A Study In Crimson by Molly Carr

Author:Molly Carr [Carr, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-907685-41-5
Publisher: MX Publishing
Published: 2010-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

But, “The circus?” said John, after Emily had left in her usual manner by climbing over the back garden wall. “Whatever is she talking about?”

“Well she can’t mean Piccadilly or Holborn Circus. Or even The Elephant and Castle. It must be the real thing, and possibly on The Common.” Which was notorious for its showmen. I had heard about ‘Lord’ George Sanger, the world’s greatest fairground proprietor. He wasn’t a Lord, of course, but had started calling himself so after Buffalo Bill began putting ‘The Honourable William Cody’ on his publicity posters. But there could be no denying Sanger looked the part, in his top hat and frock coat, and the name stuck.

But there could also be no doubt that circuses and the fairgrounds associated with them were extremely dangerous places. Nearly seventy years earlier a man had been literally kicked to death at Stalybridge by miners using their iron-shod clogs. Men, and women, in cities up and down the country were known to come out of the stews as soon as the ‘respectable’ patrons had left the fairgrounds and wreak havoc with the stalls and sometimes the circus animals. Ruffians of both sexes, mad with cheap and adulterated drink, broke open cages with picks and shovels. It was even said two elephants escaped when their pantechnicon was overturned by a ferocious group of half-starved slum-dwellers indulging in mob violence for its own sake.

One of the worst offenders was ‘Carrotty Kate’, an enormous red-headed and half-naked shrew who periodically came out of the aptly named Bull Paunch Alley in Bath and incited her followers to wreck the booths in any fair unfortunate enough to come within their orbit. Even the so-called circus ‘freaks’ were occasionally infected by what went on around them as it got later and later and no constables arrived to restore order. On one memorable occasion an American billed as ‘The Living Skeleton’ tried to murder a professional ‘Fat Man’ by knocking him on the head with a tent-peg.

I guessed things had improved since then, even if such places were still highly undesirable. But, said Mrs. St. Clair, suddenly arriving on the doorstep in her best outfit, the Nipper must be left with Millie and we three go parading in the Haymarket, through the Burlington and Lowther Arcades, and along the Strand. Places where any of the villains might spot us.

“Not on your life,” I said. What if that horrible boy from the Long Island cave had already discovered where the Watson family lived and knocked on the door while we were out? It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Have it your own way,” said Miss Fanshaw, twirling her parasol. “But somehow we have to lure them to a performance.”

“It would be much better,” said Watson gravely, “if I did the luring and you women were left out of it.”

“And even more so,” I said to Emily, “if we had the remotest idea what your plan really is.”

“Just get that little snake of a grandson inside the circus tent along with those two Belgians and Professor Moriarty.

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