The Winter Ground

17

‘How to convince the boss, though?’ said Inspector Hutchinson. We had been silent for the first few miles of the road home, each turning the fantastical idea this way and that, viewing it from all angles.

‘Could he doubt it?’ Alec cried. ‘You said yourself that Laurie had the opportunity and a history already – even if Mrs Wilson isn’t much of a witness and I agree with you there – but now he has a motive too.’

I was at the wheel and was concentrating hard on the patch of yellow light in front of us on the black road – driving this after my little Cowley felt like steering a cargo ship – so I left the inspector to argue.

‘It’s all pretty footery though, sir,’ he said. ‘A girl’s nonsense. A note that’s gone. She might have recognised him. He might have gone round the back when he slipped out. Nothing to bang your fist on. We need more.’

‘Well, all I can say is that your superintendent must be a man of very little imagination,’ said Alec.

‘If as much as that,’ the inspector said.

We had entered a straight stretch and I relaxed a little, flexing my fingers, for I had been gripping the wheel so tightly that my gloves were squeaking.

‘I’ve thought of something,’ I said. ‘Robin could have played the tricks. Was it after he first visited the circus that all the nonsense with the rope and swing came out or before? And he said he was going back down after dinner, Alec, didn’t he? He could have done it then.’

‘The rope and swing, perhaps,’ said Alec. ‘But what about the flour and balloons? No one who didn’t know what he was doing would think of that.’

‘And would he want to alert them with a lot of daft mischief?’ said the inspector. ‘Put them on their guard for more trouble to come?’

‘I only thought it was something solid for the superintendent,’ I said. ‘What else would convince him?’

‘A confession,’ said the inspector. ‘A confession is what he likes best, and not just him neither. A jury would have a rum old time with the Anastasia story and the uncle running into the sea. They like a bit of colour in the Sunday papers, but give them their due, you get fifteen men in a jury room and they turn as cautious as a bunch of old biddies about any kind of fancy nonsense.’

‘Robin Laurie is about as likely to confess to it as I am,’ said Alec. ‘He’s kept the thing about his niece quiet this long so he’s hardly going to pop his head up about Anastasia when all the hounds are baying.’

‘I was thinking of flushing him out,’ said the inspector, ‘if I can join you, sir, and put it that way. I’m not a hunting man, but isn’t that the term I’m after? We send one of the hounds in and flush him.’

‘Which hound?’ I said.

‘Nurse Currie,’ said Hutchinson. ‘Who else? She can write him a letter, put her address on the top as innocent as can be and then we’ll stick a man on her and wait for Laurie to show up.’

‘It’s a lot to ask of her,’ I said. ‘I mean, what if he gets to her when the man you’ve stuck on is looking the other way? Think of what happened to Ana – or do we call her Amber now?’

‘I don’t know about that one,’ Alec said. ‘Could it really have been her? Could Lady Ambrosine Buckie really have been living in a wagon at Cooke’s Circus?’

‘What a to-do that would have been, eh?’ said Hutchinson. ‘When His Lordship finally gave up the ghost and the brother moved in for the spoils only for Amber to pop up and scoop the lot! And after seven years too.’

I was distracted once more by trying to thread the long bonnet of Alec’s motor car along the twists of the black, winding lane but something in what they said tugged at me, or not even as much as that, but something touched me the way a cobweb will fall against one’s face, or the way a stray lash will lie on one’s cheek, almost imperceptible, just tickling.

‘So it’s Susan Currie to the rescue?’ Alec said.

‘We’ve not got much choice,’ Hutchinson replied. ‘Unless we try to drum up a story that someone saw him at the circus, that is.’

‘Hang on!’ I said and I pressed my foot very firmly against the brake. Alec and the inspector both sailed forward and jerked back again. Bunty and Milly woke up and yipped in surprise. ‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘But I’ve had an idea and I can’t think, talk and drive all at once. In fact – Alec, if you feel rested can you take over again? I’m either going to kill us all or I’m going to scratch the paint and then you’ll kill me. You slide along, darling, and I’ll go round.’

‘Right then, let’s hear it,’ said Alec when we were rearranged and under way once more.

‘Topsy,’ I announced. ‘She’ll say she saw him, I’m sure she will. She could have seen him from her rope if she’d looked. Besides, we think Robin Laurie might have been the one who tampered with her props – I do, anyway. We can ask Topsy to send a blackmail letter, pure and simple, asking him to a definite rendezvous. Then ten burly policemen can jump out and grab him when he comes.’

‘But as you said before,’ said Alec, ‘it’s a lot to ask. We’re asking her to face a man who killed a girl just like her.’

I smiled at him.

‘That little monkey? Tumbling Topsy Turvy?’ I said. ‘She’ll leap at the chance.’

Topsy, as I suspected, would cheerfully have asked Robin Laurie to meet her in a dark alley the very next night and set upon him with her own two bare little hands, and when the story spread around the circus she could have amassed a very healthy gang of helpers. For the ten burly policemen, however, even the four burly policemen that Hutchinson decided in the end would be plenty, the fabled ‘super’ had to be persuaded and so, after a week of organising, it was not until New Year’s Eve that we all gathered at the winter ground once more.

I was thrilled and petrified in equal measure to be there, as well as bursting with pride at my welcome, for the circus folk had hailed me like a conquering hero when I first returned and had continued so to hail me every time during that suspenseful week that I came back again to view the progress of what Alec called (sounding like a gangster) our sting.

Topsy had sent to Robin Laurie’s town address a letter which modesty prevents me from describing as a masterpiece of subtle menace since I was the chief architect in its composition. It simply invited him to a meeting in the performing tent at ten o’clock on the evening of the 31st to discuss a matter of mutual interest and then went on to say that Topsy would be rehearsing and Robin should feel free to enter either way since she had a clear view of both the front and the back doors from her position.

Two policemen were in props boxes just inside the ring doors and the other two were wedged under second row seats, lying stretched out, quite invisible in the dim lighting. I was to be safely tucked away from all the action behind one of the canvas wallings in the backstage with Alec and the inspector, and although Lally Wolf and Zoya Prebrezhensky were in their wagons with their little ones, doors locked and lamps snuffed, it was, I suppose, inevitable that the rest of them, Bill Wolf, Charlie, Ma and Pa, Tiny, Andrew and Kolya, were all there behind the wallings too, stock still but seething with a pent-up anger that we could feel thrumming through the ground under our feet as we waited there. Only Topsy was moving, swinging, spinning, coiling and climbing, her toes pointed and her hands wafting like petals. One could just make out the pale ovals all around as everyone looked up at her.

I could not tell what time it was there in the dark, though I fingered the face of my wristwatch, and it felt as though we had been standing still for hours when we heard the distant sound of a motor-car engine stopping far off in the trees. Then came another long wait. I imagined Robin Laurie creeping up to the edge of the clearing and standing there, hugging one of the pine trees, watching, watching. Would the very quietness warn him? Would he sense the trap and steal away again?

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

‘It’s Zoya,’ he breathed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie lifted his head and stared at Alec.

‘He did what?’ he said.

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie took a mustering breath.

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

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

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

‘Why?’ said Pa. ‘Why would you?’

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

‘Convinced her of what?’ I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘I have no idea why she went off like that when she did.’

‘I’ll tell you why,’ said Pa. He had been listening in silence with his chin sunk down on to his chest. ‘If we can keep it between the three of us, mind.’ He paused and looked into the middle distance as though at something no one else could see.

‘She had a fine talent, it’s true,’ he began, ‘but she was trying to take over – take over the spec, get her spots moved to the big finish – and I couldn’t stand to see it. Now I know why. Now I know where she was getting all her pride but then I only knew she was talking very high and speaking to me like she was the boss-lady and I was a ring boy. So, first thing I did, to show her who was in charge? I sold her golden pony, just to show her I could and she couldn’t stop me. Just to keep her down.’

‘That’s madness, Pa,’ said Ma. ‘Spoiling a fine act like that.’

‘I was mad,’ said Pa. ‘I was out of my mind. I thought…’

‘What?’ his wife demanded.

‘He thought what all husbands always think, Ma,’ I said. ‘He thought that he had lost you. To Charlie.’

Ma, who I had thought might never smile again, broke into a grin as wide as a painted clown’s.

‘Me and Charlie? Me? And your brother? I’m sixty years old, Tam, and I’ve been in the wagon with you since I wurr fifteen.’

‘But why else would you be with him against me all the time?’ Pa said. ‘What else would I think?’

‘I miss my boys,’ said Ma. ‘I want to go over there and be with my boys. I’m your wife but I’m their mammy too. And I’m a circus woman. I’m tired of knocking myself out here where it’s finished. I was happy to leave it all to Charlie, see what he could make of it with a new young wife to help him. I just want my man happy again and I want to be where the future is and I want my boys. All three.’

Pa nodded slowly, as if defeated. ‘Listen to the rest of my tale,’ he said. Once again he stopped and looked into the empty air before speaking. ‘I sold her golden pony but that’s not all. I trained her rosy-back to listen to me. They boys of yours was half right, missus. She got a fright and she gave them the nod to lift the box, but Harlequin didn’t take a turn on her. I did it. I whistled him to leave the ring. I wanted to show her who was boss. Harlequin was carrying her, but he was trained to me.’

‘That’s why you wanted rid of him?’ said Ma. Her voice had sunk to a whisper.

‘Aye, it was me.’ He sounded bleak with misery. ‘If I hadn’t sent that pony off early she’d not have been caught by yon devil and she’d be here today. I just couldn’t bear to look at him, knowing what I’d done.’

‘No, Pa,’ I said. ‘You hadn’t done anything. She would have been off in two minutes anyway. It would have made no difference.’

But Ma was not to be swayed. She gazed at her husband in horror.

‘You trained her own prad out from under her, Tam Cooke?’ she said. ‘What’s happened to you? Where’s the man I married? Where have you gone?’

Pa’s black eyes filled with tears then and he blundered away, leaving the two of us gazing after him.

‘I don’t really see why you’re so very upset about that,’ I said. ‘Amongst all the rest of it.’

Ma shushed me. ‘You wouldn’t, my beauty,’ she said. ‘Flatty like you. But that what Tam done there, it’s not circus. Just not our way.’