Case with 4 Clowns

by Bruce, Leo

  “Seem to recognize that face,” he said, and turned the light full on it.

  The photograph was of a very beautiful woman in scanty circus costume, posing in the traditional manner with one foot forward and both hands grasped behind her back.

  “What does the writing say underneath?” I asked.

  Beef read slowly. “With all my love, Suzanne.”

  “Suzanne,” I said. “Of course it is. But it must have been taken some years ago. Why, she looks scarcely more than a girl.”

  “No, it’s not so very long,” said Beef. “Look, it’s got the date underneath. Nineteen twenty-nine, it says.”

  “There must be something in it if he keeps her photo there still,” I said.

  “There you go,” said Beef sarcastically. “Romantic again.”

  I was just about to answer him when he grasped my arm. “Shut up,” he whispered. “There’s somebody outside.”

  The faint sound of steps over the grass could be heard, and then the feet mounted the wooden steps outside the wagon. There was no room to hide inside and it seemed inevitable that we should be discovered. Beef quickly drew himself behind the door and pulled at me to do the same, even though there was hardly room for his own bulky form.

  The feet stopped on the top step and there was a sharp rap on the panel of the door.

  “Are you there, Len?” asked a voice, a woman’s voice. And then, as there was no answer from inside the wagon, she knocked again. After a slight pause the door began to open slowly. The light which shone faintly into the wagon showed the outlined shadow of a figure. But at that moment there was a shout from somewhere in the field. The door was shut hastily and the feet retreated quickly the way they had come.

  “That was a close one,” said Beef. “Come on, let’s get back before anybody else comes around.”

  “But wasn’t that Suzanne’s voice?” I asked, as we walked back to our own wagon.

  “Well, you couldn’t be too sure,” said Beef in his cautious way. “But that’s what I thought. Now I wonder what she wanted in that wagon.”

  “The photograph?” I hazarded.

  “Hardly,” said the Sergeant. “Or she would have taken it before. I’d like to know what’s going on around that woman Suzanne. First Christophe, and then Len Waterman. I wonder what it’s all about?”

  “Best thing to do would be to ask her,” I said sourly. “She’s bound to tell you all about it.”

  “Wouldn’t be a bad idea,” said Beef in his innocent way. And then after a moment’s thought: “Bit blunt, I suppose. People don’t like being questioned on personal subjects like that. But there ought to be somebody who could tell us.”

  Beef pulled slowly at the ends of his mustache and walked slowly away from Waterman’s wagon. From the tent came the heavily emphasized music which I knew was played for the elephant act. It is a tune which I shall never be able to dissociate from elephants, no matter in what other context I may happen to hear it. The ponderously rhythmic way in which the band was playing the tune now will always seem, I think, the correct and only way to play it. I don’t know the name of it, but should it occur—unlikely enough—in a promenade concert, I shall probably feel like leaping to my feet and offering the conductor some immediate vocal advice.

  As we walked slowly towards the big tent a figure emerged from it and began to walk briskly across our path.

  “There’s the man who might be able to tell us something useful about Suzanne,” I said, pointing to the figure.

  “Who is it?”

  “Jackson,” I answered, “and in a hurry about something by the look of it.”

  “Oh, he’s always in a hurry,” said Beef. “Come on. Let’s ask him.”

  Jackson did not seem too pleased to see us, but he stopped when Beef called out to him.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he said briskly, “what’s worrying you now? I haven’t been seeing very much of you since you first arrived. I’d like to know how your little investigation has been going on. Have you found anything suspicious?”

  “It’s easy to find suspicious things,” said Beef quietly, “because people nearly always have something to hide.” It seemed to me that Jackson looked up suddenly as Beef said this, but I could not be sure of it.

  “Yes, I suppose they have,” he said in a casual voice. “But then, of course, that’s not what you’re looking for, Sergeant, is it? I mean, dirty washing and family skeletons and all that are of little interest in this particular case?”

  “Well, you can get too much of them,” said Beef, “but a little scandal, as you might say, is sometimes a great help to an investigator.”

  “Is that what you’ve come to me for?” asked Jackson sharply. “Because if so, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “Oh no,” said Beef. “Nothing like that. I was only speaking generally. I just wanted a little bit of information about the circus, and I thought you would be the right person to come to, that’s all.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if you came into the wagon,” said Jackson, and led us up the steps. After offering us cigarettes he lit one himself, and then, carefully seating himself in an arm-chair, he looked expectantly at Beef.

  “All right. Fire away, Sergeant,” he said.

  “How long has the circus been going?” asked Beef.

  “Well, actually my father started Jacobi’s Circus in nineteen, nine, but we reckon that the circus is twenty-five years old this season.”

  “How’s that?” asked Beef after a pause, during which he had been doing rather obvious mental arithmetic.

  “We had to stop for four years during the war. Transport was very difficult, and often it was next to impossible to get food for the animals. And, of course, many of the men went to fight. Almost all the traveling circuses shut down during that time, you know.”

  “So that makes you twenty-five this year. Jubilee year, eh?” said Beef with a grin.

  “Yes,” answered Jackson. “We have a special show every year on the birthday of the circus, but this one is the twenty-fifth, and a special Jubilee performance. I hope you’ll be here to see it.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” said Beef, remembering. “Anita told us something about that. It should be good, eh?”

  “It should be the best show we’ve given,” said Jackson.

  “Have all the artists been with you since the war?” I asked, in order to give Beef time to think out his next question.

  “Apart from one or two, yes,” replied Jackson. “Of course, some of them were only children, and didn’t start showing until later—like my daughter and Eric, and the Concinis. The only ones who have joined the show since are, let me see, the two Darienne brothers, Clem Gail, and Peter Ansell. I think that’s all.”

  “What about Suzanne?” Beef asked.

  “Suzanne joined just after we’d started—in the second season to be precise. We wanted a trapeze act, and Len Waterman said he thought he knew someone he could get, and recommended Suzanne.”

  “I see,” said Beef. “So he must have known Suzanne before she came here?”

  “Unless he saw her picture in the papers,” said Jackson sarcastically.

  “Anything between them?” continued Beef, unperturbed.

  Jackson looked sharply at the Sergeant. “Don’t ask me to tell you the private affairs of my company,” he said at last. “That is something which is completely their own affair.”

  “All right,” said Beef, “I know how you feel. Well, what about the Darienne brothers? When did they join the show?”

  “About nineteen-thirty, I think it was.”

  Beef laboriously wrote these facts down in his notebook, and then turned to the proprietor again. But this time it was Jackson who asked the question.

  “You know, Sergeant,” he said, “ever since you told me about this murder business I’ve been wondering on one or two points. Now you remember you said this story first came from Gypsy Margot? Well, do you think it possible that the whole thing
is a little scheme of hers?”

  “Scheme?” asked Beef, puzzled. “How do you mean?”

  “Suppose she wanted to do harm to the circus in some way. Suppose, in fact, that she wanted to do harm to me. This story might be her best way of doing it.”

  “I won’t say as it hadn’t struck me as a possibility,” said Beef cautiously. “But how exactly could it harm you? You said yourself that you were not worried unless someone started trying to murder you?”

  “I know. But I’ve thought of another aspect of it,” replied Jackson. “Suppose there’s no murder at all. The company are already growing a little nervous about the affair. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they really believe the story, but it makes them a bit jumpy when they see a detective about the tober. If that went on for very long there’s no telling what might happen to the show.”

  “Are you saying that Gypsy Margot is trying to break up the show?” asked Beef.

  “It’s a possibility, isn’t it?” said Jackson, spreading his hands.

  Beef grunted. “Any reason to think she might want to?” he asked.

  “She’s always been touchy about me since I bought the circus from her brother,” answered Jackson. “It wasn’t much to look at in those days. But they’d built it up from nothing, and I suppose she was proud of it. Anyway, I know she was against selling it. In the end, I had to put a clause in the contract that she was to be allowed to travel around with it whenever she wanted to. On and off she’s been with us ever since.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” interrupted Beef, “what did you do, Mr. Jackson, before you took up the show business?”

  “I don’t see that that has anything to do with the matter,” said Jackson shortly.

  “Well, you know,” said Beef persuasively, “early life and that. ‘At his mother’s knee.’ You see, Mr. Townsend here’s got to write a book about this case and it might come in useful to him.”

  “Then Mr. Townsend had better look elsewhere for his material,” said the proprietor coldly. “I am not, and have no intention of being, a romantic character.”

  “Oh, well,” said Beef, “if you won’t, you won’t. Still, there’s a lot more questions I wanted to ask you.” The Sergeant flicked back the pages of his notebook and licked the lead of his pencil thoughtfully. “Ah, yes,” he went on, “when did you first get to know Pete Daroga?”

  “When I engaged him directly after I’d bought up the circus,” said Jackson after a slight pause, in which I thought I noticed a slightly surprised expression cross his face.

  “Personal friend?” asked Beef.

  “Not particularly. Certainly no more than any of the other artists. I’m not the sort of man who makes personal friendships.”

  And looking at the proprietor’s hard expression, I could quite believe that last sentence.

  “Why do you ask?” continued Jackson. “Have you got anything against him?”

  “No, not yet,” said Beef. “Not yet.”

  From the expression in Jackson’s voice as he asked the question I felt somehow that he would have been more pleased if Beef had had something against the wire-walker. Since the Sergeant had first mentioned Daroga’s name, I thought I had detected a difference in Jackson’s voice. It was not quite a hardness; rather a greater precision with his words as though the whole subject were a little distasteful to him. But Beef’s next action was even more surprising, for he suddenly pulled the little button which he had previously found on the floor of that very wagon, out of his pocket and pushed it almost under the proprietor’s nose.

  “Did you ever see this before?” he asked.

  Jackson stared at the button with intense amazement, and his brown face slowly turned to a dirty gray color. For a moment he seemed incapable of speech altogether, and then he managed to gasp out: “Where did you get that?”

  “Found it lying around,” said Beef casually.

  “Who else has seen it?” Jackson was sitting forward on the extreme edge of his chair as he spoke.

  “No one,” said Beef.

  Suddenly Jackson snatched the button from where it lay in Beef’s outstretched palm and put it quickly in his pocket. “As a matter of fact,” he said, with something of his former coldness, “it happens to be mine. It seems to me that it’s no business of yours, in any case.”

  The door opened suddenly and Corinne entered. She raised her eyebrows at seeing Beef and myself, but said nothing. Jackson sat back in his chair, and his face seemed suddenly to reassume its normal cynical expression.

  “Are you going out again?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Corinne defiantly, as if expecting trouble about it. “After I’ve changed.”

  Beef started to his feet with a jerk. “We must be going, anyway,” he said, and nudged me towards the door as quickly as he could. “Thank you very much, Mr. Jackson. Good night.”

  “Whatever was the hurry?” I demanded as soon as we were outside.

  “I got caught like that once before,” said Beef, wiping his forehead. “That girl doesn’t care who she takes her clothes off in front of.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  April 29th (continued).

  “DO YOU remember which day they said the Jubilee performance was to be?” I asked Beef when we had returned to our wagon.

  “Saturday, wasn’t it,” said Beef. “Saturday, May the third?”

  I made a quick calculation. “That’s strange,” I commented. “Do you realize that May the third is the time limit?”

  “Time limit? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why can’t you say something sensible instead of making it into a mystery?”

  “Gypsy Margot,” I pointed out, “gave a certain time limit within which, she said, the murder would be committed. And the last day of that prediction happens to be the day of the Jubilee performance. What do you think of that?”

  “Might be an accident,” said Beef, “or she might have thought it was a good date to pick on, or, on the other hand, she might have known something we don’t. How should I know?”

  “I don’t know how,” I said coldly, “but I think you ought to.”

  “Oh, I don’t think there’s much in that,” said Beef carelessly, and began to prepare himself for bed.

  “And another thing,” I persisted. “That button. What was the point of that? Just when it looked like turning into something interesting you let Jackson snatch it away from you.”

  “Well, it was his, wasn’t it?” demanded Beef. “And, anyway, I took a copy of what was written on it. Doesn’t seem to make sense to me, but see what you can make of it.”

  He handed me his notebook opened at a page on which were printed the letters A.P.T.N.C..T.

  “What do you suppose they stand for?” I asked. “They might mean almost anything.”

  “Can’t make out what they mean at all,” said Beef as I looked at them. “Perhaps it’s a trade union or something. They’re fond of having long strings of letters—like the A.U.B.T.W. or the N.U.W.M., and all the rest of them. Never could make out what they were all about.”

  “Well,” I said, “the A probably stands for Association, the N for National, and the T for Trades.”

  “Like the Association of Pipe-Turners and National Carving Trades,” suggested Beef.

  “Good Lord, of course,” I said.

  “Only,” said Beef, “there’s probably no such union. I just made it up as I went along. And, anyway, Jackson’s not a pipe-turner, is he?”

  “Still,” I said, “we can find out about that later. The point now is to discover something about the relationship between Suzanne and Len Waterman. Jackson told us that she joined the circus before the Darienne brothers, and that she was here nearly ten years before they came. Time enough for her to give that photograph to Len Waterman—and mean what she wrote on it, too.”

  “That’s something we’ve got to find out about,” stated Beef. “Trouble is these circus people are like oysters. They never tell you anything about themselve
s unless it’s by accident.”

  “What about Gypsy Margot?” I asked. “She doesn’t seem to be in love with the circus. Perhaps she might tell us something.”

  “That’s the one,” said Beef. “And we’ll see her tomorrow morning. I’m going to turn in now.”

  The show was just coming to an end in the big tent, and the lights and people made me feel that bed was the last place I wanted to go to just then.

  “I think I’ll take a turn outside first,” I said. “You get some sleep, if you like. I’ll try not to wake you as I come back.”

  Beef had already drawn his shirt over his shoulders, and as I left the wagon his voice came indistinctly through the linen shrouding his head.

  “Gmyloveta,” he seemed to say.

  “What did you say?” I queried, with my foot already on the top step.

  Beef’s face, red with exertion and wreathed with a wide grin, emerged from the shirt. “I said: ‘Give my love to Anita’,” he said.

  As I wandered around the ground I thought how little of the country one really saw from a traveling circus. Perhaps it was our own fault. The circus people themselves seemed to know every corner of England, however remote, and could remember places even ten and twelve years after. But I had traveled with the circus through some half a dozen villages, and I found it impossible to even name them in the order in which we had passed through them. Today, I knew, we were at Beverley. But that was only because the Minster stood right next to the tober as a constant reminder. The moon lit its intricately carved exterior, and the tower with its overhanging gargoyles seemed to lean right across the big top. It was a fine night for a walk, with everything brightly lit and quiet. As if echoing my thoughts, a voice said at my ear:

  “A lovely night for a walk,” and I turned to find Anita smiling not more than a yard away from me.

  “Beef’s gone to bed,” I said. “He’s not affected by the moon.”