The Curse of the Grand Guignol (32 page)

Inspector de Guise was a man of
infinite patience, sympathetic sensibility, and an ego that was not
over-inflated, but he had borne the brunt of the Sûreté’s failings
and had been scapegoated by the Director General in a futile effort
to buy off the anarchists who wanted to dance on the ashes of law
and order. He thought he might just lose his temper and say
something he would eternally regret.

“The Countess might explain it
better,” he said in a level tone, indicating with his eyes for her
to step up. “She was instrumental in solving the Clairvoyant murder
in Biarritz last month. She was travelling at the time with Dr
Watson, the partner of Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

The Director General was
au
courant
with the Biarritz affair and had heard several
complimentary things about the aristocrat in question; though her
actual name had been relegated to the list of foreign cognomens
that possessed far too many syllables than was good for the tongue
and sounded like a Slavic disease. In fact, news had already
reached him concerning the successful part she had played in the
strange affair at Chanteloup in the Cathar hinterland. Her
reputation preceded her but not in the way he first imagined.

“We are fortunate to have you in
Paris,” he said with heavy-handed irony, though not ungraciously,
to let her know he would bow to her sleuthing skills for now, but
to not get ahead of herself. “Please, take up the story, la
comtesse.”

She managed a grateful smile
that had nothing to do with gratitude. “Each of the Marionette
Murders occurred on the exact same night that the theatre on rue
Ballu was presenting a new act – November third, tenth,
seventeenth, twenty-fourth, the premier day of December and now
again on the eighth of the month. It could
not
have been a
coincidence. Moreover, each murder mimicked what was happening on
stage. If a body was strung up from a lamp-post and the hands
chopped off on stage, so it was that it happened somewhere in Paris
at the same time.”

“Did you know about this, de
Guise?”

“I did not become aware of it
until after I was suspended from duty, sir.”

“And still you said
nothing?”

“It was only last night that I
fully realized it, sir”

“And when were you planning to
share
your realization?”

“As soon as I had some proof,
sir, as soon as I thought I would be believed. My reputation was in
tatters. My word did not hold much weight. I did not wish to
provide further ammunition to the satirists and caricaturists.”

The Director General appeared to
wince. “Please go on, la comtesse.”

“The playwright appeared to be
the likely culprit. But he claimed not to have written the plays.
He said they were passed to him anonymously. Of course, he could
have been lying. However, there is no disputing there are many
people connected to the theatre who could have known what was about
to be enacted before the actual act, namely, the actors and
actresses, the director, and the men who build the scenery and the
props.”

“I presume you have narrowed it
down to a small handful of suspects?”

“Not yet,” she replied candidly
to avoid giving birth to false hope.

Like the inspector, she was not
yet certain who the killer was, and now the corpse of Père Denys
added a baffling new dimension. He was not elderly and affluent.
His murder broke the pattern. And yet, she hoped it might prove to
be a catalyst.

Unlike the inspector, she could
not easily dismiss Crespigny. They could definitely place him at
the Trocadero. If he was not the killer, per se, he had to be
intimately acquainted.

How reliable was Pascal Leveret?
The man seen smoking a cigarette at the top of the stairs may have
been trying to sneak into a private booth. She and Mahmoud had done
the same. Or he may have been embarrassed at being spotted at the
horreur
by someone who appeared to know him. He might have
fled to avoid an awkward social encounter. Or it may simply have
been a spy from the rival rue Chaptal gang, sent to check out the
new plays, who did not wish to be caught out. There was any number
of reasons as to why he bolted.

“You knew in advance the murder
would take place at the Trocadero?” pressed the Director General,
still trying to get to the bottom of how much these two knew and
didn’t share.

She shook her head. “We strongly
suspected the sixth murder would involve a windmill, but we did not
know which windmill the murderer would choose. According to
Inspector de Guise there are numerous windmills in Montmartre. We
did not consider the Trocadero until we heard that someone had
bolted out of the theatre and hailed a cab.”

“The man Pascal Leveret
spotted?”

“No, a different man,” she
said.

“You think there may be two
murderers?”

“Anything is possible,” she said
vaguely, mainly because she didn’t want to see Crespigny banged up
in a police cell, protesting his innocence all the way to the
gallows. The Marionette Murders were horrific and horrific murders
tended to encourage people to let their emotions run away with
them. A lesson she had taken on board during her first case.
Besides, she had picked up on Inspector de Guise’s reluctance to
name names when recounting who they had pursued to the Trocadero.
She took her cue from him.

But the Director General was a
not a man who regarded subtlety and discretion as necessary virtues
for catching a killer. “As soon as we are done here,” he barked,
“we arrest everyone associated with
le Cirque du Grand
Guignol
.”

The Countess could see the
inspector’s nostrils flare as he pressed his lips together and
clamped his tongue. Such high-handed action would set them back,
not push them forward, the innocent would suffer by association,
the theatre would go bankrupt and lives would be ruined, and after
all that they might not even have their killer. She was in accord
with the inspector but she was not in fear of losing her livelihood
and had no qualms about voicing her opinion.

“May I suggest you hold off; the
killer may not even be a member of the troupe. There are several
other theories to consider.”

Tired of being lampooned, the
Director General was anxious to take action. He was accustomed to
being respected not ridiculed. He was becoming the butt of jokes at
his club and his wife had stopped holding her regular decoupage
circle with her four closest friends.

“What theories?”

“The Panama Affair.”

“The Panama Affair!” His voice,
sarcastic and strident, echoed across the night despite the
smothering fog. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds, la
comtesse? That business finished more than six years ago! France
does not live in the past!”

“And so did the Dreyfus business
finish until they brought him back from Devil’s Island,” she
reminded with hauteur. “The men who orchestrated and condoned that
miscarriage of justice will go down in history as the rogues and
scoundrels they are. Their names will ring down the centuries. If
you wish to arrest the troupe at the theatre so be it on your head.
Your name will ring down the centuries. It will be a byword for
incompetence. Whenever the name Vidocq is celebrated, your tenure
will be remembered for the clumsy mishandling of the Marionette
Murders.”

That soubriquet always brought
on a cringe. Alliteration made it worse. It served to align
something obscene with something poetic. Children would be
inventing skipping rhymes next, like ring-a-ring-of-roses, a song
about the Bubonic Plague. They might even name a disease after him.
Or worse! Perhaps they would name a clumsy police marionette with a
hare’s tail on his cap after him. His name would carry down the
centuries worse than Grosseteste.

“You think there may be a link
to the Panama Affair?” he said hoarsely, a lump in his throat so
big he wondered if he’d just swallowed his own Adam’s apple.

“It is just a thought,” she
admitted. “I have no proof. But when justice is not done, when it
is not even seen to be done, when it becomes tokenistic, it
festers, it gnaws; it eats away at the human spirit like a chancre.
When evil-doers get away with murder, it forces otherwise good
people to take the law into their own hands or to become sick at
the thought of it.

Philosophers discuss punishment
in terms of retribution. We have grown beyond an eye for an eye,
they say philosophically. We are better men than our ancestors
were. But the true purpose of punishment is restoration. The
punishment must fit the crime because the human spirit demands it.
Justice is a tonic for our souls. It is good for our health.
Punishment is the restorative. Without it we grow sick.”

The Director General had never
heard a woman speak like that. He felt lost for words. He ceded to
her entreaty.

“I will give you six more days,”
he mandated didactically, “but not seven. I cannot wait for another
murder to take place. The people are sick of it already. Paris
grows wretched. The very air is poisoned with supposition and
suspicion, fear and dread. My men are run off their feet chasing
shadows. A young girl placed a puppet in her window and the family
home was smeared in dog excrement. A marionette shop was torched
last night. A streetwalker was beaten to death because she was
wearing red lipstick. A man who purchased some sturdy string was
set upon by a mob which then chased him to his death – he leapt
into the river to escape them and drowned. People are afraid. They
are, as you say – taking the law into their own hands.” He turned
abruptly to the inspector. “Consider yourself back on duty. We need
all the help we can get. Solve this crime before the chancre
spreads to the whole of France.”

The mutilated body of Père
Denys was laid out on a workbench inside the windmill. The six
night-watchmen who had carried it in made sure to cross themselves
afterwards. This was the work of the devil, they muttered, watching
as the inspector removed a tag from around the neck and showed it
to the painted lady standing in the shadows.

Dozens of hurricane lanterns,
flickering quietly in the discouraging gloom, were suspended from
oak beams or set out on nearby tables and chairs to provide
sufficient light for viewing the corpse. There was no time to
waste. Any clue would be welcome. The police surgeon had been sent
for and had arrived grumbling into his beard about the lateness of
the hour until he saw the mutilated corpse and realized the
hideousness of the crime.

“Rigor mortis is quite
pronounced. This man has been dead at least one day, possibly two
days,” he said grimly. “He was killed by a metal spike which
pierced his heart and lungs, same as the previous victims. The
bloodstain on the undergarment tells us that. I thought all along
the murder weapon might be a thick hat pin but I now think it more
likely to have been a large iron nail. The mutilation was done post
mortem, no blood around the groin, thank goodness. It is a small
mercy but at least the poor soul was not forced to suffer the
indignity of dismemberment while still alive. This cannot go on
much longer. I am growing heartily sick of these mutilated
corpses.” Shaking his head and sighing heavily, he picked up his
medical bag. “I will examine the body further tomorrow in the
surgery where the light will be better. Do you know his name?”

“Yes,” said the inspector, “it
is Père Denys from Saint Pierre de Montmartre.”

“A priest?”

The inspector nodded.

“Madness, madness,” muttered the
police surgeon as he shuffled to the door, paused and crossed
himself. “This is a crime against God.”

The Director General did not
have the stomach to return to his twelve course banquet and took
himself off home, feeling slightly ill, wondering if the oysters
had been off or the lobster undercooked or the wine soured by a
rotten cork. But he knew it was none of those things. This was not
only a crime against God; it was a crime against France.

The Eiffel Tower loomed out of
the fog like a grotesque, half-built, giant gallows as Inspector de
Guise and the Countess made their way wearily back to their waiting
hackney cab, the driver having been paid in advance for his
patience. It had just gone midnight and the streets of Paris were
eerily quiet. The clip-clop of horse’s hoofs penetrated the
blanketed silence of the sleeping city, reassuring them they had
not yet passed through some dark veil into the Hell.

“The murderer killed Père Denys
in advance because he knew he would not have enough time to do it
tonight,” said the inspector, extracting the tag from his pocket.
“Do you agree?”

Just one word, same yet
different: nana.

“Yes,” she said. “He could not
have killed him at the church in Montmartre, transported him across
to the Trocadero, hoisted him up, mutilated him, and escaped
unseen. Nor could he have lured him to the building site as easily
as he lured the others to their places of death. The others must
have gone willingly to meet him, by willingly I mean of their own
volition, albeit unwillingly in their hearts, knowing they were
being coerced, probably blackmailed, and yet still going regardless
of the danger.”

“In hindsight, it was a mistake
not to disclose the full details of the first couple of murders.
The others would have thought twice about going to their
deaths.”

“Hindsight is a wonderful cudgel
to beat ourselves up with.”

“Have you had a chance to think
about how the priest fits into the pattern of victims?”

“He doesn’t fit in. That is the
interesting thing. The killer has killed someone he did not
originally intend to kill. He has killed from necessity.”

“Necessity?”

“When Dr Watson and I visited
the church in Montmartre to speak to Père Denys he revealed that he
was having a recurring dream about a rag and bone man. In fact, a
rag-grubber’s hand-cart woke him the night of the murder. He often
took a stroll in the cemetery at night to calm himself from his
nightmares. It’s possible our killer observed the priest doing this
and later pondered the possibility of having been seen whilst
arranging the corpse.”