Devil's Score: A Tale of decadent omen….

by Edouard Jourdan

  - That's admissible. It's just.

  I felt that the Commissioner was abandoning any prevention against Johan. For can anyone else name the feeling that had dictated this questionnaire?

  "So, madame," said he, addressing Katarina, "did M. de Varmand seem normal to you yesterday? Was he dressed like this?

  - Exactly. I even recognize his cane and felt hat.

  - You did not discuss with him any topics that would put you on the road to a solution today? Nothing that he told you in his life left any mysterious guess?

  Katarina took her time, as if she were repeating in her memory the interview of the day before. His eyes crossed Johan's. She pouted negatively and was ready to answer when the arrival of the investigating judge was announced.

  He arrived, tall and fat, with his golden beard and his little glasses. He looked like a priest ...

  It was Dupin, who is well known.

  - I know, I just read the details ... I do not like this smell of occultism.

  While the commissioner was reading the judge's notes, the photographer set up his camera, and the magnesium flashed.

  After which the doctor continued the examination of the corpse of M. de Varmand.

  Pintard, suspicious, did not lose sight of the model. I left the good man to this surveillance, preferring to follow the medical expertise.

  Mr. Edgar Bansberg came to stand behind me. He persisted in repeating that murder was the work of a spirit.

  "I will confer with my son," he said to me. We will restore in all details the events of the meeting. But already you can believe me: they left in this puppet the soul of a murderer, who escaped as soon as his crime perpetrated, giving up his fleeting form in the very pose of the attack. You must be wary, you see! Varmand was madly imprudent ... Poor friend ... Beautiful death, sir, for a spiritist! I will write the circumstances!

  He came out with these words, impatient, I suppose, to set to work and to give such a remarkable result to his book of witchcraft.

  I had limited myself to approve it by my respectful maintenance, without losing anything of the doctor's investigations and without asking me what words were exchanging Katarina and

  Johan sitting apart. Mrs. Bansberg later brought me this conversation, which finds its true place here.

  "Johan," said Katarina, "forgive me. I had hidden the visit of the Marquis ...

  - You had your reasons, darling. They were serious?

  - We thought only of you. We wanted to save you!

  - Silence! Silence! he said with a circular look.

  - Oh! Always silence! Why hide from me? What do you fear of the one who loves you so much?

  - Katarina, I'm afraid only one thing is that silence is broken. What do you know?

  - Nothing. I was going to know everything. Today, the Marquis would have told me everything!

  - Ah! ah! murmured Johan, biting his lips, "I'm starting to understand his so-called necromancy. Listen, Katarina, keep me trusting, but do not try to penetrate what's going on. I will get away, I hope, on my own. I do not want you to know ... Nobody needs to know.

  There was, in her way of being, so much fright and decision all together, that Katarina thought it was wrong to confess to her that she knew about the existence of the infra-red bandits and the nature of the submission they demanded of him. Johan, moreover, seemed extraordinarily preoccupied. He put his hand on his wife's arm and suddenly said to him:

  "I get up at night, have not I, for some time?

  - Yes…

  "Will I get out of our room, if you do not?

  - I do not know ... Maybe.

  - That night, I did not get up? I did not go out? I did not leave you?

  - My beloved friend! What will you look for! ... For pity, reject these ideas! ... No, you did not leave me. I did not sleep. I watched you. I had you constantly under the eyes, from the moment you entered through a door while the Marquis went out by the other, until the moment we are. Finally ... - after an uncertainty, she decided: - Finally, Johan, think: such brutality, you are not able ...

  - That's the damned policeman with his questions, you understand! ...

  - Of course. But you see that you have every advantage to confide in me! Always alone, always thinking about your sadness ...

  As Johan prepared to speak, Katarina felt the weight of her adultery ... And if, by an occult means, Johan was aware of his act of lust.

  - Keep me out at night, when I sleep. And as long as I do not sleep waking up, the day ...

  - What an idea! My poor Johan, you like to torture yourself! ...

  Katarina was silent, terrified of the ravages that the persecution had done in her husband's soul. Perhaps she would yield to the desire to wrap her caresses like a scared little child, when M. Dupin was heard.

  He was endowed with a flexuous voice, whose greasy, manicured hand accompanied the curves, lending them a kind of shadow in the visual domain. Admittedly, it would have been entertaining to transform M. Dupin's index or little finger into ink-soaked pens, and to see what capricious diagrams they would have drawn at the contour of a recording cylinder; his simplest phrases had been inscribed in unexpected garlands, and the briefest interjection had been conceived as a paraphe of a charming fantasy.

  - Mr Johan Bansberg, will you be good enough to give us some indication of the necromancy session you attended?

  - How then! said Johan, who restrained himself from mumbling by contagion.

  "It was first of all effects of light and perfumes. M. de Varmand placed the mannequin on this large armchair, seated, begging me to sit down too. Facing the model, I took his wooden hands in mine, and, as M. de Varmand had asked me, I stared at the effigy. These eyes, the arrangement of the lights made them constantly shimmer, while the bottom of the painted figure remained in the darkness.

  "After a moment, I heard a dull voice that seemed to escape from the model's mouth ...

  "Mouth that obscurity prevented you from distinguishing," remarked M. Dupin. Mouth you were ordered not to look, since you had the order to look at the eyes!

  - Exactly. Besides, I knew M. de Varmand to possess a grand voice, if I may say, from which he obtained the most varied sounds. And I said to him: "But it is you who speak! You are ventriloquist! The voice answered for him, after uttering a horrible groan: "That's good! I will be quiet. The pressure of my hands will now match the letters of the alphabet. "

  Everyone's attention was extreme. We were hanging on Johan's lips. He continued:

  - These words had just been pronounced that I felt ...

  Are you not very nervous? Forgive me, sir, but it's enough to see you ...

  "You understand, Judge," Johan said after making sure his father had not returned. I am certain that it was me who pressed, believing to be tight. The phenomenon is classic. I was the toy of an illusion. Mesmerized, I obeyed to myself. I was my own mind hoax, and it was my subconscious mind that conversed with my conscious one. I alone was in the hot seat. Besides, "he added, pointing to Charlotte," Madame was listening at the door; she is able to repeat everything that has been said here from seven to eight ...

  Sincerity has intonations that do not deceive. Johan's summary produced the best effect, while the hateful attitude of the maid finally attracted general animosity.

  - It is enough, sir, it is enough! It was the dilettante and not the magistrate who questioned you. The case is so strange! So macabre! If "Grand Guignol", is not it true? ... However, let's push hard! Madam, uh ... Valentine, ah! ah! Madame Valentin, you have nothing to add?

  - Yes, Judge. When Mr. Johan was gone, I heard Mr. Varmand say, "Like the other day! A negation and a negation make two negations. "

  - That's all?

  "That's all," grumbled Charlotte furiously, feeling uncomfortable.

  "I must tell you," said Johan, "that M. de Varmand had already tried to teach me occultism. He will have recognized that both attempts failed. Hence his disillusioned conclusion: "A negation and a negation make two negations
. "

  - No shots sounded inside the manikin? asked the commissioner.

  - No. M. de Varmand did not think it expedient to employ this system with me.

  - Oh! Massu, "observed the judge," do you know how you hit those blows? With the toe, in the shoe. I read that

  - Yes, I know, sir. The friend Sicot told me many stories about the mediums and their processes.

  - Sicot! exclaimed the judge. Inspector Sicot! This is the man we need! The spiritist spirit has no secrets for him. What an inspiration. Massu! Send it to you!

  Bouillard introduced himself, the little finger on the seam of the trousers:

  Inspector Sicot is in Italy for the diplomatic bag case, Judge; he will not be back before a fortnight.

  - Ah! Good God! He must be in charge of the investigation! It's the mediums, Massu! The doctor asked the judge's attention.

  - The examination of the body has not been successful, he says. This poor man was tormented like a damned, thrown into a meat grinder.

  Thumbs in the swirls of his waistcoat, Mr. Dupin fluttered his wings, offering public admiration for his entire belly.

  - Well! Do the autopsy of the murderer, now! Forgive me for this joke ...

  The effect he had expected occurred; a smile promptly repressed passed under certain whiskers. And it was decided to dissect the wooden dummy.

  Pintard put the mannequin on a table and pierced his side with a pocket knife that looked like a scalpel.

  My imagination wandered in the fields of remembrance. The fable and reality shared my senses, and, without losing the incredible dissection, I was the prey of a fantastic mirage.

  The manikin ... was just a simple assembly of wood, screws and springs.

  Everyone was disappointed by this lack of discovery.

  Someone had the idea to pick up Honoré the skeleton, perhaps wishing he revealed some dark secrets. But the pitiful skeleton could not be charged with the murder of its owner; it was only a bone bag, in the end.

  Mr. Dupin and the police then undertook a long and painstaking search. The contents of the workshop, the walls and the exits were submitted to their examination.

  Wasted effort. Breaks, suspicious traces, revealing objects, so many possibilities that remained in nothingness. The banner of blood on the walls revealed nothing.

  The papers of M. de Varmand were not numerous. M. Dupin invented them in a flash, and also acquainted himself with the will of the victim, by which he bequeathed to Mr. Edgar Bansberg the little good he possessed.

  Katarina knew that the Marquis wanted to bequeath his paintings to Johan; she thought she ought to declare it, adding that the deceased had certainly promised to rewrite his last wishes someday. There was proof that M. de Varmand did not apprehend a violent death, since he did not fear a sudden death.

  With that in his own mouth, M. Dupin took his top hat, put it on his head, and went up to the commissary.

  - Two words sum up the situation, Massu!

  Delicately he holds these two words between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, a little like the little masters pinched, under Louis XV, a catch of tobacco.

  7 – CRIME ON CRIME

  The grotesque and bloody death of M. de Varmand was one of those events peculiars to legend. If we go back to the source of the most marvelous myths - at least those which originate from a human action - we would not find a fact as singular as this death, and already clothed with so much fabulous. What will become of her in a thousand years? Transmitted from age to age, sublimated through the centuries, it may appear to future peoples as a lyrical fiction loaded with symbols. Still, the contemporary press spoke so little about it.

  There were two reasons for that.

  The first was that M. Dupin, the examining magistrate, feared ridicule. This foolish and tragic affair presented itself in such a way that it proceeded with prudence. He would have suffered to compromise Justice in his own person. So, he ordered to give the assassination the lowest publicity to journalists.

  The second was that Mr. Dupin had decided to wait for Inspector Sicot before doing anything significant. Journalism does not fit in the same way. The public, once enticed, demands a small daily dose of blood. The rumor of such a despicable murder would have provoked fireworks, collective hysteria.

  Personally, I had reasons to be interested in the trial of a case where I was a senior witness and who was close enough to an exquisite woman, worthy of all tributes and, it seemed, now without support.

  Until the return of Mr. Sicot, the police limited his activity to surveillance exercised in the world of occult forgers. It is true that M. de Varmand did not employ mediums; but it was not so with Mr. Edgar Bansberg; and every day M. de Varmand had been at the house of the former notary, with men of both sexes, of dubious origin, whom the police, rightly or wrongly, kept an eye on. These people make profession of cunning and dexterity; if the genius of evil follows them, there are dangerous bandits. As well, one of them had been received by M. de Varmand, either as a colleague or as a model for a painting. The stairs of the house of report, a false key ... Until then, everything was explained. Then everything was nothing but opacity.

  The motive of the crime? Elusive. We had not stolen anything. And then, what would have been stolen? The Marquis possessed only his pictures; and, without being the Mona Lisa, a metaphysical painting is not a commodity of great value; the joy of holding her is not worthy of committing a crime, and in this case the sale would have been sold.

  During the four weeks in which Mr. Sicot lingered in Italy to sort out some other imbroglio, I had the opportunity, without any fruit, to talk several times with Mr. Dupin, with Mr. Massu - and especially with Mrs. Bansberg.

  I had seized the encounter of the drama to reconnect with her and her husband relations that the whim of destiny had only interrupted.

  It is to be believed that we had kept good memories of each other; for I was welcomed at the Boulevard Montparnasse with as much eagerness as I diligently made my way there. A dull intuition made it a duty to offer my devotion to Madame Bansberg, in the definitive absence of the Marquis de Varmand.

  Of course, the confidences did not come right away. To provoke them, it was necessary to accumulate incidents and restore intimacy. I can not

  To reproach Madame Bansberg with so natural a restraint and the imperfect explanation that she gave me first of all for her husband.

  She felt indeed - and of herself - that it was necessary to motivate the extravagance of Johan, excuse his misguided airs, his silence, his distractions, his manias, his fury of care, his masseuses and his manicures.

  According to Katarina, all this, pell-mell, was the consequence of the same cause, and this cause must be seen in the loss of that virtuosity that the pianist would probably never recover, despite all his efforts.

  The reader, more aware than I was, already knows what to think; but, in my place, he would have accepted Madame Bansberg's explanation, so much the appearances accredit it.

  However far removed I was from the presentiment of a considerable secret, I soon realized that Johan had more to worry about than his hands, his awkwardness and his decay. I discovered without difficulty that he was in trouble with money, and that the solitude of his father, now delivered to his servants and his mediums, disturbed him.

  Johan, since the death of M. de Varmand, went daily to M. Edgar Bansberg.

  The old man received him better than in the past, not that the affection of his son appeared to him to be suitable to replace that of the Marquis, but for the reason that Johan had attended the last necromancy of the painter-spiritist and that Mr. Bansberg hoped to his revelations bring forth the light.

  "Make the light come forth," that is to say, find the name of the dead man who had murdered his friend, and oblige him to confess his crime.

  In order not to upset the irascible patriarch, Johan had to tell him and repeat how the session had gone; make the list of the murderers that had been mentioned, reproduce the requests and answe
rs of this interview from beyond the grave. The old man, cynically, controlled the words of his son by Charlotte's checks, which, it will be remembered, had listened to the door. Then, calling his mediums to the rescue, he in turn evoked the suspicious souls, made them appear at the helm of spiritualism and questioned them in the right way.

  It was, in the realm of the dead, an instruction parallel to that which M. Dupin led on his side in the republic of mortals. The former notary brought to this magistracy the cold malice and the implacable retribution of a judge by profession. Palmyra, the speaking-table, shudders more than once under the weight of her hands, like an accused seized in a dilemma or staggering at the attacks of an invective. The appearing spirits did not lead wide. But each one found a way to exculpate himself, and none of them consented to betray the brother who had done it. These tortures have a way of nobility; executed in forms, they believe themselves at the top of the criminal hierarchy - something like the martyrs of the bloodthirsty faith. And it is not of a martyr that one makes a snitch.