Case with 4 Clowns (31 page)

And I believed with them. Even my confidence in the Sergeant would not allow me to think that I was making a mistake. Though he had seemed so sure that a murder would not be attempted while he was away, I still could not shake off the feeling of horrible certainty. What was it that Beef had said? “I shall be back here before any attempt is made, just remember that.”

But perhaps he was back. Perhaps, in fact, he had not really gone away at all. What would be more like Beef than to pretend such a thing? That stolid ex-constable had imagined that the attempt at murder would not be made so long as he was in the circus. And so he had pretended to go away. He was trying to force the murderer's hand. That must have been the evidence he wanted. He was going to stop the whole thing in the open—with five hundred witnesses. What could be better? But where could he be? Why had he not taken me into his confidence? Surely I was to be trusted with a scheme like that. Somehow, the idea gave me relief. I had been worried all day with the possibility of myself being present alone when the murder was attempted, and not knowing what to do about it. Now I felt happier.

I was brought abruptly out of my brown study by the sound of shouting by the gate. The queue was beginning to file slowly into the tent, and looked back with vague curiosity to see what the noise was about. It was Gypsy Margot, trying to clear half a dozen children away from the front of her tent. But what was amazing about it was the change in her voice. It was no longer the distant dreamy voice of the seer which
we knew so well, but the harsh and strident screaming of a harridan. Not even in London had I ever heard such blasphemous and obscene language in my life. The queue went suddenly quiet when they realized the words she was shouting. It was too horrible even to giggle at, and for a long time after she had ceased the people continued to file into the tent in complete silence.

May 3rd (continued).

I
T MUST
have been about a quarter of an hour before the Jubilee Performance was due to begin that the rain started. It came suddenly, with only the slight warning of a few heavy drops falling sullenly on the canvas of the big top. The clouds must have gathered without my noticing them, for when I looked up into the sky now I was surprised at the torn ragged edges of gray which hurried across, and below them the swollen black bellies of the coming storm. The canvas walls of the big tent flopped suddenly against the poles, as if all the air had been withdrawn from the interior, or as if the tent itself were gasping for breath. The queue fell silent, huddling closer and pressing towards the box-office. Then the rain swept across them and I heard women's cries, and the short exclamations of the men as they tried to hurry Mrs. Jackson to issue the tickets faster.

Neither did the wagons around the big tent do anything to cheer the evening. With their curtained windows showing only a dull glow of the lights inside, or the occasional slit of yellow, they seemed to be hiding themselves away from the rain. One felt that, in contrast to this wet, shelterless field, the interior of each wagon was warm and comfortable.

I felt there was something macabre about the evening itself. This preternatural darkness, which had crept up suddenly and unobserved, the figures which hurried past with collar turned up, more as if they were hiding something than shielding themselves against the rain, made me feel that the circus was being isolated from the rest of the village, shut away like a plague-spot by the walls of water and darkness. Still distant was the dull roll of thunder, like a far-away shuddering, which one felt
rather than heard. The exasperated cries of men rose above it, angry and short-tempered, as they tried to catch the horses. And then the swift rush of hoofs and the eerie sound of a horse neighing invisibly in the darkness. I could imagine no more unfortunate setting for the Jubilee Performance. Despite the threatening possibility of a murder, I had thought it would be a cheerful, personal affair. However, with the last of the queue, I entered the tent.

Although we were getting towards the back-end of the season, quite a lot had been done to make the tent appear brighter. Some of the apparatus had been repainted, and the quarter-poles decorated with long bindings of ribbon in the circus colors. Yet the atmosphere was anything but festive. The audience was dull and quiet, without the usual chaff and shouted conversation. Here and there in the crowd an umbrella had been opened where the rain was coming through a hole in the tent, giving the gloomy look of forced but impatient waiting to the silent audience. Somehow, there always seemed to me to be that air of despondency in an organized “occasion” of this sort, and it would seem that when you expected people to be gay and light-hearted, then was the time when they chose to be depressed by the very means you had used to cheer them.

There was a moment when I wondered whether the strain and anxiety of the cast had communicated itself to the audience; whether they too felt, in some dim way, that they had left their comfortable firesides for the enacting of a tragedy. But I realized almost immediately that it was probably nothing more than the suddenness of the storm and the fact that they were waiting for the show to begin. Somehow, they all seemed yellow and unreal. The lighting of the tent was itself unfamiliar. Possibly Len had been trying to make it stronger by adding new lamps. I could not recognize them, but the whole arrangement looked different. It seemed
to transform everything in the tent, so that people's faces were yellow and dismal.

Cora Frances was already in her seat, talking animatedly with Herbert Torrant. They both greeted me as I sat next to them, Torrant with obvious relief, and Cora with a pleasure which showed she had some news.

“My dear,” she said immediately. “Do look at those extraordinary people from Bogli's Circus. Really, they look quite a menace, don't they? Whatever have they come for? When I saw them trooping in, one after the other, I said to Mr. Torrant here—didn't I, Mr. Torrant?—that they all looked as though they had bombs in their pockets.”

“Hardly likely,” I said mildly. “Although, as you say, there does seem to be something rather threatening about them.”

“And yet,” said Cora, “there's something rather stirring in their manner, don't you think? I mean those scowls, my dear. Really, they might be eighteenth-century sailors. A sort of foreboding expression, ‘coming events cast their shadows before,' and all that. I wonder if, perhaps, I ought to have gone to them this year? For my pictures, of course,” she added quickly as she caught my eye. “I think I shall go across to them soon and see how they react to the idea. I really don't feel that I shall want to come tenting with Jacobi's next season. Such an atmosphere of crime is really too much for me.”

It was easy to pick the circus people out of that crowd of stolid Yorkshire faces. Seventeen or eighteen of the men and women from the rival circus were seated just across the ring from us, making a clearly-defined island. Every now and again one of them would point to some fitting of the tent or ring, and the others would follow his finger with their eyes. Immediately a discussion would arise. I thought their whole attitude seemed both expectant and hostile.

I wondered whether Beef might have come in as an ordinary member of the audience. He had, I remembered, a boyish
admiration for disguises, and although I had always persuaded him against them up to now, this might have seemed a golden opportunity to him. His was not the sort of face which could be changed much by nose-putty and grease-paint. I began to run my eyes over the audience, row by row, in the hope of being able to pick him out.

Not far from me sat a man with a close-clipped beard, whose eyes were almost hidden by the soft brim of his hat. He sat perfectly still, apparently absorbed in reading a newspaper, but every now and again his large red hand would creep up to his chin and scratch gently at the edge of the beard. I knew the irritation of spirit-gum, and it seemed impossible that the man I was watching was not in reality the Sergeant in disguise. There was no doubt that he was playing the game cleverly enough. His seat was on the edge of a row, just opposite a gangway. If anything had happened in the ring, he could have been there in little more than a second or two.

I began to realize now that if this were Beef's plan, it really might be effective. It was, perhaps, a little melodramatic, but it might be the only measure likely to succeed. Perhaps I had laughed at the Sergeant a little too soon.

On the pretext of going to buy some cigarettes, I went over close to where the bearded man was sitting. He seemed to hide himself even deeper behind his paper as I approached. But, luckily, the man next to him jogged his arm, and he lowered the paper for a moment to stare with mournful brown eyes at his neighbor. I returned to my seat. However clever the Sergeant might be, he could not change his pale-blue eyes for brown ones. But because that particular man had turned out not to be Beef, it did not mean that the Sergeant was not somewhere in the tent. It made me feel quite creepy to realize that any one of these people might be Beef concealing himself under a disguise. Any one of these people might suddenly leap into the ring and stop the performance in time to save a
man or woman's life. It was absurd that I did not know for sure exactly what the Sergeant had planned for this evening. I could only sit and wait.

When the band struck up with a march, its liveliness, somehow, fell a little flat on the wet and dispirited audience. I could see quite clearly that the bandsmen had worked themselves up for the occasion, probably with a few drinks down at the local before the show, and were doing their best to cheer the people. But, somehow, it did not come off. There is nothing more depressing than synthetic gayety. The people only wanted the show to commence, so that they could forget the storm outside and the wet walk home ahead of them. As if to emphasize the dismalness of the whole affair, there was a sudden heavy crash of thunder almost overhead, which quite drowned the band, making it sound tinny and small.

Until now both Beef and I had neglected the band. It consisted of half a dozen of the tent hands, who were paid extra for this part of their activities, and who packed away their instruments after the show and helped to pull down with the rest. But what I had not realized fully before was that they actually took part in the performance. Anita had confessed that she did not know what would happen if the band played the wrong tune during an act. What would happen? Ginger was one of the members of the band. Could there be any connection between this and the sentence I had overheard from Tug about the ghost walking? It was too late to worry now, but at least I could keep my eyes open, hoping not to miss anything.

My reflections were cut short by the entry of Jackson into the center of the ring. He bowed gravely to the audience and there was an uncertain burst of clapping. He was obviously going to make a speech. I felt that the truth about Jackson, as I saw him standing there, was something I had never until then fully realized. He was a very lonely man. As he stood
under the hard lights he looked small and slim, and his voice sounded tired, as though he had undergone some frightful strain, as if, perhaps, he were at the end of his tether. It was not that the distance or the lights gave this impression, but they seemed to bring it out, make it apparent for the first time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he was saying, “for the performers in this circus, tonight's show is one of great importance. Twenty-five years ago today this circus was giving its first performances in a tent which held only a hundred people at the most. Since that day …”

I realized more than ever, as this speech went on, that this particular show was the circus people's own evening. As an experienced showman, Jackson must have known that an audience does not like a long “speech before the curtain.” And yet he was not hurrying himself over the history of the circus. The only people who were listening eagerly were those from Bogli's Circus, and the artists and hands behind the scenes.

“… Tribute to him now because he was the founder of this circus. We are very fortunate to have with us still, his sister, Gypsy Margot. Although she no longer actually appears in the ring, you must all have noticed her name as you came into the grounds this evening …”

A slight movement at the entrance of the tent made me turn round. Old Margot was standing perfectly still, watching the proprietor as he mentioned her. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes showed vividly what she was feeling. Closed, almost to slits, they looked straight at Jackson, and then, as she turned to go, the lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth, seemed to deepen into a faint sneer. But she disappeared before I could be sure.

One by one, Jackson called the artists into the ring and introduced them to the audience, and then, with them standing
behind him in a semicircle, he concluded his talk with the hope that we should all enjoy the performance. Then the band struck up with a lively tune, and the Concinis galloped straight into the ring.

May 3rd (continued).

T
HE
twins slipped from the backs of the two white horses and stood for a moment in the center of the ring, making the traditional introductory bow to the audience. Two attendants came forward to take their cloaks, and the girls were revealed in the silver riding costumes they used for this act.

With their slippered feet bouncing lightly on the cruppers of the horses, Helen and Anita followed each other round the ring. Once round, lightly, easily, as though they had been standing on a solid table, and then Anita caught a skipping-rope tossed to her by the attendant. Helen sat her horse so as not to divert attention from her sister, who commenced what could only be called an intricate dance on the trotting horse. The rope flashed under her feet as they traced an invisible pattern on the moving white back. She seemed to be pointing, emphasizing, exaggerating the steady rhythmical motion of the horse, so that there was a peculiar harmony between the rather heavy circumspect animal and its deliberate circling, and the slender girl on its back. She did not seem to be performing on the horse, so much as dancing with it.