Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring Read online

  Emily Clare nodded. ‘As though by an earthquake. He was distraught, poor man. You know these manservants, Jane. All his life he’d been taught to fetch and carry, in sunshine and in rain, never complaining.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane nodded, ‘well, they don’t have feelings, do they, people of his class? Not like you and me, I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Emily agreed, ‘I suppose not. And yet the murder of his master utterly destroyed him. It was as though he had come unglued.’

  ‘And he was stabbed, you say?’

  ‘Through the heart.’

  Both ladies shuddered.

  ‘Emily,’ Jane was loath to raise it, but the idea sat irritating in her mind and she simply had to, ‘what has Inspector Heneage’s death to do with poor William?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ she said, staring wistfully at the violets that intertwined their through the glaze of her cup, ‘and so would Sergeant Lestrade.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Jane said, looking up, ‘Where is Sergeant Lestrade?’

  The great circus rolled and rattled its way east from the Forest of Knaresborough. First the hunched camels of the night and the giant pachyderms, the darting herd of skewbald Shetlands and the huge, lumbering wagons with the rest of the menagerie. Dogs yelped and snapped at the straining beasts and the groaning wheels. Dawn saw them at Kirkby Overblow. They took their elevenses at Clap Gate. Everywhere, children ran with them, whistling, shouting, marvelling at the caged beasts, mesmerized by the jingle of bits and the snorting horses. By evening, they’d crossed the River Cock and tethered their wagons on that same field where, eternity before in the winter of the Roses, Yorkist had killed Lancastrian and the snow of Towton was stained red.

  He sat in the flickering lamplight on his great gilded wagon, a man the wrong side of fifty-three, an elegant beaver top hat at a rakish angle above a face sculpted by the weather, worn smooth by the driving rain on the road. His eyes twinkled like fireflies in their dark-ringed sockets and he patted the belcher chain and huge fob that dangled from it across his silver-thread waistcoat.

  ‘Well now,’ he said, pausing to remove a huge cigar, ‘what can you do?’

  ‘Oh, a bit of this,’ the man before him said, ‘a bit of that.’

  ‘Yes,’ the top-hatted man said, ‘there’s a lot of this ’n’ that in the circus. But you see, son, Sanger’s circus is the biggest on the road this season. We open tomorrow at Tadcaster and I’m a wireman down.’

  ‘Are you?’ the young man asked.

  The top-hatted man leaned forward, ‘Mr . . . Lister, is it?’

  ‘Yessir,’ he answered.

  ‘No, no, lad. No “sirs” here. To the great fee-paying public, I am Lord George Sanger. But round here, it’s George or Boss. My ol’ dad was a travelling showman; carried a peepshow on his back for twenty years, man and man. He was on the deck of the Victory when Nelson went down, you know.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Yes. Exactly. We Sangers are no strangers to fame. Who were you with last?’

  ‘Er . . .?’

  ‘You said you’d got circus in your blood,’ Sanger reminded him, ‘so who were you with last? Bostock’s?’

  Sanger leaned out of a side window, ‘Nell, my love, can you spare a minute?’

  There was a muffled reply.

  ‘Well, put a poultice on it,’ Sangster suggested and catching sight of a practice act beyond the campfire snarled, ‘you’ll never get a triple that way, Curtis.’

  There was a clatter on the wooden steps behind him and a pock-marked lady stood there.

  ‘Nell, my darling. I believe you two know each other.’

  The lady peered in the lamplight at the young man before her. He looked useful enough, a little spare, a little rangy. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Do we?’

  ‘Well, I . . . er . . .’ Lister hedged.

  Sanger stood up. ‘Here,’ he said and suddenly threw a cudgel at Lister, who missed it and it dropped heavily on his toe. ‘Tsk, tsk,’ Sanger shook his head, ‘wireman, eh? Well, perhaps, but you’re no juggler, I’ll tell you that. Nell, my princess, have you got Ziggy?’

  ‘George, it’s past his bedtime.’

  ‘Oh, I think Mr Lister would like to meet him.’

  She smiled and clattered back down the steps.

  ‘You see,’ Sanger retrieved the cudgel and twirled it expertly in his hand. ‘I’m surprised that my good lady wife didn’t recognize you, nor you her, you being from Bostock’s an’ all. She is of course, Lady Pauline de Vere, to use her show name, the Lion Queen of Bostock’s. In fact, old Bostock didn’t like it at all that I pinched his star attraction, but that’s show business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Pauline de Vere,’ Lister clicked his fingers, ‘it’s this bad light, I didn’t recognize her.’

  There was a sound behind Lister that he’d never actually heard before. It was like someone with appalling adenoids trying to clear his throat. When he turned, he leapt upwards, landing neatly on Sanger’s desk. A half-grown lion was looking up at him, his pale-pink tongue licking his stubby whiskers and his paws huge, spread out on the floor.

  Sanger laughed, ‘That’s not bad,’ he said, ‘Maybe you’ll make a decent wireman after all. Hmm,’ he glanced at the mess at Lister’s feet, ‘only two ink bottles broken. Not bad.’

  Lady Pauline popped her battered old head around the corner, giggling. ‘That’s only Ziggy, Mr Lister,’ she said. ‘He’s only a cub. He only wants to play.’

  ‘Yes,’ squeaked Lister. ‘Well, I haven’t been well.’

  ‘And you haven’t been near a circus, either,’ Sanger said slowly. ‘Not Bostock’s nor anyone else’s. Thank you, my love, I think Ziggy has made our point for us.’

  ‘Come on, poppet,’ and she took the hairy beast by the ear and led him away, muttering soothing things to him. ‘No, that nasty men didn’t mean to frighten you, darling. Mummy will beat him severely with her whip. Yes.’

  ‘Do you intend to stay up there all night?’ Sanger asked.

  ‘Do you have any more surprises for me?’ Lister asked.

  ‘That depends on the answer to my next question.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Which is,’ Sanger closed his wagon door and slid the bolt, ‘who are you really and what’s your bloody game?’

  Lister had not moved by the time Lord George’s ash had tumbled from his cigar. He clamped the thing between his thin entrepreneur’s lips and said, ‘Judging by your position up there, anyone’d think you’d seen a mouse, not a lion. And if you’re circus,’ he pulled the cheroot and pointed to it, ‘this is a monkey’s tadger.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lister, lowering himself carefully, ‘it’s not Lister, it’s Lestrade. Detective Sergeant Lestrade, Scotland Yard.’

  ‘I’d gathered that much.’ Sanger whipped a small, gilt-headed thing from his hip pocket.

  Lestrade slapped his own, but it was too late. ‘My tipstaff,’ he said.

  ‘Something of a giveaway,’ Sanger chortled, ‘you might as well have worn your blue hat. Snort?’ He threw the tipstaff on to the table and held up a flat-bottomed decanter, half full of amber nectar.

  ‘Not when I’m on duty, sir,’ Lestrade said, ‘so please don’t embarrass me by offering tomorrow. But for tonight, yes, I’d love one.’

  Sanger chuckled and poured a glass for them both.

  ‘There are a few gentlemen I know of east of Temple Bar who’d give their eye-teeth for your sleight of hand, Mr Sanger,’ Lestrade said of the tipstaff.

  ‘Out of sleight, out of mind,’ the showman shrugged, throwing his hat to the nearest peg. ‘Rummaging through other people’s pockets can be an invaluable pastime. How long have you been a Miltonian?’

  ‘A detective? Nearly four years.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Sanger sipped his brandy, ‘green as a rag in the weather. Two things, if you’re a-going under cover in the course of your detecting. Don’t carry your tipstaff and don’t stand too close to the likes of me. Now what d’
you want? I’m a busy man. We open in Tadcaster. We next play Pontefract. It’s . . .’ he checked his watch, ‘nearly midnight now. We must be away by five, all packed and trim.’

  Lestrade perched himself on the edge of a travelling trunk, ‘I have reason to believe that an Inspector Heneage visited your show the other day.’

  ‘No, we haven’t officially opened yet. Tadcaster is the first night.’

  ‘Not as a member of the audience,’ Lestrade explained, ‘but in the course of his inquiries.’

  Sanger frowned and screwed up his leathery face. ‘He didn’t get to me,’ he said and stuck his head out of the window again. ‘Johnnie? Got a minute?’

  A muffled voice called back.

  ‘I’m going to do you a favour,’ Sanger told Lestrade. ‘Whatever I say in the next few minutes, you play along. Savvy?’ and he slid back the bolt.

  An outsize head appeared above the wagon’s floor, followed by a pair of pallid hands with stubby fingers and a dwarf tumbled in a tight cartwheel into Lord George’s presence.

  ‘Evenin’, Boss,’ he chirruped

  ‘Can I do the business?’ said Sanger. ‘Major John, this is Mr Lister. He’s with the Weekly Graphic . . . Come to spend a few days with the greatest show on earth.’

  ‘Charmed,’ the dwarf bowed.

  Catapulted into the Fourth Estate, Lestrade reacted quickly. ‘Major,’ he said, shaking the little man’s hand. ‘You do a midget act, I presume?’

  Lord George turned away with an inrush of breath.

  The dwarf stiffened and squared up to Lestrade’s navel, ‘No, he said coldly, ‘I am the show’s accountant. I just happen to be on the short side.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ Lestrade cleared his throat, ‘sorry.’

  ‘You know how it is, Johnnie,’ Sanger said, pouring the dwarf a brandy, ‘in the Press as on the road. Always somebody else, somebody trying to muscle in, pinch your pitch, hit the town first.’

  ‘Do I?’ echoed John, gulping the glass’s contents. ‘Here’s shit in your shoes, gentlemen.’

  The others raised their glasses.

  ‘Well, Mr Lister thinks there’s another newshound sniffing around, a Mr . . . er . . .’

  ‘Heneage,’ Lestrade had caught the showman’s drift.

  ‘The crafty old bugger,’ John said.

  ‘You met him?’ Lestrade asked, accepting Sanger’s refill.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I informed?’ Sanger said. He could be as pompous as the Prime Minister if the mood took him.

  ‘Keep your titfer on, Boss,’ the accountant said. ‘I didn’t tell you because Mr Heneage claimed he was a copper. From Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Well, well,’ giggled Lestrade, ‘the crafty old bugger.’

  ‘My words exactly,’ John reminded him.

  ‘What did he want?’ Sanger asked.

  ‘He was talking a load of bollocks, Boss,’ the accountant held out his glass for more, but Sanger ignored it. ‘Some camel shit about a murder back in Harrogate. Mind you, when you played Harrogate last season, it was murder, do you remember? Stuck up load of bollocks, they are in Harrogate, Mr Lister – and you can quote me on that.’

  ‘Who else did Heneage speak to?’ Lestrade asked him.

  ‘Nobody. Oh, only Stromboli.’

  ‘Stromboli?’

  ‘The august,’ Sanger explained.

  ‘August?’ Lestrade felt everybody was suddenly speaking a different language.

  ‘Clown,’ Mr Lister,’ John told him. ‘Bloody ’ellfire, son, you’ve got a lot to learn.’

  ‘So this Stromboli . . .’ Lestrade ignored the jibe.

  ‘. . . brought him to me, rather than bother the Boss. I sent him packin’, I can tell you.’

  ‘Stromboli?’

  ‘No, the copper. Only now you tell me he ain’t a copper.’

  ‘Ah, life’s full of illusions, Johnnie,’ Sanger blew smoke rings to the gilded ceiling where baroque angels smiled down at him. ‘Well, I’m sure you want to get back to your books. You balance them so beautifully.’

  Realizing that a second drink was unlikely tonight, the dwarf bowed and took his leave. ‘I estimate three hundred bums on seats tomorrow night, Boss,’ he called.

  ‘Excellent, Johnnie. Merry counting,’ and Sanger slid the bolt again.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Lestrade asked.

  ‘Because I don’t want us to be disturbed.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean the bolt. I mean why did you invent the journalist story?’

  Sanger poured them both another brandy and sat back in his chair. ‘I don’t know. Sixth sense, I suppose. If two Scotland Yard men come a-sniffing around a circus, I’d say there’s trouble in the wind. I get the impression, Mr Lestrade, that you’re going to need all the friends you can get in the days ahead. And you won’t get them playing your cards straight. But then, you know that already. That’s why you came to me to sign on, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s just say I thought I’d learn more as Joe Lister than as Sholto Lestrade.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sanger nodded through clenched teeth around his cigar, ‘but the name has possibilities – “The Great Sholto”,’ he imagined it blazing in naphtha flares across the sky. ‘So where’s this Inspector of yours? Sent you undercover, did he?’

  ‘No,’ Lestrade said, ‘he’s lying on a marble slab in Harrogate. About now, an Inspector Bottomley of the Yorkshire Constabulary is admiring his face while sipping a hot toddy.’

  ‘Bugger me,’ muttered Sanger darkly. ‘I think you’d better tell me all about it.’

  Perhaps it was the warmth of Sanger’s gilded caravan. Perhaps it was the effect of four brandies in a quarter of an hour. Perhaps he hadn’t quite recovered from his close encounter with the king – well, prince – of the beasts. Whatever the reason, Lestrade decided to come clean. Something about Lord George Sanger inspired that in a young policeman.

  ‘Inspector Heneage was investigating a murder . . . well, two, to be exact. His makes the third.’

  ‘Fancy,’ muttered Sanger, the eyes bright in the sallow face. He out-sallowed Lestrade easily.

  ‘You travelled out of Harrogate by way of Knaresborough?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sanger.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Knaresborough lies to the north-east of Harrogate. Yet now you’re travelling south-east to Tadcaster and Pontefract.’

  ‘That’s simple,’ Sanger said. ‘Howes and Cushing.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s a cut-throat business on the road, Mr Lestrade,’ the showman rested his boots on his table-top. ‘Now I’ve got Astley’s in London, Lord George Sanger is the biggest show in the country. This season, the biggest threat comes from the Americans – Howes and Cushing arrived at the Port of London two weeks ago.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Sanger said, ‘I lead. I’ve got blokes all over the place. Come here,’ he led the pie-eyed policeman to the window, ‘look there. What do you see?’

  Lestrade took in the camp-fires, now being kicked out for the night; the great black wagons silhouetted against the Yorkshire sky. From the lines, the Liberty horses snorted and whinnied softly in their sleep and the occasional elephant trumpeted. Only Sanger had elephants that could play the trumpet.

  ‘A circus,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Sanger shook his head, ‘an army, Mr Lestrade. This is the van. I am the General. Major John is my adjutant. Everybody out there knows his place in the ranks. And ahead are my light cavalry. Blokes posted in all the major ports, the major cities.’ He consulted his watch. ‘It’s nearly one. I’ve three riders spurring south as we speak, fanning out in an arc to watch the roads. Any sign of Howes and Cushing – or anybody else for that matter – and they ride hell for leather to tell me. Then we switch towns, double back, even, if we have to, commandeer the railway. The move to Knaresborough was a feint, designed to confuse Howes and Cushing’s riders, ’cos they got t
hem too, make no mistake. It seems to have worked so far. Last I heard, their show was making for Manchester.’

  ‘A regular Buonaparte, aren’t you?’ Lestrade slurred.

  Sanger chuckled. ‘Now he was a showman.’

  Lestrade subsided gratefully into his chair again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when you left Knaresborough, you left in your wake a dead man – my Inspector.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Not far from the road, near a place called the Dropping Well. Do you know it?’

  Sanger ferreted in a gilded cupboard, heavily chased with cherubs, and spread a map across the table, careful to avoid Lestrade’s spilt ink. ‘Show me,’ he said.

  Lestrade focussed with difficulty. Sanger nodded as the detective’s finger eventually found its mark. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we passed within half a mile of there. How did your man die?’

  ‘Stabbed,’ Lestrade told him, ‘with a sharp-pointed weapon.’

  ‘Sword?’

  ‘No,’ Lestrade shook his head. ‘I have two other corpses on my hands,’ he said, ‘and I have reason to believe that all three men met their untimely ends by the same hand. Except the first two died by being hacked to death with the very weapon you just mentioned. This one is different.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lestrade shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps our man was short of time. Perhaps he’d left his sword at home. I’ve never quite seen a wound like it.’

  ‘Quite?’

  ‘Well,’ Lestrade found his glass being refilled as he struggled to remember, ‘the hole was through the heart, implying expert swordsmanship, but it was round. No sword-blade I’ve ever come across could make a hole like that. And there was something else.’

  ‘What?’

  The sergeant swayed around the caravan, lurching a little with each step. ‘A bruise. To the right of the wound.’

  ‘Don’t all stabbings cause bruising?’

  ‘Not like this. Depending on the force of the thrust, there’s bruising all the way around the wound. This was just to one side.’

  ‘Was it now?’

  ‘Mr Sanger,’ Lestrade straightened, ‘I have a job to do. You’ve been very kind, covering for me with Major John and so on. But a policeman is dead. Killed in the line of duty. Oh, he was an idiot and not very exper . . . ex . . . good at his job, but nobody kills a policeman and just walks away with it. Nobody. Besides . . . I promised a lady.’