by Amy Myers
Auguste began to feel like Hansel and Gretel in the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale making their way to the witch’s house. Should he leave a trail behind him to show the way he had gone? He reminded himself that dozens of visitors passed this way each time the catacombs were open to the public, and none had ever been lost, but it failed to cheer him up.
As he walked along the passageway running directly beneath the Avenue Montsouris, his feeling of running into danger intensified. What could Entwhistle and Gregorin be doing here? If Tudor was right and they often met here, why? It seemed a lot of effort merely to find a place to be alone.
At last the candle revealed that the passageway was opening into a rounded chamber but it, too, was empty of life, only stone inscriptions reminding him that men had worked down here — and died too — during the Revolution and the Commune. Auguste decided to stop thinking about massacres as the passageway led him into the entry chamber for the ossuary. The candlelight revealed starkly black-painted pillars, but more chillingly it revealed to Auguste’s eyes the discouraging inscription over the doorway ‘Arrête; c’est ici l’empire de la mort.’
Beyond here, he would find himself in a tangle of interwoven passages, each one lined with skulls and bones arranged in artistic patterns of death; only the inscriptions of which churchyards the bones had come from, or a line from a French poet or from Virgil’s Aeneid enlivened this city of the dead. Taking a deep breath, he plunged forward; he must go on to the furthest point of the catacombs, the crypt of Sacellum, for there, if anywhere, Gregorin and Entwhistle must have halted.
Bones seemed to stretch out to him in mute appeal as he passed, and fanciful ideas flashed through his mind. What if they reached out further and barred his way, if the dead rose up to protest at his intrusion from life and sought to make him one of them? How easy it would be to lose the comforting black line on the walls, and plunge by mistake into a side passage. Perhaps he was already alone here; perhaps Entwhistle and Gregorin had finished their business, gone out through the exit door and vanished. He almost hoped they had — until he recalled they might have locked him in, and it would be ten days until the first Saturday of the month would bring the concierge and his visitors here again. Auguste battled with his instant desire to flee from this charnel house and reach the blessed air, for he realised the crypt of Sacellum now lay just ahead.
He could hear the sound of his own breathing, but nothing else. No voices, no other breath, no light. Opposite to where he stood, on the other side of a central block of stone, he could see the passage that led out of the crypt of Sacellum towards the catacombs’ exit door; on his right, at the far end of the crypt was a rough-hewn altar. His heart seemed to be thudding like a mallet pounding on a steak. He must go in, he would go in.
“Arrête-toi, Didier!”'
The scream just behind his right ear deafened him, terrified him; but what terrified him more was the mocking laugh of Gregorin which followed. Snap; the mouse had fallen into the cat’s trap. As yet there was no touch on him only the sound of breathing and the sense of fear.
He would not turn towards Gregorin; instead he catapulted into the crypt followed by Gregorin’s mocking voice:
“Ici l’empire de votre mort, Didier.”
Auguste reached the far side of the crypt and, hearing nothing, bravely stopped, swinging the candle up to see Gregorin’s pale face grinning at him only a few feet away. Did the man see in the dark? Had he no need of candles? Even as the thought crossed his mind, he knew the answer. He was going to take Auguste’s — after its present holder was dead.
“Pray don’t be so alarmed, Didier. I prefer to kill from the front; so much more sporting, as I’m sure you will agree. So good of you to obey my summons.”
Auguste could not reach the passage he had come in by. All he could do was to spring forward down the exit passageway. And here, he instantly realised, Entwhistle might be waiting, or was it Gregorin’s plan to let him run as fast as he could to the exit door — and then find it locked against him? He would turn — to find himself face to face with Gregorin.
“Alors,” Auguste managed to make his voice sound steady, “what do you mean, your summons?”
“Through dear Ethelred. He has the makings of an excellent agent, rather better than you, Didier. Your profession seems to attract criminal minds.”
“So Ethelred and Tudor work for the Okhrana, or for the mysterious Mr Entwhistle?” Auguste’s heart sank. He had been sent to his death by those he trusted most.
“For me, Mr Didier. Money smoothes most palms. I discovered Ethelred on the streets of London, and Tudor in Wormwood Scrubs.”
“And Mrs Honey?” Auguste asked bitterly.
“Running a brothel off the Haymarket.”
The last vestiges of Tir Nan Og crashed around Auguste in an inglorious Götterdamerung.
“Shall we both stroll towards the altar, where there is more space and we can continue our business more easily?” Gregorin asked gently. “And this time, I can assure you, Mr Didier, your last prayers, which as a good Catholic I must permit you, will not be answered by the redoubtable Inspector Rose.”
“Are you, as a good Catholic, permitted to take life?” Auguste managed to reply coolly.
“Ah, that raises a moral question I have devoted much thought to: should my religion or my duty to my country come first?”
There seemed little point in not following Gregorin’s suggestion to move nearer the altar, Auguste decided cautiously. It might indeed offer more flexibility. He remembered the knife in his pocket, which no longer seemed melodramatic, and it comforted him as he took the fateful steps. There was no doubt now that this was Gregorin; the invisible barrier of chill around him surmounted even this cold atmosphere.
“You wish to kill me because I married your niece.” How odd, Auguste thought. His voice sounded quite calm. “That is hardly a duty to your country.” What weapons did Gregorin carry? None that Auguste could see, but he was well aware that Wyatt Earp would have envied Gregorin’s sleight of hand on the draw.
“My family is Russia.”
“Then the Tsar knows of your plans for me?”
“It is my duty to guide His Serene Highness, not to inform him of my methods. Some of course he is aware of. For some years the Okhrana has had a policy of providing its agents with as near a double as possible; they remain passive themselves, merely obliging in delicate situations, with a convenient alias or alibi. Dear Thomas is always obliging.”
“And where is dear Thomas now?”
“Long since left these delightful surroundings for my home at the Parc Monceau. When your body is discovered and the time of death ascertained, Gregorin will have been entertaining French diplomats for some hours. Had Tatiana still been in Paris I would have suggested he entertained her to give myself the perfect alibi. You understand I am only speaking so freely because what I say will die with you.”
“Is it you or Entwhistle who have so carefully sought the king’s acquaintance?”
“Myself, naturally. I flatter myself I have had quite a rapport with His Majesty, a rapport which you have annoyingly smashed. I think we will find it will return when you are no longer alive. I deal you a spade, Mr Didier, the card of death!”
His hand flicked like lightning into a pocket, and in the dim candlelight a playing card fluttered to the ground. Gregorin began to hum from The Queen of Spades, and the sound seemed sacrilegious in this place of death. His own death. ‘Principium et finis. Eternité’ as the inscription above the altar reminded Auguste only too vividly.
“Come, Mr Didier, do not look so glum. It is a fair fight, for you tried to kill me at Farthing Court.” He gave a shriek of maniacal laughter.
“Moi?”
“Why look so surprised? Poor Arthur. You thought it was me beneath that deer’s head, did you not, and killed me perhaps with some thought of saving not only the king, but yourself.”
“You killed Montfoy,” Auguste said vehemently. What trick was
this?
“I?” Gregorin laughed. “I am glad you can still jest, Mr Didier. Or can you?” He paused, coming close so that he could see Auguste’s face behind the candle. It was all Auguste could do not to step back, but he held his ground. “Are you telling me you didn’t kill Arthur? Remember, these are your last words before you face your God, Didier.”
“I did not. You know full well that you did, believing it was me.”
“Dear me. Suppose for the sake of argument neither of us killed poor Arthur. Who did?”
“The police believe it was Bessie Wickman.” Oh, how far away Frimhurst seemed now that all that was real was this darkness, this candle — and the certitude of imminent death. Then he remembered the knife. How could he reach it with a candle in one hand, without Gregorin being on him before the knife was out of his pocket? Only by keeping him talking.
“And Eleonore. Did you plot with her to seduce His Majesty?” The free hand crept to his side.
“It was her idea. She speaks most highly of you, incidentally. Another reason to kill you.”
“Why?” Slowly the hand inched up towards the pocket.
“Firstly, since you have clearly been unfaithful at least in your heart to my niece; secondly and more importantly that while I can for my country’s sake tolerate the idea of sharing my mistress with the King of England, I have no intention of sharing her with a cook!”
Sheer instinct made Auguste swerve as Gregorin leapt forward.
He blew out the candle, dashed it in Gregorin’s face, and then fell back against the wall, creeping along it towards the passageway out, but as he felt rather than heard Gregorin coming after him, he began to double back, manoeuvring his way back through the crypt of Sacellum in the hope of reaching the entrance passage. A sixth sense warned him that Gregorin had anticipated his plan, and he stopped and took the knife from his pocket. He would never have time to use it if Gregorin found him again, but it comforted him nevertheless. He forced himself to retreat slowly back across the crypt to that comforting wall and exit passage. Feeling his way along, he found he was in another crypt, a circular one, and he began to work his way round the walls, bumping into a pillar. At his muffled intake of breath, Gregorin laughed. He could only be a yard or two behind.
“Look around you, Didier,” he shouted. “A la mort, on laisse tout. Reflect on death, my friend.”
Then all fell silent as Auguste worked his way on, longing, in this pitch dark, to get the other candle out. Light, oh blessed light. But he dared not.
“During the Commune soldiers hunted men down. They died like dogs, as will you, Didier.”
Gregorin seemed further behind now, and his next shout was comfortingly distant. Should he have cautious hope? No, that was when Gregorin was at his most dangerous.
“Did you see that inscription we passed? Of course not, it is too dark. But I know it well. It reads: Reflect every morning that by night you may be dead.”
Surely further away. Auguste crossed the passage to the inner wall. If only there were a cross passage that might lead back to the entrance corridor. There was, but even as his hand reached out, out of the enemy darkness came a hand clutching. Gregorin was on him pressing back against the wall, so that he was unable to use the knife, and the bones of the dead were pressing into his body behind him.
Then the hands were on his throat choking him, but his legs and knees were free, and forgetting the Queensberry rules of gentlemanly behaviour he used them.
“Salaud!”'
A howl from Gregorin and a momentary slackening of the fingers, but it was enough to wrest himself free, push Gregorin off balance, and flee down the exit passage again, bumping against walls with sickening jolts. With luck, however, Gregorin would assume he was going the other way.
As soon as he felt the corridor opening into an open space again, he stopped. Nothing. Then Gregorin’s maniac shriek again. But in the distance, and too distorted to distinguish any words. He had fallen for it, and gone the other way, back towards the crypt.
Auguste tried to calm himself, to think more clearly. For a few minutes he remained still, fighting the instinct to put as much space as possible between himself and Gregorin. Gregorin might be behind, but ahead of him might be a locked door. Darkness could be a friend as well as enemy. Nevertheless the temptation to light the other candle was irresistible, and he did so.
Around him were the bones of the victims of the Revolution, and the massacre at the Tuileries, grim memorials of bloody death. He went cautiously round a corner — and froze. Ahead of him in the gloom was a man’s figure. Entwhistle had remained after all. Entwhistle would not let him pass, but Auguste could not kill him in cold blood with his knife. It would be a desecration of an implement meant to produce glorious artistic creations, not death. No, better if it had to be used in self-defence to use it against Gregorin.
Horrified, he began to retrace his steps. He was the quail in a terrible sandwich between the two men. Perhaps there was still a chance that he could find himself in a cross passage and regain the entrance passageway. He had little hope though. Gregorin was after all a trained assassin, and Auguste Didier was a cook. At every step he expected Gregorin’s mocking laugh to welcome him back. But none came, no scream in his ear of imminent death, no hyena laugh. He found himself back in the second crypt, and still all was silent. Should he take this cross passage and risk Gregorin waiting at the other end, or go forward to the crypt of Sacellum to see if there were any sign of him?
He needed to do neither, for his foot struck something soft, something that was not stone, or ancient bones. It was a body.
Auguste stepped back with a half cry, half retch of nausea, half expecting the body to leap up and kill him, as he held the candle down to see better. The body remained where it was, the blood spurting over the grey jacket, as red as the rose in the buttonhole.
Gregorin was dead, and from his chest protruded something Auguste recognised only too well. It was a kitchen knife, remarkably similar to his own.
*
Auguste staggered into sunlight through the main entrance like a soufflé rising in the warmth of the oven. How could all these people be walking around in ignorance of the hell going on beneath? What should he do? Tell the agent he could see directing traffic? No. Telephone Inspector Chesnais at the Sûreté to tell him Gregorin was dead at the hand of his accomplice Thomas Entwhistle? Yes, but he could hardly ring from a public cafe. Chesnais would insist he should stay right where he was. There was, it seemed to Auguste, only one place to which he could and should go. To the apartment of the Comtesse Eleonore. She knew the truth about Entwhistle, and now that he had killed her lover would at least convince the Sûreté that Auguste had been right all along.
*
Eleonore’s door was opened by a maid and from within came a sound Auguste knew well, the sound of satisfied diners after luncheon. The maid looked doubtfully at his attire, not looking its best since its tour of underground Paris, and he hastily demurred at her suggestion that he might wish to join the company.
“A few minutes of the comtesse’s time on a matter of urgency, if you please. My name is Auguste Didier.”
Urgent or not, Eleonore took her time, before coming into the room, clad in a delightful pale-blue cotton that accentuated her dark hair and glowing cheeks wonderfully. It had clearly been a good luncheon, he thought, somewhat sourly.
“I am delighted to see you, Auguste.”
“You will perhaps not be, when I tell you Pyotr Gregorin is dead.”
“Dead?” she repeated blankly. She sat down heavily on a chair. “Dead?” she said again.
“Yes, Eleonore,” Auguste said gently.
“You will excuse me for a moment, Auguste.”
“He told me you were lovers, and so this must be a shock to you. I am sorry.”
“Do you mean Thomas Entwhistle?” she asked in a flat voice.
“Let us not play games any longer, Eleonore. You know as I do that there were two men, and f
or you — as for me — Pyotr Gregorin was the more important. Whether you were his mistress or not, I know you were his accomplice.”
She raised her head, regaining her usual mocking tone. “You make me sound a criminal, Auguste. I am not. I am as devoted to my country and its interests as are you to yours. Our countries are different, that is all. Now tell me all that happened. Everything about how Pyotr died — I cannot believe it.”
Auguste hesitated. “Very well, but we should telephone the Sûreté as soon as we can.”
“They can wait. Tell me.”
Auguste proceeded to explain exactly what had happened, and when he had finished she asked sharply “Are you sure it was him and not Thomas?”
“Quite sure. Gregorin lured me to the catacombs to kill me, and Entwhistle would have no motive to kill me, but he might to kill Gregorin. He killed him and then fled past me.”
“Are you sure of that?”
He stared at her. “Gregorin was dead.”
“That I realise. But was Entwhistle his murderer?” She got up and began to pace nervously round the room. “Who else? There was no one else there.”
“There was you.”
He was in a nightmare. Could this be happening? She could not even face him, she was staring out of the window. “Me? But I would never have done it save in self-defence, and told you that I managed to get away from him.”
“The Sûreté may not believe that.”
“Of course they will.”
“I suggest you tell them then. I see through the window that they are at this very moment walking up the steps.”
“Quoi? How could they know I was here?”
She shrugged. “I expect they followed you here. I imagine they have come to arrest you, Auguste, and I don’t mind very much. I loved Pyotr Gregorin.” There were tears in the eyes that had once sparkled with the happiness of life.