The Curse of the Grand Guignol (17 page)

“Why?” said the doctor.

“What has happened?” said the
Countess.

Inspector de Guise pushed to his
feet with as much dignity as he could muster. “I prefer not to
discuss it. I apologise for dragging you into this matter. Please
don’t remain in Paris on my account. I can see myself out.
Au
revoir
, my friends.”

The Countess was having none of
it. She walked with him to the door. There, she pressed him
further, to no avail. He took her hand and kissed it.

“
Adieu,
” he said
solemnly, employing the French word that signalled a final parting
of the way: To God, rather than tomorrow.

Dr Watson appeared to be
drifting off. She blew out the candles and went to bed to read
about Dreyfus.

Come morning, after the
Countess instructed Fedir about the marionettes he was to collect
from Monsieur Grimaldi, she discovered something interesting from
her manservant. News of the five murders had leaked out to the
press and Inspector de Guise had borne the brunt of the Sûreté’s
failure in apprehending the killer. He had become the butt of
ridicule. Satirical articles had appeared in
Le Libre Parole
and the latest pamphlet of the Brotherhood of the Boldt. Even
Le
Temps
was scathing. Posters depicting unflattering caricatures
covered Café Bistro from floor to ceiling. The Humboldts were
having a field day. The place was jam-packed. It was standing room
only. The regulars weren’t complaining. They were having the time
of their lives too, spreading their anarchist views, fomenting
revolution and the overthrow of the government. It was no wonder
the inspector did not wish to discuss his unpaid vacation.

The Countess was livid, though
outwardly she appeared calm.

“After you collect the
marionettes I want you to rent a small room in a boarding house and
leave the trunk there. Tell the landlady you will be taking the
room for four days.”

Fedir never questioned the
strange ways of his mistress. He gave a nod and turned to go.

“One more thing,” she called. “I
want to know about rag and bone men. I do not wish you to question
Mahmoud on this matter. I would like you to find out as much as you
can from whatever source is available. I want to know when they
work, how they work, exactly what they do, and so forth. Be
discrete.”

Our two sleuths decided to pay
a visit to Café Bistro before going to Salpetriere even though it
was miles out of their way.

Dr Watson was even more incensed
than the Countess at the scurrilous treatment meted out to the
French inspector. Satire could be a force for good when it was
deployed against the shameless in society, the hypocrites, the
liars, the amoral and the immoral. But when it was deployed against
those who fought to uphold truth and justice it made his blood
boil. He was now absolutely committed to doing all in his power in
catching the killer and restoring the reputation of Inspector de
Guise.

The seedy café was ripe with
man-sweat and horse-shit. It was packed to the rafters, and though
most of the anarchists had been downing shots of vodka for a couple
of hours they still recognized an attractive woman when they saw
one, and when that woman spoke fluent Ukrainian it intrigued them
enough to clear a path to the bar.

“Samohonka,” she said loudly.
“
Dva stakane
. My comrade will pay.” She indicated Dr Watson,
who duly slapped some coins on the greasy zinc countertop.

There is no such thing as a
Ukrainian who cannot stomach vodka and Fedir had warned his
mistress of the fire-power of the homemade brew.

“
Nazdorovya
,” she cried
as she tossed it back and threw her glass on the floor for good
measure. It shattered into a dozen pieces and what was left of it
she ground to smithereens using the heel of her ankle boot.

Dr Watson decided sipping slowly
was the better way to go. “I might as well be drinking sulfuric
acid,” he muttered to himself as his tongue disintegrated.

There was nothing for it,
decided the Countess. Her companion would soon become the butt of
cruel jibes. She feigned being jostled and knocked into him. He
spilled his glass all over the man standing beside him. It turned
out to be Laszlo minus the purple beret and orange pussy bow. The
dirty paint-smock didn’t seem to suffer any damage from the vodka
bath and Laszlo was in a fearfully good mood. He was the new
Daumier, the artist of several of the masterpieces wallpapering the
cafe and was being regaled with more fanfare than Michelangelo upon
completion of the Sistine Chapel. He slapped Dr Watson on the back
in the manner of an old comrade and offered to buy him a drink. The
doctor insisted on doing the buying and made sure to get himself a
glass of vinegar that was being passed off as burgundy but was a
far better alternative to vitriolic acid.

“What brings you here?” said
Laszlo cheerfully. “Santé!”

“I’m an art lover, as you know,
and I heard about the excellent drawings. Santé! Which ones are
yours?”

Laszlo elbowed his way to the
other side of the café, pulling the doctor by the sleeve. “This
one,” he said proudly. “And that one. And the one over there.”

Dr Watson beamed his
hypocritical approval. “Marvellous!” he managed without a trace of
sarcasm. “Does your friend Salvador have any drawings on
display?”

Laszlo laughed risibly.
“Salvador cannot draw to save himself! He will always be a
dauber!”

“He’s not here celebrating your
success?”

“He is sleeping in a gutter
somewhere. Drunk from the money he got from your rich friend. Is
she here with you?”

Dr Watson looked around the
alcoholic field of dipping heads. It was like a torpid field of
nodding sunflowers, turning this way to the sun, and that way to
the sun – so many suns it was blinding. “Yes, she’s chatting to
that big blond man wielding the hammer and sickle.”

“That’s Klaus. He’s the owner of
the café, well, him and his two brothers, Kaspar and Karl. They
will lead the revolution when it comes.”

“Vive la France!” said Dr Watson
dryly, draining his vinegar and trying not to wince.

“Vive la France!” shouted
Laszlo.

And the echo went up: “Vive la
France!”

Someone started singing The
Marseillaise and that was it for the next ten minutes.

Dr Watson decided to fight his
way back to the Countess. She was drinking something that resembled
sump oil from a chipped cup.

“Have you tried the burgundy?”
he said pleasantly out of the side of his mouth.

She smiled back. “I believe it
was a good year for vinegar.”

“And cast iron stomachs. Have
you noticed the trapeze above the bar?”

“How unfortunate that there is
no
saltimbanque
to give us a demonstration.”

“Yes, it would be nice to
finally meet the artiste.”

“Don’t look now – but someone
just came in.
Pas de gaffe
.”

Casually, he looked around,
pretending to be studying the caricatures. Good grief! They had
both assumed Fedir would be busy collecting the marionettes. They
did not expect to run into him in the café mid-morning.

“Should we leave now?” he
whispered urgently.

“It will look suspicious. Order
another drink.”

Easy for her to say! She’d never
been wounded in the Anglo-Afghan War and suffered from enteric
fever. His stomach hadn’t been the same since Maiwand. He could
feel a bout of dysentery coming on and decided to buy a vodka shot
for Laszlo instead. He was scooping up the greasy glass when
someone bumped him. He thought it might be deliberate and he knew
it wasn’t the Countess.

“Sorry, comrade,” said a voice
he recognized without even looking.

“No harm done, old chap.”

He’d handled that well, he
thought, as he presented Laszlo with the vodka and congratulated
the new Daumier yet again on his marvellous creations. Laszlo’s
crowd were decrying the Paris Fair, likening it to the financial
disaster of the Panama Affair orchestrated by the filthy rich Jews.
Someone mentioned the word Potemkin and that sent everyone into a
fresh lather of violent condemnation.

Dr Watson had stomached enough.
He was on his way back to the Countess when he saw that Fedir had
been shirt-fronted by one of the Blonds behind the bar. There was
the glint of a sickle and you could have scythed the shitty air
with it.

“Keep your beady eyes and hands
off Kiki or you’ll end up like one of those puppets!”

“Vive la France!” shouted the
Countess, slapping a ten franc note on the counter. “The vodka is
on me, comrades!”

Everyone rushed for the bar as
they rushed for the exit.

Threat averted, Fedir stayed to
drink to the success of the revolution.

“Do you think it was safe to
leave him there?”

Dr Watson and the Countess were
hurrying to the end of the rue where their landau was waiting;
painted canvas strapped to the roof with no threat of rain.

“Fedir can take care of
himself,” she replied confidently.

“Those caricatures were obscene
and deplorable.”

“They reminded me of the posters
for the Grand Guignol.”

“Mmm, I wonder if my friend
Laszlo did those too. It might be worth checking. What do you think
of the theory that Kiki is the one who passes the scripts to the
Humboldts who then commit the murders? The brother who issued that
threat against Fedir didn’t mince words. Which brother was it?”

“The one called Kaspar. But what
is Kiki’s motive?”

“Hmm, that hoary old
chestnut.”

They took the corner and stopped
in their tracks.

“Where’s our carriage?” he said,
looking vacant. “It was
this
corner was it not? Corner of
rue des Trois-Frères and rue Chappe?”

“Yes,” she agreed, equally
perplexed. “I distinctly remember the laundry hanging out of the
windows but I don’t recall this pile of broken furniture in the
middle of the street.”

Paris had been completely
rebuilt in the last few decades by Haussmann, who had been granted
authority to purchase entire streets, demolish the buildings and
erect grand new boulevards. Gone were the ramshackle medieval
slums, the narrow crooked streets and the dark, sunless alleys that
were a gift to thieves and murderers and revolutionaries. Rue
Bonaparte had been an early beneficiary of his enterprise.

But Montmartre had been excluded
from the glorious reconstruction, and now that construction had
turned to the Champs de Mars and the Trocadero in preparation for
the Paris Fair it was even less likely to experience a renaissance,
so what was all this discarded furniture doing in the street?

“Let’s walk back to Boulevard de
Clichy,” she suggested.

They began to retrace their
steps and had not gone far when the landau came into view. The
carriage had been forced to move on when angry residents began
building a barricade. It signalled a possible battle with the army
or the police – a common tactic of communards during the
revolution. And so inflamed were feelings against the army
following the gross miscarriage of justice orchestrated against
Dreyfus there was talk of an uprising.

Anti-Dreyfusards, not to be
outdone, had started building their own barricade at the opposite
end of the street. The incompetence of the police following the
Marionette Murders, as the five murders were now known, only added
fuel to the fire. Effigies of Inspector de Guise and the Director
General of the Sûreté National were being strung up on lamp-posts
at every street corner.

It was not until they had
crossed the Seine that Dr Watson returned to the subject at hand.
“What if Kiki wants to revenge herself on Monsieur Davidov? That
would be motive enough to ruin him, and the three brothers would be
happy to oblige.”

The Countess nodded. “Yes, they
would do anything for her, but why those particular victims?”

“The four respectable men may
have wronged her in some way. She would not be the first pretty
circus performer who granted sexual favours to older men. They may
have been lured by her charm for the purpose of blackmail and then
refused to pay up.”

“And Madame Hertzinger?”

“She may have wronged the pretty
performer in some way that we are unaware.”

“You’re theory makes sense,
mon ami
, but we must tread carefully. Kiki managed to avoid
the Marquise de Merimont’s salonniere the other night so we haven’t
really spoken to her. I wonder if we shouldn’t pay the theatre
another visit.”

“I couldn’t stomach another
show.”

“If you feel that way I could go
alone. I want to speak to the others too. I hardly spoke to Davidov
at the party. He couldn’t focus on anything except the playwright.
Which reminds me – we simply must go to a daytime rehearsal. We
have to discover what the next murder will involve.”

“There are three short plays,”
he reminded. “How do we know which one the murderer will choose to
replicate?”

“Some advance notice is better
than none.”

“Very well,” he conceded.

He was both surprised and
pleased he didn’t have to argue his case regarding Mademoiselle
Kiki. He was loath to condemn the talented young actress but she
did live with Raoul Crespigny on the peniche so she had advance
notice about the scripts, she was in on all the rehearsals, and she
had those three blond thugs wrapped around her little finger.

“Potemkin?” he said quizzically,
moving on to something that had been puzzling him since their
recent visit to the cafe. “What is it?”

“Prince Potemkin was the name of
one of Catherine the Great’s lovers, some say her actual husband.
When she travelled to Ukraine to see how he had improved the region
he was governing, he erected false facades of houses to give the
impression of numerous dwellings and great prosperity. A Potemkin
village is one that is merely for show.”