Angels of Music (27 page)

The human waxworks went unnamed, but Kate recognised many. The Minister Eugène Mortain, famous for surviving corruption scandals and maintaining a dozen mistresses at the public expense; the examining magistrate Charles Pradier, who vowed to restock
Île du Diable
with journalists who argued the innocence of Dreyfus or the guilt of Esterhazy; General Assolant, recalled from Algeria after a run of harsh police actions and put in charge of the Paris garrison to maintain public order; Père de Kern, confessor to government and society figures, and reputedly the most depraved man in France, though always humble in public; and Georges Du Roy, publisher of
La Vie Française, L’Anti-Juif
and the children’s story paper
Arizona Jim
.

Solemnly, Guignol passed amongst the wax monsters, awarding each a rosette and ribbon, inducting these worthies into the
Légion d’Horreur
!

Kate hadn’t expected the detour into political agitation, if indeed this was that. How was Guignol getting away with it? Newspaper offices were burned to the ground and journalists submitted to the system of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether for less. For an institution eager to make powerful enemies, the
Théâtre des Horreurs
was surprisingly
un
-persecuted.

Even before the attack on the people best placed to have the place shut down, the programme seemed calculated to offend
everyone
– Catholics (especially Jesuits), Protestants (especially Freemasons), Jews (no surprises there), atheists and free-thinkers, conservatives, moderates, radicals, anyone not French enough, anyone not French at all, the medical profession, the police, the law, criminals, cannibals, the military, colonialists, anti-colonialists, the halt and lame, circus folk, animal lovers, people who lived through the Paris Commune, the friends and relatives of people who failed to live through the Paris Commune, women of all classes, drama critics.

In a city where a poetry recital or a symphony concert could set off a riot, this house was tolerated so completely that she sensed an invisible shield of protection. Was the
Théâtre des Horreurs
so profitable it could afford to bribe
everyone
? Including the Paris mob, who were notoriously easier to stir up than buy off.

In parting, Guignol sang a song whose last refrain was – loosely translated – ‘If these shadows have offended, you can all go stuff yourselves!’

The curtain came down. Thunderous applause.

‘I didn’t like it at the end, Papa,’ said one of the fat round children. ‘When it made my head hurt from thinking.’

The fat round father fondly cuffed the lad around the ear.

‘There, that’ll take the ache away.’

Guignol poked his head out of the curtain to take a last bow.

After some minutes of capering and farewell, Guignol departed and the house lights came up.

T
HE SHOW LET
out after eleven o’clock. Kate kept her head down and made for the
Sortie
.

To escape the theatre, she had to run a gauntlet of minions in Guignol masks hawking souvenirs: Toby jugs with Guignol features; phials of authentic
Théâtre des Horreurs
blood; postcards of the stars in sealed packets so you didn’t know what you were getting (how many leering Morphos did a collector have to buy to secure that elusive bare-breasted Berma?); tin swazzles seemingly designed to drive parents to acts of infanticide suitable for dramatising next season; and enamel pins with Guignol faces or bloody pulled-out eyes.

Succumbing, she purchased a profusely illustrated pamphlet featuring photographed scenes, with diagrams showing how effects were done. It might come in handy in the investigation. She was convinced a connection existed between the crimes in the streets and the crimes on the stage. It was as if the real horrors extended the argument of the
Ballade de Bertrand Caillet
. Doubtless, victims didn’t care much whether they were killed to make a philosophical point or just plain ordinarily murdered.

Leaving by a side door, she saw a cluster of devotees around the artists’ entrance. Some wore amateur horror make-up as if hoping to audition: dangling eyeballs, running sores, vampire fangs. A
mec
in a short-sleeved sailor shirt showed off a raw tattoo of Guignol’s grin. Others wore cheap masks and competed – despite their lack of swazzle – to imitate Guignol’s voice. A tipsy toff in evening dress struggled with a huge bouquet of black roses. Kate suspected Stage Door Jeannot was an admirer of the much-abused Berma. He looked more like the recipient than the disher-out of consensual floggings.

Back on Rue Saint-Vincent, she clocked Yuki’s headdress bobbing in the distance. She paused a moment to consider her options. They were supposed to make their separate ways back to the
pied-à-terre
the Persian had rented for the purposes of the investigation. Kate had memorised a few routes.

Ideally, she’d have liked a stroll by the Seine to clear her head.

The
Théâtre des Horreurs
was overwhelming. An evening with the smell of offal, that funny smoke and packed-in patrons would make anyone light-headed, even without the parade of tortures.

She passed gay cafés and cabarets, but horrors had soured her outlook. Her glasses weren’t rose-coloured, but blood-smeared. Music and laughter sounded shrill and cruel. Pretty faces seemed cracked and duplicitous.

Guignol peeped from posters. She thought she saw him in the crowd. It wasn’t unlikely. Many cardboard masks were sold in Impasse Chaplet.

She took precautions against being followed, as much for practice as genuine caution. In the front door of a restaurant and out through the kitchens – even a glimpse was enough to dissuade her from going back for a meal – and a quick change on the hoof. She reversed her distinctive check jacket to show anonymous green.

She found a table in the corner of a busy courtyard and ordered
anisette
.

No one tried to pick her up, which was obscurely depressing. If she could sit by herself in a French café and not be bothered, she must be a fright indeed.

She was thirty-two. No age at all… though her soonest-married school friends had nearly grown-up daughters and sons. As an unmarried, ‘unconventional’ woman, she was accustomed to importunage on a daily basis – in England, let alone Paris. Being Kate Reed was like being a coconut in a shy. Every other chap thought it worth a throw. If the shot went wide, no harm done, old girl. The ‘respectable’ gents were bad enough – the husbands of her school friends, or even their fathers – but the men who made her skin crawl were the firebrand stalwarts of causes she supported – Irish home rule or women’s suffrage – who felt she owed them a tumble because they said the right things on platforms. From now on, she would recommend that these pouncing comrades take a run at Clara Watson, connoisseur of exquisite tortures.

An accordion played. The performer was the image of a music hall Frenchman, down to the beret and waxed moustache – though he’d left his string of onions at home. He was wringing out the ‘Valse des Rayons’ from Offenbach’s
Le Papillon
. Space in the courtyard was cleared for a couple to enact the famous
apache
dance. A slouch-hatted, stripy-shirted rough slung his long-legged partner about in a simulation of violent love-making, in time to repetitive, sinuous music. The
fille
alternately resisted the crude advances of her
garçon
and abased herself in front of him. Throughout, a lit cigarette dangled from the corner of the man’s mouth. He puffed smoke rings between cruel kisses. Even dances in Montmartre involved punches, slaps, knees to the groin and neck-breaking holds. The girl pulled a stiletto from her garter, but the
mec
snatched it away and tossed it at a wall. It embedded in a poster of Guignol.

Kate sipped her
anisette
, which stung her nose and eyes as well as her tongue. It was but a step from this anise-flavoured, watered cordial to absinthe. Which led, popularly, to syphilis, consumption and death.

The dancers finished, and were clapped. They collected coins. Kate gave the girl a sou and hoped the bruises under her powder were from overenthusiastic rehearsal.

The point of Guignol’s Caillet play was that horror was unconfined. Not limited to one madman, not on one small stage. It was all about, all-pervasive, in the statues of Saint Denis toting his raggedly severed head and the ritualised domestic abuse of the
apache
dance. The Reign of Terror and the Commune were done, but Guignol’s Chevalier de la Légion d’Horreur were ensconced in positions of power. Georges Du Roy could throw honest ministers to
les loups
but maintain Eugène Mortain in office. Riots erupted whenever the Dreyfus case was argued. War with Germany was inevitable one week, then alliance with Germany against Great Britain was equally inevitable the week after. Père de Kern was appointed Inspector of Orphanages. Horrible whispers spread about his night-time surprise visits to his little charges, though even Zola didn’t dare accuse him in print. A military coup which would have installed General Assolant as a new Napoléon had recently collapsed at the last minute. Kate liked to think herself a reasonable person, but she was working for a faceless creature who supposedly dropped a chandelier on an opera audience because he didn’t like the casting of Marguerite in
Faust
.

Was it all in fun?

The horrors were certainly not confined to Paris. The British Mr Punch, Guignol’s cousin, knocked his Judy about as much as any
apache
panderer did his tart… and killed policemen, judges and crocodiles. In the East End, Kate spent too much time with women nursing black eyes after trying to stop their old men blowing the rent money going on beer to find Punch and Judy shows very amusing. At least, the
apachette
fought back.

She looked about the courtyard. People were having a good time, even if their pockets were being picked. Despite the horrors, life went on, mostly merrily. Dance done, the performers were drinking together, the girl flirting with her partner and the musician. Kate’s jangled nerves calmed, and she tried to shrug it all off.

The stiletto had been reclaimed from the wall. A tear-like triangular divot showed brick under Guignol’s eye.

Kate thought about the eyes of Guignol, the living eyes in the
papier-mâché
face. She thought she’d know those eyes again. But would she, really? Guignol was in disguise when he took his mask
off
. He might be anyone.

The programme and pamphlet were no help. There were notes about Berma, Phroso, Morpho (a veteran disfigured by Riffs, apparently) and others. Even Dr Orloff, the resident physician, had a write-up. Guignol’s biography was of the
character
not the performer. Guignol was himself, not who he had been… Jean-François Someone or Félix-Frédéric Whoever. Under Berma’s photograph was a paragraph about her early life and career. She’d played in other companies, rising from Cleopatra’s asp-delivering handmaiden to Juliet and Desdemona, before her engagement at the
Théâtre des Horreurs
. Under Guignol’s picture was a list of crimes. Credited as writer and producer of the show as well as its proprietary spirit, he had sprung from nowhere to take over the remains of the late Monsieur Hulot’s company.

The craze burned throughout Paris, exciting much commentary. W.B. Yeats, Gustav von Aschenbach and Odilon Redon hailed Guignol as a genius, though Kate would have laid money they wouldn’t have him round for dinner. Paul Verlaine and André Gide lampooned Guignol as a fraud, though the inconsistent Gide also said he loved the imp like a brother. Léo Taxil had boosted the Mad Mountebank of the
Théâtre des Horreurs
in his periodical
La France Chrétienne Anti-Maçonnique
, then claimed to have
invented
Guignol… only to discover his creation had ‘escaped into the wild’.

She was no wiser about the masked man.

Thinking about Guignol made her jittery. It was too easy to imagine that face –
those eyes
– looking at her from a dark corner or between a press of people. Kate still felt he, or someone wearing his face, was nearby… and could lay a hand on her at any moment.

Was that why she wasn’t being preyed on? A greater predator had marked her as his own.

She poured the last of the water into the last of the
anisette
and drank up. Then she left, hurrying towards the rendezvous of the Angels.

Was she being followed still? Had she ever?

It was as if Guignol were waiting wherever she turned. In the limelight, up on a stage, his atrocities were often absurd. In spite of herself, she had laughed. In the dark, a step or two off the main street, the clown would not seem funny.

Kate felt a chill up one arm. She looked down and saw the sleeve of her jacket – and the sleeve of her blouse – had three long slits, as if claws of supreme sharpness had brushed her when she was distracted, cleaving cloth but not skin.

She heard the laughter of Guignol, but could not be sure it was in her head.

M
ADAME
M
ANDELIP
’
S
H
ÔPITAL
des Poupées
was in Place Frollo, a triangular ‘square’ even further off Rue Saint-Vincent than Impasse Chaplet. The small shop was seldom open for business and got little passing traffic. The front window was crowded with dusty dolls. All the fixed smiles and glass eyes reminded Kate of her childhood playroom. She’d been afraid of the old-fashioned, slightly battered dolls her aunts kindly passed on. The effect of the frontage was deliberate – to ward off the curious. If there ever had been such a person as Madame Mandelip, she was long gone.

Kate was last home to the safe house. She rapped on the door, to the rhythm of the first line of ‘La Donna è Mobile’ from
Rigoletto
. She could never repress a smirk at the childish trimmings favoured by the overgrown boys of the Diogenes Club and the Opera Ghost Agency. Secret knocks, passwords, invisible ink and codes, not to mention false moustaches and – inevitably – masks. The blade up her sleeve reminded her she wasn’t immune to the appeal of deadly play-acting.