Case with 4 Clowns (6 page)

When they were brought to him he proceeded to bind the wound, passing the strips of linen over and round Anita's shoulder. His usually clumsy-looking fingers seemed adroit and expert as he worked, unrolling the bandage with a neat, sure touch. Finally, when he had finished, he lifted the girl in his arms, while Margot drew back the bedcovers, and placed Anita in the bed.

“She'll be all right,” he said turning to us. “Only a flesh-wound. Her shoulder-blade stopped it being anything more serious. Still, we might send for a doctor, just in case.”

“Is it absolutely necessary?” asked Jackson.

“Well,” answered Beef, “it's a clean wound.”

“Then we won't fetch a doctor,” stated Jackson. Gypsy Margot nodded her agreement with this, and Beef merely shrugged his shoulders. I realized that doctors were almost unheard of to circus people. Only extreme cases were taken to them. Used to dealing with the wounds of their animals or their fellow artists, they regarded interference from outside with an almost superstitious eye.

“In any case,” I said abruptly, “we ought to call in the police.”

“Police,” said Beef scornfully. “What do we want them in here for?”

Jackson and Margot were violent in their repudiation of my idea, and feeling slightly crushed, I looked at Beef in bewilderment.

“And now,” said the Sergeant, “we want to get to the bottom of this. What I want to know is just what happened in here.”

Nobody answered. Jackson stood sullenly leaning against the door, Mrs. Jackson was quietly clearing away the remains of the bandages, lint and water that Beef had been using, Helen was sitting on a low stool by the bed staring unblinkingly at her sister's face, and Gypsy Margot was mumbling gently to herself apparently oblivious of all that was going on.

“Now come on,” said Beef impatiently. “Some of you must know what happened.”

Helen suddenly moved her eyes and looked full at the Sergeant. “I did it,” she said, and her voice had a vague, uncomprehending quality which changed almost to a scream as she went on, “I did it. I stabbed her. I don't know what made me … I saw her … her back … I …”

“Now don't go getting yourself all excited,” said Beef calmly. And then, turning to the others, he went on: “Look, I'd just like to have a little talk with Helen alone, if you don't mind. Perhaps she'll be better if there's not so many people about.”

We moved towards the door, but he gave me a slight sign that I was to stay. The other three left without a word, and I closed the door softly behind them. Beef turned to Helen.

“Now tell me just what happened,” he said.

H
ELEN
looked at the Sergeant for a moment before she began to speak. She seemed to be weighing something in her mind, and I thought she was probably wondering how much she could tell us.

“You needn't be afraid,” said Beef. “We're not trying to trap you, or anything like that. I just want to hear what happened after you left the tent. Start from there. Start where you came out of the ring.”

“I don't know that I can explain it really,” said Helen. “I still feel that it can't really have happened to me. I mean, the whole thing is like a dream. But I'll try. When we came out of the ring we took our horses round to the groom, and then walked to the wagon. We were laughing at a little joke we'd had with Mr. Townsend—you know, so that he wouldn't know which of us was Anita.”

“Yes, I know,” grinned Beef. “Took him in proper, it did, too.”

“I think perhaps that's what started it,” said Helen.

“What do you mean? The joke you played on Mr. Townsend? Did you have a quarrel over it then?”

“No, not that. I'll try and tell you. You see, as we were walking along Anita made some remark about how Mr. Townsend hadn't been able to tell the difference between us. I said: ‘Perhaps it would be better for us if he could; if everybody could.' I don't know what made me say that. It just came out. ‘Why, what do you mean?' said Anita. ‘I don't know,' I said, ‘It's just that I feel tired of us being so alike, I suppose.' ”

“And what did she say to that?” asked Beef.

“Nothing, she just laughed. We'd got to the wagon by then,
and we started changing. She said she was going round into the tent to speak to you and Mr. Townsend, and then she suddenly had the idea that I should go instead of her. She tried to persuade me, but I wouldn't do it. It wasn't because I didn't like a joke sometimes. I felt something worse than that; something I can't describe.”

“You mean,” I asked, “that you thought it wasn't in very good taste. You didn't think it was a joke at all?”

“No. Nothing like that. It's a feeling I've had before sometimes. Every time we do something that proves I'm exactly like Anita I feel a little the same. It's almost as if she were stealing something of mine. As if it weren't my own life I'm leading at all, but only half of hers. I don't know if you see what I mean, it's so hard to put it into words.”

“Yes,” said Beef thoughtfully, “I think I do. What it comes to is this. When you look at your sister and she's doing something—we might say like tying her shoe-lace up—then it seems to you that it's like looking at yourself in the mirror. Only you know you're not doing that thing at all, so you're sort of jealous, because it looks as though she's taken something away from you. Is that what you mean?”

“In a way, I suppose it is,” agreed Helen. “But I don't ever think it out clearly like that.”

“All right,” said Beef. “And then what happened?”

“Well, then we went on changing and talking together as we always do. But then I happened to look round and Anita was with her back to me by the bed. Her back was bare, and the skin was just like I knew mine would look if I turned round to the mirror. I thought suddenly that if a fly settled on her it would probably make me itch as well as her. And then I picked up a knife.”

“Where was it?” asked Beef. “Did you take it out of a drawer?”

“No, it was on the dressing-table. One of the knives they
sometimes use in the ring. Not a proper one, but made of steel, only blunted. It was always hanging about the place.”

“And then what?”

“Then I stabbed her, I suppose. I don't really remember doing it. I just felt that I had to. It didn't seem to me that Anita was a person at all—more like a cardboard figure. I wanted to cut at it with something. I didn't hate her or anything like that. I just forgot she was a person at all. And then she fell across the bed with a sort of moan and I knew what I had done. Oh, it was horrible …”

Helen suddenly stopped speaking and crouched down with her head in her hands crying softly to herself. “I must have been mad,” she said. “Whatever could have made me want to do a thing like that?”

As she spoke we heard coming from the tent the sound of the band playing and of the clowns shouting. It seemed to seep through slowly, as if our attention had now become relaxed, and we were able to notice things outside of this wagon again. Anita too, must have been disturbed by the sound for she stirred for a moment on the bed, and then opened her eyes.

“Well,” said Beef, “and how are you feeling, young lady? You gave us a bit of a fright, you did.”

Anita smiled vaguely and tried to sit up. But the smile turned to a wry expression of pain as she felt the wound.

“Best thing you can do is to lie still,” ordered Beef. “Do you think you could tell us what happened?”

“I think so,” said Anita, “I feel all right really. My back hurts a little, that's all.”

The clear voice of Eric, the proprietor's son, rang out clearly from the big top, speaking some traditional clown's patter with the Yorkshire accent he was assuming for the benefit of the crowd.

'This morn I arose

From my sweet repose.

I goes

Out among the trees that grows

To shoot the crows,

And meet one of my British foes.

Anita's story was substantially the same as her sister's. She was a little embarrassed by my eye as she told of her suggestion to prolong the joke of mixed identity with me.

“It was only a joke,” she explained to Beef, although she looked at me with her eyebrows slightly raised, as if to see how I was taking it. “But Helen wouldn't do it. She seemed a little cross with the idea, so I didn't say any more.”

We have some words that quickly come to blows;

He hits me on the nose,

Down I goes,

Into the gutter where all the muddy water flows.

Eric's voice seemed to be forcing its way through tears as he told of this fictitious tragedy. Then came the unvalorous sequel, the man who knows he is bested and does the commonsense thing about it.

Up I arose,

Straight home I goes,

I takes off my wet clothes—

“And then,” said Anita, “just as I was taking off my things I happened to glance up into the little mirror over the bed. I saw Helen's arm, with a knife, coming down towards me. I tried to move, but it was too late. Then I suppose I must have fainted.”

“That move you made,” commented Beef, “just about saved your life.”

Helen gave a low soft moan at these words and looked across at her sister. Anita stretched out her hand, and Helen suddenly went across to the bed, kneeling against the side of it, and buried her face in Anita's shoulder.

—And into bed I goes.

I turns up my toes,

I tallows my nose,

I has a sweet repose—

And that's all I knows.

There was a light tapping sound on the door of the wagon and the head of Mrs. Jackson looked nervously in.

“Can I came in, Mr. Beef?” she asked. “I brought some tea. I thought the two girls could do with a cup. I always say it steadies you when anything goes wrong.”

Beef motioned her in.

“There,” said Mrs. Jackson, giving the two girls a cup each, “drink it up. You'll feel much better. Really,” she went on half-turning to Beef and me, “I don't know what's coming over the circus these days. What with one thing and another. First we have Mr. Beef here. I don't know what Mr. Jackson is about. And then this talk of murder …”

“Murder?” said Helen suddenly. “Who's been talking about a murder?”

“Oh, it's nothing to do with you, dear, I'm sure. As if anyone would think about a thing like that. No, it's something that silly boy Albert Stiles has been spreading about. As if anyone couldn't see he was having his leg pulled.”

Is that ALL you know?
asked the level voice of Jackson from the big tent.

No,
said Eric,

That's not all I know

I knows,

And you knows,

And everybody else knows,

Mrs. Jackson stopped talking abruptly when she heard her husband's voice, as if she were afraid of interrupting him. She was a small slight woman, on whom the circus life appeared to have had its effects. Nervous, so that her hands seemed to flutter continually from her lap to her hair without ever doing anything useful when they got there. She had the startled look of one of those who have grown used to bullying and sought now only to avoid it. Her white lumpy face was kind and showed concern easily.

That a nice beef steak

And a nice mutton chop

Makes a hungry man's mouth

Go flipperty-flop—

like a lamb's tail.

“Well,” said Mrs. Jackson. “I must go to put the supper on. If you've done with the cups, dears, I'll take them with me.” The band in the tent had begun to play the music for the last turn, and Mrs. Jackson stood as if it had been a command and opened the door. “Well, good-by, dear,” she said. “These little trials do us good sometimes, I always say.” And forgetting to shut the door, she was gone, half-running, half-walking across to the proprietor's wagon.

“I often wonder,” said Beef ruminatively, “how it is some of these people get into a circus. Why they join up with you. Now people like your mother, I suppose, were born in the circus. But how do those like Mrs. Jackson ever come to be here at all?”

“Your guess is quite wrong, Sergeant,” said Anita. “Actually mother wasn't born in a circus at all. She used to be on the halls. That was a long time ago, of course. But she had an act with her brother.”

“What did they do?” asked Beef.

“Oh, some sort of a mind-reading act. It depended a lot on hypnotism, you know.”

“Hypnotism?” said Beef. “Can your mother hypnotize people then?”

“Depends on the person,” answered Anita. “She can't hypnotize me, for instance. I'm the wrong sort of material. But she hypnotizes Helen sometimes.”

“Has she done so lately?” I asked. “I mean within the last few weeks?”

“Why, yes,” Helen said. “Actually, she hypnotized me this morning. Why do you ask?”

I looked at Beef. “Well?” I asked, “what do you think about it?”

“Townsend means,” explained Beef, “that there might be some possibility of your mother putting Helen under the influence, so to speak, so that she'd try and stab you.”

But both the girls disagreed completely with the possibility of this half-formed theory. They said that their mother could not control them to that extent—at least she had never done so in their experience. She was only able to put them into a sort of trance which, if anything, made one physically weaker. Beef seemed to be persuaded by them, and eventually led me out of the wagon. I was still unconvinced, but it was no use to argue with Beef. I saw that the only thing to do was to keep it in mind.

“Well,” said Beef with a broad grin as we left the wagon, “do you still want to go home?”