The Winter Ground

14

All the same, I set off rather earlier than usual the next morning and felt a great weight lift off my chest when I tiptoed into the stable tent and saw Harlequin tugging at his hay.

‘Oh, good boy,’ I told him and rubbed the stiff nap on his nose. He gazed at me from melted-chocolate eyes and chewed calmly. I patted a few of the liberty horses too, having been brought up not to have stable favourites, but they were not much interested in the giving and receiving of affection – typical beauties, who often do prefer to be admired from afar – and, although they submitted, their black eyes flashed and they paddled the ground with impatience until I gave up and returned to Harlequin.

‘What a lovely boy,’ I told him. ‘Best of the bunch.’

‘He is that,’ came a voice from inside the stall, making me jump. Groaning, Pa Cooke rose from the straw and brushed himself down.

‘Have you been here all night?’ I asked him.

‘Not the first time,’ he said. ‘Least I could do.’ He stroked Harlequin firmly and I thought I could see the sheen of a tear in his eye. ‘And I’ll not have been missed in the wagon, anyway.’

‘Well, I have very good news for you,’ I said. Quickly, I brought him up to date with the true history of Anastasia’s last exit and my offspring’s failings. ‘The question is: do we need to tell Inspector Hutchinson?’ Pa Cooke watched me with held breath. ‘Would he begin to doubt his conclusion if he knew that Anastasia was not out of control of her horse at all but had decided to leave the ring of her own accord? We already thought it unlikely that she would fall so badly, but if Harlequin was in his usual gentle frame of mind… do you see?’

‘I do, I do,’ said Pa. ‘Aye. If she was in control of her pony. I do see.’

‘But on another point,’ I said. ‘At least this chap is reprieved.’ There was a silence at that. ‘Isn’t he? I mean, there’s no need to do away with him now.’ Still Pa said nothing. He opened the stall gate and stepped out to stand beside me.

‘Time was a boss-man could do what he liked and never dream of ocht but the respect that’s due him,’ he said, which was cryptic enough to puzzle me, but he went on and things became clear. ‘Times being what they are, though, if I go back on my word now there’ll be nothing but smirks and whispers all winter, and all of them saying I’m an old man and needing my leisure.’

‘I had no idea circuses were such hotbeds of mutiny,’ I said.

‘No more had I, lass,’ said Pa.

Thus, somehow, Pa Cooke wrung out of me an agreement that he would spare Harlequin but that, to safeguard his standing amongst his rebellious crew, it would all be done on the quiet-like.

‘And speaking of which,’ he concluded, with a great air of magnanimity, ‘I don’t see no need to go blabbing on to the police. Your secret – your lads’ secret, I should say – is safe with me.’

‘I’m not at all sure I want their grubby little secret kept safe,’ I said. ‘They have a lesson to learn, after all. And besides…’ I wound down into silence; what I was thinking was that the very fact of Pa’s eagerness to sweep the new-found facts back under the carpet was a sign that he should not be allowed to. ‘But very well,’ I concluded at last, ‘for the time being. But on one condition only. That I continue, that is to say redouble, my efforts. And that if I make any material discoveries, any discoveries ad hominem, we dissolve our pact.’ Mr Cooke stared at me so I paraphrased. ‘If we find out who done it I shop him.’ My sons – or their reading tastes, at least – were good for something.

‘See this though, missus?’ said Pa, rubbing his face roughly. ‘What worries me is that, if you go lifting stones, you’re going to find a sight more than you’re looking for, you know that?’

‘And so I put the stones gently back down again,’ I said.

‘Shall I give the view halloo?’ said Alec, who was waiting for me outside, propped against the wing of the Cowley, filling his pipe.

‘A cautious tally-ho, anyway,’ I said, ‘although I’m annoyed to hear that I hide it so badly. Come with me.’

As I led him to the performing tent, I regaled him with the overnight news. He murmured, ‘Oh, jolly good, Dan,’ to hear of Harlequin’s ensured survival and gave a restrained ‘Dear me’ in reference to my sons, but otherwise bore the revelations so calmly that I wondered if he had missed the point of them.

‘You should give bulletins on ticker-tape, really,’ was his overall pronouncement once I was done.

‘You do see, don’t you,’ I demanded, ‘the implications of Ana deciding to dash out of the ring? She must have seen something which frightened her.’

‘Or offended her or angered her, yes.’

‘Oh. You do see.’ I am grateful, as a rule, that Alec is so swift on the uptake. ‘So we must ask ourselves what she saw.’

‘The fastest set in all of Perthshire, the Wilsons, you and me,’ said Alec.

I sat down on the bench where I had been on the night of the show and looked around me. The tent was as dankly cold as a dungeon today, impossible to believe that it was wood and canvas and that it had ever dazzled and resounded with lights and song. Alec sat down and leaned back against the bench in the tier behind him.

‘She had seen me before,’ I said. ‘So I’m in the clear and I’ll do you the honour of assuming it wasn’t you who put the willies up her. But it could have been anyone else.’

‘Unlikely. They’re an unprepossessing lot and but it’s hard to see why any of them should cause panic.’

‘If she knew the person and didn’t want to be recognised.’

‘Who, though?’

‘Someone from her mysterious past, I suppose. An old enemy? A wronged lover? Someone she had harmed in some way?’

‘Seems pretty thin,’ said Alec. ‘But if you’re right, we’d be down to three possibilities.’

‘Would we?’ I said. ‘That’s quick work. There were dozens of us.’

‘But only Robin Laurie, Albert Wilson or Ina Wilson could have slipped out without being seen. All the others were in front of you and me.’

‘But then she knew the Wilsons already – or at least had met them, had seen them.’

‘Had she? Are you sure?’

I thought about it briefly and the possibilities were most appealing. ‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘Maybe not, because something’s up with Ina. This different mood she’s been in ever since the murder, if murder it is, is bothering me. If she had spotted her old enemy Anastasia around the camp but hadn’t been spotted back, and had planned to bump her off… and actually it makes one wonder about Mr too. About the whole set-up, I mean. It’s always seemed odd that he’d dragged a circus all the way up here and marooned them. What if he did it to get Anastasia into his clutches?’

‘Albert Wilson?’ said Alec, grinning. ‘A ravager of maidens and a murderer of them? Come off it, darling. Robin Laurie, perhaps, but not little Mr Wilson.’

‘But it can’t have been Robin,’ I said, ‘because even though Ina slipped out for a moment she would have seen him either going or coming back again, wouldn’t she? And actually, she’d have seen Albert too. And anyway, why would Robin Laurie kill a circus rider?’

‘Why would anyone? Why would Ina Wilson? Or Albert? But there at least your point about his wife seeing him can be batted away. Wouldn’t she lie for him? If Albert Wilson enticed the circus here to bump off Anastasia – another fragrant expression, Dandy; I do cherish them – perhaps his wife knew and approved the plan.’

‘But why on earth would they let Robin Laurie fill the place with guests? And why would Albert pick such a moment to do it? And such an unlikely way too.’

Alec lifted his hand and shushed me, frowning as he does to let me know that he is thinking.

‘Perhaps,’ he said at last, ‘Albert Wilson planned to kill Anastasia. Ina knew and approved. Albert saw Laurie and Co. as just what they were – distractions, camouflage – and that’s why Ina was so livid to have Laurie arrive! But it worked and Ana is dead and that’s why Ina is full of the joys.’

‘But Robin Laurie would have seen Albert leave the tent. And anyway, no one in his right mind would hatch a plan to kill someone bare-handed by bashing her head against the frozen ground.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ said Alec. ‘Perhaps he had a knife or a rope but he didn’t need to use them. Perhaps he is hugging himself in delight at his luck.’

‘Revolting!’ I said. ‘And why exactly would Robin keep quiet?’

‘No reason at all that I can imagine,’ said Alec. ‘But we’re going round in circles, Dandy. Let’s at least find out if the Wilsons had met her. And she them.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I need to go to the castle anyway. I want to borrow their telephone and ring home.’

Alec looked enquiringly at me.

‘I need to speak to… Oh Lord, a groom, really. But how could one engineer that? I suppose it’ll have to be Grant, sworn to secrecy. As though she needed another stick to beat me with.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Alec said.

‘Harlequin is coming to stay with us until all of this is over,’ I explained. ‘But to spare Pa’s blushes, he’s being removed from Benachally in the knacker’s van.’

‘Is there such a thing?’ said Alec.

‘A splendid one,’ I told him. ‘Peter McTurk – a black van with gold writing. You must have seen it. He ranges the length and breadth of the county but he lives in Bridge of Cally not five miles away. So I need to warn the head groom and beg him to keep quiet for me.’

‘I should say you do,’ said Alec, wide-eyed, highly diverted. ‘A pony being delivered out of the knacker’s van and into the stables at Gilverton? Hugh would explode, darling. Literally explode. You’d be a widow by tea.’

Albert was at home and so Ina, inevitably, was in her chair, under her rug, with her shawl about her shoulders and her feet up on a stool. Even still, how could Albert Wilson fail to see the change in her? Not only were her cheeks still blooming, her movements had an animation about them I had never seen; she plaited the fringes of her rug and polished the gilt studs on the scrolls of her chair arm with a restless fingertip and was altogether quite unlike the girl who always before had lain on her chaise like a length of dough in its tin, her hands in her lap as dead as a pair of empty gloves forgotten there.

Albert smiled cautiously at Alec and me but, for a wriggling, awkward moment, no one spoke.

‘Any news of a funeral?’ said Alec at last. As an opener in the general sense it was a bit of a brick, but for our purposes I thought it an excellent one.

‘Poor girl,’ said Albert. ‘Thursday. Christmas Eve. Of course, I’m going to foot the bill and she will be buried here.’

‘That’s extraordinarily generous of you,’ I said, grasping the opportunity to get straight to the point. ‘You had got to know her well, then?’

‘No,’ said Albert Wilson. ‘Not at all.’

‘You mean you’d never seen her before the show that night?’

‘Oh, I’d seen her. I had a short conversation with her one day. I asked about her horse and she was quite rude in reply. Really most impolite which… why?’ he finished abruptly, staring at me. It was quite a convincing tack: if guilty, surely he would either have refused to answer or have demanded an explanation for the question right away. This had the air of him thinking on his feet and voicing his thoughts innocently as they came.

I wished I had had the chance to mull over my next move with Alec in private, but I was almost sure I was right. I saw no reason that an innocent Wilson should not hear the truth and, on the other hand, if he did have something to hide his reaction would be worth getting. So I cleared my throat and spoke up.

‘I’m investigating the murder,’ I said. ‘For the Cookes.’ And I let it settle, watching Albert very closely, before going on. ‘I was engaged to investigate another, although possibly related matter, but then the murder happened and I… folded it into my brief.’

‘You’re invest…’ said Wilson. He was gaping like a cod. ‘Murder? But it was an accident. The police have gone. We’re having the funeral and Mr Cooke has even said that he’ll put on another show. How can you be speaking of murder and why would you… even if… what…?’ He ran out of breath or ideas, or perhaps both.

‘I think the police have got it wrong,’ I told him cheerfully. ‘And if I find any solid evidence I shall go and tell them so.’

‘You astonish me,’ Wilson said. ‘I can hardly credit it.’ He stared and blinked for a bit, but went on at last: ‘As I’m sure you will appreciate, I sincerely hope the police are right and you are mistaken, but I shall give you every assistance.’ There was something almost noble about the way he said it. ‘Now, why did you want to know if I was acquainted with- Oh, my!’ Albert Wilson rose to his feet as the penny dropped as though he and it were on a see-saw. ‘Oh, dear! Oh, my!’

‘Just to strike you off the list of suspects, naturally,’ said Alec, which only upset Wilson even more.

‘List of suspects?’ he wailed and sank back down. It was quite some time before he roused himself, but when he did the noble note was back mixed with just a pinch of petulance. ‘I cannot tell you anything about the unfortunate girl. I didn’t know her at all, only spoke to her that once. I don’t remember anything else. Mrs Cooke told me about the artistes – she’s a prodigious talker – but there were no introductions.’

‘As we thought,’ I said, still very brisk. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Wilson. That’s no end of help.’ I had been hoping that my tone of dismissal would see him off even though I was the guest in his house and indeed he rose to his feet again and, bowing slightly, took off at a trot to where the spiral staircase led to the sanctuary of his business room. I caught Alec’s eye as he left and we exchanged an agreement. That, we were both assured, had been completely genuine. Albert Wilson was not our man.

‘Poor Albert,’ said Ina, when he was gone. ‘You have a mischievous streak, Dandy, don’t you.’

‘And now, for the sake of completeness, you understand,’ said Alec, ‘how about you, Mrs Wilson, if you don’t mind? What can you tell us about Anastasia?’

‘I adored her,’ said Ina. ‘I adore all of them.’

‘You did know her then? You had talked to her and she to you?’

‘Of course,’ Ina said, looking rather puzzled at the question. ‘I had become very close to her, as a matter of fact. She and I could have been great friends.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I found her difficult the only time I spoke to her at length.’

‘She was circus,’ said Ina. ‘No less part of it for not being born there. More so, if anything. It takes a splendid kind of girl to do what she did, wouldn’t you say?’

‘So,’ said Alec, when we were alone again. ‘We believe Albert.’

‘Oh, Albert!’ I said, unable not to laugh at the memory.

‘Do we believe Ina?’

‘I’m less sure,’ I admitted. ‘There was something very odd about what she said, or at least about the way she said it, and I never saw any sign of this bosom friendship. Over-egging the pudding, if you ask me, and only making herself look more suspicious in the end.’

‘It’s easy enough to check,’ said Alec. ‘Someone must have seen them if they had been together enough to get as chummy as all that.’

I could hardly remember the time when I had looked around the little ring of wagons and found it so cosy and charming. Now, they pressed inwards, each little window like a single eye watching the others. The circus people were going about their business with their heads bent and their mouths drawn down and every door was closed tight. My hand shook as I knocked at the Wolfs’ wagon, the nearest to Ana’s and the obvious place to start.

Lally Wolf was sitting on her heels in the middle of the floor rummaging in a small trunk and sending wafts of camphor into the air.

‘Here they are,’ she said, dragging out a pair of enormous black trousers and holding them up. ‘I’ll get a suit for Tom out of these no trouble. Funeral’s tomorrow and my babbies haven’t a stitch of black to their names.’

‘I’m sorry to be disturbing you, Mrs Wolf.’

‘No, you’re fine there,’ she said. ‘Life goes on. We’ve a show to do right after we lay her, you know. Life goes on with the good and the bad all mixed in together.’

‘A show?’

‘Our show,’ said Mrs Wolf. ‘For them Wilsons. Like what we was always meant to.’

‘Actually, it was the Wilsons I wanted to ask you about. Well, Mrs Wilson, anyway. About her friendship with Anastasia.’

‘What friendship’s that?’ said Mrs Wolf. ‘My wagon looks right over at Ana’s and I never saw that Wilson donah going round there, and no more did Bill neither, because he’d of said – gossip that he is and he took an interest in the lass. Too much of a one, if anyone’s asking me.’

Bill Wolf treated me to a long and speculative look, when I approached him.

‘The Tober-omey’s donah?’ he said. ‘What’s got you on to that?’

‘Do you know anything?’ I asked him. ‘If you really know something for sure, Bill, you must tell me. In all conscience, you must.’

He shook his head.

‘I know plenty and I say nothing,’ he rumbled. ‘I’ve learned my lesson. You stick your neck out and it gets you that.’ He snapped his fingers in my face, turned on his heel and left me. ‘Anyway,’ he said, over his shoulder, ‘Charlie Cooke’s the one to ask about Ana. Not me.’

‘Oh, can you not just leave us be?’ said Charlie. ‘Let us lay her to her rest. It’s bad enough having to go straight from the graveside to do a show.’

‘It does seem callous of Mr Wilson to ask you,’ I said. ‘And if Mrs Wilson was fond of Ana I can’t understand her letting it happen.’

‘Never you mind about Wilson,’ said Charlie. ‘It’ll not be him making us all jump.’

‘Your brother?’ I guessed.

‘He thinks he’s showing himself strong,’ said Charlie. ‘Same as with those lads of his – down on them so hard, he lost them. And that prad. The whole show.’

‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves,’ I said half to myself.

‘That’s it exactly, missus,’ said Charlie, and his eyes filled with tears.

‘Mr Cooke,’ I said. ‘If you know something definite, you can tell me in the strictest confidence, but you must tell me. I can tell Inspector Hutchinson and we can stop the funeral.’

That made him look up at me. His eyes were still shining but he smiled.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘That’s your way, isn’t it? Killing each other for a sideways look. But it’s not circus.’

‘Well, to be fair,’ I said, ‘it’s not anyone.’

‘What? I read the papers, you know. Affairs, inheritance, insurance, blackmail. Never a Sunday goes by but there’s not some babby killing its own pa for money or some chav squeezing the life out of his lady love for dancing with a sailor. But it’s not the circus way.’

With some difficulty, I swallowed my affront.

‘So what did you mean?’ I said.

‘I’m a disappointed man, missus,’ he said, ‘never married and never will now, and I’m old enough to know that life isn’t a fairy tale. Or I should be anyway. My brother’s the boss of this show and if I can’t give him all the loyalty and buttoned lips he deserves then who can, eh? I’m old enough to know better.’

‘Rather older than him, in fact,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘Actually the head of the family, isn’t that so?’

‘Oh, you heard that, did you?’ said Charlie Cooke. ‘Well, it’s no secret. Aye, and I thought as late as this it might all come good for me.’

‘How’s that, Mr Cooke?’ I asked him, but he only shook his head and sighed.

‘No fool like an old fool,’ he said.

At first I could not see Topsy; the ring was empty, the air still, and then I jumped at the sound of her voice floating down from the dome of the roof.

‘Are you after me, madam?’ She was knotting ropes on to the beam.

‘A brief word,’ I said. My voice sounded strange from the way my head was thrown back, very deep and threatening, not at all conducive to a fruitful interview. ‘Are you up there for the duration?’ I said. ‘Or can you come down?’

‘If only,’ said Topsy. ‘Way things are these days I wish I could just stay up here out of it all. Mind out there, madam, a minute.’

I stepped back towards the ring fence and Topsy sent two ropes tumbling down to hang with their looped ends dancing above the ring. Then she shuffled along the beam and grasped the pole to climb down to me.

‘Trouble is,’ she went on, joining me on the ground and going to tug on the ropes, ‘you still see it all even if you’re up and away. See even more of it from up there sometimes.’

She spoke carelessly enough, but her words struck me.

‘You don’t mean…? You didn’t see what happened to Ana that night, did you?’

‘No,’ said Topsy. ‘Don’t know whether to say “worse luck” or “thank God”, mind. If I’d have turned me round I could have seen it, but I was facing out. Never saw a thing. And I was down before anyone knew what had happened.’

‘A pity,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what I wanted to ask you, Topsy, was something else you might have seen, actually. Mrs Wilson and Anastasia. Did you ever see them together?’

‘Mrs Wilson?’ said Topsy. She had been tying wooden rings to the ends of her ropes with a series of complicated knots, but she stopped now and stared at me. ‘Sure it makes more sense than any of us, but why?’

‘I’m only asking if they knew one another,’ I insisted, but there was no fooling Topsy.

‘I’m keeping out of it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what happened or what’s happening now or what’s going to, but I’ve done enough.’

‘What have you done?’

She shook her head until her curls bounced.

‘I thought I was so smart and I’ve just made a mess of everything.’ She was beginning to sound ragged and looked as though she might cry. ‘I can’t help you, madam. I never saw a thing.’

I was getting precisely nowhere and was stirring up not even hornets’ nests, for at least hornets come right out and sting one in an honest fashion, but rather wisps of ghosts of hornets which threatened to sting but disappeared when one swatted at them. So I rapped rather more sharply than was warranted on Andrew Merryman’s door and could hardly blame him for opening the top half and peering out rather than calling a welcome. When he saw who it was, though, he unfastened the bottom and waved me inside where, sitting down again, he looked like some kind of giant insect, his knees around his ears and his elbows out to the sides, while he stitched at an enormous patchwork garment with a tiny needle. There seemed to be much more sewing involved in a circus life than I could easily manage, even if I ever got used to the box-beds and ashy potatoes.

‘A quick question, Mr Merryman,’ I said. ‘It’s about Mrs Wilson and Anastasia, and how well they knew one another.’

‘Hardly at all,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘You know that for a fact?’

‘Yes. Why? Do you think Mrs Wilson would be in danger if Ana had confided something to her before she died?’

‘Confided what?’ I asked, astonished.

‘I’ve no idea but why else would you be asking?’

I had to disagree with Alec; this was no dwam and the briskness seemed to strike up an answering briskness in me.

‘I’m asking because despite the fact that the police have given up on Ana and she is to be buried and forgotten and all as you were, I’m still trying to solve a murder.’

‘No one would have murdered her,’ he said. ‘It’s not circus.’

‘Good Lord, not you too!’ I cried.

‘It’s a hard thing to explain to an outsider,’ he began.

‘Oh, come now, Mr Fanshawe,’ I said. ‘If I am an outsider then so are you. And, more to the point, so is Mrs Wilson.’

‘Mrs Wilson?’ he said, looking puzzled. Then his mouth dropped open. ‘Is that why you’re asking about her? What on earth would make you think that Mrs Wilson had anything to do with it?’

‘Honestly?’ I asked. ‘It’s a straw and I’m clutching at it. Mrs Wilson… is not being herself. But then, no one is. You’re not, Bill, Topsy, Pa, Charlie – everyone is hiding something.’

‘How true,’ said Andrew. ‘And you missed out Tiny.’

‘You’ve come from Andrew’s, han’t you?’ said Tiny, crinkling his eyes at me. ‘I can always tell. We’ve got a trick we play in t’big towns, sometimes. We put on our checked suits and yellow bowlers and do quick swaps in café windows. Get it? Some flatty looks over, sees Andrew, looks away and back, sees me, goes to get his mates and we swaps again. Nearabout caused a tram crash one time.’

‘Wicked man,’ I said, and Tiny gave a very convincing diabolical laugh and hugged himself.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked presently.

‘Confirm what is becoming very clear,’ I replied. ‘Anastasia was not a chum of Ina Wilson’s, was she?’

Tiny shook his head as I had expected.

‘No, but her man’s laying on the funeral anyway,’ he said. ‘Did you know that? Should have been Cooke’s that paid for it, like, but we’re not in a way to insist. Coming to something, in’t it, missus, when her nearest and dearest can’t give her a proper goodbye. That’s the least we should do.’

‘You are very kind,’ I said. ‘But surely you – you, personally, I mean – are not scratching around for “the least you should do”?’

‘Am I not?’ he said, his face falling, deep lines forming on either side of his mouth. ‘You’re being too kind to me,’ he said. ‘Dazzled by my mesmerising looks and my charisma. But there I go again, see? I wasn’t kind to that poor girl. Not at all. She needed to be took serious, to be cared for gentle, and I just joked and teased and used her lightly same as I do everyone. I’d have been better just to keep right out of her way, like the Russians did, and there was no love lost there. At least t’rest can make theirselves feel better by carrying her coffin tomorrow, but I’m not cut out for a pall-bearer, me.’

Zoya was alone in her wagon with Akilina, her youngest child. The little girl was sitting very still while her mother snipped with scissors at her wetted fringe.

‘Forgive me stay busy,’ said Zoya.

‘While you work,’ I said, settling myself down in the other chair, ‘might I ask a few questions?’

‘Of course,’ Zoya said.

‘I shan’t say anything that might upset the little one,’ I assured her, but she shrugged off my concern.

‘Ilya has got not much of English,’ she said. ‘Kolya is so sure we will go home and our girls need to be Russian girls for then.’

‘Very well,’ I said. I was sorry that her mind was tending towards her ‘beloved Mother Russia’ given what I was planning to ask her, but I smiled encouragingly and pitched in.

‘It’s about Ana,’ I began. Zoya interrupted me.

‘I am patient woman,’ she said. ‘Everyone circus must be very patient, very steady, or never learn anything, see?’ I nodded. ‘But that one, “Anastasia”, she make my blood to boil like black sugar spilled over.’ It was a horribly apt phrase, even coming from this calm, pale woman bending over with her face so close to that of her daughter.

‘I can see that she must have annoyed you.’ I said. Zoya looked up at the inadequate word. ‘Incensed you, I mean.’ She looked down again and smiled at Akilina. ‘What I need to ask is this. I’m just about sure of what the answer will be, but tell me: did you ever see any sign that Mrs Wilson was a friend of Anastasia?’

‘Mrs Wilson? The lady from the castle? You think she killed Ana?’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I just want to know if you ever saw them together. Or if Ana ever mentioned her.’

‘Anastasia never spoke to me of anything,’ said Zoya. ‘She had too much pride and too much fear to speak to me.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You could have been her undoing in an instant.’

‘Until very soon ago,’ Zoya said, sitting back and thinking about it. ‘Some weeks, a month. Before we come here. Then she said to me one day: “I will reign over you, Madame Prebrezhensky. You shall see. You shall be sorry you ever to laughed at me, when I reign over you.” That is what she said.’

‘You must have been very angry,’ I said.

‘What, you think maybe I kill her?’ said Zoya. ‘You think all Russian just go kill everyone, hey?’

I began to clamour, shouting her down, but she was smiling at me.

‘How?’ she cried. ‘How? Magic? Send a spell?’ She closed her eyes and chanted a strange incantation in her sepulchral voice then opened her eyes wide and threw her arms up in the air like a falconer letting his hawk go. Akilina giggled.

‘Of course not,’ I said, thinking to myself that there was never a set of people in the world less prone to taking offence than these circus folk. Who else could one rather doggedly accuse of murder day after day only to have it brushed off with smiles.

Outside, I was looking around the ring of wagons wondering where to turn next, when I became aware that Akilina Prebrezhensky was standing at my side, looking up at me intently, her gaze all the more piercing given the severity of her mother’s trimming. She licked her lips and spoke in a tiny, peeping voice.

‘Missus,’ she said. Her hand curled into mine as small and soft as a rabbit’s paw and she pulled me backwards, pulled me outside the ring of wagons altogether, into the shadows where we would not be seen.

‘Missus,’ she said again. ‘Me seed.’

‘You seed?’ I echoed. I did not want to be discouraging, but I could make nothing of that. Akilina pointed back over her shoulder towards her wagon and mimed to me, making heads of her hands and snapping her fingers and thumbs together rapidly like talking mouths. She pointed at me and made the mime again. It began to make sense.

‘You understood what we were saying?’ I said. ‘In there?’ She nodded hard.

‘Me seed,’ she said again. With the kind of prickling sensation one sometimes gets from large gulps of overly fizzy champagne, I felt illumination spread through me.

‘You saw?’ I whispered. She nodded again. She pointed at her own living wagon and mimed crouching at the window, her hands up under her chin as though grasping the windowsill over which she was peeping.

‘What did you see, Akilina my darling?’ I asked her. ‘What did you see?’ Akilina licked her lips again and took a couple of deep breaths, scraping for the words to tell me.

‘Missus Lady… tchah!’ she said, then she pointed frantically over her shoulder. I turned round.

‘What? The stream? The water?’ I was miming too now.

Akilina shook her head, stood high on her tiptoes and heaved her pointing hand over her head as though trying to throw a heavy object a long way. I thought about what was beyond the stream and the trees.

‘The castle!’ I said. ‘You mean the lady from the castle? Mrs Wilson.’

Akilina clapped her hands and nodded, jumping up and down. She pointed to the performing tent and then walked her fingers away from it. And it was then that I realised, with a thump of excitement, that Alec, checking off his list of witnesses from the night of the show, had missed someone out after all.

‘Yes, yes, you’re quite right. Oh, you clever little girl. She left the tent.’

Then Akilina pointed at Ana’s wagon and shook her head hard, her mouth pushed out in a pout and her brows low and angry.

‘No!’ she said. ‘Not Ana! Lady no!’

That could hardly be clearer.

‘She didn’t hurt Ana?’ I said, just to check. Akilina shook her head so hard that the rats’ tails of her still-wet fringe banged against her head. Then her expression changed. She put her arms out and circled them as though embracing someone, closed her eyes and made loud kissing noises, swaying dreamily like Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. She was an accomplished little actress and it should have been squirm-inducing to watch, but just then I did not care.

‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who was she kissing?’

But Akilina was lost in her performance now and could not be halted. She mimed writing, sealing the letter with a kiss and blowing it into the air, where it became a bird and fluttered away, coming to earth a long way off, piercing the lover in the heart and making him swoon.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘not just kissing, eh? Love?’

‘Love,’ she said and then began a new bout of really rather excellent silent acting. She breathed out hard four times, moving her head a little between breaths, and then she polished the four spots she had breathed upon. She swept the ground with a broom, shook out and laid a cloth upon a table, lovingly smoothing it, and set down upon it a lamp, also burnished in passing, which she then lit. Her meaning was clear.

‘Love and marriage,’ I concluded. ‘I see. But who is it, darling? Who is it she loves? Who?’

Here, maddeningly, she stopped miming, stopped even pointing and spoke a stream of Russian, higher-pitched than one would have imagined Russian could be and at breakneck speed.

‘What? Who? Slow down,’ I said. ‘In fact, no. Point. Where is he? What does he look like?’ With my hands, I sketched a beard and a fat middle, spectacles and a long nose. Akilina gave me a pitying look – clearly unimpressed – and then set to herself. She held her hand up high above her head, as high as she could reach, then she smoothed back imaginary hair, plucked at a bow tie, twirled a walking stick and sauntered back and forth in front of me like Burlington Bertie from Bow.

‘The tall gentleman in the beautiful suiting,’ I said. ‘Robin. Of course.’

My head was popping like fireworks with new ideas, zapping with every new connection like low branches touching a tram wire in a thunderstorm, but one thing was very clear. I squatted down, ignoring the sound of my skirt seam straining and splitting, and looked hard into Akilina’s grey eyes. I needed all my tiny store of miming talent now for, if Ina Wilson were out of the picture, there was no other possibility except that one of the circus folk was guilty after all. And that meant that this little girl, with what she knew, might be in danger.

I pointed at my chest and at Akilina’s, put my finger to my lips and let out a long, very quiet, Sssssh!

Akilina turned a key in the middle of her mouth, took the key out and handed it to me. I put it in my pocket. We nodded again, and sealed the bargain by shaking hands. Then she stole away round the outside of the wagons to her own and I sidled off in the opposite direction feeling like a spy.

I found Alec without delay, but it was a considerable challenge to keep from blurting until we were right away from the tents and from all the wagons. I took him up to the pool at the foot of the waterfall where our voices would be drowned by the crashing of the water and where we could easily see anyone approaching.

‘Earth-shattering news, darling,’ I said, ‘and yet, and yet, you’re going to kick yourself when you hear it, because in the five minutes that I’ve known all kinds of odd puzzles have been fitting together.’

‘Shall I go and get a snare drum from Mr Wolf?’ said Alec and, although I had been all ready simply to tell him, his disdain in the face of my excitement turned me mulish and made me want to give him, as Nanny Palmer always used to say, ‘a spoonful of porridge from yesterday’s pan’. Unfortunately, Alec saw this plan forming and treated me to a withering look. ‘Oh, all right then,’ I said, ‘and don’t ever tell me I’m not an angel, because I’m far more of one than you deserve, frankly.’

‘Get on with it, Dandy. It’s freezing.’

‘If Ina Wilson,’ I began, ‘is indeed looking forward to an imminent change in her life, the way you thought she was, I know what it is. She is, I should imagine, hoping to leave Albert to join her lover as soon as his circumstances resolve themselves.’ I paused to allow the excitement to mount even further. ‘I should imagine that she hopes to become, after her divorce and remarriage, and the death of her brother-in-law-to-be, the Marchioness of Buckie.’

Alec, who really is quite good value sometimes, gave a long low whistle with his eyebrows lost somewhere in his hair.

‘How did you find out?’ he said.

‘They were seen. By Akilina Prebrezhensky, kneeling up in her bed looking out of her window at the stars on the night of the show.’

‘Peeping through the banisters,’ said Alec. ‘A thing that all children do and all adults forget they do. Is she sure?’

‘Absolutely, and she’s a remarkably stout-hearted little person – I have not a shadow of a doubt on the matter. Ina and Robin crept out to a short tryst in the moonlight while no one was looking. And that was the reason he was so utterly pole-axed by me going and telling him I turned around and asking him about Ina leaving and what he saw!’

‘He must have thought you were threatening him with exposure,’ said Alec, beginning to smile about it.

‘And that’s why he was so unsure of what to tell me and why he suddenly turned on the charm – unable to believe his luck that I didn’t know and trying to stop me thinking about it any more.’

‘They were taking a bit of a risk, weren’t they? Albert was right there in the tent. What if he had turned around?’

‘Well, maybe it wasn’t a tryst exactly,’ I said. ‘Maybe Ina dragged Robin out to scold him about turning up there. It was her only chance to get him on his own. And she was furious with him, livid.’

‘Which all of a sudden begins to make sense, doesn’t it?’ said Alec, nodding. ‘We never could get to the bottom of why she loathed him – the hints about the sickroom gossip never convinced me – but, of course, she was angry!’

‘Besides, she does have a heart,’ I said. ‘She does care for Albert a little and even if she’s leaving him she wasn’t happy to see him be made such a fool of.’

‘Not that he knew.’

‘Yes, but he will, afterwards. He’ll know then and he’ll spend the rest of his life wincing about it.’

‘He only has himself to blame,’ said Alec, sounding rather heartless. ‘He was never going to make her happy and as for all this nonsense since the ’flu – he’s had a longer run with her than he deserved to, if you ask me.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘And I suppose one can understand the attraction of Robin – when one has Albert Wilson to set him against, I mean.’

‘I wonder how they met,’ said Alec. ‘And when.’

I gasped.

‘I’ve just realised something,’ I said. ‘Hugh told me that Robin Laurie was engaged once to what Hugh described as “a very ordinary Miss” – I remember the phrase he used most particularly because I thought it was beyond vulgar – and that he broke it off hoping for better things. But perhaps it wasn’t that.’

‘You mean perhaps he broke it off in case his brother disinherited him on account of Ina’s inferiority?’

‘Exactly. Were the shades of Cullen to be thus polluted and all that.’

‘Could he disinherit him?’

‘Very possibly,’ I said. ‘I don’t go as far as to say I listen when Hugh regales me with thrilling tales of Scotch succession but some of it has seeped in over the years. You wouldn’t believe the shenanigans, if I told you.’

‘And so the lovers parted to wait for the old boy to die.’

‘Only Ina was offended and married Albert Wilson just to anger Robin. Or because she knew he would be running fast and loose with every chorus girl he could lay his hands on and this was the only way she could pay him back for it.’

‘Hang on, though,’ said Alec. ‘The Buckie wife and children died of influenza and Ina was already married by then.’

‘A divorcee!’ I cried. ‘Even better.’

‘And so Ina Wilson is crossed off our list of suspects once and for all,’ Alec said. He sounded exceedingly gloomy about it. ‘And it’s back to the circus folk.’ He sighed. ‘Are we still thinking it was a booby trap set by someone who was in the ring when she fell? Or do we think it was someone backstage and someone else is lying for him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but they are tremendously loyal to one another and surely would lie. And as for getting her off her horse or setting a trap and then spiriting it away… when one thinks about what that would need, doesn’t it come down to things like split-second timing, sleight-of-hand, physical strength…’

‘Misdirection of the eye,’ added Alec miserably. ‘Tiny and Andrew have promised to teach me some of the basic stuff if I’ll stay on after tea. They’ve been delighting to show me what they can do in plain view without being seen, just by making everyone look elsewhere. Oh, Dandy, don’t you just hate this sometimes?’