of bits. Nothing unusual there. Just like Hyde Park of a Sunday afternoon. What followed however was jarring, like nothing he’d heard before. It was a distant rumble, like thunder in the mountains and a single word, muffled, deadly – ‘Usuthu’.

&nb
sp; ‘What’s that mean, Mac?’ a voice called.

  ‘Usuthu?’ Lestrade heard the black man say. ‘Kill – it’s a Zulu word. Look, John, I’m sorry, but we’re not restaging a pygmy battle here, you know.’

  ‘I don’t have to do this,’ the detective heard the accountant say. ‘I’m only here because the Boss asked me to, seeing as how we’re so short.’

  ‘But you only reach the Lancers’ stirrups, man. It looks so . . . well, forgive me, but amateur.’

  ‘Oh, well, thank you!’ The accountant threw down his assegai and zebra skin shield and walked off in a huff, the goat-hair leggings dragging on the ground as he waddled.

  ‘OK, you black varmints!’ Lestrade heard Dakota-Bred drawl, ‘come ’n’ get it!’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Sanger’s voice carried to the caravans. ‘Your lines are “All right, you colonial chappies. Approach if you dare.”’

  ‘Aw, shucks, Boss. Ah thought this Imperial Prince feller was a Frenchman. You’ve got him soundin’ like there’s a plum plumb in the centre of his mouth.’

  ‘All right,’ Lestrade knew exasperation when he heard it. ‘That’s enough for now, everybody. Tinkerbelle, leave that idea with me, will you? You as Lord Chelmsford isn’t quite working, dear.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t!’ Lestrade heard Dorinda shout. ‘She doesn’t have the beard for it. Give me that cocked hat, you freak.’

  The caravan door clicked open and the vet stood there.

  ‘It’s not going too well, by the sound of it,’ Lestrade lay back on his pillow.

  ‘Ah, they’ll be all right. “The Prince Imperial Wins Through” – that has a ring to it. What made the Boss choose that, I wonder?’

  Lestrade had been wondering that, too. ‘Aarrgghh!’

  ‘How is the leg?’ Masters asked, tossing his hat on to the stand and whipping back the eiderdown.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Lestrade turned decidedly pale at the sight of the ugly stitches criss-crossing their way up his calf.

  ‘Well, if you will go into tigers’ cages,’ the vet shrugged.

  ‘I haven’t thanked you,’ Lestrade winced as the pain began to recede. ‘Elegant work, I’m sure.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ Masters said. ‘You owe your leg to the Boss.’

  ‘Sanger did this?’

  Masters poured himself a hefty one from the showman’s decanter and a smaller one for Lestrade. ‘Sixteen stitches,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t remember any of them.’

  ‘Just as well,’ the vet observed and took a swig.

  ‘But I understand I owe you my life.’

  ‘Oh, my dear fellow,’ Masters smiled, ‘it was brute against cold reason. I’ve never known such a reasonable tiger as Bahadur, come to think of it. But in the scale of things, I had to let him go.’

  ‘Well,’ Lestrade said, ‘I shall never forget it. Never.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Masters was covered in confusion. ‘But tell me, as one lunatic to another, Mr Lestrade, why did you go into the cage?’

  ‘So,’ the sergeant had raised an eyebrow of discovery, ‘you know too.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think there’s anyone left in the circus who doesn’t know you are a policeman,’ Masters said, ‘except they probably haven’t told Miss Stevens yet.’

  ‘Well then,’ Lestrade said, ‘you don’t have to ask. Fred Fortescue was killed by Bahadur, yes, but my lot as a policeman was to find out who put the tiger up to it.’

  Masters smiled. ‘Order, Carnivora,’ he said softly, tilting the brandy in his glass. ‘Family, Felidae; Genus and Species. Panthera Tigris Tigris. The tiger hunts by stealth at night, by choking his prey with a single bite to the throat. A full-grown male brings down thirty buffalo in a year, every one of them twice his size. And they eat from the rump first.’

  ‘Hence my leg?’ Lestrade asked.

  The vet nodded.

  ‘You know a great deal about tigers, Mr Masters.’

  ‘I hope you do now, Mr Lestrade. They’re intelligent, they’re cunning, they’re clever. But, thank God, they have not reached that stage of development which allows them to kill because a man asks them to.’

  ‘Can they be trained to kill?’

  The vet shrugged. ‘You’d have had to have asked Fortescue,’ he said. ‘Personally, I think it’s most unlikely.’

  ‘So do I,’ Lestrade watched the sunlight playing in his glass. ‘But that’s not how it was.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The death of Fortescue.’

  The vet blinked. ‘But . . . that was an accident, surely?’

  The sergeant shook his head slowly. ‘No,’ he told him, ‘it was deliberate. The murderer knew a lot about tigers, too. He knew a sudden, sharp noise disturbs them. That’s why I carried the bag.’

  ‘Ah, the suitcase for Maccomo’s ransom. Yes, I heard about that – the talk of the camp, in fact. Nifty bit of footwork, that.’

  ‘No, not that bag,’ Lestrade corrected him. ‘The paper bag. I took an empty one into the cage with me and I burst it. The bang terrified the cats, especially the one called Bahadur. He leapt at me.’

  ‘I heard the noise,’ Masters said. ‘By the time I turned the corner, you were nearly one of thirty buffalo on Bahadur’s menu.’

  ‘That was a good shot,’ Lestrade said. ‘You could have missed. Could have hit the bars. Me. Anything.’

  ‘Ah, beginner’s luck,’ Masters chuckled. ‘You’re luckier than you know, Lestrade. Tell me, who’s behind it all? If somebody deliberately burst a paper bag when Fortescue was in the cage, he must be a little on the insane side, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I’m not paid to say,’ the detective told him, ‘I’m just paid to catch criminals. And so far,’ he sighed, trying to straighten his mauled leg. ‘I haven’t exactly done very well.’

  ‘You’re looking for one man?’ Masters asked, a curious expression on his face.

  Lestrade nodded. ‘One man,’ he said.

  Masters shook his head. ‘Well, I admire you,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘You start with a corpse,’ the sergeant told him, ‘a poor unfortunate somebody who happened to be standing one day in the wrong place, whose face didn’t fit. Or someone who’d seen something he shouldn’t have seen.’

  Masters peered into the sad, dark eyes that didn’t blink. ‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You’ve worked it out.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve known for a long time,’ Lestrade said. ‘It’s the Prince Imperial.’

  ‘Who?’ Masters missed his glass in mid-swig.

  ‘The heir to the throne of France, the son of the late Emperor Napoleon III and his wife Eugenie.’

  The vet looked at him. ‘How,’ he asked, ‘can that be?’

  ‘I won’t bore you with details, Mr Masters,’ Lestrade said. ‘Let’s just say I know he’s with the circus. I know it and yet . . .’

  ‘Yet?’

  ‘I can’t find him.’

  ‘The rider on the grey!’ Masters clicked his fingers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The pale horseman. Stromboli put me on to him. He rides on the flanks as we march. Once or twice when I’ve been tending to some animal or other, he’s been sitting on his horse on a hillside or by a stand of trees. Watching. Just watching. Could he be the Prince?’

  ‘He could be,’ Lestrade said, ‘but I think he’s closer than that. I think he enjoys the havoc he causes. Not for him long-distance death, watching the mayhem by telescope. He likes it, the bastard. He wants to be here, in the centre of things, grinning like a death’s head.’

  Masters’ face grew dark and sullen. He stood up, suddenly different, smaller somehow. ‘Mr Lestrade,’ he whispered, ‘I have a confession to make.’

  The detective braced himself. He was a caravan’s length from his knuckles and switchblade and it would take him a lifetime to reach them. ‘Oh?’ he said, wondering how much defence an eiderdown would be should the chips be down, should the sands h
ave run out. Lucinda Brodie was lying nearly in this position when Fate lent a hand.

  Masters looked down on him. ‘My name is not Harry Masters. Neither am I a vet.’

  Lestrade blinked now. Had the man who was not Masters had the animal instincts of the tiger, he’d have read the fear there for all to see.

  ‘It’s Carey. Jaheel Carey and I’m a Captain of the 97th Foot.’

  ‘You’re his ADC,’ Lestrade gasped, ‘the Prince Imperial’s.’

  Carey nodded. ‘And I’ve been chasing a ghost for three months.’

  ‘A ghost?’

  Carey gazed out of the window where the circus folk went through their paces and Dorinda was adjusting her cocked hat for her role as Lord Chelmsford. ‘He’s cold, Lestrade,’ he said quietly, ‘grey. He floats like mist over a meadow – wraps wire around the throat of a woman who never did him any harm. He spikes the water bottle of the gentlest showman on earth so that he kills a little dwarf half his size. He offers love to a loveless lady, only to pin her to her bed with a Bowie knife. And he never leaves a trace. Now, you tell me, isn’t that the mark of a ghost?’

  ‘No,’ growled Lestrade. ‘It’s the mark of a lucky man. So far. But I’ve a feeling his luck just ran out. How well do you know him?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Carey slapped his thigh, turning back to Lestrade. ‘I’d only been introduced to him the morning he went. The morning he made a bolt for it on the station platform. I wish I’d watched him more closely now.’

  ‘They say he’s very ordinary,’ Lestrade nodded.

  ‘That’s what they say,’ Carey agreed.

  ‘Well, well,’ Lestrade rested back, ‘so you and I were working on the same case all the time.’

  ‘Apparently,’ Carey smiled.

  ‘If you’re not a vet, how the hell did you manage to remove Huge Hughie’s stomach?’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Carey smiled awkwardly, ‘confession number two. I was one of the first to gain a commission in the army without purchase, after Cardwell’s reforms in ’71. There’s no silver spoon in my mouth. My dad was a slaughterman. I used to work with him as a lad.’