Case with 4 Clowns

by Bruce, Leo

  “That’s a nice badger’s head,” he said. “I’ve got one nearly as large as that over the hat-stand in my hall. What do you carry a thing like that around for? Luck?”

  Clem looked up at the mask curiously, as if seeing it for the first time. “A farmer gave us that,” he said. “After he’d seen the show he said he wanted to give us a present. But he was too hard up or something, and all he could afford was the stuffed head of that badger which had been killed on his ground a few weeks before. We kept it here because of its face. It suits us, you know.”

  “Suits you?” queried Beef.

  “Yes. You know the country name for the badger? Brock. Brock the badger. Old Clown Face. We thought it was a good mascot—so there it is.”

  Beef had no intention of entering into a discussion on the fauna of these isles, so he became ruminative for a while, and then at last said: “You know, I’ve often wondered how one starts on a job like yours. I mean, did you always want to be a clown, or did you just drift into it like any other job?”

  Sid Bolton chuckled rumblingly. “In my case there wasn’t anything else to do,” he said.

  “How was that?” asked Beef.

  “I used to be shown as a fat boy on the fair-grounds,” explained Sid. “But after about six years of that I stopped being what you might call a boy, and I stopped getting any fatter. So there I was in a cleft-stick. I was too old to be a fat boy, and too small to be a fat man. I tried to go on the music-halls and sing comic songs, but I didn’t go down very well. The managers used to get letters saying how disgusting it was me being on the stage, and after a time they refused to engage me. I couldn’t take an ordinary job—I get in my own way too much—so here I am in the circus. It makes the kids laugh, anyway.”

  Sid grinned cheerfully at Beef, almost as if he had been telling of the misfortunes of a stranger, and not of his own life. He seemed to find something irresistibly funny in the potted biography he had just given Beef, and turned back to the mirror with a wide grin on his face.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Beef. “It’s a funny world. When I was a kid I used to go to circuses, and I didn’t used to think the clowns were really men at all. Special sort of animal, I used to think they were. Funny and so on, but not really human.”

  “Most children think something like that,” commented Clem.

  “But the kids are the ones that enjoy clowns the most, aren’t they?” asked Beef.

  “Not really,” said Clem. “Now you can tell that by the sort of show we put up. If you’ve noticed, the afternoon show isn’t quite so good as the evening one. Same jokes, same turns and everything. But it hasn’t got the go in it somehow. In a way, it’s the audience that makes the show. Now you take the show we shall be putting on in a fortnight’s time. That’s the best show we shall do in the whole tour. It’s a special Jubilee show on the Circus’s 25th birthday. Every year on the day the Circus started we have a special performance, and it’s the feeling of it being something extraordinary that makes the artists do the best they possibly can. You ought to stay and see it, then you’d know what I mean.”

  “What date is it?” asked Beef.

  “The 3rd of May. It’s a red letter day for us,” said Clem, grinning.

  “Red Letter Day?” queried Beef.

  “Yes, that’s what it is. Birthday and Christmas rolled into one. We have a good time that day.”

  “Wouldn’t like to miss that for anything,” said Beef, and with that we left the wagon.

  “This is making me feel a bit dizzy,” Beef told me. “I feel as if we’re canvassing for an election, or something, and have to keep all bright and breezy all the time.” He looked at his bill again. “Might as well go and see Corinne Jackson now,” he said, and went to the proprietor’s wagon.

  Jackson was not in the wagon when Beef knocked, but Mrs. Jackson was there, and also Corinne and Eric Jackson, the son and daughter of the proprietor. Mrs. Jackson, who invited the Sergeant in, quickly bustled away to make a cup of tea, this occupation seeming to be her surest standby in any and every situation, and Beef was left sitting awkwardly with Corinne and Eric. For a long time there was silence, punctuated only by Mrs. Jackson’s trite opinion of the weather given every time she had cause to pass through the central room of the wagon. Eric had grunted shortly when Beef first entered and had since made no remark whatever, and Corinne seemed to be unaware of the Sergeant’s presence in any way. Beef regarded her perfect profile with something of awe.

  Corinne Jackson was beautiful in an altogether uncircuslike way. She had none of the rich coloring of the Latin, being so different from her father that it made one look at her mother with a new interest. Had Mrs. Jackson actually been beautiful as a young woman? Corinne would seem to argue this. Her fair, closely waved hair seemed to fit close to her head, carved and set like the head of a Greek statue. Only her nostrils, with their slight arrogant curve, betrayed a trace of selfishness. Slowly and carefully she was painting her eyelashes with mascara. Beef gazed at her, his mouth slightly open.

  “Don’t you find it difficult to see where you’re going with that stuff on?” he blurted out at last.

  Corinne stared at him coldly for a moment, and then returned to her mirror without saying anything. Eric Jackson, however, gave a quickly suppressed giggle, and Beef turned to him as a likely ally.

  “Well, I mean,” he said explanatorily, “it must be uncomfortable, mustn’t it?”

  “Corinne Jacobi,” said Eric grandly. “The beautiful Corinne must not disappoint her public.”

  “Corinne Jacobi?” queried Beef.

  “That’s her ring name,” explained Eric, with a smile. “Jackson wouldn’t look very good on the bill.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Beef. “Like Sid Bolton calls himself ‘Tiny.’ Is that what you mean?”

  Once again Eric chuckled. “Well, something like that,” he agreed.

  “Here,” said Beef suddenly, glancing at the clown’s get-up which Eric wore, “you’re another of these clowns, aren’t you?”

  This time it was Corinne who laughed. “Just another of them,” she said. Beef looked at her in amazement.

  “Yes, it talks,” said Eric snappily. “If you press the right button, that is.” And he jerked his thumb in the direction of his sister, who was furiously dabbing her face with powder.

  Beef seemed bewildered by this atmosphere of animosity, and sat looking from one to the other of the two Jacksons. They appeared only to be using his presence as a means of attacking one another, and if one had believed Beef to be in reality the well-meaning simpleton that he sometimes appeared, one would have thought him uncomfortable and a little resentful about it.

  “Well, I’d better go and change,” said Eric after a long pause, and he walked through into the little partitioned room at the end of the wagon, leaving Beef and the coldly silent Corinne awkwardly together.

  Corinne, unmoved, continued with her make-up, while Beef sought for some commonplace phrase he might use to start a conversation.

  “Why don’t you ask her for her autograph, Sergeant?” came Eric’s voice over the partition.

  Corinne appeared to be completely oblivious of all that was going on around her. When she had completed her make-up to her own satisfaction, she slipped her dressing-gown off her shoulders and commenced to powder her back. She was dressed in a scanty riding-costume, and Beef averted his eyes with haste. When, however, she began to apply the powder-puff to her long elegant legs Beef stood up awkwardly.

  “I’m afraid I’m in the way,” he mumbled, searching for the handle of the door and trying to look anywhere but at the girl.

  Corinne looked at him with faint surprise. “Oh no,” she said, “you’re not in my way.”

  But Beef’s hand had discovered the door-handle and he slipped quickly out of the wagon with a heavy sigh of relief.

  “Don’t go much on that sort of thing,” he said, and it seemed to be an adequate expression of his pent-up feelings.

 
Herr Kurt, the lion-tamer, known to the Registrar’s Office in Hoxton as George Franks, was in his wagon. At least, the light which shone through the drawn curtains would seem to argue this, although Beef’s tattoo on the door brought no reply. The Sergeant waited for a few minutes, and then knocked again. This time the curtain over the glass top of the door was parted and the red, full-fed face of Kurt peered out on us. But there was no answer to the knock.

  “Perhaps he didn’t see us,” I suggested. “Try again.”

  But as the Sergeant raised his hand again, the door opened suddenly and Beef almost toppled inside.

  “What do you want?” demanded Kurt sharply.

  “Er …” Beef was momentarily at a loss.

  “Well, clear off and don’t bother me at this time of the day,” Kurt bellowed, and the door slammed within an inch of Beef’s face.

  Beef stared for a moment blankly at the door, and then he turned to me with a rueful grin.

  “Well,” he said, “there’s no mistake about that being Kurt. Curt, see?” he grinned.

  We turned and wandered slowly down towards the entrance to the tober. By this time crowds had already begun to form in front of the pay-box for the evening show, and for a little while we watched them in silence.

  “Not much good trying to see anybody else just now,” said Beef. “They’ll be changing for the show. They won’t want to be bothered.” And he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and concentrated his attention on the crowd.

  “I say, mister,” said a small but clear voice beside us. We looked down to find two very small boys clutching each other by the hands and looking up at Beef with an expression of awe. “I say, mister,” one of them repeated, “Billie wants to know if you’re the man who comes on with the elephants?”

  A broad, flattered smile spread over Beef’s face, and I could see that he considered the question to be a compliment.

  “No, sonny,” he said kindly. But after they had gone away he turned to me with a perturbed expression. “We do look a bit like commissionaires, don’t we?” he said. “Let’s stroll around a bit.”

  But we had not gone many yards when our attention was caught by the neat, quiet figure of a man sitting on the running-board of the lorry which supplied lighting to the tent, and we walked over to him.

  “Cigarette?” offered Beef.

  “Thanks, no. I don’t smoke till after the show.”

  Beef studied the man with interest; not because he had refused a cigarette, but because that refusal seemed to point to the man being one of the artists. Yet anything less like a circus artist could scarcely be imagined. He was small and rather rotund in figure with a contented oval face rather sleepy in expression. When he replied to Beef’s question he spoke very slowly, and then only after an unusually long pause in which he seemed to be repeating the other’s words and testing them as a barman does a coin by throwing it into the back of the till. Another in his place would probably have said “what” and used the time taken up by a repetition of the question to think slowly of an answer. He could not have been more than thirty-five or six years old, yet his fair fluffy hair stood out around a prematurely bald spot. It looked like a halo which had been put on like a bowler-hat instead of being worn serenely untethered. His small brown eyes did not seem to take the trouble to inspect Beef, and yet one had the conviction that they had noticed all there was of importance to notice about the Sergeant.

  “Are you one of the artists here, then?” asked Beef, voicing his thoughts. “I don’t remember seeing you in the ring.”

  “Not exactly,” said the man. “I’m the jack-of-all-trades. You know—odds and sods. Electrician, scene-shifter, shoe-mender; general handyman, in fact. Len Waterman, that’s me. And I suppose you’re Sergeant Beef?”

  Beef nodded with a pleased expression.

  “I’ve read about you,” the man went on, “in those three cases of yours.”

  “Have you?” said Beef, almost incredulously. “And what did you think of them?”

  The little man who had called himself Len Waterman seemed to be considering the question. “Well,” he said slowly, “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings about this, but since you’ve asked me, I’ll tell you. I think you did a pretty smart piece of work in all three cases, Sergeant, but I’ve got one bit of criticism.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Beef doubtfully.

  “That chap Townsend,” said Len Waterman. “Can’t you do something about him? I mean, he puts you off, the way he mucks about with the story. He calls himself your ‘old friend,’ but all he does is to make fun of you all the time. Now what you ought to do is to get someone with some sense. Someone who would write your cases for you just as they really are without any of this funny business.”

  “It’s funny you saying that,” said Beef, “because this gentleman here happens to be Mr. Townsend.”

  The little man was only momentarily taken aback. “I’m very sorry if I’ve said anything I oughtn’t,” he apologized. But then he returned to the attack along a new line. “But you must admit, Mr. Townsend,” he said to me, “that there’s a lot in what I say.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite see your point,” I said in a chilly voice. “Perhaps if you’d be good enough to explain.”

  “And I’d be glad to,” said Len Waterman. “Now look at it this way. Point one, you like to have a little laugh at the Sergeant when you get the chance, don’t you? Right,” he hurried on before I had time to interrupt. “But suppose he doesn’t give you a chance. Then you have to make one. Right again. And what’s better than publishing a book that ruins the Sergeant’s career? It places you right in his hands, Sergeant,” the man continued, turning to Beef. “Now what would these other detective story-writers do if their investigators couldn’t solve a crime?”

  “Well, what would they do?” I countered.

  “They’d hush the whole matter up,” said Waterman decisively. “That’s what they’d do, they’d hush it up. They don’t want to bring their heroes into ridicule and contempt, do they? Of course not. You can’t tell me that that there Lord Simon Plimsol don’t ever make a mistake. I bet he does, but we never hear of them. It wouldn’t do.”

  “You suggest, then,” I said, “that I should have been dishonest over the Sergeant’s last case, and not written it?”

  “That’s right,” said Len Waterman. “And what’s more, when he gets a case again, if I was you I should do it serious. Write as if you really meant it. Stop making the Sergeant look a fool. Well, that’s what I think. No offense meant, I’m sure.”

  Before I had time to assure him that I took his criticisms in the spirit in which they were offered, a voice from the tent could be heard sharply calling for “Len.”

  “That’s me,” he said, as he moved away. “Something gone wrong with the lights, I expect. Well, we’ll have a little talk some time, shall we?” and with this he ducked under the side of the tent.

  CHAPTER IX

  April 27th (continued).

  AFTER the evening show Beef and I watched the business of “pulling down.” Every day this happens in the tenting show; every day, at the end of the performances and somewhere around ten o’clock at night, the whole of the tent has to be pulled down and packed away, the gear tidied and stacked into the lorries, the animals fed and shut up in their cages, and everything got ready for the early start next morning. Boy Scouts would no doubt have called it “striking camp,” but what Beef and I watched was considerably outside the scope of the usual Scout’s training.

  Even before the show had completely finished the tent hands were running round loosening the guy-ropes, holding them in position until the last note of “God Save the King” had sounded. Then the walls of the tent came down with a rush, and almost before the first person was out of the tent in the open air, it was being rolled into large heavy bundles and moved away ready for the lorries. The light from the tent top flooded out over the tober and made the work easier, and a special light fixed to
the head of the electricity lorry helped the work. The crowd moved out slowly. The older ones only lingered a few minutes and were soon on the road home, but the younger ones hung about in groups, some of them waiting their turn at the fortune-telling booths, some of them visiting the zoo, and others simply gathering into small knots of people and talking.

  As I watched the hands and artists alike at work on the tent I realized that each person had his own particular job, and that the task of pulling down had been rationalized to its limit. There was a certain order of tasks, and people to do them, and this was the method which got the work finished in the shortest possible time. Some of them were dismantling the seating and stacking it into one of the lorries, others were collecting the quarter-poles, others taking out the pegs and collecting them, others on the canvas itself, rolling it into separate bundles which would need three or four men to lift them.

  “Standing at the corner watching other people work,” sang out Ginger as he strode past us carrying three poles on his bare, gleaming shoulder.

  “And very nice, too,” answered Beef.

  At last the two king poles were carried away, and the last bundle of canvas thrown into the back of the lorry. Only one or two of the smaller tasks remained to be finished and the artists had disappeared, leaving these to the tent hands.

  “Let’s go along to the clowns’ wagon,” suggested Beef, already on the move towards it. “I could do with a cup of tea and a bit of a chat.”

  We got both with no trouble at all. Sid Bolton, still in his make-up and clown’s costume, was juggling with the tea-pot when we entered and poured us out a cup each before we had even spoken. Clem was seated in front of the mirror wiping his face, tearing away the false tufts of hair and trying to get the grease-paint off as fast as he could work. The color ran into one mixed mess all over his face as his fingers moved briskly over the skin. Then, rubbing with an old greasy rag, he sluiced his face quickly in warm water and stood before the mirror again drying himself thoughtfully with a towel. The face which emerged from under the make-up was an exceptionally good one. Clear, unwrinkled eyes, straight, firm nose, and wide humorous mouth.