‘I’ve just been to see Ana,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ said Tiny, cocking an interested look at me. ‘And how is she this morning?’
‘Still in bed,’ I said. ‘Rather rattled after yesterday. She’s a funny one, isn’t she?’
‘She’s not alone round here, missus,’ he said, bundling up his peelings in newspaper and hefting the pot of onions into his arms. ‘Come on in. I’ll make coffee.’
‘Coffee?’ I echoed, surprised and delighted.
‘Andrew Merryman and his swanky ways rubbing off on me,’ said Tiny. Inside, he set the pot on the floor, opened the stove door and pushed it inside. The stove was the same size as all the others and so Tiny did not have to bend to look into it, but the rest of the furnishings did have something of the doll’s house about them – a miniature chair and table, a shaving stand not two feet tall, a ladder up to the box-bed at the end.
‘Sit down,’ said Tiny, nodding to a second chair. Beside his it seemed enormous, and actually when I looked closely at it, it really was enormous. ‘Andrew’s chair,’ said Tiny, laughing at my slowness. ‘I tell you when we get a good bottle down us and sit in t’wrong seats it’s an uncomfortable night for both.’ He closed the oven door on the pot and gave the stove a little polish before tucking the pad tidily away.
‘Won’t the onions make the wagon smell now anyway?’ I asked him. I could remember the smell of boiled onions in milk on the nursery fire when I was tiny, never quite worth the fug no matter that they were delicious.
‘No, it’ll all go up the pipe now,’ said Tiny. ‘Oh, the winter the winter the winter ground,’ he moaned. ‘In season, there’s a big dinner twice a day. Dinnertime and again after t’show, but winters it’s dinner together and shift for yourself at night, see? I’d starve if it weren’t for Topsy. She feeds Andrew up and I get his leftovers.’
‘She doesn’t feed you?’ I said.
‘She’s her own boss,’ said Tiny. ‘She does as she likes.’
‘And how is she today?’ I asked. ‘Have you seen her?’
He nodded. ‘Her hands is bad,’ he said. ‘Be a week before they’re straight again. Lucky in a way it’s winter and the start of it too. Pa Cooke would have her dropped off in t’next town and someone new in, family or no, if it were season.’
‘Things are that desperate?’ I said. ‘Ana said something which I took to be a story, but if things are as tight as all that …’
‘Pa Cooke stole her horse and sold it?’ said Tiny. ‘Who can say, who can say? Pa said the beast took a bad colic and the glue man come and shot him, but half of us was away to t’next stand and it’s not like Pa to hang back at pull-down. So who can say?’
‘Why on earth would he do such a thing?’ I said.
‘I’m not saying he did,’ said Tiny, which was far from a straight answer. ‘That’s just Ana’s story.’
‘It wasn’t by any means the only story she was telling,’ I said.
‘Oh, she’s the star o’ t’show and we all hate her for it?’
‘She didn’t touch on that particular point,’ I said. ‘But for some reason, she seems to think – and this in the teeth of all the evidence – that she is the target of these tricks, or whatever you want to call them.’
‘Wouldn’t call them “tricks” now, would you?’ said Tiny, his face settling in deep lines as he frowned. ‘Not if this last’s another one, because a missing swing’s one thing, but that long rope could have killed Topsy. No, it had to be an accident. Had to be.’ His voice cracked and he rubbed his hand roughly across his mouth.
‘Ana called it a warning,’ I said.
‘Aye,’ said Tiny. ‘She would do. It’s a little foible of Ana’s, see.’ He was scooping coffee into a battered tin pot, in generous quantities.
‘I don’t see, not really,’ I said. ‘When the two things that were done were specifically aimed at Topsy, I don’t see at all.’
‘Well, here’s where I have to do my duty as a fine upstanding member of Cooke’s Circus what doesn’t want to get his marchers when it’s so cold outside.’
‘I knew you knew something,’ I said.
‘I knew you knew I knew,’ said Tiny, then he grew serious again. ‘There was more than them two things done. And the rest were nowt to do with Topsy at all. Here,’ he said, ‘know what just struck me? How come you’re talking to me like I’m on your side, missus? How come you think whoever it were, it weren’t me, when it were my rope what got used for t’swap?’
‘Because of the swap,’ I said.
‘Ain’t you ever heard of a double-bluff?’
I hesitated. He joked incessantly but who knew what sensitivities the jokes might hide.
‘Because your rope was tied to the beam,’ I said at last. ‘Sorry to be so blunt.’
‘You think I couldn’t climb up that pole and walk along that beam with a coiled rope on me?’ said Tiny. He was pouring out two cups of coffee with a flourish, raising the pot as high as he could to make the tops froth. He got out of his chair and climbed on to it, pouring all the time, holding the pot high above his head and still hitting the cup with the thin stream of liquid. ‘Why would that be then?’ he asked me, looking straight across, at eye-level now.
‘I simply assumed …’ I began, clumsily. Tiny climbed down again and handed me one of the cups.
‘Yesssss, you’re right there,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have done it to save me life.’ He paused. ‘No head for heights.’ I nodded. ‘Never needed one. Boom-boom.’ And he laughed so heartily at my discomfort that in the end I had to laugh too.
‘So,’ I said sternly, at last. ‘The rest? That was nothing to do with Topsy?’
‘But mind you, missus – Ana didn’t know nowt about it. She never found out. Unless there’s even more and she did spot some. Can’t say for sure. First thing I noticed were t’balloons was swapped over. Day before yesterday, this was. The balloons Ana has for the spectacular was over with my props – mine and Andrew’s – and our balloons was where Ana’s should be.’
‘I’m not sure I see what harm could come from the wrong balloons,’ I said. ‘Delicious coffee, by the way.’
‘Ah well, see now, when I say balloons I don’t mean balloons like you mean,’ said Tiny. ‘Hoops with paper in, that’s a balloon to me. Me and Andrew hold them up for Ana in t’spec – for her to jump through off Harlequin’s back – and then we have our own ones for one of our run-ins. Some of them is paper too, but some’s rubber and I bounce right back off ’em, then there’s some’s solid wood. But they’re identical to look at, see? That’s the joke of it. First run-in, Andrew and me, we do Ana’s spec turn again only with Jinxie instead of t’pony and with the trick balloons.’
‘And you say they’d been swapped around? Like the rope?’
‘There’s no way we wouldn’t have noticed, mind.’
‘So it wasn’t really dangerous,’ I said, thinking of the cut swing, ‘just threatening.’
‘That’s it in a nutshell where I can reach it,’ said Tiny. ‘Threatening.’
‘And that’s not all?’ I prompted.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Next thing was I noticed flour in t’resin bucket.’ I waited for him to explain. ‘Resin powder, see? Ana puts it on Harlequin’s back to help her grip. That’s how voltige ponies get their name, matter of fact: rosy-backs, they call them. Anyway, she flings on a handful every time she goes through t’ring doors, casual-like. That’s what makes it seem all the worse to me somehow. Kind of more … sneakier than the rest. Just a bag of flour in t’resin-bucket.’
‘What would it do?’
‘Flour? On a pony’s back what you’re standing up on? Flour mixing in with sweat on a rosy-back working hard?’ I could feel the now familiar shiver creeping across me again.
‘It would turn to a complete lather, wouldn’t it?’ I said.
‘Lethal,’ agreed Tiny. ‘Only again there’s no way Ana wouldn’t notice. It didn’t feel nothing like resin, nor look like it, and she�
��d have spotted it straight off. So it was like you said, just a threat.’
‘But no less nasty for that,’ I said. ‘And do you think there’s anything else?’
‘Well, let’s say I was glad it were Charlie Cooke opening that there parcel of hats and not me. No, go on, I’m only joking,’ he said, laughing at the look on my face. ‘Andrew and me checked all Ana and Topsy’s props night before last. Took us nearly the whole night. Jinxie stood guard for us. Only wish we’d thought to check our own. I just checked that my corde lisse was coiled up tidy in me prop box – and it were, as far as I could tell. Never thought no more about it.’
‘But why would someone make such a good job of swapping the ropes when the swing was …’
‘When the swing was what?’ said Tiny. Then he put his head on one side. ‘Hello, hello. You’ve found it, han’t you?’
There was no point trying to dissemble since I had already betrayed myself. I admitted that I had and described the state it was in, but I insisted that its hiding place was my secret.
‘Fair enough,’ said Tiny. ‘And has it all fell in place then? Can you hang the guilty man with a bit of rope and a gold stick?’
‘To be honest, before what you told me about the flour and the balloons, I wasn’t tending towards a man at all. I was tending towards Ana. She was so angry with Topsy yesterday, I could easily imagine her getting up to tricks to spite her.’
‘Never,’ said Tiny stoutly, and he flushed as he spoke. I looked away to let his blush fade unwitnessed. Perhaps he was not just flirting when he worked so hard to make Ana laugh with all his nonsense, perhaps he was really wooing her. I hoped not: he was a dear fellow and Ana, who would no doubt think herself far above him, did not deserve the man.
‘Mrs Cooke hinted that she might have been up to some other mischief before,’ I said, speaking rather carefully now that I thought he might be an interested party. ‘You wouldn’t know what that was, would you? You seem close to her.’
‘Not me,’ said Tiny, his eyes wide, although precisely which part of my suggestion he was denying was not clear. ‘And anyway, it don’t make no sense. How can she think it’s all meant for her if it’s her doing it, eh?’ This was rather a good point.
‘Well, the fearful act is maybe just that – an act.’
He was shaking his head again. ‘No, it’s real enough. Leastways she’s never took a day off it since she got here.’
‘And what’s it all about?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, you’ll work it out soon enough,’ was all Tiny would say. ‘And you’ll kick yourself when you do. She’s a funny one, our Ana, right enough.’
‘Well, disregarding Ana for the moment,’ I went on, ‘the only other thought I had – and again this was before your revelations this morning – was Charlie Cooke.’
Tiny put his cup down on the stove top with great deliberation, straightened his jacket, smoothed his hair and then collapsed into rolling, rollicking gales of laughter.
‘I take it you don’t agree,’ I said drily, ‘but he was very touchy yesterday about the fact that he didn’t rush forward to help. He hated me noticing that.’ I was having to talk loudly above the giggles and I gave up.
‘Course he was,’ Tiny said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief bigger than he was. ‘Charlie Cooke hurt Topsy? Never!’
‘So why didn’t he help?’
‘He’s slowing down. You’ve seen him, missus – you’ve seen Andrew and me having to take the pace off t’blessed hat juggles for him! You’re right enough. We was all there under that rope before he’d even got off his seat, but there’s no mystery why he didn’t like you talking about it. It must be killing him now.’
‘Oh, poor Charlie,’ I said. ‘How awful to be brought face to face with it like that, to think that he was too slow to help. If he’s fond of her.’
‘Oh, he’s fond all right,’ said Tiny. ‘Hangs around her like a smell on the landing and takes care to make sure everyone sees him at it too.’
‘That surprises me,’ I said. I had thought that Andrew Merryman and Topsy were a pair, from the way she behaved yesterday and what Tiny had told me.
‘It’s true,’ Tiny said. ‘And he’s really started in with the pomade and pressed pants lately. Coming on like love’s young dream. She’s had to beg Andrew not to leave her alone and give Charlie a chance to get proper stuck in, for she wouldn’t want to hurt him.’
‘She’s a good, kind girl,’ I said, thinking that actually she was a very astute young madam and playing it beautifully.
‘Oh aye, she’s that,’ said Tiny. ‘She’s even had to turn to me once or twice when Andrew’s been away and I’m no white knight, am I?’
‘Poor old Charlie,’ I said.
‘Oh, for sure, poor Charlie,’ said Tiny, sounding rather sour. ‘Me heart just bleeds.’
7
Alec, to whom I reported dutifully once I was home, solved the mystery of Anastasia right away. In fact, it only took him calling it that and I had solved it too.
‘Oh, come off it, darling, please,’ I said. ‘Anastasia?’
‘She feels herself above the rest of them, she has a very dubious accent, she believes she is in hiding and may have to fly at any moment, she has lost something pretty impressive, she thinks there are spies everywhere.’
‘Yes, and admittedly Topsy was very tickled about my talking to Ana “in her own tongue”. The little minx found that highly diverting.’
‘That’s it, Dandy, I’m sure of it.’
‘But it’s nonsense!’ I said.
‘Well, of course it’s nonsense,’ said Alec. ‘Delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex.’
I clapped my hands. ‘That was just the phrase I was trying to remember.’
‘And really, when you think about it, Dan, it’s exactly the sort of madness that would go along quite nicely with the kind of girl who runs away to the circus.’
‘Taking her pony with her,’ I said. ‘Aha! Well, there’s the proof that it’s rubbish right there. How could she have her childhood pony with her if she had fled St Petersburg with her jewels stitched into her petticoats?’
‘Dandy, let me assure you,’ said Alec gravely, ‘you do not need to mount arguments against it to me.’
‘Although,’ I added, ‘if she really does think there are spies everywhere, she probably has no great love of Zoya and family and she might have cut the rope swing and put it in their wagon to make trouble for them.’
‘Wouldn’t she cleave to them as her country people? Subjects, I mean?’
‘Well, not if they could find out that she was a fake in ten questions,’ I said. ‘And perhaps not anyway. Depends what kind of Russians they are, surely. What sort of name is Prebrezhensky?’
‘A long and unspellable one,’ said Alec, stretching out his feet towards my fire and prodding Bunty with his toe. ‘Is she all right, Dan? She seems rather listless.’
‘She’s stupefied by an excess of effective training,’ I said. ‘I suppose I meant could we tell from the name whether they’d be all for the Tsar or all for the other lot. The way one would know a Cabot was a Yankee or a … what would a Confederate be called?’
‘La Fayette,’ said Alec.
‘Really? How odd.’
‘Besides, do you think it was the same person who cut the swing and hid it? Doesn’t it seem more likely that someone who hates this Topsy did the cutting and someone who likes her hid it so she wouldn’t see it and get upset? Someone who has no love for the Prebrezhenskys, presumably.’
‘So Anastasia for the cutting, but not the hiding?’
‘But why, Dandy? What is it that makes you plump for her anyway?’
‘Mrs Cooke said she had tampered with props before. With Mr Cooke’s whip, to be precise.’
‘Tampered with it how, though?’ said Alec.
‘Pinched it, I think. Why?’
‘Well, because: slashing a prop – nasty but unmissable. Hiding it – harmless prank. Swapping the b
alloons – pointless silliness. The flour thingy – a bit too subtle for me but I take your word for it that the circus folk would get the gist of the threat. Then comes the long rope – underhand, subtle again but this time all too horribly effective. So until we know all the details of the whip incident I can’t see the point of homing in on Ana and ignoring the rest of them. Can’t see it at all.’
He gave a firm nod and sat back in his chair. I scowled at him. Alec is at his least attractive when he is magisterial and he never admits how much easier it is to make these pronouncements after my orderly reports than to come to the same conclusion when one is grubbing around in thick of it all, as I do.
‘You are a wonderful sounding board, Alec,’ I said, with remarkable grace. ‘Thank you.’
‘So, leaving aside the Tsarina, as either target or perpetrator,’ he went on, ‘who else is there who might be doing it?’
‘No one I’ve come across yet,’ I said. ‘They all seem so lovely and so desperate to keep the circus a going concern despite their troubles. I did wonder about Charlie Cooke – actually not lovely at all, or not to me anyway – but Tiny said he was besotted with Topsy and simply couldn’t have done it. Pa Cooke himself has a foul temper but he’s all fizz and bang – I can’t see him creeping around and setting traps for people.’
‘I can’t see any man doing it, if I’m honest,’ said Alec. ‘It’s all so furtive and silly.’
‘Too furtive and too silly to be the work of a man?’ I said.
‘You sound like Mrs Pankhurst, darling,’ said Alec. ‘A detective, as you’re always telling me, can be no respecter of persons, much less of gentle sexes. What about Topsy herself?’
‘Topsy was the victim of the very worst of the pranks,’ I reminded him. ‘And anyway there is nothing “Pankhurst” about pointing out that when it comes to hurting young women, there is a man at the bottom of it every time.’
‘So tell me about the men,’ said Alec, ‘and stop chirping on about the womenfolk.’
‘The men,’ I said, running my mind over what I knew about them. ‘Bill Wolf is quite simply Father Christmas in his shirtsleeves and that’s that.’
The Winter Ground Page 11
