Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 138, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 821 & 822, September/October 2011

Showtime by Marilyn Todd

To be a successful historical mystery writer one must be, above all, a good researcher. British author Marilyn Todd told EQMM that she so enjoyed her research for “Showtime” that it has inspired her to plan a month-long trip through America’s West, visiting San Francisco, Bryce Canyon, and Colorado, then following the Snake and Columbia rivers through Utah, Idaho, and Oregon.

With a crack of the whip, the horses hurtled through the parted curtains into the vast oval arena. In a previous incarnation, when it carried payrolls and mail from El Paso to Fort Yuma, there were at least four horses pulling the stagecoach, usually six. But for thrills and spills, and especially romance, nothing beats two gold palaminos. Emblazoned in gilt lettering above the coach’s scarlet-painted doors were the words BRODIE MCLINTOCK’S WILD WEST EXTRAVAGANZA. Before that, it had read WELLS FARGO. Debonair in fringed buckskins, and every inch the showman with his swirling moustache, goatee beard, and shoulder-length hair, McLintock himself rode shotgun beside the driver.

Edwardian London was gripped.

The crowd whistled and cheered as wheels and hooves kicked up the sawdust, the horses’ manes streaming behind them. Inside the coach, paying handsomely for the privilege, two barristers and their wives, one field marshal, and an earl waved enthusiastically through the unglazed windows.

What they hadn’t bargained for, of course, was being scalped.

With bloodcurdling cries, eight Sioux in full war bonnets galloped into the arena and chased after the coach. The barristers’ wives screamed. So did their husbands. Arrows flew through the air, twanging into the woodwork, as the vehicle tried to outmanoeuvre them. Abandoning arrows in favour of spears adorned with genuine scalps, the war party closed in, snarling under their face paint. McLintock raised his rifle and fired. An Indian fell; he reloaded, took aim. Another attacker dead on the ground! To whoops of encouragement, he dropped a third, a fourth, then a fifth, but the braves came on undeterred. Then McLintock’s rifle unaccountably jammed. A gasp of horror filled the arena. People tilted to the edge of their seats.

Sensing victory, a bare-chested warrior broke into a gallop, aiming to take Brodie himself. As he raised his throwing spear, McLintock whipped his pistol out of its holster. Six down, two to go! But before he could reach his backup rifle, the braves had leapt onto each side of the coach. McLintock sprang out of his seat and hauled one onto the luggage rack, but even as they grappled, the other was wrestling open the door. The Sioux on the roof knocked McLintock’s pistol out of his hand. It landed with a thunk in the dust.

“Pa-ha-ska!”

With a triumphant yell, he grabbed Brodie’s long hair, and, heedless of the screams that filled the arena, was on the verge of taking his scalp when McLintock drew his Bowie knife and struck a fatal blow to his heart. As he rolled away, he realized the last brave had his tomahawk raised and was about to cut down the earl. Grabbing the Sioux’s wrist, he scrabbled for the palm-pistol he kept in his boot. With that shot, the stagecoach was saved.

“Bravo!”

“Hurrah!”

“Encore!”

Jessica watched the Indians pick themselves off the ground, brush off the sawdust, and take a bow to thunderous applause. A thrilling end to a thrilling show, she thought, as the audience gave McLintock a rip-roaring standing ovation. She watched the low sweep of his Stetson. The theatrical bow that brought his frontiersman hair tumbling round his shoulders. Outside, the band launched into a robust rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” The smell of cockles, jellied eels, and beer drifted through the turnstiles, as the stall-holders geared up for brisk trade.

“Hey, Brodie!” A tall, heavyset individual with a broken nose and a battered, ill-fitting homburg called out to his boss. “Lady here’s lookin’ to hook up with the show, but I told her you don’t hire no schoolmarms.”

“I fear I did not make myself plain, sir.” Backstage, surrounded by the greasepaint and the warpaint, the sequins, feathers, and the buckskin chaps, her English accent and formal attire came over prissy and stiff. “I am not a schoolmistress.”

Was it her voice, her appearance, or the fact that he’d heard his name called that stopped McLintock in midstride? Whatever the reason, she found her cheeks reddening as dark eyes assessed the golden curls bunched under her hat, past the grey and white pinstriped blouse buttoned tight to the neck, to continue on down to where the shine on her boots peeped out from under her narrow-waisted black skirt. For a sweeping gaze, it seemed to spend a long time on the carpetbag at her feet.

“What kind of work might you be looking for, Miss—?”

He spoke in a low, Texan drawl that also seemed to linger for an unnecessarily long time.

“Tate. Jessica Tate.” She squared her shoulders in an effort to shrug off his penetrating stare. “What kind of work are you offering, Mr. McLintock?”

“I told her, Brodie.” The man with the broken nose sniggered. “Unless she’s got some understandin’ of calf ropin’, stunt ridin’, or lasso work, there ain’t no place in this show for a woman.”

“Well, now, that’s not strictly true, Joe.” When he crossed his arms over his chest, the muscles strained the supple leather of his jacket. “I need a Cherokee squaw, a pioneer wife, and I’m still short of an Annie Oakley — style sure-shot.”

“My handwriting is neat, I am sharp with figures, I can type and keep records and operate a copying machine,” she said levelly. “Indeed, I am particularly proficient with the mimeograph stencil.”

“Impressive qualifications, if I may say so. Very impressive indeed.” McLintock tipped the brim of his Stetson to prove it. “Thing is, I have a manager, Ned Fenton, who attends most admirably to those matters. As a matter of fact, we have recently acquired a new Yawman and Erbe roller copier to chum out the flyers you have doubtless seen nailed to what seems like every tree trunk in London.” He spread his hands. “It is just unfortunate, as far as my current requirements are concerned, that Mr. Fenton does not feel qualified to pass himself off as a Cherokee squaw.”

Jessica had seen Mr. Fenton at the entrance gate. In Norfolk jacket and derby hat, he had the air of a butcher about him. He struck her as the type who would slurp his soup. From the corner of her eye, she was aware of the crowds disgorging into the temptation of the food stalls and the even more profitable sideshows.

“I do not feel qualified to pass for a Cherokee squaw, either, Mr. McLintock, and I have never picked up a rifle in my life.” She swallowed. “But I am certain I will make an admirable pioneer wife.”

She’d passed the settlers’ cabin as she crossed Wimbledon Common, where one team of workmen was erecting the tiers of a grandstand, while another built up mounds of earth to make hillocks. Whatever reenactment they were planning, she did not feel the role would be unduly taxing.

“I’m sure you will, Miss Tate, I’m sure you will.” He shook her gloved hand in both of his. “Welcome aboard Brodie McLintock’s Wild West Extravaganza, the show that brings the frontier to life, puts the wild into West, and where the dead drop twice a day but always get up.”

In that, however, McLintock was wrong.

Very wrong.

Buffalo Bill wasn’t the first to introduce the Wild West to city slickers, but he was the first to popularize it, touting everyone from Sitting Bull to Wild Bill Hickok, via Geronimo, Annie Oakley, and Calamity Jane, who boasted that she never went to bed sober or with a dime in her pocket. Staging these spectaculars proved an enormous outlay, but this was nothing compared to the takings he was raking in. Adding horseback performances from gauchos, Arabs, Mongols, and Turks, Buffalo Bill took his show to England, for the late queen’s Jubilee, before going on to tour Europe for four years, eventually returning home richer than Croesus.

Given the profit margins, the idea was quick to catch on, breeding fierce competition in its wake. As a result, Wild West shows became more circuslike with every passing year, so that, by the turn of the century, the name of the game was sensationalism with a capital S. Not one to be left standing, McLintock’s evening performances were no simple repeat of the matinee. True, the Mexicans still kicked off the proceedings with some impressive stunt riding, wearing even more impressive costumes studded with rhinestones. But, as the sun set, and naphtha flares were lit one by one round the compound, there were new thrills to exploit. Like the Cheyenne war dance beneath the totem pole, made even more sinister in the flickering flames. Or the vaqueros, handsome in black jackets slashed with scarlet, twirling flaming lassos as they galloped. Whilst not forgetting Brodie’s own display of skill: splitting playing cards with his bullets.

“For some reason, ladies don’t stay long with this show,” explained a riverboat gambler, straightening his maroon frock coat and shiny silk waistcoat. “And without a female taking the role, this here’s our first opportunity to stage The Settler’s Cabin this side of the Atlantic.”

Jessica recognised him as one of the gunslingers from the afternoon shootout, although then he had been dressed top to toe in black.

“Pardon me, ma’am, if I don’t show you myself.” With a grin, he flipped the deck in his hand so fast that the cards blurred one into the other. “I’m just about to have holes punched in my queen of diamonds and my ace of hearts, but see that Romany caravan?” He tilted his wide-brimmed hat in the direction of the horses’ compound, where the painted wagon nestled among a forest of tepees, chuck wagons, and the old Wells Fargo stagecoach. “That’s the properties cart, and that, ma’am, is where you’ll find your costumes.”

Behind them, the band started up with “I wish I was in Dixie...”

“Excuse me.”

Whistling “hurrah, hurrah...” under his breath, the cardsharp swaggered into the arena, where a painted backcloth of a Mississippi riverboat had been unfurled by the vaqueros during their final lap. Jessica imagined him double-dealing aces and queens round the gaming table, until Brodie McLintock exposed him as a cheat by shooting holes in the palmed cards.

Unhooking the stable doors on the caravan, she was puzzled why women didn’t stay long with the troupe. After all, they couldn’t all have the same motive as her...

Round, like a barrel, with oak-panelled walls inlaid with gold leaf, the caravan would have offered all the comforts of home, and then some, in its heyday. Sumptuous velvet curtains lined the lattice window, floral wallpaper covered the roof-frame, and, in the winter, a Queenie stove under the chimney would have kept it cosy and warm. Now, though, it was nothing more than a glorified storeroom, full of costumes and props, travel chests, and crates, all kept fresh with sprigs of lavender tied to the hooks.

Jessica could see its attraction. Dwarfed by buffalo-hide tents, with their painted symbols, smoke flaps, and birch stalks sticking out of the top, and alongside canvas-covered carts that forged routes across the Great Plains with such a heavy toll on human life, it made a striking contrast. Look at us, the whole collection screamed: luxury, exoticism, mystery, austerity, savagery, romance rolled into one. And you had to hand it to McLintock: Every inch of his show was choreographed to the last detail, right from the jammed rifle stock to the tomahawk poised to strike down the earl.

Rummaging among the six-shooters and hatchets, the rolled-up backcloths of desert scenes, and dolls, Jessica could hear first the gasps, then the applause, as McLintock’s shots rang out. Hauling out a checked cotton frock with its built-in camisole and apron, she buttoned herself into it. To say she was nervous about performing in front of thousands was an understatement. She had been hoping to find work of a more discreet nature. Typing. Clerking. Keeping the accounting records straight. And with the show newly arrived in London, she felt sure McLintock would have needed help with administrative issues. Instead, she was embroiled in dramatic reconstructions of a nation, life, and era that she knew nothing about. But — she swallowed. She was no novice when it came to acting. Not by any means...

Her palms left damp patches on the cotton where she’d smoothed her skirts. Pull yourself together, this won’t do, she told herself. You wanted a job, and now you have one, and a well-paid one at that. Just find yourself a hat, then go out there and be a brave, bold pioneer wife! Sifting through the exotic array of Indian tunics, sombreros, and saloon-girl feathers, she unearthed a poke bonnet with a wide front brim, pulled it into shape, then had a thought. Those dolls—?

Backtracking through the trunks, Jessica dug out a china beauty that had been wrapped in newspapers to protect it during the long transatlantic journey. A pioneer wife in jeopardy would jerk at the heartstrings. But a pioneer wife with a baby would have the audience biting their nails! In another chest she found a petticoat that could pass for a shawl. Pretty and pink, it was the perfect shade for biting nails to the quick. Out in the arena, the gambler had been run out of town, his palmed cards duly peppered with holes, and now a choir of Negroes was calming the audience down.

“Way down upon the Swanee River...”

Plenty of time before her call, and to calm her nerves, she flicked through the news. Dated July of last year, from a place called Birmingham, Alabama, the first paper was open at a review of the Extravaganza, when it had been playing there. The reviewer seemed particularly impressed with McLintock’s reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand, and also with the Sioux chasing a herd of real buffalo. Jessica supposed it would have been just too difficult transporting bison across the Atlantic.

“All the world is sad and dreary, everywhere I roam...”

The lament had reduced the audience to silence, and she could almost see the lumps in their throats. Just as McLintock had planned it. She turned the page. A boarding-house brawl that ended with one party sustaining a broken nose, the other two broken teeth. A fire in a warehouse that contained railroad equipment. The authorities strongly suspected arson, but remained thankful that no one was hurt. There was an account of a girl’s body found close to the river, listing her description, which, if anybody recognised, could they please contact the police, who suspected foul play. And, finally, the story of a guard who had interrupted a man robbing a jeweller’s, having seen him kneeling over the safe as he checked the rear window. Birmingham, Alabama, Jessica decided, must be quite a town.

With the choir shifting the mood once again, she leafed through the other reviews. The Boston Globe was equally effusive in its praise, ditto the Chicago Herald, as were editorials from as far afield as New York, Houston, and New Orleans.

“Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me—”

The audience clapped to the rhythm.

“—I come from Alabama, with my banjo on my knee.”

Jessica read on. Two women trampled by a runaway team of horses. An explosion on a ferry. One Mary Donaghy found strangled close to the docks, police were appealing for witnesses. And that was only Chicago! In Boston, a revolt by clam-diggers over harvesting rights, in which shots were fired and injuries sustained, while the seventeen-year-old daughter of a prominent surgeon had been found strangled in her home. According to the police report, she had been assaulted. And Texas was no less exciting. Escaping from the auction house, a steer tossed two men as it went on the rampage, a boilermaker was arrested, trying to cash stolen bond coupons, and two young girls were found dead with their throats cut, on waste ground outside—

“I’m coming, I’m coming, for my head is bending low,

I hear those gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.”

The song was Jessica’s cue. Dropping the papers, she hurriedly tied the bonnet ribbon under her chin, grabbed the baby, and ran to join the rest of the cast.

“Nervous?” a voice drawled in her ear.

He had changed back into buckskins and boots, which now jangled with spurs. Was there ever a moment when he was not the flamboyant showman, but just plain Brodie McLintock?

“Your manager has been coaching me all afternoon.” Ned Fenton might look like a butcher, but he had the flimflam of a snake-oil salesman and the determination of a Staffordshire bull terrier. “As a consequence, he has given me the confidence to play my part well.”

“You surprise me, Miss Tate. I thought you were already well into your role.” In the darkness, she could see his teeth bared in a grin. “Though I confess, I am curious as to how long you will remain with us.”

“I’m sure you are, Mr. McLintock.” Her own smile was no less dazzling. “I heard how ladies don’t stay long with this show.”

The grin dropped. “It’s time to take your place on the stage.”

Most of the lights had been extinguished, until only a handful hissed away in the corners. Silence had descended on the darkness, as the audience wondered what was about to unfold. Then a lantern appeared at the window of the settlers’ cabin. Inside, they could see the settlers’ son doing his sums at the table. Mother was rocking a babe in her arms. Two smaller children could be seen stretching and yawning as Mother settled them down for the night.

From one of the mounds, a coyote howled. From another mound came the bleet of a deer.

A burst of strategic lights revealed swarms of Indians snaking over the mounds on their bellies, making animal calls. Mother and son looked up, just as an arrow thudded through the window into the boy’s homework book. “Children! Hide!” cried the pioneer wife. “We are surrounded!”

The boy lifted the lantern, illuminating not only the interior of the cabin but... oh no! An Indian on the roof, about to shoot down the chimney!

“We are done for,” cried the wife. “Help! Help! We are done for!”

Suddenly, gunshots rang out and the attacker on the roof fell forward, clutching his throat. In galloped a rider astride a black mustang, picking off Indians with every shot of his rifle. Arrows hissed through the air, twanging into the walls of the cabin, while the pioneer wife clutched her child to her breast. One by one, the attackers dropped, until — praise the Lord — not one Indian was left alive on the ground.

“Husband! You saved us!” cried the brave settler’s wife. “My hero, you saved us all!”

At which point, every lamp was relit, bathing the arena in light and glory and thunderous applause.

As a script, Jessica thought, taking her bow, it left a lot to be desired. For entertainment, it was second to none.

So why didn’t women stay long with this show?

Of course, there was more to Wild West shows than dramatic reenactments. One of the biggest attractions was the sideshows. No reputable company would even consider touring without a selection of freaks and oddities to pull in the crowds. Worse, any that didn’t include the mummified remains of at least one Wild West outlaw were derided as second-rate outfits.

“His name was Ernie McGillycuddy,” a Texan voice drawled in Jessica’s ear as she hovered outside the red-and-white-striped booth where, for sixpence, you could view the mummy from just two feet away. “Twenty-eight years old when he died. Shot in the back playing poker in Kansas.”

“You are not making capital out of a murder victim, Mr. McLintock!”

Taking her elbow, stoutly encased in frontierswoman cotton, he swept her past an eager queue of bowler hats and bustles, of little girls with ringlets and widows in stiff black bombazine.

“You tell me, Miss Tate.”

He ushered her inside, where the dessicated corpse had been propped upright in a pinewood coffin. Like the price of admission, space at the sideshows was also at a premium.

“As a bandit,” he said, “Ernie had a talent for being spectacularly inept, holding up two trains that had already offloaded their payrolls, a coach that was carrying nothing but letters, and a bank that had been robbed only four days before.”

He broke off to sign a couple of programmes. Needless to say, he did that with a flourish, as well.

“In every instance, your ‘victim’ killed and maimed without conscience. Three guards, one driver, and two bank clerks died on the spot, all of them married with children. Two more succumbed to their wounds a week or so later, both of them writhing in agony to the end, I might add.”

“Cor.” A small boy, his eyes bigger than saucers, leaned over the rope to poke McGillycuddy’s gaunt face.

“Shouldn’t do that if I were you, son.” McLintock’s voice carried beyond the boy. Beyond the confines of the booth, for that matter. “Thing is, for most of these outlaws, there was never anyone willing to foot the funeral bill. And without relatives claiming the body, the law said they couldn’t be buried.”

“Cor!” The boy’s eyes popped out on stalks, and he wasn’t the only one hanging on every word.

“That meant the undertakers were obliged to embalm them, so they’d prop them up in the corner, sometimes in the window even, hoping that someone, someday, might recognise these desperados and take them off their hands.”

“But they didn’t?”

“No, son, they didn’t. Sometimes, though, children like you would wheel them up and down the streets in their go-karts, because, see?” McLintock hooked one leg over the rope and lifted the body out of the coffin. “Lighter than balsa wood.”

The crowd goggled as he waved the outlaw in the air like a doll, and Jessica could almost hear sixpenny pieces being dug out of pockets and purses. Even those who hadn’t previously been interested were fighting for a place in the queue.

“But the reason you can’t touch him, son, is that the morticians used arsenic in the embalming.” With a swirl of fringed buckskins, McLintock set Ernie back in his coffin. “Can’t have McGillycuddy adding any more to his death toll, can we? And that’s the thing, folks. A lot of these Wild West shows charge you to see mummies dug up from Chile or Peru, that aren’t real outlaws at all. But not Brodie McLintock. No, siree. Everything you see here is genuine, and though this is the only mummy we have, you’ll find wax models of Billy the Kid and Jesse James inside a real-life Texan jail in the tent on the right as you exit.”

If McGillycuddy’s criminal career was marked by mediocrity, his role as an exhibit more than compensated. Silver was chinking at a rate that would have turned the outlaw pea-green with envy. And not a dead bank clerk in sight.

Outside, the crowds swarmed like brightly coloured bees in the torchlight. Feathered hats mingled with straw boaters and cloth caps, which in turn rubbed shoulders with Prince of Wales checks and crisp governess starch, while children pulled at their mothers’ skirts in excitement, regardless of whether their little legs were encased in delicate white stockings or itchy woollen socks. Providing you could find the price of admission, such shows cut a swathe right through the class structure. What they did not do, it would seem, was deter pickpockets. Jessica watched the metal spike of a police constable’s helmet weaving through the throng, its sunburst badge glinting in the lamplight.

“Everything you see here is genuine?” she echoed softly to McLintock. “How enlightening.” She pulled the brim of her poke bonnet low over her eyes, to protect them from the glare of the flames. “I could have sworn your One and Only Baby Yeti in Captivity was an orang-outang with its fur clipped. How much I have to learn about the Himalayas.”

When the showman laughed, all eyes turned upon him, and was it surprising? White Stetson, long hair, swirling moustache, goatee beard? Jessica imagined many a staunch matron would go to bed tonight with one of his fliers under her pillow.

“I confess you have me there,” McLintock said, twirling his pistols to the delight of the crowd. Up close, she could see that the polished walnut grips were intricately carved and inset with either ivory or mother-of-pearl, she couldn’t tell which. “Hand on heart, though, Miss Tate,” he said in a voice that only she could hear, “where I can, I remain true to the part.”

She flashed him a radiant smile. “So Hoki the Bear Boy really is the result of a frontier wife’s unfortunate encounter in the woods of Montana?”

McLintock holstered his pistols, tipped his hat to the crowd, and steered her roughly out of the way.

“Hoki was born with hair covering every inch of his body,” he rasped. The toothsome smile was still firmly in place, but there was a hard glint to his eyes. “His parents abandoned him, they were ashamed. The Shoshone, the Crow, the Blackfeet, the Sioux, they all thought he was cursed, so what was I supposed to do? Let him starve?”

He jabbed his finger at the long queue waiting to see the poor creature billed as Half-Human, Half-Grizzly, All Tame.

At the gate, a girl with a snub nose and bold brown eyes was engaged in what seemed to be an argument with Ned Fenton. It culminated with the manager tipping his derby hat back in anger and pointing, in no uncertain terms, for her to leave.

“Hoki could have joined a freak show,” McLintock was saying, “where he’d have been one of numerous exhibits, but with us, Miss Tate, he is a star. A celebrity. He can call the shots on who can stroke him or not, and he makes money, Miss Tate. An awful lot of money, and if that’s not true to the part, perhaps you might tell me what is.”

With a quick “Pardon me, sir” to the man at the front of the adjacent queue, he pulled her into a different booth, where, for yet another sixpence, you could hear, in the survivor’s very own words, the Spine-Chilling Tale of the Man Who Was Scalped by Indians... and Lived!

“I believe you’ve already met Idaho Joe,” he said smoothly.

The thickset man with the broken nose was no longer wearing that terrible Homburg. Without it, though, one could be forgiven for thinking that a piece of lumpy, bumpy, shiny red leather had been hammered onto his skull with nails, and Jessica couldn’t help it: She recoiled. Worse, because he was still gripping her arm, McLintock was aware of her flinching.

“Sorry to disrupt you, Joe.” He waved a hand in apology. “Just showing the new lady around.

“People suffer,” he growled, once they were outside. “They suffer the most terrible tragedies and misfortunes, but the point is, they survive. They survive and then, for their sins, they endure — and in my view, it’s better to make capital out of tragedy than let them turn to catgut whisky or rotgut gin, so don’t you ever patronise me again, Jessica Tate. I will not stand by and have my team mocked. Not one of them, do you understand?”

With a flourish he removed his Stetson and performed a deep bow.

“Rehearsals for tomorrow’s show start at eight A.M. sharp. It sure is a pleasure to have you aboard.”

Jessica was right about the caravan. It did offer all the luxuries of home. Her home, as it transpired. Being the only female in the company, she had been afforded its privacy and comfort, and indeed the mattress proved every bit as deep as it appeared. The cotton sheets were crisp and cool, the pillow had been stuffed with the softest duck down, and the embroidered counterpane was also clean and scented. For all that, there was no chance of sleep. Beneath the little lattice window, staring up at the stars, thoughts and emotions tumbled like dice.

She refused to dwell on what had gone before, and why she’d joined the show. And she dared not even contemplate the future. The only thought that occupied her mind was that, six years ago, she had exchanged one life for another, in the hope that the dawn of the new century would bring peace, contentment, and some sense of belonging. Instead, it brought on a nightmare—

Outside, the horses in the compound snickered. An owl hooted from an oak tree on the Common.

She tossed and turned, trapped in fear, and pain, and loneliness...

Was it loneliness that prevented women from staying with the troupe? The isolation of being one female amid the camaraderie of so many men? Perhaps it was the old “gypsies, tramps, and thieves” stigma that drove them away? Certainly the—

Jessica jerked bolt upright in the bed. Dear God. In every one of those newspapers, from Chicago to New Orleans, hadn’t there been reports of women murdered? She swung her feet onto the floor and lit the lamp. With so many props and costumes cluttering the space, she could not recall exactly which of the trunks or packing cases the porcelain doll had been wrapped in. But after an extensive search, one thing was clear.

Between dashing off to catch her cue and returning with her carpetbag, someone had been inside this gypsy caravan.

And removed every single newspaper account.

“When you said you wanted a Cherokee squaw, a pioneer wife, and that you were still short of an Annie Oakley-style sure-shot, Mr. McLintock, you might have mentioned that you expected one woman to play all three.”

“I might, indeed,” he replied smoothly. The sun was sinking, casting long shadows over the Common. “But with a performance looming and a vacancy to fill, my only priority lay in not letting people down. My apologies, Miss Tate, for not making myself plain, and if you are unhappy about dressing up as a Cherokee, I will be happy to stand in for the role myself.”

If he imagined candour and smarm would take the wind out of her sails, he was wrong.

“It is not the clothes I object to, Mr. McLintock.” Even though, beneath the beaded deerskin tunic, headband, and false braids, Jessica’s own mirror didn’t recognise her. “It is the fact, sir, that, to my mind, Raven Feather looks remarkably like Grey Wolf, the Blind Cherokee Seer who was divining futures for sixpence a shot just two short hours ago.”

“Like poets and minstrels of antiquity, Miss Tate, consider it more a figure of speech. A euphemism for men of wisdom, who fasten their gaze upon inward enlightenment, and whose visions make them blind to the everyday world.”

The way it rolled off his tongue suggested he’d been taken to task more than once on this matter.

“Then I can only pray he is not blind to the board I am strapped to.”

As a change to the programme, it was decided that, between the riverboat gambler and the log-cabin finale, Raven Feather would hurl hunting knives as close as possible to a human target, who would be tied, arms outstretched, to a wooden frame. Which, as it happened, would also have its edges doused with kerosene and set alight.

“Has Raven Feather ever missed?”

Out in the arena, the band was wishing it was in Dixie, while the gambler flipped his deck.

“Just show teeth, Miss Tate.” The man who was just about to expose the card-sharp drew his pistols and twirled them in a now-familiar gesture. “It doesn’t matter how hard you screw your eyes up, the audience can’t see them in the dark.” He clucked his tongue. “But they sure can see a broad smile from the grandstand.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” she hissed, as he holstered his weapons and strode off towards the eager crowd. “Has the old man ever missed?”

Brodie stopped, turned on his heel, and grinned. The sort of grin, she decided, that could be seen, not just from the grandstand, but from the other side of London. “Honestly, Miss Tate. Why do you think I had that board painted red?”

The next few days passed uneventfully enough, if you can call flaming lassos, stagecoach attacks, and Cheyenne on the warpath uneventful. But it’s surprising how quickly you get used to seeing men with raw, red patches on their heads instead of hair, or men with hair all over their bodies and no bare patches whatsoever. And how accustomed you grow to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” competing with “Amazing Grace,” “Sweet Rosie O’Grady” and the throb of Cherokee drums. More than anything, though, what impressed Jessica was the professionalism of the group. To get arrows landing exactly where you want them when two palaminos are bumping your target lickety-split over sawdust isn’t easy. If the Sioux archers weren’t making or mending arrows, they were firing them in practice, just as the Mexican riders and the vaqueros tirelessly rehearsed their stunts against the clock, while McLintock and the gun-fighter/gambler practised timing to a fault.

There was much to discover, as well. For instance, how the steel springs on the stagecoach made it rock like a cradle, rather than bouncing its passengers about, as Jessica would have expected. And how public execution wasn’t always conducted with civility outside the courthouse doors. More often than not, the guilty parties would be lynched from ranch gates, trees, or beams inside the stables. Either that, or shot beside an open grave, tied, if they were lucky, to a chair.

She also began to appreciate just what hardship the frontiersmen and women had to suffer. Rocking like a babe you might be, on the road out of Santa Fe. But you’d be wedged knee-to-knee, from dawn to dusk, with belching men and sweaty women clutching bawling babies, and if the ground was rough or rocky, you all got out and walked. Leather blinds at the windows, rather than glass, which would break, ensured the journey was either draughty and cold or else unbearably hot, and farmers led even worse lives, never mind the Indians. The real enemy was the weather, where drought, floods, and tornadoes wiped out years of planning in an instant.

But under Brodie McLintock’s watchful eye, the West was not so much wild as glamourized and tamed, where every single bullet found its mark. Under the strict march of routine, time sped by — helped, Jessica suspected, by the fact that she was living an artificial life in artificial surroundings. But there was solace in being carried with the current. Humming Negro spirituals while sewing blue beads on a deerskin tunic served to cushion her from the world beyond the compound. A cold, dark, cruel, and soulless world, and whilst all bubbles eventually have to pop, for now, among the wigwams and sombreros, the ponies and the warpaint, reality was feeling the draught of fifteen hunting knives whizzing past her hair.

“I’ve had some thoughts on how to improve the knife-throwing act,” McLintock told her one fine Saturday morning.

Out in the arena, a cowboy with swarthy good looks flicked and cracked a rawhide lash to make patterns in the ground. Idaho Joe was up a stepladder, nailing back a sign that had been knocked over in the melee. The rest, including Jessica, were doing what they did most mornings after breakfast: picking up the debris of the night before.

She shot him a sharp glance from the corner of her eye. “I have a feeling, sir, that my mood will not be enhanced by what you are about to tell me.”

One thing she had learned about the showman: Nothing stood still with him. Only two days ago, he had introduced a new money-spinner at the sideshows. Have Your Portrait Taken With a Genuine Cheyenne Chief.

“Considering,” she said, “that Soaring Eagle is a Sioux. And he’s not a chief, either, come to that.”

He shrugged. “Cheyenne sounds more noble, less warlike, and besides...” He grinned. “Since Soaring Eagle cannot read, he doesn’t know that he’s Cheyenne.” “Allow me to recite a poem I once heard.

There are tricks in all trades, even yours and mine,

And even showmen, sometimes, tread too close to the line.”

McLintock leaned down to collect the discarded ticket stubs that littered the fairground floor like snow. “I have a feeling my mood will not be enhanced by what’s coming next, either.”

She ignored him.

“We paid to see a marvel, a cherry-coloured cat,

Whatever else we passed by, we knew we must see that.”

The shells of roasted chestnuts crunched underneath their feet as they worked together to collect the litter.

“The thing was nothing but a con-trick, we wanted our money back.

But we were then reminded... that cherries, too, are black.”

“Now that, Miss Tate.” He wagged a playful finger. “That is precisely the kind of temperament that inspired my modification to your act.”

“Let me guess. You intend to pin me to a flaming wagon wheel and spin it while Raven Feather throws his knives.”

McLintock let out a throaty chuckle. “Hardly. I was simply going to institute a touch of comedy during the introduction.” He affected his showman’s stance and voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you now Raven Feather and his lovely wife, Three Ponies. Ned will then pipe up: Three Ponies? That’s an unusual name, isn’t it? To which I shall reply, Not if you’ve ever met her, Mr. Fenton. Nag, nag, nag...”

For the first time since she could remember, Jessica laughed.

“Exactly,” he said. “Because it strikes me that laughter is the one element that has hitherto been missing from the — flaming wagon wheel?” He flicked his long hair over his shoulders. “That is an inspired suggestion, Miss Tate. First-rate. In fact, I’ll have a word with Raven Feather right now. See how he feels about a moving target. It will certainly have the audience — Hey, are you all right? Miss Tate? Jessica?”

His voice came down a long tunnel. She couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t even breathe...

“Fine. I’m fine. It’s just a dizzy spell, from bending down so much.”

“I didn’t mean to tease. There will be no danger from the knives,” he assured her earnestly. “The act—”

“No, no, I realize that.” Most of it was skill, but there was also some degree of trickery involved. “I just... just—”

In her hand, the newspaper she’d picked up was shaking like an aspen. The Wimbledon Times had, quite understandably, given the Extravaganza a stupendous review. Superlatives peppered the account like grapeshot. But news was news, and certain things took precedence. The front page, for instance, whilst making mention of the show, was primarily dedicated to two separate murders in the area. One, the grisly discovery of a man who had been bludgeoned to death in his own home. The killing must have taken place some time ago, since it was only when neighbours noticed an unpleasant smell that the police broke down the door and found the body. The second reported the murder of a young woman who had been found strangled on the Common.

“Ah. That.” McLintock took the paper from her shaking hand. “Read about it myself. Nasty business.” He rubbed his jaw. “Poor girl was here only a few days ago, pestering Ned Fenton for a job.”

Jessica remembered her. Snub nose. Bold eyes. Now lying in the morgue...

“He refused to employ her, although Lord knows a couple of saloon girls handing out fliers in the suburbs wouldn’t go amiss. Froths and feathers are the best advertising money can buy.” McLintock’s mouth pursed downwards. “Thing is, though, and as much as I hate to speak ill of the dead, girls like that bring nothing but trouble.”

Jessica focussed on her toes. “Girls like what, exactly?”

“Prostitutes, Miss Tate. Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s how it is with a life on the road. Girls think they can make easy money by joining a travelling show, and, of course, they can. Often, men who visit these sideshows do so in the hope of experiencing a rather more personal thrill, but this Extravaganza is family entertainment, Miss Tate. Such men are doomed to disappointment, and if one happens to vent his frustration in murder beyond the boundaries of our fence, it is tragic. But by no means uncommon.”

“You’re dismissing the killing?”

“Great heavens, no.” Even when he threw his hands up, the gesture was theatrical. “But I take pains to run a respectable company, and yes, ma’am, we stretch the truth on occasions, but we don’t break any laws.” He clucked his tongue. “Those who do are not welcome with us.”

With an ostentatious salute, he turned on his black, booted heel and strode away towards the booths.

Jessica watched him go. Took two deep breaths. Then brought up her breakfast over the headlines.

Swing low, sweet chariot—

It was the “in between” time. That deep, dark, tranquil period that exists only once the last, defiant spurt of adrenaline has popped, and before the first, faint spike of recuperating energy has stirred. The limbo hour, when yesterday seems a million miles behind, and tomorrow feels like it will never come. The loneliest, most desolate of times.

— coming for to carry me home.

The takings had been counted, recorded, and padlocked away. The last oil lamp, the last bonfire, the last naphtha flare was extinguished long ago. All that remained of four thousand seething souls was a lingering smell of stout, saddle soap, and stale fish and chips, mixed with tobacco, cheap scent, and carbolic. Soft snores emanated from the cluster of wagons and wigwams. A horse snickered and shifted. The corner of a sideshow tent flapped languidly in the breeze.

Swing low, sweet chariot—

No one was singing. The haunt was merely echoing softly in Jessica’s head. Along with a sense that the ending was near.

She watched the booth signs creaking back and forth beneath a sky that was low, and dark, and menacing. Wondered how long before the first jagged spike of lightning would cut through the blackness. The first rumble of thunder would ricochet over Wimbledon Common...

— coming for to carry me home.

“Can’t sleep?” The Texan drawl was little more than a whisper. “Or is it the storm?”

What could she say? She hugged her arms to her body to stop them from trembling. “You know how it is with us showgirls, Mr. McLintock. We get overexcited at times.”

He didn’t smile. “You’re shivering.”

“It’s a cool night.”

“Here.” He pulled off his jacket and wrapped the buckskins around her. They smelled of cedar, and were softer than petals.

For a long time, they stood facing each other. Her, digging her nails into her flesh. Him, staring at her with the clear steady gaze of the marksman. In the distance, she heard the clop of a hansom cab crossing the Common, before the night swallowed it up.

“Your carpetbag,” he said eventually. “When Joe called me over, said you were looking for work, I couldn’t help but notice.”

She remembered the length of time he’d stared at it.

“No one arrives with so few possessions, especially someone as educated as yourself. And then, when you accepted an acting role, instead of a clerical position, I was convinced.”

She had to ask. “Of what?” She had to know.

“That you were a police agent.”

Whatever else Jessica had been expecting, this wasn’t it. “Is that why you baited me?”

“No, Miss Tate. I baited you because I liked you and because you have spunk, and for that very reason, I tidied your caravan and made you more comfortable than I normally do for my brave young pioneer wives. The difference,” he grinned, “was the lengths I went to, to convince you how upright and honest we all are.”

“You tidied my caravan?”

“Seeing all those old newspapers scattered about, it seemed a good time for a clear-out.”

Thunder rumbled, way in the distance. A long, low drumroll of doom. “They were your reviews.”

“They were history,” he corrected. “And the past, as I’m sure you know, only holds a person back.”

She swallowed. “Each of those papers carried an account of a woman’s murder.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He rocked on his heel. “Fairs and circuses have a bad reputation and always attract the wrong crowd. That’s why, to answer your earlier question, women don’t stay long with this show. They come for glamour and romance, then find it’s bloody hard work. Being propositioned day in and day out’s the last straw.” His mouth twisted. “Don’t tell me you suspected a mass murderer amongst us?”

“Of course not,” she lied.

A zigzag of lightning lit up the sky, throwing him into silhouette. “But,” he said slowly, “we do have a killer amongst us.”

He was no Cherokee seer, he admitted, no reader of minds. But the hollows under her eyes, the drawn cheeks, the clothes buttoned up tight? “They spoke of tension, Miss Tate.”

The tension a police agent might feel, for example, expecting to be unmasked any moment.

“Or,” he added, almost to himself, “someone on the run.”

But what could a well-educated, respectable young woman be escaping from? What would make her pack so few things in a hurry? Hide her face from the policeman patrolling the crowd?

“Until it occurred to me that the best place to hide something is in plain sight.” He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and drew out a page tom from the Wimbledon Times.

“Your reaction this morning had less to do with the discovery of that young woman’s body. More that your husband had been found bludgeoned to death in his own home, after neighbours alerted the police to the smell.”

The blood—

She had never seen so much blood—

Even when he beat her until she passed out—

“What are you going to do?” she whispered.

McLintock stroked his goatee beard. “Between shows today, I asked around. Seems the dead man had the reputation of being a foul-mouthed bully who spent his wife’s inheritance on booze, then sent her out to work to earn the money. Which kind of got me wondering whether those buttons mightn’t be hiding bruises.”

Sometimes they were the size, and shape, of a footprint. Other times, he’d wrap a lump of wood in a towel, so as not to leave marks. Sometimes he just enjoyed hearing the crack of her ribs. Always, always, he raped her. And what made a young woman, recently orphaned, think marriage would offer comfort and peace?

“I asked you a question, Mr. McLintock.”

“So you did, Miss Tate, so you did. But my problem is this. I have my Cherokee squaw and my pioneer wife, but I am still short of an Annie Oakley-style sure-shot.”

“What—”

“It’s all trickery, of course. I can’t risk losing paying customers to stray bullets. But you seem to have an aptitude for these things, so I was thinking. Maybe I could teach you to shoot a rifle over your shoulder in time for our next venue, which is Paris? And then, if you feel you’d like to discuss it further, we could talk it over in Rome.”

“Paris?”

“You’d have to travel with Raven Feather, as Three Ponies, his wife. Nag, nag, nag and all that.” He looped his thumbs in his belt and tossed his long showman’s hair over his shoulders. “But no one checks the Indians’ papers, so what do you say, ‘Jessica Tate’? Is it a deal?”

Something wet trickled down her face. Was it the rain? Was it tears? Was it both?

“Thank you,” she wanted to say, but when she looked up, there was nobody there.

Just voluminous buckskins draped round her shoulders. A loud crack of thunder. And a sense of friendship, belonging, and peace.