Young Petrella (2 page)

Manfredo and Ramon were called brothers, although, in the complicated in-breeding of circus life, no one quite knew whether they were really brothers, half-brothers, or cousins. Both were swarthy, handsome and attractive, and both were
bullies, in the way that men who spend their lives controlling big cats often are.

Domenico Stromboli, who came from Naples, looked after the dogs. Or, to be truthful, the dogs looked after Stromboli. He was a cripple. Polio had reduced his arms and one of his legs to withered sticks. The circus had built him a little padded carriage, which two of the six Alsatians took turns to pull. He had first appeared, to Patrick’s fascinated gaze, driving at a hand-canter across the wide and dusty compound, with two Alsatian dogs running escort in front of him and two more behind, surrounded by a tumbling, snapping, skirmishing pack of poodles.

Patrick had got into the closely guarded enclosure by the kindness of his special friend, Auguste. Auguste was a stand-in clown. He looked after the horses. His particular charges were Rosalie and Marguerite, the beautiful white thoroughbreds, whose likeness Patrick had so often admired on the poster. They were resting for a few weeks. Sam Borner, who had married, twenty years before, into the Jacquetti family, and had now the controlling voice in the circus, knew the virtue of not overdriving a willing and successful turn.

“That’s
his
caravan,” said Auguste. “Would you like to have a peep at it?”

“I’d like to very much,” said Petrella. “If he wouldn’t mind.”

“He’s in town, with Donna. Nina may be there. She won’t tell on us.”

They climbed the stairs and opened the door, cut in two halves, heavy as a lock gate, built to last, like everything in that wonderful vehicle.

Patrick thought he had never seen anything so entrancing in his whole life. It was at once snug and spacious, and entirely beautiful.

Everything that could shine, shone. The polished teakwood tables, and settles and built-in cupboards; the brass fittings of the lamps, and the window and door fittings, and the ship’s chronometer above the stove, itself a gleaming altar of glazed brick and winking steel. In one corner stood the cage where Leopold and Lorenzo, the riding lemurs lived. They sat on a log and stared back at Patrick as he gazed, round-eyed, at them.

Lorenzo wrinkled up his eyes, and lifted his upper lip.

“He’s laughing at me,” said Patrick.

“Laughing at me,” agreed a gruff voice behind him. Patrick swung round.

The largest parrot he had ever seen was sitting on a table behind the door.

He was dark bottle-green all over, except for plum-coloured ruffs around his legs. His head was cocked on one side, and a single round yellow eye was fixed on the boy.

“Oh,” said Patrick. “Oh, what a beauty.”

“What a beauty,” said the bird complacently. It swung down neatly from the rail on top of the cupboard and waddled along the window-seat.

“Stand still,” said Auguste. “Quite still. He likes you, I think.”

“W-what,” said Patrick, “w-w-would he do if he didn’t?”

“Bite your ear off,” said Auguste. “Just you ask Ramon or Manfredo. It’s war to the knife between them and Nestor. They used to tease him – pull his tail feathers out. He bit Manfredo through the thumb. Nearly cut it off.”

Patrick watched the parrot, scarcely daring to breathe. It sidled along the tabletop towards him, still transfixing him with one unwinking yellow eye. Then it dipped its green head suddenly forward, caught the corner of Patrick’s handkerchief, and whipped it out of his pocket.

“Hey!” said Patrick.

“Hey!” said the parrot, dropped the handkerchief and broke into a scream of laughter.

“He
does
like you, see,” said a long-legged, dark-haired girl. She had come out of the back part of the caravan, where she had been tidying and cleaning the bedroom. “If he takes something of yours, it shows he likes you.”

She picked up the parrot without fuss, held it in one hand, and smoothed its head feathers with the other. The parrot preened itself.

“This person is Nina,” said Auguste. “She is a wonderful girl. She is loved by all creatures, and fears none.”

Although he was only eleven, Patrick was an observant boy, and when Auguste said “creatures” it occurred to him that he might be including two-legged creatures as well. She was a very attractive girl.

The week that followed was a week of unmixed delight. Tolerated by old Stromboli, encouraged by Auguste and Nina, he explored every corner of the Jacquetti encampment. He avoided Ramon and Manfredo and studied the great Sam Borner, owner and boss of the Jacquettis, and his wife Donna, from a respectful distance. But these were only the humans. It was the animals which entranced him. The six great Alsatian dogs, who were the policemen of the kingdom, and the tumbling crowd of poodles who formed the CID – sharp-eyed, sneaky, ubiquitous. The old circus horses, their working life over, who lived at ease, grazing behind the caravans by day and stabled by night in the shed opposite Sam Borner’s caravan. Rosalie and Marguerite, queens of the ring, each with a stall of her own, with a name on a shingle nailed over it; the great cats, in their cages at the far end of the enclosure, to be watched like Ramon and Manfredo, but not approached. White doves which lived on the rafters of the pony shed, and would come to Nina when she whistled. A marmoset which shared Auguste’s caravan, and spent its day vainly trying to catch the pigeons. Leopold and Lorenzo the lemurs, who could ride and look after horses as well as any stable boy, who lived in Sam Borner’s caravan, and were taken out of their cage by Nina every afternoon for a walk on long leather leads; and Nestor the parrot, said to be more than a hundred years old, and very wise.

It was at the end of that week, on the Sunday morning, that Monsieur Theron came to call on Patrick’s father.

Their talk took place in the front sitting room, a place of French rectitude and gloom. M. Theron was a middle-aged Basque with a short brown beard and a deceptively mild appearance. It was later to deceive the Germans, to their undoing. Patrick sat, unnoticed, in a corner behind a table covered with family photographs. He listened, in growing horror, to what was being recounted.

“Dead,” said M. Theron. “The skull fractured by a single blow.”

“How long?”

“Discovered at six o’clock this morning. The doctor said that death must have occurred at least five hours before. Not more than seven.”

“Died about midnight, then,” said Patrick’s father.

Patrick had heard only scraps of the earlier conversation. He had thought they were talking about refugees. Now he wished that he had listened. Because it was to do with the circus. Someone had been killed.

“We have held his brother for questioning.”

So! It was Manfredo or Ramon. Patrick felt a sense of relief. It would have been terrible if it had been one of his friends: Auguste, or Nina, or Stromboli. Even the majestic Sam Borner, or his kindly little wife. If someone had to be dead, better one of the savage Spaniards.

“It will be difficult to prove anything,” said M. Theron. “It is true that the field is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, but an active man could surmount it almost anywhere.”

“Have you any particular reason to suspect Ramon?”

“Spaniards—” said M. Theron, and then stopped. It had occurred to him that what he was about to say might not, in the circumstances, be very tactful.

“Can behave like wild beasts,” agreed Patrick’s father, smoothly. “But there is usually some particular reason for a killing as cold-blooded as this would seem to have been.”

“The brothers were drinking in the Café d’Algerie – it is a riverside drinking place – until close on eleven o’clock. They were excited, and shouting. They left separately. So far that is all we have established.”

When M. Theron had departed, Patrick said to his father, “It is
not
true.”

“What is not true, Patrick?”

“It is not true that anyone from outside could get over the wire fence and into the field of the circus. By day, it would be difficult. By night, impossible.”

“How so?”

“Because of the dogs. Would you like to try?”

Patrick’s father looked at him seriously. He said, “I have no official standing here. M. Theron consults me because he is friendly and, I suspect, a little out of his depth with a case which involves two Spaniards, a Yorkshireman with a Milanese wife, a Neapolitan, a Belgian, and a local girl.”

Patrick’s mouth opened.

“B-but,” he said, “how do you know about these people?”

“You have talked to me about them, many times.”

“I talked to you,” said Patrick, “but you didn’t listen.”

“When you grow up, and become a policeman,” said his father, “as I believe is your intention, you will find that it is a great advantage not to appear too attentive. As I was saying, I have no status in this matter. But if what you tell me is true, it is clearly a fact of importance, which should be established in a proper scientific manner. We will take a walk together, this evening, after dinner.”

They approached the Champs des Martyrs with due precaution, from the back. It was a soft night, with the moon half full. Ahead of them loomed the bulk of the machinery shed, concealing them from view. The corner of the wire fence was supported here by an upright of iron angle-bar.

“This would be the best place,” said Patrick’s father. He spoke in a whisper. “Will you go over, or shall I?”

“I’d better,” said Patrick. “They know me.”

He gripped the stanchion, and climbed up, easily enough, using the strands of the wire as steps. He had reached the top, and was steadying himself, with one hand on the roof of the shed, when a shrill yap sounded. As Patrick dropped to the ground, two dark forms materialised at the corner of the shed.

Patrick moved out from behind the shed, into the moonlight. The Alsatians were uncertain. The boy looked, and smelled, like someone they knew, but was behaving suspiciously. A small black dog ran up. Patrick stopped, and it jumped into his arms and started licking his face. The Alsatians lost interest. If Kiki vouched for the stranger, he was all right. Patrick walked back to his father, put the toy poodle gently down and climbed out.

“You see?” he said.

“Yes,” said his father. “I see.”

The processes of the law are never quick. It was nearly a week later that Sam Borner’s wife called on them. Donna Borner had been fifteen, a promising equestrienne, when Sam had married her and inherited his slice of the Jacquetti enterprise. Twenty-five years of married life and the rearing of three sons had rounded out her figure and engraved some wrinkles on her face but, until that black week, life had treated her kindly.

Now she was frightened.

She said, in an accent in which her north Italian consonants mixed curiously with broad Yorkshire vowels, “They have taken Sam for questioning. They took him this morning. They will not let me see him. It is a terrible mistake.”

Patrick’s father made her sit down. He talked to her, and Patrick admired the skill with which he extracted the facts without seeming to ask any questions at all.

The police, at first, had suspected Ramon. He was a violent man, he had been drinking, he had been the last person seen with Manfredo. But he could have had no hand in the killing. When he left the café he had caused an uproar by trying to break into the house of a girl he knew. The police had been called. He had been arrested, and had spent the night in one of the police lockups. As soon as this was established he had, of course, to be released.

“
I
should not have let him go quite so quickly,” said Patrick’s father. “I should like to know exactly at what time he caused this convenient uproar.”

Donna Borner was uncertain. What she did know was that Ramon, exculpated, had turned inquisitor. He had vowed to find the killer of his brother. And the possible suspects were so very few. The killing had occurred just outside the pony shed, inside the camp. It was not at all easy for an outsider to get in undetected, because of the dogs.

Patrick’s father nodded. He said that he knew about the dogs. Who could have been in the camp, legitimately, that night?

The answer was simple. Stromboli, neither of whose arms was strong enough to lift a tack hammer, let alone a sledge hammer. Auguste, who had a caravan in the middle of the line of caravans. Donna herself, and her husband. They had the caravan at the end, nearest to the pony shed. The other caravans belonged to people who were out on circuit, and they were empty. Ramon and Manfredo had a caravan at the far end, near the cages of the big cats who were in their charge.

Patrick’s father had a pencil in his hand, and was drawing a little sketch as she spoke, marking in the stables, the dog kennels, the machine sheds and the cages, round three sides of a square, and the line of caravans along the top.

He said, “And Nina?”

“How did you know about Nina?” asked Donna. “Oh, I see. . .” She had spotted Patrick, in his favourite place in the corner. “The boy told you. He is friends with all at the camp. It could not have been Nina. She is a local girl. She sleeps at home.”

Patrick’s father was drawing a series of little arrows on his diagram. One ran from the corner behind the shed to the dog kennels; a second from the kennels to the pony stables; a third from the stables to the line of caravans.

“So,” he said at last. “Auguste – or your husband.”

“Certainly, it could have been Auguste,” agreed M. Theron. “Although he is thin as a rush, he is tough as a rush, too, and has very strong wrists and forearms. All clowns have. It is their early training in tumbling. Certainly he had a motive also. Not long ago he interfered to defend Nina when Manfredo was being offensive, and received a thrashing for his pains.”

“Then—?” said Patrick’s father.

“Fortunately for him – unfortunately for Monsieur Borner – Auguste can show that he was nowhere near the camp that night.” He looked out of the corner of his eye at Patrick, and said: “Auguste spent that night with Nina, in her house.”

Patrick’s father said to him, “I think you’d better buzz off, old boy.”