Blood and Circuses

said Farrell owned the circus?’

Alan Lee looked aside. Broad and well-tended equine sides hid them from eavesdroppers.

‘He did,’ he whispered. ‘Get over a bit, Bell, you’re crowding me. But this Jones has a half-share, they say. He ain’t popular.’

‘He ain’t,’ agreed Phryne.

Miss Parkes was served dinner in her cell. By negligence, someone had allowed her a knife. It was blunt but it could be sharpened. When the constable came to take the tray of untouched food, he did not notice that it was missing.

CHAPTER FIVE

All the world’s a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances

And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare

As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii

‘A circus, Miss?’ Dot surveyed her employer, who was stripping off a shabby cotton dress and a leotard and examining her bruises. ‘Why?’

‘You remember Alan Lee.’

‘The gypsy, Miss?’

‘Yes, the gypsy. Except that he isn’t a gypsy, he’s half-gypsy. I have a lot to learn about circuses, Dot. They’re a lot more complicated than they look. They seem to have a class system. Circus folk at the top, carnival people in the middle, and gypsies at the bottom. Or that is how it seems at the present. Farrell’s has had a lot of trouble and they asked me to help—and I’m at a loose end, Dot. Nothing in the offing but social events, the occasional ball and flirting with all those tedious young men. I want something new to do and today I stood up on a horse’s back.’

‘But, Miss, I can’t come with you in a circus, can I?’

‘No, Dot dear.’ Phryne stepped into her bath and began lathering her rope burns with Nuit d’amour soap. ‘The girls don’t generally have a maid.’

‘But Miss . . .’

‘Oh dear, Dot, don’t take on! I can look after myself.’

‘But, Miss Phryne, who’ll run your bath and take care of your clothes and . . .’

‘I ought to be able to manage,’ muttered Phryne, and Dot produced her trump card.

‘Miss Phryne, it isn’t ladylike.’

Phryne swore. ‘Damn and blast all ladies to hell. No, I didn’t mean that. Come and talk to me, Dot, and don’t worry. I’ll be all right, and if I’m not it will be all my own fault, and I shall limp home and you can look after me and tell me every morning that I did it all to myself against your express advice. Agreed?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Dot. She was a small, plain young woman with long hair firmly suppressed in a plait. She was wearing a beige linen dress, embroidered with a bunch of bronze roses. Phryne sat up in the bath and began to count off points in her argument on soapy fingers.

‘All right, Dot. One, I agree that it is an escapade unworthy of my respected parent, the earl, and that my mother and sisters would have kittens if they knew. But they are all in England and with any luck no one will tell them. Two, it is very unlikely that anyone who knows me will see me. Three, if they do see me they are not going to recognise me because I shall have my hair covered and be made up and riding in a circus. Even if they notice it they won’t believe it. “Phryne Fisher,” they will say. “Doesn’t that girl look like the respected Miss Fisher? But of course it can’t be. It’s just a chance resemblance.”’

Phryne climbed out of the bath and Dot wrapped her in a moss-green velour towel.

‘Four,’ she continued, ‘I will be living with the girls so my virtue will be safe, rather more safe than I would like it to be, and five, I promise to be careful. And that’s all I am going to say about it, Dot. I will need some cheap clothes. Can you spare time this morning for a shopping trip?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Dot. ‘I don’t like it but if you promise to be careful . . . What do you like about circuses?’ she added curiously, dropping a crisp linen morning dress over Phryne’s sleek black head. ‘Nasty dirty places, all smells and noise and them poor animals all locked up in cages. I feel real sorry for them poor lions.’

‘I never thought about the lions,’ said Phryne, whisking a powder puff over her nose and applying Extreme Rouge lipstick. ‘I suppose it is tough on them. It’s not the animals, anyway, though I made the acquaintance of a mare today who would run all stockhorses to a standstill. Bell is her name. What a sweet creature. I must take some carrots, Dot, remind me. And apples. And a few packets of those extra strong peppermints. Horses love them. No, what’s fascinating about the circus is the people. And I don’t expect you to like them, Dot. They aren’t respectable.’

‘That’s why you like them,’ commented Dot. Phryne looked at her companion’s reflection in the mirror and grinned.

Tommy Harris was drinking in the Provincial Hotel, as near to the centre of Brunswick Street as made no difference and the best place to pick up whispers. The Provincial occupied the middle ground of hotel culture. It was not so respectable that it discouraged the crims, or so low a place that the commercial travellers, the truck-drivers and the local tradesmen couldn’t drink there. It was getting on for four o’clock and Tommy was well ensconced in his corner of the public bar, a schooner of Victoria Bitter in front of him and a cigarette alight in a tin ashtray beside him. Tommy Harris only smoked in pubs. It counted as protective colouration.

‘Gidday,’ muttered someone behind him. ‘This seat taken?’

‘No, mate, take the weight off,’ said Tommy affably, without turning. A body slid into the seat beside him. A blocky body and a fair head, cropped close. Hands like shovels and pale blue eyes in a fighter’s face. Tommy identified him at once. He had some unpronounceable Balkan name and his associates had decided to call him Reffo. He did not seem to mind. He was a member of the Brunswick Street Boys, otherwise known as the Brunnies. Tommy Harris knew that the Brunnies and Albert Ellis’s ’Roy Boys were involved in a slight argument which had littered the suburb with damaged adherents, although they had not killed anyone yet. As long as they involved no innocent bystanders, Sergeant Grossmith had ordered that no official notice was to be taken of this difference of opinion.

‘Want a drink, Reffo?’

Reffo nodded and Tommy signalled to the barmaid. She came over and leaned her elbows on the bar, confronting them with a vast expanse of pearly bosom which was always just on the point of bursting its bonds and spilling out of her black dress. Mary of the Provincial might have heard of the Mabel Normand bra, guaranteed to give that boyish look, but she wanted no truck with it. She grinned at them, patting her curly hennaed hair.

‘H’lo boys, what can I get yer?’

‘Pint for me mate,’ Tommy grinned back. ‘Looking beautiful today, Mary.’

‘Sauce,’ she commented, pleased, and drew the beer. It was chill and foaming.

‘Well, Reffo, what brings you here?’ said Tommy.

‘I got something you might be interested in,’ said Reffo through a moustache of foam. ‘For a price.’

‘Oh, yes? You tell me what it is and I’ll decide about the price.’

‘You’re only a tiddler,’ said Reffo scornfully. ‘Where’s your old man?’

‘He authorised me to deal,’ said Tommy easily. ‘You talk to me or nobody.’