Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring Read online

  ‘Oooh, you’ve done it now,’ the old girl whipped out her briar, ‘she’ll be blubbin’ all night. All right, Tinker, my sweet. You just go through your paces, my pet. I’ll talk to the gen’l’man.’

  Tinkerbelle, her massive chest heaving in anguish, adopted a theatrical pose and proceeded to tear in half a copy of Mr Gladstone’s book on church and state. It was for such purposes that the great Liberal had written it. She then twisted sideways, snatched up a brass poker and began to curl it into a horseshoe. Her shoulders bunched and rippled under her bodice to an alarming degree.

  ‘Well, then, sonny,’ the old crone went on, admiring the expertise of her little daughter, ‘folks’ll tell yer that ol’ Atkins was the best. Am I right?’

  ‘You are,’ Lestrade could not take his eyes off the performance in front of him.

  ‘Well, that’s a load of bollocks, is that.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Oh, ’e was a tolerable juggler. Tolerable, mind jer. Nothin’ more. But the way he treated my little Tinkerbelle; I’ll never forgive ’im for that.’

  ‘He treated her badly?’ Lestrade called over the wailing. Tinkerbelle picked up a hockey stick, having discarded the poker, and snapped it across her thigh. It broke like matchwood.

  ‘Despicable,’ tutted the old girl. ‘Tell ’im what ’e did to yer.’

  A heartrending sob was the only reply.

  ‘Oh, never mind, I’ll tell ’im. Tailed ’er,’ the old girl clamped her toothless gums on the pipe. ‘Tailed ’er in this very wagon. I was out or I’d never ’ave allowed it. Well, you get pretty broadminded in the circus, what with donkeys and llamas all over the place. Took my little Tinker’s virginity, ’e did. Here, darlin’,’ and she threw the wailing girl a clean handkerchief which Tinkerbelle tore to shreds. ‘No, my little Tinker never stood a chance.’

  Little Tinker, still crying as though her heart had burst, was placing walnuts in the crook of her knee and cracking them, first singly and then two at a time. Lestrade had seen the naked body of the late Joey Atkins and the floor show he was watching now gave him a pretty fair idea of the broad outline of Tinkerbelle’s never standing a chance. She could have flattened the juggler with one swipe.

  ‘Dirty bugger,’ the crone was going on. Lestrade was about to protest his innocence, that the mighty thighs of Tinkerbelle had aroused him but little, when it became clear she was still talking about Atkins. ‘And as fer that bloke in a frock.’

  A shriek from Tinkerbelle announced that she could take no more and she collapsed, sobbing, into the old crone’s lap, narrowly missing death by knitting needle.

  ‘Er . . . bloke in a frock?’ Lestrade was confused.

  The old girl held a cadaverous finger to her shrivelled lips. ‘Nuff said,’ she whispered. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s your murderer, Mr Newspaperman. No, darlin’. Tish, tosh, Mummy’s here, Mummy’s here,’ and she cradled the muscle-bound thing in her arms, crooning softly an ancient lullaby.

  While Lestrade hesitated in his chair, she opened her red-rimmed eyes and glared at him. ‘That’s our way of saying “bugger off”,’ she spat.

  Lestrade did and as he left the caravan’s – and Tinkerbelle’s – glow, he heard the old girl say, ‘You’ll never be in a fit state to carry that camel tomorrow, now.’

  One down, Lestrade thought, two to go. So, Joey Atkins wasn’t the paragon people made him out to be. He’d seduced the Strong Lady, however, so he must have had something about him. But perhaps the old lady’s vitriol had been tinged with jealousy. Perhaps she was secretly miffed that the juggler had not warmed to her charms. But with charms as wrinkly as that . . . Lestrade shook off the thought in the clear night air, before the stench of the elephants got to him again. He was still a young man, just starting out. Time enough for wrinkly thoughts later.

  He knocked lightly at the door of the second wagon and a bearded head popped out of a side window.

  ‘Dorinda, the Bearded Lady?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘No,’ answered the hirsute head, ‘try next door.’

  Lestrade was confused. Not even Sanger’s circus boasted two bearded ladies, surely? He tried again. This time he’d guessed right and she led him into the comfortable recesses of her gilded caravan. Velvet drapes framed the double bed which filled one end of it and she pushed him gently back on to it.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she purred.

  ‘Well, I . . . it’s a little late,’ Lestrade tugged at his collar.

  ‘Nonsense, I don’t have to be in my booth till ten. Dorinda,’ she insinuated his hand into his. ‘It’s Mr Lister, isn’t it?’

  Lestrade was wishing about now that he was the Incredible Disappearing Man, but there was little chance of that, given his lack of prestidigitation. ‘Yes,’ he gulped.

  She wandered away in her frothy negligée, lifted from Sanger’s Parisian tour of the previous year, and poured them both a stiff something or other. She didn’t take her eyes off his the whole time. ‘We’ll start with two fingers, shall we?’

  ‘Er . . . pardon?’

  ‘The Scotch,’ she held up the frosted glass, ‘two fingers’ worth. You can always come back for more,’ and she wormed her way close to him, her bustle rustling on the eiderdown. ‘My, but they’re breeding them handsome in Fleet Street these days.’

  ‘Well,’ Lestrade coughed, ‘Thank you, Miss . . . er . . .’

  ‘You can call me Dorrie,’ she moaned, looking at him under her luscious, drooping lids. ‘What can I call you?’ and she ran a beringed hand over his thigh. ‘Big boy?’

  ‘No,’ Lestrade squeaked. ‘That wouldn’t be . . . very honest, really, would it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she raised an eyebrow and twirled her moustache, ‘I’m sure we can do something about that.’

  He cleared his throat and his head in one fluid movement and gripping the glass tightly in one hand and the bed with the other, tackled the problem head on. ‘I’ve come to ask about Joey Atkins,’ he said.

  ‘Poor Joey,’ she sighed. ‘Yesterday’s man.’

  ‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘I want to know how he became that.’

  ‘Because,’ she flicked his tie out of his waistcoat, ‘today is another man. You.’

  ‘Yes,’ his grin had frozen. ‘But I am alive.’

  ‘I can tell,’ her hand had crept up his leg.

  ‘Please, Miss Dorinda. A man is dead.’

  ‘Dreadful,’ she shook her head. ‘But this is the circus, Mr Lister, dearest. These things happen.’

  ‘When they’re planned, they do.’

  She sat upright. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that Joey Atkins was murdered.’

  ‘Surely not?’ she frowned.

  ‘Take my word on it.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ she swept away to her window, where the lights of Pontefract still twinkled in the early hours. ‘Who?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ he told her.

  ‘I?’ she turned, wide-eyed, ‘why I?’

  ‘Because you and Mr Atkins were . . . lovers.’

  ‘Lovers,’ she shuddered at the word. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘if I shuddered at that word. But it’s so delicious, don’t you think? So redolent of soft sheets, firm flesh, huge . . .’

  ‘And because Mr Atkins also made love to Miss Tinkerbelle?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she snorted, sweeping her dress out of the way and pouring herself another Scotch. ‘How can a man make love to a cart-horse?’

  Lestrade thought it best not to tell her. ‘Jealousy, Miss Dorinda,’ he said, ‘is a terrible thing. It eats hearts, twists fate . . .’ he closed to her, ‘provides a damn good reason for murder.’

  She turned to face him. Suddenly she put down her glass, and tore open her bodice. Instinctively he stared open-mouthed at her firm, pert breasts, the large pink nipples pointing skywards. ‘Magnificent, aren’t they?’ she purred and let the dress descend from her shoulders. She parted her legs and stood there,
hands on hips. ‘Superb, I think you’ll agree.’

  The sergeant blinked, several times in succession.

  ‘Do you think,’ she asked him, ‘I have problems taking – and holding – a lover? Do you think I’d have lost Joey Atkins – or any man – to another man like Tinkerbelle Watson? Oh,’ she suddenly laughed, ‘it’s the beard, isn’t it? I’m sorry, you didn’t think this was real, did you?’ she stroked the luxuriant growth. ‘In the circus, Mr Lister, nothing is quite what it seems, you know. There!’ and she snatched off the black facial fuzz to reveal the merest hint of stubble underneath. ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ she twirled her own moustache while the fake one lay on the bed. ‘Mr Lister? Mr Lister?’

  But the sergeant had gone.

  She popped her head and breasts out of the window and howled into the night, ‘Maryanne!’

  Lestrade was not ashamed, in later years, to admit that he ran, positively ran, to the safety of the lion pens. The beasts sniffed him on the wind and sank back to sleep. He was in search of the Pig-Faced woman and for all her tragic title, she could hardly be more of a freak than the two he’d just met.

  He knocked on the relevant door. No answer. He tapped again. Nothing. So he pushed the door. In the murk, at the back of the wagon, he saw the nodding frame of an old lady in her rocking-chair. She smiled at him under her old-fashioned poke bonnet. Lestrade had vague memories of his granny wearing one. Her arms were swathed in long evening gloves and her shapeless fingers, probably bent with arthritis, lay useless in her lap.

  ‘Miss Stevens,’ said Lestrade, ‘I know the hour is late . . .’

  The old lady grunted, living up to her sobriquet.

  ‘But may I come in?’

  Another grunt.

  He tried to see her face in the gloom, the pale skin on which the sun never shone, the little vicious eyes.

  ‘My name is Lister,’ he told her. ‘I am a journalist on the Graphic, and I would like to ask you about the late Joey Atkins.’

  The old lady cocked her head, as though listening intently.

  Lestrade reacted accordingly. ‘Joey Atkins,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve come to ask you about him.’

  Miss Stevens frowned.

  ‘The juggler,’ Lestrade roared. ‘He was killed in the ring two days ago.’

  The enigmatic Miss Stevens chuckled. Another one who had nothing good to say about the late lamented? Lestrade appeared to have opened a can of worms. He sat down quietly beside the old lady. Years of playing the booths and the penny gaffs had not been kind. Her profile was even more repulsive than her full-face; her nose was a snout and her jaw-bone, with its peculiar structure, obviously made it difficult for her to talk. What must it be like, Lestrade wondered, to show your hideous face day after day for children to point and adults to snigger? To appear in the broad glare of naphtha and sunlight when all you really want to do is to hide in the darkest corner on God’s earth. On an impulse, he took Miss Stevens’ hand in his. His scalp crawled. She had no fingers, just a bloated, swollen hand. But she recognized his humanity and dropped her great, misshapen head on his shoulder. And ran a long, pink tongue over his face.

  He leapt across the wagon, thumping into the wall before he heard it – a stifled, mocking laugh.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he yelled.

  At first there was no movement but for the gently rocking Miss Stevens, her head still lolling to one side, the bright eyes looking at him. Then a hand emerged from the recesses of her dress, then another. They were followed by the head of a dwarf. One who wasn’t Major John. The little man rolled out from under the runners of the rocker and stumbled about, pointing at Lestrade and holding his stomach with the pain of the laughter.

  ‘Very funny,’ the sergeant said, hands on hips. ‘I came to talk to the Pig-Faced Woman.’

  ‘Many do,’ the dwarf managed between hysterics. ‘She don’t say much back, mind. Not unless I prod her with this.’ He held up a stick. ‘Ain’t that right, Miss Stevens, darlin’?’ He jabbed the bustle and the old girl grunted in reply.

  ‘But . . . she’s . . . she’s a . . .’

  The dwarf nodded. ‘Brown bear are the words you’re gropin’ for, Mr Lister.’

  ‘Brown bear?’ Lestrade repeated.

  ‘Of the family Ursidae,’ the dwarf said, untying the ribbons of the bonnet. The beast looked down at him, even in its sitting position, and licked the top of his head. ‘Gerroff, you daft bugger. Soft as shit, she is,’ the dwarf slipped a sugar lump into the animal’s gaping mouth. ‘One tooth,’ he waggled it, ‘and that’s hangin’ by a thread.’ He pulled off the gloves and the paws boxed the air. ‘There,’ he kissed the bear on the nose, ‘that’s better, ain’t it, Missy? Nobody’ll pay to see a bear sittin’ in a rockin’ chair, Mr Lister. But to see Miss Stevens, the Pig-Faced Woman, well, that’s different . . . Folks’ll trudge miles for that. ’Course, we ’ave to keep her face shaved, so’s it looks like human flesh. But you don’t mind, do you, Missy?’ and he hugged the beast. ‘When this gentleman’s gone, I’ll help you off with your dress. I’m sorry, Mr Lister, I was just puttin’ Missy to bed when I heard you a-coming. I couldn’t resist it. Hit me with a slapstick if you like, but I couldn’t help meself. Look, don’t take it wrong. You can throw me about tomorrow, if you like.’

  ‘Throw you about?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the dwarf untied the apron strings that bound them, chair and bear. ‘When I’m not workin’ the bear and the ether, I’m star of the Dwarf-Throwing Contest. Forty-three feet’s my best. Mind you, that were a throw by Tinkerbelle. I doubt there’s many men can better that.’

  So did Lestrade. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll decline, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘It’s all the same to me,’ the dwarf said. ‘Somebody’ll throw me. It’s all part of the show.’

  Lestrade shook his head and clattered down the wagon steps. ‘About Joey Atkins,’ the dwarf said quietly, ‘I’m real sorry Miss Stevens couldn’t help.’

  ❖6❖

  ‘B

  endy’ Hendey, the India Rubber Man, shaved that morning as he always did, with his left arm wrapped around his neck, scraping the cut-throat down his right cheek. The little man he shared a caravan with sat upright in his bed and saw the sun gilding the textile mills and the pit derricks. He breathed the air from the open window. ‘Good day for a parade, Bendy.’

  A grunt had to suffice as Hendey was working on his moustache-place, the trickiest operation of the lot. One slip now and he’d lose a lip, perhaps two.

  ‘What did you make of that newspaper bloke?’ the dwarf asked.

  ‘Mm-mm-m,’ Hendey observed.

  ‘Well, that’s easy for you to say,’ the little man gambolled over the edge of the bed. ‘Know what I think?’

  ‘Mmm?’ said Hendey, still scraping.

  ‘Now I know you’ll say this is silly,’ he elbowed the taller man aside and splashed his face with cold water. ‘Towel?’ he shrieked, eyes closed, little stubby arms flailing.

  Hendey threw it to him, with his left foot, of course. ‘This is silly,’ he said, complying as he always did with the little man’s every wish.

  ‘There you are,’ the dwarf caught him a deft kick on the ankle. ‘But I think,’ he beckoned the acrobat down to his level, ‘I think the bloke’s a copper.’

  ‘Get away!’ Hendey snatched the towel and proceeded to poke his ears out.

  ‘Consider,’ the dwarf bounced back on to the bed and began to haul on a tiny pair of scarlet tights. ‘Ooh,’ he squeezed himself in, ‘each time I put these on, I realize anew why they call me Huge Hughie. Consider. He’s a bloke, what, twenty-five? Twenty-six? See the way he wears his bowler?’

  ‘No.’ Hendey didn’t notice these things.

  ‘Straight. Every newshound I’ve ever seen wears it tilted on the back of his head.

  ‘So?’ Hendey shrugged, lacing his mauve kicksies above his taut abdomen.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Hughie conceded, ‘not conclusiv
e, I’ll grant you. But cop a load of this – he came looking for advice from the Pig-Faced Woman.’

  Hendey guffawed, ‘Well, he fell for that one, all right.’

  ‘Exactly. How many newspapermen do you know would go to a freak for advice? Begging your pardon, Bendy, of course.’

  ‘And yours, Huge,’ the acrobat slipped on his sequinned jacket.

  ‘Now, a copper – that’s a horse of a very different collar. Your average copper is architecturally that stupid.’

  ‘I think you’re imagining things, Huge,’ the India Rubber Man said, tucking his ears under his little cap. ‘Seen my plume?’

  ‘Last time I did it was in the mouth of that ’orrible little monkey of Dame Pauline’s.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. Is that it, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The extent of your theories about Lister of the Graphic.’

  ‘No.’ The dwarf tugged on his doeskin boots, the ones with the gold tassels. ‘No, it isn’t, as a matter of fact, Mr Clever Clogs. It’s what he’s asking about clinched it for me.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’

  ‘Has he been anywhere near you? Asked about your flexes? Has he buggery! Did he quiz me on my throwing? The trick with Missy? The ether thing? Not on your twisted torso. He didn’t. All he wanted to know about was Joey Atkins and how he died.’

  ‘Get on! Well, I’m ready. Whose turn is it for breakfast?’

  ‘Yours. You know I never eat a thing on throwing days. Better to be safe than sorry. The punters want to see a dwarf chucked, they don’t want to see a dwarf chucking up. I’ll tell you what I think. Just a tea for me, Bendy. I think he’s a Miltonian brought in by the Boss.’

  ‘What for?’ Hendey checked his appearance in the full-length cheval in the corner.

  ‘Tsk,’ the dwarf nudged him aside and tilted the glass so that it fitted him. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I could be a tall bloke in a funny mirror, couldn’t I? He’s brought him in to find who done for poor ol’ Joey.’

  ‘I thought Angie done for him, Huge.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the dwarf pushed him out of the door, ‘but you thought a camel was a cigarette until I told you different. Mind you, I reckon I’ll have to tell him about what I saw.’