Death of Anton

by Alan Melville

  “Queer,” said Lorimer. “Who the hell were those two?”

  He lit a cigarette and walked slowly up to the caravan. He was within a dozen yards of it when the curtains were drawn quickly across the windows. Old Man Carey preparing to go to bed, no doubt. Alone? No, not alone…sounds of conversation plainly audible as Lorimer came near the caravan. Heated conversation, too, and not a lady. All humble apologies to Mr. Carey for doubting, for one brief moment, his morality. A man’s voice, and the voice of a man in a temper. It was impossible to make out what was being said, for the windows of the caravan were closed, but there was not much doubt that something approaching a free fight was going on at that moment inside Mr. Joseph Carey’s elegant green-and-white caravan. Not knowing quite why the affair should interest him, Lorimer walked silently round to the back of the caravan. Just as he did so, the door opened. He stubbed out his cigarette and pressed himself close against the curved coachwork. He stood still and listened.

  “Now get out,” said Joe Carey. “And keep your dirty little nose out of other people’s business, see? If you value your job at all, that is.…”

  The door slammed. Whoever was being shown out so politely came down the steps, turned, and came to within a foot of where Lorimer was standing. It was Anton. Anton, top of the circus bill, and trainer of the seven Bengal tigers who were at that moment causing such a commotion in their railway siding a mile away. Lorimer thought it best to speak before being seen.

  “Anton…” he said.

  The other man turned round and stared at him.

  “Good God!” he said. “Are you another of them?”

  And walked away.

  This, thought Lorimer, was too much for one night. To set out for a quiet stroll to get over the effects of a tiff with one’s wife, to be drawn to Joe Carey’s caravan, and to witness goings-on such as these, to get a remark like that from Anton, with whom he had always been on as friendly terms as is possible between the two leading attractions of the circus…far too much for one night.

  “Are you another of them?” Another of what? What the devil was going on in Joe’s caravan? Was it, after all, something more serious than women? There was no answer to these questions.…For a moment he thought of hurrying after Anton and getting to the bottom of it; then he gave up the idea, and decided to wait until the morning. The idea of his quiet chat with Carey was also forgotten. He felt suddenly tired, and set off across the field on his way back to the hotel.

  He was just leaving the field when he heard the whistle again. The same short, peculiar whistle used by each of the two men whom he had watched. He’d get to the bottom of this, at any rate. He turned and ran quietly across the grass until he reached the caravan. He walked round the side of it, and waited until the door shut and the latest visitor was heard coming down the steps. This time the visitor prepared to leave the field by the other gate; Lorimer could stare at his back without being seen himself. In doing so, he got the biggest shock of the night. For the last man to visit Joe Carey’s green-and-white caravan was the immaculate little man whom he had last seen going in search of tonic water at the Station Hotel. The clown—Dodo.

  Lorimer was still young, young enough to lick his lips at the thought of adventure, which rarely came his way in the everyday life of the circus. The thrill of falling fifty feet through the air, knowing that a second miscalculated or an inch misplaced meant certain death—that was no adventure to him, and never had been. That was his job; this sort of thing was much more intriguing. He made up his mind as soon as the clown had disappeared. It might lead to something, or it might not. He’d take a chance, and hope it led to a lot.

  He ran up the steps of the caravan, and whistled, the same short, peculiar whistle which he had heard the clown and the other two men use—or as near to it as he could manage, having come from an unmusical family which even objected to the Blue Danube waltz being played while they were doing their trapeze act.

  The door opened. Two inches, no more. An arm was pushed out and a small cardboard package placed in his hand. He took hold of it in silence and waited.

  “Well?” said Carey’s voice. “Come on, then….”

  There being nothing to say, Lorimer kept silent. The door was flung open and Carey stood silhouetted against the light inside the caravan. He was a huge man, coarse and broad-shouldered. It was evident that he had been drinking. He stared at Lorimer for a moment; Lorimer could not see his face, which showed up as merely a round bullet against the light of the lamp.

  “What the hell…?” said Carey.

  His right arm shot out. The knuckles of his hand caught Lorimer on the point of the chin, making it unnecessary for him to have wasted so much time and trouble on the bursting of a single obstinate pimple. He swayed and crashed headlong down the steps. He lay still, his head on the damp grass and his body stretched up the steps.

  The door of Mr. Joseph Carey’s caravan shut with a bang and the key was turned quickly in the lock.

  Chapter Three

  Mr. Minto came down to breakfast at the Station Hotel on the following morning, and wondered just why he was such a mug.

  Why had he been mug enough to promise to look into this business of his sister’s wedding and actually take part in the ceremony? Why had he left London a week earlier than was necessary and come to stay in this excellent, but unsociable, Station Hotel? Why had he tolerated a bedroom that was next to a bath-room which gurgled and spluttered and generally behaved like Dante’s Inferno all night? And why, in the name of heaven, had he been mug enough to rise at this unearthly hour of the morning, when it was perfectly obvious that there would be nothing to do, after eating his breakfast, but to sit in the lounge and read The Times until lunch? Why?

  “Echo,” said Mr. Minto, coming into the dining-hall and taking a sad look over its wide, open spaces—“echo answers ‘Why?’’’

  It was Robert who was really responsible for his visit. Mr. Minto had not seen his brother Robert for over three years. His own business kept him in London, and Robert’s business only allowed him to come up to town on occasional hectic one-day excursions.

  “Business” is perhaps not the right word to use in connection with Robert Minto’s life work, for Robert was a clergyman. To be strictly accurate, he was a priest, and second-in-command of the Catholic Church in this town. Mr. Minto had never quite understood the reasons which led Robert to taking the cloth; for, throughout his childhood, the only leanings he had towards religion showed a desire merely to take the collection. However, Robert had become a priest. It embarrassed Mr. Minto slightly, and he saw no more of his brother than was absolutely necessary. He was a Catholic himself, like all his family; but the presence of a priest in a family like his, and especially in a business like his own, was rather apt to cramp one’s style. However, that was entirely Robert’s own affair, and as long as he kept his religion a matter between himself and his flock and did not try to make his own family see the error of their ways, Mr. Minto had no objections. To be on the safe side, however, he made a point of only meeting brother Robert at the Christmas family reunions…and occasionally managed to skip even these.

  Robert Minto (the family could never get used to the idea of him being called “Father Minto”) lived quietly and seemingly happy in this provincial town, appeared to be worshipped by every poor person in it, and occupied a microscopic flat presided over by the youngest member of the Minto clan, Claire. And, going right to the root of the trouble, it was really Claire who was to blame for Mr. Minto suffering the rumbles and gurgles of the hotel bath-room.

  Claire Minto was several years younger than her brothers, and had a most awkward habit of suddenly deciding to do surprising things. And an even more awkward habit of doing them—at once, right away, before anyone could get their breath and suggest that such actions were not altogether wise. As soon as a revolution or a war broke out in any part of the world, Claire Minto pack
ed her bag, left her clergyman brother to look after himself as best he could, and made a bee-line for the affected part for a holiday.

  Claire had gone to Austria at the time when Dolfuss was assassinated, and Mr. Minto had been put to a great deal of trouble getting her out of that country and back to England. Claire, it seemed, had insisted on taking photographs of the Chancellery in Vienna where the murder had taken place, and had said exactly what she thought of the various officials who tried to stop her. She had been promptly locked up as a suspected foreign spy. As soon as Britons became really unpopular in Italy, Claire Minto had hopped on a convenient train, arrived in Rome, and started asking for trouble right away by suggesting in a loud voice that Signor Mussolini was an ass. Only the combined efforts of her two brothers had stopped her from going to Abyssinia itself for a month’s rest. And now it seemed she had made up her mind to set out on an even riskier journey. Marriage.

  Mr. Minto, hard at work in London, had received a frantic letter from brother Robert. Brother Robert had a perplexing habit of beginning a letter as though he were resuming a conversation which had been interrupted for a moment. He started in the middle, and ended in the same place. He held no brief for punctuation of any kind, put a great deal of his thoughts in brackets, and underlined every second word. Mr. Minto took some little time before he was able to gather what was biting his brother. At last, however, he grasped the situation.

  Claire had got engaged to a young man whom she had met at a League of Nations Rally. The young man was called Briggs, and Robert Minto seemed to think that the engagement made the reform of the League of Nations even more necessary than ever. Mr. Briggs, when not attending League of Nations Rallies, was a vacuum-cleaner canvasser, and Robert did not think him at all a suitable match for Claire. He had nothing against vacuum-cleaner canvassers as a clan; many of them, he felt, were to be numbered among the salt of the earth…but he could not help feeling that Claire was being just a little hasty over the matter. Would Mr. Minto come down at once, meet Mr. Briggs, have a serious talk with Claire, and see what he could do about the business? (Mr. Minto, reading between Robert’s lines, gathered that Robert was a good deal concerned at the thought of Claire marrying and leaving him alone in the flat with a housekeeper.) Come at once, said Robert, underlining this heavily, and ending up rather surprisingly by saying that the wedding had been fixed for the following Saturday, and that he had better bring his morning-dress and top-hat in case he wasn’t able to change Claire’s mind.

  Mr. Minto had arrived the previous night, had seen Claire and realized that her mind was made up and that nothing short of a real good earthquake would stop her from marrying the vacuum-cleaner gentleman on the following Saturday. He had also met the young vacuum-cleaner gentleman, and found him a nice, reliable young man, if inclined to have clammy hands and to say “Pleased to meet you” when introduced. He had paid a quick visit to his brother Robert, assured him that nothing could be done about the impending disaster, and that he had better carry on with the arrangements for the wedding—for Mr. Briggs was also a Catholic and the ceremony would take place in Robert’s church.

  Mr. Minto had then gone back to his hotel and become involved in what seemed to be a high-class conducted tour which had just arrived in town. It was, in fact, the star performers of Carey’s Circus. He had had a drink with a man who looked like a stockbroker and who turned out to be some kind of an acrobat, and then went up to bed. The circus people, tired and dirty after their long railway journey, all elected to have noisy baths in the next-door bath-room, and even after they had gone to their rooms the bath-room took the rest of the night to settle down. It gurgled, rumbled, spluttered, groaned, wheezed, and made peculiar plopping noises. Mr. Minto sat up in bed and read the advertisements in a copy of Punch, dated August 1935, which happened to be lying on the table beside him. At a quarter to eight he rose in none too mellow a mood, and now, less than an hour later, he sat down at a window table in the dining-hall and scanned the menu.

  “Grape-fruit, sir?” said an aged waiter. “Or porridge?”

  “What’s the name of the chef?” asked Mr. Minto.

  “Bernstein, sir.”

  “In that case, grape-fruit,” said Mr. Minto. “If it had been McKenzie or McDonald, we might have risked the porridge. Being Bernstein, we’ll have the grape-fruit, please.”

  The waiter, unable to follow this line of thought, shuffled off to the serving-hatch and reported that one portion grape-fruit was required for a gentleman who was crackers.

  Mr. Minto launched his attack on the grape-fruit, and ordered a light meal of finnan haddock, double egg, and sausage with a couple of rashers of bacon—“fat and crisp, the kind that breaks on your fork”—toast, marmalade, and black coffee. He then removed an offending flower-vase, folded his Times and set it in front of him, and started to read how right the Government had been in dealing with the recent tricky international situation. The Government, he gathered, had given a lead to the other nations of the world by sitting on the fence and doing nothing. Many other Governments would no doubt have dashed in wildly and done something in the recent spot of bother; the British Government, by doing nothing, had restored confidence and brought relief to what had threatened to be a very serious situation.

  Mr. Minto was half-way through the third paragraph of this and rather more than half-way through his second sausage when he realized that he was no longer the only nit-wit to be eating breakfast at this hour. He looked over the top of his newspaper and saw a small, carefully dressed gentleman with a bald head sitting down at the next table.

  “I suppose it’s tinned?” the gentleman was saying.

  The waiter looked pained.

  “Oh no, sir. Fresh grape-fruit is always served in this hotel, sir.”

  “Can you say the same for the porridge?”

  “I’m sure you’ll find the porridge excellent, sir.”

  “If it isn’t a rude question, what nationality is your chef?”

  The waiter took some time to grasp this. Two customers of this kind in a single morning is more than any waiter can stand.

  “Er…I think he’s a Pole, sir. But I’m not quite certain. I could make inquiries, sir.”

  “No. Don’t bother. I’ll have the grape-fruit. I was just hoping that he might be a Scot, and then I could have the porridge. The English don’t know how to make it, and I shouldn’t think a Pole would be very good at it. Grape-fruit, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The waiter shuffled off again, and told the kitchen staff that there must be some kind of educational conference on in the town, since both the blokes taking breakfast were quite obviously mental.

  Mr. Minto, hearing this conversation, brightened up. Here was a kindred spirit—a man who shared his views on the major issues of life, such as porridge. He lowered his newspaper screen and beamed across to the other table.

  “Good morning,” said Mr. Minto. “I’m so glad to hear you say that about the porridge. As a matter of fact, I’d just said exactly the same thing myself.”

  “Only the Scots can make porridge,” said the little man seriously. “With all other nationalities, it’s a toss-up between two evils. The lumpy, congealed variety—and the runny, dish-water stuff.”

  “Agreed,” said Mr. Minto, who held strong views on the proper consistency of porridge.

  “Mind you, one occasionally comes across a Scot who can’t make porridge. It’s this modern craze for synthetic breakfasts, done up in cardboard boxes with high-sounding names, that’s doing it. The industry is dying. I came across three lumps the size of halfpennies in a plate of porridge I had at Inverness this spring. In Inverness, mind you. The heart of the porridge country.”

  “Dreadful,” said Mr. Minto. “You wouldn’t like to come and sit here, would you? It’s so pleasant to meet anyone who shares one’s views on things like porridge.”

  The little man
collected his Seven Pillars of Wisdom and his serviette and moved across to Mr. Minto’s table.

  “My name is Minto,” said Mr. Minto. “I’m staying down here for a few days. I can’t think why—but I am.”

  “My name is Mayhew—Ernest Mayhew,” said the little man. “I’m here for a week also—because I can’t help it.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Minto sympathetically. “Not exactly a bright spot, is it?”

  “There are some very interesting Norman ruins, I believe. And the local Catholic Church dates back several hundreds of years. It was originally a tavern. Cromwell, so they say, stabled his horses there when he passed through the town on his way North.”

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Minto. “I hope they’ve cleaned it out since then. I’ve got a wedding there on Saturday.”

  “Really? Congratulations. I can’t say I’m absorbed in this grape-fruit, can you?”

  “It’s not my wedding,” said Mr. Minto. “It’s my sister’s. I’m giving her away.”

  “I always say ‘I suppose it’s tinned, is it?’ in a sneering sort of way, you know, because it almost always is nowadays. And whenever I get the real stuff, I’m so very disappointed. It’s not nearly as good as the tinned variety.”

  “She’s getting married to a vacuum-cleaner canvasser,” said Mr. Minto.

  “And, in any case,” said the little man, “I always squirt.”

  Mr. Minto began to feel that the conversation was getting at cross-purposes. He tried a new tack.

  “I see you’re reading Seven Pillars,” he said.

  “I’m not,” said the little man. “I’m carrying it about with me. I do it to create an impression. People say, ‘Look, he’s reading Seven Pillars.’ And they at once think that I must be not only an intelligent sort of man, but—what’s more important—that I must be able to afford thirty shillings for a book.”