• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Your star, Vittoria, tells a different story. She fears for her life. Does she have any enemies here?”

“None,” Philip Rover assured us.

“What about Edith Everage?”

“Everage? She’s one of the acrobats, isn’t she?”

“So I understand,” Holmes told him. “Was she ever considered for billing as the Circus Belle?”

“Edith Everage? Certainly not! We ran a nationwide contest to choose a beautiful woman for the part. Vittoria was the winner. Edith was never considered.”

“Yet there have been two attempts on Vittoria’s life, possibly by Edith.”

“Did you get these ideas from my brother?” Philip asked, anger beginning to show on his face. “I must tell you our Circus Belle is a popular woman with the younger men here.”

“Including Charles?” Holmes studied the man with his piercing gray eyes, but before he could say anything else there came a shout from the direction of the tiger’s cage.

Philip Rover turned and started toward one of the clowns who’d yelled. “What is it?” he barked.

The clown came running over, trying to keep his voice low. “Mr Rover, something’s wrong! I just looked under the canvas and Vittoria’s in there with the tiger. I think she’s dead.”

The minutes that followed were a nightmare. Pushing the great beast back with long poles, the handlers finally were able to unlock the cage and pull the body out of its grasp. As a physician it fell upon me to examine Vittoria’s body when it was removed from the cage. I had no trouble-pronouncing her dead, but the sight of that clawed, bloody face, with the dress virtually torn from her body, moved me to a great sadness. From her tiny feet to a gaping wound in her neck, there were claw marks everywhere.

Holmes watched it all in silence, and did not speak until I had finished my examination. “What do you think, Watson? Did the tiger kill her or not?”

It was not the first time I had found Holmes’s reasoning a step ahead of my own. My eyes focused on the gaping neck wound. “His claws couldn’t have made a wound like that and there seems to be no blood on his jaws or teeth.”

“Exactly my thought! The woman was already dead when she was placed in the cage. It was covered with canvas and the killer expected it would not be found until show time.” He turned to a pale Philip Rover. “Who had a key to this cage?”

“Only the animal’s trainer. And I keep a spare one in my tent.”

“Does your brother have one?”

“I don’t think so.”

Charles Rover joined us then, summoned by the ringmaster. “What happened here?” he asked.

“Someone killed Vittoria and put her body in the tiger’s cage,” his brother told him.

“My God! Should we cancel the afternoon performance?”

Philip Rover scoffed at the idea. “We have five hundred people out there already, with more arriving every minute. The show will go on, but get this tiger cage out of here. The police will want to examine it.”

I could see something was troubling Holmes, beyond the traumatic fact of the crime itself. “Did you gentlemen carry any insurance on the life of Vittoria Costello?” he inquired.

Philip brushed aside the question. “We have enough other expenses. I know of no circus that insures its performers. Why would you ask that?”

“In a death where there has been facial injury, one has to be certain of identification. Fraud of some sort is always a possibility.”

“Go and look at the body,” Philip told his younger brother. “Assure Mr Holmes of its identity.”

Charles returned after a moment, the blood drained from his face. “It’s Vittoria,” he assured us. “There’s no doubt. The ringmaster identified her too.”

Sherlock Holmes nodded. “Then we must go about finding her killer.”

“The circus isn’t hiring you,” Philip stated quite clearly. “This is a job for the local police.”

“Ah! But they did not do well in Oxford, did they? The death of the Spaniard is still unsolved.”

“I told you about that,” Philip insisted. “It was an accident. We have no money for you, Mr Holmes.”

“I was hired by Vittoria Costello to protect her,” he informed them. “Now I