by Bruce, Leo
And what was more surprising was that the artists felt it too.
In contrast, I remembered the day, not much more than a week ago, when Albert Stiles had hushed us for mentioning the word “murder.” He had been afraid then that the others might laugh. But now there was no laughing. Everybody knew why Beef was with the circus, and they still did not laugh. That was, perhaps, the most terrifying aspect of them all; that the idea of murder had been accepted by these people, they believed in it, and thought it would happen tonight.
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.
CHAPTER XXX
May 3rd (continued).
IT 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 p
erfectly 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.
CHAPTER XXXI
May 3rd (continued).
THE 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.
The horses now drew level, running side by side and in step. Anita passed one end of the rope to her sister and the two riders did a variation together of the skipping dance. Then Anita passed across to the inside horse and they finished that part of their act with a fast gallop round the ring, hands raised to the clapping audience. Until then, I had been so occupied with watching the swift movements of each girl that I had scarcely noticed their faces. They were both smiling, as they must have been smiling all through the act, with broad set creases of their faces. For a moment I was horrified with the mask-like effect this had. It was as if those expressions had been painted on their lips. I saw the two, one behind the other one, the horse, leaning inward with the speed at which it was running, and Helen’s face just visible over her sister’s shoulder, like a reproachful other-self in a mirror. For a moment it seemed that there were not two girls, but only one. And it was exactly in that that Anita’s chief danger lay. I had a sudden realization of fear, fear of something almost unknown, that the closer the two girls approached to each other the greater was the danger. It was rather like two similar poles of two magnets which exert a violent repulsion if their magnetic fields happen to overlap.
But at that moment the twins leaped down from the horse, which ran straight out of the ring, and were bowing gracefully to the full applause of the house. A pure black horse ran in and began to canter round the ring, and the attendant came forward with a long lance and a whip, which he handed to Anita. Helen leaped into the saddle, seeming to reach it in one bound from the center of the ring. Both girls appeared to be giving the sort of performance which I had imagined only men could have given.
Meanwhile, the attendants had been placing small white wooden pegs in the ground at intervals around the ring. The horse cantered round
for a while, slipping a little and breathing heavily through its nose, then it changed to a gallop. Helen grasped the lance which Anita handed her as she passed, and placed it at the “rest” position against her thigh. I realized that the next part of the act was going to be a display of “tent-pegging” fairly familiar with cavalry exhibitions, but which I had never seen in the restricted space of a circus-ring. The idea was to pierce each of the small wooden pegs with the steel tip of the lance as the horse galloped past them. It needed a supple and accurately-timed stroke to avoid a broken wrist or the unseating of the rider.
Then, with a feeling of horror, I watched Anita flick the horse once with the whip-lash and walk in behind it, so that she was standing astride one of the pegs. Was it possible that Helen was going to pick up the little white thing from between her sister’s legs? It looked almost suicidal to me. Only the slightest slip of the horse, or an unsteady aim, and Anita would be pierced by the lance. I heard Cora Frances gasping beside me as the horse raced around, and Helen lowered the lance ready. With the horse going at that speed it would need an exceedingly strong wrist to raise the lance in time to avoid the waiting girl’s body. Anita’s face was expressionless. Had she no fear at all that her sister might not try once again to complete that which she had set out to do a few days ago?
As horse and rider approached Anita turned slightly sideways to them and then held her left foot about an inch above the peg. From where I sat it looked as though she had covered it. Helen rode past. There was a faint whistle and the flash of the lance over her shoulder, and Anita turned, almost casually, and walked to the next peg. The first one was impaled on the tip of the lance. I could not draw my eyes away from the ring, although I hated the whole thing. Somehow it fascinated me. As I looked from one sister to the other, I saw the same set, hard expression, almost as though they had not heard the violent applause which had greeted this act. The applause burst out again for the second peg, and the third and the fourth. There was only one more to be picked up.