The Ladies of the Secret Circus Constance Sayers (e books free to read .TXT) 📖

wake and crawl back up, their legs swinging in perfect unison. In the same manner, the headless clowns picked up the waltz and resumed the dance, spinning and turning. The music picked up the pace until it crescendoed into a frenzied flurry.

The stage went dark. As the lights came back on and the clowns were back in their original positions, the waltz grew tame again until they circled out of the arena.

The drum began to beat, followed by a Gregorian chant.

From the group emerged a woman with platinum hair. Lara had seen her likeness hanging on the wall at Le Cirque de Fragonard.

It was Cecile Cabot, the one from the painting.

The Spanish Web she was using was a rope with a bell at the bottom. As she waited, it lowered from the center of the ring. Cecile leapt onto the bell and quickly began to contort herself around the object as it rose higher and higher above the audience. When she reached the top, the audience realized there was no net below her. Cecile began to spin on the golden rope faster and faster, finally slowing and lowering herself back down from the rope to the bell-shaped end. Hanging off the bell, she spun her legs under it like a propeller, her body spinning like a plate faster and faster—and then she let go of the bell.

The music was otherworldly. It reminded Lara of eastern European composers, as haunting and tragic as a Russian funeral march.

The crowd, realizing that Cecile was suspended entirely on her own, leaned forward, expecting her to fall at any moment, but she didn’t. Instead she slowed her rotations so the crowd could see that she was, indeed, hovering in the air. She gathered herself and spun horizontally, picking up speed like a figure skater, moving through the air as if she were a human drill bit. Cecile had the grace of a rhythmic gymnast or ballet dancer, her moves fluid. As the rotations ended, she rolled slowly to the floor and landed softly before she lowered herself and bowed.

It was hard to describe the corkscrew. Certainly the journals didn’t do the move justice. To watch a woman fly so gracefully across the stage like a spiraling bird was one of the most stunning performances she’d ever seen.

The crowd jumped to their feet, giving Cecile Cabot a standing ovation.

With a swipe of her arm, Cecile Cabot made everything—the audience and the entire spectacle—disappear.

Turning to Lara, she bowed. “That, my dear, is Le Cirque Secret—where nothing is as it seems.” This woman in front of her seemed so different from the shy, sheltered girl from her journals. As she walked toward Lara, she commanded the room, confident and sure, but wasn’t she dead? Lara couldn’t understand how a woman long dead could be standing in front of her.

Cecile smiled, apparently knowing Lara’s thoughts. “I’m not the naive girl I once was. True, I have been dead a long time, but this circus is primarily performed by the dead.”

Lara kept forgetting anything she thought here was basically broadcast on a goddamned Jumbotron. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

But Cecile shook her head. “Lara Barnes. I’ve been waiting for you a long, long time.”

Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

July 5, 2005

Ben had been through most of the notes in Peter Beaumont’s file and hadn’t turned up anything he hadn’t seen before. From a stack of photos held together by a paper clip, he took one out and studied it. Whoever had taken the picture seemed to cause Peter’s face to light up, so Ben assumed it was taken by someone he’d loved, and yet his mother had said there had been no one special.

The only person Peter’s mother mentioned was Jason Barnes, who had been interviewed twice and said it was inconceivable that Peter had just up and left. The two had been planning to go to LA that November and try their luck. Yet Jason Barnes had not gone to LA after his best friend disappeared. Ben wondered about this detail. Why? Surely Jason could have made it on his own—eventually, he did succeed as a musician. Looking at the date, Ben did the math and realized that part of the reason Jason probably never went to LA was due to the fact that Audrey had been pregnant with Lara at the time. Jason and Audrey were married two months after Peter died. As much as he hated to do it, he would need to talk to Lara’s father.

He turned the photo of Peter over, and there was on old note attached to it. Well, attached wasn’t quite the word; the tape had almost melted into the photo paper from years of being stored in humidity. Nothing here was preserved in storage, and the photos looked like they were beginning to warp. While he’d spent hours studying his father’s notes, he hadn’t looked at the photos. There it was. The little detail he’d missed.

Other case connected? 1944.

No one had ever mentioned another case. He searched his father’s drawer, where he’d kept Peter Beaumont’s file. There was no other case. Ben inspected the writing more closely. This wasn’t his father’s penmanship. Given that it was stuck on the back of a photo, he wondered if his father had even gotten this message. The police files from the 1940s were all archived in the courthouse basement, and he wasn’t sure what he should look for. None of the archives were online. There had been no murders since the 1930s, so it was safe to limit his search to missing persons cases. He could call Kim and see if it was easier for her to check the newspaper archives on microfilm from that year for any missing persons case. He lifted the receiver to call over to the newspaper and then, remembering their lunch Sunday, thought better of it. He grabbed his keys and walked the block to the courthouse.

On the way, he stopped in for a black coffee at