45.
Worlds Fair and Foul
Jules Verne dreamed of travelling around the world in
eighty days. At the Esplanade and the Chamb de Mars
you can do it in six hours.
—BULLETIN OFFICIEL DE L’EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1889,
22 DECEMBER 1888
“A pity Mr. Holmes cannot join the hunt,” Irene noted the next afternoon, “but I believe he will still be occupied today with some most absorbing reading, particularly if German is not his long suit in languages.”
“Ha!” Elizabeth burst out in a most hoydenish manner, clapping her hands. She finally saw Irene’s surrender of the book yesterday for the clever diversion it was.
“Long suit?” I asked Irene.
“An American expression, Nell, referring to holding almost all the cards of a particular suit in a game.”
“You said this was not a game.”
“True, but it is for whoever has been watching these atrocities and our pursuit unfold.”
“You believe that this . . . butcher regards these murders as entertainment?”
“No, but such murders involve an element of perverse gamesmanship with the forces of order and law. If Jack the Ripper really wrote those notes to the papers in London, then he relished taunting the police. Here it is different. Here the police are not being taunted, but the unofficial investigators.”
“Us? You believe so?”
“I would swear to it. The killer may not see beyond the unexplored needs that drive him to these acts, as Krafft-Ebing made clear, but someone else is watching.”
“Watching us?”
She nodded. “And probably Mr. Holmes as well, which is why I’d like him someplace far away today and tonight.”
“And today and tonight we will—?”
Irene pulled the map of Paris to the top of our papers. The first thing one saw now was the triangle of lines that she had drawn, the Paris Morgue to the maison to the catacomb near the Eiffel Tower.
With a few swift strokes and the ruler she etched an upside-down triangle above it, beginning at the maison in the rue des Moulins near the Paris Opera. Her new lines extended the bottom triangle’s sides up to the Musee Grevin on the right, and the bloody cellar of last night on the left near the Parc Monceau.
“You see the pattern?” she asked.
“Triangles,” Elizabeth burst out too quickly.
Before the dawning look of disappointment could settle on Irene’s features, I put my hands to my face, covering my eyes. “Wait! I see something I have vaguely seen before.” I took away my hands so that the new lines on the map should strike my eyes with a fresh impact.
“It’s . . . the bodies we viewed were seen on the left of the map, at the morgue and the wax museum, which are almost directly above each other. And the places we saw where the bodies were dead, or killed, are on the left, with the cellar almost directly above the Eiffel Tower.
“And the rue des Moulins is in the precise middle. This pattern is maddeningly familiar . . . but what!”
“I am sure you would perceive it in time, Nell,” Irene said, beaming upon me as if I were a prize pupil. Elizabeth looked particularly exasperated.
“But we have no time,” Irene concluded.
Her fingertip touched the Eiffel Tower, the Paris Morgue, the Musee Grévin above it and finally the park.
“It’s a box waltz,” I blurted out as I followed the pattern.
“Or,” she corrected, “if you see lines that begin and end instead of an enclosure like a box. . . .”
I would not be denied my prize, but quickly sketched a figure over the streetmap. “The four sites are the end points of the X on the Chi-rho.”
Irene applauded. I was not aware of Elizabeth doing anything but sulking.
“But where, and what,” I wondered, “does the maison on the rue des Moulins have to do with it?”
“If you were to draw the P behind the X, Nell, you would find that the maison de rendezvous is located on the P’s central staff, just below where the curve begins.”
“Someone has been playing games of geography and calendars with us?” Elizabeth asked indignantly.
“Oh, it’s not a game,” Irene said quickly. “It is a serious and revolting ritual.”
“And from this pattern,” I asked, after adding the P, “you know where to begin a hunting party for the next atrocity? Where shall that be?
’Where else? The catacomb was near but not exactly at the Eiffel Tower, which is on the side where deaths occur. The Tour Eiffel is an unfulfilled site. But don’t call it a hunting party, Nell. First must come ‘scouting’ the wilderness. We will merely be out enjoying the l’Exposition universelle with le tout Paris.”
Even I had to admit that l’Exposition universelle was nothing short of a fairyland of a world’s fair, filled with exotic food, music, and sights so vast and varied that one became quite dizzy just to look at it all.
Not to mention getting a crick in the neck, for everything loomed above the milling throngs, most especially the Eiffel Tower, tarted up in a coat of scarlet paint.
The Esplanade des Invalides stretched along the glittering Seine, which had become a mirror for the exposition’s frenetic lights and motion, presenting all the jumbled sights of the French colonial pavilions with their air of an Oriental fairyland, not to mention the displays of various countries and cities.
The entire scene, darkened only by the flood of visitors snaking among the kiosks and fountains and pavilions, gave me the odd impression of a collision between Mount Olympus and the Tower of Babel.
No one regarded our trio as we wove through the jumble of people and noise. Besides boulevardiers in their frock coats and top hats, there were many men in the shorter-jacketed lounge suits that were becoming popular city wear, and women in walking suits and skirts and shirtwaists, as well as boys and girls in short pants and skirts.
We were all dressed as ourselves at last! I wore my favorite checked coat-dress, which was a feminine fitted version of a gentleman’s country ulster, I suppose, and most practical for city sight-seeing.
Irene could never forgo being smart unless she was in disguise, and then she reveled in wearing the most tawdry, unflattering costumes possible.
Today her dark buffalo red gown was subdued except for a puff of sleeve from shoulder to elbow and a central design from neck to hem of widening black passementerie cord design. It was only on the exposition grounds that I realized that the gown’s lacy vertical design exactly mimicked the pierced cast-iron shape of the Eiffel Tower itself!
The artistic soul ever seeks points of reference in even the most common things. And, of course, the fashionable new French color paid tribute to Buffalo Bill!
Elizabeth’s dress was charmingly reminiscent of an English riding habit with a bodice buttoning to the side and a mannish green silk tie over the white-linen collar and chemisette. When I mentioned this fact before we left the hotel, she got on her high horse. The style, she stated, more resembled fashions at the time of the French Revolution and nothing English at all.
Well! I hated to tell her that English riding habits of today are descended from women’s dress during the aftermath of the French Revolution early in the present century, which is more importantly known to world history as the English Regency period. I hated to tell her, but I did.
I was the only one of our trio to wear a small-billed cap that resembled the long-enduring bonnet. Irene and Elizabeth both wore the new wide-brimmed hats, which required dagger-length hatpins to stay put. It only struck me later that this may not have been a matter of fashion, but of prescient self-defense.
I only mention our attire to point out that we in no way stood out among the many similarly garbed women who walked the same aisles, sidewalks, and parklands that day and night, except for the contents of our cleverly concealed skirt pockets.
I carried my larger notebook and pencil in one pocket, and my chatelaine muffled in cotton flannel in the other. (Sherlock H
olmes’s odiously impolite comment that my rattling chatelaine announced my presence had not fallen on deaf ears.) Irene’s right pocket held her small pistol. She also carried Godfrey’s sword-stick. Why he left it at home I shall never know. Elizabeth carried a smart ladies’s walking stick that was also sturdy enough to crack craniums as well as knuckles.
These were the only accessories that hinted at our true purpose in visiting these hurly-burly surroundings.
At first, our wanderings were solely instructional. We took the moving sidewalk to the machinery building. This was much more pleasant than a ride in an elevated car, for it was entirely open and utterly horizontal. I predicted to my companions a far more universal future for this step-saving device than for the box that plummets people down in small enclosed cages.
Impressive as the machinery building was with its arched glass ceiling higher than even Notre Dame’s soaring stone nave, I called my American companions’ attention to the fact that the entire fashion for airy metal-supported roofs on everything from this behemoth of a building, the world’s largest, to French department stores and train stations in every world capital, stemmed from the marvelous Crystal Palace designed for London’s 1851 World Exposition almost forty years earlier.
This was all incontestably true, but they did not seem properly impressed.
Elizabeth, like an overgrown child, was eager to forsake the educational exhibits for the louder, more crowded, and infinitely more lurid features of the global villages and the food and souvenir kiosks.
Hence it was that we all three bought rather atrocious silk scarves in a sepia tone that pictured the Tour Awful amid a rather busy design of the various exposition erections.
We also suffered the scents of delicacies from many lands wafting from stands and braziers, along with the pungent contributions of the exotic beasts brought to the civilized world’s doorstep, if one can consider Paris truly civilized.
“Oh!” I declared in some distress as we rounded a corner to confront a sadly familiar scene.
“Oh indeed,” Irene said. “The Musee Grevin made a superb effort to reproduce this scene.”
Granted, and at least the original didn’t involve dead bodies, for which I was supremely grateful. The Cairo market scene before our eyes was complete with European travelers, draped natives, and overburdened donkeys, only all were live.
Elizabeth laughed with delight. “Now I see it. The Europeans in the tableau vivant at the Musee Grevin weren’t part of the original scene, but exposition-goers. If we were to walk into that bazaar, we would become a real part of the false scene as well. This is more than theater, more than reenactment of reality in a far part of the globe, this is reality and more distant reality meeting in a fictional setting. I admit I am confused.”
Irene contemplated the scene, her walking stick planted dead center of her still figure, like a sword she rested point down after—or before—a duel or fencing match.
“So too the actions of Jack the Ripper may be a blending of two separate realities into one puzzling and disturbing appearance of absolute reality. Is it coincidence only that the murders appear to have moved from the crude stage setting of Whitechapel to the more sophisticated yet equally corruptible environs of Paris?”
I was pleased to hear her admit the many corruptions of Paris. I was tired of hearing the City of Light hailed as the quintessential modern capital when too much of it was yet the City of Dark.
Still, that afternoon all was festive and bright.
The infectious oompah-pah of German orchestras vied with the delicate bells and strange thin melodies of the Javanese Temple music and French sailors in striped uniforms singing “Auprès de ma blonde” as they lurched merrily among the crowds.
We ambled toward the Eiffel Tower to find at its base a mammoth kiosk in praise of American invention. There is no doubt that the Exposition Tricolore, the fair’s informal title, celebrated the red, white, and blue of America as well as the French flag.
In fact, the French and the Americans have been very cozy all along, much to poor England’s disadvantage. I suppose it is a result of both countries having stirred up revolutions against God-given kingships in the last quarter of the previous century. In fact, France’s insistence on marking the centenary of its bloody revolution had made several countries withdraw as official sponsors of pavilions, including Great Britain, Italy, and Russia!
Of course America had no such scruples as these great world powers. It was there with a Telephone Pavilion, with maps showing the invention’s tentacles of lines radiating from Paris to the outlying provinces. Along one wall an entire row of telephones with two earpieces were connected to ten telephone receivers at the Opera and the Comedie-Francaise. For fifty centimes, one could listen to both theater and opera, though why one would wish to blend two such different performances, both in foreign languages, I cannot imagine.
Elizabeth and Irene were like children competing for toys, both wanting to try the devices. I accompanied them in line, but refused all their pleadings to put the alien instruments to my ears.
“But, Nell,” Irene cajoled, “you remember how I first heard sound from a distant stage at Gilbert’s house years ago, when Bertie heard a murder committed over a telephone line to the Savoy Theater? This is the same, but much better. Please try it. You can even sense the actors moving from side to side of the stage as they speak, and the singing is remarkably good.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Irene. I also recall that the dinner at Gilbert’s was the occasion on which you allowed a Certain Personage to gain a Very Wrong Impression about you, and I have no desire to be reminded of that sad situation.”
Irene rolled her eyes and clamped the devices to her temples like a set of mechanical earmuffs, moving her head in time to the music only she heard and looking like an utter idiot, as did Elizabeth and every one else in the long row of other fools who had paid fifty centimes for the privilege.
After this exhibition in which my companions were actual performers, nothing would do but that they would see the rest of the American exhibition area.
Thus it was that I was treated to such cultural landmarks of the land over the ocean as the heads of every American president, including the current model, Grover Cleveland, carved into the bowls of meerschaum pipes! I can well imagine that these presidential heads would flush with shame when the lit pipe bowls burned cherry red.
Not only that, but the pipes were so huge one couldn’t even picture a man as large as Bram Stoker smoking one. And one pipe in particular was most strange.
“Which president is that?” I asked. “The one with the huge bushy head and beard?”
Irene burst into an aria of laughter that made heads in the room all turn our way. “La, Nell! That isn’t a president’s head. It’s a buffalo head. Get out your spectacles, quickly!”
While I was thus engaged, thinking to myself that a buffalo as president probably would have done the Republic good, a woman joined our party.
“Isn’t it a marvel?” she demanded. “That pipe has been promised to Buffalo Bill after the exposition is over. He rode over here from the show grounds to see the exhibit and tied his mount to the Eiffel Tower, can you imagine?”
I could imagine many fair-goers stepping around the horse droppings later and not being at all impressed that the souvenir was courtesy of Buffalo Bill’s horse.
“A pity,” Irene said with mock sincerity. “I was thinking what a fine gift this pipe would make for Sherlock Holmes.”
“Sherlock who?” asked the attendant, thus making my day surpassingly brighter.
While the American pavilion boasted exhibits on such modern marvels as the telephone, the telegraph, and the phonograph, the native gift for vulgar exaggeration was also in full flower, especially a larger-than-life-size representation of the Venus de Milo weighing over a ton and a half and executed in solid chocolate.
Whatever the medium, she was shockingly undressed and still missing significant limbs.
At last I was allowed to leave the shadow of the tower and tour the other buildings, although I did not see anything to equal the sheer nerve of American invention.
Irene was happy to see that Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of our sometime client and benefactor, the international jeweler Charles Tiffany, had won grand prize in silver crafting. I was pleased to see that lad’s skills had advanced in the several years since Irene had been presented an example of his jewelry work by the proud but misguided father. The brooch was in the odious shape of a sinuous squid ornamented with irregularly shaped pearls, amber, and aquamarine . . . quite obviously worthless save in its maker’s eyes.
The sunlight was slanting and growing cool by the time we finished the grand tour of the major buildings and paused near an awning-shaded kiosk dispensing beverages and food.
“The cafés are crowded and noisy,” Irene declared. “Let us picnic here and we shall be set for the night.”
“Oh, Irene, I am already fatigued,” I said. “How much longer are we to stay?”
“Until the hunting is right. After dark.”
“What has this outing accomplished?”
Elizabeth made a face. “It has been fun, Nell. We are allowed to have fun!”
“Not when we are on a mission. We are on a mission?” I asked Irene anxiously, for my feet were tired and I had a headache from the close-fitting cap.
“Yes, but first I wanted to survey the fairgrounds. Buffalo Bill has suggested that we arrange to be in the Esplanade des Invalides before they light up the tower for the evening. He can’t join us until after his show ends and is tucked away for the night.”
“How will he find us in this mob?” I asked.
“I suspect that it will be easier for us to find him, but . . . don’t worry. He said he would send a ‘scout’ to locate us as long as we stayed in the entry area to the colonial section.”
“Hmmph,” I said as we walked another long way toward the riverbank. “There is only one exhibit I should like to see.”
Chapel Noir Page 42
