Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring Read online

  Sanger smiled. ‘All right, Mr Lestrade. You travel with us. Keep up your pose as Mr Lister of the Graphic. Ask what questions you like. But I must be kept informed. Savvy? Circus folk don’t take kindly to gojos – strangers – whether they’re newshounds or coppers or whatever they are. You’ll take some knocks – and you’ll be on your own. And I’ll tell you this. None of my people killed your Inspector. Circus folk don’t do that. Oh, they kill themselves occasionally in the pursuit of excellence, but they don’t go round killing passers-by, not even copper passers-by. Not real circus. You’ve got a good face,’ Sanger held him by the shoulders, ‘and you’re young and you need a break, so for now, I’ll string along with you. Who you really are will be our little secret, for the time being.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, Mr Sanger.’

  ‘Boss,’ the showman said. ‘Boss.’

  ‘Boss,’ Lestrade repeated. ‘Any ideas about the Inspector’s wound? The weapon that caused it, I mean?’

  Sanger chewed the last of his cigar. ‘Try the elephant man,’ he said and stepped backwards as Lestrade slid, unconscious at his feet.

  It took Lestrade a while to come to terms with the pounding in his head. There seemed to be a dry rattle reverberating through his ears and a tickling sensation above his lip. Pervading all was a rather strange smell he’d never encountered before. He pawed the air, idly trying to remove the irritation. Expecting a fly or perhaps a cobweb, he sat bolt upright, screaming, when he felt fur.

  In front of him a hideous face with gleaming teeth stared back. But it was not Lady Pauline de Vere, glancing back from driving the wagon, that had terrified him, but the little colobus monkey sitting on its perch, chattering.

  ‘He was only grooming you, Mr Lister,’ the showman’s wife said. ‘Say hello to Minkey, Mr Lister. He’ll shake your hand if you ask him nicely.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Lestrade said, but he had no such intention. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Just coming into Appleton Roebuck. We’ll be on the ground by noon. Then you’ll see some action for your readers,’ she winked.

  ‘My readers? Oh, yes, of course, my readers.’ Lestrade thought he’d better nip into Tadcaster when they arrived and buy himself a newshound’s notepad.

  ‘Yes, it’ll be “All hands to the tilt”.’

  That was precisely how Lestrade’s head felt as he tried to make the view beyond Lady de Vere and the plodding horses’ heads focus.

  ‘Ah, he’s a one with the brandy is my George,’ she laughed, ‘but you’ll get over it. Would you like Minkey to stroke your forehead? He’s a Temple monkey. He’s used to it.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Lestrade almost screamed. ‘Perhaps I’ll stretch my legs. Have a little walk with the elephants.’

  Lestrade hit the ground at a run, especially when he realized that the monkey was making another determined bid for his nuts. The sprain wasn’t too bad, though, and he hobbled out of the way of the herd of speckled Appaloosas that trotted behind Lady de Vere’s wagon. Standing to one side, he watched the great cavalcade roll past, stretching as far as the eye could see in both directions.

  A horseman cantered along the roadside, leaning in the saddle and glancing behind him every so often. He drew rein beside Lestrade. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘another new face.’

  ‘Er . . . Joseph Lister,’ Lestrade extended a hand, ‘Weekly Graphic.’

  ‘Harry Masters,’ the rider shook his hand, ‘I’m the vet. Seen a camel with the colic?’

  ‘No,’ Lestrade couldn’t see a camel at all, what with the dust on the road. Spring had suddenly arrived with the circus.

  ‘Damn, I hoped somebody would have. Damned if I know what to do. I knew I should have joined the Camel Corps, not the 47th Foot.’

  ‘Not many camels in the infantry?’ Lestrade commiserated.

  ‘Well, none, actually,’ Masters admitted. ‘They only took me on to service the regimental goat. Well, the Boss doesn’t pay me to sit here talking all day. We’ll have a chat later.’

  ‘Where are the elephants?’

  ‘At the back,’ the vet called. ‘They always start at the front, but the stupid buggers are so slow. Can’t stand them, personally. Good luck,’ and the intrepid outrider was gone. ‘The Sultan of Ramnuggar’s your man.’

  Lestrade sat on a milestone, the first he’d reached in his career, and waited as the rest of the menagerie came past. One black panther had a nasty turn in his eye and Lestrade was heartily glad that there were iron bars between it and him. He knew the elephants by their long, swinging trunks and great flapping ears. There were a dozen of them, a huge monster at their head. Above his grey, domed skull sat a lithe young man with blond hair and freckles.

  ‘I was looking for the Sultan of Ramnuggar,’ Lestrade bellowed above the snorting and thump of the beasts. The smell was indescribable.

  ‘You’ve found him,’ the sandy man called down. ‘Just a minute.’ He patted the animal behind the ear and the monster curled up its trunk and coiled it around his master’s waist before putting him down, so gently, at Lestrade’s side. ‘Walk on,’ the Sultan called and the great beast obeyed.

  ‘That’s extraordinary,’ Lestrade said, gaping.

  ‘Oh, that’s nothing. You should see ‘em waltz. I’m working on the Lancers, but it’s a bit fast for ‘em.’

  ‘No, I mean that you are the Sultan of Ramnuggar.’

  The Sultan grinned. ‘Yeah, well, actually, that’s Ramnuggar Road, Stepney.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Well, you know ’ow it is. Nobody’s goin’ to pay good money to see a Cockney ride an elephant. So it’s the old cork and turban. Wait ’til tonight. Who are you, by the by?’

  ‘Er . . . Joseph Lister. I write for the Graphic. The Boss has given me permission to ride with the circus for a few days.’

  ‘Well, well. You’ll want to know about my girls.’

  ‘Ah. How many do you have?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  Lestrade looked askance as he walked alongside the Sultan. The man was, what, twenty-two? Twenty-three? To have sired twelve daughters already was a prodigious feat. But then, presumably, he didn’t use his feet.

  ‘Edna’s the eldest. She’s sixty-one.’

  ‘Sixty . . .?’ Lestrade stopped.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Mr Lister,’ the Sultan said in alarm, but it was too late. Lestrade felt as though a house had hit him in the back and he sprawled forward, grazing his cheek as he hit the loose chippings on the road. He rolled instinctively and found himself staring up at something he’d only ever seen from an entirely different angle – and then it had been stuffed with umbrellas. Now, the elephant’s foot was inches from his face and joined to a ton and a half of elephant.

  ‘Esmerelda,’ the Sultan scolded and jabbed something into the creature’s flank. It lowered its foot carefully beside the prone policeman and walked on.

  ‘That was close,’ the Sultan helped him up.

  ‘I’ll say it was,’ Lestrade’s heart only now descended from his throat.

  ‘Yeah, she normally piddles on anything under her feet. You got off lightly. First lesson, then, Mr Lister. Never stand still in front of a movin’ elephant.’

  Lestrade mentally added that to his list of moving things he must never stand in front of. It was a comfort.

  ‘Now,’ the Sultan went on, ‘I’ve told you about Edna. And you’ve just met Esmerelda,’ he closed to his man. ‘I’ve got to whisper this, ’cos if they hear, there’ll be hell to pay. My favourite is Erica. That’s her over there, third from the right. Look at them eyelashes, eh? Is she a little darlin’ or what?’

  ‘That’s a nifty thing, Mr Sultan,’ Lestrade said. ‘Is it a goad?’

  ‘Ankus,’ the Sultan said, holding up the prod he had jabbed Esmerelda with, ‘that’s what they call ’em in Inja. Want an ’old of it?’

  Lestrade took the weapon in his hand. It was eighteen inches long, damascened with silver and had a spike at one end. What interested
him most, however, was the iron projection that curled away from the spike. He twisted it in his grip so that the curl was on the right. Through the clouds of dust behind the elephants, Lestrade shouted, ‘A nasty weapon.’

  ‘Not to an elephant,’ the Sultan shouted back, ‘’cos they’re so thick skinned, y’ see. Literally, I mean, not metaphysicsly. There’s nothin’ what takes umbrage quicker than yer average elephant. In fact,’ he hung back from the beasts still further, ‘I’m takin’ a chance just usin’ that dread phrase “yer average elephant”. ‘Cos they’re all special, y’ see. But no, the ankus doesn’t hurt ‘em. Whatever those bastards from the RSPCA tell yer.’

  ‘It would hurt a man, though,’ Lestrade observed.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ the Sultan took the thing back, ‘it would kill a man, I should think. In the wrong hands. ’Specially if it got him in the heart. Now, about my girls . . .’ and he proceeded to bore Lestrade to death all the way to Tadcaster.

  Tadcaster stood on both sides of the river Wharfe, dominated, in the dusk of a spring evening, by the great granite tower of St Mary’s church. The Romans had come here, many years ago and called it, wrongly, Calcaria. It was most famous however for its beer and Lord George had called the entire show together to warn them that if he smelt liquor on any man, woman or child, there’d be no pay that Friday.

  Lestrade could only watch in astonishment as Sanger’s people went through their paces. Arriving when he did with the elephants, his boots somewhat browner and stickier than before, much of the groundwork had been done. On the field, Sanger’s agent had selected, carefully tearing down Powell and Clarke’s posters first and replacing them with Sanger’s, a little man with powerful shoulders was barking orders to a crowd of navvies in bright shirts and moleskin trousers. Around him lay enough canvas to fit out the fleet in the olden days, all quarters laced together with ropes. As Lestrade watched, he heard the shout ‘All hands to the tilt’ and from everywhere people came running, taking their place at the canvas edge, with the speed of trained performers.

  ‘Come on,’ Major John belted the detective in the kneecap as he ran past, ‘nobody gets out of this. It’s tradition. I’m an accountant and I have to do it.’

  And so it was that Detective Sergeant Lestrade became part of the circus. He watched the tiny accountant grab the canvas and did likewise.

  ‘Tilt!’ bellowed the tentmaster and with a great cry, everybody took the strain. The ropes, coiled and slack, suddenly tautened as muscle and sinew bore the brunt. Across the field, four of the Sultan’s girls were meandering, it seemed idly, to the points of the compass, but as they did so, the great canvas lifted. Higher. Higher. Until, little by little, it slid along the frame ropes to the poles and darkness closed over the field.

  ‘Mind your feet,’ Major John called to Lestrade as the navvies came loping at a trot around the great tent, driving in the guy hooks with their mallets. Inside the vast arena, other men were shovelling tan and sawdust from a slowly moving cart. No time was wasted, for time, as George Sanger constantly told people, was money. One by one, the naphtha flares were lit in their iron cages and the entrance flaps were pinned back. Rows of chattering women bustled together under the auspices of Lady Pauline, setting out terraces of canvas chairs.

  ‘Ah,’ Lord George positively sprinted across the ring, ‘the smell of the crowd.’

  ‘No Parade today, Boss?’ a man twelve feet in the air on stilts called.

  ‘Not worth it at Tadcaster, Shorty,’ the showman shouted back. ‘Let’s warm up tonight and we’ll parade at Castleford, eh?’

  ‘Right you are,’ and he tottered off to fasten some fittings.

  High above them all, half a dozen young men and women, the core of the famous Flying Buttresses, swung to and fro from poles and perches, some with rods, some without.

  ‘Nets!’ thundered Sanger from the ground.

  ‘Oh, Boss, come on!’ a Buttress shouted, ‘’ave an ’eart.’

  ‘Nets!’ Sanger repeated. ‘Or you don’t go on.’ He winked at Lestrade. ‘Always the same the first night, Mr Lister. Daredevrily run riot. Like little kids, they are.’

  The little kids arrived first, scampering with their parents across the darkening grass to the magical naphtha glow of the Big Top. The man on stilts welcomed them; ‘This way, ladies and gentlemen and children. Walk up! Walk up! Step this way for the main attraction. Step right up! It’s a sight to see. Come on, kiddies, that’s it, bring your Mamas and Papas.’ And each sentence was punctuated with a thunderous crash on the bass drum.

  They took their places inside, as the tentmen hauled down the canvas of the entrance way and rolled and roped it away on a wagon, ready for the off. Then all was colour and spangles and stardust.

  The Sultan had undergone a metamorphosis. His golden hair was pinned under a lilac turban and his freckles buried under the burnt umber of the Central Indian Plain. His girls cavorted and swayed in the ring, screaming through their noses and tossing their great plumed heads. They lovingly linked, trunk to tail and twirled first this way, then that.

  The Lipizzaners, in feathers and sequins, cantered nobly around the circle, spangled sylphs on their backs, pirouetting as they rode. In the centre, Lord George, resplendent in a scarlet coat, barked the acts by way of introduction, and the applause was deafening. It took Lestrade back to his childhood, when he had seen the mighty Van Ambrugh, the Brute Trainer from Pompeii, pop his head inside a lion’s mouth to tickle the animal’s tonsils with a feather. He had not known that Van Ambrugh was actually from Fishkill, New Jersey and a martyr to incontinence. It wouldn’t really have surprised the little boy from Pimlico – his first inclination on putting his head inside a lion’s mouth would probably have been to wet himself, too. As it was, the young Lestrade had watched his mother’s face shining in the show-light, her eyes bright, her hands, red from years of wrestling in the suds with other people’s laundry, hovering in anticipation. He had watched his old dad, whose watch he still carried, the naphtha flaring on his tunic numbers. Somebody in the row behind had asked him to remove his helmet. He had – it made a change from somebody knocking it off.

  The trumpets blared to announce the highlight of the evening – ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, the ever-popular story of Dick Turpin and his ride to York!’ Sanger bellowed. He cracked his whip and a magnificent coach and pair slid into the arena, the lights dancing on its frame, the coachman hauling at the coloured reins and snaking his whip over the heads of the prancing greys. From across the sawdust ring, a lone horseman, mounted on a glossy black stallion, thudded into the centre.

  ‘Good old Bess!’ the audience shouted and the animal reared up, pawing the air and loving the roars of the crowd. Then Turpin brought him down again and caracoling sideways, drew two horse pistols and yelled ‘Stand and deliver!’ behind the mask. The coachman tugged at his leathers, bracing his feet on the board and the vehicle skidded to a halt.

  ‘Your money or your life!’ Turpin demanded in time-honoured tradition and fired his blank into the air.

  ‘You’ll not take this coach, you blaggard!’ the guard shouted and stood up to draw his blunderbuss. Turpin was faster and steadying the frisky horse, fired again with his second weapon. The guard jerked, looked down at the dark stain spreading across his spangles and buckled at the knees. Before the coachman could catch him, he toppled forward, bouncing on the rump of the left-hand horse before pitching into the sawdust. Turpin dropped his pistol as the smoke cleared. The crowd roared its approval, but the coachman lashed his horses and careered round the arena, making straight for the exit. Before he got clear, a clown tumbled on to the tan, his huge shoes flapping, his orange hair jerking up and down. He produced a huge bouquet of flowers from his trousers and lovingly planted then near the fallen guard. Turpin wheeled Bess away and cantered off.

  ‘August! August!’ the audience roared, ‘Stromboli! Stromboli!’ the clown bowed to them all, then snapped his gloved fingers and four others came running, expressionless i
n their white faces, the glycerine tears sparkling on their cheeks. They took up the fallen guard, one at each corner and carried him shoulder high.

  ‘Turpin! Turpin!’ the crowd chanted, but Stromboli wasn’t having any. He scuttled across the ring and grabbed two buckets, screaming at the audience in his Italian-English. ‘Eh? Wassa matta? Never min’ that Turpin. ‘’E’s a Dick. You! You’re too a-dry, thatsa your problem!’ and he hurled the contents of the first bucket at the front row. They screamed and recoiled, showered in confetti. But Stromboli had gone, threatening and bullying the audience on the other side.

  In the tack room near the Big Top, Lestrade had got there late. A crowd of clowns stood disconsolately around, together with an anxious-looking Sanger, his whip dangling from his wrist. Dick Turpin, the highwayman, stood to one side, looking slimmer and younger than she had on Black Bess a moment ago. Her face was deathly pale. But not as pale as the man on the floor. His greatcoat had fallen back and his tricorn hat still lay in the ring. The crowd laughed and clapped hysterically at the antics of Stromboli beyond the canvas. But the ring was a charnel-house and a man lay dead, an ounce of lead where his belt buckle had been.

  ❖5❖

  H

  e led her by the hand up the steps into the gilded caravan. The crowds had gone home, the wires come down. The Sultan’s girls were demolishing a well-earned few tons of hay, as were the horses and the camels. Several sheep had been provided by Messrs Langton, Butchers and Meat Purveyors of Tadcaster, to keep the lions and tigers from the door. The great canvas tent had come down at the cry again of ‘All hands to the tilt’ and some of the wagons were already on the road to Pontefract.

  He held out a glass. She shook her head.

  ‘Take it,’ he insisted. So she did. ‘There,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Boss.’ Her voice was barely a whisper. And she began to cry.