Case with 4 Clowns (28 page)

Was Jackson the sort of man who could stand this belittling of his dignity? And if he could not, what would his action be? It seemed fairly clear that he was being blackmailed by the wire-walker; it was almost certain that Daroga knew something about Jackson which the proprietor wished to keep quiet. Suppose the way he chose out of this difficulty were the way of murder. There had been the small incident in the empty tent when I had watched Jackson inspecting the wire-walking apparatus. Perhaps that had its significance here. But if Jackson were in some way to make the apparatus unsafe, surely there was little chance of his doing more than disabling Daroga? There could be no point in that. Daroga must have had many accidents on the wire in his time. They were often serious enough, though never likely to prove fatal. But perhaps there was some way Jackson has discovered of making
the wire a death-trap; some way which Daroga would not be able to foresee.

Before leaving Jackson I tried to think for a moment if there was anybody else he might possibly kill. Gypsy Margot seemed to be trying to break up the show; at least, we had Jackson's own word that he suspected her of that. Might he not try to murder her in an attempt to stop her influence over the others? There was even a third possibility. Jackson might be nothing more than the traditional father jealous of his daughter's honor. If it seemed to him likely that Corinne would compromise herself with young Torrant, and so leave the show, would Jackson stop at mere words in order to prevent it? Of course, looked at coldly, this made the whole thing appear fantastic, but I had to start with the supposition of murder in order to draw up something of a case, so that I must face even the most fanciful of possibilities.

One of the only factual clues we had been lucky enough to find had been the button picked up by Beef in the proprietor's wagon. Did that in some way link Jackson with Daroga? The proprietor had claimed the button as his own, and yet the wording on it had been in Russian, from which country the wire-walker had originally come. How did it fit into the relationship between the two men, and what part was it likely to play in tomorrow's show? It might possibly be the clue on which many things hung.

Of Daroga himself we seemed to know even less than we knew about Jackson. Quiet, experienced, apparently well-liked by the rest of the artists, he had the sort of frank, open manner which only left one more intrigued. Born in Russia, he had lived the life of an exile since his earliest infancy. In that life there must have been much suffering, hunger, occasionally, perhaps, fits of desperation against circumstances which had been inexplicably harder for him than for others. One could imagine such a life souring a man, making him hate the rest
of humanity. But Daroga, if he hated anyone at all, appeared only to hate Jackson. And in this there seemed to be more contempt than real hatred. If, as we suspected, Daroga was blackmailing the proprietor, what had he to gain by murdering him? A blackmailer seldom murders his victim. And besides, there had been no incident which pointed to this desire. But on the other hand, it must be remembered that Daroga was in charge of the elephants, one of which had already attempted to kill a man. These animals could be made to do very curious things, as we had seen in the incident when Albert Stiles had been ducked in the village pond. Could Daroga have some scheme in which the elephants themselves played the part of murderers? Jackson was the ring-master and had to be present during the elephant act. There seemed to be no other person against whom Daroga bore the slightest animosity.

If one were looking for people with a grouch against the world there was no better example in the show than Peter Ansell. His cynicism was far more deep-rooted than Jackson's because it had behind it a kind of developed philosophic anarchism. He was more impersonal in his dislike of people. It seemed that it was not so much that they had done wrong to him, or given him a too slender chance in life, as that they were ant-like and remote. I did not agree with his conclusions in the least, but I could appreciate his detachment.

The only part he played in the life of the circus was in his love for Corinne, but we had no knowledge of how strong that love could be. He had shown no jealousy as far as I had noticed, but he might have been given no cause yet. He had, moreover, been one of the five present when the tiger had escaped. Had he been the one responsible for that incident? And if so, what had been the intention behind it? During the actual performance, however, he did not appear in the ring and it was difficult to foresee what action he could take.
It was clear that the only motive he might have would be centered in Corinne. He disliked the circus and would not be worried at leaving it. In fact, he probably would have done so before now had it not been for Corinne Jackson.

But Corinne herself wanted to be free of the circus. Anita had told us this, and it was easily visible in the girl's manner. When she appeared in the ring it was with an air that she was conferring benefits on an audience who should be overjoyed by her condescension. She had, as they say, other ideas, and those ideas were concentrated outside the influence of the sawdust ring. She would never be content to follow the age-old traditions of circus families, training their children to continue with the act or start out with new ones. She might not be happy away from the circus, but there was no doubt that she wanted to get away. These affairs she had with young men were only one aspect of this desire. From what Herbert Torrant had said to Beef, it did not seem that she looked to any of these ephemeral suitors as an actual means of leaving the circus, but each of them did show where her sympathies lay. And yet when she was performing in the ring she seemed to be a different person altogether. I remembered once, as she rode round the ring, watching her face. She was doing a turn I had never seen before—an equestrian act which had replaced the Concinis for a while after the stabbing affair. She did not seem to notice the audience very much, but it was not the scornful disregard of her normal appearances. It was rather as if she had been caught up in the act and was thrilled by it. She and the horse performed perfectly together, as if through long habit. Yet I had never seen her rehearsing the act at any time. She was a very clever and daring rider. Why did she only show the horses and the absurd Eustace? It seemed that she was consciously limiting her part in the show as a gesture of her dislike. No other theory could reconcile her obvious
enjoyment of the riding act, and the fact that normally she never rode for the show.

Corinne was deliberately flaunting young Herbert Torrant in front of the other members of the troupe. She had led him into a pub where she most probably knew they would be collected, and at that point had insisted on holding his arm, an act which had apparently never been repeated. Who was she trying to impress? Kurt? But she took the trouble to calm any suspicions he might have, and, in any case, had never treated him as anything else but a friend, despite his obvious love for her. It was hardly the way to make him jealous. Ansell? But why should she try to make Ansell jealous in public, when whatever affair she was having with him was being conducted in private? It was a relationship of which, I believed, only Beef and I had any knowledge. But in this light there seemed to be no reason why she should attempt to keep Kurt in love with her by friendly words and gestures.

To think of Corinne as a murderess seemed completely farfetched. She was selfish to an extreme degree no doubt, but so far as I could see, she had no motive for such an act. We had seen her almost feline exasperation with Eric when he had been teasing her, but that did not seem important enough to note as a likely reason for murder. Her fear of her father might at some point become fruitful, but even so, it was difficult to see the girl as a murderess.

Kurt was slow, stodgy perhaps, but he was not a fool. He had a streak of solid obstinacy common to people who have had to make themselves fit to undertake a certain sort of job despite personal handicaps. Illiterate, short-tempered, Kurt had taken up lion-training much in the way, if he had lived in South Wales, he might have taken up coal-mining. Lion-training was to him a normal sort of way of earning one's living. As in most other jobs, you were all right so long as you did not make mistakes. After that came pride in doing it well.
Kurt was proud of his act, even thinking sometimes that it was too good for Jacobi's Circus. But in most things he was honest and straightforward. He was in love with Corinne Jackson and did not try to hide it. Neither did he try to hide the jealousy he felt when Corinne picked up stray young men. But would he be quite so outright and honest if he discovered there was something between her and the animal-feeder, Peter Ansell?

When the tiger had escaped from its cage Kurt had shown immense personal courage in dealing with the untrained beast, and it had only been his sureness which had saved what might have been a very nasty situation. But at other times he had shown an unreasonable surliness to Beef and myself, and there was no denying his jealous disposition. I felt that in some respects Kurt was dangerous. It was not easy to define precisely why, but I had a clear picture of his enthusiastic hand-rubbing when the fight with Bogli's Circus had been pending. And Bogli's Circus was still in the district. If Kurt were likely to commit the murder, it was Torrant and Ansell who stood in his way over Corinne.

Since, however, he was ill, he would not be appearing in the show tomorrow. What was this strange sudden illness? Could he really have been poisoned, as he seemed to suspect? Who did he suspect of wanting to poison him? Or could it possibly be something more underhand and cunning than that? He might not be sick at all, but pretending illness for a special reason of his own.

As the personnel of the circus ran through my mind I tried to find what it was which made all these people alike in some way. It was not that they were all circus people, but, strangely enough, that they all had some grudge or other against the circus itself. Even Jackson, the proprietor, seemed to share this with them. Were all the others the same? And if so, what was the cause of it?

Sid Bolton was surely an exception. But the memory of the street fight we had with Bogli's Circus made me think of Sid in a new light. I had noticed then the peculiar venom in the way he had attacked people he not only did not know, but against whom he had no personal enmity at all. I had come to the conclusion then that it must have been a sense of personal wrong done to him by the whole world, a bitterness left in him from those days when he had sat in a booth on the fair-ground to be laughed at by unthinking people for being the “fat boy.” And again in the ring this afternoon he had shown the same attitude. When the three clowns had been striking at each other in dead earnest I had no doubt that, as far as Sid Bolton was concerned, it was no personal grudge he felt against the other two, but a general feeling which somehow was only able to express itself in violence of a personal kind. But would he always choose his fists as the best weapon of striking back at a world he hated?

For Eric Jackson and Clem Gail, again, the fight had meant something entirely different. Eric was the most brilliant clown I had seen in the ring for a long time; he had nothing to envy the others; and yet the intensity which he, like the others, had shown, proved there was something behind it. Perhaps the clue lay in his treatment of his sister. I suspected that his bantering, flippant behavior with her, showed a sympathy with her ideas. That he, too, perhaps, felt cramped and dwarfed in the circus and would not be sorry to leave it. But he had far less chance than she, so that it would have been foolish to hope for much in that direction. If that were true, then to a certain extent the other actions followed. But although he felt frustrated as the clown in his father's circus, he might not be quite so antagonistic had he been in his own.

Neither could that fight have arisen entirely from Clem's drunkenness. Perhaps the clue lay in Clem himself. When we had first met Clem we had become aware of a dual
personality; the extremely handsome young man who resented his anonymity in the ring. He was vain, and more than a little proud of his success with women, but those qualities did not necessarily constitute a murderer. In what way, then, could he be considered as one? Although the fight in the circus ring had shown what bitterness each of the clowns could feel, it did not necessarily show against whom it might be directed. Had Clem's treatment of Cora Frances been a gesture of sudden disgust, of loathing for the painter, or had it been simply the heat of the moment? At the little luncheon-party Clem had been on his guard against Cora Frances. She had bored him, but had that boredom turned suddenly, with her intrusion into the ring, into nausea? Or was the whole thing the revealing of a concealed hate for the two other clowns?

Neither could one assume that Cora was “above suspicion.” Foolishness had, before now, been used in a murder case as a stalking-horse. Her apparent simple pleasure with everything the circus people did might, in reality, conceal her deeply wounded vanity. It was difficult to believe that she could actually enjoy being humiliated before the entire audience of the circus, and it would be foolish to take her own statement to this effect on its face value. Already she had angered Daroga by tampering with the elephants, and although it had only been in order to paint their toe-nails, there might be something much more serious behind it. The clowns were in the ring at the same time as the elephants, and in case of trouble would be the people most likely to be hurt. Was it possible that Cora would retaliate on Clem through the elephants?

Four people, bound close together in this case, were the Darinne brothers, Suzanne, and Len Waterman. In the first place there had been an affair between Len and Suzanne, so much was clear from the photograph in Len's wagon, and from what we had been told by Margot. But equally clear now was the fact that Suzanne was in love with Christophe. What
would Len do about that? The lights had fused in the middle of their act under very peculiar circumstances, when Len alone had been responsible for the lights. If Len had been trying to kill Suzanne, or one of the Dariennes, then, would he not try again? And next time such an accident might prove fatal. On the other hand, did Christophe know of the previous affair between Suzanne and Len Waterman? If so, must there not be some resentment against the electrician; even against Suzanne herself? The relation between Paul and his brother complicated this even further. From the first I had felt there was something uncanny in Paul's dependence on his brother, something which defied a clear analysis. But the emotion Paul must undoubtedly feel would be very close to jealousy. That he knew nothing about the affair between his brother and Suzanne was doubtful. He had not known a few days ago when the little incident about Suzanne learning French had occurred. But there had been time for him to suspect much since then. Margot might have spoken to him, or even Len Waterman. There was no doubt that he feared the loss of his brother more than anything else in the world. But Suzanne herself must be considered in this light. Paul stood in her way. Without him she would be able to love Christophe openly. And there were many things which might happen on the high trapeze without arousing people's suspicions. Could it be possible that one of those three was at this minute planning the death of another? Some little slip of the hand, a miscalculation in leaping, and it would be difficult even for a detective to say whether it had been an accident or not.