by Tony Medawar
VIII
WHEREIN THE DOUBLE-DOORS ARE OPENED
Others have written of the finale to this case; my own account can have no virtue except that of an eyewitness. There were wild accounts in most of the papers, and what irritated us all most was Le Figaro’s smug assertion that ‘it is amazing that the only person to see the truth was M. Bencolin, since all the details were before the eyes of the witnesses from the first.’ Whatever the general public may think of that, it will probably agree with me that the reason why Bencolin staged his dénouement in the fashion he employed was rather for a psychological vengeance on his adversary than any real desire to extract a confession. You shall judge.
Around eight in the morning, I went to my rooms in the Square Rapp for a bath and a change of clothes. My charitable landlady drew her own conclusions, and solicitously inquired after the health of ‘my little girl’. Then she found a couple of blood-spots when I sent my dinner clothes out to be pressed, and became sympathetic to such an extent that I hesitated to tell her they had been caused by a severed head. Madame Hirondelle is prone to hysterics.
Unquestionably, I thought when I was drinking chocolate by my own fire, it had been a Night. In retrospect, which is the best way to enjoy excitement anyhow, I contemplated it with entire satisfaction. I had had my murder. ‘We will forget the matter until this evening. I am going to have you all as my guests at the central office,’ Bencolin had said. ‘In the meantime, I suggest you call up some girl and go to an afternoon dance as an antidote against the future.’
When I did use the telephone to suggest this—it is a hall-phone, and Madame Hirondelle’s door is always open—my astonished landlady inquired after this and that, and fell to dietary suggestions of more theoretical than real usefulness.
Paris was preening its finery that day; the gigolos were all a-cackle on the Champs Elysées, there was a warm wine-like air made luminous around the green of the Tuileries, whose aisles were in bloom with the early-spring crop of artists painting the vista towards the Arc de Triomphe. It was all highlights and watercolour, with the grey face of the Madeleine peering down her street at the obelisk from the Nile. I very nearly forgot the black business of last night in mingling with the whirligig life in the company of my friend Marguérite (she was a demi, which is the word customarily used with tasse), until we entered one of those dancing-places where the extra charge is put on the champagne instead of the cover, and the cover is therefore permitted to be dirty. There the inspired orchestra played ‘Hallelujah’, and followed it up with ‘Bye, Bye, Blackbird’ … then, over in a corner, I saw Mr Sid Golton. He had just neared that mild state of happiness wherein flipping water in a spoon seems highly humorous, and this he was doing to calculate his range when he should begin in earnest. I saw him look at me, seem puzzled, and then he waved in recognition. His shiny cheeks were freshly shaven and blooming as a baby’s; his thin hair was plastered down, and the blue eyes far less bloodshot. A smile dawned. He waddled over, after an appraising glance at the lady beside me.
It was the stage for an experiment. I rose, and thrust out my hand deliberately. He responded.
Now I have normally anything but a strong grip, yet under the pressure when he shook hands Mr Golton perceptibly winced.
‘Geez, go easy!’ he protested. ‘Got a sore hand; fell on it last night—it’s no fun.’
‘Nor is the sensation pleasant,’ said I, ‘when a bullet hits a flashlight.’
‘You’re drunk,’ observed Mr Golton casually. ‘Wouldn’t have thought it, but you are. Well, order ’em up. Hey, garsong, oon Marteeni, see?’
The afternoon passed somehow. I was a bit preoccupied, and Golton took care of the amusement of my companion, reciting droll stories of his adventures as a ranger in Yellowstone until somebody had discovered on his property an oil gusher spouting—he illustrated the spouting of the gusher with appropriate pantomime—and delivered to him what he described as bokoo dough. Various parlour-tricks served to keep the company at the nearby tables interested in life.
We separated at six-thirty, and Marguérite, being philosophical, was content to regard one’s mood and one’s friends as just another of those things. Golton said that he had got a message from Bencolin to ‘be on hand, pronto, at nine o’clock, at the police station’. Undoubtedly there hung over us the shadow of that night …
When I returned to my rooms, I found Madame Hirondelle in possession of the afternoon paper; she had even violated an ancient French custom and bought two. All such ladies being embryo tabloid-sheets, there is no reason for the tabloid in French life. She brought me in a special tray of tea and croissants in order to dilate on broken romances, which particularly reminded her of the case of her cousin by marriage, who had blue eyes and lived in Bordeaux, and was (figure to yourself, monsieur!) only the bride of a night when, etc. … I pondered the etiquette of wearing evening clothes to Bencolin’s party, which seemed rather like debating the correctness of a morning coat to attend a guillotining. Then, upstairs, somebody’s insufferable gramophone started to scratch through ‘Hallelujah’ …
Everything made a person’s thoughts all out of proportion. I gagged at the thought of food, but something was necessary to take one’s mind off a killer. A taxi took me to the grand boulevards, already flowering with pink lights, and I dropped into a cinema. The player-piano rang with a flat stereotyped sound, like a newspaper editorial, and the peanut shells … then the picture leaped out at me, and I was struck with the extraordinary resemblance of the star to Bencolin. Except for the latter’s beard, the likeness was perfect. Nor could I imagine Bencolin plunged in the amorous intrigue whose chief purpose seemed to lead the hero as many times as possible into the wrong bedroom. But there was no getting away from that likeness. The piece was called ‘La Blonde ou la Brune?’ and featured Mr Adolphe Menjou. Presently, in one of the feminine leads, who bore the flamboyant name of Miss Arlette Marchal, I began to see a resemblance to Madame Louise de Saligny. This is a state called nerves, and is not at all pleasant.
It was eight-thirty when I arrived at the vast Palais de Justice. You cannot imagine the size of this Palace, which resembles a pictureless Louvre; so I naturally wandered into the department whose purpose, I learned, was inquiring into the whereabouts of lost dogs. This was laudable but uninteresting. I penetrated three or four corridors before I was found at last by a clever detective and escorted through a maze of rooms to the office of Bencolin.
It was a small room panelled in dark wood and lighted by green-shaded lamps. Bencolin stood behind the desk in no way like the man I had seen the night before. His suavity was a mask, his voice low and clear, his beard freshly barbered. In a chair beside his desk sat a great lump of a man, like a bald Buddha, with flabby hands folded in his lap; his eyes blinked slowly, automaton fashion, and his jaw was buried in his collar.
‘M. le Comte de Villon, the juge d’instruction’, Bencolin introduced.
The judge looked me over craftily, so that I had an uncomfortable idea he would ask for my fingerprints. He grunted, and closed his eyes. Bencolin indicated a pair of closed folding doors behind him.
‘The room of my entertainment,’ he said.
That was all, except for a faint glittery smile. I sat down, and for many minutes there was no sound except a deep humming from somewhere in the building. A watch on the table ticked audibly.
‘M. Luigi Fenelli,’ a voice suddenly announced. I jumped around and saw Fenelli being escorted in. He was very haughty; he fingered his curled moustache, and his hair positively bubbled with oil, so that some of the oil seemed to be spread over his fat face. Tiny eyes darted round.
‘Me, I am here,’ he proclaimed, and thrust his hand under the breast of his coat. Cloak and hat he offered to the escorting detective.
‘Sit down, please,’ requested Bencolin.
Again that silence, and the ticking of the watch … Presently Golton came in like a landslide, exuding geniality. But the atmosphere of the room awed him befor
e long. He demanded to know ‘why they didn’t have magazines here, like any good dentist’s office’, but his facetiousness trickled away; he sat down and shifted his feet nervously. François, the detective who had been on duty in the hall the night before, entered and stood in one corner.
Bencolin began to click a pencil against the table, just as he had the night before when he was questioning …
‘Madame Louise de Saligny and M. Edouard Vautrelle.’
The circle was complete. Madame wore a black wrap with a collar of ermine. From this collar she looked out lazily, and her face was like a lovely photograph slightly out of focus. But her black hair was bound back to a knot tonight, which seemed to make the countenance thinner, and her mouth slashed with lipstick. Only the dark speculative eyes were the same. She greeted Bencolin without the slightest semblance of interest … Vautrelle, ostentatiously cool, ran the tip of his finger along the thin line of his moustache. His colourless eyebrows were raised.
‘We are all present,’ Bencolin said. ‘M. Vautrelle, will you be so good as to tell me the time?’
‘Your questions seldom vary, do they, monsieur?’ asked the other. ‘Again subject to confirmation it is five minutes past nine.’
Bencolin contemplated the watch on his desk.
‘Yes. But for the purpose of this meeting,’ he remarked softly, ‘I prefer that the hour be fifteen minutes to eleven. François, will you be so good as to open those double doors?’
The distant humming died away. The demonstration had begun.
IX
THE LAST ACT
Bencolin asked us all to enter the room disclosed when the double-doors were opened. It was very large, the walls and floor covered with white tile, so that it resembled an operating-room in a hospital. Four lamps with green shades hung from the ceiling, immediately above six chairs ranged in two lines in such a way that the chairs of the second row were in the open spaces between those of the first, all of them three feet apart. The first row was about fifteen feet from the opposite end of the room. There were no windows.
‘We have often been asked,’ Bencolin continued, ‘why the prefecture has no psychological laboratory such as that suggested many years ago by Professor Münsterberg of Harvard. I wish to show you now that we have our own conception of a psychological laboratory. It is eminently a practical one, and, so far as I know, there is no duplicate of it in the world. I am going to ask you to assist me in a parlour game which has often caused much amusement. I am going to ask you all,’ he continued after a silence, ‘to be secured firmly in these chairs, and also gagged, for all the world as though you had been kidnapped by a cinema-inspired villain. I promise that the fastenings will not chafe you, and that you will suffer no annoyance from the gag. I should prefer that everyone accede in this, including you,’ he turned to me, ‘François, and Madame de Saligny—although madame will be excepted, if she prefers.’
I looked round at the group. Vautrelle laughed.
‘It is obvious,’ he remarked, ‘that children’s games are not confined to the nursery. Well, I have no objection, if you don’t mean to rob us while we are helpless. Hein, Louise? I—’
‘This is an outrage!’ bellowed Fenelli. His coat rose on his back like feathers. ‘To such proceedings—’
‘You are, of course, at liberty to refuse,’ said Bencolin carelessly. Fenelli worked his mouth a moment, and added, ‘But if the others agree—’ Bowing, Bencolin turned to Golton and rapidly translated his words into English.
‘Sure, it’s all right with me. But no funny business, mind!’ Golton amended. He stared at the detective, and whispered to me, ‘Wise guy, that one!’
Madame de Saligny showed no more agreement or disagreement than before. She simply shrugged, ‘I do not care.’
Manacles, felt-lined, were on the arms and legs of the chairs. Bencolin left us all to the selection of our chairs, standing before the group like a professor before his class. There was hesitation; we all glanced at each other, and it was madame who first sat down in the end chair of the first row to our left. Vautrelle took the one beside her, then Fenelli. Golton took the end chair to the right in the second row; then François, finally myself. Two attendants appeared out of a door I had not previously seen, and went about fastening the manacles on our wrists and legs with snap-locks. They produced half a dozen gags, like moustache-smoothers, with cotton for the covering of the mouth.
‘Before these are fastened,’ said Bencolin, ‘I should like to ask one question … M. Fenelli, how should you describe the late Saligny?’
I could see Fenelli’s profile partly turned in astonishment.
‘Why—why, monsieur—he was tall, and good-looking, and blond; he was—’ the manager hesitated, and chewed at his moustache. ‘I don’t know that I can make it clearer—he was—’
‘Can you make it any clearer; describe Saligny?’ Golton was asked next.
‘Why—sure—big fellow, always wore mighty fine clothes …’
‘M. Vautrelle?’
‘Precisely six feet tall,’ responded Vautrelle amusedly, ‘weight, 70 kilos; eyes, brown; nose, convex; teeth, perfect; mole on right eyebrow … is this detailed enough for you?’
‘You may apply the gags, messieurs.’
The gags did not make one uncomfortable, but the helpless feeling these and the manacles engendered caused uneasiness. It was final; no matter what happened, you stayed; a murderer could … Suddenly the lights went out, all except a drop-lamp over Bencolin’s head where he stood immediately at our left, causing us all to turn our eyes. He stood weird and inscrutable in that spot of light, which showed the hollows in his face. The face became Satanic; he smiled, and for some reason I felt a shiver of nervousness. Darkness, tied and gagged in one’s chair. There was not a sound in that vast building until Bencolin spoke.
‘The last light. Please …’
We were in total darkness now. My heart was beating heavily … Fully ten minutes passed …
‘The first thing which enters one’s mind,’ Bencolin continued in a low monotone which drifted from another corner as though he were no longer there, ‘is the idea of a church …’
Was somebody talking? A mass of people? I heard a deep but very faint humming of voices, broken with tinny laughter; the sounds of people shuffling. An auto horn honked; two of them. Distinctly I could smell the scent of banked flowers, hear a rustling. The blackness whirled before one’s eyes, resolved into shapes and twistings; those tiny voices made a laughing, rising blur. Suddenly, there crashed through the room the sweep of an organ swelling the Wedding March from Lohengrin …
The organ died away. There was a faint, rasping sob. The darkness assumed gigantic and horrible shapes, wove and broke like foam on water. After a silence Bencolin’s voice drifted dully:
‘Certain people have discovered that this man who stands as bridegroom at the altar is not the true Saligny. No, the true Saligny—’
That sound, far away in the dark; the bumping of a trunk being hauled upstairs. Thump … thump … the wheeze of panting breath.
‘It was six months ago, in another city, that something came to that trunk—’
At first it seemed an illusion, and yet the darkness changed colour, shifted with a weird green light as against gauze; the sound of lapping water … violins in the waltz of the Blue Danube … a shadow shot across this light before our eyes, the monstrous shadow of a man upreared in profile. Something sprang at it, and there lashed down a knife; a thud from sudden darkness again, and a faint groan. Then I no longer heard lapping water but a slow drip, as of thick fluid. The violins pulsed, were joined by other instruments …
‘The people have discovered all this before the marriage. But the marriage takes place … Night comes to Paris—’
Now that distant muted music blew faster, a hysterical note that swung to ‘Hallelujah’. The song beat against one’s ears in tinny resonance. Over it drifted a hum of conversation, the high laughter, the shrill chant of a croupier,
the clicking dance of the ball in the wheel. The air was overpoweringly hot, and dense with a smell of powder; and the orchestra-beat shook against it like a madman on a cage.
‘It is not loud,’ said Bencolin’s far voice, ‘because you are in the card-room. The clock—’
Yes, the clock was striking. It tinkled with eerie chimes; then it sounded clear notes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven, with maddening deliberation.
‘Already,’ Bencolin’s voice was becoming more swift, ‘the assassin is preparing. The sword has been taken down from the wall, and hidden beneath a row of pillows on the divan for use later. Look! The assassin is closing the door!’
It had been so vivid that I had a mental picture of the card-room before me. Then it was that I realised it was no mental picture at all. Staring into the dark, eyes growing used to it, I could see the inside of the card-room. I looked at it from the side on which the window would be. There were the leprous red walls. There was the door to the salon at my right; in the wall directly ahead the door to the hall. There at the left was the divan, dull old rose with its pillows, and the red-shaded lamp on the table throwing a subdued light over it. But I saw that scene as through a faint mist, hazy and unreal, a stage for ghosts, and yet with those sounds and that human laughter pulsing around … Yes, and the door into the hall was being softly closed, so softly that it hardly swayed the bell-rope beside it; the knob turned, the latch clicked, and was still. Just a few minutes after eleven. The murderer had planted his sword, and left the room …
Faint music in a long interval. The knob was turning again! I could feel that the gag against my mouth was drily rubbing my teeth; the scene whirled. The dead man walked into the room; Saligny—or, rather, Laurent posing as Saligny—vital, alive, carrying on his shoulders that head I had seen grinning from the floor. Behind him came the woman who was his wife, Louise, languorous, feverish-eyed. Not a word was spoken. The two moved like phantoms. They stopped in the middle of the room, and the horrible marionettes kissed.
