The Winter Ground (38 page)

‘Lady Ambrosine Buckie,’ I corrected.

‘Aye, right,’ said the inspector. ‘No one like the aristocracy for collecting names. Outside of the circus, anyway.’

‘I’m sure, Nurse Currie,’ I said, ‘that even in the course of a long career, you will remember this case.’

She nodded, pursing her mouth slightly. ‘Robert, Thomas, Charlotte, little Victoria, then Her Ladyship, until there was only Amber left. That’s what the family called her, madam – Amber – and I did the same.’

‘Yes, well, it’s Lady Amber that we need to ask you about most particularly,’ said Hutchinson. ‘It’s recently come to my attention that you might know more about her death than almost anyone.’

Now Nurse Currie’s eyes did just cloud over slightly and she bowed her head before she spoke again.

‘It’s a thing I’ve never done before or since,’ she said, ‘and you’ll just have to take my word for it. You’ve been speaking to that Mrs Wilson, haven’t you?’

Inspector Hutchinson nodded.

‘Well, there’s proof of it,’ she said. ‘I knew it would be her you’d got it from because I’ve never told another living soul. The things I’ve heard in sickrooms and I’ve been twenty-two years nursing this Easter. That was the only time I talked and I had to, sir. Had to.’ She spoke with great emphasis. ‘Because I didn’t know what to do for the best and it would have pressed on me like a knife if I’d tried to ignore it.’

‘You didn’t know what to do for the best?’ echoed the inspector. ‘Where was the puzzle? If there’s been a crime, you report it. That’s what’s best, every time.’

‘But I’m not sure that it
was
a crime,’ she said, the anguish beginning to sound in her voice. ‘That’s what I couldn’t decide. And Mrs Wilson told me the best thing to do was just try to forget about it and not let it eat away at me.’

‘I’ll bet she did!’ said Alec, grimly.

‘But what was there to decide?’ I said. ‘Robin Laurie drowned his niece. Isn’t that so? Whether he threw her into the water or held her under or even just stood on the cliff and did nothing. He killed her. Ina Wilson told us that.’

‘No,’ said Nurse Currie, ‘that’s not what happened at all and it’s not what I said. Mrs Wilson is misremembering, or at least maybe she never understood properly in the first place. She was ill, weak, and she only let me say it once then she just insisted that we both forget it and never mention it again.’

‘That sounds about right,’ Alec said.

‘So what did happen?’ said Hutchinson.

‘Amber didn’t catch the ’flu that winter, not like all the others did,’ Nurse Currie began. ‘She was just her own same self, playing her games and telling her wild tales – she was a girl like no other one I’ve ever seen; her father used to say she was a changeling.’ I nodded, encouraging. ‘But when her little brothers and little sisters died and then her mother that she loved so much, for they were the closest of families, unusual for people of that station in life—’ Here she stumbled over her words and coloured a little, realising her audience. ‘Well, anyway. She crumpled up. The sorriest thing you could ever hope to see. And when her mother was gone, Amber left a note and then she went too. I saw the note, sitting against her bedroom mirror – I was done with nursing by then, because there were no children left to nurse and half the maids were sick so I was helping. I was putting pressed linens away and I saw it. “To the finest father I could ever have hoped for,” it said on the envelope. I didn’t know where to put myself, what to do. I must have stood there for ten minutes together, just saying “Think, Susan, think” to myself but unable to move. When I finally came to again, I went round the grounds, round the gardens, the park, down to the beach, to her favourite little place where she played at palaces and pirate ships and crusaders – even though it was only a little shack really – and that’s where I saw him. He was looking for her too – her uncle was – and he had the letter in his hand. He came out of the shack and stood on the beach then he took a match from his pocket – I was hiding behind a tree watching him – he took a match from his pocket and he lit that letter on fire and dropped it on the sand.’

She stopped, her eyes straining at the effort of dragging the memory up and into the room for us. Inspector Hutchinson delved into an inside pocket and drew out a slim flask. He offered it to Nurse Currie but she only frowned at him, smoothed her uniform skirt over her knees and carried on.

‘I thought maybe he had read it and had thought it best his brother never saw what she’d written there. I just waited, scared to move in case he saw me, waited for him to leave the beach first, but then what did he do? He ran into the sea, clothes, boots and all, in he went. I was just going to run out and go after him, try to call to him, tell him not to do it, when he turned and came out on his own. Then off he went, up to the house, and that night they told the staff. Told all of us. Amber had drowned. Amber was gone and even her uncle hadn’t managed to save her.’

She could not have asked for a more rapt audience than the three of us; we sat like stone, each of us thinking.

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Nurse Currie said. ‘If her letter had told her poor daddy that she was running off and leaving him, then her uncle did a kind thing, didn’t he? But would it be better for His Lordship to have hope and a reason to search for her?’

‘But why are you so sure she ran off?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you believe she really did jump into the sea? A note can just as easily mean suicide as it can a runaway and you say yourself you didn’t read it.’

Nurse Currie nodded. ‘But she just wouldn’t, madam, you’d have to have known her. She was as lively as ten monkeys; she’d have rallied again and been back to all her daft ways. Joan of Arc with her sword, Marie Antoinette in her tower, Empress Anastasia hiding in the palace till the murdering rascals were gone. That was her favourite game of all.’

‘Anastasia!’ said the inspector, sitting back so suddenly that the word was forced out of him in a rush.

‘See, that’s how I knew she’d not kill herself just because her mother and all the little ones were gone. She had played that game with me, in the very sickroom, if you believe it. She told me that Anastasia was strong and she had fought for her life and not lain down and died with the others. “That’s the kind of girl I want to be, Nurse Susan,” she said to me. “I’m going to have adventures and be thrilling and people will clap and cheer when they see me.” How could that girl have thrown herself into the sea?’

‘But how did she get away?’ said Alec. ‘It’s miles from Cullen to anywhere.’

Nurse Currie was going to answer, but I got in before her.

‘She took her pony,’ I said.

‘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?