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~ * ~
REGGIE OLIVER
The Green Hour
NO! I CAN’T. I’ve had too much already. It’s getting late.” “Every hour is a green hour if you want it to be. Drink.”
“Oooh! I’m feeling all fuzzy ... So what do you want with me, as if I didn’t know?”
“Have a little more. This way, mademoiselle.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Egyptian Pyramid.”
“Won’t it be all shut?”
“Not to me.”
“It’s dark. What’s happening?”
“Have another drink, ma petite chérie.”
“No. I don’t really like it. Nasty green stuff. What are you going to do then?”
“Drink. You won’t feel the pain so much.”
“What pain?”
“Are you a dirty girl?”
“What d’you mean? Of course not! I’m a clean girl, I am.”
“No, you’re not. I can smell the filth on you.”
“Here, what are you doing with that?”
“You dirty girl! I’m going to make you sing ... That’s better. Now I shall sing to you, my little one, while you still have ears to hear.”
~ * ~
Paris, June 29th, 1867
It was five o’clock, the absinthe hour, sometimes referred to by Parisians as l’heure verte, and Commissioner Viardot had a good idea where to find his old friend Auguste Dupin. He would be seated at his usual pavement table at the Café Momus. Viardot was not mistaken. As he approached the café from the direction of the Church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois he could see a tall elderly man with a full head of white hair, sitting very upright, one hand resting on a silver-topped cane as he watched the passers-by with a curious stillness and intensity.
In front of him on the table was a glass half-full of a pale green fluid that looked like a distillation of young grass in sunlight. There was also a pitcher of water, a small plate of sugar cubes and a silver absinthe spoon. Dupin poured a tiny measure of the water into the glass. The liquid immediately turned an opaque milky colour delicately tinged with green. He then placed a sugar cube on the spoon which he gently dipped into the mixture, releasing the sugar to let it sink into the cloudy bottom of the glass. Finally he brought the glass up to his nose to scent the delicate herb-flavoured brew.
“My dear Viardot, do sit down. You evidently have something on your mind.” The Commissioner who had approached Dupin from behind, thinking himself unobserved by the great detective, was disconcerted.
“I doubt, however,” continued Dupin, “if I can be of any assistance. You know that I have long since renounced the active business of detection. My life has been one of observation and deduction, now I merely observe. I am like the Persian Poetess who said: ‘For fifty years I wrote poems to the moon; now I will simply sit and look at it.’ Besides, where are the criminals of yesteryear? The Lacenaires, the Madame Restells, the Abbé Guibourgs and the poisoners of the Grand Siècle? All gone.
“The criminals nowadays, like their crimes, are commonplace. We live in an age of bourgeois banality, my dear Viardot, of Second Empire insipidity, which I prefer to contemplate through a pale green cloud in a glass.” He took a beatific sip of the green liquid. “Would you care to join me?”
“My dear Dupin, you know I have strong views about absinthe.”
“Commissioner Viardot, you have never had a strong view in your life, only received opinions. That is both your tragedy and the secret of your success. That is why you come to me when you are in difficulties. Unfortunately I am not interested.”
“But what if I were to tell you that your beloved absinthe may be at the heart of this mystery? May even be in a sense the guilty party in the most atrocious series of crimes ever to have been committed in this city?”
For the first time Dupin looked Viardot full in the face. The Commissioner was glad to see that those piercing blue eyes had lost none of their sharpness, despite his old friend’s deplorable addiction.
“You have my attention, Viardot, but remember, I am very easily bored these days.”
“As you may know,” said Commissioner Viardot, “I have been granted the dubious honour of being in charge of all security and police matters to do with the Paris Exhibition. My jurisdiction, so to speak, covers an area of over one hundred and fifty acres on the Champ de Mars and Billancourt. We opened in April and though it has been seen to be in all respects a glorious triumph for His Majesty the Emperor and for France, it has not been without its problems.
“My immediate superior who has been on Prince Jérôme’s committee from the first is the Marquis de Saint-Loup, a most zealous man, if somewhat erratic. He became very exercised about the great number of prostitutes to be found at the Exposition at all times of the day and night. He gave me the order that such women (and indeed men) were to be cleared from the site. But it is a vast area! And one cannot simply arrest and deport a woman because she looks like a harlot. I have done my best, but the best is not good enough for Saint-Loup and the committee.
“Then one night some two weeks ago the situation took an even graver turn. One of my gendarmes, Ventroux by name, was patrolling the area around the Spanish Pavilion. (As you know, each nation in the Exposition has its own pavilion or area assigned to it in which it may display its goods and advertise its achievements.) It was close on midnight when he heard a cry. Immediately Ventroux went to investigate. Believing that it came from the Pavilion itself, he tried to gain entrance but found it locked. Having forced his way in he was met with a horrific spectacle. A woman of easy virtue who was known in her circle as La Brouette [the wheelbarrow], for reasons that I need not explain to you as a man of the world, was lying dead in front of a fantastic display of artificial Seville oranges made from wax. She had not been undressed, but her skirts were up and she had been mutilated in the genital area with a knife. Moreover her eyes had been extracted, her ears sliced off and her tongue cut out with a similar instrument.”
“Was the knife found?”
“No. But a scrupulous examination of the wounds suggested that it was about six inches long, narrow-bladed and excessively sharp. It might have been a chef’s knife, or indeed one to be found in any well-appointed kitchen.”
“Proceed.” Dupin, eyes almost closed, was staring with furious concentration into the cloudy depths of his undrunk absinthe.
“Naturally I immediately reported this frightful incident to my superiors and received strict instructions that news of the murder was to be kept from the public at all costs, and that every effort should be made to apprehend the assassin. But what were we to do? The evidence was so bizarre. The usual motivations for the crime of murder were so lacking. It was clear only that we were looking for a maniac.”
“I assume that La Brouette was just the first victim.”
“You have guessed it, my dear Auguste, as I suspected you would. The next was found but two days later in the Algerian Souk. Then one in the Scottish Hall. The portico of the Temple of Greek Arts was the next location. Then last night the murderer struck again in the Egyptian Pyramid. All the victims were ladies of the night; all had been similarly mutilated. The deaths, as far as we can ascertain, occurred at about midnight or in the early hours of the morning at roughly two- or three-day intervals.”
“Were there any other similarities between these deaths?” asked Dupin, who had been making pencilled notes in a small carnet.
“I now come to perhaps the strangest thing of all, and not the least horrible. In their mouths we found one of these.”
The Commissioner threw something on to the table. It was a crude little brooch which consisted of a pin attached to a flat brass disc, the size of a large button, coated in enamel. On a white background a bright green figure was seen hovering. She - or possibly he, it was hard to tell which - had on a long floating gown and the attenuated oval-shaped wings of a dragonfly. An attempt at artistry was marred b
y the coarseness of workmanship and materials.
“I have seen one of these before,” said Dupin.
“Of course you have! They are everywhere. It has been impossible even to track down the manufacturer.”
“La Fée Verte ... the Green Fairy,” murmured Dupin. “It is the popular name for absinthe. Sometimes people, mostly women, wear objects like this to demonstrate their lifelong devotion to the beverage. It is something of a fashion.”
“Moreover the smell of absinthe was in the victims’ mouths. An autopsy has revealed considerable quantities of it in their stomach and bloodstream. Evidently the killer is some crazed addict of the drug and plied them with it before their deaths,” said Viardot.
“Oh, evidently!” said Dupin. “Then why do you need me, my dear Commissioner? You must simply find a homicidal drinker of absinthe and your case is solved.”
“You mock me, monsieur. This is far too serious a case for your satire and irony, Dupin. What am I to do? In two days’ time, on the first of July, the Emperor Louis-Napoleon officially commemorates the mid-term of the Exhibition. He will attend a great concert in the Grand Pavilion. Maestro Rossini has composed a new Hymn for chorus, soloists and orchestra. The whole occasion may be blighted by these dreadful incidents. Already some of the national representatives are up in arms. They cannot be kept quiet indefinitely. I have been commanded to find the culprit. Unless I do so I am ruined!”
“I apologize, my dear Viardot. You asked for help; noblesse oblige, I will assist you. Was anything else noticed by anyone at about the time these incidents occurred? Any suspicious persons? Suspicious activity?”
“Nothing, I regret to say. And my gendarmes have been most diligent in stopping any suspicious-looking person and searching them for knives or other offensive weapons.”
“Unfortunately the killer in question is unlikely to have looked suspicious. On the contrary. Is there nothing else? However slight?”
“One thing perhaps - but it is hardly worth mentioning.” Viardot glanced at Dupin, who nodded at him vigorously to proceed. “On the night of the first murder, the gendarme Ventroux who was alerted by the cry of the victim also heard something else.”
“Yes?”
“Shortly after the cries came from the Spanish Pavilion, Ventroux was sure he heard someone whistling. There was no one else about at the time, so it could have been our killer.”
“Could you tell me what was being whistled?”
“A tune of some kind, I believe. I really could not say. I didn’t ask.”
“Then you should have done, my dear Commissioner! Come! We must ask this Ventroux at once, before his memory of the event becomes totally corrupted.”
While they were driving to the exhibition site Viardot asked Dupin what was so important about the whistling.
“It is clear that the killer is leaving clues deliberately, is it not?” said Dupin. “Well, this is another clue, If we can piece it together with the locations of the killings and the other evidence, we will have a picture of our criminal.”
“Do you means he wants to be caught?”
“He or she, Commissioner. We do not know which yet. Not exactly. The killer is seeking attention: the miserable ego must be fed, and to that end risks will be taken. The killer is already caught in a net of his or her own fantasies and frustrated desires.”
As they approached the Champ de Mars, they could see the great city that had sprung up on the old parade ground. It was a fantastic melange of nations and cultures: spires, tents, pyramids, minarets, palaces and pleasure domes, triumphal arches and temples had been conjured out of wood, canvas, paint and plaster: all pristine, all transient. That was the Paris Exposition, a miracle of artificiality. To Dupin the whole affair had a vulgar fragility that was wholly appropriate to the bogus Emperor, the Faux-Napoleon who had decreed it. To Viardot it was a vast and glamorous headache.
When they arrived at the exhibition site they found that Ventroux was just beginning his tour of duty in the north-west sector of the Champ de Mars. After the briefest of introductions Dupin asked him about the whistling.
“Well, monsieur,” said Ventroux, meditatively stroking his fine moustache, “it was something like a tune, something like the whistle one makes when calling for a dog or a cat.”
“Like a trill of repeated notes, you mean?”
Ventroux nodded.
“Please demonstrate, if you would be so good.”
The gendarme obliged. It did indeed sound rather like someone summoning a dog, or the trill of a bird, but not quite.
“Are you sure it wasn’t like this?“ said Dupin, and he proceeded to whistle an almost similar series of notes, but more rhythmically.
Ventroux was astonished. “That’s it, monsieur! That’s it exactly.”
“Yes, but what was that?” asked Viardot.
“You did not recognize it, my friend?” said Dupin with a touch of condescension. “Then you are clearly no devotee of the opera. It was part of the tune of ‘Una Voce Poco Fa’, Rosina’s cavatina from The Barber of Seville by Rossini.”
“But what possible—?”
“You still do not understand? The Spanish Pavilion? Seville oranges? Then there was the girl found in the Algerian Souk -The Italian Girl in Algiers. The Scottish Hall - La Donna del Lago, based on Sir Walter Scott’s poem. Le Siège de Corinthe, under the Greek Temple (Corinthian columns, I believe). The Egyptian Pyramid - Mosè in Egitto. All these unfortunate girls were found on sites representing locations used by the composer Gioachino Rossini in his operas. And if I am not mistaken, they are all Rossini operas that have been performed at the Paris Opera in recent years. You can confirm this for me. Meanwhile I must pay a call.”
“On whom?”
“On Maestro Rossini, of course!”
“You do not suspect him, do you?”
“Great heavens, no! He is far too old and infirm. On the contrary, I suspect someone who has a connection with the Maestro and possibly bears a grudge against him.”
“But why?”
“Did you not say that in two days’ time, on the first of July-?”
“The Emperor attends a public performance of Rossini’s new Hymn to inaugurate the Exhibition! You mean someone is trying to prevent this from happening?”
“Oh, it goes deeper than that. Far, far deeper. À bientôt, my dear Commissioner!”
Viardot contemplated his old friend Dupin as he hailed a fiacre. At least I have done one good thing, he thought, I have extricated him from his alcoholic stupor and given him a new lease of life.
Paris was bathed in warm evening sunshine when the fiacre stopped on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in front of a villa, pleasantly situated in its own grounds. Dupin paid and dismissed the driver, and bounded up the steps to the front door with the agility of a man half his age. He presented his card to the servant who opened the door to him and was asked to wait in the hall.
Presently a tall, imposing woman in her fifties, with suspiciously jet black hair, entered. Though he had not met her before, Dupin identified her at once as Rossini’s long-established mistress and guardian, Olympe Pélissier.
“Monsieur Dupin?” she said, glancing at the card “I am afraid I have not had the pleasure of your acquaintance. I regret to say that Maestro Rossini is not receiving today. He is recovering from a slight chill. Perhaps if you would put your request in writing we will see what we can do.”
“Who is that, my dear?” said a voice from one of the rooms leading off the hall. The door opened and through it waddled a very stout old man, wearing a brocade dressing gown over his day clothes and Turkish slippers on his feet. He was adjusting a wig of a rich auburn colour on his gigantic egg-shaped head.
“Why, it is the great detective, is it not? Monsieur Auguste Dupin? Hero of the Rue Morgue! Solver of the mystery of Marie Roget! My dear friend, it has been many years, so many years! Far too long. Come in! Come in!”
“Maestro�
��” began Olympe.
“My dear madame, you need not worry. I feel better already. Come into my salon, my dear Auguste, and we shall have a tisane together.”
Once they were both seated on either side of the fireplace in the salon, Dupin explained the situation while Rossini listened intently. Dupin noticed that physically the great composer had deteriorated considerably since they had last met at the Opera over a decade ago. He had become flabby and corpulent and most of his teeth were gone. The famous wig looked more grotesque than ever on his seventy-five-year-old head, but the shrewd little eyes were still bright.
“Believe me,” he said when Dupin had finished, “I do not wish to make light of these horrible events, but if someone is truly trying to prevent a performance of my Hymn I should be in their debt. It is a terrible piece. Truly one of the sins of my old age. I shall not be attending the performance.”
Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 3