Case with 4 Clowns (7 page)

“Most certainly not,” I answered. “Things are just beginning to look exciting.”

As I lay awake in bed that night I let my thoughts wander over what we had already witnessed in the circus, and its difference from the sort of life led by the rest of society. It was, I thought, exciting enough without the promise of a case. There seemed to me so much more vitality in the people. Already there had been an attempt at a murder, and I felt, as I lay there, that almost anything might happen in the future. That was the whole point about circus folk. They were not predictable, as most other people were. One felt that one had to be prepared for anything, when one was with them. It might be something quite small and ridiculous, or it might be something huge and terrifying. One could not foresee it anyway. But it was exciting. I decided that I would stay on with Beef.

Since so many little things happened each day which were not in the usual logical order of our previous “cases,” I realized that it would be best to keep a continual account of them in the form of a rather full journal. Then, if anything did happen, I should have all the possible details of what led up to it already written down. It would certainly save time later. That was, of course, if a case ever came of the business. And even if it did not, I thought to myself, it would still be worth staying on.

I turned to Beef to tell him about my decision, but he was already asleep, snoring gently with his face to the wall.

April
27th.

B
EEF
was already up and dressed when I awoke. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk examining a long yellow sheet which he held in his hands, and when I spoke to him he brought it over to me.

“This is one of the circus bills,” he explained.

“Have you found a clue or something on it?” I asked drowsily.

“Clue?” said Beef. “No, I got an idea, that's all. You know what we ought to do today? We ought to make a thorough round of everybody in the show; go along to everybody and see what they're like, and that. Might come in handy afterwards.”

“So that bill is a sort of checking list, is it?” I asked.

“That's right. Take a look at it.” And Beef handed me the bill. This is what I read:

JACOBI'S CIRCUS.

Twice
4-30

Daily.
8-0

Seats at 1/-, 1/3, 2/4, and 3/6.
Children
half-price
at matinees.

THE CONCINIS.
THE GREATEST LADY TRICK RIDERS IN THE WORLD.

Incredible equestrian feats—grace and color on a galloping horse.

CORINNE JACOBI
& her
ARAB HORSES.

Equine elegance and good manners under the eye of the graceful Corinne.

The DARIENNE BROTHERS AND SUZANNE.
GREATEST AERIAL ACT OF ALL TIME.
Thrills!     
Thrills!!     THRILLS!!!

HERR KURT
AND HIS MAN-EATING LIONS.
The bravest man on earth.

PETROV DAROGA.
ECSTASY ON THE TIGHT WIRE.

EUSTACE
THE UNBELIEVABLE SEAL
Shown by our own Corinne Jacobi.

ARCHIE, SAM, and TINY
the funniest clowns in existence.
You scream,
YOU ROAR,
YOU YELL!!

JACOBI'S FAMOUS ELEPHANTS
SHOWN BY PETROV DAROGA
Watch Hoodlums stand on his head!

MANY OTHER LAUGHS, THRILLS, AND DISPLAYS.

“Simple, isn't it?” said Beef as soon as I had finished reading it. “We just go round to each of those in turn, and there you are.”

“I suppose you know what you are doing,” I said, “but personally I can't see the use of it. You can't very well collect evidence at this stage, can you?”

“Evidence? Of course not,” said Beef scornfully, “that's all
you seem to think about. My idea is to get to know some of the people. Make myself at home like. You never know what might come of it.”

“True,” I said. And in a few minutes we had started on our tour.

Beef made first for the proprietor's wagon. Jackson was alone and let us in immediately Beef knocked.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose you've got your murder now, Sergeant. Although you can hardly call it a murder when the girl was little more than scratched, can you?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Beef slowly, “I don't somehow think this is the murder I've been looking for. In the first place, it was too clumsy, wasn't premeditated, as they say. More what they call in France a crime of passion, if you ask me. And then, of course, as you say, it wasn't a murder at all. Now, I've spoken to both of the young ladies, and although I won't bother you by going into the full story, it seems to me that it's something to do with them being twins, if you see what I mean?”

“I'm afraid I don't,” replied Jackson.

“Well, it's rather difficult to explain,” said the Sergeant slowly. “Look at it like this. Here you have two girls, as like as two peas. Now, in an ordinary family living in a town say, that might cause a bit of fun sometimes, but nobody wouldn't take it serious. But here things are a bit different. Those two girls weren't leading more than one life between the two of them. Everything one could do the other might get the credit for, everybody one knew, the other knew as well. There was nothing private between them at all. Well, I think that's what was the cause of this little business. Nothing very serious, mind you, but just enough to make one of them lash out.”

“I'm sure your theory is very interesting, Mr. Beef,” said Jackson in a rather flat voice, “but I fail to see where it's getting you.”

“That's what I was coming to,” said Beef eagerly. “Now, it may not mean anything in itself, so to speak, but it gives me just the opportunity I want to go round and talk to all the people here. I don't want to question them like a policeman. Don't think that, Mr. Jackson. I just want to have a friendly little talk with them all, so's I can get to know them and get an idea of the circus as a whole. You see what I mean?”

“Quite, but why come to me about it? You're perfectly free to have these little ‘chats' if you wish. It is no affair of mine, so long as you don't interfere with the working hours of the circus, that is a question which only affects the people themselves.”

“Still,” said Beef, uncrushed, “I just thought I'd like to get your approval. Well, that's all right then.” And at that he rose, and we left the wagon.

When we were outside he drew me aside, and with an expression of childish pleasure, opened his large hand and showed me what lay in the palm of it.

“Found this on the floor in there,” he said.

It was a small colored button with five or six letters printed across the center. It looked a very ordinary object to me. Perhaps a badge for some circus society, or one of those “clubs” which the makers of some proprietory articles actually persuade people to join in order to advertise their wares.

“Well, what about it?” I asked.

“I like little things like that,” Beef said. “Especially coming out of Jackson's wagon. I've got my eye on him, you know.”

“But what does it mean?”

“How should I know?” protested Beef. “Give us a chance. I only just picked it up. I shall make an examination of it later,” he added grandly. “And now I think we'll go and see the Dariennes.”

“Oh yes, I know,” I said, “the greatest aerial act of all time.”

“I don't know about that,” admitted Beef, not recognizing my quotation from the circus bill, “but I've heard they're very good trapeze artists. French, too. I like anything French.”

“They have a partner, haven't they?”

“Um,” said Beef. “Suzanne. But she's not French. More like Camden Town, I should say. But she's All Right though.”

When we entered the Dariennes' wagon we found that Suzanne was with them, and it was she who invited us to that universal cup of tea which will always be associated in my mind with visits to circus people. It was hot, and sticky, and sweet; a rich dark brown in color, and made with tinned milk. Since Beef seemed completely occupied with the noisy consumption of this I felt that it was incumbent on me to open the conversation, which I conscientiously did, touching on such commonplace subjects as the weather, the dullness of the Yorkshire people, and the possibilities of a good house that evening. Meanwhile, I was closely examining the Darienne brothers.

I had already heard strange rumors of these two, although I was determined to let Beef find out all that I knew for himself. Theirs was the most highly-paid act on the show, and topped the bill in the sense that they were given the largest type in all Jacobi's posters. But what had struck Ginger, my informant on the subject, was the relationship between the two brothers. The Concinis were bound by their similarity, but between the Dariennes there was a more subtle bond. “Paul, that's the oldest one,” Ginger had explained, “watches his brother like a cat with a mouse.” I appreciated this somewhat trite simile when I looked at Paul when he sat in the wagon. He had string-colored hair, which was cut so short that it stood straight up over his forehead in the old pre-war German fashion, and his face was large, heavy, and brooding. There was a sour and worried look on his solid features, and his big fleshy jowls were set uncompromisingly. Christophe was a very different type. He was slight, blond, and in the
true sense of the word, gay. His clear-cut features were almost pretty, and his movements were swift and eager. He talked a great deal more than Paul, and had a little chiming laugh, the effect of which I found altogether charming. Both of them spoke English with a strong French accent, which gave to their conversation a special, if artificial, attraction, like the love-making speeches of Chevalier in the more obvious of his films.

Both the brothers were a queer mixture of delicacy and hardness. It was easier to understand this when they began to talk about their early life. Born in France, they had lost both father and mother before the age of ten, and had chosen then, rather than live with an elderly aunt in the south, to go on the roads and earn their own living as best they could. It had been a very hard life, and was a case of being strong and agile, or dying. Somehow they had survived, and by the time they were sixteen and thirteen respectively, they had been taken on as tent hands in a small circus. From that time their progress had been steady, and, as Paul put it, completely without exciting details. They had come to England because they heard the pay was better, and because they wanted to travel. They had been together, dependent on each other, since infancy.

Suzanne, who had been sitting silent, now spoke directly to Beef for the first time. “I mother them, Mr. Beef,” she said and although the phrase was lightly spoken, it seemed to carry more significance than a joke normally does. Suzanne Beckett was still a very pretty woman. She gave one the impression of having once been a very beautiful one, and in the irregular, nervous movements of her hands, there was still something exquisite left, something extremely graceful. She might have been almost any age, but when she told Beef that she was thirty-five I could see that he believed her. And Beef generally knew when people were lying to him. A widow, past the peak of her career, she should not normally have been very
interesting, and Beef would probably have taken little notice of her had it not been for one little incident which occurred just before we left.

While we had chatted, Beef had solemnly, steadily, loudly drunk the whole of his large cup of tea. It was not until he had set the cup down empty that he seemed really to turn his attention to the matter in hand.

“Now,” he began heavily, “you're the top of the bill, aren't you?”

“Why, yes,” said Christophe cheerfully, “of course we are.” And he launched in to a long explanation of why such an important act as theirs should have deigned to travel with a tenting show at all.

At the end of it Suzanne gave him a quick smile, and turning aside to him as though she did not want us, or perhaps even Paul, to understand, she made a remark in French in a very low voice.

Beef might have missed this, but I saw Paul look up sharply and his eyes traveled from one to the other of his partners. At first it seemed that he was not going to speak, but at last he said slowly and in English: “Suzanne, I never knew you spoke French!”

The emphasis of this remark was as strange as the subject of it. How could it be, I wondered, that the girl who worked with them every day, who seemed to be looking after them now, should speak his language without him knowing it?

Even Christophe seemed flummoxed. “I've been teaching her a little,” he said, and reaching over for Suzanne's spoon, he hurriedly stirred his tea.

Nothing more noteworthy took place during our interview, which ended with the cordial invitation from all three of them to come and see them again, and the hope that we would enjoy their act. Beef thanked them, and climbing down the steps
of the wagon backwards, he set off in the direction of his next interview.

In any case the next wagon, which belonged to Peter Ansell, who worked as lion-feeder for Herr Kurt, the trainer, was empty, so Beef made his way over to the enclosed zoo where Ansell was most likely to be at that time of the day. The zoo, which was attached to Jacobi's circus, was actually a small enclosure of cages drawn round in a rough square and fenced round with canvas and rope to keep out prying eyes. Each of these cages was in reality the wagon or trailer in which the animals were towed from place to place on the tour, and became a cage when the front boards were taken down each day. Some of the animals behind these bars were those used in the ring, such as the lion and the seal, while the others were the more well-known “oddities” of the animal world which are always an attraction, and which were taken round as a side-show to the circus.

Beside the three lions which Kurt showed in the ring, there were three cubs, which he was still training, a fourth lion which, although full-grown, had not been trained because “he'd never had time to get down to the job,” and a tiger and a jaguar, also untrained. The smaller animals, beside Eustace the seal, consisted of a hyena, a three-toed sloth, a fox, numerous monkeys, a porcupine, a kangaroo, a wolf, an owl, a vulture, and a skunk. It was, apparently, Ansell's job to look after these animals. He had to feed them, clean out the cages, act as vet and nursemaid, should the need arise, and see that nothing went wrong while they were traveling from place to place.