The Magnificent Lizzie Brown and the Mysterious Phantom

by Vicki Lockwood

“He always was,” Lizzie said, making a sour face. “He’s never stolen as much as that before, though. A few silk hankies, the odd watch maybe.” He’s gone up in the world since I left, she thought bitterly.

  Nora shook her head. “Pockets full of other people’s gold, and he still wants you to pay his debts. The nerve.”

  Lizzie nodded in agreement, but her thoughts were far away. With her out of the picture, Pa would have been desperate for money. Desperate enough to break into the bigger houses and rob rich people?

  Maybe she’d dreamed of the Phantom because, deep down, she already knew who he was — her own flesh and blood. No. It couldn’t be. Pa just wasn’t clever enough to avoid getting caught. But Lizzie still shuddered at the thought.

  “I ain’t never going back to him,” she told Nora.

  “You’ll never have to,” Nora promised. “You’re one of us now.”

  Lizzie felt close to tears, and not just from the shock of seeing Pa like that. His words had hurt. He’d called her a selfish wretch in front of all those people. For all they knew, she was the bad one.

  I did the right thing, Lizzie told herself. He really would have dragged me off by my hair if he’d caught me. Thank goodness for Fitzy taking me in.

  >* * *

  The circus set up in a wide green park that lay like a blanket in the midst of London’s East End. Crowds were already beginning to gather before the tents were even up, and there was a crush to get in on the opening day. The main tent was packed night after night, and the sideshows drew a waterfall of pennies and shillings.

  “Always a good stop, the East End,” Fitzy told her, surveying the sea of faces. “Your poor hardworking man wants value for money, and that’s what we’ll give him. I swear it.”

  Lizzie worked as hard as everyone else. The hard part wasn’t seeing people’s futures, she now realized. That part was easy. The hard part was telling the client the truth about what she saw. People didn’t always like that.

  “People don’t go to a fortune-teller to be told the truth,” Malachy told her. “They want you to tell them that everything’s going to be all right.”

  But Lizzie had made up her mind not to lie, even if it was difficult. An ounce of real help was worth a ton of comforting lies.

  June came, bringing blistering heat and even more customers. Lizzie sweltered inside her airless little tent. One especially stifling day, a round-faced man came in. Lizzie already had a headache.

  “Now I’m not what you might call a believer,” the man said, settling himself in the seat opposite Lizzie. “All this psychic stuff is so much nonsense, if you ask me. But my wife believes it all lock, stock, and barrel, so here I am.” He thrust out his hand, daring her to take it.

  Lizzie smiled despite the sharp pain building up in her head. She took his hand and the pain suddenly grew, searing through her skull like burning gunpowder.

  The pain must have showed on her face. “You needn’t bother with the theatrics,” the man said smugly.

  Right, Lizzie thought. I’ll show you. She traced her finger down his life line. Visions began to appear, but it was hard to see them clearly through the clouds of pain in her head.

  “I can see you walking along a beach, as a little boy—” Lizzie began.

  “I was hardly the only small boy to have gone to the seaside,” the client interrupted, laughing at his own wit.

  “You’re crying . . . a crab’s nipped your toe, and everyone’s laughing.”

  For a moment the man stopped chuckling and sat still. Then he scoffed. “Happens to lots of children.”

  Lizzie went on, describing what she saw. Her head was pounding now. The client refused to be impressed, no matter how many scenes Lizzie described. She tried to see clear details, but it just hurt too much.

  Suddenly a vision blazed in her mind, clear and bright as the sunrise, cutting through the fog of pain. “I can see a tall house in an alley,” she said. “Posh one too. There’s a big bronze door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head.”

  She felt the man stiffen.

  “You’re coming out the door. Big bunch of keys in your hand. Looking left and right.”

  The man was silent. He seemed lost for words.

  Lizzie shuddered. “Something’s close, something evil. It’s like there’s blood in the air.”

  The customer laughed nervously. “Back to the theatrics.”

  “It’s him!” Lizzie sucked air through her teeth.

  “Who?” the man asked.

  Lizzie bit her lip. A man with a mask over his face. Carrying a sack over his shoulder. Creeping ever so quiet and slow. He don’t want to be seen. She strained to see more. She saw a church at the foot of the alley with a golden dragon perched on its tall spire. A voice was calling in the distance. It was the same noise she heard every night. “Last show, last show . . .”

  Lizzie abruptly dropped the man’s hand and took a few deep breaths. “Do you live in a tall house down an alley?”

  “No, I don’t,” said the man.

  Lizzie frowned. Maybe her vision had been wrong. Or perhaps she hadn’t understood it properly.

  “But I am looking after a tall house while the owner is away,” the man added. “I watch over it during the daytime, then at night I make sure it’s all locked up. Now will you tell me what on earth you’re getting at?”

  “I think you’re going to be robbed,” Lizzie warned. She deepened her voice so he would take her seriously. “By the Phantom himself!”

  The man’s cheeks puffed up like a frog’s, and he burst out laughing.

  “It ain’t funny!” Lizzie yelled.

  “Oh, that does it!” he laughed. “Wait until I tell my wife! Psychics, indeed.” He wiped his eyes. “Dear child, you’ve put on quite a show for me, but you’ve pushed it a bit too far.”

  Lizzie sat there red-cheeked and fuming as the man explained that the police had offered special protection to all houses with valuables in them. The house’s owner had asked the local police to keep an eye on his property — and hired him as a watchman for extra protection.

  “So the one thing that definitely won’t happen is a robbery! Not on my watch!” He was pink as a sliced ham from laughing now.

  “I know what I saw,” Lizzie insisted.

  “And by the Phantom, of all people! Tsk! Don’t you know that the Phantom has been made up by the newspapers to thrill stupid readers?” He stood up, still laughing, and tossed Lizzie a penny as he left. “You’ve earned it. What a little storyteller you are!”

  “Serve him right if he did get robbed,” Lizzie muttered. She sat and stewed for a moment, then made up her mind and sprang out of the tent. She took off running after the man. His life could be in danger. He had to listen.

  Up ahead, Lizzie spotted the man talking to a police constable. Neither of them had seen her. “Something amusing, sir?” the constable was asking.

  “Dark forebodings from a fortune-teller!” said the client. “The Phantom is coming to rob the house I guard!”

  The two men laughed together.

  “I’d say you’ve been robbed already, sir, handing over your money to one of them lot,” the policeman said. “Don’t ever believe a word those circus folk tell you. They’re cheats and liars. All of ’em.”

  Lizzie turned around and walked away before she was seen. The constable’s words burned in her ears. “It ain’t fair,” she whispered. “I’m no liar! I just wanted to help.”

  Despite the people who swirled around her, Lizzie felt very alone. She knew what she had seen. She might be the only person in the world who knew where the Phantom would strike next!

  CHAPTER 10

  The rest of the day couldn’t go fast enough for Lizzie. There was no chance to get away from the stream of clients, even for a moment. She had to tell someone about the Phantom. Someone who would listen.


  Finally, she got her chance. Once the last of the spectators had been ushered out of the main tent, she met Malachy, Hari, and Nora there. Dru and Erin, who was understudying for Collette, cartwheeled through the air high above, cramming in some last-minute trapeze practice. Lizzie almost couldn’t bear to look.

  Hari studied her. “You’ve had another vision,” he said.

  Lizzie stared at him. “How can you tell?”

  “You’re clenching your right hand. The one you use to do the readings. You did that last time too.”

  Lizzie felt uneasy. She hadn’t known Hari very long, but it was alarming how easily her new friend could read her.

  Once Dru and Erin had clambered down the rope ladders, sweaty and breathless from their practice session, everyone gathered in a circle. Malachy sat on top of a hay bale like a king holding court. He nodded for Lizzie to start speaking.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but just listen, all right?” Lizzie said. When she had their attention, she continued. “I had a customer today — a man who watches over a posh house. I saw it in the vision. And I saw someone come along with a sack like they was going to rob it.” She took a breath. “It was the Phantom.”

  “You saw the Phantom?” Erin leaned forward, excited. “What’s he look like?”

  “Nobody knows,” Nora said scornfully. “He wears a mask, doesn’t he?”

  Erin looked to Lizzie. “What’d the mask look like, then?”

  “It was horrible,” Lizzie said. “Like a ghost, or a skull, sort of. I tried to warn the man, but he laughed in my face!”

  Excited chatter broke out. Nobody even questioned the truth of what she’d seen. Lizzie felt buoyed up by their faith in her, as if she’d taken a jump into the unknown, only to be caught by a safety net.

  “The question we ought to be asking,” Malachy said after the babble had died down a bit, “is why you had this vision in the first place?”

  “So I could warn him,” Lizzie said immediately.

  “But he didn’t listen, did he?” Malachy said.

  Lizzie frowned. “Lay off! I did my best!”

  “I know. But think,” Malachy said. “What if he wasn’t the one who needs to act?”

  Lizzie held up her hands. “So who does, then? Me?”

  A hush fell upon the gathering. They all looked at one another. Were forces beyond their control setting some great hunt in motion, some adventure beyond anything they’d ever imagined?

  “It stands to reason,” Malachy said quietly, “that a power that can see the future would have known your client wouldn’t listen. So if the vision wasn’t meant for him, it must have been meant for you.”

  “You reckon I’ve got this . . . this gift of mine so’s I can stop crimes happening, don’t you?” Lizzie said.

  “I honestly do, yes.” Malachy jumped down from his perch. “You’ve already stopped one, haven’t you?”

  “Aurora,” Erin said.

  Lizzie remembered Aurora’s blood-chilling threats as she was dragged away. She hadn’t just stopped a crime, she’d made an enemy. Now Malachy was pushing her to confront the Phantom, who was far more dangerous. All of a sudden, Lizzie felt sick.

  “Maybe I should just forget all about it,” she said. “It’s too risky. I don’t have to do anything, do I?”

  “You can’t be serious!” said Nora. “What if you’d just let Aurora rob that man? You think she’d have stopped with him?”

  “She’d have kept stealing,” Dru agreed. “And when she was finally caught, it wouldn’t just be her who got blamed.”

  “It would’ve been the whole circus!” said Malachy.

  Hari looked up. “If you are the only one who can stop the Phantom, Lizzie, then you have a duty to do so.”

  “Why does it have to be me, though?” Lizzie complained. “Ain’t it the police supposed to stop criminals?” But even as she spoke, Lizzie remembered what the passing officer had said. “I suppose the coppers are a waste of time,” she said with a sigh. “At least, that one I saw today was.”

  “You saw a policeman on the site?” Malachy frowned.

  “He spoke to my customer. ‘Don’t ever believe a word those circus folk tell you,’ he said. Called us all cheats and liars.”

  Eyes rolled and tongues tutted all around the circle.

  “Comme toujours,” muttered Dru. “The police don’t like us, Lizzie. Whenever we come to town, we’re the first to be blamed if there’s a crime.”

  “Heard it a thousand times,” Nora agreed with a sigh. “Thieving travelers, they think we are.”

  “A policeman grabbed my ear once,” Hari said gloomily. “He warned me not to use my ‘Indian rope trick’ to climb into windows and steal. I laughed. I told him such tricks are make-believe.” Hari pointed at a white scar on his cheek. “He gave me this for talking back to him.”

  “Safe to say we won’t be going to the police,” Malachy said. “Sorry, Lizzie. They’re always like that where we’re concerned.”

  Lizzie rose to leave. If the police wouldn’t help and the adults wouldn’t act, then she’d just have to confront the Phantom herself. Once she’d figured out where to start, of course.

  “So we’ll have to be the ones who investigate.” Malachy touched her arm, stopping her in her tracks. “You didn’t think we’d let you do this alone, did you?”

  Lizzie stared at him. “Seriously? You’re all in? Every one of you?”

  Nora, Erin, Hari, and Dru all nodded and grinned. Malachy tipped an imaginary hat in Lizzie’s direction. “All for one, and one for all.”

  “Fantastic!” Lizzie cheered. “So . . . um . . . how are we going to catch him, then?”

  “The same way we caught Aurora,” Hari said. “You recognized the gentleman and his watch, so you were able to act in time. We must look for something similar in this new vision.” He sat cross-legged, his eyes closed. Lizzie was sure he was building up a picture in his remarkable mind. “Tell us everything,” he said. “Take your mind back. Talk us through what you saw. Every detail.”

  And that is exactly what Lizzie did. She described the tall house, the lion’s-head door knocker, the narrow alley, the church with the huge spire, and the flying golden dragon perched on top. Lastly, she told them about the stooped figure of the Phantom, clutching his sack.

  Hari asked question after question in a low calm voice, like a hypnotist. “How many windows?”

  “Nine or ten.”

  “Was the sky light or dark?”

  “Sort of halfway.”

  “Was the sack empty or full?”

  “Empty.”

  The questions went on until Lizzie’s poor head ached with the effort of remembering. If Hari was growing frustrated, he didn’t show it. Somehow, that boy was always calm. Malachy paced back and forth while the others looked on tensely, waiting for the moment of truth.

  “Did you hear anything?” Hari finally asked, trying a new tactic.

  “Yes!” Lizzie burst out. “A voice, shouting out, ‘Last show, last show!’”

  “But that’s us!” Nora cried, shivering all over. “That’s this circus!”

  “I’ve got goose pimples,” Erin said with a shudder.

  Malachy snapped his fingers. “That tells us when it’s going to happen! The callers call the last show at eight o’clock every evening.”

  “When the sky is half dark and half light,” Dru added.

  “Now we just need to work out where it’ll happen,” Malachy said. “Let’s get to work. We have a crime to stop!”

  They all leaped up and began to rush from the tent, except for Hari. “One moment,” he said, still cross-legged, holding up a hand.

  “Yes?” asked Malachy.

  “If we are going to start investigating together, I think we should have a name.”

  “Brillian
t idea!” Erin said. “We should be . . . The Show Tent Irregulars!”

  “I don’t want to be an Irregular,” Lizzie said. “Sounds like someone with an upset stomach.”

  “Dru Boisset and the Human Oddities?” Dru suggested cheekily. Lizzie cuffed him around the back of the head.

  “It needs ‘gang’ in the title. We should be the something gang,” mused Nora.

  Hari brightened. “I like that! The Something Gang. It has an air of mystery.” He drew a question mark in the sawdust with a finger. “My calling card.”

  “Too much mystery,” said Malachy. “No, I know what we should be. It’s obvious. It’s staring you all in the face.”

  They all looked at him, questioningly.

  “Well?” Lizzie demanded.

  “The Penny Gaff Gang!” Malachy exclaimed.

  Lizzie had to agree it was perfect.

  CHAPTER 11

  The next day was Lizzie’s day off. Most of the circus folk went into town when they had free time. The men went to drink and the ladies to shop, but Lizzie had very different plans. It was her versus the Phantom now, even if the Phantom didn’t know it yet.

  Ever since Malachy had told her not to bother with the police, she’d turned the problem over and over in her mind. Malachy was wrong, she decided. She hadn’t even tried talking to the police. Yes, her client had laughed with the constable, but maybe she could make a different police officer listen. All she had to do was prove she was serious. Seeing was believing, after all. If she could convince a policeman that she had powers, then they’d have to take her seriously, wouldn’t they?

  Lizzie ran through the narrow, winding Whitechapel streets, looking for a police station. Alarmed people sidestepped out of her way. A dog tethered outside a pub barked savagely at her.

  The more she looked, the more confident she felt. Hadn’t the police admitted they were baffled, anyway? They needed any help they could get to catch the Phantom. What did it matter if it came from a circus fortune-teller?

  Lizzie finally found what she was looking for on Leman Street. Inside, the police station was gloomy and smelled strongly of soap and writing ink. A desk sergeant with bags under his eyes looked down at her.