Trollheart

II: The Murderer is Revealed

Receiving no assistance from the owner of the circus, we had no choice but to check each of the tents which dotted the field. After several failures we came to one in which three men were sitting and having coffee. A quick glance at their faces told us these were clowns, currently off duty. None of them were the man we were looking for. Holmes tipped his hat.

“We are looking for a Mr. Deschamps, gentlemen. Would any of you know of his whereabouts?”

One of the men looked up, gave Holmes a surly glance. For a clown, he seemed quite gloomy.

“Medical tent,” he snapped, shortly, returning to his drink.

“Third one along on the right,” piped up another, somewhat more helpful. “Black and white squares. Dude's been there since he was attacked by that there monkey.”

“At least it's put paid to his midnight disappearances,” noted the third.

The remark was made in an offhand manner, but something about it drew Holmes' attention.

“Disappearances, sir?”

The third clown looked at the other two. One, the first who had spoken, looked away, while the second shrugged. It seemed clear to even such as I that they had no great regard for Deschamps, and if he had a secret, they were not bound to keep it.

“Just about every night,” the third clown told us. “We're meant to stay in the compound, see. Kinda rule of the circus. Mr. Nilsson, he don't want us moseyin' off and gettin' into mischief. But you don't tell Frank what to do, no siree bob!”

It seemed that something like a shiver passed through the man, and he wrapped his hands more tightly around his mug, as if craving the heat.

“Frank?” Holmes raised an eyebrow.

“Well, Francis.” The clown scowled at him. “ He hates to be called Frank. Kinda why we do it."

"Not to his face, though," muttered the first clown. The third one shrugged, though it seemed like a shudder,

"Not gold-darned likely," he agreed. "Guy gives me the creeps, y'know? Thinks he's better than all of us. Has this fancy to be called mon-soo-er, bloody Canuck.” Irritated though he was, I noticed keenly that the third clown looked around a little warily, no doubt to assure himself that Deschamps was nowhere in earshot. It seemed our acrobat friend cast a long shadow over this circus. He even had the owner covering for him, or too afraid to give him up. Holmes nodded, took out his notebook and wrote something down, underlining it. He tapped his pen against his teeth, nodded again.

“So Mr. Deschamps – Frank – left the compound?”

“Sure did. Made no secret of it neither. Mr. Nilsson was real mad about it, but he's scared of the guy. There's somethin' in Frank's eyes, y'know? Somethin' that tells you you ain't the fastest gun, so you best not draw. We all seen it, mister. It's kinda... hypnotic, see? When I was only knee high to a grasshopper my paw took me to see this Wild West Show – y'know, like that Buffalo Bill? Weren't him or nothin' but another guy. An' they had this injun, reckon you'd call him a medicine man, witch doctor, some horsepucky like that. Well, when I looked in this guy's eyes, I sorta felt like he was talkin' to me, like he could, I don't know, see into mah soul or some dang thing. Deschamps is the same. Has this, y'know, power to make folks do what he says. Scary. Take mah word for it, you don't want them eyes turned on you, friend. Reminds me,” he turned to the middle clown, who nodded in dumb agreement, “of a rattler, y'know? One false step and you're done, son.” He shivered again, took a drink of his coffee, stared into the mug.

“He's had Nilsson under his spell for years,” he muttered, again glancing around as if afraid he might be heard. ”It's him as runs this show round here. He's the boss man,” he muttered.

Holmes smiled one of those frosty smiles of his.

“Ah, well, M. Deschamps may just find that, to use one of your delightful American colloquialisms, there is a new sheriff in town. Good day, gentlemen.”

Holmes tipped his hat and exited the tent.

As we came out we were greeted by a rat-faced little bulldog of a man, who was walking hurriedly across the grass. Behind him were three police constables.

“Ah! Lestrade!” Holmes greeted the inspector. “I see you got my telegram. Good.” He looked at the three officers. “Good, stout men, not afraid of a little rough stuff?” Lestrade nodded. “Capital! I fear we may be somewhat impeded in our attempt to arrest this man.”

Lestrade swept his glance around the circus, taking in the tents, cages, stands and the various performers who moved to and fro.

“Anyone trying to impede the progress of the law,” he warned, in a voice meant to be heard by all, “will bring down upon him the full force of that law. Stand aside!”

We got some sullen looks as we made our way across the grass but nobody tried to stop us as we headed for the medical tent. On Holmes' advice, Lestrade stationed his men outside, while he himself accompanied us inside, where we found our man, sitting in a chair. He turned to look at us as we entered, his face showing the scars of the monkey attack, just as Miss Penny had described it.

“C'est quoi?” he snapped, lapsing into his second tongue. “Fais attention! Je suis malade!” For emphasis, as if any were needed, he pointed to his face, where the tell-tale signs of what could only be the Herpes virus were already making their presence known.

“Yes,” remarked Holmes. “You are indeed a sick man, though I fear far sicker than anyone here realises.”

Beside me, Lestrade shrugged, and all I could do was watch. Holmes seldom if ever shared his findings with anyone, least of all me, before he was ready. As he had said earlier, all the threads had to be in place before he would or could reveal the finished tapestry.

The man's eyes narrowed, a cunning light entering them.

“Allez-vous!” he snapped, reaching for a heavy stick by his feet as he noticed Lestrade for the first time. “Quelle est votre affaire?”

Holmes signalled to me. I pointed my service revolver at Deschamps, whose hand moved away from the stick.

“I shall tell you what business it is of mine, Monsieur,” Holmes answered. “But I will ask you to speak the Queen's English, which I know full well you are able to do. You are in England now, sir, not Canada. Pay us the courtesy of using our language, as you have used some of its people.”

“Je ne sais...” began the man called Deschamps, then, shrugging, switched to English. “I don' know what you mean, sir. 'Oo are you, that you disturb the great Tumbling -” . Suddenly, he coughed hard, the fit shaking him like a leaf, his face turning red. Finding his breath, he gasped “Tumbling Deschamps, the world's most accomplished acrobat?” He looked at Holmes with a proud, arrogant tilt of the head.

“You've tumbled your last, monsieur,” the great detective returned. The Canadian sneered.

“And 'oo are you to say so, eh?” he demanded. “What give you the right to come here and accuse me of...” He stopped for a moment, frowning. “Of what do you accuse me, monsieur?”

“I think you can drop the pretence, M. Deschamps,” Holmes told him. “It really won't do. We have the letters, we have your note, we have your jacket, and – oh, another thing, m'sieu: did you know Mrs. Liebert was left-handed?”

The blood drained out of the face of the man as he digested this information. Holmes smiled coldly.

“That was your first real mistake, m'sieu, the one that put me on to you.”

“But.. mais comment?”

“Ah, I am in fact in error, do forgive me.” Holmes placed one finger to his thin lips. “Yes, your first mistake – your real mistake, sir, was in choosing to smoke that morning. This gave me my first real clue, and told me that there had been three people, not two, in that chamber.”

Deschamps smiled, as if he had been expecting something else, something more concrete, perhaps.

“Oh now, m'sieu,” he said in his broken English, “zat could 'ave been – 'ow you say – personne? Anybody? Many people smoke.”

“Yes,” agreed Holmes. “However you do not know me, M. Deschamps. My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I have written some small monographs on various technical subjects. On the Distinction Between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos? You have not read it? Ah. A pity, for had you done so, you might have been less inclined to have smoked that morning.”

Deschamps' eyes widened, then narrowed.

“You lie, eh!” he spat. “Nobody could identify tobacco smoke from its mere smell! C'est impossible!” Even I could translate that.

“Well, that is true to a point,” Holmes allowed. “My own expertise is in distinguishing the ashes, not the smells. But in conducting such a study, one does – rather like Mr. Jabez Wilson with the Encyclopedia Britannica, you recall, Watson? One does absorb some extra data, and I flatter myself that on entering the room in which Mr. Liebert was so brutally murdered that I instantly detected the aroma of a tobacco called, I believe, High Plains, sold only in Canada, principally in the Yukon area, and which you yourself are now smoking, sir.”

With a rather stupefied look, Deschamps took the cigarette from his mouth and stared at it. We could see the letters H, I and G winding around the barrel, with beneath them another line, of which we could only see P and L, but the inference was plain.

“I suppose once a smoker, always a smoker, eh?” Homes smiled a granite smile. “I suspect,” went on my friend, “that it was you behind the poisoning of Sir Robert?”

Deschamps shrugged. “It was important that Lord – 'ow you say? Bailey was the man to try Mme. Liebert.”

“Why?”

“Ah, m'sieu 'Olmes,” the acrobat sneered, a nasty twist to his lip made more grotesque by the way the scars and cuts stretched the skin of his face. “It would seem your reputation is no' so great as I was told! You did not know there was - 'ow you say - bad blood between Peter Liebert and Lord Bailey? That they both bid for the same tract of land in Berne, Switzerland, more than ten years ago?”

Holmes looked blank, and the acrobat sniffed imperiously.

“Mme. Liebert's father – she was not married to him then, was Mademoiselle Schechter – awarded the logging contract to Liebert, 'oo then fell in amour with his daughter. They were married the next spring. Lord Bailey nursed a dark hatred for the woman he believed had interceded with her father on behalf of Liebert. He – 'ow is it you say it – he jumped at the chance to replace Sir Robert when the trial judge... fell ill.”

“You had it all worked out, didn't you, Deschamps? I would be willing to wager that all the flower girls who have died in the last month were your handiwork, is this not so?”

Deschamps spat. “Women! I curse them all! Le monde is better off without them.”

“As it will be without you, M. Deschamps. Or should I say, M. Baudelaire?”

For a moment, several emotions chased across the Canadian's face. Shock, dismay, panic, outrage, fury and then it settled into a complacent and mocking smile.

“Bravo, monsieur 'Olmes!” he clapped his hands sarcastically. “You 'ave me. I congratulate you.” He stepped forward, holding out his wrists to Lestrade. As the inspector made to fasten the handcuffs on him, Deschamps suddenly grabbed him and expertly flipped him over his shoulder. Lestrade landed heavily with an oath, and the acrobat executed a perfect leap over me and sailed through the open flap, landing lightly on his feet. He had barely touched ground before he was off and running, leaving myself and Holmes staring after him, frozen for a second and, I must admit in my case at least, full of astonishment at the man's agility.

“After him!” shouted Holmes, dashing out of the tent. “That is Charles Emile Baudelaire, the Yukon Terror!”

Rushing outside, we saw to our dismay that the man deserved his name. One of the constables lay dead on the grass, his neck broken. The other was nursing a broken wrist, while the third was in pursuit of the rapidly-receding figure.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018