anchored the governing rope with careless strength. ‘Now you’re going to stand,’ said Doreen. ‘Put your hands down again, bring up your feet. Come up, Bell.’
This was going against every instinct of self-preservation and all Phryne had ever learned about horses. She fought an inner reluctance to do anything so foolish, pulled her knees in towards her chest and straightened her back. It did not want to straighten.
‘Feet further apart and flat. Good, you’re supple enough. Now, when I tell you, push down with your hands and stand up. Do it in one movement. You gotta flow, not jerk. You can do it. Come on.’
Phryne attempted to convince herself that it could be done and failed. Bell completed another circuit. Phryne began to sweat and her hands slipped on the chestnut hide. She lifted them, one by one, to wipe on her cotton dress.
‘You can do it,’ called Alan Lee.
‘I don’t think I can,’ wailed Phryne from her upside down position. Her thigh muscles twinged, presaging cramp.
‘Don’t think,’ said Samson. ‘I’ve got you. Hup!’ he roared, taking Phryne entirely by surprise, so that she had released her grip on Bell and was standing up, arms out, actually standing up on Bell’s back, with the ring fleeting past and some force holding her on.
Every rider is familiar with the drag of gravity as a horse jumps a fence. But this force did not pull her down. It appeared to be encouraging her to stay mounted. She noted from her perspective of the watchers that she must be leaning in towards the centre of the ring.
‘Good. Stick on,’ encouraged Doreen. ‘See? I told you anyone could do it. Try a handstand.’
Phryne, elated, bent again and laid her hands on the horse’s neck.
‘Not there—you’ll strain her neck. In the middle.’
Attempting to move back, Phryne lost her balance and fell. The governing rope brought her up short of the sawdust. Doreen brought Bell to a halt and stood caressing the soft nose.
‘Here’s your carrot, Bell. Fern? You all right?’
Phryne was sweaty, bruised by the canvas jacket and completely above herself.
‘Fine. I’m fine. Can we do it again?’
‘Yes,’ said Alan Lee. ‘And again every day. I reckon you’ll be able to stick on good-o by the time we get on the road again. See? I told you. And now you’re coming with us. You promised,’ he reminded her.
‘Yes, I promised. And I’ll come. Oh, that was lovely.’
‘Come back tomorrow,’ said Doreen. ‘Meanwhile, you need to practise handstands and balance. Alan can take you home and he’ll come and get you again. Now we gotta take Bell back to the lines and groom her. She did bonzer for you, Fern. But she’s the best. There ain’t many neddies with a pace like hers. Molly trained her up from a filly.’
Phryne led Bell out of the big top. Samson, having removed the governor, carefully detached it and undid his line, returning the hanging rope to exactly the same length and position.
‘Never meddle with a rope and never move it,’ said Alan Lee. ‘Someone’s life might depend on it. If you watch the flyers, you’ll see what I mean. But the Bevans don’t like an audience when they’re rehearsing. You’ll have to sneak into the show. You’ll see ’em put out a hand for a line, knowing that it’s there. If it ain’t there . . .’ he left a significant pause and Phryne nodded.
‘Quite. Who was Mrs Fantoccini?’
‘Why do you ask?’ Alan Lee seemed taken aback.
‘Jack Robinson said he arrested her for murdering Mr Christopher.’
‘Oh, yes. Well, she was one of the Flying Fantoccini. The husband and two brothers and Amelia Parkes and her sister Ella. They was good, too. Eh, Doreen?’
‘Good? They was great,’ said Doreen. ‘She never oughta married that bastard George, though. He treated her like a dog.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Look, this was ten years ago, I wasn’t here,’ said Doreen sharply. ‘I knew Amelia when we was kids together. I’da said she wouldn’t hurt a flea. But he knocked her about. Stole her money. They say . . .’ She lowered her voice and looked sidelong at Alan Lee and Samson, who took the hint and shifted out of earshot. ‘She told me that he made her have an illegal operation, you know, to get rid of a baby.’
‘Why?’ whispered Phryne. ‘Wasn’t she married?’
‘You can’t be a flyer if you’re expecting.’
‘That’s terrible!’
Doreen’s eyes glinted. Phryne noticed that her eyes were not green as she had thought, but a dark, almost charcoal grey.
‘Yair. And she wanted that baby real bad. But she loved him so she did it, and after that she was so scarred up inside she couldn’t never have another. She went strange then. Cold. You couldn’t get close to her. But I was away when it happened. Alan might know.
‘Alan?’ she called him over. ‘What about the murder?’
Alan Lee seemed uncomfortable. ‘I was here, yes, but I didn’t see it. Come along, we’d better get Bell back before her legs stiffen.’ As they walked, he began to tell the story in brief, unwilling sentences.
‘George had arranged a big finale. Six flyers all crossing each other, simple enough. But he insisted on his own trapeze; he had small hands and he needed a thinner bar. That night, they were all flying and he reached his bar and then he slipped. He fell. He fell outside the net, because he was at the top of his flight. Forty feet to the ground and he was dead. When they lowered his bar, they found it was smeared with engine grease. His wife, she had engine grease in her fingernails, and his brothers knew he’d been beating her. They knew about the baby, too.’ He grinned at Doreen. ‘You can’t keep secrets in a circus. And that day, he had been heard to tell her that he was short of money and that she should go on the street to earn him some, because that’s all she was worth. He called her a clumsy flyer and untrustworthy in the air. She killed him all right. She admitted it.’
‘And I can see why,’ observed Phryne.
They had traversed the carnie’s camp and were entering the horse lines when a tall man with white hair roared up to them.
‘You, what are you doing with my horse?’ he bellowed.
‘We had permission, sir,’ explained Alan Lee. ‘We are bringing her back now.’
‘You carnies are all horse thieves!’ yelled the tall man, face flushed with rage. ‘You put her back right now!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Alan Lee submissively. Phryne wondered why he did not yell back at this rude person. Then she understood. Alan Lee, though delightful, skilled and beautiful, was low down on the circus pecking order, so he could not reply with the cut direct. His humbleness annoyed Phryne. She stared at the interlocutor, wondering what was eating him. He seemed unnaturally angry.
‘You stay in your own camp,’ he snarled. ‘I don’t want any of you diddikoi coming into my circus and stealing my animals and upsetting my people.’
‘I asked Mr Farrell,’ said Samson quietly. Samson was hard to overlook. He loomed over the man, broad as a door, and he was not smiling. ‘Mr Farrell said it was all right. We’re training a new rider for the rush. Why don’t you ask Mr Farrell about it?’ Samson asked with quiet menace.
The man cast a glance around the group, his eyes resting on Phryne.
‘You the new rider?’ Phryne remembered her place in the hierarchy of the circus and reined in her temper.
‘Yes, sir,’ she muttered, hanging her head.
‘What’s yer name?’
‘Fern, sir.’
‘You just remember who I am,’ he said pompously. ‘I’m Mr Jones and I own Farrell’s.’ He pinched Phryne’s cheek. ‘Nice little girl. You treat me right and I’ll treat you right.’
Phryne refrained from an answer but scuffed her soft shoe in the dust.
‘You get that horse back to the lines,’ Mr Jones ordered brusquely. ‘And mind you rub her down.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Alan Lee again and they led Bell away.
‘Whew!’ said Phryne, as they were brushing Bell and feeding her more carrots. ‘What a tartar! I thought you
