Case with 4 Clowns (36 page)

“That was out of my hands,” said Beef, “as you shall hear in due course. No one in the world could have guessed that Kurt would get up yesterday and show those lions. Not Lord Simon Plimsol couldn't have,” he added bitterly. “Nor Mr. Philo Vance, nor Dr. Thorndyke, nor any other of the detectives whose novels sell ten times what ours do. And if anyone blames me for not having prevented the murder, you can tell them that. No one,” his voice ran on towards a rhetorical climax. “Not the Lord Mayor of London, nor the Shah of Persia could have done different. I'm an investigator, and I investigated. After all, do any of them do more than that? Did Sherlock Holmes prevent the murders he had to find out about? Which of them ever stopped their man before he done it? Why, some of them start investigating a murder and have half a dozen more before they make an arrest. I've read cases where a cold-blooded assassin, with the ‘keenest brain in the world of investigation' smelling out his doings, has gone so far as to poison, blow up, stab and strangle three or four innocent people before the reader knows who he is. And just to make a better story of it, mark you. Unscrupulous, that is. Human life should come before royalties and cheap editions. Or film rights, for that matter. I don't believe in a lot of blood to give satisfaction to people what pays tuppence in a lending library. And if I could have stopped that poor fellow being killed, I would have, whether you lost your chance of writing a masterpiece or not. And that's more than you can
say for many of them. Why, if they was to stop the murderer first, there wouldn't be many murders to write about. And what's more,” he added savagely, “there wouldn't be any writers making handsome fortunes telling the tale. Now, I'll tell you the story.

“When I first got that letter from Albert I thought to myself, ‘well, that's funny.' Not because I thought there was going to be a murder, but because anyone should have said there was. And anyway, I thought, it would make a nice holiday. I mean, since I've retired from regular duties, I've often wanted to see a bit of the world, and here was my chance …”

“So you allowed me,” I broke in furiously, “to give up all other work, and the chance of finding a detective who would be taken seriously, to come up and indulge your taste for a holiday.”

“Taken seriously?” said Beef. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know what the
Church Times
said,” I argued hotly. “ ‘To take the egregious Beef seriously has already become impossible. He is a figure of fun.
We cannot swallow your Beef.' “

Beef leaned back in his chair and looked at me fixedly for a moment. “Do you suppose,” he said with a blundering attempt at sarcasm, “that I have any wish to be swallowed by the
Church Times?
You know very well how I feel about parsons.”

I waved this nonsense aside impatiently. “The fact remains,” I said, “that you are a laughing stock in the world of detection, and that before we started on this business I had my eye on a young lady school-teacher in Murston who, I have been told, solves every interesting crime by an algebraic process which she works out during her scripture classes. She would, I believe, have made an excellent investigator for me to chronicle, instead of wasting my time running in and out of
public-houses after you. Yet you calmly inveigled me into following you to Yorkshire because you wanted a holiday.”

“Well,” explained Beef, “you had a motor-car. I never liked trains, they make me dizzy. But do let's get back to the point, if you want to hear how I solved this extraordinary riddle.”

“Yes,” I said, “do let's. I have no doubt that, in your own estimation, you have done a remarkable piece of work. Though all I can see is three wasted weeks, culminating in a most unfortunate accident.”

Beef paused. “If,” he said, “I was to prove conclusively to you that there had been a murder; that I knew there was going to be a murder; that I knew who was going to do it and who was going to be the victim; that I knew why he was going to do it, and how; could you give me a little of the credit which you so readily hand out to all these other brilliant gentlemen?”

I laughed. “If you do all that,” I said, “I'll admit that you're a master.”

Beef shook his head sadly. “No,” he said, “you won't. Not when I tell you. It was perfectly simple, and you had all the evidence I had. It depended on quite plain and obvious things. There was nothing superhuman, nothing complicated, nothing that called for Scotland Yard, theories, fingerprints, or microscopes. I solved it because I've got one thing you'll never have, Townsend; not you nor any of your clever crime-solvers—common sense, my boy. Common sense, a bit of experience, observation, and a habit of putting two and two together have got me where I am today. And they've solved this crime, what's more. Yet when I come to tell you how, you'll be turning your nose up again. All right. A prophet's never recognized in his own country. And I don't suppose if I was to tell you what happened to the
Marie Celeste,
who killed Cock Robin, the whole truth about Colonel Dreyfus, and where the flies go to in the winter-time, you'd ever realize
that I'm more than what you think I am. Still, perhaps some of your readers are more intelligent than what you are, and'll see that it needed Beef to get at the truth of this. So you may as well write it up.

“Now the first thing I realized when we came up on this circus was that we were dealing with unusual people. All the way through you've been laughing at me for learning circus words, and for treating the circus as something apart. Well, it is something apart. I don't mean as the people in it are monsters, or freaks, or anything like that, but just that they're a bit different from the sort of people you usually mix with. They couldn't help it, living the way they do. You could make as many New Year resolutions as you liked and it wouldn't change you much. But if you changed your way of living … that's what makes people different. So I knew, directly I decided to come along to the circus, that the people would be something a little different from what I'd been used to. And that's the first thing I set about finding out. I wanted to know just how much, and what it meant in a case like this. And what I found out was this. Take this language of theirs first. It's a sort of umbrella, as you might say. Something to shelter under, that's what it is. It wasn't so very long ago that people used to look down on circus people, and think they were no better than gypsies or thieves. So, like other people when they're sneered at by society, they got into a corner out of the way. Or in other words, they worked up this special language of theirs so that no one could understand what they were talking about unless they wanted them to. A sort of retreat, that's what it is. People in towns didn't think very much of the circus people, so what's more natural than that the people in the circus shouldn't think very much of the rest of us. Tit for tat, you see. They live in a world all their own, and they don't have too much to do with anybody else if they can help it.

“But when I'd got to understand that, I didn't think, as you did, that every little bit of jealously and nasty feeling among these people was going to lead to one killing another. But I did see that they were worth watching. Why, I've learned more about human nature, watching the people on this show, than I learned in five years traffic-directing in the Force. I'm getting on to fifty, you know, but I'm only just feeling my way when it comes to the human heart. For instance, those clowns.

“Now you noticed Sid Bolton in that fight we had with Bogli's Circus; vicious he was, as if he owed someone a grudge. Well, in a way, so he did. How would you like to be sat up in a tent for silly folk to laugh at because you was fat? You'd hate them, like Sid Bolton does. But if you came out of the job and went on with your ordinary life after you might forget it, or it might only show every now and again. But Sid Bolton joined the circus, so he goes on not liking people. Like these here agitators you hear so much about, he's got a grudge against the world. It hasn't treated him fair, see, so he likes to spit in its face now and again. But that doesn't mean he'd go about wanting to kill some special man or woman. That's not what he feels. When he gets people alone he likes them, and when he gets them in a crowd, he doesn't, and that's all there is to it.

“With young Clem Gail, it's much the same. Only he's got a different reason. Now you went and listened to him when he was with that girl. Did you notice anything peculiar about that?”

“They were very romantic,” I said.

“He didn't tell her what he really did in the circus,” said Beef with emphasis. “That's what gave me the key to him. And why didn't he? Because of his face, that's why. Because the only time anybody clapped him or said he was good, was when he had that hideous make-up on, and because when he came out of the ring nobody ever recognized him. He's a
well-set-up young chap, is Clem Gail, and it galls him that he lives what you might call two lives. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking about that little game they had in the ring when they all set to slapping each other. But you got that all wrong. In the first place, Clem was a bit drunk, and he was wild with everybody and showed it. And in the second place, he was wild with Cora Frances, and who wouldn't be? Hanging round him like she hangs round everybody. But you don't think that because he took a smack at her he wanted to do her in, do you? 'Course he didn't. Why, if that was true, half the husbands in the world would be under arrest at this minute,
and
their wives would be coming round to try to get them out. You can't go suspecting people of wanting to commit a murder just because they show a healthy dislike for somebody what well deserves it.”

“But,” I interrupted, “what about Eric's enmity for his sister?”

Beef gave a huge guffaw and slapped his thigh. “There you go again,” he said. “Enmity for his sister! I don't know where you get all these ideas from. Couldn't you see that he was just like a schoolboy? He was enjoying himself—pulling her leg a bit, like I pull yours sometimes. He has the time of his life, young Eric does. Larking about like a regular kid.”

“All right,” I said irritably, “don't rub it in. But what about some of the others. Jackson and Daroga for instance? You can't say there wasn't something going on between them.”

“Of course there was something going on between them,” retorted Beef quickly, “but it wasn't what you thought. You got the right idea, but you exaggerated it, like you always do.”

“Do you mean to say that Daroga wasn't blackmailing Jackson?” I asked in surprise.

“Well, in a way he was, and in another way he wasn't. I'll explain it to you,” said Beef. “We'd better start off with that button what I picked up in Jackson's wagon and what you
thought must belong to Daroga. Now you saw for yourself that it wasn't likely to have been Daroga's because it had writing on it in Russian, and he'd left Russia when he was quite a tot. But Jackson said it was his—so why shouldn't it be?”

“And why should Jackson own a Russian button?” I asked.

“Well, there might be any sort of ordinary explanation to that,” answered Beef. “But as it happens, the answer is very interesting—and also very simple. You see, Jackson happens to be a Russian himself. You noticed how he dodged my question when I asked him what he'd been doing before he started the circus business? The reason was that he was in Russia, and he didn't want us to know.”

“But why not?” I asked. “That's not a crime, is it?”

“No, it's not a crime,” said Beef. “But it is a crime to stay in this country without registering yourself or taking out naturalization papers for more than a certain amount of time. And that's what he'd done. And that's what Daroga knew he'd done. You see, it was that little button what gave it away. You remember it had the Russian word for artist or actor on it? Well, that meant he belonged to one of these here organizations or unions or whatnot, like there's so many of.”

“So he was blackmailing him after all?” I exclaimed.

“There you go,” said Beef, “running away with an idea again. I wouldn't call it blackmailing him. He had a sort of a hold over him, that's all. As a matter of fact, Jackson took a lot of care of Daroga—more than what he did of any of the other artists, anyway. Look at the way he kept an eye on his wire-walking apparatus. What you thought was suspicious and sinister. But you know the sort of man Jackson is; a bit of a Tartar to get on with, nasty way with him, bad-tempered, likes to order people around. Well, Daroga couldn't stand that, so when he finds out that Jackson's keeping something
quiet, then he uses it to have a bit of peace from his nagging. That's all there was to it.”

“And what about that little incident when Daroga built up on the wrong tober?” I asked.

“Exactly,” agreed Beef. “Didn't that just go to show what it was Daroga wanted? He liked to feel free, that he had a bit of a say in the doings of the circus and wasn't always to be ordered around like the others were. Some people are like that. They just can't stand being told what to do.

“But you ought to have seen what a useful man Daroga was to the circus. Jackson's got a good business head on his shoulders, and he wouldn't do anything that might make Daroga clear off, as you might say. So he has to put up with Daroga, knowing about him being an unregistered alien, so as to keep him in the show. He's a handy wire-walker, as you've seen for yourself, and what's more, he knows how to manage those elephants. Of course, I admit that Daroga had a pretty strong hold over old Jackson. Didn't need more than a word from him in the right quarters, and Jackson would have been bundled straight out of the country. But where you went wrong was in the way you thought that hold was being used. There wasn't no money in it, nor nothing that might have caused a murder. Daroga was quite happy so long as he didn't get badgered about by Jackson to do this and to do that. And so long as he knew Jackson's secret he was safe from that. Jackson didn't want Daroga to leave the circus, and he knew that if he treated him right he wouldn't go and split to the police. So really they were both perfectly satisfied with things as they were, and there wasn't no cause for one of them to try and do in the other like what you seemed to think they would.”