Death of Anton

by Alan Melville

  “He hasn’t come in again, as far as I know, sir,” said the night porter.

  “I don’t think he’ll be in,” said Mr. Minto. “He’s staying down at the circus. His animals have been a little troublesome, I understand.”

  Mr. Minto then asked the night porter politely for the key of his room, 210, the number was. At a quarter to six in the morning night porters are rarely at their brightest and best. It is the witching hour when they stop snoozing illegally and prepare to go to bed for a spot of honest sleep. The porter handed over the key willingly, ignoring the fact that he had already given Mr. Minto one key that night, and that Mr. Minto was down in the register as occupying room number 224. Mr. Minto walked upstairs and opened the door of Anton’s room.

  Anton had not expected death, at any rate. His room was untidy, and a half-finished letter lay on the dressing-table. It was written in German, and Mr. Minto’s knowledge of that language was restricted to a single sentence asking for another glass of beer, please—and even then he was not sure whether beer was masculine or feminine in Germany. He opened some of the drawers of the dressing-table, and out of one produced a sheet of foolscap. It was the only interesting find in the room. It was a document—not very properly drawn up, but still perfectly legal—giving over the ownership and management of Carey’s Circus to one Ludwig Kranz, otherwise known as Anton. It was signed by Joseph Carey, but the space for Anton’s own signature was still blank.

  Mr. Minto put the document away in his pocket and went to bed.

  Chapter Nine

  Father Robert Minto ate a hurried breakfast, for he had much to do. The date of his sister’s marriage, like her courtship and engagement, had come on him with a rush and left him rather short of breath and considerably short of time. Claire was like that: if she made up her mind to do a thing, it was usually done before one had time to find out when it was going to take place. Saturday, the twenty-third of July, which last week had seemed so far ahead, now presented itself in front of Robert as an urgent affair which demanded his immediate attention.

  There now seemed no chance of persuading Claire to drop the idea of marrying her young man; if anyone could have done it, it was the third member of the Minto family, and Detective-Inspector Minto, however good he was at solving crimes, had failed miserably in this. Claire and her vacuum-cleaning fiancé were scheduled to be married at two o’clock on the following Saturday, and nothing could be done about it now. Except to make the various arrangements for the ceremony, and the celebrations which followed it. And, having come to this conclusion, Robert realized that there was still a tremendous amount of things to be done. The job of the delegates to the League of Nations Assembly was, in Father Minto’s opinion, mere child’s play compared with the number of things he had to deal with before two o’clock on the following Saturday. The League of Nations people could, at any rate, adjourn their tasks sine die, and frequently did so; but Robert was tethered down to Saturday, the twenty-third of July, and the million and one things which Claire had told him to do had somehow to be done before that date.

  Claire, businesslike as ever, had written out three lists of Things to Buy; one for herself, one for her fiancé, and one (the largest, it seemed) for Robert. The priest had lost his list and did not like to ask his sister for a copy. The only thing he could remember being on the list was socks, for Claire had said that he hadn’t a decent pair of socks to his feet, and that she refused to be married by a priest whose toes were sticking out through his hose. Robert finished his breakfast, and dashed out to buy socks.

  Armed with the socks (an unusual thing to be armed with), Father Minto made his way to the church to keep an appointment with the organist. He had to tell the man exactly what was required of him during the wedding service. Claire had given him very definite instructions about this, for she knew the organist of old, and had been at a number of weddings in the church when the ceremony had developed into an organ recital, with much throbbing and a great many twiddly bits on the vox humana.

  Robert found the organist enjoying himself in an empty church with a spot of Wagner. It should have taken the priest no longer than two minutes to tell the man what he was to play, when he was to play it, get him to repeat his instructions to make sure that they had sunk in, and hop off on some other errand. (Robert had just remembered another item on his list: Order Buttonholes from Florist’s—and he was impatient to dash off and do this before he forgot.)

  The organist, however, was a chatty soul. Robert listened to him attentively for an hour and three-quarters. After brushing aside all Claire’s instructions with an airy “Just you leave all that to me, Father”, the organist launched forth on a favourite theme of his, the gist of which was that Beethoven, if he had not been blind, would never have written the magnificent music he did write. If Beethoven had not been blind, according to the organist, his imaginative powers would never have been developed to the extent that they were. He would have done all his composing by hard theory and cut and dried rules, instead of allowing his genius to have full play. If Beethoven had not been blind…But here Robert, remembering that he had to meet Claire and Mr. Minto for lunch, got a word in edgeways and reminded the organist that Beethoven hadn’t been blind at all. Deaf, quite likely; blind, definitely no. The organist said that it must have been Milton he was thinking about, but that it all came to the same thing in the end. The priest, harking back to the subject of music for the wedding service, was assured that everything would go all right if it was just left to the organist.

  Robert left him, and he began at once to play a movement from the “Pastoral” symphony in rather a vicious manner, as though piqued at the idea of the composer having been deaf instead of blind.

  On his way out of the church, the priest was stopped by a man.

  “Father M‘Veagh?” the man asked.

  “No. I am Father Minto.”

  “You’re a priest here, though? In this church?”

  “That is so.”

  “You’re the priest who was at the circus-party last night?”

  Robert, who was doing his best to forget the evening he had spent with the intelligent sea-lion, admitted this.

  “I thought I recognized you.”

  The priest looked at him closely, and remembered the face.

  “Can I do anything for you?” he asked.

  “I…I’ve come to confess.”

  “Come this way, will you?”

  He led the stranger to a little panelled room off the choir stalls. It was his custom to have a heart-to-heart talk with those who came to him in circumstances such as these.

  “Sit down,” he said. “You can talk freely to me here. Then I will take you back to the church. If you wish, you can talk to your God there.”

  The man sat down and played nervously with his hat.

  “Are you a member of the Church?” Robert asked.

  “I’m a Catholic, Father, and as good a Catholic as I can be. It’s the first time I’ve been inside a church in three years. I’m with the circus—I can’t get to services. We’re always on the move on Sundays.”

  Robert smiled.

  “You have an excuse, at any rate,” he said. “Many who have no excuse still do not come. Well…what has brought you here?”

  “Maybe you know what happened last night. There was a man found dead in one of the cages. Anton—the man who trains the tigers.”

  “I know. I saw him. Most distressing.”

  “I killed him.”

  Robert looked for a long time at the oak tablet on the wall, on which were printed in gold lettering the names of the priests in charge of the church since its inception. He found himself unable to take his eyes away from the tablet and fix them on the man seated in front of him. There was a long silence. Then the man spoke, very quietly.

  “I shot him. Three shots, high in the chest. One grazed his shoulder, the other
two went into his chest. I was mad…I didn’t know what I was doing. It was out in the field—just behind the tigers’ cage. They were making a bit of a noise at the time…so were the people in the tent where the party was going on…it drowned the sounds of the shots. I opened the door of the cage and threw him in. The tigers leapt on him right away…it was horrible. They think he was mauled by them. He wasn’t. He was shot…I killed him, Father…God help me.”

  The priest stood up. He was very pale.

  “Come into the church,” he said.

  An hour later, Father Minto joined his brother and sister at lunch at the Station Hotel. Claire’s fiancé, who was to have been present, had telephoned at the last minute saying that he could not come. A big deal in the vacuum-cleaner world was, it seemed, imminent. Mr. Minto was in good form. Although he would have been the last to admit it, there was nothing which put Mr. Minto into such high spirits as a curious case. The more curious the case, the better he liked it.

  “Hullo, Robert,” said Claire. “You’re late, darling. I’m interviewing Detective-Inspector Minto—he’s nosing about again. Did you see about the buttonholes?”

  Robert said that he hadn’t had time to see about the buttonholes but had bought socks.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said Claire. “You can’t wear socks in your buttonholes, can you? Sit down, dear, and let me get on with the interview. Now, Inspector, may I tell my readers that an arrest is considered imminent?”

  “My lips,” said Mr. Minto, “are sealed.”

  “That’s what Mr. Baldwin always says before his long speeches. Oh—you don’t know, Robert, do you? The most thrilling thing has happened. You know the man who was found in the cage last night? Well, he hadn’t been mauled at all. At least, he had, but that was after. He’d been shot. Murdered, I mean.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Robert.

  “How did you know?” asked Mr. Minto.

  “I…heard something about it this morning.”

  “Well, Detective-Inspector Minto is on the job. Don’t be at all surprised if he turns up at my wedding on Saturday surrounded by bloodhounds. Or arrests one of the ushers. Look at him, Robert—the the long arm of the law.”

  Mr. Minto reached out the long arm of the law and poured out another glass of Sauterne.

  “Well, carry on, Inspector,” said Claire. “As you were saying…”

  “As I was saying,” said Mr. Minto, “there are four definite suspects at the time of going to Press. Quite probably it’s none of these four, but they’re enough to be going on with. I think it’s fair to assume that the man who murdered Anton is connected with the circus.”

  “Why?” asked Claire.

  “Because he evidently didn’t think twice about opening the door of the tiger’s cage and heaving the body inside. I wouldn’t have done that, and neither would you. Whoever did do it was used to tigers. Which brings us to Suspect Number One.”

  Mr. Minto sat back as the aged waiter came up to the table, and waited patiently until the question of fruit salad, steamed ginger pudding, tapioca and figs, and/or prunes and custard was satisfactorily settled by all concerned. All concerned wisely decided to overlook the sweet course and have biscuits and cheese.

  “The four suspects are the four people who left Dodo’s supper-party last night at various times before the thing was discovered. First of all, that man Miller. At present things aren’t looking any too well for Comrade Miller. The outlook’s distinctly unsettled, as far as he’s concerned. He had a very definite grudge against Anton—he gave himself away at the party by saying what he thought of Anton—and he’s been heard to say many times that he wouldn’t break down and cry if Anton was torn into little pieces by his tigers. Mr. Miller is Suspect Number One.”

  The priest looked serious. He cut himself a small portion of a Gorgonzola which looked about the same age as the waiter, and reflected that his brother and Mr. Baldwin were not the only persons going about with their lips sealed.

  “Next on the list, in order of suspicion, is Lorimer. The trapeze chap.”

  “Oh no!” said Claire. “He looked such a nice young man. In fact, if I hadn’t met Ronnie first, I could quite easily have fallen for Lorimer. If he hadn’t met Loretta first, that is. She’s a very charming girl.”

  “That’s just the point,” said Mr. Minto. “Loretta, it seems, has been charming to more than her husband. I don’t believe half I hear, but—believing only one-half of what I’ve heard last night and this morning—Loretta had been enjoying a little affair with another man. The other man was Anton.”

  “Poor girl…”

  “Dodo—the clown—overheard Lorimer making a date with Anton for after the show last night. He says that Lorimer didn’t seem to be on the best of terms with the tiger gentleman. He also says that Lorimer had just discovered that Loretta was having an affair with Anton. I’ve had a chat with Loretta, but I got nothing out of her. She gave one of the finest impersonations of an oyster I’ve ever seen outside the West End.”

  “Why not have a chat with Lorimer?” said Claire.

  “For the very good reason that Lorimer has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  Robert said this in such an unexpected, high-pitched voice that both his brother and sister turned and stared at him. The little priest stirred his coffee nervously.

  “He didn’t sleep at the hotel last night. He hasn’t been seen at the circus ground this morning. In fact, after he walked out of Dodo’s party, he seems to have vanished altogether. A stupid thing to do, if he killed Anton. And an even more stupid thing to do, if he didn’t. Lorimer, then, is Suspect Number Two.”

  “And Number Three?”

  “The clown—Dodo.”

  “Darling, you couldn’t accuse Dodo of doing it. Not after that lovely supper. And he’s such a mild little man. He reminds me of my Ronnie.”

  “Your Ronnie—” said Mr. Minto.

  “Don’t go any further. I know you’re going to say something rude about him, so you needn’t bother. It couldn’t be Dodo, in any case. It was Dodo who found Anton lying inside the cage.”

  “If I committed a murder,” said Mr. Minto—“and such a thing is not unlikely with people like your Ronnie running about wild—if I committed a murder, I should make a point of being the first person to discover the crime. The first person to find a dead body is the last person the police think of suspecting.”

  “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first,” said Robert.

  “Exactly. With the common run of policemen, that is. I, of course, am different. Pass the cheese.”

  Robert passed the cheese.

  “But you can’t suspect Dodo just because he happened to find the tragedy,” said Claire. “Or just because he’d left the party before it happened. You have to have something more than that to go on. Or haven’t you? You policemen seem to go on very little nowadays.”

  “I have something more,” said Mr. Minto. “This…”

  He took out his pocket-wallet and laid the piece of brightly coloured silk on his plate.

  “That is part of Dodo’s clown costume. The one he was wearing at the party last night. It’s been ripped off the costume, not cut off. There’s a little dried blood on the edges. It’s just possible that this piece of cloth was torn from the costume by…claws.”

  “A nasty thought,” said Claire.

  Robert dropped his bombshell.

  “That’s purely guess-work, isn’t it?”

  Claire stared at the priest in amazement. It was the first time that she had heard Robert say anything of the kind to his brother. The detective Mr. Minto generally overawed and subdued the priest Mr. Minto. If anyone had suggested that Robert would have accused Mr. Minto of pure guess-work, she would have laughed for a considerable time. Perhaps, after all, she had misjudged Robert. The man w
ho dared to accuse Mr. Minto of guess-work obviously had something in him. Unless it was only the Sauterne, of which, Claire noticed, Robert had had two glasses.

  “Guess-work?” said Mr. Minto, snorting. “Of course it’s guess-work, Robert. But what makes it worth looking into is the fact that this piece of cloth was picked up just beside the tigers’ cage. By me, in fact. I’d very much like to see Dodo sun-bathing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think he’ll have quite a nasty scratch just above the right hip, where this piece was torn out of the costume. He had a small scratch on his lip when he came back to the tent last night. However, as you say, that is purely guess-work. All the same, Dodo goes down as Suspect Number Three.”

  “And the last on the list?”

  “Joe Carey, the proprietor. And don’t ask me why I suspect him, because I can’t give you any valid reason at all. I don’t like him. I think he’s a nasty piece of work, and I don’t hold with the kind of visitor who comes to his caravan at four in the morning and gives peculiar whistles—but that’s all I have against the gentleman.”

  “Have you asked Dodo anything?”

  “Yes. I asked him what he did after he left the party. He says he went across and had a drink in Carey’s caravan, with Carey. He says that beer doesn’t agree with his inside, and he had a quiet lime-juice, which was most acceptable. Carey bears him out in that. On his way back to the tent where we were, Dodo passed the tigers’ cage and saw—what we all saw later. Then he dashed back to us and spilled the beans.”

  “And what about the costume?”

  “I couldn’t ask him to let me see it—having only guess-work to go on,” said Mr. Minto, with a twinkle in his eye in the priest’s direction. “Perhaps I’ll get a chance to see it later. I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s at the laundry just now. There, now…that’s the position. I think Anton was killed by one of those four. Maybe I’m wrong. I was once.”