Hands on the neck, Phryne thought, feet flat and apart. She brought up both knees in a smooth sliding motion and was kneeling, putting out both arms to balance. Two circuits flashed past.
‘Hands and feet,’ ordered Molly Younger, and Phryne managed to convince her back to straighten. She was getting dizzy from the passing scene and closed her eyes briefly. The St Christopher medal flicked over at her throat.
‘Stand up, Tea-dancer.’
Phryne was stung. She pushed away from Missy’s neck and found herself standing, feet placed either side of the horse’s spine, high off the ground and held up by that strange force. Missy moved sweetly beneath her feet. Phryne began to experiment with what she could do. She stretched out her arms, curved them above her head and then hastily replaced them in position.
‘Arms by your sides!’
Phryne slowly lowered her arms until she was standing like a pole, leaning inward, perfectly balanced.
For a moment. Then Missy moved out from beneath her and she wavered, lost her balance and flung herself forward, landing astride with her legs around Missy’s neck.
‘Stop!’ Missy slowed to a walk and halted. Phryne slid off her back and embraced the horse while the world went round and round.
‘You say you’ve never done acrobatics before?’ Miss Younger’s voice was sharp. Phryne blinked as the world did an eight––some reel.
‘Never,’ she gasped. ‘Not on a horse.’
‘If Allie had been able to do that, she never would have broke her leg. You fall quite well. Tumbling, then?’
‘Yes, a little.’ Gymnastics at an English girls’ school, Phryne felt, could probably be called tumbling. She smiled briefly at the idea of what her games mistress would say if she saw her pupil now.
‘Good. We will practise every day and by the time we go on the road you may be good enough to be in the rush. Now take Missy back to the lines and let me see you groom her.’
Phryne gathered up the long rein and returned it to Miss Younger, then led Missy back to the lines with an arm over her neck, whispering endearments to the patient beast all the way.
Miss Younger supervised the grooming, feeding and watering of Missy with a closed mouth. When Missy nosed up to investigate the contents of Phryne’s cardigan pocket, Miss Younger was at her side in a flash.
‘What are you feeding her?’ she demanded. Phryne held out a flat palm.
‘Carrots,’ she said meekly.
‘Eat one,’ Miss Younger ordered.
Phryne, remembering the untimely death of Socks, bit into a carrot and fed the rest to Missy. She waited until Miss Younger had turned away before she spat the mouthful out.
Phryne hated carrots.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Lord’ George Sanger
Tommy Harris returned to Mrs Witherspoon’s refined house for paying gentlefolk with a warrant to search everywhere for anything. He was determined to be thorough.
He had nothing to rely upon but the conviction that the woman who had drawn him away from the brink of that roof was not guilty of murdering Mr Christopher.
He reached the house to find that the only person home was Tillie, the girl described as halfwitted. She answered the door timidly and would only allow him inside after he had exhibited the impressive warrant, blazoned with the seal of the Magistrates’ Court at Melbourne.
‘Ooh,’ she commented, handing it back. ‘Well, you’d better come in, bettern’t you? Missus is out. What do you want?’
‘I’ve got a warrant to search everywhere,’ said Tommy Harris, smiling at Tillie. ‘I’m Constable Harris. Do you remember me?’
She wiped her hands on the greasy tea-towel she was carrying. ‘Yair. You was here when they took Miss Parkes away.’ Tears filled Tillie’s eyes. ‘I liked her. I don’t reckon she killed Mr Christopher.’
‘I don’t reckon so, either.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No. So that’s why I’m searching. But that’s a dead secret, Tillie. You won’t give me away?’
Tillie mopped her eyes with the tea-towel. She was a faded girl, with pale blue eyes and scraped-back blonde hair. She smiled slowly at Constable Harris. ‘I won’t give you away.’
‘Good, now you tell me about the lodgers, while I have a look at each room.’
‘The keys is in the scullery. I’ll get ’em.’ Tillie scurried away and was back in no time.
Tommy Harris began with the bedrooms. Miss Parkes’s room was tidy, sparsely furnished and anonymous. The bed was neatly made. Harris lifted the mattress and felt down behind the pictures and the back of each drawer in the chest of drawers. Clothes, plain and well kept. Her stockings were darned with the correct thread. This was always an index, Tommy had been told, to the state of a woman’s mind. There were no reminders of her circus past. Her prison-release document was the only personal item in the room. Her ashtray was full of pins and one loose button.
‘All right, Tillie, who’s next?’
‘This is Miss Minton’s room.’
‘Do you like her?’ asked Tommy, reeling back under a cloud of cheap scent. Tillie looked around to make sure that no one was listening.
‘She’s all right. Makes a lot of work. Lots of washing and ironing, with all them costumes. I don’t know what sort of an actress she is, though. And,’ Tillie lowered her voice further, ‘I don’t think she goes to church when she goes out on Sundays.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I asked her what church she was, cos I thought she might be a Catholic. I can’t abide them Micks. She said she went to St Paul’s. But she don’t.’
‘How do you know?’ The overpowering femininity of Miss Minton’s belongings was stifling Harris. The window had evidently not been opened for some time. He pulled at a drawer, dreading that he might see something which would cause him to blush.
‘She leaves at the wrong time. Service at the cathedral is eight and ten. She often don’t leave until ten. I don’t know where she’s going but it ain’t church. But she’s got some pretty things.’ Tillie gazed admiringly at a gown figured with gold dragons. ‘And she smells nice.’
Love letters and cards and cheap novels with chocolate wrappers marking her place comprised most of Miss Minton’s reading matter. Tommy glanced through them. The terms in which Miss Minton’s person was described by one ardent suitor were too much for him. He felt his cheeks begin to burn.
He replaced the letters, felt along the mattress and under the bed. There he found three unmatched stockings and an earring. The walls of her room were hung with posters for various plays, and the small table was covered by a fringed shawl. Her wastepaper basket contained more chocolate wrappers and two types of cigarette butt—one long and lipstick stained; the other short, gold-ringed and brown.
‘Oh! They’re the ones that Mr Sheridan smokes!’ squeaked Tillie. Tommy Harris selected a representative
