Jo Jo was led sobbing out of the ring, overcome by the music. The crowd laughed and clapped.
While the clowns were performing, the cages of lions had been brought in. Now the iron walls had been built and Amazing Hans summoned his beasts to appear.
As he called them by name, they sat up and snarled. ‘Sarah, Sam, Boy, King, Queenie, Prince!’
Phryne had seen lion tamers before. And she really did not like the lions. The clowns paused in the antechamber.
‘You’re marvellous,’ said Phryne. ‘Really terrific.’
‘Did you hear that, Toby?’ asked Jo Jo. He touched his brother’s cheek and waved a hand in front of his eyes. ‘Oh, dear, he’s gone again. Now, Fern, what about you? Can’t go on with a naked face, it’s indecent. Let me just stand Toby over here and I’ll paint you. We might as well match, eh? Tip up your chin. Now stay still.’
Matthias could not have been more professional. He smoothed greasepaint numbers five and nine into Phryne’s skin, carefully blending it in the palm of his hand. Then he drew in her eyes, provided red for her cheeks and lips and tucked a stray wisp of black hair under the feathers.
‘Pretty bird,’ he said. ‘Look at yourself.’
Phryne surveyed the face in the mirror and did not know it. The paint abolished features with which she was tolerably familiar and transformed her into a circus rider, born in a trunk and exactly the same as all the others. She smiled, then frowned. She was looking at a stranger.
A whip cracked in the big top. The lions were removed and it was interval. The crowd came streaming out, in search of fairy lollies and saveloys and ice-cream in tubs.
‘I’d better put poor old Toby back in his box,’ said Matthias. ‘Back later, Fern. Don’t miss the flyers. They are very good.’
Phryne learned that she was required to stay within the purlieus of the tent. She obtained a cup of tea and sat down on the grass to consider her situation.
There was too much that she did not know. She could pin down most of the accidents at Farrell’s Circus to the abominable Jones and his three henchmen. The tall one, the dark one, and the man with the sticking plaster on his hands. That was clear. What was not clear was why. If Jones wanted his half-share, he now had it, at the cost of three hundred pounds. What if Jones was the appointee of Sweet Dreams Pty Ltd? Phryne presumed that he was. He wielded too much power over Farrell not to have some financial or other very strong stake in the show. Mr Burton, a very shrewd person, thought it was money. So Jones, or Sweet Dreams Pty Ltd, had their half. Why should they keep on? And why should they kill Mr Christopher? If they had?
Phryne felt wrath glow in her insides about Mr Christopher. Christopher/Christine, he had been billed. Criss/Cross, the man–woman, perfect complement to poor Miss Younger. She would never find another man like him. Phryne was desperately sorry for Molly Younger.
‘Heads up, Fern,’ warned Dulcie. ‘The Bevans are on.’
The trapeze was occupied. Two young men, one at each end of the tent, were stretching and bending on gear slung from the king poles. They were clad in fleshings and tunics and they glittered with spangles. From the ground they seemed to have naked legs, chests and arms. They unslung the trapezes and swung out lazily, sitting on the bar like children on a swing, far over the audience’s heads.
One slid down and swung. The other slid as well, with a
A young woman in a cloak was climbing a rope as easily as walking up a ramp. She reached the flies, unclasped the cloak and dropped it fluttering to the ground. It seemed to fall very slowly. It was a long way down. The audience’s eyes followed it. Two more men swarmed up ropes to the ceiling, just under the hot lights.
‘Now,’ she heard the biggest man call, hanging upside down by his knees. Some kind of cuff attached his ankle to the trapeze.
Swinging gently, the first man lazily let go of the bar with his knees and flipped himself into space. Just as lazily and with absolute timing, the catcher locked his hands onto his wrists. The crowd screamed. The catcher swung back and deposited the flyer on the perch. The next Bevan performed a somersault. The third did a double somersault. Five people changed places between trapeze and perch, moving with the assurance of birds in their native element. The young woman Lynn flew nonchalantly through the air, her lithe body a streak of blue, glittering as she turned, and was snared by her catcher’s safe hands.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen!’ announced Sam Farrell. ‘Silence if you please. Miss Lynn Bevan will now attempt, for your astonishment and delight, the most dangerous feat ever to be done by an aerialist. The triple somersault!’
The audience clapped. Phryne winced away from their hot eyes.
‘Called the death trick,’ continued the ringmaster, ‘thought to be humanly impossible. Now, could I have complete silence please.’
The drum rolled and was still. The blue-clad girl appeared to be impossibly high and impossibly delicate. She could not defy gravity for long enough to roll three times. Phryne held her breath. So did the crowd.
The catcher and the girl, hanging by their knees, began to swing. They were carefully out of phase. One movement seemed to be wrong and ugly because it did not reflect the other. Only when Phryne had begun to gnaw the greasepaint off her lips did the girl leave her perch and spin like a ball in the air. Once, twice, thrice and her hands came out of the last roll. The catcher had her safe, or as safe as she could be hanging by both wrists high above unforgiving sawdust. From up there, Phryne thought, the net must look like a pocket handkerchief. The crowd roared with relief and admiration. Miss Bevan was decanted neatly onto the stand and the Flying Bevans slid down ropes to take their bow.
‘While they get the net folded, we have jugglers,’ said Dulcie. ‘One of which is, come to think of it, me.’
She ran into the ring, catching balls tossed to her by her tall handsome partner. He smiled at her as she tossed back objects of different sizes and weight. There were balls, a matchbox, a club and an orange. Dulcie managed them without appearing to concentrate. The pair moved around the outside of the ring, tossing objects and quips, as the roustabouts rolled up the safety net and carried it out.
Then they took the centre. A boy ran in with a bundle of lit kerosene flambeaux. Dulcie and Tom took one each and passed them. Then two each and finally three. The flames flared and streamed as they were passed with precision from one hand to the other, so that Phryne was dazzled. She wondered how burned they had got, practising this dangerous trick. Finally, they caught up three each and brandished them.
Bernie entered, with Bruno in tow, passing Dulcie and Tom. The bear took a scooter away from a clown and got on it. He pushed off and scooted around the ring with solemn dignity, then dropped on all fours and was fed a ginger biscuit. He sat down, sat up and rolled over on request. Then the band struck up a waltz and he bowed to Bernie and waltzed him confidently around the ring to the strains of an out-of-tune
Sultan and Rajah lumbered in to stand on tubs and awe the audience with their hugeness, and Phryne remembered that she was on soon. She had better go and look for Missy.
She found her standing quietly with the other horses. Feathers nodded between her ears and her harness was glittering with stones. The elephants walked out, and in came Mr Sheridan the magician. He wore immaculate evening dress and carried only a small wand. Phryne watched him pass, disliking his manner. She pinned down the cause of her distaste. He was a parvenu, an affected social climber. She recalled that his father was reputed to have been a grocer and wished his son had stayed a counter-jumper, where he belonged. Dulcie, in tights and a spangled costume, came behind him, bearing a collapsible table. Behind her were two stagehands carrying the disappearing box.
Phryne patted Missy and gave her a carrot. The dark passage was full of horses and girls. The hot air smelt sweetly of greasepaint and it was stifling. Phryne went back into the tent and looked through the peephole again.
‘I conjure,’ announced Mr Sheridan, ‘a dagger!’
Out of the air a dagger came floating down towards him. Phryne was close enough to see that it was suspended by nearly invisible fishing line.
How Shakespearean, thought Phryne. Parlour stage craft. She was not interested in Mr Sheridan. The audience, however, were enthusiastic.
‘We’re on,’ said Miss Younger’s voice. ‘Mount up.’
