Kerry Greenwood - Blood and Circuses

‘Thank you for this little comic interlude, Terry,’ said Robinson. ‘Now, hadn’t you better wake your constable and ask him what in hell’s name he thinks he’s doing?’

Grossmith strode over to the pair and bellowed, ‘Wakey, wakey!’

Lizard Elsie sprang to her feet, hands hooked into claws, and then identified the speaker. She grinned at him. ‘H’lo, Terry,’ she said. ‘I brung your copper back.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with him?’ Grossmith crouched down next to Harris. He shook him by the shoulder. The young man groaned and strove to focus. Grossmith roared, ‘Harris! What’s the matter with you?’

Robinson came out of the doorway and inspected the recumbent officer.

‘Use your eyes, Terry. Look at his coat. And his shirt. That ain’t booze. He’s not drunk. That’s blood. He’s been hurt.’

‘One of youse has got bloody eyes, then,’ said Lizard Elsie sarcastically. ‘Of course he’s been hurt. He’s been shot. It was that fucking mongrel Wholesale Louis. If you want to bloody know.’

‘The ’Roy Boys,’ said Grossmith. ‘Call the police surgeon,’ he shouted at the bemused duty officer. ‘Don’t stand there like an idiot! Jack, d’you reckon we can get him up onto the bench?’

Together they lifted Constable Harris. Lizard Elsie began to sidle towards the door and Robinson caught her arm.

‘Stay with us, Else,’ he said. ‘I reckon we owe you a favour.’

‘For a fucking change,’ she told him. ‘He’s a good boy, he is,’ she added. ‘I was bloody getting the worst of it last night in the Blue Diamond and he piled in and rescued me. Then we ran away and fucking Louis shot ’im, so I hid ’im all night and we come ’ere on the first tram. He’s not hurt bad. He’s just tired and bloody shocked.’

‘Elsie, you are a remarkable woman,’ said Robinson.

‘Too fucking right,’ Elsie agreed.

In an hour, Constable Harris was recovered enough to be interviewed. The wound was revealed to be a long, shallow gash along his side, which hurt when he moved but was not serious. That he had not contracted tetanus the police surgeon attributed to Elsie’s dressing of the wound with fine cognac.

‘Best drink I ever had,’ said Elsie wistfully. ‘And I didn’t like to waste it.’

‘It wasn’t wasted,’ said the doctor. ‘Keep the wound dry, lad, and get it dressed again tomorrow.’ He took his leave.

‘Now, Harris, tell me exactly what happened,’ instructed Grossmith. ‘Slowly.’

Constable Harris, who had been allowed to wash and change back into his uniform, felt clean and comfortable. He sat up straighter and ordered his thoughts. He then told, in minute detail, everything he could remember about the night before.

‘Then I crawled into this humpy and I don’t remember anything until Elsie dragged me onto the cobbles and we staggered out to the street and caught a tram. They almost didn’t let us on. We must have looked a sight.’

‘I wrapped him up and I stayed with him to keep him warm,’ said Elsie slowly. ‘You can bloody die of cold and shock if you ain’t kept warm. Then I brung ’im back like he says. But what I wanna fucking know,’ her voice rose in wrath, ‘is where do them mongrel ’Roys get off, trying to snuff me what never did ’em any fucking harm? And why?’

‘Ah. Yes. Now, you told Albert Ellis that he owed you ten bottles,’ said Grossmith slowly. ‘Why should he owe you ten bottles, eh, Else?’

Lizard Elsie looked past him at the wall. Her mouth shut tight.

‘Come on, Elsie, you’re in big trouble. Not from me. I’m not going to charge you with anything if all you did was go into the Provincial and start a fight with the publican so that the ’Roys could shoot poor old Reffo. Neither is my chief.’ Elsie looked at Robinson. He nodded. Grossmith continued, ‘But you rescued Harris here, who seems to have a talent for being rescued by women, and the ’Roys’ll be after you now. You’ve never done anything really wrong, Elsie, except swear the air blue. We got nothing against you. But I bet the ’Roys don’t see it like that.’

‘What can you bloody do?’ asked Elsie. ‘I spill my guts to you, then I go out on the street again and they’re fucking waiting for me. Wholesale Louis with his bloody gun.’

‘We can keep you in protective custody until we sort it out,’ said Grossmith. ‘You can walk out any time you like,’ he added, as Elsie made a convulsive start for the door. He hung onto her. ‘Wait a bit, Elsie. You and me, we’ve known each other a long time, eh? I always did the right thing by you, Else. I’d hate to see you dead.’

Elsie did not struggle. She allowed Grossmith to put her back in her chair.

‘Yair. Well, you’re bloody right. I did start that fight. Albert Ellis owes me ten fucking bottles of port, the mean bastard dog. And I s’pose I can trust you, Terry. I s’pose so,’ she said reluctantly.

‘And we could probably manage a bottle of beer a day,’ he added. ‘You know you’ve gotta get off the red biddy, Else, it’d kill a brown dog. A week on one bottle of beer a day and you’ll be leaping like a spring lamb. But I’ll give you a bottle of brandy out of the first-aid kit to start you off.’

‘Whaddaya reckon, eh, sailor?’ She nudged Constable Harris in his uninjured side. ‘You’re the one what swept me off me poor ole feet.’

‘You stay for a while, Elsie,’ said Constable Harris. ‘While we have a little chat with Mr Ellis and the boys. I’m anxious to meet them again.’

She sized him up in one sharp glance from her bright black eyes. Then she smiled a breathtaking smile from her wrinkled face, gentle and sensuous, which set Constable Harris back in his recovery.

‘All right, sailor.’ She patted his cheek. ‘I’ll do it. Come on then, Terry,’ she laughed up at the big policeman, ‘put the bloody cuffs on. I’ll go quiet.’

Because there was no other accommodation available for females, the duty officer put Lizard Elsie in the same cell as Miss Parkes.

Phryne Fisher managed not to spill her tea. She stared at the little man, who was driving the horse and preserving a perfectly blank face.

‘Sorry?’

‘I recognised you when Rajah pulled off your scarf,’ he explained. ‘No one else is likely to have heard of you.’

‘And you have?’ Phryne did not feel equal to denying it entirely and had now lost the initiative.

He smiled slightly at the tacit admission of identity. ‘Oh yes. I read the fashionable papers.’

‘Why?’

‘Book reviews,’ said the dwarf calmly. ‘Since I graduated from Oxford I have kept up my reading. Literature is my field. Also, I like to see what the social set is doing. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. The times change, and we change with them. There has been a general failure of nerve since the War, would you not agree? No one believes now that there is a golden age ahead, not even Mr Wells.’

‘You were at Oxford University?’ squeaked Phryne. ‘Then what are you doing in Farrell’s?’

‘Where else could my . . . deformities be valuable? Everywhere else I am a freak. Here I am still a freak but I am a performer. Circuses are the only places where dwarves can get some respect. And even then, you heard the head rigger. “Safe with me,” he said and laughed.’

‘Only because you are obviously a gentleman,’ said Phryne. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, Mr Burton, how old are you?’

‘I’m thirty,’ he said, looking into her face. ‘I went grey early. That’s good. An old dwarf has more value, because he is obviously not just a child. I’ll never be taller than I am and unless I can find a suitable lady dwarf I’ll never marry.’

‘How about . . . er . . . love?’ asked Phryne. Mr Burton laughed.