The Curse of the Grand Guignol (21 page)

“He had some private business to
see to,” said the Countess vaguely, selecting a fauteuil by the
window that bathed her in the dappled impressionistic light of a
wintry Parisian morning. They had parted angrily. She actually had
no idea where he might be or what he might be doing. She wouldn’t
be surprised to learn he might this very minute be catching the
train to Calais. “I came personally to let you know I am giving a
small party on the eighth of December. A Gobolinks party,” she
said, pausing, waiting for the nonplussed look as she handed the
Marquise de Merimont the invitation she had brought with her. “I do
hope you can come.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the
world. I haven’t been to a Gobolinks in years. Let me see, the last
time I went to a Gobolinks party I was sixteen. It was the year I
came out. Yes, an absolutely glorious season for me. I attended
five balls in a fortnight. I don’t think I ever stopped dancing at
any of them.” La marquise perused the invitation. “Oh, it is in the
afternoon. That is a good idea. One can still attend the theatre.
Costumes, too! How marvellous! One does like to dress up in silly
costumes occasionally. Who else will be coming?”

“Monsieur Davidov, Monsieur
Crespigny, Monsignor Delgardo, and I thought I might invite your
librarian.” She deliberately omitted the name of the inspector.

“Monsieur Radzival will probably
write the best poem. Are you having judges?”

“Yes, there will be La Noire and
my step-aunt’s dear friend, Mahmoud. He is Sikh.”

“Bravo! Negress and Sikh. An
interesting mix always makes for the best party. I am looking
forward to it with the anticipation of a debutante.”

“Should I leave Monsieur
Radzival’s invitation with you?”

“Yes, of course, though if you
wish to deliver it personally you will find him in the library. Did
you visit the library on the night of the salonniere? No? It was my
late husband’s pride and joy. The boiserie is seventeenth century
and several of the medieval manuscripts are priceless. He was very
proud of his Armenian collection. Make sure Casimir shows you the
oeuvre of Mesrop of Xizan. I would go with you but as you can see I
have not yet finished my croissant.” She rang a little bell and a
maid appeared from an adjoining boudoir. “Fifi, show Countess
Volodymyrovna to the library.”

The maid made a little
curtsey.

Several staircases later the
Countess found herself in a splendid gallery lined with leather
books tooled with gold, Persian rugs scrolled with acanthus leaves
and a frescoed ceiling honouring France’s most celebrated
auteurs.

Monsieur Radzival, rarely
emotional, appeared delighted to be invited to the Gobolinks party
for he rarely went out of an evening and he was keen on poetry. He
asked who would be attending and she got the impression he
considered the poetry prize his for the taking. Tucked under his
arm was the book by Emile Zola that had been sitting on his
secretaire the previous evening. He enquired if she had had a
chance to read the articles on Dreyfus.

“I plan to finish them
tomorrow,” she said, admiring the creative handiwork of the
celebrated master miniaturist and genius known as Mesrop of Xizan
before changing the subject. “What can you tell me about the Panama
Affair?”

“Panama?’ he said. “Do you mean
the Panama Canal Scandal?”

“If they are one and the same,
then yes.”

“Did your family lose money? Is
that why you ask?”

“I ask because yesterday when I
was visiting Salpetriere I learned there was an influx of
prostitutes after the Panama Affair. I wondered how an event in
Panama might affect prostitutes in Paris.”

“I see, well, the Panama Affair
involved the construction of the Panama Canal which was being built
by the French following their success with the Suez Canal. The
Canal Company sold stocks, bonds and shares to finance construction
but it soon began making huge losses. In 1889 a civil tribunal
forced the company to cease work. A sale to the Americans was
planned but the French government delayed the decision. Work
continued in sections because of a contract with the Colombians and
the financial losses increased.

By 1892 bankruptcy was declared
and the extent of corruption astonished everyone. Ferdinand de
Lesseps and Gustave Eiffel were rightly given gaol sentences which
were later annulled. Hundreds of ministers who had been taking
bribes were either acquitted or fled to England. Jean Jaures
conducted the enquiry but it was a white-wash. Many in government
and finance profited enormously while eight hundred thousand
ordinary citizens of France suffered catastrophic losses.”

“What was the extent of the
loss?”

“Nearly two billion francs.”

“Two billion!”

“Yes, staggering to think about,
and some of those who lost everything were single women – fifteen
thousand women in all.”

“I see - many of them would have
been forced into prostitution.”

“Precisely, and that is the
reason for Salpetriere’s influx.”

“Was the Panama Affair tied in
with the Dreyfus Affair?”

“Only in that two of the biggest
financiers were Jewish. Reinach and Herz. They distributed the
bribe monies. It inflamed anti-Semitic sentiment which later led to
bias against Dreyfus.”

“I vaguely recall
Le Libre
Parole
playing a part?”

He nodded in the affirmative.
“Before Reinach committed suicide he gave a list of names to the
anti-Semitic newspaper which published the names of guilty culprits
day by day, bit by bit, to prolong their misery. The newspaper
became famous overnight and still trades on its Panama heyday.”

“You have excellent recall of
the details of the affair,” she complimented.

He coloured at the praise and
tried to shrug it off. “It comes from working in a library.”

“Do you know anyone who was
affected by the Panama Affair?”

“There would not be a person
living in France today who would not be affected by the affair. It
cut deep.”

“I meant personally.”

He considered the question
thoughtfully. “Well, Monsignor Delgardo hails from Colombia but
that is tenuous, I admit.”

“I meant closer to home.”

Neatly arched brows registered
the audacious inference. “La marquise? No, no, out of the question.
My patroness hails from a noble French family going back hundreds
of years to the Knights Templar. And she is immensely wealthy. Look
around,” he invited with a grandiloquent sweep of his hand that
took in thousands of rare and beautiful books. “She is a widow,
neither Colombian nor Jewish, and she is not at all interested in
affairs of state. She is interested only in the arts.”

The Countess went straight from
the Hotel de Merimont to rue Ballu. She was determined not to miss
any part of the rehearsal and not to be turned away by the
temperamental Monsieur Davidov. She had brought a substantial
offering in the event he was in a bad mood.

Dr Watson was waiting for her
outside the theatre. She practically kissed him.

“I thought you would be half way
to Calais by now.”

“I considered it,” he said
bluntly.

“Thank you for re-considering
it.”

“Did you deliver the
invitations?’

“Yes, and it’s just as well you
absented yourself. La marquise was still in bed. I was ushered into
her bed chamber but it might have been awkward for you.”

“Ha!” he snorted. “From what you
said about French literary salons that is the equivalent of the
English reception room.”

“You sound much chirpier.”

“I went back to rue des Bouffons
and bought some new pipe tobacco. I ran out of Latakia. They didn’t
have any stuff from Syria but they had some stuff from Egypt. It is
much stronger but now that I have broken the calabash in I can pack
it with the stronger stuff. By the way, the old marionette man is
dead. There was a black wreath on the door of his shop.”

Her heart wobbled for a bit.
“Monsieur Grimaldi - how did he die?”

“The tobacconist said he died
peacefully in his sleep. Shall we sneak in the stage door and do
battle with Davidov?”

Davidov was delighted to see
them. He kissed the Countess on both cheeks – French style, not
Russian - then did the same to Dr Watson. They sat in the front
row.

The three horror plays consisted
of a rape, a beheading, and a dismembering.

Rape was a perennial favourite,
especially if the victim was bound and gagged first. This victim
was tied to a bed for the purposes of titillation, and the
similarity to Coco did not escape the Countess. Kiki played the
lead role and so convincing was her ordeal that Dr Watson almost
leapt to her rescue. Felix was the rapist. After being violated,
the girl was untied, and an exhausted Felix fell asleep. She
climbed onto a swing to console herself. A white dove flew into her
hand and all looked well. But then Felix awoke, strangled the girl
with the rope from the swing, broke the neck of the dove and
crushed it beneath his jackboot.

Beheadings were a mainstay of
stage acts, particularly magic acts, and this time it was Vincent’s
turn to suffer for his art. His head was sawn off by Hilaire the
lunatic butcher and then tossed through a window. Real glass
shattered with spectacular violence. The defenestration added a
dramatic flourish to what might have been a humdrum death. The
severed head bounced several times across the stage, spurting blood
everywhere, until it rolled into the orchestra pit.

Dismembering, though common
during the Inquisition, Roman conquest, Dark Ages, Medici period,
Crusades and Punic Wars, was less common in the nineteenth century.
Hilaire, the strong man, was strung up from a windmill semi-naked
and his member was sliced off by La Noire, the classic woman
scorned. She then put it somewhere where it could not physically go
if it were still attached.

Dr Watson squirmed and the
Countess laughed. But that was the strange thing about the Grand
Guignol. Comedy could be horrible. Horror could be funny. The
performances gave them a lot to think about as they hurried
back-stage.

Dr Watson, perhaps to check that
Mademoiselle Kiki had suffered no actual harm, went to her
dressing-room first, but she had already cleaned herself up and
disappeared. Most likely to Café Bistro. He moved right along and
found the Negress tossing off her blood-splattered garments.
Fortunately she was doing it behind a screen.

“Thanks, sweetie,” she drawled
when he praised her performance. “Will you be going to the red mill
tonight with your lady friend and the sheik? I’d really love to see
you there. I waited and waited last night but no one showed.”

He had no idea who or what she
was talking about but thought it best to humour her. A lady who
wielded a sharp blade with skilful relish was not one he wished to
disappoint, especially when that blade was currently reposing
within arm’s reach on her dressing-table.

“Yes, yes, that’s a
thought.”

The Countess found the three
actors in various stages of semi-undress in their spotlessly clean,
shared dressing-room. They were arguing about whose turn it was to
empty the ash-tray.

“Let
me
do it,” she said,
scooping it up, going out into the corridor and tipping the spent
butts into an up-turned top hat. Returning, she offered the trio a
gold-tipped cigarette from her silver etui and lighted one for
herself. “Bravo on your performances, gentlemen.”

They were not often referred to
as gentlemen and warmed to the Countess at once, however they were
not big on conversation so she decided to get the ball rolling.

“Have you been working together
very long?”

“Since we ran away from the
orphanage together,” said Hilaire, savouring a reminiscing puff.
“How old was we Vincent?”

“You was six, Felix was eight
and I was ten.”

“You joined the circus
together?”

Felix laughed harshly. “We was
press-ganged!”

“At least there was money in it
back then,” said Hilaire bitterly.

“What happened to make you leave
the circus?”

“It went belly-up after we
poured our life savings into it,” said the jongleur, the eldest of
the trio. “The whole country went broke and no one could afford to
go to the circus no more.”

“The elephant died first,”
remembered Felix. “And then the lion. We couldn’t afford to feed
them.”

Monsieur Radzival had summed it
up neatly - the Panama Canal Scandal cut deep. The Countess feigned
ignorance. “Why did the whole country go broke?”

“The Canal Company went
belly-up,” confirmed the clown.

“It weren’t like the Suez,”
explained Vincent. “That made everyone rich but the Panama was
different. Mud and rain the whole time.”

“And dirty Jews,” added the
strong man, clenching his fists. “They got filthy rich and went to
England along with half the French parliament. Should have strung
up the lot of them while we had the chance.”

The other two men clenched their
jaws and nodded.

“But now you have found success
here on the Paris stage,” she said brightly.

“But there’s no skill to it. No
juggling, no knife-throwing, no nothing like that.”

“No proper laughter,” added
Felix miserably.

“Just murder and torture and
rape – that’s what people want to see now,” said Hilaire.

“But there’s good money in it,”
argued the Countess. “You’re sold out every night.”

The men laughed crudely and
pathetically.

“Davidov pays us a pittance,”
admitted Vincent ruefully. “He got us to sign contracts before we
knew what we was getting into.”

“He wanted Kiki,” added the
clown, “and we came along for the ride.”

“He’s got us tied up good and
proper now,” said the strong man, wringing his hands.