The Winter Ground

13

Determined to show Hugh that his capacity to do without me was more than matched by my utter indifference as to whether he were a feature of my day, I went straight back to the winter ground from Cairnbulg on Tuesday morning and arrived to find the circus in a state of some uproar. There were raised voices in the stable tent, sounds of childish weeping from the Prebrezhenskys’ living wagon and the unexpected sight of Bill Wolf stamping up and down in front of the performing tent, his brows thunderous and his boots making the very earth shake beneath them. Mrs Wolf could just be seen watching from behind the lace in her wagon window, a pained expression upon her broad face, and Tommy and Little Sal were sitting on the steps gazing at their father with a mixture of curiosity, trepidation and awe.

Ma Cooke popped her head out at the sound of my motor car and came over to meet me, moving at a trot, wiping her hands dry on her skirt as though upon an apron which her evident agitation had made her forget she was not wearing.

‘So, here you are back again and where were you when we needed you so?’ she scolded me as she arrived at my side.

‘What’s happened?’ I said.

‘The police have gone. Accident, they said. Only to be expected, they said. What were we doing wasting their time a-calling it anything else?’

‘But you didn’t want them to stay,’ I said. ‘So what’s wrong?’

Ma’s eyes flashed to Bill Wolf before she said anything. He had ceased his stamping up and down and was now stamping over towards us.

‘Fie, fi, fo, fum,’ I said under my breath. ‘What on earth’s up with Bill?’

‘The good Lord knows and He won’t tell the likes of me,’ said Ma. ‘I don’t know what we’re at, my beauty. I’ve known that man there fifty years and more and been in the wagon with thon forty-five and this is the first time either of them’s puzzled me in all my days.’

‘“Thon” would be Pa?’ I hazarded.

‘He’s gone too far now,’ said Bill as he drew close to us. It was a considerable effort not at least to take a step back from him. With his shoulders thrust forward, his fists bunched and his voice an angry rumble he made one think of those thrilling gods from Norse Stories Retold; thrilling, that is, when presented in the form of a little woodcut showing how Thor got his hammer, but rather terrifying when standing right before one, larger than life, clearly fuming. ‘What’s he playing at, eh? He’s overstepped the mark and no mistake about it.’

‘Isn’t that what I’m telling Mrs Gilver? I don’t know what he’s at. I can’t work it out for my life. And there’s Inya, Alya and Ilya breaking their little hearts.’ Ma sounded almost ready to join the Prebrezhensky girls with some weeping of her own.

‘But what’s happening?’ I insisted, hoping that I did not sound as shrill as I felt inside.

‘He’s lost his senses,’ said Ma. ‘Lost his circus sense anyways. He’s said he’s going to shoot the pony and won’t hear a word against it. As soon as the police told him what they’d made of it, he decided. I tried to change his mind and Charlie tried, then we both tried together and he just got madder and madder and he won’t listen to anyone.’

‘But I won’t stand for it,’ said Bill, his temper rising again on the swell of his booming voice. ‘I won’t be made a fool.’

‘Shoot Harlequin?’ I said. ‘Kill him?’

Ma nodded miserably.

‘But… but what about Princess Zanzi?’

‘Who?’ said Bill.

‘Tigress what bit my pa when I wurr a little maid,’ Ma told him.

This was very troubling news. The hasty shooting of hapless little ponies was common enough in my world, of course, where fond fathers of suddenly crippled daughters were wont to reach for their guns, but Pa Cooke killing off a highly trained and surely valuable rosy-back prad, at a time when Cooke’s Circus was far from thriving, and when the lost girl had been such a thorn in the collective Cookes’ side? The only explanation I could see for that was not one I welcomed: the police had chalked up Ana’s death as an accident and happily wiped the chalk dust from their hands and Pa was falling over himself to boost the official version. Surely, he would only do that if…

‘Oh no,’ said Ma. ‘No, no, no, don’t be thinking that there. Pa would never.’

‘You give me goose pimples sometimes, Ma,’ I said. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

‘Twas wrote on your face like love and hate,’ said Ma, and for once I should rather have thought her psychic, since to have his every thought ‘wrote on his face’ is as unhelpful to a detective as to a card player.

‘And you, Bill,’ I said, mustering my courage and turning to look up at him. ‘What think you? And why are you so angry?’

‘I think no harm of Tam Cooke,’ said Bill, rather unconvincingly to my mind. ‘And don’t you go twisting up my words on me. I just want what’s best for us all. All I ever did. And killing Harlequin is just burning pound notes, to my mind. I won’t stand for it.’

‘I’m not sure I shall either,’ I said. ‘Where is he, Ma?’

Pa Cooke, as Ma indicated with a jerk of her head, was in the performing tent so squaring my shoulders I strode off to have it out with him. He was standing in the middle of the ring in what I had come to think of as his rehearsal dress, long boots and flashing whip but coatless and with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, shirt buttons open piratically low upon his chest, giving an effect close to pantomime. Certainly his audience seemed not far from booing and hissing. Topsy, arms folded very tightly across her chest, was looking stonily ahead without a trace of her usual twinkles. Zoya and Kolya, just behind her, were slumped forward, elbows on knees, staring coldly at Pa and muttering now and then to one another in their guttural Russian, a language so suited to gloomy muttering that one does wonder how Russians do anything else, such as telling jokes or wooing maidens, and surely a Russian wedding with the vows repeated in those doleful lumps of sound could not be festive.

Pa saw me enter, but only cracked his whip and turned his back. I slipped into Alec’s row of seats and shuffled along until I was sitting beside him.

‘You’re back,’ he said. ‘Have you heard what’s happening?’

‘Ma just told me. Do you have any idea why?’

Alec gave a short laugh ‘I’m up to my eyebrows in artistic temperament and haven’t the faintest of clues about anyone. Even Miles is beginning to seem a bit odd, frankly.’

‘Quiet,’ barked Pa, from the middle of the ring. ‘Quiet when we’re working.’

‘News to me,’ said Topsy and Pa treated her to a glare. Then he whistled earsplittingly shrilly through his teeth and Tiny and Andrew came bowling into the ring on two unicycles, with Charlie Cooke trotting after them pushing a wheelbarrow. Jinx, in the barrow, looked his usual irrepressible self but Charlie’s face was mutinous and a moment’s viewing told me why.

‘This is instead of Ana and Harlequin,’ Alec whispered, as Tiny and Andrew sped around the edge of the ring, juggling coloured balls, while Charlie and Jinx chased after them, never catching them up.

‘Charlie won’t think much of being the chump,’ I said. ‘I take it he can’t ride a unicycle himself, then?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Alec. ‘But look at Bill Wolf: packed up his medicine balls and crossbows and took to the accordion with never a grumble.’

‘He’s grumbling plenty today,’ I pointed out. ‘Stalking up and down like a thundercloud out there.’

‘That’s because Pa chucked him out of the tent. For lip.’

‘Can he do that?’ I was amazed. I had grown used to the idea that the circus folk were as civilised as Alec and me, only sprinkled with a little strangeness, as a kind of garnish.

‘Apparently,’ said Alec. ‘Because he only had to say it once and off Bill went. It seems the boss can do whatever he likes.’

‘Even as far as killing ponies,’ I agreed. Most unfortunately, there had happened to be a moment’s silence just then while Tiny and Andrew balanced, arm in arm and wheels still, and so my words reached Pa Cooke’s ears.

‘Right,’ he yelled, ‘that’s it. Clear the tent. Everybody out.’

‘I’m not presenting to an empty tent, Tam,’ said Charlie. ‘You clear them out and I go too.’

‘That’s right,’ said Topsy. ‘You always said an act needed eyes and ears right through from first reckoning, Pa. Like you always say an act needs noise to rise above if it’s any good.’

‘You stick to what you know, lass,’ said Pa. ‘It’s only an animal act that needs to practise noisy.’ Then he seemed to realise what he had said and shut his mouth firmly, glaring round, daring anyone to make something of it. Andrew Merryman, of all people, took the dare.

‘I can only offer again,’ he said. ‘If you would let me go and get Harlequin and show you what Tiny can do…’

‘Arabesques as elegant as I can make them,’ said Tiny, jumping down from his cycle and striking a pose on the sawdust, with one short leg stuck up in the air, foot daintily pointed. ‘I’ll even wear a tutu and tights. Owt for a laugh, me.’

‘Because it’s like you always said, Pa,’ Andrew went on, ‘bringing the cycles out in the spec is going to kill our first spot.’

‘Enough,’ said Pa. ‘Out with the lot of you. You’ – he jabbed a finger at Tiny – ‘and you’ – another jab in Andrew’s direction – ‘two spots and the spec from everyone and don’t tell me I didn’t say that up front. The spec’s my worry and the spots are yours.’ Now he turned and scowled at Topsy. ‘I’ll not be bending over to help anyone with a second spot ever again.’ He wheeled back again. ‘And Charlie? Brother or none – I’m the boss of Cooke’s Circus and nobody talks to me that way.’

With one last poisonous look around the tent he marched away to the ring doors and disappeared through them.

‘Golly,’ said Andrew, which made Topsy laugh and eased some of the tension.

‘Only don’t you think his exit would be stronger wi’ a puff of smoke?’ said Tiny. ‘I’ll suggest it later, maybe.’

‘This is no time for jokes,’ Charlie snapped at them. ‘That lass is still in not in the ground.’

The other clowns and Topsy looked at their feet.

‘That is not the only why is no time for laughing,’ Zoya said. Kolya nodded gravely and turned to me.

‘Mee-zuss Kilvert,’ he said. ‘You talk to him, heh? One more act go pfft! and we all gone.’

Between the beseeching look on his face and the knowledge that he would not understand my excuses anyway, he was hard to refuse. So, reminding myself firmly of what Ma had told me – that Pa Cooke’s bark was all and that his bite was toothless and hardly deserved the name – I hopped over the ring fence and followed him.

‘Mr Cooke?’ I called, scurrying through the backstage warren. ‘Mr Cooke? Wait, please. I need to talk to you.’ I caught up with him, rather unfortunately, just at the back doors, almost at the precise spot where Anastasia had lain. ‘Mr Cooke,’ I said, panting slightly. ‘Ma told me about Harlequin, but I could scarcely believe it. Why would you do such a thing?’

‘I’ve no call to be giving you an account of myself,’ he said. His tone was lofty, but the anguish upon his face belied it.

‘I’m not sure I can agree,’ I told him. ‘I am engaged to make all well at Cooke’s Circus and you said that I was to expect co operation from everyone. Are you exempting yourself from the requirement?’ It was hardly unexpected that his eyes widened at that; my own heart was thumping at my temerity and I was not unconscious of the whip coiled in his hand. Did I only imagine it twitching?

‘I never knew what nonsense Ma was at getting you in here anyways,’ he said. ‘She gets these feelings of hers most days and twice on Sundays.’

‘But this time she was right,’ I said. ‘The rope and the swing and…’

‘Aye, this time,’ said Pa. ‘So I thought it’d do no harm to let them know you were here watching and reporting back, let them know who’s boss, in case they were forgetting.’

‘But don’t you see? The police might be wrong. Whoever played the tricks might have killed Ana.’

‘Never, never, no,’ said Pa, contradicting himself rather. ‘Your own babbies saw what happened, didn’t they? And a pony that can’t be trusted in the ring is no good to anyone and I can’t afford to keep him in hay, not with things the way they are.’

We had arrived at his wagon and since he did not say goodbye to me, but only mounted the steps and opened the door, I took it upon myself to follow him. Inside Ma was perched on one of the armchairs and Ina Wilson was ensconced in the other. Ma’s face was drawn with worry, but Ina greeted us with a smile and continued stroking Bobbo and feeding him raisins with a great show of cheerful nonchalance.

‘Missus,’ said Pa Cooke politely when he saw her.

‘Well?’ said Ma to me. I shrugged. She turned to Pa. ‘And didn’t Old Nellie once crush a lad in her trunk when my pa took her calf off her too quick and she was broken-hearted there? And didn’t she turn out to be the best elephant as ever was in the ring and out of it? Flatties could ride her, little chavs and raklies could run under her belly and she never turned a hair.’

‘Have the clowns finished?’ said Ina.

‘Aye, they’re off,’ Pa replied, ‘if you could call them clowns. If you could even call them circus. And my own brother too. I never thought I’d see the day when being the boss meant less than that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘When my old granddad was the rum coll at Cooke’s his word was law, and the whole place run a sight better for it.’

‘Your Grandpappy Cooke bought a unlucky white dog what Old Man Chipperfield himself couldn’t do nothing with, Tam,’ said Ma. ‘And he finished up in the ring, in a silver halter pulling a little carriage full of doves. My Auntie Magda told me. I think I might have a photograph of him somewhere in my cupboards there.’ She looked about at the panelled walls of her home as if about to leap up and begin rummaging for it. ‘Snowball. Swiss mountain dog, he was. You must remember him yourself.’

‘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.’

Grant turned on a sixpence.

‘What? They can’t even bite their tongues and say they liked her now she’s dead and gone? Oh, that’s cold, madam, isn’t it? And the poor pony! Still, I daresay there’s a lot of eating in it and they’re all foreigners, aren’t they?’

I was in bed that night, still reliving the last thrilling moments of The Eagle, when I heard a scuffling and whispering outside my door. Bunty wrinkled her brow at me, wondering whether to bark, and I shushed her, put a marker in my book and waited, hoping that whoever it was would fail to summon the courage and creep off again. I often wish we had a housekeeper at Gilverton, for maids in torment have woken me in the night fairly regularly over the years having run through their other options and found them wanting. I was led by my own mother, upon my marriage, in supposing a cook and butler quite sufficient for the household’s needs, but I overlooked the role of the housekeeper as a kind of matron to the lower servants; a service my own very motherly mother never minded taking upon herself but one which chafes at me like horsehair.

This evening, I was not to be lucky and at length there came a timorous knocking. Bunty sat up, towering over me on the bed, and wriggled her rear end against the blankets in anticipation.

‘Come in,’ I called. ‘If you must,’ I added under my breath, and I turned up the gas and laid my book aside.

It was not however a stricken girl and her quaking companion who stole inside, white-faced and knees knocking, but my own two sons, whose knees under the striped flannel might be still but who were certainly white-faced enough, with invisible lips and purple smudges under their eyes, although whether from trepidation or from killing deer was not immediately clear. I should like to think that the sight of their prey crumpling to the heathery ground could turn them pale, somehow. I do not mind the stag shoots in summer but I loathe it when my menfolk go off to shoot does and come back grinning.

‘What is it?’ I asked them. ‘Where’s Nanny?’

‘We wanted to ask you something, Mother,’ Donald said.

‘Can’t it wait till morning?’

‘Not really,’ said Teddy. ‘Maureen said that Nanny told her that Mrs Tilling said at supper that Grant told everyone at tea that you said to her that… is it true, Mother? Has Harlequin been shot?’

‘Is this what can’t wait until tomorrow?’ I asked them.

‘You must tell us, Mother,’ said Donald. ‘We can’t sleep until we know.’

‘And probably not after either or ever again.’

‘Now, don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘If there is one thing I cannot abide it’s sentimentality about animals. It’s one thing that Daddy and… that is, Daddy and I are in complete agreement there.’ Donald and Teddy were not bold enough to glance at Bunty, asleep again now, with her head on my knees, but I could tell that they wanted to. ‘Yes, Harlequin is to be shot,’ I went on rather more brusquely than otherwise I might have, ‘although he hadn’t been when I was at the circus earlier – but there is no call for you two to moon about it.’

‘We’re not mooning,’ said Donald, and he did sound genuinely stricken, I must say. ‘Is he… Are they shooting him because of his funny turn? Because he ran off?’

‘You must understand, boys,’ I said, rather more gently, ‘that a circus pony has to be as solid as rock, it’s not like a naughty pony that you or I might put up with because we love him and just make sure to wear a hat and keep off the hard roads. If one is standing on his back on one tiptoe and cantering round and round one must be able to trust him with one’s life. Literally, with one’s life. The one you should be sorry for is poor Ana. Think of that.’

Both boys bowed their heads, letting their long forelocks hang in front of them. Donald nudged Teddy and Teddy nudged Donald back. In the end they both looked up again together.

‘But he might not be shot yet?’ Teddy said.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, losing patience. ‘I shall find out for you tomorrow.’

‘Because he didn’t,’ Donald said, suddenly rushing forward and putting both hands flat on the bed. Bunty rolled over to look at him. ‘He didn’t have a brainstorm or even anything. He didn’t take off, Mother.’

‘And we don’t want him to die.’

I stared at them for a moment before speaking again.

‘Are you telling me that you lied?’

‘Well, you’ve always taught us not to say that someone lied, Mother. You always taught us to say that they “told an untruth”.’

‘Yes, Donald my dear, thank you for the lecture,’ I said, ‘but I’ve also always taught you not to tell untruths, haven’t I? You’d better explain exactly what happened.’

‘It was Mr Cooke,’ said Teddy. ‘After everything went wrong that night. After Inya screamed and everyone left and you told us to stay put, remember? Well, we stayed put and Mr Cooke came back, snorting like a dragon and glaring, thrashing his whip and he saw us and asked us what had happened.’

‘Well, he asked us if we lifted the box,’ said Donald. ‘Except he called it the dash box.’

‘Do you mean that he swore at you?’

‘Like anything. He was beside himself. Worse than Rumpelstiltskin.’

‘Don’t try to be to be sweet, Teddy. This is hardly the time. What letter did it start with?’

‘B,’ said Teddy.

‘All right, so he asked you if you had lifted the bloody box, then. Don’t be prim, boys – it’s most unappealing.’

‘Yes, he asked us that and honestly, Mother, if you could have seen him. He was towering over us, smacking his whip against his legs and gnashing his teeth. He looked ready to kill us if we admitted that we had.’

‘So you lied. You said you hadn’t.’

There was a long, confirming silence.

‘And then you lied to me.’

Another silence.

‘And then – good Lord – you lied to the police and when Inspector Hutchinson saw through it and tried to penetrate those bed knobs you have on top of your necks instead of heads, you toned down the nonsense but stuck with the lie.’

Great fat tears of shame were wobbling on Teddy’s lower lashes by now and Donald’s shoulders had slumped so far that I wondered his dressing gown didn’t slip off them and land on the floor.

‘I shall have to tell Daddy.’ Four beseeching eyes met mine. ‘At least. And Inspector Hutchinson. If not your housemaster too. I am thoroughly disgusted with the pair of you.’ The tears spilled at last and splashed down Teddy’s pyjama front. Donald screwed up his eyes and scrubbed his nose with the heel of his hand.

‘Will we go to jail?’ said Teddy. Donald, with a faint return of spirit, told him to shut up but looked at me for corroboration.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But your names will copied down in a… in a big ledger at the police station and kept there, on file, in case you ever do anything so naughty ever again.’ I was only trying to frighten them but as I spoke I began to wonder whether it might not be true and I hoped that I should be able, in conscience, to keep it from Inspector Hutchinson after all. ‘Now, without embellishments or omissions, if you please, will you tell me what really happened?’

‘Of course,’ said Donald. ‘We’re really very sorry, Mother. What actually happened is that Anastasia came past and gave us the nod.’

‘Meaning we had to lift the box for her to go out next time round, you know.’

‘So we did and off she went and we put it back again.’

‘And how did she look? When she nodded to you?’

They considered this for a moment and it was a relief to me to see that they really were trying to remember and not just deciding what to say.

‘She looked a bit alarmed, didn’t she, Ted?’

‘Well, I’d say surprised, rather than alarmed. Alarmed is too dramatic-sounding. I’d say she was unpleasantly surprised.’

‘I agree,’ said Donald.

‘Honestly? She’d had some kind of nasty surprise? You’re not just-’

‘No, Mother, we’re not just anything. We’ve learned our lesson, really.’

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘It’s Harlequin who’s learned your lesson, poor thing.’

At this they drooped again and I packed them off to bed, hoping that they would toss and turn all night thinking about him.

I myself spent a good hour, turning this way and that and punching my pillows until Bunty gave a long protesting moan and persuaded me to lie at peace. What a pair of goops I seemed to have introduced into the world, a world already well served with them and in no need of two more. A pair of what the army calls yes-men with withering disdain (even though it produces most of them), kowtowing to Pa Cooke, making up fluffy stories for me, not having the courage to come clean to Hutchinson and only being stopped in their tricks by soppiness about the damned pony. Well, I was jolly well going to let them sweat for a few days before I told them it would be our secret. I did not care to hear Hugh’s views on the matter and of course, the police and housemaster had only ever been a little – warranted – bluster of my own.