The Curse of the Grand Guignol (4 page)

Surprisingly, his tawny skin
seemed lighter than she remembered, not at all dark and menacing,
merely sun-tinted. His flashing eyes, however, were the same, like
obsidian gems, they gleamed – she remembered - in the dark, like
the all-seeing eyes of an ancient desert idol with supernatural
power. He never smiled. He was not smiling now. Not even as he
greeted her, welcoming her home after years of absence.

“
Merci, Mahmoud, vous parlez
l’anglais
?”

“
Oui, la comtesse
-
English, French, Pashto, Dari, and Hindi.”

“Bravo, Mahmoud,” she praised,
genuinely impressed by his mastery of so many tongues. “May I
introduce my travelling companion, Dr Watson. He speaks
English.”

Dr Watson’s eyes fell at once
on the sheathed dagger. He got the distinct impression the Sikh
would like to slit his throat given half a chance. He made a mental
note to sleep with his door locked, in fact, to keep his bedroom
door locked at all times, whether he was in or out. Memories of
Pashtun tribesmen slipping death adders into empty beds made him
break out in a cold sweat. Major Rawlins had endured a horrific
death.

In fact, the doctor decided
then and there to keep his Webley in his pocket from this moment
forth. The Sikh might recognize it as a service revolver, which it
rightly was, and think he was back in the Hindu Kush. Sikhs were
born warriors; killing was in their blood; they made the deadliest
assassins.

What on earth had possessed the
Countess’s aunt to hire an assassin as a major-domo? It defied
belief. Actually, come to think of it – it was par for the course.
Ukrainians were all mad. The Countess was a case in point. How had
he ever been talked into detouring to Paris? Oh, hang on! It had
been his idea. Perhaps certain forms of madness were
contagious.

“Hello, Mahmoud, no need to
stand on formality.”

He tried to sound relaxed when
the major-domo bowed stiffly but a slight tremor in his voice
betrayed him. Still, he didn’t think the Sikh noticed. Not with all
that wadding around his head.

Café Bistro was a seedy little
establishment near the Moulin Rouge. It was frequented by
down-at-heel artists, muses, writers, pamphleteers, dancers,
anarchists and anti-Dreyfusards. The regulars took their coffee
bitter and black with a dash of homemade vodka to dilute the
sludge. Everyone chain-smoked cheap Russian cigarettes that were
really dried horse shit. The place smelled like a barn full of
animals at the end of winter. The ceiling was black, the floor was
blacker, the glasses were grimy, the cups were greasy, the
windowsill was a graveyard for dead flies and the people who worked
there were surly, belligerent and dangerous.

Arguments erupted over every
little thing: the colour of Clemenceau’s cravat, the name of
Voltaire’s cat, Marx and Lenin, the existence of the devil, the
Third Republic, the Panama Canal, the Dreyfus Affair, the Paris
Fair, the price of bananas in Venezuela, and who was paying for the
next round of drinks.

Café Bistro was owned by three
German brothers (Kaspar, Karl and Klaus) who were known
affectionately as The Brothers K - a nod to Dostoyevsky, brotherly
madness and the Russian babushka who had raised them; and sometimes
less affectionately as
Die Troika -
a wink to their
subversive politics.

The brothers lived upstairs and
kept a printing press in the cellar along with the still for making
samohonka. Most nights would find them running off seditious
articles concerning bankers, financiers, politicians, policemen,
judges and Jews. They signed their work KKK. Their surname was
Humboldt and the masthead at the top of their pamphlets proudly
proclaimed: The Brotherhood of the Boldt.

Inspector de Guise had already
viewed the mutilated corpse outside Café Bistro soon after midnight
when he first received word that another murder victim had been
found by a policeman near the Moulin Rouge. Corpse number five. It
had been carefully crafted after death, same as the other four, to
resemble a puppet. The wrists were tied with string which was then
attached to a rudimentary wooden crossbar, the sort of thing used
to manipulate a marionette out of view of the audience. The
mutilation this time was to the tongue – it had been cut out after
death and was nowhere to be found. At least the luggage tag was
loosely draped around the neck and he didn’t have to hunt for it in
the dark. Just one word; same yet different: didi.

He read it and felt vindicated
that he had not summoned the Countess in vain.

The corpse had been taken to
the morgue, where he had again viewed it at nine o’clock in the
morning, confirmed that it was not a homeless beggar or penniless
drunkard, but a respected citizen of France, same as the previous
four corpses that had been mutilated after death and set up to look
like puppets. Now it was ten o’clock and he had returned to the
café to speak to the Humboldts.

“The pool of blood in the
alleyway did not surprise you when you opened up this morning?” He
addressed the one called Klaus whose turn it was to dispense sludge
to the handful of bleary-eyed comrades who’d managed to drag
themselves out of bed before midday.

The Teutonic giant recognized a
policeman when he met one, shrugged his shoulders and blew a plume
of shit-smelling smoke the inspector’s way. “Fights break out all
the time. One day a pool of blood, the next day a puddle of puke,
the next day dog turd or cat piss – it’s Karl’s job to sluice it.
What’s the big deal?”

As if to prove his point, a
brawl broke out between two men slumped at a table by the window
when one told the other to
tais-toi
. Cups were upended and
thick black viscous sludge pooled on the table top before dribbling
onto the floor. It looked more like oil than coffee. Klaus grunted
something vicious and stomped over, knocked the offending patrons
out of their chairs with a swift slap left and right, then
proceeded to wipe up the sludge with a filthy tea towel which he
then draped casually over his shoulder.

“Beat it! Both of you! And
don’t come back till you’re sober!”

The two men staggered out,
leaning against each other, tails between their legs.

The inspector waited until the
German returned to the zinc serving counter and began to dry some
coffee cups with the same tea towel. “You didn’t bring your
furniture in last night?”

“What is this! Is there a law
against leaving the furniture out on the street?”

“Yes,” said the inspector
calmly, “actually there is.”

Klaus tossed his cigarette into
a glass of red wine that still had some dregs in it from the night
before and trumpeted, “Hey! This flic is here to arrest me because
we left our furniture outside last night!”

A racking chorus of emphysemic
guffaws rumbled through the shitty haze.

“I’m not here to arrest you. I
just want to know what you know about the blood in the
alleyway.”

Looking bored, Klaus began to
light up another cigarette. “Ask Karl – that’s his job.”

“Where will I find Karl?”

Klaus moved to a trapdoor and
bellowed, “Karl!”

The inspector got the
impression Klaus did not want the inspector to go down into the
cellar. The German stood between the inspector and the black maw
until a blond head popped up. It could have been a demigod rising
from the dead.

“What’s up with you? You know
I’m busy with – ”

Karl could spot a policeman at
a glance, same as his burly brother. And make no mistake the two
men could not be mistaken for anything but brothers. They were both
built like Minotaurs minus the mythic horns. Aryan good-looks had
endowed them with blue eyes, blond hair, and chiselled features. If
they had bothered to bathe, use a razor or get decent haircuts they
would have passed for handsome.

“This flic wants to interrogate
you about the blood this morning,” said Klaus in a mocking tone,
fresh cigarette hanging off the side of a thick lip.

Karl emerged into the dirty
light and dropped the trapdoor behind him. It banged into place and
several of the patrons reacted as if a gun had been fired.

“What blood?”

“You cleaned some blood off the
alleyway this morning?” reminded the inspector, wondering why he
was bothering with this line of enquiry. The Humboldts had a
reputation as anarchists, not melodramatic killers. If they had
wanted to kill someone they would have done it fearlessly. They
would not have left behind a puppet-like corpse and an artistic
trail of blood. They would have made a bomb and thrown it through a
window.

Karl had the same mannerisms as
his brother – he gave a surly shrug. “So what?”

“Do you know how the blood got
there?”

“This isn’t the Café des
Flore,” he amplified with a sneer, earning an accolade from his
appreciative audience. “Fights break out all the time.”

“You live above the café, how
come you didn’t hear anything?”

“We were in the cellar.”

“We?”

“Klaus and Kasper and me.”

“In the cellar?”

“Sorting out a delivery of
wine,” he said a little too quickly. “We were checking the crates
to make sure we hadn’t been short-changed. Can’t trust anyone these
days.”

Another appreciative snigger
rumbled around the squalid café.

“Can I take a look in the
cellar?” The inspector went to step around the German when the
third brother appeared suddenly from a back room. He was holding a
meat cleaver, or rather wielding it, and had probably been
listening to the entire exchange.

“What for?” The third lookalike
had even more attitude than the first two.

“It will corroborate that you
were busy uncrating bottles of wine.”

“Since the wine has been
uncrated there is nothing to corroborate,” he declared with surly
emphasis, forming a solid wall with the other two
chips-off-the-block.

Relying on brains rather than
brawn, Inspector de Guise was not built like a Minotaur and he
didn’t really believe he would find anything in the cellar apart
from an illegal still for vodka and pamphlets denouncing rich Jews,
and he had a chilling premonition that checking the cellar might
end in a nasty accident, perhaps even a fatal fall down a ladder.
Not having any back-up made him reluctant to go it alone into the
underground. Jules was busy scouting for possible witnesses and
Marcel was busy speaking to the dead man’s widow, trying to
establish a link with the other murder victims – five in all
now.

He bid the Brotherhood of the
Boldt an ironic
bonne journee
and headed toward rue
Bonaparte.

“The staging of the murder
scenes to make the victims look like marionettes
has
to be
an allusion to the theatre, moreover,” asserted the Countess
confidently, eyes alarmingly bright as myriad theories germinated
inside her head one after another until she settled on her
favourite, “the theatre of naturalistic horror known as
le
theatre du Grand Guignol
.”

Dr Watson recognized the
passionate and breathless tone. Like father, like daughter.
Sherlock was always unnaturally aroused by the prospect of a new
case, a fresh adventure, an element of danger. “What makes you so
sure it has something to do with the Grand Guignol?”

“Grand Guignol means Big
Puppet. It is named after a giant puppet from Lyonnaise similar to
Punch.”

“As in Punch and Judy?”
clarified the doctor.

“Yes,
that
Punch - there
simply must be a connection.” Another frisson of excitement caused
her neck hairs to stand on end.

“The five murder victims,” said
the incorruptible inspector, drawing an unsentimental breath and
wondering if he had done the right thing after all in dispatching
that telegram, “had no connection to any theatre whatsoever. They
had no family members or close friends who worked in the theatre
and no dealings with the theatre in a professional capacity. As far
as we know they had never even attended a performance of the Grand
Guignol.”

Undeterred, the Countess rang
the bell for Mahmoud. What they needed was more coffee and some
patisseries. Men were always more agreeable when their stomachs
were full. They had reached a stalemate early and needed to go back
to the beginning. Inspector de Guise was looking pale and tired; no
doubt the murders were keeping him up at night. What little sleep
he was snatching was probably being circumvented by the next murder
and the one after that. Dark circles underscoring the nut-brown
eyes were making the hazelnuts look like something even the
squirrels would reject. His unhealthy skin tone had all the warmth
of bowl of yesterday’s kasha. She wondered if he’d been skipping
meals and if he’d had any breakfast.

She subpoena’ed him with a
winning smile. “If you wouldn’t mind indulging me, Inspector,” she
said when the coffee had been dispensed and he had consumed three
freshly baked croissants and two brioches, “I would like you to
describe all four murders in detail starting with the first.”

Carefully, he replaced his
delicate demitasse cup on the tray table, wiped the corners of his
mouth with a linen napkin and made himself comfortable for the
first time since being ushered into the salon that overlooked busy
rue Bonaparte.

It was not a grand room, stiff
with French formality; more like a Byzantine closet full of exotic
little treasures. The step-aunt had clearly possessed eclectic
taste and had created an orientalist trompe l’oeil from her many
travels to far-flung destinations. There was a collection of
jewelled scarabs from Egypt on a round table by the window, a bust
of Herodotus in the corner, another of Caligula with his face to
the wall like a naughty boy in disgrace, a row of phallic ornaments
on the carved mantelpiece surmounted by an octagonal Venetian
mirror, and myriad Eastern Orthodox ikons depicting various saints
and several versions of the Virgin Mary – oddly, the saints all
looked alike and the Virgins all looked different; the many looked
like one and the One looked like many.