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quiet menace.
    The man cast a glance around the group, his eyes resting on Phryne.
    ‘You the new rider?’ Phryne remembered her place in the hierarchy of the circus and reined in her temper.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ she muttered, hanging her head.
    ‘What’s yer name?’
    ‘Fern, sir.’
    ‘You just remember who I am,’ he said pompously. ‘I’m Mr Jones and I own Farrell’s.’ He pinched Phryne’s cheek. ‘Nice little girl. You treat me right and I’ll treat you right.’
    Phryne refrained from an answer but scuffed her soft shoe in the dust.
    ‘You get that horse back to the lines,’ Mr Jones ordered brusquely. ‘And mind you rub her down.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Alan Lee again and they led Bell away.
    ‘Whew!’ said Phryne, as they were brushing Bell and feeding her more carrots. ‘What a tartar! I thought you said Farrell owned the circus?’
    Alan Lee looked aside. Broad and well-tended equine sides hid them from eavesdroppers.
    ‘He did,’ he whispered. ‘Get over a bit, Bell, you’re crowding me. But this Jones has a half-share, they say. He ain’t popular.’
    ‘He ain’t,’ agreed Phryne.
    Miss Parkes was served dinner in her cell. By negligence, someone had allowed her a knife. It was blunt but it could be sharpened. When the constable came to take the tray of untouched food, he did not notice that it was missing.

CHAPTER FIVE
    All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances
And one man in his time plays many parts.
    William Shakespeare
As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii
    ‘A circus, Miss?’ Dot surveyed her employer, who was stripping off a shabby cotton dress and a leotard and examining her bruises. ‘Why?’
    ‘You remember Alan Lee.’
    ‘The gypsy, Miss?’
    ‘Yes, the gypsy. Except that he isn’t a gypsy, he’s half-gypsy. I have a lot to learn about circuses, Dot. They’re a lot more complicated than they look. They seem to have a class system. Circus folk at the top, carnival people in the middle, and gypsies at the bottom. Or that is how it seems at the present. Farrell’s has had a lot of trouble and they asked me to help—and I’m at a loose end, Dot. Nothing in the offing but social events, the occasional ball and flirting with all those tedious young men. I want something new to do and today I stood up on a horse’s back.’
    ‘But, Miss, I can’t come with you in a circus, can I?’
    ‘No, Dot dear.’ Phryne stepped into her bath and began lathering her rope burns with Nuit d’amour soap. ‘The girls don’t generally have a maid.’
    ‘But Miss . . .’
    ‘Oh dear, Dot, don’t take on! I can look after myself.’
    ‘But, Miss Phryne, who’ll run your bath and take care of your clothes and . . .’
    ‘I ought to be able to manage,’ muttered Phryne, and Dot produced her trump card.
    ‘Miss Phryne, it isn’t ladylike.’
    Phryne swore. ‘Damn and blast all ladies to hell. No, I didn’t mean that. Come and talk to me, Dot, and don’t worry. I’ll be all right, and if I’m not it will be all my own fault, and I shall limp home and you can look after me and tell me every morning that I did it all to myself against your express advice. Agreed?’
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Dot. She was a small, plain young woman with long hair firmly suppressed in a plait. She was wearing a beige linen dress, embroidered with a bunch of bronze roses. Phryne sat up in the bath and began to count off points in her argument on soapy fingers.
    ‘All right, Dot. One, I agree that it is an escapade unworthy of my respected parent, the earl, and that my mother and sisters would have kittens if they knew. But they are all in England and with any luck no one will tell them. Two, it is very unlikely that anyone who knows me will see me. Three, if they do see me they are not going to recognise me because I shall have my hair covered and be made up and riding in a circus. Even if they notice it they won’t believe it.