Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) (6 page)

“‘Don’t worry,’ says the doctor. ‘I know just the thing to make you feel better, better enough to keep going. The circus is in town. Just go down there tonight and keep your eyes on Grimaldi the clown, and you’ll find yourself laughing.’”

“Nice story,” I said, looking across the tent to watch the woman named Peg hurrying toward us.

“Maybe,” said Kelly, reaching for another pancake, “but I don’t believe it, a Jackpot for clowns. There aren’t many suicides in circuses. Circus people seldom give up hope. We learn to live on hope. That’s what we talk about most of the time: next year, the next job, things getting better, homes we’re going to buy, places we’re going to visit, things we’re going to be.”

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” I said with my crooked smile.

“I used to think I was going to be a cartoonist. I was pretty good. The clown I do, Willie, I really drew him first for an ad agency I worked for back in Kansas City. Then I thought for a while I’d be a trapeze star, center-ring stuff. Was too for a while, did a teeth-hanging act. Damned hard on the jaws. Until a few months back I thought I might like to be in movies, but … If I ever grow up, I think I’ll just be a clown.”

Peg was standing next to us with something in her hand. Her hair was gradually escaping from the hairpins, which tried to hold it against the wind. She was the kind of woman who left a trail of hairpins you could follow to the far reaches of Alaska.

“Hi, Peg,” said Kelly. “Want some coffee?”

“No … yes … I think no,” she said, patting back some hair. “Tom said I should give this to you.”

I took the sheet of paper from her hand and looked down at the list. It had the names of everyone in the tent when the harness was removed. It included the name of Emmett Leo Kelly and was, as for each person on the list except for me and the final name, followed by a place of birth and a date. Kelly’s was Sedan, Kansas, December 9, 1898.

Peg couldn’t make up her mind about staying or sitting. I pointed to the bench next to me, and she sat.

“Sheriff is here,” she said.

“And …” I prodded.

“I think he’s convinced it’s an accident,” she said, reaching for a piece of toast on my plate, realizing what she was doing and pulling her hand back. I took the toast and placed it on the table in front of her.

“I haven’t had a chance to eat,” she explained, picking up the toast with a guilty hand.

“Your not eating doesn’t help the Tanuccis,” said Kelly, pouring her a cup of coffee.

She took it, and I discovered that …

… Dr. Patrick Y. Ogle had been born in Singapore Falls, Maine, eighty years earlier …

… the Tanuccis were from Corsica …

… one person in the tent at the time of the theft was a snake charmer named Agnes Sudds …

… one person was a local businessman from Mirador named Thomas Paul …

… and one person was a movie director named Alfred Hitchcock.

One of them was probably the murderer. I showed the list to Kelly.

“Can’t help you much,” he said. “I’ve only been with this circus a few weeks.” He handed the list to Peg, who was consuming whatever Kelly and I weren’t holding onto.

“No,” said Peg.

“My money’s on one of the outsiders,” said Kelly. “Probably that Hitchcock fella.”

Which, I thought, is why you are a clown and I am a detective, though there were those who would argue that I would make a better clown than a detective.

“OK,” I said, standing up. “Then let’s start with Hitchcock.”

He was a short, fat man with a lower lip like a pouting tailor, hair sparse but neatly in place, and wearing a dark suit and tie that looked as if they had just been handed to him by Belman’s Cleaning and Dyeing in Hollywood. He was seated in Elder’s office with his hands folded on his lap like a schoolboy.

“Hitchcock?” I said.

“I am Alfred Hitchcock,” he replied, looking at me with large eyes hooded by lids which suggested indifference, but the eyes gave too much away. “Are you a policeman?”

The word “policeman” seemed to come hard for him. I’d never seen Hitchcock before, but I knew who he was.

“
Suspicion,
” I said.

He looked frightened. His knuckles went white, and his hands remained clasped.

“Of what?” he said.

“No,” I smiled. “I’ve seen
Suspicion.
I’ve seen your movies. What are you doing here, at the circus?”

“At the moment,” he said very slowly with a distinct English accent, “I am being very frightened. Before that I was trying to get some material for a sequence in a film I’m considering.”

“A circus scene?”

“Precisely,” he said with a slight uplifting of the right side of his mouth that represented pain or an attempt to be friendly. “I’m staying with an acquaintance nearby, and my plan was to stop by for a few hours this morning, get some sense of atmosphere, and present my ideas to the writer. Why have I been asked to talk to you, and who are you?”

I sat on Elder’s cot. “Between us, I’m a private investigator. Name is Toby Peters. I’m pretty sure that aerialist Tanucci was murdered.”

Hitchcock’s eyes opened with interest, and he shifted his fat body slowly to face me. “Murdered,” he repeated, either savoring the word or trying to hear it come from his own mouth when it was about something real. “You are sure?” he said.

“As sure as I am that I’d marry Joan Fontaine if she’d have me,” I answered. He definitely smiled this time.

“This is better than I could have hoped,” he said as much to himself as to me. “But I’m sorry. A man has been murdered, and all I can think of is my movie.”

“That’s all right,” I said, wanting to lie back on the cot but unable to do so with the rigid, rotund director seated across from me. “You’re not a suspect. You’re more in the way of a possible witness. I saw you come in the tent earlier, and I saw you watching me when I walked over to the practice hitch.”

“Yes,” he said. “It struck me as rather peculiar that someone should be walking away from the flow of the crowd, the movement toward death. It struck me as an interesting image, the isolation of one man moving away from where the world is looking.”

“Did you see anyone go over to that harness, that thing I was looking at, maybe take it down?”

Hitchcock pursed his lips, blinked his eyes, and nodded once. “Someone did, I believe. I wasn’t watching really, but I had the sense of a person in blue, rather tall, or something about the person seeming tall.”

“Man, woman?” I tried.

“A man-woman,” he mused. “No, I don’t think so. I should surely have noticed that.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but he must have been. What I surely couldn’t decide was whether the joke was on me or a private entertainment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I react rather badly when disaster strikes anywhere but on a studio set.”

“I forgive you,” I said, wondering how to get out of this polite, droll conversation and get murder back to the people where it seemed to belong. “Tall figure, blue?”

“Correct,” he nodded, looking at the posters. “I never realized how frightening a circus could be.” Instead of looking frightened, he looked quite pleased. “Do you think it would be all right if I stayed today and possibly tomorrow? My friend lives in Mirador. He drove me over this morning.”

“I guess so,” I said, giving up and lying down on the cot. “I suggest you stay away from the Mirador police.”

Hitchcock rose slowly with a distinct grunt. He looked even fatter standing than he did sitting.

“As I have indicated,” he said, “I have a morbid fear of the police, dating back to my childhood days when my father had a policeman put me in jail for an hour to teach me what happens to bad boys. I have endeavored since that moment to be a good boy and stay away from policemen.”

“I’ll run off copies of that philosophy and send it to a few hundred friends of mine who could use it.”

“Good afternoon,” Hitchcock said politely, moving to the door.

“If you remember anything more about who was standing near that harness, let me know,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’ll be around.”

“I shall,” he said and left the wagon.

Thomas Paul, the “businessman” from Mirador, was the next person ushered into the wagon-office by Peg. When I heard the door open I sat up, and it’s a good thing I did.

I hadn’t had a good look at the man in the business suit who had run into the tent an hour earlier. I knew he was big, but his face had been covered by a hat. That hat was still on, but it couldn’t hide the scar on his face, a purple scar that split his face in half. The right side was sharp-eyed and smiling with a secret joke. The left side was pulled down, distorted by what seemed pain or sorrow. He was a Janus who couldn’t be read, happy and sad at the same time. The scar cut across the corner of his mouth, so his speech was slightly distorted.

Grotesqueness was no sign of guilt, just of fascination. I shook his hand and pointed to the chair. He took it. With some stretch of the imagination, his suit might be taken for blue, but it was more black than blue. Paul didn’t seem a good bet for a killer. Whoever did it was probably tied in to the death of the elephants for the past few years and was affiliated with the circus.

“Why have I been asked to come in here?” he said, his voice slurred.

“Won’t take a minute,” I said reassuringly, trying to make up my mind if it would be more polite to avoid looking at him or to force myself to keep my eyes on him.

“My visage makes you uncomfortable, Mr….”

“Peters,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I assure you that it is an even greater source of discomfort to me,” he said, the one side of his face amused, the other even more in agony from its opposite grin. “War accident. The Ardennes. Shell exploded. I have a feeling that even more will suffer in our current confrontation with the Huns.”

“We don’t call them Huns anymore,” I said. “Nazis.”

“It is your war,” he said, sitting back. “Call them what you like.”

“This is a routine investigation for the insurance company,” I said, not liking Mr. Paul. “May I ask you a few questions?”

“You may ask,” he said, his eyes never leaving me. “I will decide whether or not I wish to answer.”

I found a pencil and began to doodle on a sheet of paper on Elder’s desk. I drew cubes tied together and worked on Koko the clown. I didn’t care if Paul knew I wasn’t taking notes. “How long have you lived in Mirador?” I asked.

“Four years,” he said. “Though I fail to see how such information could help the insurance company.”

“Simply trying to fill out the form,” I said. “Background information establishes the credibility of the witness.”

“I witnessed nothing,” he said. “The accident had already taken place when I arrived.”

“What were you doing here, at the circus?” I tried.

“I am a reasonably wealthy man,” he said. “Primarily real estate in various parts of the nation. I have some plans for revitalizing Mirador and the county. Hope to draw business interests here.”

“To help the county while you sell land?”

“It is mutually advantageous,” he agreed. “I have no intention of defending my interest in making money. It is my interest, my passion. I came here today to try to begin negotiations to have the circus set up a permanent West Coast headquarters here. Just a preliminary step. The idea would be to make the circus management welcome, to plant the seed.”

“Your sheriff didn’t exactly make them welcome this morning,” I said amiably.

“Mr. Nelson is sometimes a bit overzealous,” said Paul. “But he knows his responsibility.”

“And he knows who pays the rent,” I added, looking up.

That face betrayed nothing because it displayed everything. “Mr.…”

“Peters,” I said.

“I am not here to engage in argument with you. I wish to cooperate with the circus if I can, for reasons which I have now made quite clear to you. I will make it clear to the management of this circus that it is to their advantage to have a location like Mirador where the government, which includes the sheriff, fully understands the plans and needs of the business community.”