The Curse of the Grand Guignol

by Anna Lord

  She addressed the envelopes to the Marquise de Merimont, Monsieur Casimir Radzival, Monsignor Jorges Delgardo, Monsieur Serge Davidov and Monsieur Raoul Crespigny. Tonight, when handing out the invitations, she would let it be known that declining was not an option.

  The party required judges. She fleetingly considered Laszlo and Salvador, but then she thought Mahmoud and La Noire would be the better choice.

  Fedir had not yet returned from Café Bistro and she began to grow concerned for him. She was about to ask Dr Watson to return to the café when Mahmoud let her know her manservant had been out all day and had only just returned. She pretended to be highly incensed and asked for her manservant to be sent up to her at once.

  Fedir reported that he had collected the marionettes and had rented a small room in a nearby lodging house on rue Figaro where he had deposited the trunk. He questioned the landlady about rag and bone men, making it seem as if he might be interested in pursuing such a line of work. She informed him that rag and bone men were highly regulated in France, as were most things. The French were fond of rules and regulations.

  Rag and bone men could only work at night, between dusk and dawn. They were only allowed to use one hand cart and could not use a horse to pull their cart, lest the slumber of the good citizens of France be disturbed. They had to use a stick to sort through the piles of rubbish to avoid being bitten by rats and contracting rabies or bubonic plague. Rags had to be washed and dried before being sold on. Bones could not be stored longer than one week.

  A lot of the rag-grubbers used to have drying houses along the river where they could wash their rags and hang them out to dry but the embankments were being constantly redeveloped. Rue de Lilas and rue de Brouillard were popular haunts for rag and bone men in the quarter of Montmartre.

  He had visited rue de Lilas and rue de Brouillard to see for himself. Most of the rag and bone men were still sleeping but he found one who was awake and had time to talk. Since the introduction of the garbage bin in 1884 by a man called Poubelle there was less business for rag-grubbers and competition was now fierce. Everyone guarded their patch zealously. Newcomers trying to muscle in were severely beaten and sent packing.

  The Countess thanked Fedir and asked him to appear sullen upon his return to the kitchen, as if he had just been given a stern reprimand. When he reached the door she recalled the threatening incident in the café.

  “If things are unsafe,” she said, “I would prefer you not to return to Café Bistro. The Humboldts have a reputation for violence and there may be trouble on the streets.”

  Fedir assured her he was in no danger. Kiki was a shameless flirt, the sort of girl who enjoyed seeing men fight over her. He had no intention of allowing her to bait him. Yes, the Humboldts all had short fuses but after Kaspar threatened to string him up the other two brothers took pity and invited him down to the cellar to see their printing press. That’s the reason he was so late coming back to rue Bonaparte tonight. They were running off new pamphlets daily now instead of weekly and he had stayed to help out. Tomorrow’s pamphlet would be unsparing in its condemnation of Inspector de Guise.

  “Send in Xenia,” instructed the Countess, fearing the worst for the reputation of the French inspector who was being scapegoated in this terrible business. A more honest, thorough, intelligent and hard-working servant of France could not be found anywhere in Paris.

  When Xenia arrived the Countess informed her of what she had seen in the lower level of Salpetriere. She instructed her maid to pay a visit to the asylum and hospital on the morrow. To feign interest in everything and ask lots of questions of the nurses and doctors but to avoid the man called Monsignor Delgardo. She described him as a distinguished, dark haired, portly man in his fifties, possibly of South American origin, whom she would instantly recognize because he would be wearing the long black robe of a Catholic monsignor.

  Xenia was to take an abundance of money to bribe the nurses. She was to ingratiate herself with whomever she could in order to gain access to the lower level. The aim was to learn all she could about Monsignor Delgardo’s research and to discover exactly what he did with the patients on the lower level. If at any time she felt she was in danger she was to leave at once.

  The Countess and Dr Watson shared their news with each other over dinner, after which the doctor lit up his new calabash and settled back in the armchair by the fire. Before long, thanks to the relaxing benefits of the spicy Latakia, he was snoring soundly. She didn’t have the heart to wake him and took Mahmoud to le Cirque du Grand Guignol instead.

  Nerves on edge from her earlier visit to Salpetriere, sensationally followed by sordid scenes of naturalistic horror, and the Countess’s nausea returned. Even dusky-skinned Mahmoud appeared paler of cheek by curtain’s close. They had availed themselves of the private booth of Monsignor Delgardo after first checking to see whether it was occupied.

  “No point leaving the booth vacant if the Monsignor is not coming,” said the Countess somewhat audaciously, making herself comfortable on the velvet chaise longue and indicating for her maître de maison to do likewise.

  The booth was velvet-lined and sound-proofed. A chaise longue was angled behind a screen not dissimilar to that inside a confessional. It offered privacy to the viewer without obstructing the performance on stage. A bolt on the inside of the door mitigated untimely intrusion.

  At the end of the performance the Countess hoped to bump into the person in booth number one, but she was too late. The tall figure in the black cloak with the voluminous hood was slipping through the prohibited door that led back-stage. She tried to catch up to the mystery figure but this time the door was securely bolted from the other side. It forced her and Mahmoud to go back into the theatre and enter via the empty stage.

  Nothing the Countess did appeared to surprise the maître de maison, possibly because he was accustomed to the antics of her late step-aunt, a woman driven by an adventurous spirit, impulsive nature and rebellious streak.

  Mahmoud made quite an impression on all those he encountered. He was intimidating in appearance, a bit theatrical in his attire, and though he must have been at least sixty years of age he wore the years well. Most impressed was La Noire.

  The Negress, mistaking Mahmoud for an Arab sheik, sashayed up to him and purred out an introduction. She let him know she would be dining at the Moulin Rouge every night this week. He simply nodded and she took that as confirmation she would see him there.

  Even the temperamental director showed restraint in the presence of the Sikh with the curved dagger that was more threatening than his iron eyebrows. He was bawling out the girl whose job it was to put the dog in its cage when Mahmoud scooped up the whimpering terrier by the scruff of the neck and placed it carefully in the dog box. The girl thanked him kindly and the director went to find someone else to flay.

  The Countess told Mahmoud to find himself somewhere to sit while she distributed the invitations. Fortunately, people who lived and breathed theatre enjoyed dressing up and finding costumes at short notice was not a problem for them, not even when those costumes had to be symmetrical. No one had attended a Gobolinks party before and they were happy to accept for the novelty value if nothing else. Plus an invitation from a genuine Ukrainian countess was not something to be sneered at.

  Davidov thought it might be the precursor to future beneficence. Raoul regarded it as grist to the writer’s mill. And La Noire was thrilled to be asked to be a judge when she discovered Mahmoud would be partnering her. She gave a squeal of delight and did a shimmy.

  “Splendid!” said the Countess. “Wear a costume. It will add to the joie de vivre.”

  After depositing Mahmoud back at Des Ballerines the Countess directed the coachman to take her to the Ile Saint-Louis. At the eleventh hour she had decided to invite one more guest to her Gobolinks party and she thought it might be wise to issue the invitation in person under cover of darkness.

  This invitee lived on the topmost floor, under the mansard roo
f of a five level apartment that fronted the Seine. There was no elevator. Breathless and flushed, she knocked on the door. The inspector, looking washed out, drained, and hung out to dry - just like the line of washing strung across his kitchen - was surprised to have a midnight visitor and stunned to see the Countess. He ushered her in before her reputation was as tattered as his. While he prepared some coffee on the stove she told him about her Gobolinks party, explaining about the subconscious mind and its effect on a guilty conscience.

  “Are you sure you want me there?” he said dubiously.

  “Your presence will unnerve the killer.”

  “But I have been totally discredited. Have you not seen the caricatures? Have you not glimpsed the effigies littering the Left Bank: the Director General as a red devil and me as Pierrot, the incompetent servant? I am a joke! The killer will be laughing behind my back!”

  “This killer enjoys theatrics. This killer will want to play games with you. This killer will want to outsmart you, to make you look even more of a fool, especially if there is an audience.”

  “Oh, thank you,” he said dryly. “You forget I am off the case.”

  “You are being invited to a private party,” she reminded. “None of the guests have been charged or even linked to the murders as yet.”

  “So what makes you think the killer is among them?”

  “I don’t know for sure but…” And so she told him what had transpired so far about the scripts, anonymous, and the tenuous link between Raoul, Kiki, the Humboldts, Laszlo, Delgardo, Coco, Davidov, and the three circassiens, Felix, Hilaire and Vincent. “It could be any combination of them or all of them in it together.”

  Unconvinced, he raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know - I’d like to pin the murders on the Boldts.”

  “I’m more inclined to think the three circus performers are part of it. I plan to speak to them tomorrow. I plan to invite myself to a daytime rehearsal. If nothing else, we will know what naturalistic horror to expect on the night of the eighth.”

  “You think there will be another murder?”

  “I am certain of it.”

  Worry etched itself into every porridge-like feature of his face as he pushed to his feet and began to pace the tiny garret. “I don’t have a costume.”

  “Arrive an hour early and I will have one ready for you.”

  “I’m no good at party games.”

  “This is more of a murder game and you are good at those.”

  “How does a Gobolinks party go?”

  “You create some ink blots on a piece of paper and then write a poem to go with one of them. And don’t tell me you are no good at poems.”

  “As a matter of fact I am very good at poems. I won the school poetry prize three years in a row. Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud are my heroes. That part I can do in my sleep.”

  “Speaking of sleep you look like you could use some. You don’t want the killer to think they have got the better of Inspector Didier de Guise. However, before I leave you to your slumber, might I be so bold as to make a suggestion?”

  She stood and gathered her winter cloak around her in preparation for leaving. He walked her to the door. It was only six steps. She paused and looked at him with a gaze that was disconcertingly direct for a woman, and for a moment he imagined she might lean forward and kiss him on the lips.

  “May I suggest you visit le Cirque du Grand Guignol on rue Ballu before the party and may I suggest you go in disguise?”

  He shook himself, thanked her sincerely for the suggestion, and bid her goodnight.

  “When this business is over,” she said in a softer restrain, looking back over her shoulder, “I have a chateau in the Loire and a villa in Cap Ferrat. You are welcome to stay at either of them for as long as you like.”

  “And if the killer evades capture?”

  “You can stay indefinitely.”

  His spontaneous laugh, throaty and uninhibited, echoed in the tiny stairwell like a thunderbolt from heaven and it surprised him to realize he could still laugh.

  Chapter 12 - Moulin Rouge

  Fedir and Xenia left early for Salpetriere. They did not join the household servants for breakfast and Mahmoud did not see them leave. Their plan was to have a walk around the grounds together and then embark on separate tours. Fedir would then go to Café Bistro to help with the printing of more seditious pamphlets while Xenia would ingratiate herself with a member of staff or even Little Marianne, whom the Countess had described in detail.

  Visitors came and went all day and it was easy to lose oneself in the crowd. A visit to the prostitutes was also planned. One of them might even be acquainted with Monsignor Delgardo.

  “He is Colombian,” said Dr Watson.

  “How do you know?” challenged the Countess.

  “He told me.”

  “You didn’t mention it to me.”

  “You didn’t mention it to me that you wanted to know.”

  And so went the breakfast conversation that morning - Dr Watson snappy that she had gone to the theatre with Mahmoud and later paid a visit to the French inspector. At midnight! On her own! And she snappy that she was being forced to defend herself.

  “What are your plans for today?” he put to her brusquely, as if he intended to play no part in them.

  “This morning I intend to deliver invitations to la marquise and her librarian. I need to do it personally because I cannot risk them having time to think it over and possibly declining. Everyone else is coming. I have asked La Noire and Mahmoud to act as judges.”

  He didn’t know which of those two names annoyed him most. “Why them?”

  She aimed a glance over her shoulder at the door. “Shh, lower your voice. La Noire is part of the troupe and yet we hardly know anything about her. As for Mahmoud, he is here on the spot and we don’t need any extra guests. Besides, what is wrong with Mahmoud?”

  “He is…He is…He is a servant!”

  “He is a maître de maison,” she corrected with asperity, “and I strongly suspect he was the lover of my late step-aunt.”

  “So? According to you she had dozens of lovers.”

  “None as devoted as Mahmoud. He has kept everything just as she left it. In forty years he has altered nothing. I consider him more of a step-uncle than a servant. Put it down to my Ukrainian up-bringing but the word kym denotes a member of a family who is not blood kin.”

  “You are allowing emotion to blur your judgement yet again.”

  “How so?”

  He went to the door to check no one was lurking in the hall before continuing.

  “He could be mentally unstable, friendless in a foreign land, cooped up in this house on his own for forty years waiting for his lover to return briefly to his arms before flitting off again. You say devoted, I say unbalanced. Has it occurred to you he could be the one following us?”

  She gasped. He took advantage of the sharp intake of breath.

  “He is tall and broad of shoulder. He is dark-skinned. At night his face may give the appearance of a black mask. Or he may don a black mask to disguise himself. He knows our movements. It is possible he keeps a carriage in a nearby mews.”

  “You are not about to suggest he is the killer?”

  “What’s so far-fetched about that?”

  “Motive,” she shot back, having harnessed the fullness of her breath for a come-back.

  He had already given the matter some thought. In fact, he had been thinking about it ever since he first spied that shadowy figure standing in the arch of the gate of the Hotel de Merimont. “What if we are dealing with a crime passionelle? What if the respectable elderly gentlemen happened to be your step-aunt’s previous lovers? What if Madame Hertzinger had been a jealous rival who thwarted your aunt in some way? What if it has nothing to do with the theatre at all?”

  His theory jolted her. And though she was inclined to scoff at the suggestion, she could not dismiss it or even discredit it. Had she been chasing puppet-shadows bec
ause she got it in her head the murders were theatrical and therefore linked to the theatre? Was the joke on her!

  It was true they had not yet found a connection between the five victims. What tenuous thread connected them? There was no possibility the victims were chosen at random. They were too much alike – elderly, respectable, affluent. They simply had to share some link, some secret, some event from their past.

  “Dr Watson not with you?” remarked the mature aristocrat as the Countess was shown into the lavish bed chamber where la marquise was enjoying breakfast in her lit-a-la-polonaise.

  “He had some private business to see to,” said the Countess vaguely, selecting a fauteuil by the window that bathed her in the dappled impressionistic light of a wintry Parisian morning. They had parted angrily. She actually had no idea where he might be or what he might be doing. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn he might this very minute be catching the train to Calais. “I came personally to let you know I am giving a small party on the eighth of December. A Gobolinks party,” she said, pausing, waiting for the nonplussed look as she handed the Marquise de Merimont the invitation she had brought with her. “I do hope you can come.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I haven’t been to a Gobolinks in years. Let me see, the last time I went to a Gobolinks party I was sixteen. It was the year I came out. Yes, an absolutely glorious season for me. I attended five balls in a fortnight. I don’t think I ever stopped dancing at any of them.” La marquise perused the invitation. “Oh, it is in the afternoon. That is a good idea. One can still attend the theatre. Costumes, too! How marvellous! One does like to dress up in silly costumes occasionally. Who else will be coming?”

  “Monsieur Davidov, Monsieur Crespigny, Monsignor Delgardo, and I thought I might invite your librarian.” She deliberately omitted the name of the inspector.