The Winter Ground (39 page)

Even as I thought it, I heard the sound of a wagon door opening and boots descending the stairs. Tiny threw himself on to the grass and lifted the bottom of the canvas, peering out under it.

‘It’s Zoya,’ he breathed.

After a minute came the sound of soft knocking and Zoya’s voice.

‘Is me, Lally,’ she called. ‘I come for cocoa. So lonely tonight with them all go drinking.’

‘Oh, what a brave girl!’ I whispered to Alec. ‘She must have seen him hesitating.’

‘That’s what comes of a Scotch rum-coll,’ said Lally, and the ten generations of showmen were there in her voice, for she must be terrified and yet she spoke with a chuckle. ‘Flaming Hogmanay!’ she said. ‘You’ll get used to it, Zoya dear.’ Then the wagon door closed on them and we were back to silence.

Only a moment of it, though. I flinched and felt Alec jump too when Topsy’s voice suddenly sounded.

‘I thought you’d come,’ she said. Looking up we saw her gripping the rope with her legs and gazing downwards, smiling, her arms folded. ‘Sure it’s going to be a happy new year for me this year, isn’t it?’

‘You little vixen,’ came Robin Laurie’s voice. ‘You filthy little sneak,’ and the rope started to jolt and jerk around.

‘He’s trying to shake her off it,’ I breathed to Alec.

‘I saw everything, you know,’ said Topsy, her voice as strong as ever although it was strained from the effort of holding on to the juddering rope. ‘You’re not going to—’

‘Enough,’ the inspector whispered beside me and I saw a faint gleam as he put his whistle to his lips and blew.

Then came chaos, shouts and curses, rushing feet and the sudden deafening crack of a pistol shot. I was knocked over by someone racing past me and I stayed down with my arms around my head, shaking. I could not get my trembling legs to lift me up again. There was the sound of bodies crashing together, slamming against the ground, and a shout of pain. My eyes were squeezed shut and the shout echoed on and on.

‘We’ve got him,’ said the inspector’s voice eventually. ‘We have him. Out you come, madam, sir.’ Slowly, I lowered my arms and sat up. The circus folk were gone and only Alec and I remained in the backstage passageway. Only he and I had cowered here after the shot. So Alec was blushing to the tips of his ears when we emerged into the ring and saw them all. The policemen were standing ranged around the inspector, slightly kicking at the sawdust for something to do, and in the middle of the ring Robin Laurie lay, trussed in a rope like a swaddled infant, with one of Bill Wolf’s boots planted on his middle and one of Andrew Merryman’s long feet resting rather hard against his neck. Pa and Charlie held the ends of the rope and Ma, I was astonished to see, held a pistol. Only Tiny and Topsy seemed unaware of Robin; they sat with arms about one another on the floor of the ring, Tiny bawling like a bull calf and Topsy covering his face with kisses.

‘All right, lads,’ said the inspector, ‘let him up and let us get the handcuffs on him. If you please, Mrs Cooke.’ While Pa and Charlie unwound the rope, Ma cocked the pistol and aimed it at Robin Laurie’s head.

‘And don’t you think I wun’t there,’ she said.

‘Rather unorthodox, Inspector,’ said Robin Laurie. ‘I’m not sure what the Chief Constable will think of you treating me this way.’

‘What way’s that, sir?’ said Hutchinson, opening his hangdog eyes very wide. One of the constables grabbed Laurie’s hands behind him and clicked the handcuffs closed. ‘You came in, Constable McBurney here apprehended you and applied the bracelets. If anything else happened it was so quick I missed it. Must be that sleight of hand, see? Very fast movers, these circus folk.’

Laurie glanced back at Ma and blinked. She was standing with her arms folded, no pistol in sight.

‘We’ll see,’ said Laurie. ‘The colonel is a close friend of my family. And what you fail to appreciate, what I came here to explain to Miss Turvy tonight, is that it was an accident.’ Suddenly he turned to me. ‘It really was, Dandy. It was pure fluke. I had a good squint at her when she was in the ring, but I just couldn’t tell for sure one way or the other. So I thought I’d go round the back to take a closer look when she came off. She took fright when she saw me, the pony stumbled and … well, I needn’t go on, surely.’

‘Oh, needn’t you?’ said Charlie Cooke. ‘The pony stumbled and what? She was a brilliant horsewoman, voltige, haute école, trick riding, you name it. The pony stumbled and you grabbed her and pulled her off and bashed her head on the ground, didn’t you? That was no “accident”.’

‘This man is lying, Inspector,’ said Laurie. ‘He saw nothing. Nothing happened for anyone to see. It was an accident, I tell you.’

‘It’s a jury you need to convince, sir,’ said Hutchinson. ‘Don’t waste your breath telling me. Now let’s be off, eh?’

‘Might I have one moment?’ I asked. ‘Will you tell me this, Robin? Was it really her?’

Robin Laurie regarded me with a small smile before he answered.

‘I can’t say. It was dark and she fell with her hair over her face. I didn’t look. I can’t say.’

‘You killed her and you weren’t even sure who it was you were killing?’ Alec’s voice was hoarse with disgust but Robin only smiled again and said nothing.

‘Ah yes, but Alec, it was desperate,’ I said. ‘He was so close. Who could blame him for being rather … jumpy, could we call it? … when he had got so close to the prize?’

‘What you talking about, my beauty?’ said Ma. Robin was eyeing me rather more warily now.

‘Seven years,’ I said. ‘Since the influenza. Seven years of keeping his fingers crossed that she would never turn up again and seven years of telling anyone who would listen how very weak his poor brother was, seven years until Ambrosine Buckie – whose body was never found – could be declared legally dead. And then I suppose her father would have died too. How were you going to do that, Robin? How were you going to kill your brother?’

Robin Laurie was breathing as though he had been running, but all he said was:

‘I have no idea what this woman is talking about.’

‘But then came the calamity,’ I went on. ‘With only weeks to go, a chance encounter on a train, a tale of a circus girl, gently born, with a trick pony, who called herself Anastasia. Could it be? Could it possibly?’

Robin Laurie ignored me and addressed the inspector, but his voice was strained.

‘If you are not going to let me go right here and now, Hutchinson, then I demand that we get on with it. The sooner you tell the Chief Constable what you’ve done the sooner he can let me go with apologies and give you the sack. Make no mistake – that’s what’s coming to you.’

‘Aye, let’s go,’ said Inspector Hutchinson. ‘I’m not caring much which way it turns, mind.’ He gave Laurie his most sorrowful look and sighed. ‘I’d be just as happy on half-pay, raising begonias. I’m getting tired of the likes of you.’

The circus folk stepped back to let them pass, all except Ma who bustled forward instead, rummaging in one of her pockets.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘For pity’s sake. If there’s an ounce of goodness in you.’ She thrust a card under Robin’s face and his expression changed. The sneer left and he stared hard at it for a moment, then he lifted his eyes to Ma’s.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell. I just don’t know.’

‘What was that, Poll?’ said Pa after they had gone and we were standing, exhausted, in the ring, staring around at one another.

‘Photograph of Anastasia,’ said Ma, ‘what we got took when first she come to us.’ Pa nodded and began to coil the rope. Bill Wolf helped him. Charlie went to the ringside and fetched a broom, began to smooth the sawdust over again.

Ma saw me looking at the photograph and passed it to me. I looked down at the smiling face, the outflung arms and the strong shapely legs. She was standing on the back of a pretty bay pony, with ribbons in its pale golden tail and a spangled bridle across its starred nose. They were beautiful, both of them.

‘But how could he not know?’ said Alec. ‘Didn’t he see her when he was here that first time? The night he slashed the rope and the swing?’

Charlie lifted his head and stared at Alec.

‘He did what?’ he said.

‘Didn’t he, Dandy?’ said Alec. ‘Isn’t that what we said?’

‘I thought it was Ana,’ said Charlie. Everyone stared at him. He lifted his chin and looked back with a steely glint in his eye. ‘We’ve all been keeping our lips buttoned this last week, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s time we cleared the air, eh, Ma?’

‘You’re right there, Charlie,’ said Ma.

‘Not here in front of everyone,’ said Pa, miserably.

‘I’m with Charlie,’ Topsy said. ‘Let’s get it straight and get it over.’

Charlie took a mustering breath.

‘I suspected Ana,’ he said, ‘when I found the cut rope and the cut swing.’

‘So did I,’ Ma agreed. ‘I wurr sure Ana was behind it.’

‘So I swapped the rope,’ said Charlie. ‘And I never thought of it being too long. Fool that I am.’

‘Why?’ said Pa. ‘Why would you?’

‘I didn’t want her to be sent away. Not before I had convinced her.’

‘Convinced her of what?’ I said.

‘That she should marry me,’ said Charlie, hanging his head. ‘And that her and me could take over this circus and run it together.’ Pa’s mouth fell open and he stared at his brother. ‘With the star of the show in my wagon, I thought nothing could stop me.’

‘That’s why she wasn’t interested in a new act, eh?’ said Bill.

‘Why you hid the swing in our wagon?’ said Zoya, to Charlie.

‘I never meant no harm,’ Charlie said. ‘I was halfway out the tent with it and you all came in the other way. I panicked, nipped out under the walling and it was the first wagon I come to, first place I could think to get it off my hands. I just didn’t want her to be in trouble, didn’t want Tam to send her packing before I had persuaded her.’ He shook his head. ‘God in heaven, the things I’ve done.’

‘We’ve all done things we’re not proud to own,’ said Pa.

‘What about the flour and the balloons?’ Andrew asked.

‘That was me too,’ Charlie said. ‘I thought if tricks were played on Ana no one would suspect it was her behind them.’

‘But how can you have wanted to marry a girl you thought would do such things?’ Topsy said. ‘She can’t have been right circus, Charlie. How could you?’

‘I thought once she was in her place, in charge, she would be happy and she would stop all the games.’

‘And anyway,’ said Ma. ‘It wun’t her at all. It wurr that Laurie. See, Charlie? You don’t need to think bad of your girl what’s not here to clear her name. She was circus through and through.’

I had been thinking hard in the waiting time between Boxing Day and Hogmanay and there was something troubling me: I knew that Topsy’s swing was gone before Robin Laurie ever appeared. I remembered Ma telling me it was missing the first day I had come to the circus, the day that Robin first came to tea. But if there was a choice between blaming him and blaming a poor dead girl who could do no more harm to anyone now, I was with Ma. I said nothing.

‘What a mess,’ said Bill Wolf. ‘What a state we’ve got ourselves in, eh?’

‘If people would just talk to each other,’ said Topsy. ‘If everyone would just say what they’re thinking.’

How like the young, I thought, who have not yet learned that as many hurts can come from secrets shared as from secrets hidden.

‘You’re right,’ said Tiny. ‘I’ll start. You’re my girl, Topsy. The only one for me and I shouldn’t have tried to hide it and make you jealous.’

‘But how could you not see how I felt about you?’ she said.

‘You were friendly to everyone,’ Tiny said. ‘I needed to make sure.’

‘So you flirted with Ana,’ said Charlie. ‘I could have laid you out for that. Making up to her for all to see when I was having to play it so close to my chest, save Tam finding out.’

‘There’s worse things than a bit of flirting,’ Andrew said. ‘Look at me: jumped in up to my neck with the first thing in skirts ever to come near me.’

Tiny, his arm at full stretch around Topsy’s waist, grinned at him until one thought his face would split.

‘God in heaven, boy,’ he said. ‘If I’m not proof that there’s someone for everyone, I dunno who is. Yours’ll come. She’s coming.’

‘Poor Ana,’ said Ma, quietly to me. ‘Bill wanted a ring partner, Charlie wanted to be the boss man, Tam wanted obedience, Tiny only wanted to mend his pride. Nobody really wanted her. I wonder who she wurr, eh? Wonder if she wurr this Lady Amber? She must have been – she recognised him there, didn’t she?’

I shook my head and Pa, who had joined us, gave me a sharp look.

‘I don’t know why Ana left the ring,’ I said, ‘but it wasn’t because she recognised Robin Laurie.’ I nodded at the photograph which I still held in my hand. ‘This is Bisou, isn’t it? The pony Ana brought with her? Well, I’ve been in Amber Buckie’s house and I’ve seen a picture of her and her beloved pony. He was black. So whoever Anastasia was, she wasn’t Ambrosine.’

‘You sure, my beauty?’ said Ma. ‘Certain sure? Don’t seem right, one maid disappearing into thin air and another popping up out of nowhere and them not one and the same. You got a buddy with no past and a buddy with no future, you want to tie them together nice and tidy.’

I could not help smiling at the troubled look on Ma’s face and I should have laid a hefty wager that in the retelling, in the years to come, Ambrosine and Anastasia would indeed be tied tidily together. I had thought from the first that Ma’s stories had had the benefit of an editorial hand.

‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘And I’m afraid that “no future” is probably the plain truth about Amber. Perhaps her note was cryptic and perhaps her body was never found but one can hardly suppose she really has been in hiding all these years. A girl that age running off can usually be relied upon to be home again by morning. No, I think she must have died, by her own hand or by misadventure somehow. It was only Robin Laurie’s desperate hopes that she
wasn’t
alive that ever made him believe she was. With less at stake he’d have been happy to dismiss the news of “Anastasia” without a care.’

‘So,’ said Ma slowly, thinking it through, ‘if it wun’t her uncle she saw, what wurr it?’