Chapter Fifty-Seven
Jane smiles at Helen Yaxley, who is halfway through hosing down her dogs outside her house.
“Jane,” Helen says, pointing the hose toward the gravel and then turning it off at the wall. “Lovely to see you. How are you?”
“Oh, fab. Yes. All good. Just, you know, still pottering around trying to find your ex-guest Rose White. Who it turns out is actually called Daisy Black.”
“Gosh, is she really? Sounds like you’ve been doing sterling work.”
“Funnily enough, turns out she might have been down here to meet her uncle. He works as a—ha! Quite funny actually—but he works as a clown at the circus. I mean, someone has to be a clown, I suppose, and anyway, not only has Daisy disappeared but so has her clown uncle. And God, I could go on, Helen. I really could. But for now, Reggie and I”—she indicates the German pointer in the passenger seat of her car—“we’re heading over to the grounds where the circus was on the bank holiday and we’re going to have a sniff around.
See what we can find. And I wondered—and I know this sounds weird—but could I possibly grab something of Daisy’s from her suitcase?
Something she’d worn? Assuming you still have her things? ”
“Oh,” says Helen. “Right. I mean, yes, I do still have her suitcase. It’s in the garage. And your dog, he’s trained, is he?”
“Well, yes and no. As in, I have not trained him, but someone must have as he is very good at it. At sniffing.”
Helen wipes her hands down on the sides of her jeans and hands the dogs’ leads to Jane. “Give me a minute. I’ll be right back.”
The wet dogs collapse at Jane’s feet, panting. She’s not sure what they are, some kind of poodle mixes, a black one and a brown one. Helen returns a moment later with the scruffy suitcase and passes it to Jane. “Knock yourself out.”
“You’re a star,” says Jane. “Thank you.”
She unzips the case and is confronted once again by the sad array of clothes.
She holds leggings, T-shirts, bras to her nose, and she sniffs, looking for that scent of skin and flesh.
Then she sees minuscule white flecks of dry deodorant on the edge of a bra cup.
That’s the one, she thinks, and she waves it at Helen.
“Got it!” she says, and Helen gives her one of her looks, a look that says: “I always thought you were a little mad, and now you’ve just proved it. ”
“You may as well keep the suitcase, Jane, to be honest. I really don’t think the police are coming back for it and clearly you have more use for it than me.”
“Good idea,” says Jane. “Great.”
She zips it back up and lobs it into the boot of her car. Helen waves her off a moment later, looking slightly dazed.
The field is bare. It’s hard to imagine that just over two weeks ago this small corner of the Dorset countryside had been packed with cars and people and animals and caravans and there was a huge tent here, right in the middle of it all.
Now it looks a little tired, the grass not as lush as the grass elsewhere, but apart from that, you’d never know a circus had been here.
She pulls into the empty car park and opens the door for Reggie, his lead in one hand, Daisy’s bra in the other. “Here,” she says to Reggie, running the straps of the bra across his snout. “Find it! Find it!”
The dog understands the assignment and immediately dashes across the field, his nose close to the ground, running up and down in stripes across the tired grass.
His snout goes in and out of the undergrowth, the hedgerow, and soon he is changing direction, taking Jane across the field and into a tarmacked area that Jane had not known existed.
Here, it is immediately clear, is where the circus performers kept their trailers and caravans while they were in the village.
There are large rubbish bins at one end, a row of toilets at the other.
Reggie makes a beeline for the bins and starts sniffing crazily at the bases.
Then he runs behind them and starts scrabbling in the grassy verge just behind, which is a run of three wooden benches.
Jane approaches the dog. He’s got something in his mouth.
She gets closer and gently removes it. It’s a paper cup with a logo on it that Jane recognizes from the coffee shop in the village.
An image flashes into Jane’s head then: Daisy Black, sitting here, a coffee cup in her hand, watching from a distance. From here she’d have been able to see into the trailers, see the circus performers wandering around, see, Jane assumes, her lost uncle Jasper and possibly observe him for a while.
Or maybe, Jane thinks, Daisy and Jasper had sat here together and talked? Maybe they had arranged ahead of time to meet on this bench at a certain time?
Whatever the truth, the coffee cup proves that Daisy Black has definitely been here, at the circus ground.
But where on earth is she now?