Case with 4 Clowns (29 page)

Tug Wilson was a character I had almost forgotten to include in the possible murderers. Yet in some ways he seemed the most sinister of them all. What had he meant by the phrase: “The ghost walks tomorrow”? If he had a scene for tomorrow night's performance, this must include Ginger, since it was to this lad that the words had been addressed. Were there
more than just those two in it? Many of the other tent hands were surly, and were often treated by the proprietor as less than human beings. Could it be possible that it was against Jackson that this plot was aimed? The phrase in itself was no proof, but if looks revealed intentions, there were many among the hands who would be glad to get even with Jackson for some of his biting words. Tug himself was almost too villainous to be a villain, with his dark face and loosely hanging hands. But he was an unknown quantity. Ginger I knew and liked, and I did not feel that he could easily be suspected of a murder. But a group of men banded together will often do things which none of them singly would have wished. I felt we had neglected the tent hands in our investigations.

But what of the old woman who was behind this case? It was Gypsy Margot who had first predicted the murder, and whose daughters had given us the first hint that there might be something in her prediction. Jackson himself seemed to think that she would be pleased to see the circus break up. That might be true, but would she go to the length of committing a murder to achieve her end? She was a strange person, and it was not fantastic to suppose that she knew much more than her peculiar talk revealed. She might, in a sense, be daring us. The sort of challenge which had been issued enough times before in detective stories, by the intending murderer to the detective. Suppose she meant to commit the crime herself and was getting a strange satisfaction out of watching Beef and me turning our attention away from her to the other members of the circus. She hated Jackson because he had taken over the circus from her brother years before, and would now be glad to see Jackson broken. She might try to kill Jackson himself, or, what would be far cleverer, murder any other member of the troupe. Her end would probably be achieved in either case, but the latter would be far more difficult to prove. A murder without a motive would
be almost impossible to trace in the conditions under which the circus worked.

And then, was there anything at all in the theory of hypnosis? Anita admitted that her mother was a hypnotist, but insisted that it could not be used to do harm. But Anita had also admitted that she was a bad subject, so that if Margot had been using her powers evilly she would scarcely have used Anita, or even told her about it. If Helen had been hypnotized when she stabbed her sister, the same method might be used again. But if even the first stabbing had been quite simply a sudden revulsion from the likeness between the twins, there was still a possibility of it occurring again. This time it might be successful. Could it have been that Gypsy Margot had foreseen the outbreak between her two daughters? I wished suddenly that Anita had not decided to appear in the ring again tomorrow. If only she could have rested for another day or two, I felt the danger-point would have passed. But now she was placing herself in danger unnecessarily, and the thought sickened me.

Well, there they were. All the people connected with the circus. Two or more of them would be mixed up in an attempted murder by this time tomorrow night, and it was impossible still to do more than guess which ones it would be. There must be some way, I thought to myself, of limiting the possible murderers to some two or three. Then it would make the Jubilee show much less nerve-racking. Perhaps if I ran over the salient points once again I might get some clue. But as I turned the sheets, Beef's voice suddenly startled me.

“Have you got it all worked out nice?” he asked. I had thought him asleep, but I suppose he had been watching all this time, smiling to himself over my attempts to get the whole case clear.

“At least, I've got the evidence in order,” I said abruptly.

“Do you know who's going to murder who?” went on Beef relentlessly.

“Well, not exactly,” I replied. “But I do know who might commit the murder, and who might be killed.”

Beef chuckled. “So do
I,”
he said, “if you don't put that light out and come to bed.”

May 3rd.

I
SHALL
never forget that day. The quick succession of events, the feeling of an almost unbearably hastening time, made me feel that I was being pitched forward into something of which my powers of observation were too slow to take full account. Actually there was no particular rush in the early morning. It had been decided, because of this day of the Jubilee performance, to cut out the afternoon matinee show altogether. We moved on to the next tober more than an hour after the usual time, and by the time we arrived there the Sergeant was up and dressed, a fact which by itself denoted the lateness of the hour. Beef was in a silent mood, and made no reference to the previous night. We ate without speaking, while he glanced cursorily over the newspaper. At last he wiped his mouth, and taking a long and noisy gulp from his tea-cup he turned to me.

“Well,” he said, “nearly time I was off.”

“Off?” I was aghast. “Surely you're not going anywhere today?” I asked.

“That's right,” he said complacently.

“But what about the murder?” I demanded. “There's the Jubilee show tonight. You're not going to miss that, are you?”

“I might be back in time,” said the Sergeant. “But I can't be sure. There might be more to do than I bargained for.”

“But this is madness,” I said. “We've been collecting evidence all this time, and then on just the one day that the murder is bound to happen, you decide to go away somewhere. Surely it's not as important as all that? It can wait a few days.”

“Who told you there was going to be a murder today?” asked Beef.

“Well, nobody told me,” I admitted. “But it's obvious. And I thought you knew who was going to commit it. You've been behaving as if you knew.”

“I know what somebody's going to try on,” said Beef, “and I'm going to stop it.”

“And how are you going to stop it?” I asked.

“I'm going to get the one who means business before anything can come of it.”

“So you're going off for the day?” I asked sarcastically.

“That's right,” agreed Beef. “There's a bit more evidence I need before I can lay my hands on the one I want, and I'm going to get it. Take a run round some of the old tobers and see what I can find out.”

“What in heaven's name can you get from the places we've left?” I demanded. “When the circus leaves a village it's finished with. You might get a little pub gossip, but what do you expect to find in the way of evidence?”

“You leave that to me,” said Beef reassuringly.

“But do you mean just the tober we've left this morning, or farther back?” I asked.

Beef shrugged. “Can't hardly say,” he said. “Might be six, might be seven, might be as much as eight tobers back.”

“It doesn't make sense,” I said despairingly. “You say you're going to stop the murderer, and yet today is the day the thing is most likely to happen, and you go away. I don't care if you get enough evidence to hang the murderer fifteen times over—I still can't understand why you must go off today.”

“Now don't you worry about that,” said Beef. “I know what I'm doing. Can I take the car?”

But I could not be persuaded as easily as that. I felt that Beef was behaving with unexampled stupidity. Almost anything might happen at this Jubilee show, and yet he calmly told me not to worry, and wanted to borrow the car for the
day as if he were going off on a little spree. Was this an admission of defeat? If anything went wrong this would be the end of Beef. I perceived only too clearly that the Sergeant might, after all, know no more than I about the possible murderer. Perhaps he knew even less, and my list of the previous night might be more useful in the end than his investigations. At least, it was a complete summary of all we had found out.

But was it? Suddenly I realized, with a clarity that sickened me, that there was one name I had forgotten to add to the list of possible victims; and that name was my own. I had been taking my role as chronicler too much for granted, had imagined that I stood securely outside the whole affair. And yet the opposite was true, as I saw now. There was hardly an incident of importance at which I had not been present. I had been one of those whose lives were threatened by the escaped tiger, I had taken part in the street fight with Bogli's Circus, Anita and I had been approaching the elephant-tent when the new hand had been thrown out, I had been present at Cora Frances's luncheon-party and later sat beside her during that frightening exhibition in the ring.

In fact, I was linked to the circus much more closely than Beef himself was. Why had I not seen this before? Until now I had seen the curious affair with Anita as having only a purely personal importance. But these few days had shown us that the circus was riddled by jealousy and suspicion, and quite unconsciously I had been dragged into the center of the danger. Which way should I look for my possible attacker? From Helen? From Old Margot? Or from some unexpected direction, one of the other men who envied my success with the quiet, lovely Anita?

It might even be that one of the women was jealous. All false modesty aside, it was quite possible that a young successful writer like myself, good-looking, cultured, with easy, pleasant manners, might cause some stir among the feminine
element in Jacobi's Circus. Perhaps I had been too absorbed in Anita and in the murder case to notice anything of this sort. But there was no excuse for not realizing that my monopoly of the young equestrienne might cause trouble. This was no time for self-congratulation, however. I must think of some way of placing myself out of this danger.

My first instinct was to offer to go off with Beef for the day, but I saw quickly that this would be absurd. One of us at least must remain with the circus, and since the Sergeant had already made his plans to leave, then I, despite the personal danger, must remain. It would do no harm, though, to take some measures to defend myself.

“What happened to your revolver?” I asked as casually as I could.

Beef grinned. “Getting the wind up?” he asked.

“Well, at least,” I said a little irritated by his manner, “I ought to be prepared in case there's any sort of attempt. And since you've taken it into your head …”

“All right, all right,” said Beef. “If it'll make you feel any the more comfortable I'll tell you this. Nobody's going to try anything on tonight.”

“How can you possibly say a thing like that?” I demanded. “How do you know there won't be a murder?”

“I'll tell you after, how I know,” replied the Sergeant, “but there won't be one. I shall be back here all right before any attempt is made, just remember that.”

“I should feel far safer if I had the revolver,” I said.

“You don't want that,” coaxed Beef, as if he were trying to persuade a child not to eat some obnoxious sweet. “Might do yourself no end of harm mucking about with a loaded revolver.”

“Don't be absurd,” I said indignantly. “I'm not a child. I know how to look after myself. I'd just like to have it in case of emergencies.”

“All right,” said Beef at last. “I'll lend you my gun if you let me borrow your car.”

“If you're determined to proceed with this ‘investigation',” I said sourly, “I suppose I can't stop you. And in that case you may as well take the car.”

“Fine,” said Beef. “Now I'm just going over to see Kurt, and then I'll be off.”

He was not with the lion-trainer more than a few minutes, and when he returned he looked a little worried. “He seems in a pretty bad way, poor fellow,” he said. “Wouldn't do no harm for you to take a look at him later on and see if he wants anything.”

As the Sergeant climbed heavily into the driving-seat of my car about half an hour later, he leaned over and said to me: “Now look after yourself. Keep your eyes open and don't let nothing escape you. I'll be back as soon as I've got what I want.”

“That's all very well,” I said bitterly, “but it would be far better if you weren't going at all.”

“Nonsense,” said Beef, pressing his foot on the starter. “Everything's going to be all right.” And with that the car moved forward towards the gate of the tober, and I turned a little wearily back to the wagon.

Beef's revolver, which he had so amusedly left with me, turned out to be one of very ancient and unbusiness-like design. With a memory of George Raft I tried to stuff it into my hip pocket, but the end projected awkwardly, and contrived to pinch me when I sat down. Neither would it fit into any of my pockets except those in my overcoat. I could scarcely walk about the grounds in the boiling sunshine wearing an overcoat, so that I was forced to compromise and leave the thing near the door of the wagon hidden under a towel. Anyway, it was, as Beef would have said, “handy” in case I needed it.

It was significant that other people beside myself were concerned at Beef's absence on this particular day. Even Ginger seemed to have a feeling that it was a serious mistake on the Sergeant's part.

“What's he done that for?” he asked. “Suppose something happens?”

“He had very important business to attend to,” I said loyally, and not knowing how much of the Sergeant's movements he wanted known among the rest of the circus.

Ginger shook his head. “He's a card, he is,” he commented. “Still, I expect he knows what he's doing. Hope there's no trouble, that's all.”

“Are you expecting any?” I asked quickly.

“Haven't you heard?” Ginger looked amazed.