by Tony Medawar
‘Oh, yes. Cheating is quite unnecessary, and too dangerous … Well,’ he added, smiling, ‘am I not showing you Paris, my friend Jack?’
‘And much obliged. Except that I had hoped to go slumming. This is as dull and decorous as the Latin Quarter.’
‘Yes, but wait,’ Bencolin remarked softly. ‘I seldom go anywhere for pleasure. I think you will find that this is no exception.’
‘A case?’
He shrugged his shoulders. For a time he sat staring with blank eyes at the crowd; then he took out a black cigar, and rolled it about in his fingers. Absently he continued:
‘It has been in the past my good or bad fortune to be concerned only in cases of an outlandish nature; cases whose very impossible character admitted of just one solution. Cast your mind back. There was one way, and only one, in which the smuggler Mercier could have been strangled[1]; there was one way for La Garde to have been shot[2], and one way for Cyril Merton to have accomplished his “disappearance”[3]. Is a person, then, to evolve a philosophy that there is but one way for any crime to be committed? Hardly; and yet—’ He scowled across the room.
‘The Duc de Saligny,’ he went on abruptly, ‘is good-looking, wealthy, and still young. He was married at noon today to a charming young woman. There, you will say, is a perfect cinema romance. The bride and groom are both here tonight.’
‘Indeed? Aren’t they going on a wedding-trip?’
‘To the modern marriage,’ mused Bencolin, ‘there seems to be something slightly indecent about privacy. You must act in public as though you had been married twenty years, and in private as though you had not been married at all. That, however, is not my affair. There is a deeper reason for it.’
‘They don’t love each other, then?’
‘On the contrary, they seem to be violently in love … Have you ever heard of the bride?’
I shook my head.
‘She was Madame Louise Laurent. Three years ago she was married to a certain man named Alexandre Laurent. Shortly afterwards, her husband was committed to an asylum for the criminally insane.’ He was silent a moment, thoughtfully blowing smoke at the ceiling.
‘Laurent was examined in a psychopathic ward. I was present at the time, and I give you my word that Cesare Lombroso would have been delighted with the case. He was a mild-appearing young man, soft-spoken and pleasant. The black spot on his brain was sadism. Usually lucid, he would have intervals in which the temptation to kill and mutilate became overpowering; and none of his crimes ever became known until after his marriage. Of course, such a neurosis could have no normal marriage, and culminated in what is known as “lust-murder”. He attacked his wife, with a razor. She contrived to lock him in his room, for she is strong, and summoned help. By that time the frenzy had spent itself, but his secret was out.’
Bencolin spread out his hands.
‘A genius, Laurent, a scholar, a prodigy in the languages. He spent his days in the asylum very quietly, at study. The marriage, naturally, was annulled.’ Bencolin paused, and then said slowly, ‘Six months ago, he escaped from the asylum. He is at large today, and the confinement seems only to have unbalanced him more completely.
‘What did he do? He set out to find a perfect disguise. In these days, my friend, they are childish who seek to disguise themselves with any stage-trappings: paint, or false hair, or anything of the kind. Even an unpractised eye, such as your own, could penetrate such subterfuges without difficulty … No, Laurent did the only perfect thing. He put himself under the care of Dr Grafenstein, of Vienna, the greatest master of plastic surgery. He had himself remade entirely, even to his fingerprints. When this had been done, he quite coolly killed Dr Grafenstein—the only person who had ever seen his new face. Even the nurse had never laid eyes on the patient: in the first stages, he was swathed in bandages; when he began to heal, he concealed himself in his own room. Yes, he killed Grafenstein. He is now in Paris. Two days ago, he wrote a letter to the young Duc de Saligny. It said simply, “If you marry her, I will kill you.” And I very much fear, my friend, that he will.’
I do not believe that I was ever in my life struck with so much horror as at this unemotional recital. Bencolin had never raised his voice. He smoked meditatively, watching the crowd; out of his words there grew in my mind a distorted picture of a lunatic, a Grand Guignol madman stepping through green dusk. Bencolin turned his sardonic face, shook his head, and remarked as though in response:
‘No, we are not dealing with the conventional killer or the blood-curdler, who betrays himself in public. Have I not said that Laurent is mild-mannered and pleasant?—only with that clot on his brain. And what does he look like? The good God knows. He may be that fat banker over at the roulette table; he may be the young American, or the croupier, or any of them, or he may not be (and probably is not) here at all. But I shall not forget the Duc de Saligny’s face when he brought that letter to me. A tall swaggerer with bloodshot eyes and an excitable manner: he kept biting his lips, and looking round until you could see the whites of his eyes. He was frightened, but he refused to admit it. Yes, he would go through with the wedding, and so would Louise. But you will see that he longs for public places now, until my men can step out and lay their hands on Laurent.’
That was the beginning of the nightmare drama. It seemed to me that the voices had grown more shrill, the gestures more elaborate; and that some force of Bencolin’s words had penetrated to everybody in the room. It was not possible for them to have heard him, and yet you would have said that everyone was conscious of it, and was looking over towards us, furtively.
‘Is he always dangerous?’ I asked.
‘Any man who has committed one murder is always dangerous. And Laurent especially, for our pathological case has discovered how pleasant it can be.’
‘How does madame—madame la duchesse take all this?’
Bencolin was regarding a very oily and effusive gambler, who proclaimed his losses at the top of his voice; then the detective laid his hand on my arm.
‘You will see for yourself. Here she comes now … You notice? No emotion or agitation; she looks as though she were in a drug-fog.’
A woman was crossing the room towards us; she moved in a rather vague way, with expressionless eyes and a slight smile. She was beautiful, but she was more than this. Even her hair had a cloudy look. The eyes were heavy-lidded and black, with not too much mascara, the lips of a sensual fullness which just escaped being coarse. In dress she was perfect, the black gown accentuating the invitation of shoulder and breast. She twisted her pearls vaguely. There was a little silver anklet under the grey stocking … She came straight up to Bencolin. When he bent over her hand she was negligent, but, closer, you could see a vein pulsing in her throat.
Bencolin introduced me, and added, ‘A friend of mine. You may speak freely.’ She looked towards me, and I had a sense of veils being drawn away. It was a look of scrutiny, not unmixed with suspicion.
‘You are affiliated with the police, monsieur?’ she asked me.
‘Yes,’ said Bencolin unexpectedly.
She sat down, refused one of my cigarettes, and took her own from a little wrist-bag. Leaning back, she inhaled deeply; her hand trembled, and her lips stained the tip of the cigarette as though with blood. She wore some kind of exquisite perfume; one was conscious of her nearness.
‘Monsieur le Duc is here?’ asked Bencolin.
‘Raoul? Yes. Raoul is getting nervous,’ she answered, and laughed shrilly. ‘I don’t blame him, though. It is not a pleasant thing to think about. If you had ever seen Laurent’s eyes—’
Bencolin raised his hand gently. She shivered a little, looked slowly over at me, and then said. ‘There goes Raoul now, into the card-room.’ She nodded towards a broad back disappearing through a door at the far end of the room. I saw no more than that, for I happened to be looking at my wristwatch. I looked at it twice, absently, before I noticed that the hour was eleven-thirty.
‘Orange blossoms!’ she sa
id, and laughed again. ‘Orange blossoms, lace veils. A lovely wedding, lovely bride, with even the clergyman staring at us and wondering if there were a madman in the church. Orange blossoms, “till death do you part”—death! Very possibly!’
This was sheer hysteria. The sights and sounds of the casino blended in with it; the banging of the jazz band became nearly unbearable. That voice of the croupier rose singing over it, like the bawling of the man who announces trains. Louise, Duchesse de Saligny, said abruptly,
‘I want a cocktail. Don’t mind me if I seem upset. I keep thinking of Laurent crawling about … M. Bencolin, you’re here to see that no harm comes to Raoul, do you hear? “Till death do you part”—’ She shivered again.
There was silence while Bencolin looked round for the boy with the cocktail tray, a silence, and none of us intruded on each other’s thoughts. A man and woman walked past us, almost stumbling over madame’s feet; and I recall that the man was saying heatedly in English, ‘Five hundred francs is entirely too damn much!—’ The voices trailed away.
Somebody had come up in front of us, and coughed discreetly. It was a tall man; dapper, blond, with an eyeglass and an almost imperceptible moustache.
‘Your pardon if I’m intruding,’ he remarked. ‘Louise, I don’t believe I know—’ He took out his handkerchief unnecessarily, wiped his lips, and stood fidgeting.
‘Oh … yes,’ she murmured; ‘these are gentlemen from the police, Edouard. Allow me to present M. Edouard Vautrelle.’
Vautrelle bowed. ‘Very happy … Raoul’s gone to the card-room, Louise; he’s been drinking too much. Won’t you play?’
‘That music—’ she suddenly snapped; ‘damn that music. I can’t stand it! I won’t stand it. Tell them to stop!’
‘Doucement, doucement!’ Vautrelle urged, looking round in a nervous way. With an apologetic nod at us he took her arm and led her towards the table; she seemed to have forgotten our existence.
Bencolin picked up the cigarette-stub she had left in the ashtray. He was juggling it in his palm, when suddenly he looked up. Madame and Vautrelle were in the centre of the room directly under one of the large chandeliers; they stopped. We all heard the crash of breaking glass, and saw the white-coated servant leaning against the door of the cardroom. He had let fall the tray of cocktails, and was staring stupidly at the wreckage.
Everyone turned to look. With the cessation of voices, the jazz band had stopped too. The manager, his fat stomach wobbling, was hurrying across the room. But most distinctly emerged the drawn, shiny face of the servant—who had seen something, and was desperately afraid.
Bencolin did not seem to hurry, but he was across the room immediately. I was directly behind him; he extended in his palm, for the manager’s gaze, the little card with the circle, the eagle, and the three words, ‘prefecture of police’. Together we went through the door of the cardroom.
My sensations were the same as those I had experienced once at a sideshow when I had seen some mountebank swallow a snake. The room was not well lit; its leprous red walls were hung with weapons, and a red-shaded lamp burned beside a divan at the far end. A man had fallen forward before the divan, as though in the act of kneeling—but the man had no head. Instead there was a bloody stump propped on the floor. The head itself stood in the centre of the room, upright on its neck; it showed white eyeballs, and grinned at us in the low red light. A breeze through an open window blew at us a heavy, sweet smell.
II
RED FOOTLIGHTS
With the utmost coolness, Bencolin turned to the manager.
‘Two of my men,’ he said, ‘are on guard at your door. Summon them; all the doors are to be locked, and nobody must leave. Keep them playing, if it is possible. In the meantime, come in yourself and lock this door.’
The manager stammered something to an attendant, and added, ‘Nobody is to know about this, understand?’ He was a fat man, who looked as though he were melting; a monstrous moustache curled up to his eyes, which bulged like a frog’s. Tumbling against the door, he stood and pulled idiotically at his moustache. Bencolin, twisting a handkerchief over his fingers, turned the key in the lock.
There was another door in the wall to our right, at the left side of the dead man as he lay before the divan. Bencolin went over to it; it was ajar, and he peered outside.
‘This is the main hall, monsieur?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said the manager. ‘It—it—’
‘Here is one of my men.’ Bencolin beckoned from the door, and held a short consultation with the man outside. ‘Nobody has come out there,’ he observed, closing the door. ‘François was watching. Now!’
All of us were looking about the room. I tried to keep my eyes off the head, which appeared to be gazing at me sideways; the wind blew on my face, and it felt very cold. Bencolin walked over to the body, where he stood and peered down, smoothing his moustache. Beside the neck-stump I could see projecting from the shadow a part of a heavy sword—it had come, apparently, from a group on the wall, and though the edge was mostly dulled with blood, a part near the handle emerged in a sharp, glittering line.
‘Butchers’ work,’ said Bencolin, twitching his shoulders. ‘See, it has been recently sharpened.’ He stepped daintily over the red soaking against the lighter red of the carpet, and went to the window at our left. ‘Forty feet from the street … inaccessible.’
He turned, and stood against the blowing curtains. The black eyes were bright and sunken; in them you could see rage at himself, nervousness, indecision. He beat his hands softly together, made a gesture, and returned to the body, where he avoided the blood by kneeling over the divan.
‘Jack,’ he said suddenly, looking up, ‘pick up the head and bring it over here.’
No doubt about it, I was growing ill.
‘Pick up—the head, did you say?’
‘Certainly; bring it here. Watch out, now; don’t get the blood on your trousers …’
In a daze, I approached the thing, shut my eyes, and picked it up by the hair. The hair felt cold and greasy, the head much heavier than I had thought. While I was going towards Bencolin, I recall that the jazz band started playing again downstairs, dinning over and over, ‘Whe-en ca-res pur-suoo-yah, sing hal-le-looo-jah—’
‘I shouldn’t tamper with this,’ Bencolin observed, ‘but nobody can give me orders; and I don’t think we need a coroner’s report about the manner of his death.’ He fitted the head against the trunk and stood back, frowning. I sat down heavily on the divan.
‘Come here, monsieur,’ said Bencolin to the proprietor. ‘This sword: it comes from the room here?’
The manager began talking excitedly. His syllables exploded like a string of little firecrackers popping over the room; the almost unintelligible clipped speech of the Midi. Yes, the sword belonged here. It had hung with another, like itself, crossed over a Frankish shield on the wall near the divan. It was an imitation antique. Oh, yes, it was razor-sharp; this lent such a semblance of reality, and the patrons like reality.
‘The handle,’ remarked the detective, ‘is studded with round brass nail-heads; we shall get no clear fingerprints from it, I fear … Do you ever use this room, monsieur?’
‘Oh, yes; frequently. But we haven’t used it tonight. See, the card tables are folded against the wall. Nobody wanted to play. It was all that roulette.’ Volubly eager, the manager waggled his fat hands. ‘Do you think it can be hushed up, monsieur? My trade—’
‘Do you know this dead man?’
‘Yes, monsieur; it is M. le Duc de Saligny. He often comes here.’
‘Did you see him go in here tonight?’
‘No, monsieur. The last I saw him was early in the evening.’
‘Was he with anybody then?’
‘With M. Edouard Vautrelle. The two were great friends—’
‘Very good, then. You may go out now and inform madame la duchesse; be as quiet about it as possible—better take her out in the hall, in case she makes a scene. Tell M.
Vautrelle to step in here.’
He went out by the hall door, leering over his shoulder with tiny wrinkled eyes. Bencolin turned to me.
‘Well, what do you make of it?’
I could not collect my thoughts, and blurted dully, ‘They were fortunate to keep it from the crowd out there—’
‘No, no: the murder?’
‘It was a terrific blow. It must have taken a madman’s strength.’
‘I wonder!’ said Bencolin, beginning to pace up and down. ‘Not necessarily, my friend. It was a two-handed blow, but, as our manager says, that sword is razor-sharp. I do not think that such gigantic strength was essential. You could have done it yourself. Look at the position of the body; does it convey nothing to you?’
‘Only that there seems to have been no struggle.’
‘Obviously not. He was struck from behind. We may assume that he was sitting on the divan before he was struck; but he got to his feet. Mark that: he got to his feet also before he was killed—you note that he is some distance out from the divan …’
‘Well?’
‘Yes, there are a number of pillows on the divan.’
‘Pillows?’
‘Certainly. Great God! Where are your wits? Don’t you understand?’
‘It suggests nothing except—except an amorous implication.’
‘Amorous the devil!’ snapped Bencolin. ‘There was nothing amorous about the situation here.’ He laughed wryly, and added, ‘Our madman is now in these gaming-rooms. Nobody has left, unless my agents were asleep.’
‘By the hall door?—’
‘François has been there since eleven-thirty. Do you know what time Saligny came in here?’
‘I recall exactly, because when madame pointed him out I was looking at my watch. It was eleven-thirty.’
Bencolin looked at his own watch. ‘Just twelve; it should be easy to check alibis … How do you account for the fact that the head lies at some distance from the body, standing up?’
‘It certainly couldn’t have rolled to that position.’