The Winter Ground (29 page)

‘You’ve no need to be telling me all this like I don’t know,’ said Pa. ‘I’ve never been hard on any beast in my life, or that wee soul wouldn’t be sitting there, would he?’ He pointed at the monkey, who stopped with a raisin halfway to his open mouth and gazed back at Pa.

‘What’s Bobbo been up to?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’s always been a cheeky one,’ said Ma.

‘He took Ma’s sewing scissors to my whip, is what he did,’ said Pa. ‘My whip! She found him sitting on the box-bed, tail end of last season, snipping it up into scraps, din’t you, Poll, eh? When I was a lad you could get the ghost just for touching the rum coll’s whip. It was the crown jewels and the true cross. I never laid a finger on my old pa’s whip till he was laying dead in his coffin and even then my hands were shaking.’

‘If the clowns are off,’ said Ina, just as though they had not spoken, ‘I think I’ll go and see if I can catch them.’ No one answered her. Pa was gazing fondly at Bobbo and Ma and I were trying not to catch one another’s eye. So Ana, if indeed it were she, had not only stolen the whip, but had cut it too, as she had cut the swing and the corde lisse. And Pa had forgiven Bobbo a deed much graver than Harlequin’s lapse. ‘They said they might put on their make-up to let me try a portrait,’ Ina went on. ‘Thank you for the tea, Ma. Goodbye, Pa. Dandy.’ She fished her pad of paper and her paint box out from under her chair and skipped off down the steps with an air of girlish innocence which would have been hard to take in a twelve-year-old and was sickening for a woman in her twenties. I could not help but stare after her.

‘Aye, the head empties when the heart fills,’ said Ma.

‘Is her heart full then?’ I said.

‘For sure. There’s a change coming there, you mark me.’ She reached over and picked up Ina’s teacup, turned it over on the saucer and twisted it three times then peered into its depths as though she were looking down a well. ‘Aye, a change coming, no mistake about it.’

I played down the mystical element somewhat when I spoke to Alec and did not mention the teacup at all.

‘You yourself said, darling, that Ina Wilson was biding her time, remember? Well, now she’s jumping up and down with glee.’

‘Very suspicious to have her in such tremendous spirits all of a sudden,’ said Alec. ‘Did what you found out from Laurie put her in the clear or in the soup, Dan?’

I had to think about this for a moment or two before I answered, for the whole of the interlude at Cullen was rather confused in my memory. I was driving us back to Gilverton, where Alec was to act as a buffer between Hugh and me while I got to work on the boys. It had occurred to me that while they had been leaned on good and hard about Ana’s exit from the ring, any other impressions and overhearings they might have come by had been left untapped. I steered the Cowley around the curves of the lane, planning just how I should attack them, with fired questions and threats like the good inspector, or with cakes and cuddles and warm maternal urgings to get all the nasty memories off their precious chests.

‘Dandy?’ Alec prompted. ‘Is she in the clear?’

‘Almost,’ I said at last. ‘I mean, probably. Oh, for goodness’ sake yes. Of course. I mean to say, she really did just pop out and then pop back in and she really did put her head down. It’s just that I know for a fact that her head was down before the screaming started.’

‘She would have to be very sensitive to atmospheres to come over faint because the spec went off its timing,’ said Alec.

‘But never mind that,’ I said. ‘What we should be concentrating upon is Pa getting rid of the pony. That’s far more suspicious if you ask me.’

‘Especially given the lingering question about the other one who supposedly dropped dead,’ Alec agreed. ‘What was his name?’

‘Bisou,’ I said. ‘Exactly. Pa says he can’t trust Harlequin and can’t afford to keep him as a pet, but there must be more to it than that. Circus people, Alec, keep the tigers who eat their fathers and boast of the fact on the sides of the cage. If some moth-eaten kangaroo dies of old age, they stuff it. Pa himself – and wait for this, for it will knock you flat – still gazes fondly upon Bobbo even though Mrs Cooke told her husband that Bobbo had cut up his whip. Pa’s whip, I mean.’

‘So Ana cut it, didn’t just steal it?’ Alec said. ‘But why would Ma cover that up for her?’

‘I don’t know, and apparently the rum coll’s whip—’

‘Quite,’ said Alec. ‘I’ve been steeping myself in circus ways, Dan, you don’t have to tell me. It’s sacrilege.’

‘You know, Inspector Hutchinson told me just before he left that he found it significant the way some props were slashed and some just moved around.’

We drove in silence for a while.

‘And maybe to Inspector Hutchinson it was,’ Alec said at last. ‘What else did he tell you?’

‘He said he’d like to know what kind of understanding there was between Charlie and Ma. And actually, Ma did just tell me that when she and Charlie tried together to change Pa’s mind about Harlequin, he got angrier than ever.’

‘She seems ready to side with anyone except her own husband,’ Alec said. ‘For all her talk of “family” all the time.’

‘Don’t be harsh,’ I said. ‘I agree that she’s up to something – up to plenty, probably – but disloyal she’s not. Her devotion to her sons puts me to shame, I can tell you.’ I am sorry to admit that I left a small pause here, in case Alec should want to contradict me. ‘Anyway, what about your discoveries?’ I asked him, after it. ‘What did you find out in all your steeping?’

‘There’s something up with Andrew,’ Alec began. ‘Not just the upset over Ana and disgust about Harlequin.’

‘What then?’

‘He just seems to be dancing to a different tune, if you see what I mean. In a bit of a … what’s that wonderful Scotch word, Dandy, that sounds like a Hindu prayer?’

‘A dwam?’ I suggested.

‘That’s it,’ said Alec, chuckling. ‘A bit of a dwam.’

‘How on earth did you hear that?’ I asked him.

‘I came upon a housemaid standing on the front stairs staring out of the window across the lawns, steaming up the glass with her breath, no less, and instead of blushing to her roots and scurrying off she just said, “Michty me, surrrr, I’m aff in a dwam.”’

‘How charming,’ I said, without any enthusiasm, for Scotch phrases leave me quite cold and it is irritating to see Alec’s servants – so new and full of promise – begin to flex their brawny muscles and take over the house as mine did long ago. I was sure if he had started out with a little austerity and a few judicious sackings he could have stopped it. ‘You’re sure this … daydreaming, this wool-gathering, isn’t Andrew’s natural way?’

‘Hard to say. He was never exactly hearty but I haven’t seen him for years and I can’t tell what he’s like as a rule these days.’

‘Well, I must say, Alec my darling, that doesn’t seem to me to be enough to have justified your staying behind; I could have told you that everyone was in a bit of a state, which is all your discoveries amount to.’

‘Moving on from my valuable impressions, then,’ said Alec, ‘to my more practical discoveries, I’ve also established the alibis once and for all. Tiny and Andrew vouch for one another and for Charlie Cooke too. All three were in mutual sight at the props table when Anastasia went thundering by and they saw nothing. Ma and Bill Wolf likewise. The tent men as we know were playing cards in the animal tent with the stable lads. Actually two of the stable lads were mucking out while they had the chance, since all the prads were in the ring, but they are all accounted for one way or another. Saw nothing, know nothing, saying nothing.’

‘What about Mrs Wolf?

‘She and Tommy had been out front watching the spec and came round when they heard the commotion. She says you saw her.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Yes, that’s right, I did. She helped Zoya take the children away. Is that everyone then?’

‘Every last soul. It was surprisingly easy to tick them off the list too. All cosy together like little animals in their burrow.’

‘Suspiciously so, do we think? Are you saying they were each careful to provide themselves with alibis?’

‘Good God, of course not. What a nasty mind you have these days, Dan. I was only saying that if this were mid-season, there’d be bandmen and their families, countless more workers and grooms, and they’d be spread over the land in the summer sunshine. I was just saying we were lucky to have them huddled together for warmth.’

Stung by the accusation of nasty-mindedness, I forbore from voicing any further opinions but looked forward to getting something a little more concrete out of Donald and Teddy, if the gods were smiling on me.

The gods were not, or at least not entirely, for the boys had gone stalking up on the moor and so, as always when they are stalking or hunting, they would fall to Nanny upon their return, for blistering hot baths and bread soup in front of the nursery fire before an early bed. The boys’ nanny, Nanny Younger, was very far from being the presence in the house that my nanny, Nanny Palmer, had been but on stalking days she was not to be crossed lightly. I had seen her stare down Hugh – even Hugh! – and I certainly could not summon the boys to my sitting room and interrogate them there.

However, since they were on the moor, the silver lining was that Hugh was up there too and would stay up there until night fell then hang about the yard with the ghillies until the last dog was fed and every carcass – assuming success – was hung and dripping, then would feel justified in demanding a mustard bath, a rug and a toddy – his own bread soup by the nursery fire, in effect – and I should not see him until the morning.

Alec stopped long enough to drink a cup of tea with me and then took himself off; he has a nice sense of how to play our friendship in my house when Hugh is absent, I must say, and he was, besides that, reluctant to find himself included in the outing in prospect that evening. For I was Cinerama-bound, as would be many of my staff too, I expected. Hugh is wont to curl his lip and think it a victory when he hears that a pair of housemaids and I have converged at the box office in pursuit of Mr Fairbanks or, as in this case, Mr Valentino, but I do not care. It might not be true of Hollywood that all of life is there, but more of life is there than one can ever find in Perthshire.

Before that, though, there was an onslaught to be borne, one to which Alec’s departure on top of Hugh’s absence had left me wide open. I had been days and days at the circus, tramping around in the damp, and then two days of driving in a leather bonnet and an overnight stop in a house too cold to permit any kind of ablutions.

‘Right, madam,’ said Grant, closing my bedroom door firmly at her back and advancing. ‘Let’s see what’s happened under that hat.’

Nothing tremendously out of the ordinary, was the judgement, but the sight of my nails had Grant fanning herself and calling for salts.

‘What have you been at?’ she squeaked, turning my hands over and back in her own and shaking her head. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘I hardly know,’ I answered, a little nonplussed, if I am honest, at how blackened and grimy they were and sheepishly hoping that the sparse, smoky candles in the dining hall at Cairnbulg had hidden them from the two sober Brodies the evening before. The third, less sober Brodie would not have noticed, I am sure. ‘I’ve hardly touched the monkey and I haven’t unwrapped a hot potato straight from the fire ash since last Friday. I can’t think how I’ve got so filthy.’ I stopped shy of an out and out apology, which might in ordinary circumstances have put Grant out of humor, but she was very keen, I think, to hear about the monkey (and the potatoes) so she contented herself with a fond shake of her head and went to get two bowls of hot lemon for me to plonk my arms in while I bathed.

‘And the caravans themselves are quite spotless,’ I told her, once I was back and at my table wrapped in a dressing gown. This was one of Grant’s own favourite terms of praise. ‘Very neatly organised inside, like those wonderful old steamer trunks. I miss those.’

‘You and me both,’ said Grant. ‘Madam. I loved filling your trunks for a voyage in the good old days. It was the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a doll’s house. A place for everything and everything in its place.’

Well I remembered it; when such divertissements were part of my life in my early married years Grant used to plan my wardrobe down to the last boot button and prided herself on packing more completely different ensembles – costumes, she called them, harking back to her theatrical days – than any other woman on board could believe or live up to. Most gratifying of all to her, I always suspected, was the fact that she could swat away any of my puny attempts to have a say in matters. If I suggested some frock other than she had laid out for me, her face would close up as though on a drawstring and she would say: ‘Can’t, madam, I didn’t pack it,’ or ‘No, madam, we’re saving that for Saturday night and if we wear it now, we’ll have to go to the ball in the figured silk with the wrong shoes.’

‘They sound civilised enough, anyway, circus or no,’ said Grant. ‘When we heard about the poor girl, we did wonder.’

‘What
did
you hear?’ I asked, not expecting much, for if there were a single grain of truth amongst the cloud of gossipy chaff that must have been carried over the hills to Gilverton, I should be surprised to hear it.

‘That the poor love fell to her death and the elephant took to the woods and the heartless so-and-sos just kept right on with the show, juggling and tumbling and what have you except for one clown ran after the elephant because it was worth more to the ringmaster than what the poor girl was, and her his own flesh and blood. And that they only called the police to get their names in the papers for a bit of free advertising of how dangerous the acts are, otherwise they’d just have buried her in the woods like all the others and say no more about it. But if they keep their houses clean, they can’t be all bad.’

My head was reeling, but I made an effort to be fair.

‘She did fall and hit her head as far as we know,’ I said. ‘But it was a pony, not an elephant, and they only kept going until someone found her and they hated the police being there. As far from enjoying the drama as could ever be imagined. And as for heartless, the circus boss has said the pony is to be shot, although the girl who died
isn’t
one of the family and wasn’t even much of a favourite with the rest of them.’