The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

  Pulling the two composition books from her messenger bag, she began to tell them about Émile and Cecile. She’d spent all night translating the second journal and had made a copy of her English translation for Barrow, indicating where she couldn’t decipher the manuscript. Also tucked away in her bag was an actual ticket to Le Cirque Secret. While the ticket had appeared to bleed last night when she’d torn it, this morning the paper was perfectly mended as though it was a living thing that had healed itself overnight.

  She was undecided whether she was going to tell them about the invitation but was leaning toward not. From a purely academic standpoint, it made sense to show them, so they could lay their lands on an authentic ticket from Le Cirque Secret. Yet if she told Gaston and Barrow, they’d never let her show up tonight. She couldn’t risk them trying to stop her. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. Looking at them both, she knew if they had tickets in their pockets, they would go.

  “I cannot believe another Giroux painting has been hanging in the office of Le Cirque de Fragonard for years?” Barrow’s hands were on his face in disbelief, his eyes wild. “I need to see it. Today if possible.”

  “Oh, Teddy, it’s so beautiful. Even more beautiful than my painting.” Lara cut a piece of her duck confit as Barrow skimmed the notebook. “It’s in the owner’s private collection. And I do mean private; there is some creepy stuff in there.”

  “I’ll call someone at the institute to see if I can get Fragonard to let us see it.” Barrow was distracted, furiously scanning through his phone contacts. After leaving two voicemails, he settled back into his seat and focused on the journal, smoothing the pages. “The writing is so faded. We should be wearing gloves.”

  “I’ve only managed to translate the second journal.” She met his eyes. “It tells the story of two of the paintings—Cecile’s and Sylvie’s. I’m convinced that my grandmother—the woman who helped raise me—was not Cecile, but Sylvie. I think the answer is the third journal.” She handed the second journal to him. While it might have been faster for him to read the third, she kept it, preferring to be its first reader. After all, this was her family, her legacy. She needed to be the one to read Cecile’s words. While Barrow was fixed on Giroux, she was getting drawn into Cecile’s world. “Any word about the painting?”

  “I’m seeing Micheau right after this,” said Barrow about Alain Micheau, the Giroux specialist who’d driven up from Nice. Earlier, Barrow indicated that two scholars needed to agree that it was a Giroux before raising the discovery to the larger art community. “Last night, Alain was at the institute until I had to force him to leave. The paints used on Sylvie on the Steed match an order Giroux placed with Lefebvre-Foinet on Rue Vavin in Montparnasse right before his death. They would have custom-blended the pinks and aquas for him. Giroux got his canvases there as well. He’d ordered three smaller ones for The Ladies of the Secret Circus a month before his death. The size on the first painting is a match. The journals also provide a wonderful first-person account of the creation of these works.” Barrow looked at the notes and the second book in disbelief. He reached out and touched Lara’s hand. “I want to thank you for this gift.”

  She smiled. “It’s quite a story, isn’t it?”

  “The paintings need to be together,” said Barrow. “I can’t believe Fragonard has held on to it all these years. They were an urban legend in Paris. Fragonard would have known that, especially being in the circus community. It was selfish… irresponsible.”

  “So how did the first painting measure up?” asked Gaston, changing the subject. “I’m sure it was different in your mind.”

  Barrow did not shift his gaze, and it seemed as though he didn’t hear the question at first. “Sylvie on the Steed was smaller than I’d thought it would be, a bit like the Mona Lisa—it lives large in your mind but is rather small on the wall. It was also moodier than his earlier work, the colors more vivid, and he used a technique that made them look like they’re dripping, yet it was not an impressionistic work. So I guess I would say I was underwhelmed by the painting’s size but overwhelmed by how it spoke to me. After seeing one of the series, I believe they are the crown jewels of Giroux’s works.”

  “Why Giroux?” asked Lara.

  “What is this? The question-Teddy petite dejeuner?” Barrow laughed and tore off a piece of country bread and studied it intently. “I was ten years old when my mother took me to the Louvre for the first time. She was often on location for photo shoots, and by this time she and my father had divorced, so I was raised by the nanny. Time with my mother… well… it was precious to me, and anything associated with it was heightened, special. At the Louvre, I spied this hulking canvas in front of me with these green skin tones and this yellow-orange haze. It was his painting of the Devil, but the Devil as Giroux saw him was not the standard depiction with horns and pitchforks and hooves. Instead it was the most magnificent woman in red, blood dripping from her fingertips and from her chin, but she was stunning and ravenous. It was a violent painting, yet sexual. The Spanish painters did works like this, but not the French. Giroux used some kind of melting technique with it that became his signature; the work just looked like it was dripping. He returned to this technique for your painting. I had never seen anything like it. That I was so attracted to this dark work seemed to unnerve my mother, who steered me away from it. And so I forgot about it until years later, when I was in Milan and it happened to be on loan there. To see it again, I felt a destiny with both the painting and the man. It had stirred feelings in me and made me want to know more about art—about him. Of course, I was to learn that the painting was not of the Devil.”

  “The Vampire,” said Lara.

  “Indeed.” He smiled. “The most beautiful painting I had ever seen.”

  On cue, Gaston started. “You have to understand, Lara, that artists in 1925 had largely rejected painterly, beautiful art. Art was political—they believed that the colonial, bourgeois tastes had led to the events surrounding the Great War, so the entire premise of art was being challenged. Paris at the time was surrounded by Dadaists, surrealists, and futurists all trying to set the course for what art would be next,” said Gaston. “And yet here is Giroux sitting in the cafés beside them still painting largely beautiful paintings.”

  “And getting away with it,” Barrow chimed in, not wanting Gaston to have too much expertise. “Had he lived, he would have been as famous as Salvador Dalí or Picasso. I’m sure of it.”

  “And he wasn’t using everyday materials like pens and doors to create art, like Man Ray,” added Gaston, his espresso cup hitting his saucer loudly.

  “No,” agreed Barrow, “the bastard just created beautiful paintings that were rather out of fashion at the time. He did challenge ideals of art—but even those are quite exquisite. He once remarked that being in the war, he’d seen many forms of hell in his life, and the one thing it had taught him was to value beauty.

  “After I’d learned what happened to him—that his death was shrouded in some mystery—that added another layer for me,” said Barrow. “No one had ever really solved what had killed him or where these paintings had gone. There were various theories, but no one had taken the time to study it. That, and my mother took me to all of the circuses when she was on photo shoots—Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, and Montreal—the Rivoli.”

  She hadn’t thought he was a fan of the circus, but it made sense. “So it was the scholarship,” said Lara. “I’m curious. You said there was a mystery about his death? What killed him?”

  “Bright’s disease,” said Barrow, distracted.

  Lara looked puzzled.

  “An old term for kidney failure,” said Gaston, clarifying.

  “That’s hardly mysterious,” said Lara.

  Barrow shrugged. “The disease came on rather suddenly. His friends said that he’d cut his hand at Le Cirque Secret and never recovered. They attributed it to Bright’s disease, but the feeling was that it might have been some strange blood disease.
He just seemed to waste away within a week’s time. The circus lasted another eight months or so after Giroux died. And just like that”—Barrow snapped his fingers—“it was never heard from again. Its last performance was held sometime in 1926. Mourier looked for word about it anywhere… Barcelona… Rome… London, but it never appeared again.”

  Lara couldn’t imagine spending a lifetime researching one person’s work. She understood that these men liked their little art lectures—liked to listen to themselves. Yet as they talked, the ticket burned in her bag. She took a little joy in knowing that she had a secret that wasn’t being tossed around by the two of them for discussion. If they knew she had the ticket, she’d be irrelevant in the conversation about it.

  “And you both believe Le Cirque Secret is responsible for his death?” If she was going to go to Le Cirque Secret, she should know what she was getting into. She hadn’t finished the third journal yet. So far, there was nothing indicating that Giroux was about to meet a mysterious end. On the contrary, he seemed to be a man very much in love.

  “I believe Mourier,” said Barrow. “He was a well-respected journalist and he was convinced there was something very odd about Giroux’s death. In fact, it remains one of the great mysteries of the art world. After he died, the landlady took his canvases out back to the trash. Man Ray and Duchamp—who happened to be in Paris at that time—pulled some of them out of the garbage. Oddly enough, Duchamp—who was never a fan of Giroux—ended up curating and selling most of his work.”

  Barrow stopped for a moment while his entrée was placed in front of him. “The exciting thing about these journals is that they really correspond to the final weeks of Giroux’s life.”

  “There was much discussion a few years back about going to the Père Lachaise and exhuming his body to find out what had actually killed him,” said Gaston.

  “I was hoping they’d do it,” added Barrow.

  “Wait! Émile Giroux is buried in the Père Lachaise? Why didn’t you tell me that yesterday?” Lara couldn’t believe she’d been right near the artist’s grave yesterday.

  “I forgot,” said Gaston, shrugging, his face blushing.

  Barrow shook his head. “Gaston was never much for cemeteries.”

  “Couldn’t it have been something as simple as alcohol poisoning or poison from the paints he used? Pneumonia from a nasty chill?”

  Both men grumbled. She wasn’t being a good sport. They were all fans of Giroux and it seemed like she was challenging them.

  “Based on Cecile’s diary, I now feel sure the circus also had ties to the occult,” said Barrow. “There were even rumors that it was a gateway to Hell itself. But we found it—you found it. After all these years of searching, we actually fucking found it, Lara. Do you know what it was like? I feel like I’ve sold my soul for this damned circus, believing in my heart that there was always more to the story. I pored through every biography of anyone who had ever known or spoken to Émile Giroux or anyone—I mean anyone at all—who had gone to the circus. I even met people who claimed they’d gotten a ticket, but they were all frauds. I had nothing until Gaston called me and told me what you had in your possession. I am forever in your debt.”

  Lara looked up and saw tears in Teddy Barrow’s eyes.

  Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

  July 3, 2005

  Washington Post reporter Michelle Hixson stood in front of the battered chalkboard looking perplexed.

  “I’m surprised you’re working on a Sunday,” said Ben.

  The reporter gave him a puzzled look. “The story is due to my editor on Tuesday morning. It’s hard to get way out here during the week.”

  “Yes, the July Fourth holiday.” Ben noticed she returned her gaze to the board. He had dragged it up from the basement in an attempt to frame out the details about the disappearances of both Peter Beaumont and Todd Sutton. Embarrassingly, it looked like those time lines he’d seen the TV cops use and he felt like he was playing at being a real police officer, like he’d done when he was a kid when his father would set up a small desk for him beside his own, complete with nonworking phone. He could imagine that, as a Post reporter, Michelle had seen real police work at the First Precinct in DC. Given he had little experience with true crime, he was ashamed by how it looked when people walked into his office and found notes taped to the board. Did he look too eager to finally have a real case?

  Yet the reporter seemed engrossed, taking in the information. She was tiny, elf-like, with short brown hair. In heels, she came to Ben’s shoulder. “This is quite helpful,” she said, her head following his scribbles. Since Doyle couldn’t be trusted not to blab key clues on the case, Ben had never included details on the board that needed to be protected. He looked at the time line written in pink chalk—the only color he could find at the supermarket. It made the board look like some sidewalk hopscotch game.

  “It’s a strange story for sure.” She turned, pushing up her glasses. Everything about her was neat—even her small handwriting in the notebook that he’d glimpsed.

  “And your father was also the chief of police here, is that correct?”

  “Yes, he retired in 1993,” said Ben. “He died two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Talking with her was damned awkward and unnerving. She allowed pauses between sentences and made no attempt to fill up the silences with words.

  “Yes, well…” Ben motioned for her to sit. He was already uneasy. He wiped his palms on his pant legs. From the details in his father’s files on Peter Beaumont, the older police officer had taken the disappearance seriously. Whoever had placed Todd’s car in the exact same location either had seen this file or had firsthand knowledge of Peter Beaumont’s case. Given the thick layer of dust that had covered the locked file cabinet, Ben didn’t think that anyone but him had looked through it in years.

  “What is your current theory of the case?” Her voice had no inflection. Ben thought she was a real no-bullshit type of reporter, quiet but deadly.

  Seasoned cops, real cops, didn’t dish out details. They held back clues and “refused to discuss the case.” Ben inhaled sharply, not wanting to appear a fool in the pages of the Washington Post. “Well.” He tried to think what Steve McQueen would do if he were playing Ben in this scene. Steve McQueen would look pensive and in control. Shifting in his seat, he leaned back and folded his hands on his lap, like they did in Bullitt. “It’s possible that the same person committed both crimes. The other thought was that Todd Sutton knew about Peter Beaumont’s disappearance and staged the entire thing to look like it. I don’t think that the latter is likely, but it can’t be ruled out.”

  “Was Sutton having money problems?” The reporter thumbed through her notes. Her nails were bitten to the quick.

  “Not that we’ve found.”

  “He disappeared on his wedding day. Perhaps cold feet?”

  “Possibly, but then why leave his car behind?”

  She seemed to consider his explanation but gave nothing away. “The site, Wickelow Bend.” She straightened herself in her chair. “People are calling it the Devil’s Bend.”

  “Sadly, yes. The Ghostly Happenings show has made it a tourist attraction.” In the nine months since Todd Sutton’s disappearance, Ben knew what everyone was saying about Wickelow Bend, but he wasn’t about to believe in something otherworldly, not yet. Something evil may have befallen both Todd Sutton and Peter Beaumont, but Ben had to think that it was more likely some mortal person, not some Witch of the Wickelow Woods. Unfortunately, reporters, ghost hunters, and tourists were still crowding the Shumholdt Bridge, causing something that Kerrigan Falls had never had before: traffic.

  “But you don’t think there is anything… odd about it?”

  “You mean supernatural?”

  She shrugged but jotted something down. “Your word.”

  “No,” he said, letting the simple answer hang between them for a moment. Her eyebrow rose as if she wanted him to elaborate. “I think someone out
there knows what happened to these men. Stories like yours are helpful to bring new leads to light.”

  “Y’all are a legend around here with no crime. That means you also don’t have a lot of experience with missing persons cases, Chief Archer. No offense.” At this, she smiled.

  “None taken.” He smiled back coolly, channeling Steve McQueen once again. He’d expected a bit of a dance, but he hadn’t anticipated that she would be trying to paint them as Mayberry. This was a very different feeling than he’d had with the Kerrigan Falls Express reporters, especially Kim Landau. “Your paper wrote about our phenomenon a few years back. It ran in your Style Section.”

  “Oh yes, I read that one. It was cute,” she said. “Yet the cases you have involve two men who’ve gone missing on the same exact date.”

  Her tone was sweet, curious even, yet her questions were precise… sharp. He knew what she was hinting at. “We are certainly exploring some ritual aspect to the case.”

  “By we, you mean you and your one deputy?” She did this thing where she looked at her notes before she fired a shot across the desk.

  Yes, he thought, they were a small police force. Just the two of them. “And help from the Virginia State Police.” He played with a frayed hem on his uniform so his hands had something to do. Inside, he was steaming. They were a small force, but they weren’t inept. He could see the outline of her article forming. “Would you like some coffee, Ms. Hixson?”

  “No, thank you,” she replied. “Yes, the Virginia State Police.” She was thumbing through her notes. “Yes, here it is. Todd Sutton’s car—the 1976 Ford Mustang. According to them, it was wiped by a professional. You don’t think that’s strange?” She looked up at him.

  He leaned forward, smiling again and hating himself for smiling. “May I ask where you got that information?” Behind his calm exterior, Ben was seething. There had been no prints of any kind found in or on the car. It had been wiped clean. Not just wiped; the state police admitted that the lab hadn’t seen anything like it. No fiber, hair, or DNA of any kind. That information was supposed to be confidential. How did this woman find it?