The Alchemy of Murder

by Carol McCleary

  “There’s no reason a scientist, if that’s what he is, can’t be as crazy as any other demented man. Can you imagine the harm of someone with scientific brilliance turning to alchemy and the dark side of science? Intelligence is not a gift just for the good. Some of the greatest rulers who have ever lived, men who have swayed over millions or conquered empires, were madmen. Ivan the Terrible, the Borgias, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Richard III, Henry VIII, they were all blood-thirsty mass murderers. Scientists like Doctor Pasteur have saved thousands of lives. Who knows what harm a mad genius can do? There are more virulent killers in a cup of sewer water than all of the armies of the Great Khan. Turn them loose on the world and they would be an invisible army of conquerors.”

  “Jules, we are hunting for a man that walks on two feet, not an invisible army of germs. Besides, I came to Paris to find a killer, not to save the world.” But even as I speak the words, headlines flash in my mind: NELLIE BLY SAVES THE WORLD.

  Saving the world would not be such a bad thing. I just pray I’ll live to report it.

  35

  Jules and I go in separate directions. He’s off to have dinner with his doctor and discuss the fever outbreak in more detail. Initially, I feel slighted that I didn’t get an invitation to the dinner, but I must admit it works nicely for me. I’m not through intriguing for the day.

  Upon arriving at Pigalle Hospital, I give the fiacre driver an extra tip to go in and inquire at the reception desk as to the hour Dr. Dubois gets off work. He is told six o’clock. Since I have an hour to wait, I send him on his way, thanking him, and take a brisk walk to burn off nervous energy and clear my head.

  When I return I decide to wait in a café-bar across from the hospital, a place where one can stand at the counter and get a cup of café au lait. As I sip my drink and try to fit together the pieces of Jules’ insane notion about the slasher and this killer microbe, I get a glimpse of a tall and very large-built man coming out of the hospital. I almost spill my drink. From the height and bulk I am certain this is the same man who was lying in wait for me last night outside my garret.

  There can’t be two men in Paris with that physique. He’s wearing a flowing black cape and a hat that a Musketeer would be embarrassed to don. A large golden eagle feather is slanting out of the dark purple velvet band.

  Once again, I can’t see the face.

  He turns and goes down the street. Curious as to who he is and where he’s going, I leave the café and follow him. I’ve gone no more than a dozen feet when he turns into a building. Hurrying after him, I enter the building, an office establishment with a pharmacy on the first floor.

  He’s nowhere in sight.

  I ask the pharmacist, “Did a tall, very large man wearing a black cape come in here?”

  He jerks his head toward a door. “He went to the offices.”

  The door he indicates leads into an entryway that has only a stairway leading to the offices above and a door that I presume takes you out to the back of the building. I start to go up the steps and pause—what’s my plan? I can’t go office to office asking for a huge man in a black cape with a crazy hat.

  I check the time. Dr. Dubois will be leaving the hospital soon. If I continue this hunt, I will miss him. I go back to the café and wait at the coffee bar, sipping a new café au lait and watching the hospital steps. I can’t shake that huge man from my mind. Could he have a connection to Dr. Dubois?

  * * *

  PROMPTLY AT SIX, Dr. Dubois comes down the front steps of the hospital and walks up the boulevard. I follow on foot, giving him a good lead. I’m surprised at the location he leads me to—a circus.

  Cirque Fernando, the world’s most famous circus, is not far from the Moulin Rouge. It’s permanently housed in a wood building shaped like a huge circus tent. I’ve passed the building several times during my Montmartre ventures, but never had the time to buy a ticket and enjoy the acts that have the reputation of being the finest in the world.

  He doesn’t buy a ticket, but instead joins a large group of people that have formed outside next to a hot air balloon. The balloon is staked beside the main tent. Its passenger basket is big enough to transport four people. I’m familiar with both gas and hot air balloons because I rode in one at a Pittsburgh fair soon after starting my first reporting job.

  The ride took us three thousand feet into the air and a fresh breeze swept us miles from Pittsburgh before setting us down in a cornfield. Swinging and bouncing in that balloon basket had been a frightful ride at the time, but in looking back it was an exciting experience. I was positive my editor would commend me for my daring feat, but instead he was annoyed. Called it unladylike! An expression I despise. No doubt it was invented by a man who didn’t want a woman playing with his toys.

  The circus balloon is a “captive” one—ropes are lashed to its basket so it won’t rise more than fifty feet in the air. From the talk around me I learn the balloon will carry trapeze artists above the crowd where they’ll perform death defying feats designed to motivate people to buy tickets to see more daring acts inside the tent.

  The artists tonight are the Flying Lombardos, an Italian brother-sister team. A barker in a red ruffled frock coat, matching top hat and a jet-black beard atop a platform next to the balloon extols the skill and courage of the young trapeze artists.

  Dark clouds loom overhead, giving an added touch to the excitement. Jules would enjoy this. Many of his most successful books have dealt with aeronauts, the daring men who defy gravity in balloons to fly like birds.

  The daring duo come onto the stage-platform and the audience gives them a thunderous ovation. They’re certainly a handsome pair, about my age with red hair, pale green eyes, and complexions kissed by the sun. I suspect they’re not just brother and sister but twins—with long hair and a padded chest, the brother could well pass for his sister.

  As the balloon lurches up, the trapeze artists give a bow to the audience and leap from the platform onto aerial ladders hanging beneath the basket. The two young daredevils have nerves of steel. They swing from one ladder to the other. The young man, hanging from his knees, catches his sister as she leaps like a monkey from her own ladder. We gasp in horror as she slips from his hands—and scream with relief as she catches the ladder’s bottom rung. I am sure all part of the act, but extremely well done.

  I spot Dr. Dubois in the crowd. His face is flushed with excitement, but it’s the look of a man who is aroused by more than the vicarious danger. No doubt he’s smitten with the trapeze girl.

  Once the balloon exhibition is over, the good doctor heads up Boulevard Clichy with me a safe distance behind him.

  Night is falling and people are leaving work, some heading home, while others stop for drinks at the boulevard cafés. Dr. Dubois does the latter and enters a café called the Rat Mort. I sit on a bench nearby, unsure what to do next.

  The entrance is guarded by a large woman enthroned on a high bench behind a bar. She’s of some fifty years, whose swelling contours are tightly laced by belts and corsets. She seems to know everyone that enters, including the doctor. I need to figure out a way to get by her and not been seen by Dr. Dubois. I hear someone call her “Laure” and get behind another woman in line to be ushered into the salon proper. Each woman who enters cranes over the saucers on the counter and kisses Laure on the mouth with tender familiarity.*

  What have I gotten myself into? If I want to get in, I’m going to have to kiss this woman on the lips! Never! As I contemplate my fate, the young woman in front of me turns and says, “Quite a bunch of old hags, aren’t they?” She has a common look to her and I peg her as a shop girl.

  Smiling, I murmur a listening response. I’m more concerned on how to avoid kissing the woman.

  She jerks her head at the café. “I’ve just come by to pick up a meal and a few extra francs. I’m not of that persuasion, if you know what I mean, but these old poules like to have young faces to flirt with. It’s better than pulling the devil by the tail.”


  To pull the devil by the tail is to live from hand to mouth.

  “Come here often?” she asks.

  “My first time.”

  “Well, let me show you the ropes.”

  “That’s very kind of you. I’m Nellie.”

  “Rosine.”

  Rosine gives Laure, the gatekeeper, a kiss and I flow by with just a nod. She doesn’t mind. The girl behind me is eager to kiss her.

  I spot Dr. Dubois approaching a table where two people are already seated. One rises to greet the doctor—it’s the big man that was lying in wait for me outside my apartment building and the one I tried to follow from the hospital. The big man kisses Dr. Dubois on the lips! A long, full kiss. Good Lord, they’re sodomites!

  I haven’t read the Krafft-Ebling study Jules mentioned, but I’ve heard it discussed, and I’m not a babe in the woods. I know there are liaisons between men—a medical condition called an “inversion” of sexual feelings—and that a new term, “homosexuality,” is used in the German study. Strict laws are on the books almost everywhere prohibiting such couplings. In many countries the death penalty is applied. But this is bohemian Montmartre where anything goes.

  The other person at Dr. Dubois’ table is a woman. She never gets up. I am unable to make out her features or age because her back is to me, but the doctor also kisses her on the lips as he sits down.

  At another table a young man with short curly hair is keeping a table full of middle-aged women breathlessly attentive to his slightest caprice. Further observation reveals that when the young man laughs, his bosom swells. The man is really a woman! “Boston marriages” is what the boys in the newsroom call liaisons between women.

  As my escort leads me in, Dubois, the big man, and the woman, rise from their table and disappear up a stairway.

  36

  “Over here, Rosine, you girls join us.”

  The woman who beckoned us wears a man’s fedora, the hat made popular by Victorien Sardou’s play of the same name. Another woman sits next to her. Both have clumsy figures and so much rouge and lipstick caked on, they look like clowns. As they fawn over Rosine and eye me, they remind me of the matronly hens who cackled the loudest at church socials when I was a little girl.

  To say the least, I have no interest in the women’s conversation and pay no attention. I needed to know what Dubois and his big friend were doing upstairs but I couldn’t just rush up the steps. I don’t even notice the drink before me until I feel Rosine nudging me.

  “My friends bought you a green fairy.”

  “Merci.” I take a gulp and it goes down my throat like green lava. I stop breathing. My whole body lights on fire. My eyes feel like they have swelled and are ready to burst from their sockets. Determined not to draw attention to myself, I very slowly let out a breath, sure I am expelling fire. I cough politely in a handkerchief and wipe my teary eyes. I try to breathe, but it hurts.

  “All right, my dear?” The woman with the fedora gives me a sloppy grin.

  “Fine,” I croak. “It tastes like licorice.”

  Rosine takes a swig of her own drink. “You have to get used to it, of course, but once you do, you’re hooked like a fish.”

  The three women go on with their empty café chatter as I politely force myself to slowly sip my drink. I do say, Dr. Dubois is full of surprises.

  “Here, my love.” Rosine places another green fairy in front of me, disrupting my thoughts. “This one will taste much better, now that you’ve got the burn of the first out of the way.” She laughs and goes back to talking with the women.

  I am leery of having another drink.

  “Come on.” Rosine leans close and whispers in my ear, “You don’t want to insult my friends. Drink up.”

  I know the score when it comes to alcohol. It all boils down to mind over matter. It’s really that simple. My reaction to alcohol is just a matter of mind over matter. I can surrender to the alcohol, let it take control of my mind, or I can take control of it. My choice. It makes no difference that this is my first experience with a strong drink; I will be able to handle it because I am a very determined, strong-willed, modern woman.

  As I told Mr. Pulitzer before I left for Paris, we cannot be afraid of the challenges that are presented to us in our life. The only way to conquer them is to face them head on with a strong determination to conquer and win. The same goes for liquor.

  Satisfied that I have this beverage well under control and feeling quite forthright, I have another and wait patiently for Dubois and his friends to reappear. As the minutes tick off, I begin to feel lightheaded. Finally I ask, “What goes on upstairs?”

  Rosine puts her hand on my thigh and leans much closer than she did before, her lips brushing my ear this time as she whispers, “It’s a private place for secret things. Let’s leave these old cows and I’ll show you.”

  Ah, secret things.

  Exactly what I thought—the dark heart of the den of iniquity. No doubt I will catch Dubois and his friends red-handed in flagrante delicto. Excited, I gulp down the last of my third drink and lick my lips, grinning at Rosine.

  “Yummy. You’re right about this drink. I like it.” I get up and flop back down. “Whoa! I feel dizzy.”

  Rosine helps me up. “Its okay, honey, you just need to get your feet under you.”

  “Keeping them under me is the problem.” I giggle as we head for the stairs. Rosine’s arm is around my waist holding me up. “Up, up, up the stairs, one, two, three—up we go.”

  “Shhh,” she laughs, “you’re attracting attention.”

  “That won’t do,” I cackle. My head is so light; I could have flown up the stairs.

  “Shhh.”

  “Rosine,” I try to whisper, “do you know why it’s called a green fairy?”

  She shakes her head no and laughs. “Please tell me.”

  “It’s because it makes you as light as a fairy.”

  We both break out giggling, making it harder for us to get up the steps. At the top of the stairs we enter a smoky room that smells sweet.

  “Over there, I want a dark corner.” I steer her to a small table hidden in a dark corner. Once seated, I look around the room, trying to spot my prey. Rosine snuggles very, very, close to me. Her hand goes onto my thigh, while her lips kiss my cheek, then my ear. I pay no attention, for I am on a mission.

  In the haze of smoke I see the big man, Dr. Dubois, and the woman. Dr. Dubois appears to be pointing at something.

  “That’s them,” I say, frowning at the group. I stare at them and finally realize it’s me Dr. Dubois is pointing at.

  “You surprise me…” Rosine whispers in my ear as her hand moves way up inside my dress and pushes between my thighs. “I didn’t take you for one who wanted fun.”

  I turn to her to respond and she gives me a full kiss on the mouth!

  In a flash she wraps one hand around my shoulder holding me tight, while the other fondles my breasts. The room starts to spin—faster than a merry-go-round. And even though I try, I can’t pull away from her. Finally she stops.

  “Wha—!” is all that comes out of my mouth. I shove her away from me, sending her and her chair flying onto the floor. As I stand up, the little table goes over.

  My head continues to swirl and swirl and I collapse back down, but the swirling won’t stop. It becomes a maelstrom, like the terrible black whirlpool Jules Verne traveled to the Arctic Circle to witness.

  A wave of vertigo engulfs my mind and then there is nothing.

  37

  Tomas Roth

  While Roth was in the laboratory studying his notes, Émile Duclaux, Dr. Pasteur’s second in command of the facility, poked his head in and instructed Roth to meet Pasteur in the rabies lab. As Roth got up to wash his hands and follow him out, Duclaux pointed down at something on the floor. “Isn’t that René’s cap?”

  “Why, yes. He must have dropped it on his way out.” Roth picked up the yarmulke knitted by René’s wife and tossed it on the counter
.

  Roth’s job as Pasteur’s assistant did not include the highly specialized rabies work, but he was not surprised that he was instructed to meet Pasteur there. Inflammatory accusations about the Black Fever outbreak were on the front pages of last evening’s newspapers. No doubt the Minister of the Interior made another visit to the Institut.

  Duclaux read Roth’s thoughts as they walked down the corridor. “Last night it was the minister again. Next time I believe it will be the President himself pleading for help.”

  “Perhaps the Institut should give classes to politicians on how to use a microscope.”

  Duclaux gave him a look of disapproval that said humor was not appreciated with the city in a crisis.

  Immediately upon entering the rabies laboratory, Roth rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands at a sink with an overhanging spigot and deep basin. Hand washing was mandatory for each person who entered or left a laboratory—a fixed ritual established by Dr. Pasteur. One began by washing the bar of soap itself, rinsing away the outer layer, then lathering hands and wrists, rinsing a layer off the soap again before returning it to its dish.

  “The laboratory is a zoo with many exotic and dangerous animals,” Pasteur told Roth when he had come to work at the Institut. “You must take care none of them bite you.”

  Roth had even seen Pasteur unconsciously wiping his water glass, plate, and utensil with his napkin during Institut lunches. The man was a fanatic about cleanliness, but one could not blame Pasteur after what he had discovered under the microscope and was always reminded of the horrible deaths these unseen creatures did to his family and close friends, not to mention society.

  Dr. Pasteur was standing by, deep in thought, while a rabies assistant examined a rabbit’s spinal cord. Roth didn’t dare disturb Pasteur with questions or suggestions. Rising at dawn, Pasteur was completely engrossed in his work throughout the day, spending most of his waking hours in the laboratories. In the evening, to save his eyesight from the ravages of gaslights and oil lamps, Madame Pasteur read the day’s newspapers to him in their private apartment. That was his life, a life that did not include the opera or even family picnics.