Case with 4 Clowns

by Bruce, Leo

  Both the brothers were a queer mixture of delicacy and hardness. It was easier to understand this when they began to talk about their early life. Born in France, they had lost both father and mother before the age of ten, and had chosen then, rather than live with an elderly aunt in the south, to go on the roads and earn their own living as best they could. It had been a very hard life, and was a case of being strong and agile, or dying. Somehow they had survived, and by the time they were sixteen and thirteen respectively, they had been taken on as tent hands in a small circus. From that time their progress had been steady, and, as Paul put it, completely without exciting details. They had come to England because they heard the pay was better, and because they wanted to travel. They had been together, dependent on each other, since infancy.

  Suzanne, who had been sitting silent, now spoke directly to Beef for the first time. “I mother them, Mr. Beef,” she said and although the phrase was lightly spoken, it seemed to carry more significance than a joke normally does. Suzanne Beckett was still a very pretty woman. She gave one the impression of having once been a very beautiful one, and in the irregular, nervous movements of her hands, there was still something exquisite left, something extremely graceful. She might have been almost any age, but when she told Beef that she was thirty-five I could see that he believed her. And Beef generally knew when people were lying to him. A widow, past the peak of her career, she should not normally have been very interesting, and Beef would probably have taken little notice of her had it not been for one little incident which occurred just before we left.

  While we had chatted, Beef had solemnly, steadily, loudly drunk the whole of his large cup of tea. It was not until he had set the cup down empty that he seemed really to turn his attention to the matter in hand.

  “Now,” he began heavily, “you’re the top of the bill, aren’t you?”

  “Why, yes,” said Christophe cheerfully, “of course we are.” And he launched in to a long explanation of why such an important act as theirs should have deigned to travel with a tenting show at all.

  At the end of it Suzanne gave him a quick smile, and turning aside to him as though she did not want us, or perhaps even Paul, to understand, she made a remark in French in a very low voice.

  Beef might have missed this, but I saw Paul look up sharply and his eyes traveled from one to the other of his partners. At first it seemed that he was not going to speak, but at last he said slowly and in English: “Suzanne, I never knew you spoke French!”

  The emphasis of this remark was as strange as the subject of it. How could it be, I wondered, that the girl who worked with them every day, who seemed to be looking after them now, should speak his language without him knowing it?

  Even Christophe seemed flummoxed. “I’ve been teaching her a little,” he said, and reaching over for Suzanne’s spoon, he hurriedly stirred his tea.

  Nothing more noteworthy took place during our interview, which ended with the cordial invitation from all three of them to come and see them again, and the hope that we would enjoy their act. Beef thanked them, and climbing down the steps of the wagon backwards, he set off in the direction of his next interview.

  In any case the next wagon, which belonged to Peter Ansell, who worked as lion-feeder for Herr Kurt, the trainer, was empty, so Beef made his way over to the enclosed zoo where Ansell was most likely to be at that time of the day. The zoo, which was attached to Jacobi’s circus, was actually a small enclosure of cages drawn round in a rough square and fenced round with canvas and rope to keep out prying eyes. Each of these cages was in reality the wagon or trailer in which the animals were towed from place to place on the tour, and became a cage when the front boards were taken down each day. Some of the animals behind these bars were those used in the ring, such as the lion and the seal, while the others were the more well-known “oddities” of the animal world which are always an attraction, and which were taken round as a side-show to the circus.

  Beside the three lions which Kurt showed in the ring, there were three cubs, which he was still training, a fourth lion which, although full-grown, had not been trained because “he’d never had time to get down to the job,” and a tiger and a jaguar, also untrained. The smaller animals, beside Eustace the seal, consisted of a hyena, a three-toed sloth, a fox, numerous monkeys, a porcupine, a kangaroo, a wolf, an owl, a vulture, and a skunk. It was, apparently, Ansell’s job to look after these animals. He had to feed them, clean out the cages, act as vet and nursemaid, should the need arise, and see that nothing went wrong while they were traveling from place to place.

  “Funny,” commented Beef, “having a fourth lion just like the others, and never using it.”

  I was a little bored with the number of things the Sergeant found “funny.” “I don’t see why,” I answered, and walked on ahead.

  We learned later that, for the most part, the village people who paid their tuppences to go into the zoo after the circus show had finished, had never until then seen any of the animals shown there. It is surprising how few people who live in the country have seen a fox more than fleetingly. The circus is often their only chance of seeing other animals than the most ordinary and common ones of the countryside.

  We discovered Peter Ansell digging just outside the zoo, with the slender gray kangaroo hopping slowly around him, nibbling here and there at a blade of grass. It crinkled its nostrils at Beef, but then appeared to forget him, and went on with its exploration. Ansell stood up when Beef greeted him, and sat on the edge of a wagon with his feet dangling over the side.

  He must have been about thirty-five or six, with a slow cultured voice and an appearance of frankness. It did not take many questions from Beef to start him talking about himself, and the information he revealed was astonishing.

  “How did I come to work in the circus?” he said, repeating Beef’s question. “One drifts, I suppose. At least I’ve always drifted, and this simply happens to be another port. I ran away from home—or should I say school—at the age of fifteen and have only seen my parents once since then. My father was ‘something in the city,’ as Henry James says. Actually, he was a sugar-broker, whatever that may imply. Anyway, it was something extremely dull. I was sent to a public school and forgotten. Really, you can’t imagine what a public school is like unless you’ve been to one, Sergeant. Take the food, for example.”

  “Bad, was it?” asked Beef hopefully.

  “Horrible. Nearly all the boys’ parents had estates, and during the Christmas term we had to eat partridges and pheasants for lunch every day. Sickening. I ran away.”

  “And then what did you do?” asked Beef.

  “Oh, almost everything. I just wandered around most of the time. Tramp, estate agent, in prison, work-houses, farm laborer, commercial traveler, you know the sort of thing. And do you know I think the happiest years of my life have been spent in prison? Funny, isn’t it? But I get this itch to move on, not the so-called ‘wanderlust,’ but something much more negative. You should read Ernest Hemingway, Sergeant, for a full description of what I mean. Everything goes to hell inside you, and you move away from things rather than towards. Fear of the known and monotonous, so you jump for the unknown every time. Until it turns out as bad as the other, and then you jump again. The difference is that the ‘wanderlust’ makes you walk forward with hope, my feeling makes me go backwards in fear. Well, that’s my signature tune, Sergeant, and for the rest I’m fairly happy at the moment feeding horse-flesh to lions and cleaning cages.”

  “Who is it exactly employs you then?” asked Beef.

  “Well, it’s Kurt who pays my wages, so I suppose he’s the employer. He engaged me, too. That was rather a funny affair. Perhaps you’d like to hear it.” And without waiting for us to answer him, Ansell leaned easily against the side of one of the cages and began to tell us.

  “A few years ago,” said Ansell, “I was wandering through Westmoreland when I happened to pass through a town that had one of those small private zoos. A chap in a c
offee-stall, where I stopped for a few minutes, told me that the man who usually looked after the lions at this zoo had been killed only that day. Apparently he’d been clawed to death through some sort of carelessness. Anyway, the point was, this fellow who told me the story added that he thought they’d have difficulty in getting anyone to take that job now. It gave me an idea. I’d been on the road for more than a month unable to find any work to do, and I thought this was a real gift of fortune. Of course, I went straight to the zoo and asked for the job.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” asked Beef.

  “Scared? Of course I was. But I was also hungry—and that’s much more important. As it happened, I didn’t get the job at all. When I rolled up to the office I found that there was a queue of about fifty or sixty chaps all waiting for the same reason. What was the good of me waiting? I knew nothing about animals, so I was bound to be turned down. I don’t know what fetched all those others. I suppose it was because the other chap who had been killed had got his name in the papers over the affair (even if he wasn’t alive to read them), so these blokes thought it was a romantic sort of a job, and along they came. Or perhaps they were hungry too. Anyway, I saw it was hardly worth waiting, but instead of clearing straight out I wandered round the zoo first to have a look at the animals. Might as well get a free show while I could, I thought. But when I got to the lion-house, who should come in but the owner of the zoo himself. I knew who it was because he was talking to a man he had with him about selling some lion cubs. I edged up near them and listened to what they were saying, and then when the bargain was concluded I went up to the chap who’d bought them and suggested that he might need some help in getting them away.

  “ ‘I’ve got a lorry outside,’ he said. But I pointed out that he couldn’t manage the cubs by himself.

  “ ‘Do you know anything about lions?’ he asked. I admitted I didn’t, and he seemed to think that was rather funny. Anyway, he was so tickled with the idea of my knowing nothing about them but offering to handle them for him, that he said he’d give me ten bob if I got them into the lorry.

  “And I did. I haven’t the slightest idea how I did it. I was scared stiff. But ten bob was a lot of money to me just then, so I grabbed them one at a time by the scuff of the neck and pitched them into the lorry. The man was amazed. He just stood there looking at me.

  “ ‘Did you say you knew nothing about animals?’ he asked me when I’d finished.

  “ ‘Not a thing,’ I said, feeling very pleased with myself now that the job was over.

  “ ‘Then it must be instinct,’ said the chap. ‘I like people who have the right instinct with animals. Would you like a job with me? I’m a lion-trainer.”

  “And there the job was. Of course I took it. And as you have no doubt guessed, the gentleman who gave it to me was Herr Kurt, lion-tamer to Jacobi’s Circus.”

  As he finished his story Ansell picked up his shovel again and recommenced his work as if we did not any longer exist.

  “He’s a rum sort of a bird,” commented Beef as we left the enclosure.

  “I think he’s very pleasant,” I said. “I like the grateful way he told the story of his job and about Kurt. He’s not the sort of man you’d expect to be grateful over anything.”

  “That’s why he’s rum,” said Beef shortly.

  “But surely,” I protested, “the fact that he sounded grateful to Kurt should make you revise your estimate of him?”

  “I know the type,” said Beef confidently. “He’s not really grateful to anyone, you mark my words. He’s got something up his sleeve, you’ll see. A man with an education like that just wasting his time pottering around in all sorts of jobs. Feeding animals. Grateful!” Beef ended scornfully. “Not him. I know the type.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  April 27th (continued).

  PETE DAROGA, the wire-walker, was seated on the steps of his neat brown wagon bending over a length of wire. He was splicing the end with a concentration which prevented him from hearing us approach, so that I had time to study the man before Beef spoke.

  Although more than sixty years old, Daroga was still nearly six feet tall. He held himself upright, and had shrunk very little with age, unlike most people of his years. In his prime he must have been an unusually large man, for although now he was sinewy, his firm, wide frame seemed to have been little reduced by age, and one could see in the broad shoulders and steadily posied neck the signs of immense strength. His fingers, as they moved over the unraveled wire, were light and hooked, moving with pecking, finicky jerks as though the task were distasteful to him. He was the sort of man to whom inanimate objects offer no resistance, the small pieces of wire under his hand seeming to fall readily into place.

  His face was the almost unbelievable leathery brown of a Breton peasant, twisted and ugly and far too small for his large body. The deep-cut wrinkles, sinking almost to the bone, gave his face a cushiony appearance. And on it the long ugly scar which started on his right cheek-bone and ended at his misshapen ear seemed like a hasty darn in which the wrong shade of wool had been used.

  Becoming aware of Beef, Daroga looked up quickly, wrinkling his eyes as though trying to recognize the newcomer.

  “I’ve seen you about somewhere before, haven’t I?” he asked.

  Beef nodded. “S’right,” he said, and then almost shyly, like a small boy giving his name to the Mayor’s wife: “Sergeant Beef,” he volunteered.

  “Oh yes, of course. You were just here in time for that little business between Helen and Anita, weren’t you?” said Daroga.

  Beef squatted down at the foot of the steps as if prepared for a long conversation. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “I don’t think there was anything very serious in that. Though, mind you, it’s as funny a case as ever I came across. Nor I wouldn’t say it was over yet.”

  “What makes you think that?” asked Daroga curiously.

  “I couldn’t exactly say,” said Beef mysteriously. “Now I can understand some people; Mr. Jackson, for instance …”

  “Can you?” said Daroga sharply.

  “Can I what?”

  “Understand Jackson,” answered Daroga impatiently.

  “Well, in a manner of speaking. I mean he’s a straightforward sort of chap when you know the type.” Beef suddenly seemed to realize that he was answering instead of asking questions, and quickly turned to his companion. “What do you think of him then?” he asked.

  “Treats everybody like dirt under his feet,” burst out the wire-walker suddenly, and then as if he had quickly controlled himself, he bent, and picking up the wire he had been splicing he shrugged his shoulders. “But he’s the boss around here, anyway,” he finished flatly.

  “Do you like him?” asked Beef.

  “We get along,” said Daroga, and Beef sensed by his tone that he did not wish to pursue the subject any further.

  “You know,” the Sergeant went on after a pause, “I like it here. Everybody’s so friendly and nice. Generally they behave a bit suspicious towards a policeman. Not that I’m in the Force any more, but you know what I mean.”

  If Daroga knew what he meant he did not take the trouble to show it, but remained silent, inspecting the length of wire in his hands.

  Beef tried again. “And this moving around,” he said. “You see a lot of the country, and so on. Gives you experience.”

  Daroga did not look up, and except for a slight grunt it was impossible to tell whether he had heard Beef at all. The Sergeant stood up.

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose you want to get ready for the show. I don’t want to get in anybody’s way.”

  A further grunt from the wire-walker was the only farewell which he received.

  “Wonder what makes him so surly?” muttered Beef, but he appeared not to expect an answer, so I followed him on.

  The long converted bus which stood next to Daroga’s neat wagon was known as the Clowns’ Wagon. The long body, divided into three rooms, was often the
meeting-place of many of the artists in the evenings after the show, but when Beef stood outside inspecting the peeling paintwork plastered with torn and faded circus bills, there were only two people inside it: Sid Bolton, known as “Tiny” in the ring, and Clem Gail, or “Archie.”

  Beef knocked cautiously and was greeted with a loud shout of “Come in.” Clem Gail was seated in front of the mirror, dressed already in his clown’s costume, and decorating his face with the traditional red and white grease-paint and sticking the fantastic pieces of hair on his chin and cheeks with spirit gum. It was difficult to recognize in this parody the handsome young man I had noticed about the grounds, and whom Albert Stiles had pointed out to me as Clem Gail. It was his voice that invited us in, and he looked up with comically squinting eyes.

  “Hullo, Sergeant,” he said. “Will you join us?”

  Beef grinned. “Shall I be in the way here?” he asked. “I just thought I’d like to drop in for a bit of a chat before the show started.”

  “Come in and sit down,” said Clem Gail. “That is, if Sid isn’t using all the chairs.”

  Sid Bolton, thus referred to, waved Beef to the only unoccupied seat, while his other hand continued to rub cold-cream into his large gleaming face. In the restricted space of the wagon his huge bulk seemed more than usually oppressive. It seemed that there was no way of escaping him, that sooner or later, wherever one moved in the wagon, one was bound to collide with him. Even Beef, who was no stripling himself, looked as though he thought it would be unwise to move from the rickety stool on which he now sat.

  Yet “Tiny” Bolton was not the usual conception of “fat man.” There was little flabbiness about him, and except for the roll of flesh under his ears which quivered whenever he turned his head or laughed, he was muscular and overgrown rather than paunchy or dropsical. His movements were swift and sure, and his long, rather fine hands, were ludicrous on so large a body. They reminded one of a deep-sea diver, in his solid inflated costume, and yet from which protrudes his naked unprotected hands. Nevertheless, his bulk was, at close quarters, slightly embarrassing, and Beef found it difficult to hit immediately on a topic of conversation. His eyes, roving round the wagon hopefully, were caught by the mounted mask of a large badger which hung above the door.