which Tommy had grabbed at random. It was Napoleon brandy, kept in the Blue Diamond for the manager’s own personal guests. Elsie was lulled and soothed. She wrapped her arms around the large form of Police Constable Harris, breathing in his fresh healthy scent of male human, tweed and shaving soap. Fevered and exhausted, he laid his head on her breast.
Such darkness as was to be found in Fitzroy echoed with the sound of leather-clad feet as the ’Roy Boys searched all the lanes and byways for Lizard Elsie, the sailor’s friend, and her new protector.
Phryne Fisher rose from her green sheets, collected her lover and her circus gear, and faced her staff. They all looked worried.
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be away,’ she said, adjusting a turban over her black hair. ‘It might be days or it might be weeks. If anyone comes looking for me you are to say that I am in the country for a rest-cure and I have left no forwarding address. Here is a list of towns where I’ll call at the post offices for letters. Remember that I am called Fern Williams.’ She glanced at Dot apologetically. ‘Sorry, Dot dear, but I couldn’t think of another name at short notice. If you really need me write to me, but use cheap stationery and a Coles envelope. If I need anything I’ll write, or I’ll telephone, supposing I can find a phone that isn’t in the general store. If I need to be rescued, Mr Butler can bring the Hispano-Suiza and just whisk me off home. This is Mr Lee,’ she added, presenting a sleek and glowing young man. ‘Mr Alan Lee. He’ll know where to find me and his orders are mine.’
‘Miss,’ said Dot, ‘what about Detective Inspector Robinson?’
‘What about him?’
‘Are you going to tell him where you are going and all?’
‘That’s a good idea, Dot. You ring him and tell him. If he wants me, then he can follow the same routine. If he really wants me, tell him to get someone to arrest me. I can’t be seen to be on good terms with the cops.’
‘Yes, Miss. Good luck, Miss Phryne.’ Dot kissed Phryne on the cheek. ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’
‘Yes, Dot, I will. I promise.’
Mrs Butler stepped forward and offered Phryne a bottle.
‘What’s this?’
‘Goanna oil,’ said Mrs Butler. ‘If you’re going to keep falling off a horse, Miss Fisher, then you’ll need it.’
Phryne took a last look at the anxious faces and said, ‘Thank you. I’ll be off then.’
No one moved.
She went out of her own back door, taking a last look at the solid, well-known and well-loved house.
‘Right?’ asked Alan Lee, running a caressing hand down her back. ‘You want to leave all this and come to the circus, Fern?’
Phryne shivered pleasantly and kissed him very gently and lingeringly on the mouth. She would not be able to kiss Alan Lee again while she stayed with Farrell’s Circus and Wild Beast Show.
‘Right,’ she said.
Half an hour later Alan Lee parked his truck near the carousel and Phryne leapt out, clutching the brown suitcase. Her dress was once-washed and a blinding pink. Her head was bound up in a closely fitting pink turban. Her only unusual attributes were hidden. Around her waist, in a custom-made webbing belt, was her card case, some coins and twenty pounds in notes. In a compartment in the cheap suitcase was her Beretta and a box of ammunition.
The circus was breaking up. Two trucks had been loaded with planks and seats. Phryne stowed her suitcase on the truck designated by a laconic rigger. He was dressed lightly in a blue singlet, army-issue shorts, boots, and a fixed hand-rolled cigarette.
‘What are they doing?’ she asked him nervously, expecting to be snubbed. He smiled indulgently down at the pink turban.
‘You’re the new rider, ain’t you? Never seen this before? Well, first we take down the canvas,’ he said, as gangs of sweating men passed him, unlacing and folding the sides of the tent. ‘Then we take out the guys and dismast the king poles.’
‘Which are they?’
‘The two highest ones. They’re jointed so we can carry them. But they gotta fall careful-like, ’cos they cost a fortune. So we slows the fall all the way with lines.’
‘But what takes the strain?’
‘Rajah,’ he said, gesturing with a thumb. Rajah the elephant, in harness, was holding the lines which stretched up to the king poles without shifting her feet. Phryne noticed three men in a group, leaning against the guys and smoking.
The head rigger noticed them too. ‘Hey, you blokes! Come and lend a hand.’
One of the group made a rude gesture and the rigger strode off into the collapsing tent. Lifting the man off his feet, the rigger swung him out from under the canvas. The man stood rubbing his arm with one sticking- plastered hand.
‘You wanna work in a circus,’ the rigger said calmly, the cigarette never moving from its position on his lower lip, ‘then you work.’
‘Mr Jones said—’
‘I don’t give a . . .’ The rigger noticed Phryne and did not finish the sentence. ‘I don’t care what Mr Jones said. He ain’t head rigger and I am. Now carry canvas or get out.’
Sulkily, the three men moved away. The rigger spat out his cigarette and ground it slowly into the dust with the heel of his boot.
‘Now, you watch,’ he said. The tent came down with a gusty sigh, ballooning gently, as the king poles toppled. Rajah trundled out as it fell and stood patiently waiting until someone undid her harness. An army of men fell on the flattened saucer-shaped mass and dissected it into laced sections of canvas, miles of line, poles, tent pegs, electrical equipment and wires.
‘You’ve got electric lights, then,’ commented Phryne.
‘Yair, boss bought a generator. That’s the generator truck. Much better than the old flares. Petrol vapour, they were, and bloody dangerous. The electric ones are beaut. But the flyers say that they’re too bright and they get too hot up in the air. Flyers,’ he chuckled, ‘they don’t come more temperamental than flyers.’
It struck Phryne that she was talking to the most important man in the circus. Without this tall and competent rigger, the temperamental flyers would have no trapeze, the circus would have no cover, no lights and no ring. He seemed to bear his responsibility lightly. His eyes, however, missed nothing.
Horses neighed, camels hooted and bubbled. Rajah was unharnessed and led through the crowd by one ear. The air was full of smoke as all manner of trucks revved and either started or did not start. The air was also filled with curses.
‘Miss Fern,’ said a voice at Phryne’s hip. This time she did not look up and around but dropped to one knee immediately. The dwarf seemed nervous.
‘Mr Burton,’ she said. ‘Good morning.’
‘Would you care to ride with me?’ he asked diffidently. ‘The Catalans and I travel in convoy. Or perhaps you have a companion already?’
Phryne’s body ached suddenly with remembrance of Alan Lee’s touch. She banished a treacherous thought of what it might be like to make love in a moving caravan.
‘Am I supposed to travel with the rest of the girls?’ she asked.
The rigger commented, ‘Nah. The girls spread ’emselves wherever there’s a place. You go with Mr Burton, girl. You’ll get a more comfortable ride with him.’ He grinned. ‘Safer, too.’
Since Mr Burton had drawn himself up to his full four feet (advertised height, three foot, seven inches), Phryne interposed her body.
‘Thank you for telling me about the tent,’ she said hurriedly to the rigger. ‘Most interesting.’ He gave her a puzzled look and she realised belatedly that she had used the wrong voice.
‘Gotta go,’ she added and accompanied the dwarf across the disintegrating camp to his own caravan. It was drawn by a large and patient horse, who was being backed into the shafts by one of the Catalans.
‘
