by Bruce, Leo
“Why, everybody in the circus does.”
“And what’s that got to do with a murder?”
“Well,” said Cora Frances, “I think I read somewhere that if you kept stuff in a tin after you’d opened it, you’d get ptomaine poisoning. What could be better for a murder?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” said Beef. Fortunately the artist did not notice the wink the Sergeant gave me, but swept on.
“Why, the most likely person to be murdered is myself. I know two or three who would like to get me out of the way.”
“You?” asked Beef incredulously. “Why should anyone want to do you in?”
“Jealousy,” said Cora Frances in a slightly softer voice. “Jealousy. Simply mad with jealousy some of them are. Now there’s Suzanne,” she ticked them off on her fingers, “who’s frightened I’ll take the Dariennes away from her. And there’s Anita, who likes to think herself the most popular person in the show and would like to get me out of the way. Then there’s Mrs. Jackson, who thinks I might steal her husband from her. She hates me like poison.”
“How about Gypsy Margot?” asked Beef. “Isn’t she jealous in case you take her fortune-telling business away from her?”
Cora Frances laughed again. “You know,” she said, “I have theories about Margot. She’s an astonishing old dear. I think she’s probably the best-read woman I’ve ever met.”
“Never heard her talk about books,” commented Beef.
“Oh, but neither have I,” said Cora blandly. “It’s just an idea I have.”
“Any other idea about who might be murdered?” asked Beef.
“Well, there’s yourself, Sergeant,” said Cora. “We mustn’t forget you. In all good murder cases the criminals always have a shot at the detective when they find he’s a little too hot on the scent.”
“Here,” said Beef, “we don’t want nothing on those lines. I’m a peaceful sort of chap, I am. Don’t want no shootings and that going on.”
“We shall see, anyway,” said Cora in her “tinkling” voice. “Well. I must go off and get dressed for the evening show now.”
“Why? Are you going in the ring?” asked Beef.
“Oh, no,” said Cora. “I meant dressed, not dressed. See you in the tent.” And waving a hand at us she walked away.
CHAPTER XVII
April 29th (continued).
IT WAS odd that Beef and I had never seen a complete performance of the circus. We had seen bits of it, a turn here and there, but never the whole show. Something had always happened to interrupt us. Sooner or later, for some reason or another, we always had to leave the tent before the show was ended.
That night, when we took our places in the tent, we intended to see the whole show, and it was therefore with some misgivings that I realized that we were seated next to the young man whom we had seen talking to Corinne Jackson a village or so back; a young man called Herbert Torrant.
During the first of the turns he leaned forward in his seat watching the ring with close attention, and for some time did not notice us. Then he turned round and stared at Beef.
“Aren’t you Sergeant Beef?” he asked suddenly.
Beef grinned with obvious pleasure, as he always did when he was recognized. “How did you know that?” he asked. “I didn’t know you’d seen me here before.”
“No, not here,” answered Torrant. “I used to know you in Wraxham—I was there for a short time when you were solving that second big mystery of yours. I was in the Ordnance Survey. Get about a bit, you know. But it’s funny meeting you here.”
“Ordnance Survey?” said Beef. “I don’t seem to remember that. Was it the one just past the station? The one where the landlord never quite filled the glasses? I never went there but the once.”
Torrant laughed. “No, Ordnance Survey,” he said. “You know, we make maps and things.”
Beef must have thought a change of subject the best way out of this situation, for he asked, after a slight pause: “And what, might I ask, would you be doing following this show around?”
“Well …” said the young man, turning slightly pink, and stuttering, went on to say that he was “interested in the show business.”
“Oh, I see.” Beef nodded wisely. “ ’Course, this is no holiday for me,” he went on. “I’m working.”
“On a case?” asked Torrant, lowering his voice and looking round suspiciously.
“Murder,” said Beef, with a brief decisive nod.
Torrant appeared to jump slightly in his seat at this simple word, and he stared at the Sergeant incredulously with slightly open mouth.
“Hasn’t happened yet,” went on Beef, “but it will do, all right. I got my eye on quite a number of people.”
Torrant’s hands began to stray unaccountably up the buttons of his waistcoat towards his tie, until he noticed them and stuffed them quickly in his coat pockets.
Frankly, I found this attitude surprising. I had always imagined that a generation brought up on “thrillers” and “shockers” would find little to make them nervous in a murder in real life. Perhaps the fact that the crime had not actually been committed made this difference. Solving a murder when it had been done was rather like a cross-word puzzle, but when, as in this case, the possibility of a crime lay in the future, then perhaps it was not quite so commonplace. At any rate, Torrant’s nerviness seemed to hint this.
At this point Paul Darienne, still in his ring clothes after his act, came through the opening of the tent and sat down next to me. Beef and Torrant continued their conversation in low voices.
“Have you seen Christophe?” asked Paul.
“No.”
“Funny. He left the tent with me, and then he seemed to disappear. I can’t find him anywhere.”
“Perhaps he’s gone down to the pub,” I suggested.
“No. He didn’t change, and he couldn’t have gone down like he was.”
“Perhaps Cora Frances has stolen him,” I said facetiously.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” muttered Paul quickly. “I don’t like the way she chases after him. It’s not right.”
“But surely,” I protested, “that’s his business. I mean, a little flirtation now and again. And, anyway, I should think she’s perfectly harmless.”
Paul did not answer, but in a few minutes slid off his seat and left the tent again. As I watched him go I noticed for the first time the figure of the old gypsy woman standing not more than a yard away in the gangway. I had not seen her come in. She seemed to be chuckling to herself over something, and in a few minutes turned to me.
“He was looking for his brother, wasn’t he?” she asked me.
“Yes. Do you know where he is?”
The old gypsy chuckled knowingly. “And suppose I did,” she answered evasively.
I was irritated by her secretive manner, but attempted not to show it. “Then where is he?” I asked.
Old Margot looked around her suspiciously. “You’re not to tell anyone, young man,” she said slyly, and coming closer so that she seemed almost to breathe in my ear, she went on: “Christophe is in my tent with Suzanne. Yes, that’s where they are. They go there and talk sometimes. You see, Paul wouldn’t let his brother out of his sight if he could help it, so they have to sneak away from him.”
“Why shouldn’t Paul like his brother talking to Suzanne?” I asked. “Do you mean he’s jealous of his brother?” I was getting a little tired of this jealousy theme, which seemed to dominate all the people in the circus in one form or another. I could see that it offered little enough variety in the matter of motive, and it was a pity, as far as writing the story of the case was concerned (if there was ever a case to write about) that there was not a rather larger choice of “bad” feelings in this case.
“Not him,” answered the old woman. “Jealous of the woman, if anything.”
“How could he be jealous of Suzanne?” I asked sharply, suspecting that she was trying to bewilder me. But she refused to answer. Or r
ather, she appeared not to hear, for she placed her almost fleshless hand on my arm and whispered: “Don’t tell anyone,” and quickly made her way out of the tent.
This seemed to me to be exactly the sort of thing we were looking for, and I turned to Beef, who seemed, by this time, to have elicited a great deal of personal information from young Torrant.
“I see,” he was saying. “So, in a manner of speaking, you only came over to the circus to see Miss Corinne?”
“That’s right,” said Torrant. “It’s a bit dull being stuck in this lousy county all by yourself. You know what I mean. You don’t get time to pick up any friends, so you just drift around and pick up anything there is going.”
“Just a harmless flirtation?” asked Beef heavily.
Torrant laughed. “Hardly a flirtation,” he said. “She keeps me at arm’s length all the time. It strikes me she’s having some sort of a little game. I’ll tell you what makes me think so. The other night I was going to drive her into Hull to go to the flicks—the pictures—but then we found they weren’t open. They don’t in Hull on Sundays, you know; just like these awkward Yorkshire people. Then, when I asked her what she’d like to do for the evening, we thought we’d just drop into a pub while we thought it over. Now here comes the funny bit. All the way in the car she’d been sitting right over the far side of the seat as if I was rat-poison, but when we were just going into the pub she suddenly grabbed my arm and hung on it, and just at that moment the door opened and we found the bar was full of circus people who’d come into Hull as well. She walked me straight through them hanging on to my arm all the way. And the looks I got from two of them were enough to stop anyone sleeping for a fortnight—especially when you start talking about a murder to be done in the circus. That chap Kurt was one of them, and the other was the college fellow; the one who feeds animals.”
“Peter Ansell,” suggested Beef.
“That’s right. But directly we’d got away from them she made me drive straight back to the camp, and wouldn’t have anything more to do with me. I thought to myself: ‘She’s trying to impress somebody, that’s what she’s doing.’ ”
“Very interesting,” said Beef. “Ve-ry interesting.”
At this point Corinne came on to do her riding act, and I was able to attract the Sergeant’s attention and tell him at last what I had just heard from Gypsy Margot.
“And the most interesting point is,” I concluded, “that Paul apparently suspects Cora Frances of flirting with his brother and doesn’t know anything about the Suzanne affair.”
“How do you know it is an affair?” queried Beef sharply. “You’ve got a romantic mind, you have. It might be something far more serious. Suppose they’re hatching a robbery, or something.”
“Beef,” I protested, “you must try and forget that you were once a village constable. All the time you seem to be looking for the most hackneyed sort of clues and motives when they’re only to be found in the people themselves. At least, in this case.”
Beef looked at me with a faintly derisive grin, but said nothing.
“To me,” I went on, “it seems that the core of this problem will be found in this very relationship; the relationship which binds Paul and Christophe, and includes Suzanne. There is something I feel whenever I meet those two brothers together. I can’t quite define it, perhaps uncanny is the word which fits them most, but in any case, it’s something which we can’t afford to neglect.”
“Who said I was neglecting anything?” demanded Beef.
“Oh yes, I know,” I said impatiently. “But this is different. There’s no blood, or sword-sticks, or footprints in what I mean. You’ve got to get at the minds of those people or you’ll never get anywhere at all.”
“Ah, now there,” said Beef, “I think I know what you mean. Frenchmen, those two chaps are, and Frenchmen always are hard to understand. Now if it was Englishmen … you know where you are with an Englishman.”
I turned away from him in despair to watch the performance going on in the ring. Despite our intention to watch it right through, I had so far seen remarkably little of it. We were seated in the best seats in the tent; that is the section of seating immediately on the left of the entrance to the tent which were covered by a thick red carpet. The seats in general were arranged like the positions round an arena, in an oval bank of steps. In the cheaper seats the planking was uncovered and one stood in constant danger of slipping through the space between the planks and falling on the ground. This space under the seats was often used by children as a means of entering the tent unseen, since if they slipped under the wall of the tent they could crawl along under the audience and reach an empty place unless the sharp-eyed attendants caught them in the process.
From where we sat I could see, out of the corner of my eye, the fold of canvas which was the main entrance, and people leaving or entering the tent could not have done so without being observed by me. I quickly directed Beef’s attention to a couple who had just entered and slipped quickly out of sight under the carpet-covered seating. They were Christophe and Suzanne.
Beef pointed his finger downward in elaborate dumb-show to indicate that they were directly underneath him. I could hear their voices faintly through the thick carpet, although it was impossible to catch every word. We leaned forward in our seats, ostensibly to watch the performance in the ring, although I forget what was actually taking place just then, and in reality listening to the conversation beneath us.
“But you’re wrong,” Suzanne’s voice was saying. “Making eyes at Cora only arouses Paul’s suspicions. At the moment he doesn’t know anything at all about us, but if you start making him suspicious by getting off with that painter woman then he’ll start suspecting you all the time. He might even find out about us. And besides, I don’t like you making eyes at that terrible woman—even if it is only pretending.”
For a moment there was silence, and then Christophe’s voice saying:
“Why can’t we tell him, anyway? Why can’t we tell everybody?”
“Chris darling, you know we can’t. Paul would go crazy.”
“I’m not ashamed of being in love with you.”
“We’ve had all this out before.”
“I wish Paul would be sensible about things like this. Just because we’ve always been together he thinks it’s always to be like that.”
“Chris, don’t be stupid. You know you’ve got to stay with Paul. This can go on all the time, but we musn’t let him know about it. We’re quite happy as we are. Why start making trouble for ourselves?”
Again there was a silence, and then Christophe said almost sullenly: “All right. You always know best, Suzanne. I’d better get back to the wagon before he starts wondering where I’ve got to.”
The canvas flap of the tent rustled, and the two of them had gone.
“Here,” said Beef, “let’s get out of here. I’ve got some hard thinking to do, and you’d better come along and help me.”
“But we haven’t seen the show through,” I protested.
“Fine time to think of that,” said Beef. “Come on.”
CHAPTER XVIII
April 29th (continued).
“I CAN’T see any particular hurry,” I said as we left the tent. “What do you want to do at this time of the night?”
“There’s two wagons,” said Beef, “what we haven’t been into as yet.”
“Which are those?” I asked.
“Len Waterman’s and Kurt’s.”
“But neither of them will be in their wagons now,” I pointed out. “Waterman’s busy with the lights and Kurt comes on with his lions act in a minute or two.”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Beef. “I’d rather like to have a look at those two wagons without any interference from either of them.”
“But Beef,” I gasped dutifully, “you can’t possibly do that. In the first place you’ve no authority, and in the second place we’re guests here. What should we do if we were caught?”
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“Who ever heard of a detective having authority?” snorted Beef. “A detective is above authority, you ought to know that. Why, if he had to wait for authority where would all these books be? There wouldn’t be a single interesting detective story on the market. You don’t want to quibble over little matters like that. Come on, we’d better get it done while the performance is still on.”
Rather half-heartedly I followed the Sergeant out of the wagon again. When he began activities of this kind I was always assailed by doubts. It had been pleasant living with the circus and just drifting along, but when it came to searching the private belongings of the members of the troupe I felt that things were going a little too far. However, I knew it would be useless to protest.
“Which one are you going to search first?” I asked.
“Well,” said Beef thoughtfully, “I’ve got a feeling that we might come across something promising in Len Waterman’s things. That chap puzzles me. Perhaps because he’s so quiet. Doesn’t keep thrusting himself to the front like some others I know.”
“Well, he’ll be working on the lights until the show is finished,” I observed, “so we shan’t be found out, anyway.”
“Ex-actly,” said Beef. “And that makes it a good place to start off with. Now then, here it is. You keep a watch out on the steps and I’ll have a look round.”
On second thoughts, however, Beef called me into the wagon with him, since I might be seen standing by the steps and arouse suspicion that way. I could much better watch from the inside of the wagon, where I should not be seen by anybody casually walking by.
Beef shone his flash-lamp cautiously round the inside of the wagon, taking care that the beam did not cross any of the windows. The space was very limited and cramped, even though it was only for one man, and everything was piled up in an indescribable state of untidiness.
“One thing,” commented Beef. “He wouldn’t know whether anybody had been here or not.”
The contents of the wagon seemed to be for the most part quite uninteresting, and Beef quickly abandoned the pile of things on the floor and turned his attention to the two cupboards. The first one turned out to be filled with odds and ends of wire and string, nuts and bolts, pliers, and all the other paraphernalia of an odd-job man. Beef was just closing the door, however, when the beam of his torch shone on a large photograph stuck on the inside.
