The Curse of the Grand Guignol (35 page)

“You think the two of them fled
together?” quizzed the inspector.

“I am certain of it. That’s why
Crespigny left the theatre in such a hurry. He wanted to warn
Radzival we were narrowing down the list of suspects. He probably
helped stage the corpse on the windmill to speed things along.”

“So Crespigny was in on it the
whole time?” The doctor wondered if he’d missed something
important.

She shook her head. “No, he
guessed it was Radzival shortly before we did. Possibly after that
time he took me to visit the rag and bone yard in Clignancourt. We
had been talking about the Panama Affair and I think he guessed
then that the killer was taking revenge for the scandal. Several
things he said that seemed puzzling at the time make sense now. I
thought he was trying to hide the extent of his family’s losses but
I think now he was hedging because his brain was ticking things
over regarding Radzival.”

“But I don’t understand,” said
Dr Watson, frowning. “Crespigny hardly knew Radzival. The only time
he would have seen him was at the salonniere. Why risk everything
for a man you hardly know?”

“Love makes us do strange
things.”

“Love!” The inspector’s tone
was incredulous.

“Crespigny was hopelessly in
love with Radzival. Delgardo must have noticed it at one of the
salonnieres. He put me onto it. Crespigny admitted it when I
confronted him. That’s why I’m sure they fled together.”

“But what about Radzival?”
challenged the inspector; skeptical to the last, though he knew
such men existed and even had some among his coterie of friends.
“Did he feel the same? He struck me as a cold fish, aloof and
unemotional.”

“Dignity is often mistaken for
aloofness and aloofness for coldness. His emotions must have been
in constant check. By the end of the Gobolinks party I think
Radzival understood how Crespigny felt about him, and I do believe
he reciprocated those feelings. I saw him blush more than once when
Crespigny made physical contact. Keep looking for a link to the
first five victims otherwise we have nothing tangible linking
Radzival to the Marionette Murders. I’m going to the library. There
may be a folio cupboard with a diary hidden inside it, or at least
some notes. I doubt la marquise went there often. It was her
husband’s pride and joy, not hers. Radzival would have had the
place to himself.”

Five thousand books!

Feeling overwhelmed, she hoped
she would not be forced to search inside every single one of them
as she gazed despairingly at the endless shelving. First up, the
rare Syrian manuscript by Mesrop of Xizan and that’s when she
recalled the book the librarian had tucked under his arm when she
delivered his invitation. It was the same book on the étagère in
his bedroom. Emile Zola’s
Germinal
.

Many said it was Zola’s best.
The title meant ‘seed’ in Latin, but it was also the name of a
month of the year. A month in spring. Did the month mean something
special? Was it the month of his birth or the month he returned to
Paris to find his family utterly ruined?

She wondered about all the
possibilities as she rushed to his bedroom. The novel was still on
the étagère. She held the spine, turned the book vertical so that
the pages faced downward, and gave it a vigorous shake. Out
fluttered more than a dozen pages of notes covered with neat
handwriting. Each page had a different name: Dupin, LeBrun,
Hertzinger, Mueller, Lodz…there were ten more. It was the first
five that she was most interested in.

Monsieur Dupin, the glove
manufacturer, had cheated the maternal grandfather out of tens of
thousands of dollars when he bought the Bobigny factory for a
pittance. Monsieur LeBrun had sold the family’s priceless art
collection and then failed to pass on the full proceeds of the
sale, even charging an exorbitant fee that was tantamount to theft.
Madame Hertzinger had bought many of the artworks for a song in
collusion with LeBrun, who then kept the best paintings for
himself. Several were still hanging in his gallery. Dr Mueller, the
Crusade historian, had once worked at an insane asylum in
Montmartre where he regularly stole provisions which he sold on the
black market while the inmates starved to death. Captain Lodz, an
old family friend with ties going back to Poland, had been given
the family vineyard in Alsace on the proviso the sisters would be
cared for, but after raping them he turned them out and they ended
up on the streets of Paris.

The other ten names revealed
more of the same. It was an indictment of the worst of human nature
– to profit from misfortune. Epithets for tags had already been
chosen: matka, brat, siostra, wuj, stryj, and so on. The Slavic
link was just a random selection. The next five were Polish and
some Jewish ones came later.

As she prepared to return to
the private study with the tangible proof they needed she realized
that he wanted her to find the book. He wanted her to know. He
wanted her to understand that in a world full of monsters some were
to be pitied.