Haunted Castles (9 page)

T
he
commissaire de police
had never seen anything like it. He spoke poor English, but I was able to glean his meaning without too much difficulty. “It is how you say . . .”

“Horrible?”

“Ah, oui, mais . . . étrange, incroyable . . .”

“Unique?”

“Si! Uniquement monstrueux! Uniquement dégoûtant!”

Uniquely disgusting. Yes, it was that. It was that, certainly.

“The manner, M'sieu' . . . the method . . . the—”

“Mutilation.”

“Oui, la mutilation . . . est irrégulière, anormale . . .”

We were in the morgue—not that newish Medico-Legal Institute of the University on the banks of the Seine, but the
old
morgue, that wretched, ugly place on the quai de l'Archevêché. She—Clothilde, my
petite amie
of the previous night—had been foully murdered; killed with knives; her prettiness destroyed; her very womanhood destroyed, extracted bloodily but with surgical precision. I stood in the morgue with the
commissaire
, César, Sellig, and the other girl, Mathilde. Covering the corpse with its anonymous sheet, the
commissaire
said, “It resembles, does it not, the work of your English killer . . . Jacques?”

“Jack,” I said. “Jack the Ripper.”

“Ah oui.”
He looked down upon the covered body.
“Mais pourquoi?”

“Yes,” I said hoarsely. “Why indeed? . . .”

“La cause . . . la raison . . . le motif,”
he said; and then delivered himself of a small, eloquent, Gallic shrug.
“Inconnu.”

Motive unknown. He had stated it succinctly. A girl of the streets, a
fille de joie
, struck down, mutilated, her femaleness cancelled out. Who did it?
Inconnu
. And why?
Inconnu
.

“Merci, messieurs, mademoiselle . . .”
The
commissaire
thanked us and we left the cold repository of Paris' unclaimed dead. All four of us—it had been “all five of us” just the night before—were strained, silent. The girl Mathilde was weeping. We, the men, felt not grief exactly—how could we, for one we had known so briefly, so imperfectly?—but a kind of embarrassment. Perhaps that is the most common reaction produced by the presence of death: embarrassment. Death is a kind of nakedness, a kind of indecency, a kind of
faux pas
. Unless we have known the dead person well enough to experience true loss, or unless we have wronged the dead person enough to experience guilt, the only emotion we can experience is embarrassment. I must confess my own embarrassment was tinged with guilt. It was I, you see, who had used her, such a short time before. And now she would never be used again. Her warm lips were cold; her knowing fingers, still; her cajoling voice, silent; the very stronghold and temple of her treasure was destroyed.

In the street, I felt I had to make some utterance. “To think,” I said, “that her last evening was spent at the Guignol!”

Sellig smiled sympathetically. “My friend,” he said, “the Grand Guignol is not only a shabby little theatre in a Montmartre alley. This—” his gesture took in the world “—this is the Grandest Guignol of all.”

I nodded. He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Do not be too much alone,” he advised me. “Come to the Théâtre tonight. We are playing
Cinna.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I have a strange urge to revisit the Guignol . . .”

César seemed shocked or puzzled, but Sellig understood. “Yes,” he said, “that is perhaps a good thought.” We parted—Sellig to his rooms, César with the weeping girl, I to my hotel.

I have an odd infirmity—perhaps it is not so odd, and perhaps it is no infirmity at all—but great shock or disappointment or despair do not rob me of sleep as they rob the sleep of others. On the contrary, they rob me of energy, they drug me, they send me into the merciful solace of sleep like a powerful anodyne. And so, that afternoon, I slept. But it was a sleep invaded by dreams . . . dreams of gross torture and mutilation, of blood, and of the dead Clothilde—alive again for the duration of a nap—repeating over and over again a single statement.

I awoke covered with perspiration, and with that statement gone just beyond the reach of my mind. Try as I did, I could not recall it. I dashed cold water in my face to clear my head, and although I had no appetite, I rang for service and had some food brought me in my suite. Then, the theatre hour approaching, I dressed and made my way toward Montmartre and the Rue Chaptal.

The Guignol's
chef-d'oeuvre
that evening was a bit of white supremacy propaganda called
Chinoiserie
. (“The yellow menace” was just beginning to become a popular prejudice.) A white girl, played by a buxom but ungifted actress, was sold as a slave to a lecherous Chinese mandarin, and after being duly ravished by him and established as his most favored concubine, fell into the clutches of the beautiful but jealous Chinese woman who had hitherto occupied that honored post. The Woman Scorned, taking advantage of the temporary absence of her lord, seized the opportunity to strip her rival naked and subject her to the first installment of The Death of a Thousand Slices, when her plans were thwarted by the appearance of a handsome French lieutenant who freed the white girl and offered her the chance to turn the tables on the Asian witch. The liberated victim, after first frightening her tormentress with threats of the Thousand Slices, proved a credit to her race by contenting herself with merely tickling the soles of the Chinese girl's bared feet with a plume. Although I had been told that
l'épisode du chatouillement
—“the tickling scene”—was famed far and wide, going on for several minutes of shrieking hysterics until the tickled lady writhed herself out of her clothing, I left before its conclusion. The piece was unbearably boring, though it was no worse than the previous evening's offering. The reason for its tediousness was simple: Laval did not appear in the play. On my way out of the theatre, I inquired of an usher about the actor's absence. “Ah, the great Laval,” he said, with shuddering admiration. “It is his—do you say ‘night away'?”

“Night off . . .”

“Oui.
His night off. He appears on alternate nights,
M'sieu' . . .”

Feeling somehow cheated, I decided to return the following night. I did so; in fact, I made it a point to visit the Guignol every night that week on which Laval was playing. I saw him in several little plays—shockers in which he starred as the monsters of history and legend—and in each, his art was lit by black fire and was the more admirable since he did not rely upon a succession of fantastic make-ups—in each, he wore the
same
grotesque make-up (save for the false facial hair) he had worn as Bluebeard; I assumed it was his trademark. The plays—which were of his own authorship, I discovered—included
L'Inquisiteur,
in which he played Torquemada, the merciless heretic-burner (convincing flames on the stage) and
L'Empoisonneur,
in which he played the insane, incestuous Cesare Borgia. There were many more, among them, a contemporary story,
L'Éventreur,
in which he played the currently notorious Jack the Ripper, knifing pretty young harlots with extreme realism until the stage was scarlet with sham blood. In this, there was one of those typically Lavalesque flashes, an infernally inspired
cri de coeur
, when The Ripper, remorseful, sunken in shame, enraged at his destiny, surfeited with killings but unable to stop, tore a rhymed couplet from the bottom of his soul and flung it like a live thing into the house:

La vie est un corridor noir

D'impuissance et de désespoir!

That's not very much in English—“Life is a black corridor of impotence and despair”—but in the original, and when hurled with the ferocity of Laval, it was Kean's Hamlet, Irving's Macbeth, Salvini's Othello, all fused into a single theatrical moment.

And, in that moment, there was another fusion—a fusion, in my own mind, of two voices. One was that of the
commissaire de police
—“It resembles, does it not, the work of your English killer . . . Jacques?” The other was the voice of the dead Clothilde, repeating a phrase she had first uttered in life, and then, after her death, in that fugitive dream—
“Je le déteste.”

As the curtain fell, to tumultuous applause, I sent my card backstage, thus informing Laval that
“un admirateur”
wished to buy him a drink. Might we meet at L'Oubliette? The response was long in coming, insultingly long, but at last it did come and it was affirmative. I left at once for L'Oubliette.

Forty minutes later, after I had consumed half a bottle of red wine, Laval entered. The waitress brought him to my table and we shook hands.

I was shocked, for, as I looked into his face, I immediately realized that Laval never wore evil make-up on the Guignol stage.

He had no need of it.

L
ooking about, Laval said, “L'Oubliette,” and sat down. “The filthy place is aptly named. Do you know what an
oubliette
is, M'sieu'?”

“No,” I said; “I wish my French were as excellent as your English.”

“But surely you know our word,
oublier?”

“My French-English lexicon,” I replied, “says it means ‘to forget, to omit, to leave.'”

He nodded. “That is correct. In the old days, a variety of secret dungeon was called an
oubliette.
It was subterranean. It had no door, no window. It could be entered only by way of a trap door at the top. The trap door was too high to reach, even by climbing, since the walls sloped in the wrong direction and were eternally slick with slime. There was no bed, no chair, no table, no light, and very little air. Prisoners were dropped down into such dungeons to be—literally—forgotten. They seldom left alive. Infrequently, when a prisoner was fortunate enough to be freed by a change in administration, he was found to have become blind—from the years in the dark. And almost always, of course, insane.”

“You have an intimate knowledge of horrors, Monsieur Laval,” I said.

He shrugged.
“C'est mon métier.”

“Will you drink red wine?”

“Since you are paying, I will drink whisky,” he said; adding, “if they have it here.”

They did, an excellent Scotch and quite expensive. I decided to join him. He downed the first portion as soon as it was poured—not waiting for even a perfunctory toast—and instantly demanded another. This, too, he flung down his throat in one movement, smacking his bestial lips. I could not help thinking how much more graphic than our “he drinks like a fish” or “like a drainpipe” is the equivalent French figure of speech: “he drinks like a hole.”

“Now then, M'sieu' . . . Pendragon? . . .”

“Glencannon.”

“Yes. You wished to speak with me.”

I nodded.

“Speak,” he said, gesturing to the barmaid for another drink.

“Why,” I began, “I'm afraid I have nothing in particular to say, except that I admire your acting . . .”

“Many people do.”

What a graceless boor, I told myself, but I continued: “Rightfully so, Monsieur Laval. I am new to Paris, but I have seen much theatre here these past few weeks, and to my mind yours is a towering talent, in the front rank of contemporary
artistes,
perhaps second only to—”

“Eh? Second?” He swallowed the fresh drink and looked up at me, his unwholesome eyes flaming. “Second to—whom, would you say?”

“I was going to say, Sellig.”

Laval laughed. It was not a warming sound. His face grew uglier. “Sellig! Indeed. Sellig, the handsome. Sellig, the classicist. Sellig, the noble.
Bah!”

I was growing uncomfortable. “Come, sir,” I said, “surely you are not being fair . . .”

“Fair. That is oh so important to you English, is it not? Well, let me tell you, M'sieu' Whatever-your-name-is—the lofty strutting of the mountebank Sellig makes me sick! What he can do, fools can do. Who cannot pompously declaim the cold, measured alexandrines of Racine and Corneille and Molière? Stop any schoolboy on the street and ask him to recite a bit of
Phèdre
or
Tartuffe
and he will oblige you, in that same stately classroom drone Sellig employs. Do not speak to me of this Sellig. He is a fraud;
worse
—he is a bore.”

“He is also,” I said, “my friend.”

“A sorry comment on your taste.”

“And yet it is a taste that can also appreciate you.”

“To some, champagne and seltzer water taste the same.”

“You know, sir, you are really quite rude.”

“True.”

“You must have few friends.”

“Wrong. I have none.”

“But that is distressing! Surely—”

He interrupted. “There is a verse of the late Rostand's. Perhaps you know it.
‘A force de vous voir vous faire des amis . . .'
et cetera?”

“My French is poor.”

“You need not remind me. I will give you a rough translation. ‘Seeing the sort of friends you others have in tow, I cry with joy: send me another foe!'”

“And yet,” I said, persisting, “all men need friends . . .”

Laval's eyes glittered like dark gems. “I am no ordinary man,” he said. “I was born under the sign of Sagittarius. Perhaps you know nothing of astrology? Or, if you do, perhaps you think of Sagittarius as merely the innocuous sign of the Archer? Remember, then, just who that archer is—not a simple bear or bull or crab or pair of fish, not a man, not a natural creature at all, but a very unnatural creature half human, half bestial. Sagittarius: the Man-Beast. And I tell you this, M'sieu' . . .” He dispatched the whisky in one gulp and banged the empty glass on the table to attract the attention of the barmaid. “I tell you this,” he repeated. “So potent was the star under which I was born, that I have done what no one in the world has done—nor ever
can
do!”

The sentence was like a hot iron, searing my brain. I was to meet it once again before I left Paris. But now, sitting across the table from the mad—for he indeed seemed mad—Laval, I said, softly, “And what is it you have done, Monsieur?”

He chuckled nastily. “That,” he said, “is a professional secret.”

I tried another approach. “Monsieur Laval . . .”

“Yes?”

“I believe we have a mutual friend.”

“Who may that be?”

“A lady.”

“Oh? And her name?”

“She calls herself Clothilde. I do not know her last name.”

“Then I gather she is not, after all, a lady.”

I shrugged. “Do you know her?”

“I know many women,” he said; and his face clouding with bitterness, he added, “Do you find that surprising—with this face?”

“Not at all. But you have not answered my question.”

“I may know your Mam'selle Clothilde; I cannot be certain. May I have another drink?”

“To be sure.” I signalled the waitress, and turned again to Laval. “She told me she knew you in her—professional capacity.”

“It may be so. I do not clot my mind with memories of such women.” The waitress poured out another portion of Scotch and Laval downed it. “Why do you ask?”

“For two reasons. First, because she told me she detested you.”

“It is a common complaint. And the second reason?”

“Because she is dead.”

“Ah?”

“Murdered. Mutilated. Obscenely disfigured.”

“Quel dommage.”

“It is not a situation to be met with a platitude, Monsieur!”

Laval smiled. It made him look like a lizard. “Is it not? How must I meet it, then? With tears? With a clucking of the tongue? With a beating of my breast and a rending of my garments? Come, M'sieu' . . . she was a woman of the streets . . . I scarcely knew her, if indeed I knew her at all . . .”

“Why did she detest you?” I suddenly demanded.

“Oh, my dear sir! If I knew the answers to such questions, I would be
clairvoyant
. Because I have the face of a Notre Dame gargoyle, perhaps. Because she did not like the way I combed my hair. Because I left her too small a fee. Who knows? I assure you, her detestation does not perturb me in the slightest.”

“To speak plainly, you relish it.”

“Yes. Yes, I relish it.”

“Do you also relish—” I toyed with my glass. “—blood, freshly spilt?”

He looked at me blankly for a moment. Then he threw back his head and roared with amusement. “I see,” he said at last. “I understand now. You suspect I murdered this trollop?”

“She is dead, sir. It ill becomes you to malign her.”

“This
lady
, then. You really think I killed her?”

“I accuse you of nothing, Monsieur Laval. But . . .”

“But?”

“But it strikes me as a distinct possibility.”

He smiled again. “How interesting. How very, very interesting. Because she detested me?”

“That is one reason.”

He pushed his glass to one side. “I will be frank with you, M'sieu'. Yes, I knew Clothilde, briefly. Yes, it is true she loathed me. She found me disgusting. But can you not guess why?”

I shook my head. Laval leaned forward and spoke more softly. “You and I, M'sieu', we are men of the world . . . and surely you can understand that there are things . . . certain little things . . . that an imaginative man might require of such a woman? Things which—if she were overly fastidious—she might find objectionable?” Still again, he smiled. “I assure you, her detestation of me had no other ground than that. She was a silly little
bourgeoise
. She had no flair for her profession. She was easily shocked.” Conspiratorially, he added: “Shall I be more specific?”

“That will not be necessary.” I caught the eye of the waitress and paid her. To Laval, I said, “I must not detain you further, Monsieur.”

“Oh, am I being sent off?” he said, mockingly, rising. “Thank you for the whisky, M'sieu'. It was excellent.” And, laughing hideously, he left.