Case with 4 Clowns (11 page)

The girl gave a short, nervous laugh. “That's not because I'm frightened,” she said.

“Why is it, then?”

She gave no answer, and for quite a while neither of them said anything. When they began talking again it was in so quiet a voice that I was unable to catch more than a word here and there. What, I wondered, did Beef expect me to do now? Was I supposed to worm my way into the tent itself and
see
what was happening? I could not imagine Beef being so cruel or unthinking as that. I sat, shivering slightly, in the cold grass, cursing everything and the Sergeant in particular.

“Oh, but it's warm here,” said the girl's voice suddenly. “I could stay here all night.”

“You'd have to sleep with the elephant-man then,” said Clem.

She laughed lightly. “I shall have to go in a minute, anyway,” she said. “Whatever will Mother think of me?”

“No. Not yet,” said Clem, and for a little while again there was silence. “You look all misty, like a cloud,” said Clem's voice after a while. “Your face is just a white patch floating about on the hay. And your hands seem to move about as if they had nothing to do with anything else.”

The girl laughed softly and drowsily. “I must go now,” she said reluctantly. “Really I must.”

In a moment I heard the tent-flap open and the long
shadows of the pair stretched along the grass close beside me. I kept completely out of sight and hoped that Clem would not take it into his head to walk round the tent. They stood for some time in that position, and their shadows told me that they were kissing, although I didn't dare to confirm this in case I was seen.

“Come on, then,” said Clem abruptly. “Would you like me to see you home?”

“No, it's only just down the road. I'll find my way. Good night, Clem.”

They walked slowly together to the center of the tober, which was now clear and open, then the girl walked on by herself to the gate and Clem stood still there and watched her until she had disappeared and I could no longer hear even the hard sounds of her heels on the road. Then he turned and walked to his wagon.

“Cushti palone, col?” shouted a voice, and the head of Peter Ansell stuck out of the window of his wagon.

“What the hell's that to you?” demanded Clem snappily, and slammed the door of his wagon behind him.

Beef was sitting up in his bunk reading when I entered our trailer. “Well?” he asked cheerfully, laying the book face down on the covers.

“Is that all you've been doing all the time I've been crawling around in the wet grass spying for you?” I counterattacked.

“Never you mind what I've been doing,” said Beef severely. “What I want to know is how you got on.”

“I think the whole idea of yours was thoroughly ungentlemanly, and in extremely bad taste,” I protested.

“You are a one,” said Beef, grinning. “I bet you enjoyed it, listening in, and that.”

“I did not,” I replied sharply. “I found it most degrading and uncomfortable. Suppose someone had seen me?”

“But they didn't,” commented Beef. “Well, tell us what you saw.”

“I'm very much afraid,” I said, “that Clem Gail is something of a Don Juan.” And I went on to relate all that I had heard and seen that evening.

April 28th.

I
T MUST
have been very early when I awoke, for I lay in bed for some considerable time before I heard any noise of stirring from the tober. I stretched pleasantly. As always waking early seems to give one longer in bed, and one can take advantage of this by thinking unhurriedly over the small things one seldom has time to consider more than once in a while.

Beef had truly surprised me over this case so far. It was not only that I had discovered something new in him, but that I had begun to realize that it had always been there and I probably too blind to notice it before. It had been so easy to pick out his fooling, his ludicrous behavior under some circumstances. But in the last few days I had been forced to see an efficiency and a control over other people which had possibly put all his past behavior in a different light.

In any case, it was pleasant being here and watching him. Pleasant to see how well he got on with these circus people. He seemed to make no effort, but was just the same old friendly, boyish, natural Beef. The circus people themselves were something so unexpectedly new. Their code of morals, their behavior, their attitude, were somehow subtly different from the rest of society. It was strange country, though not strange enough to make one feel uncomfortable. In these few days' experience of them I began to look at them in a new light. What Jackson had said on that first day about the possibility of a murder in the circus, now assumed a new importance.

I felt now that almost any member of the circus we had so far met would be capable of committing a murder under certain circumstances. Perhaps that is true of everybody, but
with the circus folk one felt there would be nothing particularly outrageous in that occurrence. It would be in a different category to the numerous other trials for murder reported weekly in the papers.

Normally one feels that the people one knows best are those least likely to commit a murder. It is because one knows them that one feels this. But in this case it was the reverse. Knowing the circus people a little, I felt that there was scarcely one of them who would surprise me by killing one of their fellow-artists. And Lord knows there were plenty of motives scattered through their lives. Beef and I had already come across enough motives to settle any ordinary case. They seemed to thrive on jealousy, enmities.

And it was not to condemn them that one said any one of them might commit a murder. It was rather a recognition of their peculiar vitality, their quickness, the life in which they lived continually so much closer to violence, accidental or purposeful, than the normal Englishman.

While I had been lying dreamily thinking of these things the sky outside the window had begun to grow and recede with faint streaks of light. The sun had not yet risen, but already the air was warmer and more alive. I decided to get up straight away and drive on before the circus this morning instead of arriving, as usual, after most of the work had been done and the big top pitched.

It was colder than I had expected, and it was difficult to restrain the first impulse to get back under the covers, but after a minute or so, as I moved around the wagon dressing, the blood began to circulate and I felt healthy and cheerful and had begun to whistle to myself until I realized that Beef still slept.

The dew was still on the grass outside, so that the whole tober shone grayly. Long black smears here and there, crossing and re-crossing the center, showed where the horses had wandered grazing, and around the door of many of the
wagons the trampled grass proved that I had been wrong in thinking that no one was stirring because I had heard no noise of it.

“Cup of tea, Mr. Townsend?” called a voice across the field, and I noticed the head of Sid Bolton sticking out of the window of the clowns' wagon beckoning to me. Many of the hands were crowded into the hot, stuffy interior of the wagon drinking the early morning tea, which was all the food any of them had until the tent was pitched at the next tober. They were cheery and talkative and I felt vaguely pleased that I had stolen a march on Beef by leaving him sleeping.

As the lorries were being started and run a little while in order to warm the engines, I asked Sid Bolton for details of the next tober. My idea was to run on ahead and attempt to get some idea of what the circus looked like to the people in the village where it was arriving. I wanted to see the whole thing from the beginning, as it were.

My cheerful mood persisted as I drove along the main road towards Hull. The sun was just above the horizon and threw an elongated shadow of the car along the road in front of me. There was still a faint ground mist, which, I had been told, meant that the day “would be a real stinker,” filling some of the small hollows so that only the tops of the trees showed above it. It might have been ladled out in great spoonfuls here and there in an attempt to level the country as a road-worker levels a road with tarred stones in the summer. It was scarcely half an hour's journey to the next village where we were to pitch for the day, but then my car was not loaded and made far better speed than the huge circus lorries. I passed the elephants, which must have started more than two hours before the dawn, within three miles of the village, and the man who rode beside them on horseback gave a careless wave when he saw who I was. It was Tug Wilson, and his face, in the short glimpse I caught of it, looked sour and disgruntled.
I gathered that getting up early for the elephants was not calculated to improve the temper—unless, of course, in a process of wearing it down.

I found the village, when I reached it, to be small and almost indistinguishable from the other villages we had been stopping at for the last few days. It was built around a crossing of two narrow roads, none of which went to anywhere particularly important, but led eventually to other villages such as this one. As the street entered between the houses it grew far narrower than it had been in the open country, but there was no traffic other than my car, so I had no chance of observing the constriction which would be inevitable when the main body of the circus reached it later in the morning. Every other shop window, and every pub, displayed the bright yellow bill of Jacobi's Circus, but they were of little help to me in discovering the tober. I asked the only occupant of the street; an elderly, vague man, who was staring at me as if I had been a procession of Red Indians in full war-paint.

“Circus?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “Can you tell me where the circus usually pitches when it comes to this village?”

“Is a circus coming here?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Can you tell me,” and so on.

“Is it the same one was here a month ago?” he asked. “Called itself Boggles or Woggles or something?”

“No,” I said patiently, and repeated my original question.

This time it drew response, and the man directed me to a field on the edge of the village. “That's where they usually go,” he said. And I took his word for it and drove the car down to the gate. I did not enter the field, but parked the car just outside on the road, and sat there waiting for the circus to arrive. I had not long to wait, for in something under an hour the first lorry drove up, closely followed by the rest of the caravan. Daroga waved and drove the first lorry in.

Pete Daroga's was always the first wagon to enter the new tober. He drove it over to the far end, leaped out and was inspecting the ground by the time the next wagon had drawn in. Selecting the flattest portion of the field as the place on which to pitch the tent, he proceeded to supervise the raising of the king-poles into position. Within half an hour the iron pegs had been driven home and the swaying canvas was being hauled slowly up into the air. Most of the other wagons had arrived and had arranged themselves in a rough circle round the field, each in its special position facing the big top. Jackson's wagon was the last to arrive, and as the large blue trailer was pulled into position the proprietor himself opened the door and stood grimly on the grass watching the operations. For a while he did not speak, but watched the men moving backward and forward. His mouth was set in a hard thin line, and his eyes were concentrated on the figure of Pete Daroga as he moved among the men giving them instructions. Not until he had moved over to the front of the field did he speak.

“I suppose you know, Daroga, that you are building up on the wrong tober?” he said, and his voice was cold and biting as he spoke.

Pete turned quickly at his voice. “This is the tober you told me,” he said abruptly.

“We all know,” said Jackson suavely, “that you are infallible, Daroga. But in the present instance—although I am
sure
it is not your fault—what you have done will have to be undone. Unless, of course, you would like to pay the rent of this field out of your own earnings.”

Pete flushed at the cold insult in these words and walked slowly across the field towards the proprietor. “Are you trying to tell me that we've got to take the blasted tent down and move it into another field?” he asked.

Jackson shrugged as if he were not interested in the
question, and would have turned to walk into his wagon if Pete had not grabbed him roughly by the sleeve. Jackson shook off the hand impatiently, but nevertheless waited for the man to speak.

“This was the field we built up in ten years ago, isn't it?” asked Pete.

Jackson shrugged again. “Ten years ago—certainly. But it so happens that the arrangement has been changed since then and the landlord prefers that we use the smaller field across the road.”

“Then you'd better go and persuade him otherwise,” said Pete bluntly. “Don't go trying to put the results of your own dam' carelessness on to me. The tent's nearly up now, and it won't be shifted for you nor all the landlords in the village. Carry on, men,” he shouted at the hands, who had been standing about watching the quarrel. “Get those quarter-poles in.”

The two men stood facing each other with less than a yard separating them. Neither of them moved, but stared straight into each other's faces. Pete was tall and almost loose-jointed, his hands on his hips and his feet slightly apart pushing his battered, ugly face forward from between his shoulders as if inviting anyone to hit him. Jackson, small, slick, with glossy hair and a faint sardonic grin, watched him as if in contempt.

“You know who's boss here, Daroga?” he asked quietly.

Pete spat on the grass to one side. “I know one or two things more than that,” he said. “And that makes us even.”

Jackson's eyes flickered for a moment, and he turned them away and looked over towards the tent where the men had begun work again. “I'll see what I can do,” he said at last.