Blackstone and the Great Game (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 2)

by Spencer, Sally

  The elephant now had all its feet back on the ground once more, but was resisting the attempts of its mahout to climb back on to its head. The howdah continued to rock dangerously, though the strap which ran under the elephant’s belly still held. Inside the howdah, the Maharaja hugged his son tightly to him and tried to guess what chances the frail young body would have of surviving if they both jumped for it.

  The bodyguards fired their muskets. One of the balls flew wild and struck a Horse Guard who was just climbing to his feet, but the others thudded into the body of the tiger.

  The great striped beast roared in anger, and looked around in a desperate attempt to locate this new source of danger. But even as he was preparing to fight back as he always fought back, there must have been a part of him which recognized that it was already too late—that the wounds he had received were mortal. With one last, half-hearted snarl, he collapsed into a heap and died.

  The danger had passed, but the elephant did not know that. It was no easy thing for a creature of its size to manoeuvre around so it was facing in the opposite direction, but what it lacked in gracefulness, it made up for in fearful speed.

  As the huge animal turned, the mahout clutched desperately and ineffectually at one of its thick rear legs. He knew he was in great danger of being trampled to death, but he was more willing to risk that than face his master’s displeasure.

  Most of the crowd and Indian retinue had fled by now, either north towards Piccadilly or south towards Pall Mall. The Maharaja’s bodyguards, their daggers in their hands, cautiously approached the tiger, which, though dead, still twitched as its muscles contracted. On the other side of the Black Marias, in Charles II Street, Sergeant Simcox gave one last cough and then died.

  The elephant had completed its turn and, trumpeting loudly, stampeded back up the street, scattering the fleeing spectators. The bodyguards, realizing that their attentions had been diverted by circumstances to the wrong animal, turned to give chase on foot.

  So much had happened. So many people had seen so many terrible things which they would remember vividly until their dying days. And less than thirty seconds had passed.

  ***

  Blackstone had begun to run towards the parade the moment he’d realized what might possibly occur.

  ‘I should have thought this through,’ he rebuked himself, as he gasped for breath and drew ever closer to the developing disaster. ‘I should have seen this was too good an opportunity for them to miss!’

  But even he—who had seen so many incredible things both in London and Afghanistan, who knew enough of the fiendishness of the human mind to be prepared to expect almost anything—could never have predicted the tiger.

  He would have reached the level of Charles II Street much quicker if he’d had a clearer path, but he and Patterson were the only ones travelling in that direction, and to get there it was necessary to avoid panicked people and hysterical horses. Even so, he would have felt a quiet pride at the speed at which he had covered the route, had it not been for the fact that by the time he reached the dead tiger, the elephant had already begun its dash for safety.

  Since the road had been closed to all other traffic, there was nothing to obstruct or slow down the elephant—at least nothing effective, for people bounced off its legs without it even noticing them.

  The Maharaja, still clutching his son and whispering words of comfort, kept his eyes on the road ahead in the vain hope of seeing something which might save them. And suddenly—against all odds—there was something!

  Standing squarely in the middle of the street ahead of them was a man dressed in the fashion of a nobleman from the Maharaja’s own kingdom. And in his hands he was holding a rifle—a big one, like the ones the Maharaja had used himself when shooting elephants.

  If he shot the elephant in just the right way, the Maharaja calculated, the creature would not drop immediately but would first slow down and then sink to its knees. And then he and his son could either jump to safety or else be thrown clear. It was a dangerous option, but less dangerous than all the others which seemed to open to him, and if he used his own body as a cushion for the boy’s, it was more than possible they would escape with no more than a few bruises.

  The man in the road ahead had raised the elephant gun to his shoulder.

  ‘Shoot!’ the Maharaja screamed, although he knew that the man probably couldn’t hear him. ‘Shoot, I say! Save my son, and I will reward you beyond your wildest dreams!’

  There was an explosion which seemed so loud to the Maharaja’s ears that he could almost have been in the gun barrel it came from. And then, beneath him, the elephant shuddered.

  Eleven

  Blackstone would later estimate that it had taken him less than two minutes to cover the ground from the point at which he had first noticed the procession to the entrance to Jermyn Street, where the elephant had finally been felled. Even so, he was not the first to arrive. Several of the Maharaja’s bodyguards were already clustered around the shattered howdah, which itself lay several feet from the dead elephant.

  The Inspector quickly surveyed the rest of the scene. Two constables stood a few yards to the left of him, mumbling uncertainly to each other, and beyond them a fresh crowd was already starting to build up.

  ‘Get these people out of here!’ Blackstone screamed at the constables. ‘Do it now, while you’ve still got jobs!’

  Ruddick and Calvert took their first steps like men who had just been snapped out of a trance, but within seconds their movements had become more fluid and they were starting to herd the crowd back.

  The bodyguards were still in a tight, protective circle, but though they seemed to be concentrating on its centre, they were not entirely unaware of what was going on around them, and as Blackstone approached, two of them whirled round to face him, their daggers already in their hands.

  ‘Police!’ Blackstone said.

  A small man with wire glasses appeared from the inner circle.

  ‘I am Aggarwal, His Majesty’s secretary,’ he said. ‘Do you have some identification?’

  Blackstone produced his warrant card. The secretary peered at it, then spoke a few, rapid words in Hindi.

  The circle parted, and Blackstone could see the Maharaja. He was lying on the ground, his head supported by the rolled-up jacket of one of his bodyguards. His eyes were closed, and he was not moving.

  Blackstone took a couple of steps forward and knelt down beside the Maharaja. He noted two things immediately. The first was that there was a slight rise and fall of the other man’s chest—the second, the strong smell of chloroform.

  Blackstone straightened up and stepped back. ‘Where is the Maharaja’s son?’ he said to the secretary.

  The small man bent his head. ‘Gone,’ he said in what was almost a wail. ‘His Royal Highness is gone!’

  ‘My father took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade,’ the Horse Guards’ captain said mournfully. ‘They rode up that valley under a barrage from hundreds of Russian guns. It was one of the greatest disasters in English military history—but it can’t have looked any worse than this.’

  Patterson glanced around him. All the cavalry were now back on their feet. But two of their horses were not, nor ever would be again, for the noble beasts had broken legs and had already been shot.

  ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself,’ the detective told the captain. ‘These horses of yours were never trained to deal with anything like this.’

  The other man was not consoled. ‘I’ll be ‘Tiger’ Lennox-Frith from now until the day I die,’ he said. ‘It’ll probably even go on my tombstone.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Can my men and I be of any use here?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Patterson admitted.

  ‘Then, with your permission, we’ll withdraw to barracks and assess our losses.’

  ‘Good plan,’ Patterson agreed, for want of anything else to say.

  ***

  Blackstone and the two constables were standing facing eac
h other at the entrance to Jermyn Street. Both Calvert and Ruddick had their heads bowed—like errant schoolboys who had been summoned to the headmaster’s study.

  ‘Tell me, in your own words, exactly what happened,’ Blackstone said.

  Calvert quickly sketched out the arrival of the Indians and the discussion which had followed.

  ‘And you had this pleasant little conversation while a bull elephant was actually charging you?’ Blackstone asked incredulously.

  ‘No, sir,’ Ruddick replied. ‘It was before that.’

  The kidnappers had planned it well, Blackstone thought. Better than well! They had planned it brilliantly.

  ‘So what happened next?’ he asked.

  ‘The man with the big rifle told us we should stand back an’ let him handle things. That made a lot of sense to us. You can’t stop an elephant with a police-issue truncheon.’

  The man in the .flowing coat took up his position in the centre of the road as calmly as if he were just waiting for a delivery boy to arrive. He raised the gun and took

  careful aim. The explosion was as loud as a cannon. The elephant pitched .forward, then almost froze .for a second before toppling over.

  ‘The howdah was thrown clear, was it?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘The what, sir?’

  ‘The seat.’

  ‘Yes, it was thrown clear.’

  ‘And you immediately went to see how the man and the boy were?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No? Why not?’

  ‘We were told not to.’

  ‘Keep back,’ the man in the flowing coat said.

  ‘But we’re the policemen here!’ Calvert protested.

  ‘And we are His Majesty’s true and loyal servants. It is not meet that your unbeliever’s hands should touch his royal personage.’

  ‘So these Indian blokes rushed over to the Maharaja and his son?’

  ‘They rushed over to the man we’d thought was the Maharaja up to that point,’ Constable Calvert said.

  ‘And wasn’t he?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And how would you know that?’

  ‘Because the man with the gun told us he wasn’t, sir.’

  Flowing jacket ran back towards the constables, carrying the child in his arms. ‘Treachery!’ he shouted. ‘Treachery and treason!’

  What are you talkin’ about?’ Ruddick demanded.

  ‘The man lying beside the elephant is not our Maharaja. He is an impostor. A well-known enemy of the state.’

  And you believed him?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir. He sounded very convincin’,’ Ruddick said. He frowned. ‘Why? Are you tellin’ us he isn’t an impostor after all?’

  ‘I take it from what you’ve just said that it didn’t occur to you to ask why, if the man dressed as the Maharaja had been an impostor, the few dozen people who were with him at the time hadn’t noticed,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘No, it—’

  ‘Or why, even if they were too far away to get a clear view of him, his son, who was sitting next to him, didn’t spot it!’

  ‘Perhaps…p-perhaps if we’d had time to think…’Calvert spluttered. ‘But it all happened so fast, sir.’

  Of course it did, Blackstone agreed silently. That was just how the kidnappers had planned it.

  ‘So since you now believed this man was an impostor, you made an attempt to detain him, did you?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘If he’s not who he’s supposed to be, we’d better arrest him,’ Ruddick said to the man in the flowing coat.

  ‘There would he little point in that,’ the Indian replied. ‘He is already dead.’

  ‘And you just took his word for that, too?’

  ‘Like we said, sir, he was very convincin’,’ Ruddick said.

  ‘Don’t tell me that was a lie as well.’

  ‘What state was the young prince in?’

  ‘He was unconscious, sir. Must have knocked his head when he fell off the elephant.’

  ‘Are you sure he was unconscious?’

  ‘Well, he certainly wasn’t movin’.’

  ‘You didn’t happen to notice a strange smell, did you?’

  Ruddick and Calvert exchanged uneasy glances.

  ‘Indians always smell funny to me,’ Calvert said unconvincingly. ‘It’s all them spices they eat.’

  ‘So all you could smell was spices. Wasn’t there, perhaps, the odour of some kind of chemical?’

  ‘Might have been,’ Ruddick said begrudgingly.

  ‘Perhaps the odour of chloroform?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘So, you were standing next to the Indian who had the young prince in his arms. Did you make any attempt to take the prince off him?’

  ‘Yes, we…we did try.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you succeed?’

  ‘The nigger talked us out of it.’

  ‘We must get the young prince away while we still can,’ Flowing Jacket said.

  ‘You can’t go doin’ that,’ Ruddick protested. ‘He’s a witness to a serious crime.’

  ‘He is a small child who is in great danger of being assassinated. Will you take the responsibility for his death?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘I thought not. In which case, please stand aside while I remove his Royal Highness to a safer place.’

  ‘An’ that’s when this cab pulled by two horses arrived,’ Ruddick said.

  ‘Who was driving it?’

  ‘Another nigger.’

  ‘Now wasn’t that convenient?’ Blackstone asked. ‘The first five turn up with an elephant gun just as the elephant goes berserk, and at the very moment they need a cab to take the young prince away, one arrives. It’s almost as if they’d known exactly what was going to happen, isn’t it?’

  Calvert muttered, ‘I suppose so.’

  And Ruddick said nothing at all.

  Twelve

  Patterson, shoulder-to-shoulder with the veterinary surgeon, watched as the four burly attendants from the London Zoological Gardens struggled to get the tiger into the back of the van.

  ‘A fine specimen,’ the vet said mournfully. Did they really have to shoot him?’

  ‘He was running wild in the streets of London,’ Patterson pointed out. ‘And he is a man-eater.’

  ‘Tigers aren’t particularly attracted to human flesh,’ the vet grumbled. ‘Given the choice, he’d probably have eaten one of the horses. Or had a go at the elephant. And if he had decided on human hors d’oeuvres, so what? There’s men and enough to spare in London—but there was only one tiger.’

  Patterson wondered whether the other man was joking, then decided that he probably wasn’t. ‘Can you do some tests on him?’ he asked.

  ‘What kind of tests? Want to know how the poor creature died? I can tell you that now. He was shot by a bunch of irresponsible niggers. I’ve seen the bullet holes for myself.’

  ‘I’m more concerned with the way he was acting earlier,’ Patterson explained. ‘A couple of the Horse Guards claimed that he didn’t seem very steady on his feet. I was wondering if he’d been drugged in some way.’

  ‘If he was drugged, then there was even less excuse to shoot him,’ the vet said, with growing outrage.

  ‘Could you find out about drugs?’ Patterson asked patiently.

  ‘Suppose so. I could do it while I was skinning him.’

  ‘Skinning him? Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Look,’ the vet said, ‘I’m very angry that he was shot, but now that he is dead, his skin’s no use to him—and it will make a very fine addition to my living room.’

  ‘I imagine it will,’ Patterson agreed.

  The attendants had succeeded in cramming the tiger into the back of their van and had slammed the door on him.

  ‘Well, that’s another job done,’ the vet said, starting to walk back towards the van.

  ‘How long?’ Patterson called after him.

  The vet glanced
over his shoulder. ‘How long to skin him?’

  ‘How long to carry out the tests for me.’

  ‘Couple of hours. Maybe a little longer.’

  The vet climbed on to the passenger seat of the van, issued a terse instruction to his driver, and was gone. Patterson looked around him. There was so much of the bloody mess still left to clear up that he had no real idea of where to start.

  At least the Maharaja was no longer an immediate problem. His bodyguards had escorted him back to Claridge’s the moment he’d been revived. His dancers, musicians and flower girls, on the other hand, had been left to their own devices, until they’d been rounded up like sheep by a couple of constables. Now they stood huddled together in a group. They looked lost, Patterson thought—exotic, dark little people who were completely out of place under an English sky which, even in August, must seem dull to them.

  He walked over to the group. ‘Does any of you speak any English?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Me. A little,’ volunteered one of the drummers.

  ‘Where are you staying in London?’

  The drummer looked to his companions for guidance, and an animated discussion followed.

  ‘Big palace,’ the drummer said finally. ‘Claridge Palace.’

  ‘You’re staying in Claridge’s Hotel?’ Patterson asked incredulously.

  The drummer nodded. ‘Some under roof, some down below floor.’

  Some in the garrets and some in the cellars, Patterson translated. ‘And can you find your way back there?’ he asked. The drummer nodded confidently.

  ‘Then you’re to return to the hotel and stay in your rooms until a policeman tells you that you can leave. Understand?’

  ‘Unner’sand,’ the drummer said.