The Curse of the Grand Guignol (25 page)

Monsieur Crespigny arrived next.
He could hardly take his eyes off the breeches. He came dressed as
Shakespeare because it was the first costume he found and it fit
like a glove. He found it in an old chest at the back of the
theatre. He even found a gold hoop earring to mimic the sixteenth
century fashion favoured by Englishmen at that time but had to
remove it when everyone pointed out he needed two. Fortunately he
had two quills and was able to display them in matching
pockets.

Monsignor Delgardo came shortly
after the playwright. The Eminence Rouge was in scarlet robes and
looked the epitome of religious absolutism. He sported a red skull
cap and a gold signet ring on every finger. Cardinal Richelieu
would have eaten his heart out.

La Noire sashayed in on the arm
of Monsieur Davidov. She was Cleopatra with heavy eye make-up, an
asp hair ornament and a substantial amount of Nubian flesh on
display despite the fact she was nowhere near the Equator.

He was Napoleon with an equal
number of medals on both sides of his imperious barrel chest and a
monster black hat that sat astride him like a mythically beastly
bicorn.

Champagne flowed. They took
their seats around the dining room table and prepared to have
childish fun when Raoul Crespigny, grinning as impishly as a
naughty schoolboy, dropped a deliberate clanger, designed to excite
and unnerve.

“Are you going to tell everyone
why they were invited here to your jolly party for the eighth of
December?” he addressed to his hostess with dangerous
politeness.

Black ink splattered across the
table and all over other people’s papers as everyone looked up
quickly with impassioned alarm.

For a brief moment the
Countess’s remarkable poise faltered but when a terrible genie is
halfway out of its bottle there is no putting it back. She held her
nerve.

“
Certainement
,” she
smiled enigmatically; eyeing the curious little party with an air
of elegant omnipotence. “There will be another Marionette Murder
tonight.”

She waited for the gasps to
subside.

“But what has that to do with
us?” questioned the Red Eminence.

“The murderer has been
re-enacting a part of the horror show staged at rue Ballu. He
murders his victim according to script. He always strikes on the
opening night of the new performance. That will be tonight.”

“That’s absurd!” shouted Davidov
with all the fury of a war general.

“No it’s not,” calmly countered
la marquise, who had grasped the significance of the invitees more
swiftly than most. “Countess Volodymyrovna has rightly pointed out
the similarity between the horror show and the murders. I noticed
it myself when I read of the murders in
Le Temps
yesterday.
Perhaps she thinks we can help narrow down the culprit who is
trying to ruin
le Cirque du Grand Guignol
.”

“Oh, yes, well, that’s
different,” muttered the Napoleonic lookalike, backing down. “I
thought Crespigny meant we were invited so that a guilty person
could be tricked into confessing like in those ridiculous English
detective plays. I directed one once in Minsk. It was a triumph
despite the woeful plot. You could spot the killer in the first
act.”

“No,” said Crespigny weightily,
explaining himself, “I meant it was time the Countess confessed she
is investigating the murders on behalf of the Sûreté National and
that she suspects one of us.”

“One of us!” came the indignant
chorus.

“But I have nothing to do with
the Grand Guignol,” pointed out Radzival in a level-tone, allowing
the truth of the statement to speak for itself.

“And I,” said la marquise with
regal gravitas, “could hardly murder large men and string them
up.”

“No one is accusing you, dear
lady,” assured Dr Watson, picturing the party descend into a
witch-hunt.

“No one is accusing anyone,”
said the inspector morosely – mainly because they had not a
skerrick of proof.

“Who the blazes are you anyway?”
demanded Delgardo magisterially, turning as scarlet as his robe,
glaring forthrightly at the interloper he believed might be a
scribbler from the gutter press. “I don’t believe we were
introduced.”

“It’s Sherlock Holmes!” laughed
Crespigny.

“Who?”

“The great London consulting
detective and friend of Dr Watson!” Crespigny’s voice continued to
ring with cynical amusement.

“But he speaks fluent French
with an impeccable accent.” Radzival, ever the disciplined
courtier, was observant to a fault.

“I am Inspector Didier de
Guise,” confessed the man in the spotlight, bracing for hoots of
laughter, and it didn’t take long for ignominy to rear its ugly
head.

“It’s Pierrot!”

“I thought it was Cucurucu!”

“No hare’s tail on your hat
tonight, inspector?”

Not everyone joined in the
lampooning. Radzival, mindful of falls from grace, declined from
making insulting remarks that chipped away at a man’s dignity. La
marquise, a true Gallic blue-blood of exemplary breeding never
mocked those beneath her; it was simply bad manners.

The Countess interrupted the
cruel jest. “Who is it that paints the backdrops for the
theatre?”

La Noire, who had been observing
the comical pantomime with a glass of champagne in one hand and one
eye on the door for Mahmoud, and enjoying everyone’s discomfort
immensely, was the first to register the question. “Vincent, Felix
and Hilaire.”

“Why do you want to know that?”
barked Davidov belligerently, feeling especially militant in his
bicorn hat. “Do you suspect the trio of circassiens?”

“I suspect everyone and no one
at this stage,” said the Countess.

“That must be because you have
no proof,” reasoned Delgardo, feeling a touch more relaxed now that
the man in the check coat turned out not to be a journalist out to
smear his good name. “Is that why you chose to hold a Gobolinks
party? To try and force one of us to reveal our innermost emotions
and deepest secrets through our own ink blots?”

“What are you talking about,
Monsignor Delgardo?” said the Marquise de Merimont. “I don’t
understand. How can ink blots force someone to reveal an emotion, a
secret?”

“A game of Gobolinks is not as
innocent as it appears,” explained her librarian.

“But a Gobolinks party is
harmless fun,” persisted la marquise.

The librarian looked earnestly
at the Countess. “Shadow-pictures can reveal something dark about
our shadow-selves – is that it?”

The Countess nodded solemnly.
“Yes, I admit I was hoping to learn more about each of you through
your ink blots.”

“That’s ludicrous!” cried the
regal lady. “I never heard such nonsense in my life!”

“Not so ludicrous, la marquise,”
said Monsignor Delgardo. “It is an accepted method of psychological
evaluation. It has been used successfully to uncover the disordered
thoughts of mental patients.”

“Mental patients!” blasted the
war general, leaping up from his chair. “Is that why we have been
invited! So that we can be assessed like a bunch of lunatics! If
you’re in on this Delgardo, you can forget that booth!”

Delgardo looked frightened. “No,
no, this has nothing to do with me.”

“I bet you planted the idea in
the Countess’s head,” continued Davidov, frothing at the mouth.
“Your type is good at that sort of thing. You dealers of psychology
are all shamans and witch-doctors.”

“Sit down, Davidov,” said
Crespigny tiresomely. “You will give yourself a seizure and you
look ridiculous in that hat when your head bobs back and forth.
Besides, the murderer is not a mental lunatic. Far from it. The
murderer is clever, calculating and creative. Isn’t that right,
Inspector de Guise?”

“Yes, that’s a good way to
describe our murderer.”

“But he must be a lunatic,”
interrupted La Noire, joining the debate, “normal people don’t go
about mutilating corpses and making them look like puppets.”

“They do if they’ve got good
reason,” said Crespigny.

“Good reason?” questioned the
librarian, meeting the playwright’s gaze. “There can never be good
reason for such horror. The man is a monster.”

Crespigny did not back down.
“Perhaps our murderer has his reasons.”

“Stop calling him ‘our
murderer’,” rebuked Davidov. “You make it sound as if he is one of
us.”

“But that’s just it,” argued
Crespigny. “He has to be one of us. He is privy to the plays before
they are enacted on stage.”

“Impossible!” cried Davidov. “I
keep them locked up.”

La Noire drained her champagne
flute. “Kiki,” she said darkly.

Those who had their backs to the
Negress turned around sharply.

“What about Mademoiselle Kiki?”
pressed Delgardo.

“Kiki knows what’s going to be
acted on the stage,” she said.

Davidov slammed his fist down,
knocking over his own bottle of ink. Fortunately the tray spared
black ink spilling onto the table. “The Humboldts are behind it!
They are always hanging around the theatre like a bad smell! They
must have threatened her! They are the murderers! Bloody
anarchists!” He glared at the inspector. “What are you waiting for?
Go and arrest them!”

“As soon as you give me proof,”
said the inspector, wishing he could pin it on the three men who
had lately made his life hell and ruined his career. He pictured
himself back in the fold of his feckless
famille
, ensconced
in the noble bosom of card sharps, embezzlers, forgers, and
aristocratic prostitutes. The Grossetestes made the Humboldts look
like pillars of the community. His siblings would revel in his
disgrace. They would slap him on the back and congratulate him for
finally giving up on an honest career.

“Surely,” said Delgardo, anxious
for Kiki’s fragile mental state in light of her recent tragedy,
“the police can easily link the three anarchists to the victims.
Weren’t they all rich citizens – the sort revolutionaries hate
most? Kiki would have no grudge against them. She must have been
threatened, as Monsieur Davidov rightly pointed out. The poor girl
must be terrified out of her wits.”

Davidov started frothing again.
“Arrest them I say!”

Dr Watson, having observed the
Countess wave away Mahmoud, the footmen and the maids so as not to
interrupt the heated discussion, decided to dispense champagne
himself. Throats were dry and tempers were running hot. It seemed
to work.

“Calm down, Monsieur Davidov,”
said the librarian. “This is not Russia. The police do not go about
arresting citizens without good cause.”

“Quite,” said la marquise, her
voice resolute. “We have moved beyond the dark days of the
revolution when the citizens of France could be incarcerated on the
whim of those in power.”

Davidov took a deep breath and
emptied his glass. “I’m not saying guillotine them without trial.
I’m saying arrest them and interrogate them. Search their café.
Find proof. It will be there somewhere. Mark my words.”

Dr Watson refilled the
director’s glass.

The Countess made a suggestion
that set off a series of grateful sighs. “Shall we adjourn to the
salon for afternoon tea? We can then return refreshed and finish
our game.”

“What!” barked Davidov; the one
abstainer of gratitude; emptying his second glass in one fell
swoop. “So you can read things into our ink blots and pin the
crimes on us?”

“Have you got something to
hide?” challenged Crespigny, allowing the ladies to exit the room
first.

That comment silenced the
director and anyone else who might have objected on similar
grounds. Anyone who refused to finish the shadow-picture game would
now look like someone with something to hide.

Exotic objets d’art scattered
about the salon provided a distraction as delicacies were served
along with coffee and a selection of teas. Tempers cooled. La
marquise showed a lot of interest in the ikons. Davidov thought he
might be able to work them into one of the plays. Delgardo was
fascinated by the Egyptian scarabs. Davidov thought he could work
them in too. Radzival, who had once owned a valuable collection of
Ormolu clocks, displayed his vast knowledge of the workings of the
timepieces to Crespigny. La Noire managed to corner Mahmoud by the
fireplace and seemed riveted when he explained about the different
phallic objects. When Mahmoud retreated, La Noire sashayed up to
the Countess.

“You think it could be Vincent,
Felix and Hilaire doing the murders,” she said huskily, “that’s why
you asked who painted the backdrops?”

“I wondered about the backdrops,
because whoever painted those had to know in advance about the
plays that were going to be performed, though not the entire
play.”

And that’s what bothered her.
The murderer had to know the entire play to borrow the most
pertinent bits from it.

Delgardo was listening; his oily
tone was on the sarcastic side. “You can hold another Gobolinks
party and invite them, oh, but unfortunately it will be too late
for victim number six.”

“You will have to invite Laszlo
and Salvador too,” intervened Davidov sardonically. “They used to
be in the circus with the others. They put together the trapeze for
Kiki and Coco. They make all our props: the fake head, the fake
tongue, the fake member, the window, the swing, everything. And
they are always whining about how I don’t pay them enough.” The
director turned to his playwright. “Hey, Crespigny! You can write a
play about a circus clown who gets stabbed by a knife-thrower!”

Crespigny, who was appreciating
the finer points of Ormolu clocks – the exquisite gilding, the
superb rococo detailing, the burnished effect - scowled at the
interruption. “I might write a play about a Russian peasant who
gets crushed by an elephant in a church filled with ikons and then
mauled by lion as he crawls to the altar.”