‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘And wherever you go keep your ears open for a whisper about Exit.’
The next morning Phryne Fisher awoke, threw on the shabby clothes and was transported to the circus by Alan Lee.
‘I’ll take you to meet Molly,’ he said, sparing one hand from the wheel of the old Austin to lay on Phryne’s shoulder. ‘She’ll take over training you, Fern. The circus folk, they don’t like diddikoi. As you heard from Mr Jones.’
‘What is a diddikoi?’
His dark face creased in a grimace that might have been laughter or pain.
‘I am. Half-gypsy, half-Gorgio—Gorgios are what the gypsies call everyone else. My mum was seduced by a Gorgio when she was sixteen and her own people threw her out. Luckily the man married her later but she had to leave the road and she lives in Prahran now. I haven’t seen her since I ran away when I was twelve to go with Farrell’s. The man said it was in my blood and hers too and called me a gypsy. And the gypsies won’t have me because I’m the son of Marie who left the road and betrayed her people. So I’m a betwixt and between, neither fish nor flesh. I wasn’t born on straw but I can’t stay in one place. Like them, I’m a traveller. Like the man my father, I’m a good businessman, so I make a decent living out of the merry-go-round. It’s uncomfortable, though. I only half believe in curses, for instance. If I really believed in them, I could go to Mama Rosa and get the curse taken off. If I didn’t believe at all I could forget about it. But I’m in the middle.’
He shrugged and Phryne patted the hand on her shoulder.
‘That’s why I came and got you, lady. I don’t think Mama Rosa got your name and description from the spirits. However, I know she’s a shrewd old biddy with a finger on the pulse of the circus. And there are things Mama Rosa knows that she couldn’t have got anywhere else. So I came and got you and now . . .’
‘Now?’ Phryne pulled the scarf further down over her eyes.
‘Now you can find out what’s happening and I don’t need to decide my own future for a while. I don’t want to leave Farrell’s but I gotta make a living. If this tour don’t clear a profit, I’ll take off on my own. Carousels are popular. But I like Farrell’s and I don’t want to leave my mates. That make it clear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Also, once you’re with the circus, you shouldn’t have anything to do with us—with Doreen and Samson and me. Doreen’s off today, anyway, to see her mum in Tumbarumba. She said to say goodbye. I hope she don’t try and take Joe on the bus again. Now, listen. The circus folk don’t mix with the carnies. You’ll have to slip into their way of doing things, become one of them, if you want to find out anything. And to their way of thinking the carnies ain’t no more important than the fleas on a dog. See?’
‘Yes. I see.’
He stopped the truck on the outskirts of the camp. ‘It’s not what I want,’ he said, staring past her through the dusty windshield. ‘Not what I woulda chosen, Fern.’
‘Not what I would have chosen, either.’
Phryne ran a considering hand down the perfect dark profile, the set mouth, the firm chin, until her fingers curled in the hollow of his collarbone and he shivered.
‘Tonight,’ she mouthed into his ear. ‘Tonight is my farewell to luxury. Come and share it with me?’
The shadowed face inclined. The smooth cheek turned a little into her caressing palm.
‘Tonight,’ said Alan Lee.
The horse lines were busy. Performers were grooming, trimming hooves, and plaiting manes and tails. The hot sun ripened the scent of dung and sweat and hay. Alan Lee led Phryne through the lines and presented her to a small woman who was applying sulphur and lard to a pony’s back. Molly Younger was shorter, stockier and plainer than her image on the posters. She was dressed in riding breeches and a workman’s shirt, with her long blonde hair dragged back under a peaked fisherman’s cap. Alan Lee introduced Phryne.
‘Fern, eh?’ She looked at Alan Lee. ‘All right, Lee, you can leave her with me.’
Alan Lee said, ‘Good luck, Fern,’ and turned away without another word.
‘So. You can stand up on Bell?’ Molly’s voice was cracked and her eyes were red but she was brisk and her regard was as straight as a lance. She surveyed Phryne and ran a hardened hand down over her body. ‘Some muscle there. But your hands are soft. You haven’t done any trick work for a while, have you? Where have you been?’
‘Dancing,’ said Phryne in her hesitant Australian accent. ‘I been dancing.’
‘In one of the dancehalls, I suppose, shilling a dance? You’ll have a harder life here. Now, anyone could stand up on Bell. Bell’s my darling.’ Bell, hearing her name, nosed into Miss Younger’s hand and was fed a carrot. ‘She’s as steady as a rock and as good as gold. Some of the others are not so good. We’ll take Missy here and see what you can do. I don’t like taking my replacement riders off the chorus line,’ she added, detaching a grey from the lines, ‘but that silly bitch Alison has broken her leg good and proper and I’m missing a girl for the horse-rush.’
Phryne trailed Missy into a clear space. The grass had been beaten down and dried and the ground looked uncommonly hard. Phryne reflected that this was going to be a painful test if she failed.
‘A circus ring is forty-two feet across,’ said Miss Younger, reeling out a long rein and taking a bamboo pole with a few ribbons tied to the end, ‘because that is the width that brings centrifugal force into action. A horse cantering around a forty-two-foot ring generates the force and allows the rider to stand up. I don’t suppose you are interested in any of this, Miss Tea-dancer, but that is why you will stay on, if you stay on. Mount.’
Phryne leapt onto Missy’s back. The creature did not flinch and began to walk in a circle. Phryne pressed her knees into the grey sides and urged her into a canter.
‘No. Don’t try and control your mount. That’s why you haven’t got any reins. Leave it to me. That is the horsemaster’s job. Sit quiet and let me tell Missy what to do. You have to trust me, Fern.’
Phryne relaxed her grip and Missy completed two circuits. She was keeping in a precise circle even though there was nothing to guide her, not even a chalked outline on the grass. Molly Younger flicked the bamboo pole and Missy increased her pace, lengthening her stride into a smooth canter. Her pace was not as even as Bell’s.
‘Side to the left,’ ordered Miss Younger. Phryne managed the movement and sat sidesaddle on the bare back, hands braced.
‘Side to the right.’
Phryne was getting the hang of Missy’s pace, which was slightly faster than Bell’s because of her shorter legs. She slid and balanced, facing the outside of the ring. Caravans and tents flashed past. She did not look down but fixed her gaze on the flag flying from the big top.
Miss Younger flicked her whip again. ‘Come up, Missy.’ Her voice when addressing the horse was clear and gentle. ‘Kneel up, rider,’ she ordered Phryne.
Hands on the neck, Phryne thought, feet flat and apart. She brought up both knees in a smooth sliding motion and was kneeling, putting out both arms to balance. Two circuits flashed past.
‘Hands and feet,’ ordered Molly Younger, and Phryne managed to convince her back to straighten. She was getting dizzy from the passing scene and closed her eyes briefly. The St Christopher medal flicked over at her throat.
‘Stand up, Tea-dancer.’
Phryne was stung. She pushed away from Missy’s neck and found herself standing, feet placed either side of the horse’s spine, high off the ground and held up by that strange force. Missy moved sweetly beneath her feet. Phryne began to experiment with what she could do. She stretched out her arms, curved them above her head and then hastily replaced them in position.
‘Arms by your sides!’
Phryne slowly lowered her arms until she was standing like a pole, leaning inward, perfectly balanced.
For a moment. Then Missy moved out from beneath her and she wavered, lost her balance and flung herself f
orward, landing astride with her legs around Missy’s neck.
‘Stop!’ Missy slowed to a walk and halted. Phryne slid off her back and embraced the horse while the world went round and round.
‘You say you’ve never done acrobatics before?’ Miss Younger’s voice was sharp. Phryne blinked as the world did an eight––some reel.
‘Never,’ she gasped. ‘Not on a horse.’
‘If Allie had been able to do that, she never would have broke her leg. You fall quite well. Tumbling, then?’
‘Yes, a little.’ Gymnastics at an English girls’ school, Phryne felt, could probably be called tumbling. She smiled briefly at the idea of what her games mistress would say if she saw her pupil now.
‘Good. We will practise every day and by the time we go on the road you may be good enough to be in the rush. Now take Missy back to the lines and let me see you groom her.’
Phryne gathered up the long rein and returned it to Miss Younger, then led Missy back to the lines with an arm over her neck, whispering endearments to the patient beast all the way.
Miss Younger supervised the grooming, feeding and watering of Missy with a closed mouth. When Missy nosed up to investigate the contents of Phryne’s cardigan pocket, Miss Younger was at her side in a flash.
‘What are you feeding her?’ she demanded. Phryne held out a flat palm.
‘Carrots,’ she said meekly.
‘Eat one,’ Miss Younger ordered.
Phryne, remembering the untimely death of Socks, bit into a carrot and fed the rest to Missy. She waited until Miss Younger had turned away before she spat the mouthful out.
Phryne hated carrots.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tell us the showman’s tale, you say. And why not?
The very thought of it brings back to my ears
the jingle of bells.
‘Lord’ George Sanger
Seventy Years a Showman
Tommy Harris returned to Mrs Witherspoon’s refined house for paying gentlefolk with a warrant to search everywhere for anything. He was determined to be thorough.
He had nothing to rely upon but the conviction that the woman who had drawn him away from the brink of that roof was not guilty of murdering Mr Christopher.
He reached the house to find that the only person home was Tillie, the girl described as halfwitted. She answered the door timidly and would only allow him inside after he had exhibited the impressive warrant, blazoned with the seal of the Magistrates’ Court at Melbourne.
‘Ooh,’ she commented, handing it back. ‘Well, you’d better come in, bettern’t you? Missus is out. What do you want?’
‘I’ve got a warrant to search everywhere,’ said Tommy Harris, smiling at Tillie. ‘I’m Constable Harris. Do you remember me?’
She wiped her hands on the greasy tea-towel she was carrying. ‘Yair. You was here when they took Miss Parkes away.’ Tears filled Tillie’s eyes. ‘I liked her. I don’t reckon she killed Mr Christopher.’
‘I don’t reckon so, either.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No. So that’s why I’m searching. But that’s a dead secret, Tillie. You won’t give me away?’
Tillie mopped her eyes with the tea-towel. She was a faded girl, with pale blue eyes and scraped-back blonde hair. She smiled slowly at Constable Harris. ‘I won’t give you away.’
‘Good, now you tell me about the lodgers, while I have a look at each room.’
‘The keys is in the scullery. I’ll get ’em.’ Tillie scurried away and was back in no time.
Tommy Harris began with the bedrooms. Miss Parkes’s room was tidy, sparsely furnished and anonymous. The bed was neatly made. Harris lifted the mattress and felt down behind the pictures and the back of each drawer in the chest of drawers. Clothes, plain and well kept. Her stockings were darned with the correct thread. This was always an index, Tommy had been told, to the state of a woman’s mind. There were no reminders of her circus past. Her prison-release document was the only personal item in the room. Her ashtray was full of pins and one loose button.
‘All right, Tillie, who’s next?’
‘This is Miss Minton’s room.’
‘Do you like her?’ asked Tommy, reeling back under a cloud of cheap scent. Tillie looked around to make sure that no one was listening.
‘She’s all right. Makes a lot of work. Lots of washing and ironing, with all them costumes. I don’t know what sort of an actress she is, though. And,’ Tillie lowered her voice further, ‘I don’t think she goes to church when she goes out on Sundays.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I asked her what church she was, cos I thought she might be a Catholic. I can’t abide them Micks. She said she went to St Paul’s. But she don’t.’
‘How do you know?’ The overpowering femininity of Miss Minton’s belongings was stifling Harris. The window had evidently not been opened for some time. He pulled at a drawer, dreading that he might see something which would cause him to blush.
‘She leaves at the wrong time. Service at the cathedral is eight and ten. She often don’t leave until ten. I don’t know where she’s going but it ain’t church. But she’s got some pretty things.’ Tillie gazed admiringly at a gown figured with gold dragons. ‘And she smells nice.’
Love letters and cards and cheap novels with chocolate wrappers marking her place comprised most of Miss Minton’s reading matter. Tommy glanced through them. The terms in which Miss Minton’s person was described by one ardent suitor were too much for him. He felt his cheeks begin to burn.
He replaced the letters, felt along the mattress and under the bed. There he found three unmatched stockings and an earring. The walls of her room were hung with posters for various plays, and the small table was covered by a fringed shawl. Her wastepaper basket contained more chocolate wrappers and two types of cigarette butt—one long and lipstick stained; the other short, gold-ringed and brown.
‘Oh! They’re the ones that Mr Sheridan smokes!’ squeaked Tillie. Tommy Harris selected a representative collection of butts and put them into an envelope.
‘Come on Tillie, I’m stifled in here,’ he said. ‘Who’s next?’
‘This is Mr Christopher’s room,’ breathed Tillie. ‘All his stuff is still there. Ooh, this is creepy!’
Constable Harris had been taught how to search a room. He got down and crawled. His first effort had been thorough; at the end of half an hour his harvest was scant. The only things which he could not definitely state were Mr Christopher’s possessions were another strip of flimsy paper, which he discovered caught behind the picture of Miss Molly Younger, a length of twisted fishing line and a small white feather. The collection meant nothing whatever to him but he packed it all up in another envelope.
‘What’s the next, Tillie?’
‘Mr Sheridan’s room.’
But no matter how Constable Harris turned the key, the door would not open.
‘Missus’ll be mad,’ said Tillie. ‘They ain’t s’posed to muck about with the locks. In case of fire, she says.’
‘Well, it won’t open. Tell me about the house. Can you get into the roof? What about under the floors?’
‘They fixed the ceilings where the roof used to leak but the painter ain’t been yet. And now I expect she’ll have to have the downstairs ceiling fixed. Ooh, to think of poor Mr Christopher lying there bleeding like a tap! It’s awful.’
‘How did you feel about him, then?’ asked Tommy, trying not to think of Mr Christopher bleeding like a tap. Tillie screwed the tea-towel in her water-sodden hands.
‘He was a gent,’ she said sadly. ‘Never any trouble and as nice-spoken as you please. Not like Mr Sheridan. He’s not nice.’
‘What sort of not nice?’ asked Tommy.
Tillie grimaced. ‘He pinches,’ she said, rubbing her bony hindquarters as though an old wound still ached. ‘And he grabs. But now he’s taken advantage of Miss Minton, I’ll reckon he’ll leave me alone.’
‘Why do you
think he’s done that?’
Tillie looked up at the ceiling, scratched her nose and refused to comment further. Tommy Harris went downstairs to wait for Mr Sheridan to return home.
Phryne Fisher completed the grooming of Missy and said to Miss Younger, ‘Are you hiring me?’
Miss Younger inspected Missy. She ran a hand through the soft mane and lifted a hoof to check that it had been properly cleaned.
‘You can stay. If you aren’t good enough to go in the ring, you can mend, wash, make yourself useful. Thirty shillings a week, five more if you go on. You sleep in the girls’ tent, that’s on the left of the big top. We go on tour on Friday. You’ll need fleshings and a costume but we can look at that when we see how you progress. All right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Call me Miss Younger. You came with some carnies. Don’t have much to do with them once we’re on the road. Not if you want to be accepted by the circus.’
‘No, Miss Younger,’ said Phryne.
‘Go over to Mr Farrell’s van and get a contract. Tell him to talk to me if there’s a problem. And Fern . . .’
‘Yes, Miss Younger?’
The horsemaster came closer, lifted Phryne’s chin with a finger and looked into her face. Phryne looked back. The older woman’s face was blotched with shed tears which powder did not entirely conceal. Phryne was sorry for her.
‘I don’t know what things have been like for you, being a dancer, but circuses are very moral. If you play at being a tart, you’ll be taken for one.’
‘Yes, Miss Younger.’
‘And look out for Mr Jones. He has an eye for a pretty face. You aren’t precisely pretty but you’re graceful and you’re young and that’s how he likes ’em. Don’t be alone with him.’
‘No, Miss Younger.’ Phryne pulled her chin out of the horsemaster’s hold. ‘I can take care of myself,’ she said. ‘But thanks for the warning.’
Phryne walked across the circus towards the largest and most gaily decorated van. It had ‘Farrell’s Circus and Wild Beast Show’ emblazoned along both sides in red and tarnished gold. She paused at the bottom of the steps. The half-door was open.
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