Clarence frowned. He could look quite formidable when he frowned. “Cat, it’s not like you to accuse anyone without evidence. What exactly are you basing your suspicions on, other than the fact that Zora wanted to share a cabin with you?”
Catherine leaned forward. She felt like Sherlock Holmes discussing his conclusions. It all fit together so perfectly. “Look, Zora is the only person other than the porter with a key to our cabin. After all, it’s her cabin as well. Anyone else would have been taking the risk that I was already inside, but that wouldn’t have worried her—she could just have searched another time. And if she was seen entering, none of us would have thought anything of it—we would have assumed she was going to fetch something, or take a nap. Where was she after breakfast? She said she was going to feed the snakes, but where was she after that? She could have gone back and looked through the trunk then.”
“You yourself have shown me how easy it is to open a locked door,” said Beatrice thoughtfully. “You told me it took Diana only an hour to teach you how. And whoever looked through the trunk must have picked that lock—why not the door lock as well? Certainly it would be a risk, but if someone could get in quickly, without being seen—”
“Yes, but that was me,” said Catherine. “I can hear tumblers falling, remember? And it’s harder to pick the lock on the cabin door—a trunk lock is child’s play to anyone with a hairpin. Anyway, I didn’t say I had any proof. Just a suspicion, that’s all. Sherlock Holmes would follow up on a suspicion, wouldn’t he? She’s the most logical suspect.”
Catherine remembered the evening they had boarded, standing on the platform in the Gare de l’Est while Lorenzo distributed their tickets. She was supposed to share with Miss Petunia—everyone had to share, except of course for Beatrice because of her poison. But Zora had grabbed her by the arm and said, “I’m sharing with Catherine! Come on, Cat Girl, it will be fun!” Miss Petunia had agreed to trade tickets and share with Mrs. Kaminski, who helped her sons set up and made sure the nets were securely tied. Even then, Catherine had wondered why Zora was so eager to share with her. It was not as though she and the snake charmer were friends.
“I think you should ask her,” said Clarence. “Give her a chance to defend herself. It’s only fair.”
“You should have been a judge instead of a lawyer,” said Catherine.
He laughed, but his laughter had an edge of bitterness. “They wouldn’t let me be either in Massachusetts, Whiskers. Not after what I did.”
“What did you do?” asked Beatrice. “You’ve never told me.”
“Or me,” said Catherine. She sat down next to Beatrice, the theft of the telegram forgotten for a moment. She and Clarence had been friends since she had joined the Circus of Marvels and Delights, but he had never told her why he was here, what had brought him to the sideshow. She had not asked—as she had told Beatrice, one didn’t ask questions in the circus. But now that Beatrice had brought it up, she was curious as well.
He sighed. “You really want to know?”
Beatrice nodded. Catherine simply waited. If he wanted to tell them, he would. Clarence was not the sort of man you could persuade or plead with.
“All right. It was the year I graduated from law school. Like the other black men in my class, I was inspired by Judge Ruffin, the first black man to graduate from Harvard Law and the first to become a judge in Massachusetts. I thought I was going to be just like him. Me, a poor boy raised by a widowed mother who used to clean other people’s houses to pay the rent. Well, I went through Howard on scholarship, then Harvard on scholarship, and my first year out I worked for an organization offering legal aid to other poor folk—black, Irish, Italian, all sorts. I was sent to one of the counties in the western part of the state, to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. That was the first time a judge called me ‘boy.’ I got my client off all right—the woman herself stood in the witness stand to say it wasn’t rape. They wanted to get married. That was legal in Massachusetts, and she was of age, but her father didn’t want her to marry a black man, so he told the sheriff that my client had raped her. She was visibly pregnant.
“My client walked out of that courthouse a free man, but there was a crowd waiting for him outside, and suddenly her brother stepped out of that crowd. He was the sheriff’s deputy. He had a gun, and he said he was going to shoot that damn . . . his language isn’t fit to repeat. He was determined to kill my client. Without thinking, I jumped on him and wrestled with him for the gun. It went off. . . . He bled to death in my arms. So I was tried for manslaughter in that courthouse, in front of that judge. Despite his jury instructions, I was acquitted—you could almost see him frothing at the mouth with fury and tearing his hair out, the day I walked out of that courtroom, a free man. Everyone in that crowd had seen it was an accident, but who was going to give me a job after that? It didn’t matter that I was innocent. My face had been on the cover of the Boston Globe as the black man who’d killed a white policeman. My mother had died the year before of cancer, and my only other family was cousins down in Virginia. I had no money, so I got a job working the boiler on a steam ship bound for England. After we landed in London, I worked for a while down at the docks, in the East End. There, I met some men who were putting on a Zulu Extravaganza—not one of them was a Zulu, but they said that sort of thing paid well, and what did Londoners know about Zulus anyway? I was in that show for two years before it disbanded, but eventually one of the members left to get married, and another started a grocery business, so there weren’t enough of us to go on. It was back to dockwork for me, until one day I saw an advertisement for Lorenzo’s circus, and I asked him if he needed a professional Zulu. And I’ve been with the circus since.”
They were all silent for a moment. Then Beatrice said, “Could you not use your law license in England?”
“I haven’t bothered to find out,” said Clarence. “I’m done with the law, and I hope it’s done with me. Now, the lunch service is going to start soon. Cat, do you want to talk to Zora or not? If you’re going to do it, you’d better do it soon. We’ll be in Vienna in a couple of hours. I’d rather you had it out with her than go around spying and being suspicious. That’s another kind of poison, especially for a show like ours.”
“All right,” said Catherine. “I suppose now is as good a time as any. And you need to get out of Beatrice’s cabin. How long have you been in here, anyway? Beatrice said an hour, but I don’t believe her. She doesn’t even wear a watch.”
“I came in after breakfast,” said Clarence. “That was . . .” He took out his pocket watch. “Three hours ago?”
“Damn it, Clarence, you should know better! And you should have kicked him out, Bea. You know it’s not good for him to stay in here so long, even with the window open. Do you want the same thing to happen again? You know—like with Giovanni?” She was so angry at them—at both of them. Why did people’s emotions get in the way of rational thinking? Beatrice in particular should know better. The first man she had loved had become poisonous from spending too much time in her presence. Then, he had died. Why could she not think of the consequences?
“I am so sorry,” said Beatrice. “I should have been more conscious of the time. But it was so pleasant to talk. . . .” She looked conscience-stricken, and as though she were about to cry. Catherine was almost sorry for having spoken so harshly. After all, it must be difficult for Beatrice, not being able to socialize with the others. The circus—or in this case, the traveling sideshow—was a collegial group. Someone was always telling a story or demonstrating new tricks. There were card games and spontaneous sing-alongs that startled the staff of the dining car. Henrietta, the Queen of Lilliput, who was also Mrs. Colonel Sharp, had a particularly fine voice. Beatrice could not join in any of that. On the train, every cabin was an enclosed space in which her poison could accumulate. She had to spend most of her time alone. Catherine came to see her as often as possible, but even she could not spend all her time with Beatrice—she wa
s not immune to Beatrice’s poison either.
“Come on, Clarence,” she said. “If I’m going to confront Zora, I want to do it now, and I want you to come with me, in case there’s any trouble. Anyway, you need to get out of here. If I have to come to your funeral, it’ll be your own damn fault.”
“Cat, I’m fine,” he said. “I can take care of myself, remember?” But when he stood up, he stumbled as his knees buckled under him, and he had to clutch at the luggage rack overhead.
Catherine just looked at him, too exasperated to say anything. What was it with men, anyway? They always thought they were so strong, so rational—and really, they were just as emotional as women. Or more so! Here was Clarence, risking his health, even his life, for a conversation with the Poisonous Girl. . . . If he weren’t her oldest friend, she would have remonstrated with him. Of course, if he weren’t her oldest friend, she wouldn’t have been so worried! And she cared about Beatrice, too. She wanted Beatrice to be happy—but not at the cost of Clarence’s life.
“All right, Cat.” He followed her into the corridor. “Whatever you were going to say, consider it said. I can see it all over your face—you look like a tabby turning its nose up at bad milk! I promise I’ll be more careful. Now, where’s Zora?”
Zora, it turned out, was sitting in the cabin she shared with Catherine. Next to her on the seat that was her bed at night, while Catherine took the bunk, were Sasha and an older woman Catherine did not recognize. She looked like someone’s kindly grandmother, in a dress of black crepe with a lace fichu around her shoulders. She was wearing an old-fashioned black bonnet, and peered at Catherine through a pair of strong spectacles.
“Hello, Cat!” said Sasha in his strong Russian accent. That part of his story at least was true—he really had come from Russia, although from the slums of St. Petersburg rather than the steppes that stretch across that great empire. He looked nothing like a dog—today he was wearing an ordinary wool suit with a Norfolk jacket, and would have struck an onlooker as unusual only because of the copious amount of hair that grew over his face. “This is Frau Krähe. She is an old friend—she was a nurse at the orphanage in Moravia where I was sent as a boy. I was walking on the platform when we stopped in Wels, smoking a cigarette, when suddenly I thought, I know that woman purchasing a newspaper! And it was indeed she. Frau Krähe was just telling us that she got on in Munich, and is going to Vienna as well, to visit her granddaughter. She is several cars down. Is that not a strange coincidence?”
“I suppose so,” said Catherine. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” She shook the small, crooked hand in knitted black gloves that Frau Krähe held out, not particularly pleased that Sasha was there, or his friend, although she looked like a nice old woman. She had hoped to find Zora alone so she could confront the snake charmer with her suspicions.
“I am always pleased to meet a friend of dear Sasha,” said Frau Krähe, in a German accent that was even thicker than his Russian one, if that was possible. “How well I remember when he first came to us—a charming little boy, but very sick! We got him well again, on plenty of brown bread and clean mountain air. Now he smokes those vile cigarettes. Really, Sasha!” She shook her head at him, then turned back to peer at Catherine and Clarence through her spectacles. “And you are also with the circus?”
Then introductions were made all around, but Catherine wished both Sasha and his friend would leave so she could talk to Zora alone.
Instead, he finished telling the story of how he had been sent by himself, at such a young age, to the orphanage in Moravia. His father, who shared his hirsute condition, was also a sideshow performer, but had succumbed to the lure of alcohol and made barely enough to support his family. His brother and sisters had all been sent to orphanages as well—he had not seen them since they were children. Frau Krähe had helped him, more than he could describe. He owed her everything. . . .
“I want to talk to Zora for a minute,” said Catherine, interrupting his story.
“Of course,” said Sasha, standing up. “I shall save you all seats for the luncheon service, yes?”
“As for me, I have my luncheon in a basket that I purchased in Wels,” said Frau Krähe. “It is so easy, so convenient—these girls that come with baskets and sell them to the passengers for a few hellers. I have lovely goose pie, and a cheese, and grapes. But I hope to see you again, dear Sasha. I have so much to tell you still, and a little something to give you. When you are finished, perhaps you can come to my cabin and talk some more to me, nein?” She rose slowly, with a hand on her back—it was obvious that she suffered from rheumatism.
Sasha nodded, then followed her out of the cabin. When the Dog Boy and his friend were gone, Catherine turned to Zora.
“What?” said Zora defensively. “You’ve been looking at me strangely ever since you came in here. Out with it!”
Fine, if that was the way she wanted to do things! “Have you been going through my trunk?” asked Catherine. “There’s something missing, and I think you took it.”
“You think I went into your trunk and what—stole something of yours?” Zora was visibly angry. “And what is Clarence here for, to strong-arm me into admitting that I’m a thief?”
“Now, Zora,” he said. “You know I would never do that.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I just wanted Cat to talk to you, so this could all be cleared up.”
Zora stood up from the seat. Her fists were clenched at her sides. She looked as though she were about to hit someone. “I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t do, Clarence. You know, I’ve been called a thief before. Growing up in Hackney, going to the markets with my mother—the shopkeepers always kept an eye on us, in case we pilfered anything. Because we looked Indian, and you could never tell with those wogs, could you? The number of times I was told I wasn’t welcome because I wasn’t really English, even though I’d been born in London, same as them. I thought the circus was going to be different. I thought you”—she looked at Catherine accusingly—“were going to be different. But you know what? Why don’t you just search my stuff. Go on. Whatever you’re missing, jewelry or money—you just go ahead and look for it!” She bent down and drew her suitcase out from under the seat, threw it on top, and opened it violently, so that dresses and scarves spilled out. She shook the contents directly onto the seat cushions, then scattered them about. “Here you go, that’s what you wanted, right? And if you find whatever you’re looking for, you can go ahead and put me in gaol, or whatever they have for gaol here in Austria. I’m going to feed the snakes—they need their lunch too. They may be poisonous, but they’ve never made me feel like dirt. It takes a human being to do that.”
She slammed the cabin door behind her, and Catherine could hear her boots stomping down the corridor.
“Whiskers,” said Clarence, “you know I love you, but that was not your finest hour. You have no evidence that Zora did anything wrong. The least you could have done is asked her instead of accusing her. She’s a member of this circus too, just like you are.”
Catherine frowned. Whose side was he on, anyway? “Look,” she said, impatiently. “She’s the only one of us who’s new, the only one who wasn’t here when Justine and I were part of the circus, before we got tangled up with the Alchemical Society. Beatrice told you about the society—I don’t think she should have, but she did. Do you think the sort of people who created me or Beatrice—or allowed those sorts of experiments—would have any moral compunctions whatsoever? If she’s working for the society, then I’m not sorry I offended her.”
Clarence regarded her from under lowered brows. She had never seen him look so judgmental. “They may have no moral compunctions, but you should.”
Well, she was certainly not going to dignify that with an answer! Couldn’t he see how important this was? Sometimes the end justified the means.
MARY: No, it doesn’t. And you were insensitive, you know. You can be, sometimes.
CATHERINE: Well, if I’d known then what I know now,
I would have acted differently. But I didn’t, did I? If we start criticizing ourselves for all the decisions we’ve made, second-guessing ourselves, we’ll never actually get anything done. The past is gone, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Do you regret that time you shot Holmes? I’m sure you do, but what are you going to do about it now? Nothing, that’s what, because you can’t. Except wallow in your own guilt, which doesn’t help either him or you.
MARY: I still think you could have been nicer to Zora. Or at least more polite.
CATHERINE: Well, excuse me! There were no etiquette manuals on Moreau’s island.
An hour later, Catherine had searched through Zora’s suitcase, and then the entire cabin. She had even searched through the trunk again, just in case she had somehow, improbable as it was, overlooked something the first time. But she had found nothing. There was no sign of the telegram, and no sign that Zora was anything other than who she said she was—except perhaps that she used a rather expensive brand of soap for a girl who had grown up in the East End, which could simply be a matter of personal taste. Catherine had tried to repack Zora’s suitcase neatly—not that Zora was a particularly neat packer!
European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 2) Page 33