The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [10]
Because he was a British officer, Captain Marlowe’s file was conveniently located in London, so we have to be satisfied with this for now, my good Watson. Now, the questions I jotted down in my notes that day are only a few of what should occur to a clear-eyed investigator presented with this synopsis. I’ll leave it to you to try to count up the puzzles hidden in those hundred and eight words, because they breed fast, the little rabbits. Here’s a gift, though, in case your history’s not too strong: the War ended on the 11th of November, 1918, the day before Paul vanished.
One more item from the boy’s file: “Next of kin: Mrs. Emma Hoyt, in care of Flipping Hoyt Brothers Entertainment, Ltd., Sydney.” So much for Eulalie Caldwell and brother Tommy; no wonder they’d had to hear the news from a third party: they weren’t mentioned when Paul enlisted. Kin seems to have been a complicated question for our boy. I’d have to ask the lawyers: might his Davies inheritance belong to this new next of kin, if Paul Caldwell was dead and somehow retroactively rechristened Paul Davies?
Good morning, Mr. Macy! Shall we continue? Good.
Of course I remembered the Flipping Hoyt Brothers Circus—but first, I hear impatient Mr. Macy whingeing, “What’s this ripping yarn got to do with my poor mistreated auntie and vanished great-uncle?” Everything, Mr. Macy, everything. Patience. Have some faith in your storyteller, eh?
Now then, of course I remembered the Flipping Hoyt Brothers Circus, but I was surprised to find it still in existence when I went enquiring after Emma Hoyt at the circus’s ticket booth, the 8th of July, 1922.
“She’s about to go on,” says the bald, shirtless, moustached man at the booth. “She’s available for admirers after the performance, but here’s a tip, mate: she’ll be more likely to talk to you if she knows you saw her show.”
“It’s on now?” I asked, looking around the field surrounding us and the sagging yellow tent, three or four people milling about some caravans.
“Starts in five minutes. You’re a lucky man.” I paid for a front-row seat, and the bald man emerged to tear the ticket he’d just sold me, then showed me to my place, pulling the canvas shut behind us. I counted the audience: I was one of eight, though there were empty benches and risers and a row of large divans with tables, seats for 300 or some. My usher sat me, then continued down the empty aisle, stepped over the flaking red wooden wall in front of me, opened a gate in the high metal fence circling the sandy pit, locked the gate behind him, and picked up a megaphone. His red velvet trousers were white at the seat. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he yelled, walking in circles, looking high over my head at long-ago crowds.
His opening remarks finished, he unwound his whip and lifted a hatch at the back of the cage. Three monstrous tigers slunk in. Our bald man lazily attended to making them leap over each other, roll on their backs, spring through a metal ring, all of which they performed sluggishly but with sudden bursts of snarling rebellion, which the whip didn’t shut up too quickly. For his finale, he had the tigers lie down, not without resistance, and he opened the hatch at the back of the cage again. There, dramatically lit from behind, was a strange little profile, and then in waddled a penguin. The bird circled the prone tigers once, promenaded up and down their backs, and then “logrolled” them, walking in place on their bellies as the tigers rolled underneath him. Finally, the penguin stepped off, took a turn of the ring for applause, and approached the three tigers to kiss each of them on the nose (previously sprayed with herring scent, no doubt). The children gasped and laughed. It was a neat display, I’d imagine. When it worked.
Today,