The Curse of the Grand Guignol (24 page)

Tempestuous clouds were banking
up and the temperature was dropping. It would soon start to rain.
She pushed to her feet and stepped gingerly toward the gang-plank.
“By the way, Kiki’s sister died today. You might show her some
sympathy.”

“I didn’t know she
had
a
sister.”

“Coco; I believe she had a
circus accident a couple of years back and became addicted to
absinthe and opium to deal with the pain. She was a patient at
Salpetriere. I bumped into Kiki at the hospital and offered to
bring her home.”

“She will get sympathy from me
but she won’t get any from Davidov. I hope she is still able to do
the show tonight or the Russian will be livid and we will all be
made to suffer.” Courteously, he offered her his arm. “I’ll walk
you up the embankment to your hackney cab. The grass is damp and
it’s easy to slip.”

“You said that la marquise goes
every night to the theatre? Does she watch the show from
back-stage?”

“No, she would only get in the
way. Davidov organized for her to have the booth with the best
view. It is the one before Delgardo’s.”

“Did your family lose money in
the Panama Affair?”

He gave a sardonic chuckle. “You
mean did I kill and mutilate those I hold responsible for the
biggest corruption scandal in history. Firstly, I am not a killer.
Secondly, I don’t know if the five victims were connected to the
scandal. Thirdly, if you find the killer and the victims are
connected to the scandal let me shake the killer’s hand. Fourthly,
everyone lost money except those who got away with murder.”

When they reached the top of the
embankment the Countess spotted a hand-cart loaded with broken
furniture. It was not being wheeled by a rag-grubber but it
prompted a thought.

“Are there any rag and bone men
hereabouts?”

He regarded her oddly through
the oblique tilt of his round glasses. “Probably, why?”

“Do you know where I might speak
with one of them?”

“Well, I cannot introduce you to
any this side of the canal but there is an alleyway in Clignancourt
where I believe they congregate.”

“Hop into the cab.
On y
va
.”

Naturally, he wanted to know why
she was suddenly interested in rag-grubbers and so she told him her
theory about the murderer possibly using a hand-cart to transport
the bodies.

They crossed the canal and soon
came to grim area lined with dilapidated warehouses where the worst
dregs of society washed up in one big stinking stewpot. The stench
was horrid and the Countess was forced to breathe through her
scented handkerchief.

“Are you sure you want to go
on?” asked Crespigny when they entered a sunless alleyway that
Haussmann and God had overlooked.

She steeled her nerve and
nodded.

“So be it,” he said cavalierly,
rattling rusty doors and gates as she dodged puddles of greasy
filth until he finally found a gate that was not bolted from the
other side. “If you’ve got a few sous make sure to get them out
before we get coshed on the head for trespassing. These men are
rather protective of their treasure.”

The roof of the warehouse had
collapsed years ago but several rotten beams were still intact.
Four brick walls defined the space and a hovel made from sheets of
tin that served as a shelter leaned against one of them. A large
cauldron, full of rags, was bubbling away. More rags, strung up
from wires that criss-crossed from beam to beam, flapped in the
wind like dirty ghosts that would never come clean. A small mangy
mongrel barked ferociously.

“Shut-up Mazarin!” barked a
man’s voice even more ferociously, before a back-bent figure
emerged from the hovel wielding a spiked stick. “Well, well, what
have we here? Visitors, Mazarin!”

“A few questions, good sir,”
said Crespigny in his most courteous refrain, warily keeping one
eye on the vicious flea-ball, “and we will make it worth your
while.”

The dog kept barking until the
man gave it a swift kick. “Shut-up, Mazarin!”

Yelping, the dog slinked off to
lick his wound in private.

The rag-grubber licked his lips.
“Questions?” he prompted greedily, noting the quality of the lady’s
garments.

The Countess asked him about his
trade. He showed her his hand-cart and his spiked stick and her
eyes seemed to widen in wonder, as if he had just showed her the
necklace of that Austrian bitch. She paid him the equivalent of a
king’s ransom. Tonight, he would have his cake and it too. Cake and
bread forever!

The evening of the sixth of
December was spent at home. Everyone took turns sitting by Xenia’s
bedside. There was the fear of brain damage from lack of oxygen.
Fedir did not go to Café Bistro and rarely left his sister’s
side.

The next day the Countess turned
her mind to party costumes. Fortunately, her late step-aunt had
several masquerade costumes in her wardrobe. Six seamstresses were
hired to re-stitch them to make them fit and to add symmetricality
as required. Fedir was dispatched to buy necessary accoutrements,
plus coloured paper, ink, extra pens, and to send a telegram on
behalf of the Countess. She thought a break would do him good.

Dr Watson was going as
D’Artagnan, the loyal friend of the Three Musketeers. The Countess
was going as Colombina, the mistress of Harlequin. Inspector de
Guise was going as Sherlock Holmes, though he didn’t yet know it.
Mahmoud was going as himself.

By late afternoon Dr Watson and
the Countess decided they also needed a break. They ordered the
landau and made their way to Ile Saint-Louis. It was the smaller of
the two islands in the Seine. The largest being the Ile de la Cite
which boasted the architectural masterpiece called Notre Dame.

Inspector de Guise was at home,
which was fortunate for they had tramped up four flights of stairs
to knock on his door. They brought wine and provisions, fearing the
inspector might not be looking after himself as well as he should.
He lit a paraffin lamp which soon warmed the gloomy garret and they
set about discussing all that had recently transpired and what it
might mean in relation to the murders.

After much conjecture, the thing
they concentrated on was the next murder. If the Countess was right
and it was act three, there would be no hushing up a dismembered
corpse strung up from the famous red mill. All hell would break
loose in the city. The Director General of the Sûreté National
would be apoplectic. But how, they asked themselves, would the
murderer achieve such a feat? The Moulin Rouge was open all night.
There were hundreds of patrons coming and going through its doors
and hundreds more milling about on the street outside. Our trio
couldn’t see how the murderer would ever get away with it.

“Perhaps it will be the other
act,” suggested the inspector. “What did it involve?”

“It was a beheading,” said Dr
Watson blandly, surprised at how quickly his brain had accepted
horror as the norm.

“Well, that is a mutilation
too,” noted the inspector.

“The head is then thrown through
a window,” added the doctor, making it sound like something that
happened every day.

“What about the stage-setting?
Will that give us a clue?”

“The backdrop was the river.
There were peniches moored along the bank.”

The inspector straightened up.
“Peniche? That’s an unusual word for an Englishman to use. Most
Englishmen would say: houseboat.”

“Oh, righto, that’s because
Mademoiselle Kiki lives on a peniche with Raoul Crespigny. We paid
them a visit the other day. The three actors live on the next
peniche along. It was Monsieur Radzival who used the word. I hadn’t
heard it before. I shall probably call houseboats peniches from now
on and irritate all my English friends.”

The Countess sat forward,
frowning at her un-manicured fingernails, wondering who actually
painted the backdrops; she had really let herself go recently. “No,
no, no, it won’t be the beheading. The killer keeps the body parts
as souvenirs. He does not throw them through windows. It will be
the dismembering. It may not be at the Moulin Rouge. Are there any
other windmills in the city, inspector?”

“Yes, I can think of several
dozen. Montmartre is still rustic. Windmills are scattered on the
hillside among the vineyards and vegetable gardens. And there are
novelty ones too. Miniature ones near the Moulin Rouge where
tourists like to have their photographs taken. And some are placed
outside cafes and bars for decoration. And many brothels have them
by their front doors. The cheap prostitutes like to associate
themselves with the courtesans of the red mill. There are some in
parks and even cemeteries. People put them on their crypts and
mausoleums instead of angels and urns.”

“Well, that is your answer,
gentlemen. The murderer will have already chosen his windmill and
there is nothing we can do but wait and see.”

“Perhaps extra patrolmen might
scare the killer off?” suggested Dr Watson, ever the optimist. “Can
some of these windmills have police standing by?”

“There are not enough police in
Paris for such a task and if I go to the Director General and tell
him I think a man will be dismembered and strung up on a windmill
he will take out his gun and shoot me and then have me arrested for
disturbing the peace.”

The Countess believed making
light of a serious situation indicated the brain was still
functioning at its peak but she wasn’t sure if the Frenchman
believed it. “Have you paid a visit to
le Cirque du Grand
Guignol
, inspector?”

“Not yet. I will go tonight.
Today I prepared myself a disguise. I am going as a bohemian
artist. I have a smock, a beret and a bad wig. The disguise may yet
become a mainstay. By the end of the week my career in the Sûreté
will be finished and I may be forced to earn a living as a
Splattereur.”

On the way home Dr Watson asked
the coachman to detour to the tobacco shop in the Marais. He was
hoping a batch of Latakia had come in from Syria as promised. He
wanted to take some back to England. It was while he was settling
his bill that he realized how Monsieur Grimaldi knew the Countess
lived on rue Bonaparte. He had left a forwarding address and the
marionette man must have come into the tobacco shop at some stage,
chatted, and obtained it from the tobacconist.

“Nothing sinister in it at all,”
he explained later to the Countess.

Xenia was showing little sign of
improvement. They took turns spooning water into her in the hope of
flushing out her kidneys. She was unable to recognize anyone around
her but she seemed to respond to loud noises and Dr Watson took
that as a positive sign.

The Countess wanted to confront
Monsignor Delgardo and accuse him of attempting to murder her maid
but the doctor warned her against acting rashly.

“There are street vendors
everywhere, wandering in and out of the grounds, selling foodstuffs
and even wine. Anyone could have administered some poison to her
food or drink. And don’t forget the place is an insane asylum, full
of lunatics, many who appear quite normal, many roaming free with
God-knows-what on their mind. These modern methods are all well and
good but the supervision was woefully inadequate.”

The Countess’s loathing for
Delgardo increased in proportion to the blame she attached to
herself; the guilt she harboured; the personal responsibility that
weighed on her conscience. She was the one who had sent Xenia to
Salpetriere. If anyone should be held to account it was she.
Organising the forthcoming party helped take her mind off her
self-flagellation.

The seamstresses had finished
the costumes. A pastry cook, sous chef, and extra servants had been
hired, including two footmen and three maids who had experience at
waiting at table. The dining room and salon had been readied with
flowers and scented candles. Coloured paper – a different colour
for each guest - ink and pens had been set out on individual trays
to avoid any mix ups. And prizes had been organized.

An enamelled gold and silver
cigarette box in the style of Faberge for best poem.

A jet tie pin for best
costume.

An iridium, gold-tipped, dip pen
for best ink blot.

A linen handkerchief for booby
prize, presumably to cry into.

Inspector de Guise arrived one
hour early as arranged. The check wool coat with Inverness cape
hung a bit loosely and the deerstalker hat was a tight fit, but at
least he was a real detective.

“Isn’t Mr Holmes normally
portrayed with a pipe?” said the inspector.

Dr Watson generously offered his
recent purchase. “Here, take this. Sherlock never smoked a calabash
but it looks the part, and don’t forget those two magnifying
glasses. They will add authenticity.”

“D’Artagnan sits well you well
on you, doctor,” remarked the other. “But where is your musket and
sword?”

“Well, they would have played
havoc with the symmetricality. I would have needed two of each, and
I was afraid of damaging the chair every time I sat down. Damned
nuisance things. I don’t know how men managed it back then.”

The costume of Colombina -
meaning little dove - was a dramatic mix of commedia dell’ arte and
Venetian Carnevale. The flouncy skirt was made from triangles of
brightly coloured silk sewn together in random patterns, the waist
nipped with a flirtatious red sash and the bodice provocatively
low-cut. It came with an intriguing black and gold Venetian style
mask. The Countess had her up-pinned chestnut hair gathered using
an assortment of jewelled gew-gaws. A pair of lavish drop-earrings
finished it off.

Looking regal, The Marquise de
Merimont and Monsieur Radzival arrived together. She was dressed as
Marie Antoinette and he came as Louis XVI. Her flamboyant finery
and exquisite jewels were sumptuous to behold. His costume belonged
to the late Marquis de Merimont and had undergone extensive
alterations since yesterday. The librarian was substantially taller
and significantly leaner than the original wearer. The white wig
and frilly lace cravat were deft touches but the piece de
resistance was definitely the white stockings and tight
breeches.