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We arrived at King’s Meadow shortly after one. The publicity had attracted a crowd but they were mainly adults. The expected audience of children had been kept away by fear of further violence. We could see why the Rover Brothers needed help. Once inside the gate Holmes surprised me by not heading toward the main tent. Instead he detoured to the smaller tents where the Rover Brothers stayed. Philip Rover was just emerging from his tent with a blonde young woman who seemed vaguely familiar. She wore a long green dress and gloves, more suited to a night at the theatre than an afternoon at the circus.

“Holmes!” Philip said, perhaps a bit startled by the encounter. “I want you to meet my friend Milly Hogan.”

I remembered the Everage girl’s description of her as Philip’s blonde doxy who traveled with him but rarely attended the performances. Sherlock Holmes reached out as if to shake her hand, but at the last moment suddenly grabbed her left wrist instead.

“What is this?” she asked with a gasp of fright. Already he was pulling up the sleeve on her forearm, revealing a small scar, faint but visible. We had seen it before.

“I believe we meet again, Miss Hogan. You came to my rooms in Baker Street on Tuesday posing as Vittoria Costello, as part of your plot to murder that young lady.”

Both the Reading police and the Rover Brothers themselves demanded explanations, and Holmes was only too glad to supply them. We had adjourned to Philip’s tent while Milly Hogan was being questioned elsewhere, and he began by describing her visit to us.

“The black wig was nothing to an actress, of course, nor was the assuming of Vittoria’s character. If her plan went well we would never meet the real Vittoria so no comparisons would be made. Perhaps she had even intended to keep her face veiled until I guessed, wrongly, at her identity. As it was, both Watson and I noted how little she resembled the drawing on the posters, but we thought little of it. I believe the death of Diaz was indeed an accident, but it must have suggested the entire plan to her. She came to me two days later with her story of the previous attempts on Vittoria’s life. Her whole point was to have me present the following day when the real Vittoria was killed, supposedly by the tiger the circus had just acquired.”

I remembered his words of the previous evening. “You said the tiger did nothing in the morning, Holmes.”

“And he did not. We established quickly enough that Vittoria was killed before being placed in the cage, but that still meant the murderer had to open the cage to do it. Opening the cage of a strange tiger, only just arrived with its trainer would be a highly dangerous undertaking. The fact that the tiger did nothing to attract attention meant that the person who opened the cage was no stranger to him. The trainer could be ruled out. He only just arrived the night before and would hardly have had a motive for killing Vittoria. But Edith Everage saw you, Philip, along with Milly, playing with the new tiger yesterday morning. That was probably no more than an hour or two before the murder. The tiger knew and remembered Milly.”

“This whole thing is ridiculous!” Philip insisted. “The tiger cage was outside of our tents, in full view. How could Milly or anyone else have killed Vittoria and placed her body in there without being seen?”

“The cage may have been in full view, but it was covered with canvas. I would guess that Milly lured Vittoria out there to see the new tiger. Once under the canvas for a better look, Milly stabbed her in the throat before she could scream, then opened the cage and pushed her in. You told us, Philip, that you had an extra key to the cage in your tent.”

“Why would she do it? What was her motive?”

“The Everage woman told me you were fond of both of them. Jealousy has led to more than one murder. Of course Milly planned to pin the crime on Everage, which is why she came to us impersonating Vittoria.”

I asked a question now. “How did you know, Holmes? After all, you deduced our client