The Headless Lady

Chapter Four Suspicion

The animal cages, parked end to end, lined half the interior of the menagerie, not the gay and gaudy gold-encrusted parade wagons of memory, but great, simply painted, red and white trucks and trailers. They held a pair of lions with cub, two leopards, a brown bear, a hyena, a colony of chattering monkeys, and a trained chimp. The lead and ring stock was lined up on the opposite side; two bored but supercilious camels, a bright-eyed zebra, a sleepy ibex, and the horses — broad-hipped resin-backs, high-school and liberty horses, and cow ponies. Near the entrance that led into the big top itself, just beyond the stand that sold Coca-Cola, popcorn, and peanuts, were four elephants, their trunks moving in restless exploration. An attendant was sweeping the broad back of one of them with a broom.

Near the horses stood a lanky figure in an especially resplendent costume of tight white trousers, high-heeled boots, bright blue shirt, and ten-gallon hat, coiling a long lariat. His hard, angular face in the shadow of the hat brim had a very familiar look.

“Tex Mayo,” Mac said. “The movie star. Featured in the after-show with Blaze, his educated pony. Fancy roping, riding, shooting, and bull-whip snapping. You must meet the horse.”

“What’s wrong with Tex?” Merlini asked.

“Prima donna,” Mac said. “He was a big shot in Hollywood until the singing cowboy came in; Tex is tone-deaf. Made a lot of dough in his time and spent it all on swimming pools. He gets a bigger salary than any other performer on the show, but to him it’s still peanuts. The Major was ready to put the skids under him, too — he’s been liquored up pretty much lately, and it interferes with his marksmanship. But he’ll be around awhile longer now, I guess. He’s been making a play for Pauline — and she likes it.”

Mac went on into the big top; and Merlini, Towne, and I stood just within watching the clowns, who were slapping each other down with oversize gloves in that perennial bit of circus tomfoolery, the clown prize fight.

Merlini watched it a moment and then asked, “Just what did happen to the Major, Towne? Mac rather shies from the subject.”

Towne turned to look at him and raised a questioning eyebrow. “You don’t think Calamity’s remarks have any foundation, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Merlini said. “That’s why I asked.”

Towne shrugged. “Don’t know a lot about it,” he said. “They found him around midnight last night, quarter of a mile or so from the lot at Kings Falls. He’d piled up against a concrete bridge abutment at the foot of a hill. Nearly threw him through the windshield. I missed all the excitement. I heard about it when I got on the lot this morning.”

“What do you do, tag along in your own car and stop at hotels?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t agree with Calamity, then?”

“I hadn’t considered his remarks very seriously. I’ve heard him do a lot of grousing since I joined up Saturday. I don’t know what he thinks it is, if it wasn’t an accident. Suicide’s not very probable by that method, and it’s a damned impractical murder method. You could drug a man or knock him out, then put him in the machine and pull the throttle out at the top of the hill; but you couldn’t be at all sure you’d kill him.”

While Towne was speaking, the clowns finished and ran off, and the announcer’s voice came from the amplifiers: “The Mighty Hannum Shows now take great pleasure in presenting an outstanding feature of the circus world, those two amazing dancing queens of the tight wire, Pauline and Paulette, in their death-defying somersaulting feats of grace and impossible skill!”

“Oh,” Merlini said. “Miss Hannum is working tonight?”

“Yes,” Towne replied. “Looks that way. It takes a lot to stop her. Very determined young lady.”

Merlini glanced at me. I knew he was thinking that the phrase had a familiar sound.

Two girls in Spanish costume, flaring trousers, bolero vests, and wide-brimmed, scarlet hats took their bow in the center ring and ascended swiftly to the small platforms, ten feet high, between which stretched the thin steel wire. At this distance they were merely two dancing figures, either of whom might be the girl we were looking for.

Singly at first and then together they ran and postured on the slender, bouncing wire in a sort of two-dimensional dance, a routine that was such an expert and unusually graceful exhibition of balance that even my layman’s eye tagged it at once as big-time.

The announcer broke in again for a moment: “Pauline will now attempt a feat equaled by no other woman on the wire, a backward somersault from feet to feet! Watch her!”

One figure ran lightly to the center of the wire, balanced slowly, stood perfectly still with arms outstretched, held it, waited, and then repeated the maneuver, taking short, calculating steps as she watched the wire, building up to her climax. She did it finally — a sudden rising lift, a backward swirl of color, and a precarious, shaky landing, the wire vibrating from side to side beneath her feet. It seemed for a second impossible that she could maintain her balance; and then suddenly she stood straight and still, and walked without haste to her platform.

“The announcer exaggerates,” Merlini commented. “She’s not the only woman to do that, but she is good. Let’s get a look at her as she comes off. Under the side wall there and around—” He stopped suddenly, his gaze fastened on the center ring. “Towne,” he said, “does that happen at every performance?”

“That? What?”

“The other girl. She just completed as nonchalant a forward somersault on the wire as I’ve ever seen.”.

“Yes. She’s done it each time I’ve seen the act.”

“And the only special announcement was the one Pauline got, like now?”

Towne nodded. “Uh huh. Why?”

“There’s a story for you,” Merlini answered. “The forward on the wire, anyplace for that matter, is far more difficult than a backward. Try it sometime. Find out why the wrong girl gets the announcement and you should have a story. Come on, Ross. See you later, Towne.”

I followed Merlini as he ducked under the side wall on the left and out into the back yard. Star Avenue, or Kinker’s Row (kinker is a performer), as it is sometimes called, lay before us, an orderly line of autos, trailers, sleeping cars, and prop trucks drawn up paralleling the big top. Halfway along the side wall were two openings, the entrance and exit used by the performers in entering the arena, called the back door. Walking in the space between the cars and the tent, we started toward it.

We had gone only a short distance when Keith Atterbury came from the dark between two trailers and stopped us. There was a seriously worried expression on his face. “Could I see you a minute? I’ve got something I’d like to show you.”

Merlini nodded. Atterbury moved to the nearest trailer and, standing in the light from its window, opened a large manila envelope. He took out three glossy 8 x 10 photos and gave them to Merlini. I looked over his shoulder. A strip of copy paper pasted along the lower edge of the first photo bore the typed caption: Circus owner killed in auto crash near Kings Falls, N. Y. The photographer had done a professionally competent job. The shot, although taken at night with flash-lighting, was clear and sharply focused. But it was not the sort of picture you would enter in a salon exhibition or care to look at during a meal.

Major Hannum was a heavy-set man with an almost totally bald head. His body was lying halfway through the shattered windshield of the car, the front end of which, jammed against a concrete bridge abutment, resembled a battered accordion. His face was badly lacerated. The second photo was a close shot from another angle, and the third a long shot.

Merlini looked up and gave Atterbury a sharp glance. “Why,” he asked, “are you showing these to me?”

Atterbury tapped a cigarette nervously against the back of his hand. He spoke hesitantly, jerkily. “I know Sigrid Verrill and her father. I was on the Webb Show with him last year. He told me about that Skelton Island case you solved. I don’t like that photo. You know about such things. I want to know if what I see in it means what I think it does — before I stick my neck out. You—” Merlini broke in. “Do you have anything more than just this?”

“You do see it then,” Atterbury said. “I’ve been hoping all day that I was wrong. Yes, I’ve got more.”

“I see enough to want to know a lot more,” Merlini replied. “Let’s have it.”

I took the photos from Merlini and gave them a closer look. I didn’t get it.

“You heard Calamity,” Keith began. “There’s more of the same. I went back to Kings Falls this morning, as soon as I heard about the accident. They hadn’t moved the car yet. I didn’t like what I saw. Then, at the newspaper office, I happened to see the photos.”

“What didn’t you like?”

“Well, for one thing, the Major put nine or ten thousand miles on his car every season. He’s never had as much as a dented fender before. The cops figured he was drunk and speeding. But he had a bad heart, he never drank, and no one ever saw him go faster than forty-five on a straight stretch. We kidded him about buying a sixteen-cylinder speed-wagon and then driving it like a horse and buggy. He was as proud as Punch of that shiny cream and chromium. Afraid he’d scratch it. Then, suddenly, he smashes it all to hell.”

“Where was he going?” Merlini asked.

“That’s funny, too. Nobody seems to know. He couldn’t have been headed for the town ahead. He always moves with the show the next morning, for one thing; and the road he was on was headed south. Waterboro’s north of Kings Falls. The road was a side road at that. It doesn’t hit anything but tank towns for sixty miles.”

“Picture taken at night,” said Merlini. “Just when did the accident happen?”

“They found the body at midnight. He’d left the lot in Kings Falls at 10:45, during the concert [extra show after the main performance, originally a musical pro-gram]. I’ve checked that. The kid stationed at the lot entrance to direct parking saw his car leave, driving like hell. Almost ran the kid down. But the queerest thing is that the Major would even think of leaving the lot at a time like that. Just before the main show blowed, he gave orders to have the menagerie top double-staked for the night. It was getting damn windy, and it looked like blowdown weather. The Major told ’em to run through the concert on the double-quick so we could get the customers out and the other tops sloughed before we had trouble. Then, just as the customers that didn’t stay for the after-show were coming out, he says he is going to his trailer for a slicker. That was 10:30. He never came back. That’s what made me wonder in the first place. He wouldn’t leave the lot in the face of a possible blowdown.” (To slough, pronounced to rhyme with bough, is to take down.)

“That a first-hand account?” Merlini asked. “You were on the front door when he left?”

Keith nodded. “Yes. I’d been there all evening, and I stuck around with Calamity until the concert was all out and all over about eleven, when I left to go ahead to Waterboro. I usually make my jump after the night show so I’ll be on deck in the next town early to contact the papers.”

“And you think that this photo—”

“Cinches it. Yes.”

“Newspaper photo. Who took it?”

“Photographer on the Kings Falls Gazette, Irving Desfor. He had a lucky break. He was the guy who found the body.”

“He took his pictures before anyone had touched the car or body?”

“Yes. First thing he did. Even before he reported it.”

“The paper hasn’t printed these shots?”

“They used the long shot. Not so much detail in it. The others are a bit strong for public consumption.”

Merlini looked at the photos again. “Judging from the matter-of-fact caption, neither the photographer nor his editor saw in the pictures what you think you do? And the medical examiner—?”

“They’d have spread it all across the front page if they had. The medical examiner hasn’t seen the photos, as far as I know. And he didn’t see the body until it was in the undertaking parlor in Kings Falls. I checked that.”

“Going to show it to him?”

“I don’t know. Should I? Have I got enough evidence? The medical examiner’s an elderly stuffed shirt, and now that he’s given his verdict of accidental death, he won’t want to back-track without some damned good reason. Besides, he’s nearly a hundred miles behind and in the next county. Tomorrow we’ll be eighty miles farther away.”

“That’s awkward,” Merlini admitted. “Who else have you shown these to?”

“No one — yet.”

Merlini looked surprised. “And you’ve had the pictures all day? Why not? Shouldn’t Mac see them?”

Atterbury shook his head. “It’s dynamite. You saw Mac’s reaction when Calamity aired a few doubts. Hush-hush. A police investigation on a circus is poison. They might hold up the whole show while they nosed around asking questions. We’d maybe blow the next stand, and the fuzz on the route ahead might make trouble about issuing readers. At a time like this that could fold the show. Mac’s job—” (A reader is a license to exhibit.)

“Dammit!” I exploded impatiently. “What is it in these pix that I don’t see? Mind?”

“Something you can’t see because it isn’t there,” Merlini answered. “Something that isn’t there but should be. That it, Atterbury?”

“Yes. Blood.”

“Blood?” I looked at the prints again.

Merlini said, “Those cuts on the face, Ross. And that whopping big gash along the neck. His head and shoulders are lying out on the engine hood. That cream-colored paint job should be well smeared with blood. But it isn’t. There’s just one small dark streak across the top of his head that might be blood. That’s not nearly enough.”

I got it then. It hit me like a ton of high explosive. The cuts had been made after death — some time after. The accident—

Merlini was speaking. “Why haven’t you shown these to Miss Hannum? After all, he was her father. Even though it may affect the show, if the accident is suspect she has a right to know — and to decide if the police—”

“That,” Keith said, “is the trouble. You see, just as the Major left the front door last night headed for his trailer, I saw someone come from the back yard and follow after him. They went into the trailer together. The last person to see him alive was Pauline Hannum!”

For a moment no one said. anything. Then Keith added, “And, unless we do something about it? there’s another murder to come.”