The Curse of the Grand Guignol (16 page)

“So much for never locking
doors,” muttered the doctor as she disappeared into a
confessional.

Her litany of sinfulness ran to
twenty minutes. She emerged looking quite cleansed. The same could
not be said for Père Denys. A decapitation was probably foremost on
his mind. Dr Watson had strolled around the little church several
times and was now sitting in the front pew.

“You cannot smoke in here,” said
Père Denys amiably, noting the pipe.

“Oh, no, no, I wasn’t smoking.
Indeed not. I was just resting my new calabash in the palm of my
hand to get a feel for it.”

Père Denys smiled indulgently,
the way a Sunday school teacher might smile at a young altar boy
who has just forgotten a catechism. Gently, he began ushering his
visitors to the door.

“Is the Cimetiere de Montmartre
next door?” asked the Countess eagerly. She knew very well it
wasn’t. “We have just visited Père Lachaise to pay our respects to
Balzac, Bizet and Bellini. And I cannot possibly leave Paris
without paying homage to Dumas and Gautier.”

“The Cimetiere de Montmartre is
further to the north. If you hurry you will be there in no time.
Next door we have the Cimetiere du Calvaire, the smallest cemetery
in Paris.”

“The name seems familiar. Is
someone famous buried there? Descartes? Voltaire? Zola?”

“Zola is not yet dead.”

“Really? Are you sure? I’m
certain I read in
Le Temps
that Zola died on the
twenty-fourth of November. Or was that Dreyfus and
Le Libre
Parole
?”

Père Denys drew a weighty
breath. “I think you might be confused about the date. A murder
took place on that date in the cemetery but it was not anyone
famous.”

“A murder in the Cimetiere de
Montmartre?”

“No, no, in the Cimetiere du
Calvaire next door.”

“Oh, how dreadful! Did the
murderer seek sanctuary in your church? I know murderers can do
that because I read it in that book by Diderot.”

“I think you might mean
Hugo.”

“Not Denis Diderot?”

“Trust me. I am a priest – The
Hunchback of Notre Dame was written by Victor Hugo. And no, the
murderer did not seek sanctuary because the door was locked.” He
looked longingly at the large brass key in his hand. “Go back to
rue des Abbesses and follow it west. That is the best way. If you
hurry you will be there before they lock the gate.”

The Countess thanked him, turned
to go then whirled back. “I wonder if the victim would still be
alive if he had found sanctuary inside your church.”

Père Denys sighed heavily. “The
victim was killed elsewhere and transported to the cemetery
sometime during the night. He was not running for his life, banging
on the doors of the church, crying out for help.”

“How thoughtful.”

“What?”

“The murderer transported his
victim directly to a cemetery.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. The
victim will not be buried next door. He was Lutheran.”

“Transported how?”

“I have no idea. The police said
the victim had been killed elsewhere. They seem to know about these
things. The body was merely posed -” He stopped suddenly; as if
he’d just realised he’d said too much already.

Once again the Countess thanked
him and turned to go then dropped her reticule. Unfortunately, or
perhaps otherwise, the clasp was undone. Feminine contents spilled
on the doorstep of the church. The priest immediately volunteered
to retrieve them, possibly to save time and embarrassment.

“Was it you who found the body,
Père Denys?”

He watched her stuff more money
into the poor box, and nodded slowly.

“I was woken by an unpleasant
dream, a recurring dream. I couldn’t sleep. I pulled on a coat and
decided to take a walk in the little cemetery. It is a peaceful
place. It helps to calms me. I was walking between the graves when
I saw…saw the body. I went quickly to find a policeman.
Fortunately, there was a patrolman at the Place du Tertre.”

“I also have a recurring dream.
It concerns a marionette. What is your recurring dream?”

Père Denys looked slightly
abashed; he dropped his gaze for the first time since meeting them.
“It concerns a rag and bone man.”

“What are you thinking?” said
Dr Watson as they rumbled back to rue Bonaparte and darkness
dropped its dirty cloak over the lovely city. Lamp-lighters were
out in force lighting the gas lamps. Fog from the Seine was
swaddling the Pont Neuf as they crossed to the other side of the
river. She hadn’t spoken since entering the landau.

“I am thinking that Père Denys
has a recurring dream about a rag and bone man because he hears the
cart in the night. I once had a recurring dream about spiders. I
was staying in a house in Florence. One night I realized the canopy
above the bed was embroidered in the style of a cobweb. The canopy
was removed and the dream stopped.

I am thinking that familia
herlequin, a group of demons who gave harlequin his name, may have
been a group of five. The prefix quin- refers to five. The acting
troupe at
le Cirque du Grand Guignol
is coincidentally made
up of five characters.

I am thinking that the man in
the black cloak on Quai de Valmy may have been wearing a black
mask. Did the man you saw last night have a black mask?”

“It cannot say for sure but now
that you mention it, his face did seem unnaturally dark.”

“I am thinking that the man who
followed our coach last night might be the same man. I am wondering
if he wore a black mask.”

“I can ask the coachman when I
question him.”

“Be subtle. Don’t plant the idea
in his head. Finally, I am thinking about Diderot.”

“The French philosopher?”

“Man will never be free until
the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last
priest.”

Mahmoud was waiting for them in
the entry hall. “You have a visitor, la comtesse. He is in the
kitchen.”

The fact that Mahmoud had
ushered her visitor into the kitchen told her everything she needed
to know. “Does he have a work of art with him?”

“He has a canvas with paint on
it.”

Dr Watson smiled wryly as he
mounted the stairs. “Don’t hang it anywhere where I will be forced
to look at it!” He was off to check his bedroom for death adders.
And it was no laughing matter when he found the door unlocked and
the window closed. He donned a pair of leather gloves and began the
search in earnest.

The Countess, who was on her way
to collect some money from her boudoir, heard the kerfuffle. “What
happened to your room? Why are you wearing gloves?”

“Nothing’s happened to my room
and my hands are cold.”

She didn’t have time to deal
with his strange ways and left him to it.

“Where would you like me to hang
the canvas, la comtesse?” asked Mahmoud after Salvador the
Splattereur had skipped off wearing a broad grin, having confirmed
that Madame Hertzinger never went to the theatre. She considered
the Grand Guignol immoral and repulsive.

“Leave it in the hall and let me
think about it,” she said. “Serve dinner in half an hour. I will
inform Dr Watson myself. Is my manservant about?”

“No, la comtesse, he is out. He
has been coming and going all day.”

“Good. I mean fine. Where is my
maid?”

“She is laundering the lace
petticoats. She does not trust the laundress hired by the
novaire
.”

“Thank you, Mahmoud. That is
all. Oh, wait, just one thing. You went out last night?”

He appeared to stiffen. “If la
comtesse would prefer that I not go out…”

“No, no, of course not, you may
come and go as you are accustomed to doing. I was merely curious.
Think nothing of it.”

Dr Watson’s room was in total
disarray. The blankets and bed sheets were on the floor. The
drawers were turned out. The wardrobes flung open and the contents
strewn across every available surface. He was standing on a silk
bergère checking the curtain pelmet.

“Dinner in half an hour,” she
said without batting an eyelash. “Don’t forget your calabash and
Latakia.

Curiouser and curiouser.

The ghost of Zoya Volodymyrovna
was everywhere in the pied-a-terre on rue Bonaparte but especially
in the dressing room where the unsigned portrait painted by one of
her many lovers hung above the dressing table set between the two
windows that overlooked the courtyard garden. The artist had
captured her in that perfect moment when one is young and happy and
in love, that fleeting moment when the past is golden and the
future rosy.

Zoya looked nothing like the
Countess. She was blonde, blue-eyed, luminous and beautiful. It’s
no wonder men fell in love with her. But she had brains too. Men
loved that most of all. They loved her wit and vivacity, her
ability to make them laugh, to forget the things they needed to
forget, and to live in the moment as though it would last
forever.

Could anyone really be that
happy?

Was Life really so
wonderful?

Did we become what we believed
we were?

Were we always true to
ourselves?

Or were we all playing a part,
living a lie, deceiving ourselves, deceiving others; pretending to
be happy when we were miserable inside, full of bitterness and
self-loathing and despair, damning ourselves to hell without the
help of demons?

The Countess peered at the
bottom right-hand corner of the painting. There was a tiny mark.
Not a signature. A single letter. She brought her candle
closer.

M.

Dr Watson sat back in the
fauteuil by the fire and savoured the first puff of his calabash.
He had carefully packed it with Latakia and it was drawing
brilliantly.

“I say! That quote from Diderot
was a bit harsh. You were harsh on Père Denys as well. How he
didn’t lose his temper with you says a lot about the character of
the man. He deserves a sainthood. I don’t like to be blunt, but you
were exasperating in the extreme.”

“Mea culpa. I was being
deliberately provoking. But people are more likely to blurt out
things when they are provoked and exasperated. When they are calm
they retain self-control, they refuse to drop the mask of
self-respectability; they rarely say what they really think and
never what they shouldn’t.”

“What did you learn?” he
challenged. “That Montmartre Cemetery is nearby? We already knew
that. That the victim was killed elsewhere? We already knew that
too. That churches are sometimes locked? That priests can dream?
That…”

They were interrupted by the
arrival of Inspector de Guise. He was looking even more bleary-eyed
than last time.

“What’s that thing in the hall?”
he said after the usual polite preamble was out of the way and
coffee was dispensed.

They told him about Galerie
soixante-six and the marionettes.

“Interesting,” he said, rubbing
the stubble defining his jaw. “But the Splattereurs are harmless. A
bunch of cloud thinkers. Where are you going to hang the, er,
painting?”

“I’ve decided to donate it to
Salpetriere,” said the Countess. “The bright colours might cheer
the patients up.”

Dr Watson guffawed. “The
lunatics will appreciate it! They can hang it in the asylum section
of the hospital! They won’t want to make the other patients any
sicker than they are!”

Inspector de Guise smiled for
the first time in a month. “You are not an art lover, Doctor?”

“You are not suggesting that
thing in the hall is art?”

The two men laughed like naughty
boys who had said something rude in front of an adult and expected
to get away with it.

“Not all modern art is bad,”
ventured the inspector, glad to talk about something other than
murder and his present predicament. “The work they are calling
Impressionism, for instance, has depth and the colours are pleasing
to the eye, but I admit it takes more than colour to make a
Caravaggio. A Caravaggio will take your breath away whether it is
hanging in the Louvre or in a cowshed.”

“Precisely,” said the doctor,
happy to have someone agree with him for a change.

“You are quite right,
inspector,” said the Countess, agreeing with him too. “Some
paintings will only be appreciated because they are hanging in the
drawing-room of a rich patron. Put them in a cowshed and their true
worth stands out.”

“People have lost the ability to
appreciate true artistry,” lamented the doctor.

“I go by the rule that if I
could have painted it then it isn’t art,” added the inspector. “It
is merely self-expression.”

The Countess thought back to the
portrait of her step-aunt – how perfectly the artist had expressed
his love of his subject. What love had Salvador expressed for
Madame Hertzinger in his painting? It wasn’t the lack of realism,
it was in the execution. “All art is self-expression but not all
self-expression is art.”

Dr Watson was finally enjoying
an agreeable conversation. The Latakia was like inhaling mouthfuls
of heaven. “People never seem to have the same problem with writing
or music as they do with fine art. Random words on a page may be
defined as writing but it will never be mistaken for literature.
Placing quavers and semi-quavers ad hoc on a sheet of music will
never be the equal of an opera. And yet any application of colour
to a canvas passes as art. The next century will define human
stupidity.” His brain seemed to leap from one thing straight to
another without effort. “There hasn’t been another murder has
there?”

Inspector de Guise stiffened his
shoulders. “No, no, not yet, I came to let you know I have been
removed from the case. The Director General of the Sûreté Nationale
took the decision this afternoon. He let me know personally. I will
be taking time off without pay starting tomorrow.”