Case with 4 Clowns by Leo Bruce

the difference between us. I said: ‘Perhaps it would be better for us if he could; if everybody could.’ I don’t know what made me say that. It just came out. ‘Why, what do you mean?’ said Anita. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘It’s just that I feel tired of us being so alike, I suppose.’ ”
    â€œAnd what did she say to that?” asked Beef.
    â€œNothing, she just laughed. We’d got to the wagon by then,and we started changing. She said she was going round into the tent to speak to you and Mr. Townsend, and then she suddenly had the idea that I should go instead of her. She tried to persuade me, but I wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t because I didn’t like a joke sometimes. I felt something worse than that; something I can’t describe.”
    â€œYou mean,” I asked, “that you thought it wasn’t in very good taste. You didn’t think it was a joke at all?”
    â€œNo. Nothing like that. It’s a feeling I’ve had before sometimes. Every time we do something that proves I’m exactly like Anita I feel a little the same. It’s almost as if she were stealing something of mine. As if it weren’t my own life I’m leading at all, but only half of hers. I don’t know if you see what I mean, it’s so hard to put it into words.”
    â€œYes,” said Beef thoughtfully, “I think I do. What it comes to is this. When you look at your sister and she’s doing something—we might say like tying her shoe-lace up—then it seems to you that it’s like looking at yourself in the mirror. Only you know you’re not doing that thing at all, so you’re sort of jealous, because it looks as though she’s taken something away from you. Is that what you mean?”
    â€œIn a way, I suppose it is,” agreed Helen. “But I don’t ever think it out clearly like that.”
    â€œAll right,” said Beef. “And then what happened?”
    â€œWell, then we went on changing and talking together as we always do. But then I happened to look round and Anita was with her back to me by the bed. Her back was bare, and the skin was just like I knew mine would look if I turned round to the mirror. I thought suddenly that if a fly settled on her it would probably make me itch as well as her. And then I picked up a knife.”
    â€œWhere was it?” asked Beef. “Did you take it out of a drawer?”
    â€œNo, it was on the dressing-table. One of the knives theysometimes use in the ring. Not a proper one, but made of steel, only blunted. It was always hanging about the place.”
    â€œAnd then what?”
    â€œThen I stabbed her, I suppose. I don’t really remember doing it. I just felt that I had to. It didn’t seem to me that Anita was a person at all—more like a cardboard figure. I wanted to cut at it with something. I didn’t hate her or anything like that. I just forgot she was a person at all. And then she fell across the bed with a sort of moan and I knew what I had done. Oh, it was horrible …”
    Helen suddenly stopped speaking and crouched down with her head in her hands crying softly to herself. “I must have been mad,” she said. “Whatever could have made me want to do a thing like that?”
    As she spoke we heard coming from the tent the sound of the band playing and of the clowns shouting. It seemed to seep through slowly, as if our attention had now become relaxed, and we were able to notice things outside of this wagon again. Anita too, must have been disturbed by the sound for she stirred for a moment on the bed, and then opened her eyes.
    â€œWell,” said Beef, “and how are you feeling, young lady? You gave us a bit of a fright, you did.”
    Anita smiled vaguely and tried to sit up. But the smile turned to a wry expression of pain as she felt the wound.
    â€œBest thing you can do is to lie