The Road to Gundagai (29 page)

‘Thank you,’ said Blue. ‘This is wonderful.’ It was so good to sit at a table again, a shining polished table; to choose food from covered dishes, instead of accepting what was splashed onto a tin plate.

She tried the lamb’s fry. Perfect, moist like Mrs Huggins’s, not tough like Ethel’s had been, the gravy rich but not fatty. Ethel’s gravy had burned flecks in it. Crisp toast — the big hunks of bread they toasted on the fire were good, but thinly sliced hard toast was a different dish entirely, especially with apricot jam. The scrambled eggs were moist and orange.

A woman in the ironed overall of a housekeeper opened the door. ‘Tea or coffee, Miss Matilda?’

‘Coffee please. Miss Magnifico? Or would you prefer orange juice or milk?’

‘Tea please.’ She had grown used to strong black sweet tea at the circus. It helped wake you up at four am, and kept you going after a long performance.

The housekeeper vanished down the corridor.

Miss Matilda took another bite of her scrambled eggs, then put down her fork. ‘How long have you been with the circus?’

‘Circus people are born to the life,’ said Blue evasively. She took another bite of crisp toast.

‘But you weren’t. You haven’t been there very long either.’ Miss Matilda carefully buttered a corner of toast, then added, ‘I am afraid I manipulated you, to get you alone. I’m curious.’

Blue swallowed. Perhaps she hadn’t been as clever as she’d thought. Instead of her finding a way to get Miss Matilda on side, it seemed that the older woman had an agenda of her own. ‘I … How do you know I haven’t been with the circus all my life?’

Miss Matilda smiled. ‘You know how to use a butter knife. Your toast is torn, not cut, and you take small mouthfuls, just as my mother insisted all ladylike girls should do. Do you have many butter knives at the circus?’

Blue thought of their meals around the campfire, sitting on bales of hay, the enamelled tin plates, the spoons and fingers to eat the bones. ‘No. Nor fish knives,’ she added.

‘I could tell by your accent too. Those clear English vowels in an Australian circus. You can look like the others, but now and then you forget to sound like them. So, how long
have
you been with them?’

‘Just over a year.’

‘Do your parents know?’ The words were gentle.

‘My parents are dead,’ said Blue flatly.

‘My dear, I am so sorry.’

Blue shrugged. What could this woman know, with her comfortable house and her comfortable life?

‘My parents died when I was twelve. It was … not easy.’ Miss Matilda smiled reminiscently. ‘Not easy at all. But I still remember much of that time with joy. Good flowed into the empty spaces.’ She looked back at Blue. ‘How did you arrive at the circus? You don’t have any relatives? Forgive me, but a girl who knows how to use a butter knife and is not intimidated by silver serving dishes usually has a relative or two who can afford to look after her.’

Blue looked down at her lamb’s fry and eggs. Suddenly she trusted this woman, who had taken in an unknown circus fortune-teller, would let a circus camp on her land, and seemed not even to notice that her husband dribbled from one corner of his mouth as she kissed him, except to worry he did not want to join an interesting guest for breakfast, or meet an elephant.

‘You might begin by telling me your real name,’ added Miss Matilda gently. ‘You admitted that no one is really called Magnifico.’

‘It’s Laurence. Bluebell Laurence, but I prefer to be called Blue.’

‘I don’t blame you. Well, Miss Laurence? Why are you with a circus and not safely with some member of your family?’

Blue met her eyes. They were good eyes, with laugh wrinkles and the wrinkles that came from gazing into the distance. ‘My aunts tried to poison me,’ Blue said abruptly. ‘The circus people rescued me.’

Miss Matilda regarded her for a moment. ‘You know, I doubt that very much. Not that the circus people rescued you. They seem good people. But in my experience aunts rarely murder their nieces, except in novels.’

‘It was arsenic. It had to be arsenic!’ Suddenly it all poured out: the fire, the aunts taking her from hospital before her legs had healed, the big old house far from anyone she had known, even Uncle Herbert, the growing nausea, her hair falling out, her steady recovery once she’d left …

Miss Matilda listened intently, interrupting a few times for more detail, waiting till the housekeeper had left the tea and coffee pots before Blue resumed her story again. At the end she pushed her chair back.

‘Another cup of tea in the living room?’ She led the way, then waited till Blue was seated on a silk-covered sofa, soft and firm all at the same time. She had forgotten how good it was to sit on a proper sofa too, inside a house, protected from wind and sun and rain.

‘Do you believe me now?’ Blue asked.

‘Strangely enough, I do. Tea, this time, for both of us,’ Miss Matilda added, as Mrs Mutton peered in. ‘Or rather, I believe that you believe it, and possibly the circus people do too.’

‘There’s no possibly about it,’ said Blue hotly. ‘Why should they help me if it isn’t true? I’m crippled.’ She gestured to her legs, her awkwardness on the sofa. ‘People ask the circus for work nearly every day. They could have got someone much more useful to be a mermaid, or to dance. There was a woman who’d been a ballerina a few months ago …’

Miss Matilda held up a hand to stop her. ‘There is also the fact that you are probably a very rich woman. Even I know of Laurence’s Shoes. I believe I read something about a lost heiress a year ago too. You will be inclined to help your benefactors, won’t you?’

‘Of course I’ll help them all in any way I can, but —’ She stopped. ‘You’re saying they planned it all to make me grateful?’

‘It’s not impossible,’ said Miss Matilda gently. ‘Perhaps the nausea was a result of your injuries. An infection can make you feel very ill indeed. Then you got better naturally at the circus.’

Blue shook her head. ‘I was feeling worse and worse. But after just one day at the circus I felt much better.’

‘Very well then. This Mah you speak about, whose brother is with the circus. She could have fed you something harmless every day to make you feel sick, something as common as castor oil perhaps.’

Blue met Miss Matilda’s eyes. ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘Fred … well, Fred might do something like that to someone he didn’t know, especially if he thought no one would be really hurt. But not Mah.’

‘This Fred of yours might like the idea of a rich wife. He might have convinced his sister it was for the best.’

‘No. Fred’s like a brother.’ She stopped. At times Fred’s behaviour was not at all brotherly. But Mah … ‘Mah is a rock. She saved my life back in the fire.’

‘She may think she deserves payment.’

‘Not Mah. Miss Matilda, you don’t understand the circus — these people, I mean. They trick the audience in little things, like pretending a bear and a half is one bear, or that I’m really a mermaid. But they don’t trick each other.’

Miss Matilda looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Do you truly trust them? Or do you just feel you have to trust them, because you have nowhere else to go? Because I am sure we can find you a place of safety, no matter what has happened.’

‘I trust them.’

‘And you want to stay with them?’

Blue nodded. ‘For now anyway. When I’m twenty-one, well, I don’t know what I want to do then. But they are my family …’ She hesitated again. What would happen to the circus — and her life — if Madame died, if Sheba was too frail to perform, if Mrs Olsen and Ginger and Gertrude went to America?

‘What is it?’

Blue shrugged helplessly. ‘Gertrude — she’s one of the Boldini Brothers, except they aren’t brothers, they’re mother and daughter … Gertrude has been offered a good job in America. And the circus belongs to Madame. At least I think it does … But maybe Gertrude will leave now, and her mother and brother will go with her.’ She shook her head. ‘If the circus can’t perform, we won’t make any money. Mrs Olsen might have no choice. If she leaves us as well, there won’t even be a circus.’

‘No one is leaving.’

Blue hadn’t heard the door open. She turned. Joseph stood in the doorway, his eyes even more shadowed than when she’d seen him last.

‘What is it?’ she cried.

He looked at Miss Matilda, not at her. ‘The caravans are here. The elephant is down by the river.’

‘Is Sheba all right?’ interrupted Blue.

‘Seems fine,’ said Joseph shortly. ‘I left her having a drink in the shallows. They’ve put up a couple of the tents there too, for the men to sleep in.’

‘Is the Big Top under cover? And the equipment? It’ll rust if it gets wet —’

‘Everything else is down at the police station. Including your House of Horrors.’

She stared at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘There’s been a murder. At your circus.’

Miss Matilda looked at him sharply. ‘Joseph! Are you sure?’

‘Very sure. Sergeant Patterson will be here soon to tell you himself.’

Blue struggled to her feet. For a moment she could only think of arsenic; arsenic in the tea or cocoa, Mrs Olsen or Mah or Ginger ill like she had been, so ill they died. ‘Who’s been poisoned?’ she asked desperately.

Joseph looked at her strangely. ‘I didn’t say anything about poison. This chap’s head’s been cut off. With one blow, by the look of it.’

Miss Matilda made a muffled sound of horror.

‘Chap?’ Not Fred, she thought. Please, not Fred. Nor Ephraim or Ebenezer. She tried not to think of them lying headless, bleeding. ‘Please, who is it?’

Somehow Blue found herself sitting next to Miss Matilda, her hand clasped in the older woman’s. ‘Joseph, don’t keep her in suspense. Who has been killed?’

‘I don’t know. And if any of the rest of the circus know, they aren’t telling. I went back to help them load up the rest of it. You know the skeleton in the House of Horrors?’

Blue nodded, though she had only seen it briefly when she’d helped with the unpacking. Only those who had never known anguish could find pleasure in a House of Horrors.

‘It’s real,’ said Joseph.

Chapter 24

They sat in the Drinkwater living room, Mrs Olsen, Gertrude and Ginger on one sofa, Blue, Fred and Mah on another, Ephraim and Ebenezer clearly uncomfortable in their armchairs, the Gibber’s Creek sergeant facing them, with Miss Matilda and Joseph slightly behind.

‘Let’s go through this again,’ said Sergeant Patterson wearily. He was greyhound thin, with a cap of close-cropped, woolly grey hair. ‘You say none of you knew the skeleton was there?’

‘We knew it was
there
,’ said Gertrude impatiently. ‘We thought it was fake. Like the giant bear.’

‘Even though it is clearly made of bone?’

Fred nodded. ‘If we thought about it at all, we probably all reckoned it was made from cow bones or horse or something. But we just didn’t think about it.’ He looked around at the others for support. ‘It’s been there forever.’

‘And forever is how long?’

Fred hesitated. ‘I’ve been with the circus eleven years. But the House of Horrors was part of a sideshow before that. Nothing’s been added to it since then. Well, Ephraim plays a ghost sometimes …’

Blue carefully didn’t look at Fred. Ten years, she thought. Fred has only been with Madame ten years.

The sergeant raised an eyebrow. ‘In an old sheet?’

‘A mess of mosquito netting. I think Ephraim touched up the paint on the gargoyles a few years ago too.’

Ephraim nodded. ‘Just them, but. The skeleton never needed nothing doing to it. It’s all wired together, right and tough. Good fencing wire …’ His voice trailed off, as if he realised exactly what the fencing wire was holding together.

The sergeant looked back at Fred. ‘And your name is …?’

‘Fred Smith,’ said Fred easily.

The sergeant looked at Mah. ‘So your name must be Marjory Smith, as you’re his sister.’

The room seemed to become slightly stiller. He’s no fool, thought Blue. He’s been checking up on us already. Telegrams to other police stations perhaps, as well as the hurried conversation with Miss Matilda when he arrived.

‘My name is Marjory Malloy,’ said Mah clearly. ‘I was brought up at the Orphanage of St Matthew. I’ve been at the circus since last May.’

‘She’s my cousin, not my sister,’ said Fred, his eyes meeting the sergeant’s in artless truthfulness. ‘But being brought up at the orphanage together like, well, it seemed easier to tell everyone at the circus she was my sister.’

‘So you’re also the … cousin … of the Robert Malloy who is wanted in connection with a bank robbery up in Brisbane, ten years ago? According to the records, he had a sister at St Matthew’s Orphanage.’

Fred gave the sergeant his best, most open gaze. ‘That’d be the size of it, sergeant. All families have a skeleton in their cupboard. Cousin Robbie is ours. Sorry,’ he added. ‘Bad joke.’

‘Indeed.’ The sergeant looked at Mah, then at Joseph. ‘This particular skeleton is at least ten years old. Isn’t that right, Mr McAlpine?’

‘I’d say so,’ said Joseph. ‘So does Dr Thomas. Maybe a lot older — depends on how it’s been kept. Pretty sure it’s a man’s skeleton. You can tell by the hips, as well as the size of the bones. He was short too, about five foot. No signs of injury except for the severed vertebrae at the neck. The bones are a bit brittle in places.’

‘It might be a
hundred
years old,’ said Blue. ‘Madame might have bought it with the rest of the equipment in the House of Horrors.’

‘Possibly.’ Joseph’s face was expressionless. ‘We have skeletons that we study at university. One of them was a professor of medicine. He left his body to the university … Well, anyway, you get to be able to tell how old a skeleton is. I shouldn’t think this one is more than twenty years old. But it could be much less, with all the travel and heat it’s been exposed to. Ours are kept in wooden cases when they’re not in use.’

The sergeant looked at Blue. ‘You are Bluebell Laurence, also known as Belle Magnifico, and Belle the mermaid?’

It made her sound like an American gangster. Miss Matilda must have told him her real name, in their short conversation when he arrived. ‘Yes.’