Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Hello, Missy,’ he said softly. ‘Thank you.’

  And the bear flopped forward on to its gloved forepaws and laid its head on his chest and licked his face with her long, pink tongue. She had waited long enough.

  Lestrade packed his trunk and said goodbye to the circus. They’d all come to see him off – the Sangers, the Sultan and his elephants, Dakota-Bred, Maccomo and Jim Crockett. The Bearded Lady had fondled him as much as she dared in broad daylight at Chesterfield Station and the Lion Queen had put her scrawny arms around his neck. That was nothing however to the squeeze Tinkerbelle Watson had put on him. Sanger offered him a job; looking after Missy; anything. But that was not Lestrade’s road. Madame Za-Za took his hand again and patted it. ‘Don’t get trapped by the Bracelets of Life, sonny,’ she said. The Walker brothers hugged him between them and even shy little Angelina Muffett, never very at home away from her horses, blew him a kiss as he boarded the train. Bendy Hendey uncoiled himself from the lamppost to wave as the whistle blew and the detective shunted away in the morning.

  ‘Well, Lestrade,’ the Director of Criminal Intelligence was abrasion itself three days later, the sergeant squarely on the carpet. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’

  ‘The case is closed, sir,’ Lestrade told him.

  ‘Closed? Closed? You stand by and watch some wild animal break the neck of the Prince Imperial, having . . . having, mark you, already permitted the death of your superior officer and disappeared under cover without so much as a kiss my . . .’

  ‘Ah, Director.’ The door crashed back and an old Jew stood there.

  ‘Mr Prime Minister,’ Howard Vincent was on his feet again.

  ‘Tell me,’ Disraeli said, looking warily around, ‘is that . . . reptile still here?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Howard chirped. ‘Having something of a siesta at the moment, behind the ottoman. Shall I . . .?’

  ‘No!’ Disraeli screamed. He tapped his gammy way across to Lestrade, who tapped his way gammily back. ‘Mr Lestrade,’ he said. ‘It’s been too long.’

  ‘Lord Beaconsfield,’ Lestrade nodded stiffly. ‘It’s good of you to remember.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? Well, Director,’ the Prime Minister slumped into a chair, ‘don’t let me interrupt. Carry on. Carry on.’

  Vincent cleared his throat. ‘As I was saying . . . your conduct in this case has been appalling, Lestrade. You have broken every rule in the book.’

  ‘I did catch a murderer, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Lestrade, oh, yes,’ the Director growled. ‘Rather as I catch colds – by accident. It’s the horse troughs for you, sonny. By the time I’ve finished the paperwork, you’ll be back in blue for the rest of your natural.’

  ‘Er . . . sir?’ Lestrade had hobbled over to the window. ‘Before I go and change, could you answer one question for me?’

  Vincent’s eyes flashed fire, but he wasn’t going to appear petty in front of the Prime Minister, so he permitted the impudence. ‘Very well,’ he sneered. ‘Just one.’

  ‘Well,’ Lestrade peered down into the courtyard below where constables and detectives jostled with tethered horses. ‘It’s just that there’s not much room here in the yard at the Yard. I was wondered where you parked your grey.’

  ‘My what?’ Vincent’s face had indeed turned that colour.

  ‘Your grey. Your pale horse. The one you rode in Yorkshire and Derbyshire when you were trailing George Sanger’s circus.’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘What’s this about, Vincent?’ Disraeli asked, his cane outstretched.

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘Do I understand that you merely followed the circus? That you were there all the time that Sergeant Lestrade was risking his life and you did nothing?’

  ‘I . . . I thought it best to observe. I . . .’ he smiled obsequiously at his Prime Minister. ‘I’m not frightfully au fait with field work. I wasn’t all that sure what to do.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ Disraeli nodded, his goatee twitching. ‘Mr Vincent, your political leanings – those of which we spoke not long ago . . .’

  ‘Oh, Conservative, Prime Minister. Through and through. They don’t come any bluer – or truer – than I.’

  ‘No,’ Disraeli smiled disdainfully, ‘I’m sure not. Well, then. I happen to know that there is a little seat becoming vacant shortly somewhere in the Chilterns.’

  ‘There is?’ Vincent’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Yes. Some scandal is about to break concerning the present incumbent and a whole choir of boys. Oh, it’ll rock the country for a few days. I shall go to the Queen, God Bless Her, and tender my resignation. She’ll turn it down and we can carry on as normal. But the vacancy will be there for a man such as yourself.’

  ‘Well, Prime Minister, Lord Beaconsfield,’ Vincent gushed, ‘what can I say? I’m speechless. Of course, it’ll be difficult combining my constituency duties with those of the Yard.’

  ‘Er . . . yes,’ Disraeli’s lower lip jutted proud of his face. ‘Well, I think we can scale those duties down, don’t you?’

  ‘Scale them down?’ Vincent flickered. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well,’ Disraeli was patience itself. ‘When I say “down” I really mean “out”.’

  ‘Out?’ Vincent mouthed the word. No sound came from him at all.

  ‘Look,’ Disraeli spread his arms, ‘we’re very grateful to you, Director, for all you’ve done in creating the CID, but, well, frankly, I’m afraid I shall have to let you go.’

  ‘But sir,’ Vincent had turned purple. ‘Prime Minister . . .’

  ‘Yorkshire,’ Disraeli reminded him. ‘Derbyshire. You sat on your grey horse, Mr Vincent, while the Prince Imperial was killed. And you did nothing.’

  ‘Ah.’ Vincent knew defeat when he tasted it.

  ‘Now, perhaps you could leave us alone. Take that wretched iguana for a w-a-l-k or something?’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Vincent stood up shakily. ‘I think I’d like to be alone for a while.’

  ‘Of course.’ Disraeli closed his fingers on his great lower lip. He waited until the door clicked behind him. ‘Well, Inspector . . .’

  ‘Sergeant, sir,’ Lestrade said. ‘Although, after today, I suspect, constable.’

  ‘Yes,’ Disraeli nodded. ‘I always suspected Constable – The Hay Wain – what a dog’s breakfast. I expect that reptile could paint better pictures. But I digress – something old Gladeye’s always accusing me of. Mr Lestrade, you have done your country an inestimable service.’

  ‘Catching the Prince Imperial, you mean?’

  ‘No, Mr Lestrade,’ the old Jew’s eyes narrowed, ‘I mean shutting up about it.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘You haven’t? Oh, but you have, Inspector.’

  ‘Sir,’ Lestrade looked levelly at his man. ‘I will not take a bribe, not even one as handsome as that.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ Disraeli shook his head. ‘We’re not talking about bribes, Inspector. The dark days of Derby have gone forever – “Every man has his price”. No, we’re talking about a professional job well done.’

  ‘But I’ve written a report,’ Lestrade explained.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Disraeli frowned. ‘As I came in I noticed a small conflagration on C corridor – that’s where you keep your records, isn’t it?’

  Lestrade’s face fell with a certain inevitability. ‘Yes, sir,’ he nodded wistfully. ‘Indeed we do.’

  ‘And then, with Mr Vincent’s sudden resignation from the Yard, which I received today, and his new career in politics, well, it’s only your word, isn’t it, Inspector? Only your word about the whole incident.’

  Lestrade sighed. ‘And the Prince Imperial?’

  ‘Sad,’ Disraeli shook his head, ‘sad. The Prince Imperial was killed on 1 June of this year of our Lord 1879. He ran into a Zulu Impi in the treacherous long grass of Natal. Of course, Captain Carey, his ADC, will be court-martialled. I’ve sent him the transcript of his trial. Heads will roll in all
directions. A pity, really – a fine officer. It would have been better had he gone north in search of the Prince rather than wasting his time in the fleshpots of London. I’ve already sent my deepest condolences to the little abortion’s mother, the Empress, along with his bloodstained uniform and other mementoes.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Disraeli struggled to his feet. ‘I’ll see that your promotion to Inspector is gazetted in the Police Review. And I think a spot of leave would be in order – say, two weeks?’

  ‘That would be . . . pleasant,’ Lestrade said. He felt for the handkerchief still knotted at his wrist. ‘Perhaps in Yorkshire,’ he said.

  ‘Yorkshire?’ Disraeli grimaced. ‘I’d have thought you’d had enough of that, already.’

  ‘I made a promise to a lady, sir,’ the Inspector said.

  ‘Aha,’ the Prime Minister patted his shoulder. ‘Oh, by the by, I almost forgot. Who should call to see me yesterday but my old friend George Sanger.’

  ‘Your . . . your old friend?’

  ‘Why, yes. Last year, on my way back from what is, so far, the greatest triumph of my life, the Congress of Berlin, I encountered the great showman and his band played all the tunes of glory in my honour. Fine fellow. Fine fellow. He was in town planning his London season for the summer. He told me the whole bizarre story. He gave me this note for you. Good morning, Lestrade. I’ll let myself out.’ And he hobbled away.

  The iguana slithered over the ottoman and sat basking in the morning sun, watching Lestrade through indifferent eyes. The new Inspector opened the envelope. Inside, in the Boss’s immaculate copperplate, he read, ‘Good roads, Lestrade, good times and merry tenting.’

  He kicked the iguana on the way out.

  Other titles in the Inspector Lestrade series for your consideration:

  ❖ The Sawdust Ring ❖

  1879

  ‘In the circus, nothing is what it seems ...’

  Walk up! Walk up! This way for the greatest show on earth! It is 1879. Disraeli is at Number Ten. The Zulu are being perfectly beastly to Lord Chelmsford. And Captain Boycott is having his old trouble again.

  What has this to do with the young Detective-Sergeant Sholto Lestrade? Absolutely nothing. Or has it? He has his work cut out investigating mysterious goings-on at ‘Lord’ George Sanger’s Circus. First, the best juggler in Europe is shot in full view of a thousand people. Then Huge Hughie, the dwarf, dies an agonizing death under the Ether Trick. Finally, the Great Bolus dies by swallowing the wrong sword. And all of this after two bodies have been found with multiple slashes ...

  And what is the link with Mr Howard Vincent, founder of the CID? And has the Prince Imperial really been caught by the Impis? A trail of murder is laid among the llama droppings as the World’s Second Greatest Detective goes undercover to solve the Case of the Sawdust Ring.

  ❖ The Sign of Nine ❖

  1886

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  ‘Hello, hello, hello ...’

  It was a puzzle that faced Scotland Yard from its very beginning – whose was the limbless body found among the foundations? And in the murderous world of Sholto Lestrade, one question is invariably followed by another – what do a lecherous rector, a devious speculator and a plagiaristic novelist have in common? Answer: they’re all dead, each of them with a bloody space where his skull used to be. And six others are to join them before our intrepid inspector brings the perpetrator to book.

  But 1886 was a bad year for the Metropolitan Police. The People of the Abyss have heard the whisper and the spectre of Communism haunts the land. There is a new Commissioner, a regular martinet, at the Yard. And then, there is that very odd couple, sometime of Baker Street ...

  Lestrade braves haunted houses, machine-gun bullets and two Home Secretaries in his headlong hunt for the truth. And at last, this is the book that chronicles his now legendary impersonation of the Great Sarah Bernhardt. The Police Revue was never the same again.

  ❖ The Ripper ❖

  1888

  ‘Oh, have you seen the Devil ...?’

  In the year 1888, London was horrified by a series of brutal killings. All the victims were discovered in the same district, Whitechapel, and they were all prostitutes. But they weren’t the only murders to perplex the brains of Scotland Yard. In Brighton, the body of one Edmund Gurney was also found.

  Foremost among the Yard’s top men was the young Inspector Sholto Lestrade and it was to his lot that the unsolved cases of a deceased colleague fell. Cases that included the murder of Martha Tabram, formerly a prostitute from Whitechapel, and that of the aforementioned Gurney.

  Leaving no stone unturned, Lestrade investigates with his customary expertise and follows the trail to Nottinghamshire, to a minor public school, Rhadegund Hall. It is his intention to question the Reverend Algernon Spooner. What he finds is murder.

  As the Whitechapel murders increase in number, so do those at Rhadegund Hall and so do the clues. What is the connection between them all? As if it weren’t confusing enough, Lestrade is hampered by the parallel investigations of that great detective, Sherlock Holmes, aided by Dr Watson. Who is the murderer of Rhadegund Hall and are he and the man they call ‘Jack the Ripper’ one and the same?

  ❖ The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade ❖

  1891

  ‘Such as these shall never look

  At this pretty picture book.’

  It is 1891 and London is still reeling from the horror of the unsolved Ripper murders when Inspector Lestrade (that ‘ferret-like’ anti-hero so often out-detected by the legendary Sherlock Holmes) is sent to the Isle of Wight to investigate a strange corpse found walled up in Shanklin Chine.

  But this is only the start of the nightmare. It is merely the beginning of a series of killings so brutal, so bizarre and, apparently, so random, that only a warped genius – and a master of disguise – could be responsible. Even when Lestrade pieces together the extraordinary pattern behind the crimes from the anonymous poems sent after each murder, he is no closer to knowing the identity of the sinister, self-styled ‘Agrippa’, the ‘great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man’.

  It becomes a very personal battle and Lestrade’s desperate race to avert the next death in the sequence takes him all over the country, from London to the Pennines and back, resulting in a portfolio of suspects which covers the entire range of late-Victorian society.

  ❖ Brigade ❖

  1893

  ‘And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade.’

  There is a new broom at Scotland Yard; Nimrod Frost. His first ‘little’ job for Lestrade is to investigate the reported appearance of a lion in Cornwall, a supposed savager of sheep and frightener of men. Hardly a task for an Inspector of the Criminal Investigations Department.

  Yet even as Lestrade questions a witness, a man is reported dead, horrifically mauled. Having solved that case to his own satisfaction, Lestrade returns to London and to another suspicious death and then another ... All old men who should have died quietly in their sleep. Is there a connection – is there a mass murderer at work?

  Lestrade’s superiors discount his speculations and he finds himself suspended from duty, but that is a mere technicality to the doughty Inspector. He moves from workhouse to royal palace, from backstage at the Lyceum to regimental dinner in search of clues and enlightenment.

  When can his glory fade?

  ❖ The Dead Man’s Hand ❖

  1895

  ‘There was no 9.38 from Penge.’

  Anon.

  The London Underground Railway, in 1895, was described as ‘dark, deadly and halfway to Hell’. Only too true, for as the last train rattled into Liverpool Street, the one remaining passenger did not get off. How could she, when her eyes stared sightless and her heart had stopped?

  There was another corpse at the Elephant in the morning, wedged between the seats like an old
suitcase. And another had missed the late-night connection at Stockwell. What was left of her lay on the floor of the ‘padded cell’, her shoes kicked off in the lashings of her agony as she died.

  There is a maniac at large and Inspector Lestrade is detailed to work with the Railway Police, something he needs a little less than vivisection. Heedless of warnings to ‘mind the gap’ and ‘mind the doors’, the doughty detective plunges through a tangled web of vicious deviants to solve a string of murders so heinous that every woman in London goes in fear of her life.

  Who is the legendary Blackfriars Dan? What are the secrets of the Seven Sisters? Whose body lies at Ealing? Will the London Transport System survive, or will Lestrade run out of steam?

  ❖ The Guardian Angel ❖

  1897/8

  ‘And a naughty boy was he ...’

  He was in his forty-third year and knee-deep in murder. Well, what was new? Sholto Lestrade wouldn’t really have it any other way.

  The first fatality in a series of killings which was to become the most bizarre in the celebrated Inspector’s career, was a captain of the 2nd Life Guards, found battered over the head in the Thames at Shadwell Stair, an Ashanti War medal wedged between his teeth. Lestrade’s next summons was to the underground caves of Wookey Hole where the demise of an Egyptologist – a scarab clamped between his molars – prompted the question; can a man dead for a thousand years reach beyond the grave and commit murder?

  The further death from a cadaveric spasm of an enobled young subaltern whilst on picquet duty (this time a locket is his dying mouthful) forces Lestrade to impersonate ‘Lt Lister, Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry’ and into becoming a barrack-room lawyer of incisive command.