Case with 4 Clowns (24 page)

The evening was warm and lovely. Hardly any moon, but a sort of soft light blurred the edges of the trees and made them seem half-human, standing round the side of the field like parents waiting to collect their children from a party which was going on inside the tent. The lorry which fed electricity to the tents was purring softly, and as I walked slowly by it I noticed Len Waterman seated hunched up on the step with his head in his hands. He did not seem to notice me. I wondered if he were feeling ill, but I was too nervous to approach him and ask if he were all right. His fingers were sunk deeply into his hair, and he sat still, almost without breathing it seemed.

Anita was on the steps of her wagon, trying to read by the thin yellow light which came over her shoulder, and I stopped to talk to her. From the inside of the wagon came rattling and clattering, as if old Margot were beginning to get the supper ready. Even the fact that neither of the twins had been appearing in the ring now for a week, could not break the circus routine of exceedingly late supper. Like the artists who had been performing, Anita and Helen would not sit down to the last meal of the day until nearly midnight.

As I approached the wagon steps Anita looked up and
smiled at me, and then, closing the book she was reading, she held the back of the cover up to me for me to see the title. It was
Case With No Conclusion,
the story of Beef's last case, and I felt childishly flattered. To me, Anita was an unusual sort of person altogether. Most people, on discovering that I wrote detective novels for a living, take up one of two attitudes. Either they think “thrillers” are the perigee of degradation and look at me as though I were something which had slipped out of a hole in the wainscoting, or else they gush at length about writing in general and tell me how they have a cousin who “writes,” and have I ever heard of him. I seldom have, by the way, and it gives me pleasure to say so.

But the point about Anita was that she did neither of these things, and yet was genuinely interested in me. She had not, perhaps, been delivered up to “middle-class morality,” as Shaw's dustman would have phrased it.

“What do you think of it?” I asked.

“I don't think you're quite fair to the Sergeant,” was her comment.

The circus band had begun to play the “Skaters' Waltz.”

“That's the trapeze act starting,” said Anita.

The crowd in the tent had become now completely silent. I could imagine the row on row of strained white faces, the unanimous turning of heads, the bright lights reflected in the widely-staring eyes. By now I knew the turns off by heart, and when the first burst of applause came I could visualize Paul and Christophe bowing from the center of the ring after their introduction of the act. Once more the band struck up—slow, soft music, which was the only sound to be heard from the big top.

“What would happen,” I asked Anita, “if the band played the wrong music?”

“I don't know,” she laughed. “We're all like circus horses really. Some of us have routine acts which we've been doing
for years. And with the same music. If the music went wrong, you know, I think the act would just crack up. But it's never happened yet.”

A fresh burst of applause from the tent made me look up. Sharp brilliant flashes of light came through the small gaps which the wind opened now and again in the canvas. From the dynamo-lorry stretched the two wires which carried the current to the lighting in the tent top. I had often noticed the rough joints and knots in these wires, and even now, in the dark, it seemed only an act of fortune that the current ever reached the lamps.

There was a prolonged roll on the drums. The finale had started. In perfect silence—there was no band now—the lithe figures of Suzanne and the two Dariennes were swinging slowly on the high trapezes. A gasp, bitten off sharply, as from one gigantic man rather than from a crowd of three hundred people, told us that Suzanne had slipped backwards on her trapeze and was hanging by her feet. The drums again. I seemed to feel the tension in the air as she prepared to hurl herself across the ring to where Paul was already swinging gently with his arms ready to catch her. My mind seemed to time it so that with my eyes shut I could see the somersaulting figure pass through the steady white light in the center. And then, as Paul's arms would be stretching out to catch her hands, instead of the usual mass sigh of relief, came the piercing scream of one woman.

But before the sound had ended, the tent seemed to quiver with excited shouts and cries from the audience. Anita and I leaped to our feet, and as we did so I noticed that the guide-bulb over the lorry had gone out.

“The lights must have fused,” Anita managed to say, as we ran toward the tent entrance.

Inside the tent we could see nothing. Some of the crowd were attempting to find the exit, and their angry, frightened
voices, gave us no clue to what had happened. I could hear Jackson's voice rising powerfully above the clamor:

“Keep perfectly calm, ladies and gentlemen. Keep in your seats. A small technical hitch …”

At first the crowd seemed to take no notice, but his voice went on and on in the darkness, and it must have seemed to the frightened people, the only thing to which they could cling.

“Those of you who have left your seats, please remain exactly where you are. The lights will be repaired in a few minutes. No one will be hurt so long as they keep still.”

The people in the tent seemed to have obeyed Jackson's commands, for the noise subsided to a low but steady murmur. Some genius in the bandstand began to play “Daisy, Daisy,” as a solo on his saxophone, and by the second bar everyone was singing.

“Good God,” I said to Anita, “have they no imagination at all? Why, at this moment Suzanne may be lying on the ground with her …”

The dim red flickers of matches struck here and there in the crowd only served to illuminate the staring faces of those who struck them. But at that moment the lights came suddenly on. My eyes immediately sought the trapeze. At one end sat the two Dariennes, staring into the crowd below; and the other, empty, swung with sickening slowness, with the white sweat-handkerchief dangling from one corner. The scene below was in unutterable confusion. The ring was half-filled with standing and seated members of the audience.

As Anita and I rushed forward I glanced upward and saw the still figure of Suzanne lying in the net. Paul and Christophe were descending as fast as they could, and in a few moments they were lifting Suzanne out of the net and handing her carefully down to Jackson and Clem Gail, who stood ready at the side of the ring. Christophe sprang out of the
net and bent over the still form when they placed her on the ground. “Suzanne,” he almost shouted at her, “speak to me.”

He raised his head and looked swiftly round the circle of faces. His jaw muscles were set, and his eyes looked hard and rock-like, almost unseeing. Then suddenly he seemed to shrivel, and pitching forward on to the pale figure in his arms, he pressed his face against her breast. His slow rhythmical sobbing increased, until it had become almost animal-like in its intensity. His fingers twitched, nervously pulling at the spangles on Suzanne's costume.

The thin querulous face of a woman in the crowd poked suddenly between Jackson and myself. “Why doesn't someone get a doctor for the poor thing?” she said shrilly. I became conscious of the people around us.

“Where's Beef?” I said.

Almost as if I had called him up from some smoky depth, a stir in the crowd proclaimed the appearance of the Sergeant.

“Here, what's all this?” his disembodied voice was saying. And the round anxious face of my old friend appeared over the heads of the crowd.

I felt a sense of relief when Beef bent down briskly and shook the hysterical Christophe by the shoulders.

“Come on, young fellow,” he said kindly, “that sort of thing won't get you nowhere. Pull yourself together.” And after lifting the boy bodily away, he expertly raised Suzanne in his arms and walked with her to the entrance of the tent. The crowd stood back in silence and made way for us as we followed Beef to Suzanne's wagon.

Beef laid the still figure on the bed, and after a brief examination reassured us:

“She'll be all right in a minute or two. Doesn't seem to be nothing broken.”

“Are you sure?” asked Christophe anxiously.

Beef nodded, and bending down, began to rub the
unconscious girl's hands. “Look,” he said, after a minute or two, “she's coming round now.”

Suzanne moved uneasily on the bed, and then drew a deep breath through her parted lips. “What happened?” she said in a dazed voice.

“That's what we want to know,” said Beef. “You gave us a scare, you did, young lady. How are you feeling?”

Suzanne sat up. “I don't know,” she said. “Did I fall into the net?”

“That's where we found you,” said Beef.

Suzanne pressed her hands across her eyes. “All I can remember,” she said, “was seeing Paul's arms for a second as I came out of a somersault. And then, suddenly, I couldn't see anything. It was just blackness. I caught Paul by one hand, but I slipped. Then I think I must have hit the edge of the net with my shoulder.”

She touched her neck gingerly with the tips of her fingers, and I noticed for the first time a long red weal which was gradually turning blue.

“That's where it caught you all right,” said Beef. “Knocked you out, it must have, and thrown you back into the net. Lucky it wasn't the other way or you would have broken your neck.”

“I seemed to go blind,” said Suzanne, “I felt …”

“That's all right,” said Beef. “It was the lights went out. And that's what I'm going to see about now.”

The Sergeant looked at the two trapeze artists for a minute, and then turned to Paul. “What exactly did happen?” he asked him.

“I saw her coming towards me,” burst out Paul suddenly. “I saw her coming, and then, suddenly, the lights went out and I tried to catch her. But I was only able to seize one arm, and she slipped.”

I felt there was something strained and artificial in the way
Paul was speaking. He seemed to be justifying himself. I looked quickly at Beef to see if he shared my suspicion.

“And then what happened?” said Beef.

Paul shrugged. “I don't know. She should have fallen into the net—it was just underneath us—but I suppose she twisted and missed it. There was just the scream, and it was too dark to see anything.”

“I see,” said Beef. “Then the man I want to see is the electrician, isn't it?”

“Well,” I said to Beef as we walked across towards the dynamo-lorry, “have you got your case ready?”

“Case?” said Beef. “Not going anywhere, are we?”

“Evidence,” I said with exasperation; “clues.”

“Oh,” said Beef, “that. Well, I wouldn't say as I'd exactly got a case.”

“But Beef …” I protested.

“The matter with you,” said Beef, “is that you're in too much of a hurry.”

“Hurry,” I said, “but you've had three attempted murders already. What are you waiting for?”

“As I've said before,” Beef pointed out patiently, “you jump to conclusions. We've had nothing to show that this was anything more than an accident.”

“But the tiger,” I said.

“Tiger!” Beef was scornful. “Tigers are always escaping. You want to read your Sunday papers.”

“But in this last case,” I pointed out, “we do know that Christophe was frightened of his brother finding out about the affair with Suzanne.”

Beef interrupted sarcastically. “I suppose your theory is,” he grunted, “that Paul blew the lights out and then dropped Suzanne to the ground. Ver-y interesting.”

“Nothing of the sort,” I snapped. “You forget Len Waterman. What about the photograph we found in his wagon?
We know that there was an affair between him and Suzanne some years ago. And he was in charge of the lights, wasn't he?”

“Well?” said Beef.

“Then he might have done it,” I said.

“So might Father Christmas,” said Beef.

After which example of what Beef would no doubt have called humor, we walked in silence. We found Len Waterman sitting on the running-board of the lorry coiling a length of fuse-wire.

“Nasty turn out,” he greeted us. “Always did think something like that would happen. Now perhaps they'll take my advice about having a double circuit.”

“What difference would that make?” asked Beef.

“Well then, if one circuit failed,” said Len, “the other one would be all right. Couldn't have all the lights going out at the same time then.”

“Is that what happened this time?” asked Beef, in his “casual” voice, which would not have deceived a child.

“What do you think did then?” demanded Len Waterman, in a belligerent tone.

“I just wondered,” said Beef. “I mean I don't know nothing about this electricity stuff.”

“Nothing at all?” said Len.

Beef shook his head. Whereupon, rather, I felt, like the doctor in
Le Medecin Malgre Lui,
Len proceeded to give a technical discourse, of which not more than one in five words was comprehensible to us.

“Oh,” said Beef, when it was finished, “so that's what happened. Now you don't mind if I ask you a few personal questions, do you?”

“Depends how personal,” said Len.

“Well, what was this affair you had with Suzanne? I mean,
wasn't there something between you two? You know, walking out and that?”

I felt that if ever there was an example of an elephant trampling through tissue-paper, this was one. I was a little disappointed however in Len's reaction.

“Well,” he said slowly, “there
was
a sort of an arrangement.”

“Marriage?” said Beef.

“Her husband was still alive.”