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.”
Chapter Five
Burglars We
“… Watch the little lady closely, boys. Now she’s here; now she’s gone. The trick that fooled Houdini! For ten cents more you can step right up here on the stage, look into the cabinet, and see just how it’s done. Don’t crowd …”
Within the tent the music of the band changed from waltz time to the sprightly rhythm of the “Beer Barrel Polka” as a group of liberty horses trotted in.
“There would seem to be something happening in all three rings at once,” Merlini said quietly. “But let’s take them one at a time. Assuming that it may be murder, you’ve given Pauline opportunity. Anything else?”