The Curse of the Grand Guignol (13 page)

“Suicides are common,”
explained Monsieur Radzival as the landau came to a halt and they
looked down a weedy embankment where some fishermen were dragging a
body out of the water. Then almost in the same breath he said, “You
didn’t meet Mademoiselle Kiki last night. You will most likely meet
her today. Mademoiselle Kiki calls Bobo home too.”

“That must drive the three
Humboldts insanely jealous,” reasoned Dr Watson.

“Oh, not at all, according to
la marquise Monsieur Crespigny regards Mademoiselle Kiki like a
sister. He regards all women thus. Mademoiselle Kiki used to live
on Le Cirque, the peniche moored next one along where the three
circassiens live.”

It was with trepidation that
our two sleuths crossed the gangway. Neither said so directly, but
they expected to find the playwright lying in a pool of blood. In
fact, it would not have surprised them to discover the dead body
currently being fished out of the river to be that of the man they
had come in search of. Had they arrived too late?

But no, Raoul Crespingy was
nursing a cup of black coffee and a throbbing head. The moment he
spotted the Countess he recalled the midday appointment and
groaned. Dr Watson feigned interest in the man’s health, then
knowing the Countess would need time alone with the playwright in
order to question him, suggested he and Monsieur Radzival take a
stroll along the Quai de Jemmapes and look at the dead body. He
hoped the corpse would not resemble a marionette – but then he
realised the date was wrong. It had not yet been a week and if the
killer stayed true to form the next murder would not take place
until the eighth of December.

“Anonymous?” said the Countess
bluntly.

It all came back to the
playwright and he groaned again.

“Let’s go up on deck,” she
suggested, though it was more like a command. “I am warmly rugged
up and you look as if you could do with a lungful of fresh air. Is
Kiki on board?”

“Kiki? No, she’s gone to
rehearsals with the troupe from Le Cirque.”

“Good, then we won’t be
interrupted when you explain to me how you get hold of scripts that
are linked to the murders plaguing Paris.”

He wrapped his hands around his
coffee cup and groaned again. They settled on empty wooden crates.
The sky looked like it had been streaked with turpentine and
stripped of colour.

“You may begin,” she instructed
sternly.

He had had a chance to order
his thoughts and did not quibble. “When I took up the job at
le
Cirque du Grand Guignol
I was already suffering from writer’s
block. I hadn’t been able to write anything new for more than a
year. I had penned a few things on Dreyfus and managed to get them
published in rags like
Le Libre Parole
and rubbish pamphlets
published by the Brotherhood of the Boldt. I was trading on that to
keep my reputation afloat until the muse returned. How hard could
it be write three short plays that appealed to degenerates, I asked
myself. Unfortunately, it was harder than I imagined. Davidov
scorned everything I showed him. Then, when I was about to give up
hope and confess to being a failure I found an envelope waiting for
me here on Bobo. It contained three short plays written by
Anonymous. Hilariously cruel, vile and risqué! Davidov loved them.
They were a huge success. All that week, as the plays were being
lauded, I suffered in secret, wondering how I would replicate such
success when,
voila
, another envelope appeared.”

“When you say ‘appeared’ – what
do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that. I
returned to the peniche late one night and there was this envelope
on the table addressed to me. I was not about to look a gift horse
in the mouth.”

“You made no enquiries?”

“No, why should I? Whoever was
writing them knew their plays were being performed on rue Ballu.
They knew I was passing them off as my own work. One does not toss
away a gift from the gods. Who knows! They may even have come from
the gods!”

He gave a cynical self-mocking
laugh.

“More like a gift from the
devil,” reminded the Countess archly. “I presume you still have the
original copy of each play that came from Anonymous?”

He shook his head. “I made
copies in my own hand and destroyed the originals for reasons that
are obvious.”

“I suppose it is too much to
ask if you recognized the penmanship?”

“They were written in pencil.
It was a childish scrawl. I presumed that was to disguise the
identity of the writer?”

“Hmm, what about the
paper?”

“Cheap, poor quality.”

“Envelope?”

“Expensive, good quality.”

“You kept the envelopes?”

“No, I destroyed them too.”

Neither said anything after
that. They lit up cigarettes and gazed at the fast-moving current
that started one hundred miles away at the Ourcq River and
eventually ebbed into the Seine. Flecks of winter sun were
reflected on the surface of the inky water like bits of broken
glass. The constantly shifting patterns provided a mesmerizing
son-et-lumière lightshow.

“There’s a man in a black cloak
standing on the opposite bank - don’t look now,” she warned. “Wait
until you toss your cigarette into the water and then look.”

He took one last drag, tossed
his cigarette into the swift-flowing canal and looked over to the
Quai de Valmy. “What about him?”

“Have you seen him before?”

“No.”

“What about at the
theatre?”

“A lot of people wear black
cloaks, especially the ones who take private booths. They don’t
want to be recognized. There’s no crime against it. If you are
thinking that man might be Anonymous, well, so he might, but so
might it be anyone in Paris.”

Yes, Anonymous could be anyone
in Paris. No! That was wrong! It couldn’t! Whoever delivered the
envelopes knew where Raoul Crespingy lived. They knew his early
playwriting attempts had been rejected by Davidov. They knew when
he would be away from the peniche and when he would return. They
were talented and shrewd and secretive. They were clever and
cunning and capable of cold-blooded murder.

“What time do rehearsals
finish?” she asked suddenly, pushing to her feet.

“They go all afternoon. Why?
Are you planning to ruin my life by telling Davidov what I just
revealed to you in confidence?”

“No, I am planning to pay a
visit to Le Cirque while there is no one at home. Will I find the
peniche locked?”

“No one locks their peniche
around here. The people who live on the canal do not steal from
each other. They already know there’s nothing worth stealing. Are
you going to search for paper and envelopes?”

“Amongst other things,” she
said cagily. “But first I’m going to search Kiki’s room. By the
way, as soon as you receive the next gift from the gods I want to
know. And do not destroy any part of it. When are you expecting it
to arrive?”

“It arrived this morning, as I
had hoped. That’s why I left the Hotel de Merimont early and why I
forgot the midday rendezvous. I have already copied it and
destroyed the evidence.”

She blasphemed under her
breath. “Next time you do that I will have you arrested.”

He was about to remind her she
had no authority in France but then thought better of it. “This way
to Kiki’s room,” he said.

The peniche was larger than it
looked. It was built in the style of a miniature Noah’s Ark, and
being a floating zoo, it came with all the accompanying ripe smells
of a barn. One would have thought that having a woman aboard would
have mitigated the stench of unwashed clothes and a stinking
piss-pot, alas, it was made all the more nauseating by the liberal
drenching of eau de toilette.

Kiki had numerous chests of
fancy clothes, some expensive baubles – presumably gifts from her
trio of lovers - costumes from her circus days, but no paper,
pencils or envelopes.

“She’s illiterate,” said the
playwright matter-of-factly when the Countess commented on the
dearth of paper and books.

“How long have you been living
together here on the peniche?”

“Three months. Kiki moved in
two months before the first show. Davidov insisted she move in here
with me when he discovered her spending more and more time at Café
Bistro. He organized for Felix, Hilaire and Vincent to move into
the peniche next door at the same time. They christened it Le
Cirque. Presumably, the idea was to help keep an eye on her. Not
that he had anything to worry about from my end. He knows my
preferences don’t run to the Kiki’s of this world. The four of them
had been living in a slum near the Trocadero but it was being
demolished to make way for the Paris Fair. They were living hand to
mouth after their circus folded. Circuses cannot compete with the
Grand Guignol, the Moulin Rouge, the dance halls, the
cinématographes, and so on. Fortunately, Davidov had seen one of
their shows and recognized their talent. He snapped them up. He
pays them a pittance. Like all those who have tasted true poverty,
they are grateful for the work, but one day they will turn and bite
the hand that feeds them.”

Dr Watson and Monsieur Radzival
were nowhere to be seen. They were neither gawping at the corpse on
the grassy embankment, nor strolling along the quai, nor crossing
the iron bridge to the other side of the canal. The man in the
black cloak was still watching the peniche.

Le Cirque was surprisingly tidy
and odour free. The three circus performers were clearly
disciplined and self-respecting men. They lived by the adage: a
place for everything and everything in its place. It made the job
of searching for evidence easy. But the Countess was not merely
searching for pencils and paper here she was searching for a
possible murder weapon (something with a deadly spike), small
pieces of wood, string, cardboard, a hatchet, and a sharp knife
able to cut through cartilage. She found none of these items. But
what she found made her breath catch.

“What’s that?”

Raoul Crespigny was leaning
negligently against the door jamb. He had followed her without her
knowledge, creeping up on her on quiet cat feet.

“A puppet,” she said, trying
not to betray her startlement.

“Let’s see it.”

She lifted it up for him to
view, because to do otherwise would have made him even more
curious. It was old and battered and unpleasant to look at.

“Sacre bleu!” he exclaimed,
sounding surprised. “Bigger than a puppet! I remember when I was a
boy there was a vagabond who came to our village every summer. He
was probably nothing more than a tramp, but being wide-eyed, I
regarded him like a
ballant cascadeur
, an acrobatic
stuntman. He dangled an ugly doll like that with a gaudy red mouth
and bright red cheeks and he entertained the kids with impromptu
shows and amazing feats. One summer he just stopped coming. I
remember waiting and waiting for him to show up. I looked out for
him every day. When the leaves started to fall and the days grew
shorter I realized he wasn’t coming back again. I wondered for a
long time what happened to him.”

“Did you ever find out?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully.
“Sometimes I still wonder.”

Carefully, she replaced the
marionette back in the old leather trunk plastered with travel
posters from Toulon, Toulouse, Nice and Sarlat. “Nothing in here.
Whose room is next door?”

“Vincent.”

“Whose room was this?”

“Hilaire.”

“Not Felix?”

“No, why?”

“No reason.”

An hour later, when she emerged
from the pristine belly of the houseboat, Raoul was waiting for her
on the deck of Le Cirque.

“He’s gone,” he said. “The man
in the black cloak disappeared about ten minutes ago. He was
definitely watching us, or more to the point, watching you. Did you
find anything?”

“No,” she lied, endeavouring to
sound bitterly disappointed. “Nothing at all interesting.”

“What about that giant
puppet?”

Careful not to look at him, she
took the hand he offered as she clambered down the gangway onto the
quai. “That is hardly the evidence of murder I was looking
for.”

“True,” he shrugged as he leapt
down beside her, “but it looked a bit grotesque. I might find my
muse and work it into a play for le Grand Guignol. What do you
think?”

“I think you would need to find
your muse first.”

He laughed at her quip. “Hey!
Where do you think your friend, Dr Watson, got to with that weird
librarian?”

“Monsieur Radzival – what makes
you call him weird?”

“Well, he is weird. He reminds
me of a salamander. He’s got a slender body, short arms and a blunt
head. His legs are the right length for his torso, but the rest is
weirdly proportioned. I bet he’s able to grow a body part if you
chop it off.”

“Does he go often to the
theatre?”

“Never.”

“He doesn’t accompany la
marquise on occasion?”

“Never.”

“She goes regularly?”

“Of course.”

“On her own?”

“Always. She is a major
benefactress and keeps a private booth. She always comes back-stage
after a show to congratulate everyone on their performance. She
doesn’t mind being seen. She is not a hypocrite.”

“Does la marquise have any say
in the show?”

“If you mean does she tell
Davidov how to do his job – no! Oh, there’s your friend now,
crossing the bridge with the librarian. I don’t how la marquise can
stand that slimy salamander slinking around Hotel de Merimont day
and night. He gives Kiki the creeps.”

The Marais started life as a
marshy bog outside the walls of Paris where the Knights Templar
chose to build their place of worship. Other religious buildings
such as churches, abbeys and convents quickly followed suit and
before long the nobility were erecting their private palaces in the
shadows of God’s many houses. The unwholesome marsh soon boasted
the greatest number of
hotels particulier
of any
arrondissement.