The Curse of the Grand Guignol (26 page)

Iron eyebrows brushed off the
insult. “There are no elephants and lions inside churches.”

“There might be if they escaped
from a circus,” offered La Noire sweetly.

“The peasant might even be
crucified in the final scene,” suggested Radzival, entering into
the ridiculousness of the fantasy scenario.

Crespigny laughed heartily and
slapped the librarian on the back. Radzival appeared to blush at
the rough contact or perhaps the fact he was thrust suddenly into
the limelight. He blushed some more and took a step back when the
playwright gave him an impish wink.

“Yes!” exclaimed Davidov loudly,
happy to take centre stage. “We haven’t had a crucifixion! If you
finish it with a rape on the altar that would be the
coup de
grace
!”

Dr Watson had heard enough. He
excused himself from the salon to look in on Xenia.

The Marquise de Merimont was not
as appalled as the doctor expected. Her soft sea-green eyes were
sparkling avidly.

“Instead of viewing the
Marionette Murders as a threat to your livelihood,” she addressed
to the director, “you could capitalize on them.”

“How do you mean?” said Davidov,
sounding interested.

“You could make use of them in
your promotions. Contact the newspapers and point out the
similarity of the murders to your plays. The audiences will come on
droves. Queues will be stretching to the Boulevard de Clichy. You
will be more popular than the gang on rue Chaptal in no time at
all.”

Davidov punched the air
triumphantly. Napoleon at the end of his Egyptian campaign could
not have been more over-joyed. “You’re right! Why didn’t I think of
it! The return on your investment, la marquise, will be enormous!
And I could afford to take the show to America!”

“America?” echoed la marquise
weakly, the sparkle going out of her skin.

“Yes! Straight after the Paris
Fair next year!”

La Noire gave a little clap and
did a shimmy. “I can go home famous! Not just a cheap chanteuse
or…” She stopped abruptly and looked around for Mahmoud, her voice
dropping. “Or a two-bit actress no one has ever heard of.”

“Let’s go and finish those ink
blots!” shouted the director like a general rallying his troops for
victory. “I’ve got a show to put on tonight!”

The mood lifted. No one felt
under threat. It was tacitly agreed that either the Humboldts or
the circassiens were guilty. Everyone set to work creating a poem
to match their blot.

Dr Watson rattled off the first
thing that came into his head. He was disgusted with the people he
was being forced to entertain and wanted this party to end as soon
as possible. Apart from la marquise and the librarian, he didn’t
think the others possessed a shred of morality between them. And he
was none too certain about the Marquise de Merimont. She had
sounded quite gleeful in the salon when outlining how Davidov could
profit from the murder of innocent souls. And she
did
go
every night to the theatre. That spoke volumes for her true
character.

He formed a new theory. He
wondered if la marquise paid the Humboldts or the circassiens to
murder people to promote the theatre she financed. She probably
knew lots of respectable elderly citizens who could be lured to
dark and sinister places in the middle of the night for the
purposes of mutilation and murder. She probably watched under cover
of darkness, the same way she watched the horror plays from her
private booth.

Dr Watson rattled off the first
rhyme that came to him:

This and That

An eye for an eye

Tit for tat

This or That?

Davidov thought his blot looked
like a Golem:

Unshaped Shem

Vulgar clay

Met and emet

Death and Truth

Kneaded from Adam

Dust to dust

Judenhass.

Inspector de Guise was out of
sorts and out of inspiration. His mind was drawing blanks just as
it had been from the start of this terrible business. Nothing made
sense:

Two wrongs don’t make it
right

Oh, yes they do!

Two wrongs make a right

Tu quoque!

The Marquise de Merimont was
seeing moon rabbits. Her whole life seemed meaningless, a fading
fantasy; her youthful dream dying before her eyes, the world
spinning inexorably away from her:

Lonely rabbit on the moon

Blind, deaf, mute, old

Far, far away

All alone

Dead.

Raoul Crespigny felt his muse
return. Life was suddenly golden. Time was on his side. He dipped
his quill in the ink and wrote as furiously as the bard:

Murder most foul

Alas poor Yorrick

Who struts and frets his hour
upon the stage

One may smile and be a
villain

Good night sweet prince

Flights of angels sing thee to
thy bed

To die to sleep

And in that sleep of death

What dreams may come

Conscience makes cowards of us
all

Be not my sins remembered.

Monsignor Delgardo decided it
might be wise to stick to butterflies. He set out to create the
most boring imagery imaginable, the sort that would draw no
attention to itself; words such as luminous, diaphanous, temporal
and ephemeral were purged in favour of the banal:

Butterfly flits

By and by

Flutterby Butterfly

fly, fly, fly.

Monsieur Radzival’s blot looked
like an angel. He had long ago given up believing in angels so it
surprised him to see one. He was more accustomed to seeing
devils:

Library angel

Heavenly spirit of the book

Beautiful being

Luminous, diaphanous,
mysterious

Sweet stardust thing

Fearless seraphim

Adieu.

The Countess could not
concentrate while Xenia was lying upstairs, barely breathing,
fighting to stay alive. She kept picturing Xenia’s golden plait on
the pillow and Coco’s stringy hair on the mattress and Madame
Hertzinger’s hair hacked off with a hatchet. Ink had splashed onto
her paper when Crespigny first caused everyone to jump. It ran
higgledy-piggledy in all directions like witch’s hair caught in a
windstorm:

Little Witch
en
l’air

Stormy eyed, starry eyed

Wild and wicked

Sing for Little Mary

The song of Marianne

Mad Mother, bad Mother

Madonna on a string

Rag doll, hag doll

Danse, danse, danse
.

Mahmoud and La Noire didn’t take
long to decide the winners. The Sikh liked the word seraphim and
the Negress believed in guardian angels. That settled it. Monsieur
Radzival was declared the winner of the poetry prize. He accepted
graciously and seemed lost for words when he received the enamelled
gold and silver cigarette box in the style of Faberge.

Best ink blot went to Monsieur
Delgardo. Everyone loved a butterfly and they could appreciate the
delicate symmetry in the design. Pity about the poem. He was
clearly thrilled to receive the iridium, gold-tipped, dip pen and
was about to launch into a thank you speech when Crespigny cut him
off.

“Shut-up, you old fool,” he
snapped, looking flushed from too much champagne. “Don’t let
Richelieu’s costume go to your head. It’s a children’s game, not an
invitation to join the forty immortals. You are not being
inaugurated into the Académie francaise.”

Best costume was won by Monsieur
Davidov. As the judges pointed out, he seemed to inhabit the role,
not just the clothes. The iron-browed director seemed speechless
and humble for the first time in his life as he accepted the jet
tie pin. He promised to reserve the first row for his two hosts,
the inspector, and the Sikh. “Bring all your friends!” he said
magnanimously.

As for the booby prize, that was
won by everyone’s favourite critic, Raoul Crespigny. He had gone to
the least amount of trouble for his costume, his ink blot was a
featureless blob, and his poem was entirely plagiarized. It was
very disappointing for a wordsmith. Everyone applauded unironically
as he wept into his handkerchief and departed with an arm around
the winner of the poetry prize to prove he was no sore loser.

Exeunt omnes.

Xenia began to show
improvement. She took a little food and was able to keep it down.
Her pulse was stable and she recognised the faces of those gathered
around her bed. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Fedir was dispatched to pick up
the trunk full of marionettes, and then hire a couple of men to
deliver it to the theatre for a set time, so as not to implicate
himself.

The Countess changed quickly out
of her Colombina costume and went off in the landau to the
telegraph office to check if the telegram she had sent the other
day had received a reply.

Smoking his calabash, Dr Watson
sat by Xenia’s bedside and dozed off.

Inspector de Guise went directly
to Montmartre. A private conversation with the Countess prior to
the arrival of the other guests had him on a mission to investigate
rue de Brouillard and rue des Lilas. It was his job to interview
every rag and bone man he came across, waking them from their
slumber if need be. The Countess had charged him with the task of
discovering if a new rag-grubber had recently joined their ranks.
He only had a few hours to complete the task for he was due at rue
Ballu at eight o’clock. There was no time to change out of his
costume so he went as Sherlock Holmes.

After speaking to a dozen
rag-grubbers and discovering nothing of interest he finally came
across a tatty Ratapoil wearing a battered top hat and a
double-breasted coat that had seen better days. He was in a
talkative mood and told him that a new man had recently moved into
rue de Brouillard. The new man kept to himself and did not sleep on
the premises, unlike the others who guarded their rags and bones as
if they were crown jewels.

Rue de Brouillard was a
charcoal-smudged lane lined with disused brick warehouses
punctuated with broken windows where black smoke blinded everyone
who came and went because charcoal braziers burned day and night in
order to dry the rags that hung from the rafters. Some of the
better rags were washed in cauldrons full of boiling water which
hung suspended over small bonfires. The rag and bone men would stir
their rags and pull them out using a spiked stick, then fling them
over the rafters to dry. The stick was about a metre long and had a
metal spike at one end to enable piles of rubbish to be turned over
quickly and efficiently. The men could only work at night and they
had miles of streets to cover. Scavenging efficiently was an
art.

“What can you tell me about the
newcomer?’ asked the inspector, trying not to inhale the noxious
acrid fumes assailing his nostrils.

Ratapoil took a swig of
something sour-smelling from a dirty bottle. “No one has seen him.
He comes after we have all gone and returns before the rest of us.
We only know he has been because of the ruts.”

“Ruts?”

“The wheels of his hand-cart
make ruts in the filth on the cobbles as they go in and out his
door.”

“Which warehouse is his?”

A bony arm finished with
fingerless mittens pointed into the stench-ridden gloom. “There are
no numbers. If you start this end and count seventeen doors you
will be there. But there’s no use walking that far. You will find
it bolted.”

The inspector acknowledged the
advice but checked anyway. The hinged door fitted tightly into a
wide brick archway. It was typical of the double doors found in
mews where aristocrats kept their carriages and horses. This one
was less grand, probably built for wagons. The warehouses must have
stored onions or cabbages in the days when Montmartre supplied the
vegetables for Paris. But the city had caught up to the country and
the roads were better now. Vegetables could get to market in a day.
The door was splintered with age, but it was still solid enough to
withstand a battering-ram. There was no breaking in. The brick
façade had one broken window, too high to allow for entry.

Darkness was gathering. Fog was
settling in the smoky laneway. The inspector wanted to get the
smell of rotting bones and dirty rags and putrid filth out of his
borrowed clothes. He walked to the nearest treed square and sat
down on a bench to let the wind blow through him.

He thought he’d been sent on a
fool’s errand. He couldn’t see how rag and bone men had anything to
do with the murders. If anyone obeyed the rules and regulations of
the city it was the rag and bone men. The Countess was clutching at
straws, indulging in wishful thinking, perhaps hoping that Pascal
Leveret’s testimony about bumping into a man at the end of the rue
de Brouillard might be significant. But as Pascal had pointed out:
why would the murderer ask if there had been a murder? Even the
simple-minded Pascal could see the logical absurdity of that.

Hang on! If the murderer really
was clever, calculating and creative then that is exactly what he
would ask! Who had put those words to him at the party? Was it
Davidov or Crespigny? Or perhaps Delgardo? It wasn’t Radzival. He
had been the voice of reason. It was most likely Crespigny. He was
a smooth talker. Davidov did a lot of ranting. Delgardo did a lot
of blathering. But Crespigny was good with words.

Was Crespigny employing a rag
and bone man to assist with the moving the bodies? The bodies had
all been transported from the place where they had been killed to
the place where they had been found. And what better method of
transport than a hand-cart? No one would pay attention to a rag and
bone man going about the streets in the middle of the night. And
the body could be concealed amongst the rubbish on the cart. Bloody
rags discarded by women who had had their menses would disguise any
blood stains and mask the smell of death. No one went near a rag
and bone man if they could help it. Rag-grubbers stank. Their
clothes were soiled and stained. Another splash of blood would go
unnoticed.