The Curse of the Grand Guignol (34 page)

“Yes,” said the other,
accepting a cigarette and passing the etui along to the inspector.
“I suspected the playwright of being behind the murders and when I
discovered him sneaking out of the theatre I decided to
follow.”

“Monsieur Crespigny? Really?
Where did he go?”

“To the Trocadero.”

“Did you catch up to him?”

“No, he evaded capture.”

The inspector lighted the two
cigarettes for the ladies and then his own. Dr Watson declined a
gasper and decided against striking up his calabash.

“And there you found a sixth
victim?”

“Yes.”

A parlourmaid entered and their
hostess requested the best amontillado, macarons and hot chocolate
– five cups. She was one of the few hostesses in Paris who served
little chocolate pots prior to dinner. She waited for the maid to
close the door.

“Mutilated?”

“Dismembered.”

There was no gasp of surprise.
“Same as act three?”

“Yes.”

“Strung up from a
windmill?”

“Yes.”

They may as well have been
discussing the weather. Their hostess turned to the inspector. “Do
you also suspect Monsieur Crespigny?”

“I do,” he said sparingly,
taking care not to look at the Countess who suddenly looked pleased
with herself. He knew she did not concur and he wondered what this
queer conversation was hoping to achieve. Unless Crespigny was
hiding behind a false panel he couldn’t see the point of it. “I had
hoped to arrest him this morning. But he did not return to his
peniche. He has gone into hiding.”

“He cannot hide forever,”
observed Dr Watson, “although that rotten bounder, Esterhazy, did a
good job of it. Shaving off his moustache and going to ground.”

“Perhaps Kiki knows where
Monsieur Crespigny is hiding,” suggested their hostess blandly.
“She apparently left the theatre early too.”

A footman arrived bearing a
salver of amontillado and four glasses. Their hostess waved him
away after he placed the salver on an ottoman. Dr Watson did the
honours.

The inspector explained about
the death of Kiki, omitting most of it, saying only that she had
been found dead after falling from a rooftop.

“Does Davidov know?” their
hostess asked, biting her bottom lip, clearly concerned about her
investment now that the shining star had been expunged from the
firmament.

“Not yet,” said the inspector,
who was finally starting to relax, Spanish sherry in one hand,
cigarette in the other. Breakfast was hitting the spot nicely as
well. “You are the first to hear the news, la marquise.”

She smiled gratefully as the
maid returned with macarons and hot chocolate. Serving the
chocolate was a ritual the Marquise de Merimont especially enjoyed.
She savoured pouring the rich liquid beverage from the special
silver chocolate pot with the distinctive side handle and handing
out the delicate, handle-less, Chantilly porcelain cups. She felt
like a Mayan priestess presiding at a religious ceremony.

“Camille, inform Monsieur
Radzival we are having hot chocolate in my boudoir and tell him to
join us.”

The maid curtseyed.

A short time later, Camille
returned to say that Monsieur Radzival was nowhere to be found and
that his bed had not been slept in.

The Countess sipped her
chocolate; she too adored the handle-less cups that required two
hands yet felt infinitely airy and delicate. “Is it customary for
your librarian to go out without informing you?” she said with more
hauteur than was warranted.

“Certainly not,” responded
their hostess, sounding distressed, the first chink in her
sang-froid making itself visible. “It is completely out of
character. Raoul Crespigny in hiding, Mademoiselle Kiki dead, and
now Casimir Radzival missing – what can it mean?”

“How long has your librarian
been with you?” asked the Countess; managing to sound merely
curious.

“Five years come Christmas. His
maternal grandfather was a close friend of my late husband who
passed away almost seven years ago, just before that terrible
Panama Scandal came to a close. The Radzival family was enormously
wealthy but they lost everything, everything. It was a tragic
story, tragic. The grandfather had a stroke as the scandal was
drawing to a close. It was brought on by the fear of bankruptcy. He
became paralysed and died soon after. The father committed suicide
at the end of it all. He bore the brunt of the guilt of his poor
investing, you see. The mother became quite dangerous, stabbing the
family dog with a carving knife and then attacking a child in the
street. They had to put her in an insane asylum. Three sisters
descended into prostitution.

And throughout this time
Casimir was working in Panama as an engineer, trying desperately to
complete the ill-fated project. His superintendent withheld his
mail because he did not wish to lose Casimir’s expertise. By the
time Casimir discovered the worst of it and returned to France it
was too late to save his family. His plight came to my attention
through mutual friends; too late to save his sisters, they died
inside Salpetriere, but not too late to save him from a life of
penury. I knew he would not accept charity so I offered him the
position of librarian. He has been here ever since.”

The Countess and Inspector de
Guise cut a glance. In that moment he understood she had been
carefully steering him to this point.

Carefully the Countess replaced
her little Chantilly chocolate cup. “Shall we inspect his private
study? It may give us a clue as to what, I mean, where…?” She
deliberately left the sentence portentously hanging, giving the
impression Casimir Radzival may have followed in the footsteps of
his guilt-ridden père.

La marquise led the way. The
door was locked. Casimir, bereft or not, was not the sort of man
who left doors to inner sanctums open. The chatelaine was summoned.
She brought a large ring full of keys with her. But the key to the
private study was not among them. Casimir had misplaced his own key
and had borrowed the key from her ring one time. He had failed to
return it. The chatelaine, sensing the librarian’s special position
in the household and holding him in the same high regard as her
mistress, had not chased it up.

The butler was summoned. A
second set of keys existed. He kept them in the silver safe. La
marquise in the meantime felt faint. She retired to her bed and
asked to be kept informed should any news reach them, no matter how
dire. While the inspector and Dr Watson waited for the butler to
return, the Countess slipped back into the boudoir, rolled back the
cylinder desk, and rifled through the papers. One sheaf in
particular brought a knowing smile to her face.

The private study was
eventually unlocked.

“What are we searching for?”
asked Dr Watson. “A suicide note?”

“No,” said the inspector, “we
are searching for re-writes of the plays.”

“
Au contraire
,
mes
amis
,” said the Countess, “we are searching for anything that
links Monsieur Radzival to the first five victims.” She reeled off
the names: Maurice Dupin, Louis LeBrun, Amelie Hertzinger, Eugene
Mueller and Stanislaw Lodz.

Inspector de Guise started with
the secretaire which had numerous drawers and possibly one or two
secret compartments. Dr Watson checked the armoires. They were
bulging with boxes full of accounts received and paid; the late
marquis had apparently been a stickler for keeping track of
expenditure. The Countess left the men to it and went to speak to
their hostess in her bedchamber.

The Marquise de Merimont was
reposing languidly on a récamier, her blush-pink, pinch-pleated,
satin day dress fanning out with such perfect elegance it could
have been an idealised
mise en scene
lifted straight from
the French Romantic canvas of Jean-Baptiste Perronneau. “Do you
think Crespigny murdered Casimir?” she said weakly, half afraid of
the answer.

“No, I don’t think so,” said
the Countess confidently. “In fact, I’m sure he didn’t.”

Reassured, the noble voice
lifted a little then faltered quiveringly before fading. “Do you
think, do you think, it possible that Casimir is the…killer?”

“Yes,” she said bluntly, “and
that is why I seek permission to search his bedroom.”

Sighing, la marquise put her
hand to her pearlescent forehead and closed her limpid sea-green
eyes. She resembled a mermaid washed up on a beach or a Nereid on
her deathbed. “If you must. His room is in the north wing. The
butler will have a key.”

“Did Monsieur Radzival have a
valet?”

“No, I pressed him to take one
but he refused. He said his needs were simple. The under-footman
did for him when necessary. You will see by his room what I mean. I
offered him a larger bedchamber in the east wing but he
declined.”

By now the servants had guessed
something was seriously wrong. The butler, sensing la comtesse was
searching for something vital, offered to assist her. She shook her
head.

“Send up the under-footman,
tout de suite
.”

Every new fact she learned
pointed more and more to Casimir Radzival being the killer. He had
no valet because he did not want anyone to access his bedroom in
his absence. A valet would come and go, organizing things for his
master. But an under-footman might confine himself to running a
bath, brushing down frock coats, seeing to the laundering of
handkerchiefs, shirts and undergarments, checking if boots needed
to be polished by the boot boy, and so on. He would be summoned
only when specifically required.

The under-footman knocked and
entered. “You sent for me?”

“Yes, I’d like you to tell me
if anything is missing from this room.”

The word ‘missing’ was every
servant’s worst nightmare. It implied theft. The under-footman got
his back up at once. “Missing?”

She needed to put him at ease
or she would have no co-operation. “Monsieur Radzival has
disappeared. I need you tell me if any personal items have been
removed from his bedchamber.”

The under-footman relaxed his
shoulders and began to search the room, opening drawers and closing
them. The room was compact and sparingly furnished. After a few
minutes he stopped. “The gold and silver cigarette case he received
recently is missing. He placed it here on the étagère next to this
book by Zola. His diamond tie pin, a gift from la marquise is not
here. Likewise, for his gold cuff links and gold fob watch, also
gifts from the mistress. I believe he wore them last night when he
left for the theatre.” He lifted up the satin counterpane. “The
valises under his bed have gone.” He threw open the doors to the
wardrobe. “All his vestments, shoes and hats are missing.”

Well, that was self-evident!
Monsieur Radzival had returned late last night, packed his
belongings and fled. He had taken only those things which he
actually owned. The valuable paintings, silver candle-sticks, Ming
porcelain and ivory bibelots his patroness would have chosen to be
placed in the room were still on display.

The Countess locked the door,
pocketed the key and returned to the private study. Her two
companions had struck gold. In a hidden compartment of the
secretaire the inspector had found a small, neatly folded,
transcript of the six acts that related to each of the six
murders.

“Radzival must be Anonymous,”
he said eagerly, tasting success at last. “He passed the plays on
to Davidov but kept a copy of the six acts he was intending to
mimic in real life.”

“No,” contradicted the
Countess. “I just checked the desk of la marquise, the one in her
boudoir that she was terrified of allowing me to inspect. Under the
roll top was a copy of all six plays written in her hand, dated,
number seven for next week finished and dated, and she was working
on number eight, dated for the week after next. It was almost
finished. She funded the theatre because it allowed her to stage
her own plays. She would have known that Davidov rejected
Crespigny’s early efforts and she anonymously passed her own onto
him. She was the playwright but she was a noblewoman, a marquise,
unable to put her name to the lurid plays of the Grand Guignol. The
theatre was more than entertainment to her, it was her creative
life. She went every night to see her own plays because she was
proud of her efforts.”

“Are you saying she is the
killer?” challenged the inspector.

“Of course, not. Think,
gentlemen, who would have had access to her private desk? Who could
have seen in advance the plays she wrote? Who could have chosen the
act most suited to be staged as murder in real life but who had no
connection to the theatre whatsoever?”

“Radzival,” said the two men
simultaneously.

“Exactly – Casimir Radzival.
But he did not wish to implicate his benefactress in murder so he
committed the murderous acts while she was in her private booth. If
the murders were ever linked to the plays she would not be a
suspect. And he must have known Crespigny was not really writing
the plays, so he knew the playwright could not be charged with
murder either. But think how well the staging of the Marionette
Murders with the name tags suited the caricature associated with
the Panama Affair. Despite the tags not matching the caricature in
perfect word order, the public would have made the connection
sooner or later. What other evidence do we have?”

In the bottom of one armoire,
Dr Watson had found some string, and in a hat box on top of another
armoire he had located ten blank cardboard tags, identical to those
found around the necks of the victims. The evidence was fairly
damning.

“Nothing about the victims?”
posed the Countess.

The two men shook their
heads.

Disappointed but not
discouraged, she explained about Radzival’s bedroom. “He must have
known he would have time to return to the Hotel de Merimont to pack
his things last night. Crespigny, on the other hand, must have
realised we were onto him. He probably expected a policeman
standing by at the peniche. He was forced to flee
empty-handed.”