The Winter Ground (14 page)

‘But mind you, missus – Ana didn’t know nowt about it. She never found out. Unless there’s even more and she did spot some. Can’t say for sure. First thing
I
noticed were t’balloons was swapped over. Day before yesterday, this was. The balloons Ana has for the spectacular was over with my props – mine and Andrew’s – and our balloons was where Ana’s should be.’

‘I’m not sure I see what harm could come from the wrong balloons,’ I said. ‘Delicious coffee, by the way.’

‘Ah well, see now, when I say balloons I don’t mean balloons like you mean,’ said Tiny. ‘Hoops with paper in, that’s a balloon to me. Me and Andrew hold them up for Ana in t’spec – for her to jump through off Harlequin’s back – and then we have our own ones for one of our run-ins. Some of them is paper too, but some’s rubber and I bounce right back off ’em, then there’s some’s solid wood. But they’re identical to look at, see? That’s the joke of it. First run-in, Andrew and me, we do Ana’s spec turn again only with Jinxie instead of t’pony and with the trick balloons.’

‘And you say they’d been swapped around? Like the rope?’

‘There’s no way we wouldn’t have noticed, mind.’

‘So it wasn’t really dangerous,’ I said, thinking of the cut swing, ‘just threatening.’

‘That’s it in a nutshell where I can reach it,’ said Tiny. ‘Threatening.’

‘And that’s not all?’ I prompted.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Next thing was I noticed flour in t’resin bucket.’ I waited for him to explain. ‘Resin powder, see? Ana puts it on Harlequin’s back to help her grip. That’s how voltige ponies get their name, matter of fact: rosy-backs, they call them. Anyway, she flings on a handful every time she goes through t’ring doors, casual-like. That’s what makes it seem all the worse to me somehow. Kind of more … sneakier than the rest. Just a bag of flour in t’resin-bucket.’

‘What would it do?’

‘Flour? On a pony’s back what you’re standing up on? Flour mixing in with sweat on a rosy-back working hard?’ I could feel the now familiar shiver creeping across me again.

‘It would turn to a complete lather, wouldn’t it?’ I said.

‘Lethal,’ agreed Tiny. ‘Only again there’s no way Ana wouldn’t notice. It didn’t feel nothing like resin, nor look like it, and she’d have spotted it straight off. So it was like you said, just a threat.’

‘But no less nasty for that,’ I said. ‘And do you think there’s anything else?’

‘Well, let’s say I was glad it were Charlie Cooke opening that there parcel of hats and not me. No, go on, I’m only joking,’ he said, laughing at the look on my face. ‘Andrew and me checked all Ana and Topsy’s props night before last. Took us nearly the whole night. Jinxie stood guard for us. Only wish we’d thought to check our own. I just checked that my corde lisse was coiled up tidy in me prop box – and it were, as far as I could tell. Never thought no more about it.’

‘But why would someone make such a good job of swapping the ropes when the swing was …’

‘When the swing was what?’ said Tiny. Then he put his head on one side. ‘Hello, hello. You’ve found it, han’t you?’

There was no point trying to dissemble since I had already betrayed myself. I admitted that I had and described the state it was in, but I insisted that its hiding place was my secret.

‘Fair enough,’ said Tiny. ‘And has it all fell in place then? Can you hang the guilty man with a bit of rope and a gold stick?’

‘To be honest, before what you told me about the flour and the balloons, I wasn’t tending towards a man at all. I was tending towards Ana. She was so angry with Topsy yesterday, I could easily imagine her getting up to tricks to spite her.’

‘Never,’ said Tiny stoutly, and he flushed as he spoke. I looked away to let his blush fade unwitnessed. Perhaps he was not just flirting when he worked so hard to make Ana laugh with all his nonsense, perhaps he was really wooing her. I hoped not: he was a dear fellow and Ana, who would no doubt think herself far above him, did not deserve the man.

‘Mrs Cooke hinted that she might have been up to some other mischief before,’ I said, speaking rather carefully now that I thought he might be an interested party. ‘You wouldn’t know what that was, would you? You seem close to her.’

‘Not me,’ said Tiny, his eyes wide, although precisely which part of my suggestion he was denying was not clear. ‘And anyway, it don’t make no sense. How can she think it’s all meant for her if it’s her doing it, eh?’ This was rather a good point.

‘Well, the fearful act is maybe just that – an act.’

He was shaking his head again. ‘No, it’s real enough. Leastways she’s never took a day off it since she got here.’

‘And what’s it all about?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, you’ll work it out soon enough,’ was all Tiny would say. ‘And you’ll kick yourself when you do. She’s a funny one, our Ana, right enough.’

‘Well, disregarding Ana for the moment,’ I went on, ‘the only other thought I had – and again this was before your revelations this morning – was Charlie Cooke.’

Tiny put his cup down on the stove top with great deliberation, straightened his jacket, smoothed his hair and then collapsed into rolling, rollicking gales of laughter.

‘I take it you don’t agree,’ I said drily, ‘but he was very touchy yesterday about the fact that he didn’t rush forward to help. He hated me noticing that.’ I was having to talk loudly above the giggles and I gave up.

‘Course he was,’ Tiny said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief bigger than he was. ‘Charlie Cooke hurt Topsy? Never!’

‘So why didn’t he help?’

‘He’s slowing down. You’ve seen him, missus – you’ve seen Andrew and me having to take the pace off t’blessed hat juggles for him! You’re right enough. We was all there under that rope before he’d even got off his seat, but there’s no mystery why he didn’t like you talking about it. It must be killing him now.’

‘Oh, poor Charlie,’ I said. ‘How awful to be brought face to face with it like that, to think that he was too slow to help. If he’s fond of her.’

‘Oh, he’s fond all right,’ said Tiny. ‘Hangs around her like a smell on the landing and takes care to make sure everyone sees him at it too.’

‘That surprises me,’ I said. I had thought that Andrew Merryman and Topsy were a pair, from the way she behaved yesterday and what Tiny had told me.

‘It’s true,’ Tiny said. ‘And he’s really started in with the pomade and pressed pants lately. Coming on like love’s young dream. She’s had to beg Andrew not to leave her alone and give Charlie a chance to get proper stuck in, for she wouldn’t want to hurt him.’

‘She’s a good, kind girl,’ I said, thinking that actually she was a very astute young madam and playing it beautifully.

‘Oh aye, she’s that,’ said Tiny. ‘She’s even had to turn to me once or twice when Andrew’s been away and I’m no white knight, am I?’

‘Poor old Charlie,’ I said.

‘Oh, for sure, poor Charlie,’ said Tiny, sounding rather sour. ‘Me heart just bleeds.’

Alec, to whom I reported dutifully once I was home, solved the mystery of Anastasia right away. In fact, it only took him calling it that and I had solved it too.

‘Oh, come off it, darling, please,’ I said. ‘
Anastasia
?’

‘She feels herself above the rest of them, she has a very dubious accent, she believes she is in hiding and may have to fly at any moment, she has lost something pretty impressive, she thinks there are spies everywhere.’

‘Yes, and admittedly Topsy was very tickled about my talking to Ana “in her own tongue”. The little minx found that highly diverting.’

‘That’s it, Dandy, I’m sure of it.’

‘But it’s nonsense!’ I said.

‘Well, of course it’s nonsense,’ said Alec. ‘Delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex.’

I clapped my hands. ‘That was just the phrase I was trying to remember.’

‘And really, when you think about it, Dan, it’s exactly the sort of madness that would go along quite nicely with the kind of girl who runs away to the circus.’

‘Taking her pony with her,’ I said. ‘Aha! Well, there’s the proof that it’s rubbish right there. How could she have her childhood pony with her if she had fled St Petersburg with her jewels stitched into her petticoats?’

‘Dandy, let me assure you,’ said Alec gravely, ‘you do not need to mount arguments against it to me.’

‘Although,’ I added, ‘if she really does think there are spies everywhere, she probably has no great love of Zoya and family and she might have cut the rope swing and put it in their wagon to make trouble for them.’

‘Wouldn’t she cleave to them as her country people? Subjects, I mean?’

‘Well, not if they could find out that she was a fake in ten questions,’ I said. ‘And perhaps not anyway. Depends what kind of Russians they are, surely. What sort of name is Prebrezhensky?’

‘A long and unspellable one,’ said Alec, stretching out his feet towards my fire and prodding Bunty with his toe. ‘Is she all right, Dan? She seems rather listless.’

‘She’s stupefied by an excess of effective training,’ I said. ‘I suppose I meant could we tell from the name whether they’d be all for the Tsar or all for the other lot. The way one would know a Cabot was a Yankee or a … what would a Confederate be called?’

‘La Fayette,’ said Alec.

‘Really? How odd.’

‘Besides, do you think it was the same person who cut the swing and hid it? Doesn’t it seem more likely that someone who hates this Topsy did the cutting and someone who likes her hid it so she wouldn’t see it and get upset? Someone who has no love for the Prebrezhenskys, presumably.’

‘So Anastasia for the cutting, but not the hiding?’

‘But why, Dandy? What is it that makes you plump for her anyway?’

‘Mrs Cooke said she had tampered with props before. With Mr Cooke’s whip, to be precise.’

‘Tampered with it how, though?’ said Alec.

‘Pinched it, I think. Why?’

‘Well, because: slashing a prop – nasty but unmissable. Hiding it – harmless prank. Swapping the balloons – pointless silliness. The flour thingy – a bit too subtle for me but I take your word for it that the circus folk would get the gist of the threat. Then comes the long rope – underhand, subtle again but this time all too horribly effective. So until we know all the details of the whip incident I can’t see the point of homing in on Ana and ignoring the rest of them. Can’t see it at all.’

He gave a firm nod and sat back in his chair. I scowled at him. Alec is at his least attractive when he is magisterial and he never admits how much easier it is to make these pronouncements after my orderly reports than to come to the same conclusion when one is grubbing around in thick of it all, as I do.

‘You are a wonderful sounding board, Alec,’ I said, with remarkable grace. ‘Thank you.’

‘So, leaving aside the Tsarina, as either target or perpetrator,’ he went on, ‘who else is there who might be doing it?’

‘No one I’ve come across yet,’ I said. ‘They all seem so lovely and so desperate to keep the circus a going concern despite their troubles. I did wonder about Charlie Cooke – actually not lovely at all, or not to me anyway – but Tiny said he was besotted with Topsy and simply couldn’t have done it. Pa Cooke himself has a foul temper but he’s all fizz and bang – I can’t see him creeping around and setting traps for people.’

‘I can’t see any man doing it, if I’m honest,’ said Alec. ‘It’s all so furtive and silly.’

‘Too furtive and too silly to be the work of a man?’ I said.

‘You sound like Mrs Pankhurst, darling,’ said Alec. ‘A detective, as you’re always telling me, can be no respecter of persons, much less of gentle sexes. What about Topsy herself?’

‘Topsy was the victim of the very worst of the pranks,’ I reminded him. ‘And anyway there is nothing “Pankhurst” about pointing out that when it comes to hurting young women, there is a man at the bottom of it every time.’

‘So tell me about the men,’ said Alec, ‘and stop chirping on about the womenfolk.’

‘The men,’ I said, running my mind over what I knew about them. ‘Bill Wolf is quite simply Father Christmas in his shirtsleeves and that’s that.’

‘Oh, very objective,’ said Alec. ‘How convincing.’

‘Although he knows something he’s not telling. Kolya Prebrezhensky I’ve yet to meet properly. Tiny Truman is perfectly friendly towards Topsy although again there’s a little edge there somewhere. But he would not harm Ana, I’m sure. He’s the only one I’ve seen being kind to her so far, more than kind; I think he might be smitten. And he doesn’t have the figure for manhandling heavy ropes. Andrew Merryman … I can’t say, but again he is a friend of Topsy’s, perhaps more than a friend if Tiny’s hints are reliable.’

‘I don’t think we can cut anyone out simply because they are friendly to one of the girls,’ Alec said. ‘It might be an act. And if it’s more than friendship – if it’s love, or passion anyway – then I should say there’s more reason for suspicion not less. Jealous rages, lovers’ spats, unrequited yearnings. Rich pickings, I’d say. Now is that everyone?’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ I said. ‘Except for the working men. There are five – no, six – of them. Grooms.’

‘Six grooms?’ said Alec. ‘For thirteen horses. That seems rather lavish.’

‘Well, there are as many rough ponies too,’ I reminded him. ‘And they’re not just grooms. They’re tent men. They do the heavy work. They don’t seem to mix with the artistes from what I see.’

‘Ah,’ said Alec. ‘I like the sound of them.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You’ve never even met them. Why on earth should the working men immediately be the suspects?’

Alec stared at me.

‘Good Lord, Dandy,’ he said. ‘Don’t let Hugh hear you. Two days’ companionship with a family of Russians and you’re ready to take up arms for the proletariat.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said, hotly. ‘I’m just questioning your objectivity as you questioned mine.’

‘But I’m making a serious suggestion,’ Alec said. ‘Anastasia, from what you tell me, is an extremely attractive and extremely haughty young woman. As likely to attract the attention of a lusty young tent man as she is unlikely to give him the time of day. And Topsy sounds an out and out flirt, who has wound at least both Mr Cookes around her little finger and has Andrew Merryman on a string too. Well, why should she not have given these working men the same treatment? And why should not these working mean, inflamed by the sight of the pair of them in their tights and costumes and yet spurned by them as honest swains, be moved to play a few tricks on them to get their own back?’