A Circle of Dead Girls

by Eleanor Kuhns

  ‘Go on, Mrs Rees,’ said Hanson evenly. He seemed to be the only one unaware of Rees’s lapse. ‘Did you see the ropedancer here?’

  ‘Only from a distance.’ Lydia took in a deep breath. ‘I don’t believe she saw me. Mr Asher approached me first. He told me he was taking me to her.’ She stopped and bit her lip. Rees could feel her trembling beneath his arm.

  ‘And did he?’ Hanson asked.

  Lydia nodded. ‘He took me here but she wasn’t in. He-he accused me of spying on him for you.’ She turned her gaze on her husband. ‘Mr Asher behaved as though you already knew he was guilty.’

  While Rees stared at her in shock, Bambola spoke. ‘And then I came in. I told him to leave you alone.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lydia said. ‘That’s what happened. And he said he wasn’t going to bother me anyway. I was too old to be attractive.’

  ‘But you’re only twenty-six,’ Rees said. Then the meaning of Lydia’s words sank in.

  ‘He-he was the one attacking the young girls?’ Rouge asked then. He threw a knowing glance at Rees. ‘I told you the murderer was in the circus.’

  The magistrate nodded. ‘I’ve been following them for months. I knew something was wrong.’

  But I liked Asher, Rees thought, horrified.

  ‘I swear I didn’t know,’ Bambola said, looking at Rees.

  ‘How did you happen to shoot Asher?’ Rouge asked her.

  ‘He said he was going to kill her,’ Bambola said. ‘I couldn’t allow that to happen so I shot him.’

  Rees, who could not imagine Asher saying that, felt as though the world was shifting around him. He had understood nothing. Asher had performed an entire play around him and he had never realized it. ‘But wait,’ he said and then paused. He had no clear idea what he would ask.

  ‘She is the connection to Asher,’ Lydia said in a low voice.

  Rees looked at Bambola. ‘You loved Asher, didn’t you?’ he said.

  Tears filled her eyes. ‘Once,’ she said. ‘Before he became a monster.’

  ‘Weren’t you …? I mean …?’ He stopped. He wasn’t sure he could ask this in front of everyone.

  Bambola smiled faintly. ‘We were lovers. Once. And, as you might expect, I became pregnant. I was not so good on the rope anymore; my balance was off. One day I fell.’ Tears began streaming down her cheeks. ‘I lost the baby. Asher was glad. I would have been useless to the circus as a mother.’ The resentment in her voice made Rees flinch.

  ‘So, he … those young girls,’ Rees said, unable to keep the censure and disgust from his voice.

  Bambola nodded. ‘I didn’t know. I swear it. None of us did. God forgive me, I wondered if Boudreaux might be the guilty one.’

  Rees hesitated. Did he believe her?

  ‘Someone was helping him,’ Rouge said. ‘Had to be. For one thing, he could not have dealt with those two villains by himself.’

  ‘I didn’t know. He kept that part of his life from me,’ Bambola said, her eyes wide. ‘If he had help I do not know of it.’ She swept her eyes around the circle. ‘But it was no one in the circus; of that I am certain.’

  ‘Why did he kill Boudreaux?’ Lydia asked.

  Bambola blinked. Rees was glad to see the color returning to Lydia’s cheeks.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe Boudreaux knew about him? Maybe he helped? They were very close. Or maybe Boudreaux tried to blackmail him.’ She paused. Turning her gaze to Rees, she added, ‘Mr Asher wanted to frighten you away. Maybe he thought shooting Boudreaux would succeed in doing so. I knew you would solve the murders, you see. My cards told me. I didn’t know Asher was the guilty one, you understand. But I knew you would find the murderer and I told him that.’

  ‘You told him?’ Rees repeated.

  ‘He laughed at me. He hit me.’ She pulled back her lacy sleeve to reveal bruises on her wrist. ‘He never believed in the cards.’

  ‘Was that Mr Asher’s cravat?’ Lydia asked.

  Bambola nodded. ‘Of course. He wore it to the funeral.’ She glanced at Rees from under her lashes. ‘You saw him there.’ Rees nodded, the image of Asher in the cravat and shabby linen jacket flashing into his mind.

  ‘You put it in the bushes,’ Lydia said. ‘To implicate Asher.’

  Bambola did not reply.

  ‘Well, this all seems very clear,’ Hanson said.

  ‘Are you going to put me in jail?’ the ropedancer asked, twisting her hands together. ‘I did shoot Mr Asher.’ Her face twisted and tears filled her eyes again. ‘I didn’t want to. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t listen.’

  Hanson and Rouge shared a look and then they both turned to Rees. ‘What do you think?’

  Rees felt the weight of everyone’s eyes upon him. He turned to look at Bambola. As her large dark eyes lifted to meet his gaze she smiled tremulously and he felt a tug of familiar desire. Then Lydia stepped forward and slid her hand into his elbow. Although he didn’t turn to look at her, he smelled the lavender from her hair and the ghost of David in her borrowed clothing; the odors of manure and sheep and soil. Rees realized how closely he had come to betraying his marriage vows and hurting the people he loved.

  ‘Black silk,’ Lydia murmured.

  Rees remembered Bambola on Asher’s arm; Bambola wearing a black silk dress.

  Exhaling, he began thinking furiously.

  ‘Just a few more questions,’ Rees said.

  Bambola stared at him in astonishment. ‘More? You don’t believe me?’

  Rouge grinned at Rees as Hanson bowed. They would support him.

  ‘Why didn’t you leave Asher?’ he asked her.

  ‘And go where? Do what? Besides, I was afraid. You cannot imagine the things he made me do.’ A shudder racked her small frame. Rees thought she might be telling the truth now and realized how little he trusted her.

  ‘He made a mistake in Grand Forks, didn’t he?’

  ‘How did you know?’ She stopped and took a breath. ‘That boy was dressed as a girl. Asher was angrier than I’d ever before seen him.’ She shuddered and buried her face in her hands. ‘The worst of it is …’ She looked at him with tear-filled eyes. ‘I think at the end he preferred strangling those girls to the-the … other.’

  ‘You were his partner,’ he said.

  ‘No. No. I only found out after.’ She stretched out a hand but dropped it when she saw Rees’s expression. He was silent as he tried to untangle the facts from her partial truths.

  ‘You shot Asher in the head,’ he said. ‘It was an excellent shot.’ She blinked, thrown off balance by the abrupt change in subject, and nodded warily. ‘You told me your father taught you.’ She nodded again. He could tell by the stiffness of her body that she no longer believed he would free her. ‘Tell me again how you took the gun from Asher.’

  ‘It wasn’t in his pocket,’ she replied. ‘He’d left it on the counter. So, I took it and fired.’ She smiled. ‘I was fortunate – I was too close to miss.’

  Rees looked at the charred fold on the right side of her skirt. She followed his glance. As the color drained from her cheeks, she dropped her hand to cover the blackened cloth.

  ‘Were you close to the smaller of the two men Asher hired to murder Boudreaux?’ Rees asked icily. ‘That was another precise shot.’

  ‘But I–I didn’t,’ Bambola stammered. ‘I didn’t shoot anyone.’

  ‘That shot was positioned a little to the left, almost exactly in the same place as the shot that killed Asher. The muff gun pulls right. I think you were a willing participant in the murders. All of them. The young girls as well. Until Asher went too far and murdered Boudreaux, one of your own.’

  It was a stab in the dark but when Rees saw her expression change he knew he was right.

  ‘I knew it!’ Hanson muttered.

  ‘But wait a minute,’ Rouge said. ‘You argued with me. You said it couldn’t be anyone from the circus because no one saw their wagons. All of them’ – and he gestured around him – ‘are marked with the rearing horse.’<
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  Nodding, Rees looked over his shoulder at the carriages. Before he even knew what he would do, he was moving toward them. He felt as though his mind had been filled with fog and now, as that blew away, he could think clearly. The pieces of the investigation were falling into place. Within those twenty steps, he came up with a possible explanation. He reached out for the rearing horse and pulled. With some effort, the iron insignia came off in his hands. The wood underneath the door was unmarked, plain. This carriage now appeared unremarkable. ‘It’s magnetic,’ Rees said. ‘Both metal carvings can be removed.’ He turned once again to look at the ropedancer. ‘Paul Reynard saw a woman in a carriage. He said she waved at him. That was you, wasn’t it?’ He paused but she looked away and said nothing. ‘I think you were not just a willing participant but an enthusiastic one.’

  Now she stared at him, her soft velvety eyes going as hard and black as obsidian. ‘You could have come with me, you know. Joined the circus.’

  ‘And what would I do in the circus?’ Rees asked scornfully.

  ‘I would have taught you.’ She smiled at him, her face softening. ‘My feelings were engaged. What I felt between us was real. You’re a good man, Will Rees.’

  Despite the tingle that went through him, the ghost of the feelings Rees had once felt, he imagined her hands with those perfect nails clutching the girls under their armpits and shuddered.

  ‘I love my wife and children. My life is with them,’ he said. He thought of the tarot card she had given him. ‘Did you read the cards for yourself?’ he asked. ‘You told me I was Justice. What did the cards say about you?’

  She looked at him for a moment and then she spat at him.

  ‘None of that,’ Rouge said, taking her by the arm and jerking her backward.

  As the constable left the field, Rees looked at the magistrate. Hanson nodded at him.

  ‘I knew you’d solve it,’ he said. ‘That’s your gift.’

  Rees inclined his head in response. Piggy would never apologize for what he’d done, Rees knew that. But he felt they had made a step forward, away from the anger and envy that had marked their relationship since their childhood.

  Inhaling a deep breath, he looked around him, first at Billy who was leaning against the wagon wheel and then at the rest of the crowd. They all looked worried; one of the women sobbed. Otto’s forehead was furrowed.

  ‘Are we free to go?’ he asked.

  ‘I believe so,’ Rees said. And then: ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Continue on,’ Otto said. ‘We won’t have a magician or a rope-dancer. But we will manage.’

  ‘I know a few tricks,’ said one of the men.

  ‘You’ll have a clown,’ Billy said. He coughed raggedly. ‘At least for a little while.’

  ‘Good, good,’ Otto said. ‘Let’s finish packing up. We can stop along the road and take stock …’ His voice faded as he turned away. All of the circus folk followed him except for Billy.

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye,’ he said, coughing.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ Lydia asked, reaching out a hand.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He turned to look behind him at the colorful wagons. ‘Maybe Otto …’ He shook his head doubtfully but managed a lopsided smile. ‘At least we won’t be fleeing from the villages in the middle of the night. Not usually anyway.’

  Hearing something in Billy’s voice Rees fixed an accusing stare on the clown. ‘You knew Asher was murdering those girls.’

  Billy shook his head. ‘I didn’t know. But I guessed something was going on, something not right.’

  ‘All those young girls,’ Lydia said in a hushed voice.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’

  ‘Tell someone? Who?’ Billy scoffed. He paused to catch his breath. ‘Nobody would believe a circus clown.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Rees asked. ‘Don’t you understand, Billy? How many of those girls could have been saved?’

  ‘I could have been wrong,’ Billy protested in a feeble voice.

  ‘That’s an excuse.’ Rees passed his hand over his forehead. ‘I might have caught Asher sooner.’ He could not say Bambola’s name. Just the thought of her participation in the murders made him nauseous.

  Billy looked up at the sky for a few seconds before looking directly into Rees’s face. ‘And what were we to do?’ he asked, waving his arm at the wagons behind him. ‘This is our home. Where would we go? Where would I go? No one wants a freak like me working for them. My own family turned me out onto the road to starve. And I’m not the only one either. None of us has any other place. This circus and these people are our only home, our only family. Would you risk everything on suspicion?’

  Rees stared at the little man for several seconds. Finally, he said, ‘I’m sorry. But you understand I had to pursue justice for those murdered girls. I had to stop Asher. Other girls would have died …’

  Billy nodded. ‘I know. That’s why no one except Asher and Bambola, not one of us’ – he gestured again at the wagons – ‘tried to prevent you from investigating. We wanted you to succeed.’

  ‘Otto warned me off,’ Rees said.

  ‘He was afraid for you,’ Billy replied. ‘We thought it would be you lying dead on the ground.’

  Rees heard Lydia gasp.

  Billy looked around at the muddy field. ‘With any luck, Otto will keep the circus going.’

  ‘I hope so, for all of your sakes,’ Lydia said. ‘Come on.’ She nudged Rees with her elbow. ‘It’s time to go home.’

  Rees nodded and began walking toward his wagon. ‘How did you know?’ he asked her. ‘About Bambola, I mean?’

  ‘I’m a woman and I looked at her with a different eye,’ she said grimly.

  Shame swept over Rees. ‘But the black silk dress? You weren’t at the funeral.’

  ‘It was soaking in the wash basin. In bloody water.’

  Now he felt like a fool.

  They crossed the field in silence. As she climbed into the wagon, Lydia spoke. ‘I do love these clothes. It’s so easy to move around.’

  Rees, understanding she was offering him an olive branch, looked at her. ‘The world is turned upside down,’ he said, smiling but not entirely joking. ‘I daresay I’ll be wearing skirts next.’

  Lydia turned a tentative grin upon him. ‘I doubt we could make dresses in your size.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. He forced a grin. ‘You don’t have to say it: I would make a very homely female.’

  Lydia laughed out loud and he felt something inside of him relax.

  Knowing that he was returning to his usual life – farming – felt bittersweet. But it was his life, and the lives of his wife and children.

  Still, he would never forget Bambola; the murderer he had almost – almost – set free.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  The circus has a long history. Acrobats and jugglers have their beginnings in the Bronze Age; the first known depictions of acrobats and jugglers are from approximately 3000 B.C. The ancient Egyptians taught these arts to the Greeks, and the Greeks taught them to the Romans. They spread them throughout their empire in the form of itinerant troupes known as funambuli or ropewalkers. The word circus is actually from the Latin for circle. (Acrobatics arose independently in China.)

  During the Middle Ages, jugglers and acrobats performed at fairs all over Europe and in England. With the ascension of the Puritans in England in the mid-1660s, however, the fairs and the entertainment there stopped. They prohibited all frivolity including Christmas celebrations.

  England’s circus began again about one hundred years later with a retired Sergeant-Major named Philip Astley. A trick rider, he began exhibiting his horsemanship just outside of London. He performed in a circle – or circus – like most equestrians. In 1770 Astley decided to draw other entertainers to what was basically a horse show: i.e. he hired acrobats, ropedancers (wire walkers), and jugglers to attract a larger audience. He ended his show with a Pantomime that included Harlequin, Columbi
ne, and Clown, characters from the Elizabethan stage theater which were themselves influenced by the Italian Commedia del’arte. They became another prominent and familiar part of the circus: the clowns. The new circus became very popular.

  Like so many parts of American culture, the early circus was a transplant from Great Britain, brought over by John Bill Ricketts in 1793. Astley had built a large enclosed ring (that he called a Hippodrome) not only in London but also in France. With the brewing violence of the French Revolution, Astley fled Paris. England began preparing for war, a war that began a few years later with Napoleon’s rise. So, Ricketts left for the United States, bringing some of his performers with him to Philadelphia. With the upset in Europe more and more of the British circus folk joined him in the United States.

  A few years later, Ricketts took the circus on tour. Do not imagine this early circus performing under a big canvas tent with trained elephants, lions, and other exotic animals. In the beginning they performed outside in a handy field and passed around the hat. The circus still did not have the more exotic animals like lions and elephants. The animal acts at this time consisted of trained dogs, pigs, and sometimes bears. And, of course, trained horses continued to be the stars as this was still primarily an equestrian show. Later, temporary wood enclosures, usually open to the sky, were built in the towns for the performances. The first canvas big top was not used until the mid-nineteenth century when the circus truly became a traveling entertainment.

  By 1900 circuses dominated American popular culture. 1905 was the Golden Age. Then hundreds of outfits existed, playing to between several hundred and 20,000 people a night. If anyone is interested in pursuing a circus career, there are a number of circus schools around the world, (Ukraine, Germany, and France) including several in the United States.