“A cat in a frying pan?”
“It’s an old American expression.” Actually, I’d only heard my mother use it, but it sounds old to me. The tapping of his cane becomes more aggressive; I’ve hit a nerve.
“There’s another old expression, American and French. It’s called sticking your nose in places where you shouldn’t.”
Amazing. He talks about how he came to Paris to kill a man and cannibals eating his brains and he thinks I should ignore it? Impossible.
“Excuse me for saying this Jules, but I don’t think—”
“Strange.” His mind is talking aloud, as my mother would say when I interrupted her in mid sentence.
“What’s strange?”
“That Perun would associate with the likes of Artigas. They’re enemies. In the eyes of an anarchist, Artigas is a capitalistic enslaver of the common man, the very sort of moneyed plunderer the anarchist wants to kill. And anarchists are the greatest threat to men of Artigas’ ilk. They live in fear and surround themselves with bodyguards because they know any one of them may be the next victim of the radicals.”
“Then why would Perun work for Artigas?”
“Maybe,” Jules muses, “he isn’t working for him. Maybe he’s working with him. Or even better, Perun could be spying. Perhaps Artigas is developing a new killing weapon, the sort of thing an anarchist group would love to get their hands on.”
As I give this idea a bit of thought, Jules’ walking stick continues to tap the ground with a thoughtful, almost nervous cadence that I have observed occurs when he is engrossed in solving a problem.
“Jules, whenever Artigas’ name is mentioned, you become rather, uh, disconcerted. You react as if there is bad blood between you. We’re conducting an investigation together and this man suddenly fits into it. Don’t you think it would be unfair for you to withhold information from me?”
“Keep information from you?” He laughs. “Mademoiselle, dealing with you is like peeling an onion that changes each time a layer is exposed. If you told me it’s daytime, I would have to check to see if the sun is in the sky.”
Obviously, this is not the time to discuss Artigas with him.
51
At the Procope we find Oscar surrounded by a group of people, including waiters. They have gathered by his table listening to him expound on the subject of aesthetics, which I think has something to do with the philosophy that only beautiful things matter. It is not brains or hearts that count, but surface beauty. If a woman is not beautiful, if a flower is not lovely, they are worthless. Apparently no one has told Oscar that beauty is only skin deep … and that his surface skin is not so very pretty. But, I must admit, his voice is beautiful.
Oscar doesn’t talk, he sings phrases, his tongue is a conductor’s baton that brings together ideas and sounds from a dozen different parts of his brain at the same time. There is something grotesque and yet appealing about this huge creature who expresses himself with extravagant gestures and poetic license. I have to admit that he is a strange bird, but the more I am around him, the more I find to admire and adore. Deep down I believe he has a heart of gold. The only way to place him in a scheme of killing prostitutes would be if they were talked to death.
“Ask your friend to meet us outside. I have some questions I didn’t get the opportunity to ask him last night.”
I don’t need to know the reason why Jules doesn’t want to be seen with Oscar in the Procope. The man is a verbose peacock anywhere in public. He draws attention like a naked woman.
At my signal Oscar joins us outside, walking through the crowd as if it is the Red Sea parting for him. He beams at Jules. “I heard a waiter refer to you as Jules Verne. How delightful to meet the man who wrote those books of my childhood about balloon trips and projectiles to the moon. Why, I thought you were dead!”
“After making your acquaintance, Monsieur, I’m certain that I have died and gone to hell.”
So much for camaraderie. We start walking to a café a few blocks away.
Oscar has exchanged his green overcoat for a deep purple, almost black cape that falls to his shoe tops. Under the cape he wears a forest green velvet coat, lilac shirt, dark grey beeches, white stockings, and patent leather shoes. His hat is oversize and extravagant, a chevalier’s hat, the same lilac as his shirt and with a red feather stuck in it. All in all, he looks as inconspicuous as a P. T. Barnum parade.
“Your friend who was murdered, did he ever mention having a Russian friend?” Jules voice is gruff, as if he would prefer to shake the information out of Oscar.
“Russian? No, is this mad killer Russian?”
“We’re not certain.” The gruffness in Jules’ voice doesn’t subside. “Did he ever mention a chemist? Or someone involved in science in any manner.”
“No Russians, no chemists, although a Russian contact would not have been surprising, there’s quite a few Russian students in Paris. Isn’t Paris rather the institute of higher learning for the Russian upper classes.”
It isn’t a question, but it throws me for a moment. Oscar’s use of an Irish colloquial sentence structure is just his way of showing his ability to talk like the lower classes. In other words, another way for him to dazzle a listener by making them think about what he’s saying. He starts a dissertation on the Russian university system and Jules interrupts.
“I’m sure your café acquaintances will find that information fascinating. As to your friend whose life was taken, describe the circumstances of the crime.”
Oscar sighs, in pain from the memory. I don’t believe he’s faking. He is simply a dramatic person—melodramatic at that. Maybe it’s his way to handle the hurt.
“Jean-Jacque was found still dressed in his female attire in a small, dark alley off of Boulevard de Clichy. His abdomen had been laid open, but there was so little evidence of bleeding in the alley. The police surmised he had been murdered elsewhere and his body was dropped in the alley afterward.”
“Does he live near the alley?”
“Heavens no, Jean-Jacque was a person of breeding. The area where his body was found houses the poor and other of God’s unfortunates.”
Jules taps the sidewalk with his cane. “Interesting. How did his body get placed in that alley? Even on the Butte, one would not drag a body down the street. I wonder … why did the killer find it necessary to transport the body in some manner to that spot?”
“To discourage a police investigation,” I suggest. “He’s always struck in poor areas and chose victims whose death would raise less of an outcry than the deaths of respectable people. He may have met Jean-Jacque at Place Blanche or anywhere, even across town at Boulevard Saint-Michel and lured her—him.”
“Lured to where? To the killer’s dwelling? Does that mean the killer lives in an area near the alley?”
“The crime could have been committed in a fiacre on the way there,” Oscar offers.
“The fiacre would have been bathed in blood and reported to the police. The killer could have had his own private carriage, but that would involve an accomplice since a driver would probably be needed.” Jules turns to me. “I agree that the motive for leaving the body in an alley would be to discourage a thorough police investigation. But the body would have had to be transported there in some manner. We can hardly assume that the killer threw the body over his shoulder and carried it there or took a fiacre with a dead body. It’s easy to conceal a dead body in a carriage driven by a coachman, but less so in a small self-driven rig. He either has a carriage—”
“Or, as you suggested, lives in the area,” I interrupt. “But, if he has a carriage, we can assume he’s a person of considerable means. If that’s so, why would he live in a poor area?”
“Easier to hide his evil doings,” Jules says.
The remark stops me dead cold. “Yes. He must live very near the alley. Transporting a dead person more than a few feet is very difficult. We have to go immediately and take a look at this location.”
Jules grabs
my arm. “After we finish with Artigas at the Exposition.”
“We’re going to the Exposition.” Oscar smiles with delight.
“We don’t all have to—”
“Since Artigas has such an evil reputation, perhaps the three of us should go together,” I suggest, in the hopes of maintaining peace.
“Not Count Artigas himself, you say. I’ve seen the man around the Café de la Paix. Rather an unpleasant sort, no culture really, isn’t he just a bag of money. How is he mixed up in all this?”
I fill Oscar in on what we learned about Toulouse’s picture.
“Louis Pasteur? The scientist? So the old fossil’s still with us. Found a cure for dog bite a few years ago, didn’t he. Perhaps someone should be searching for a cure for man’s bite.”
He beams at us, no doubt in the hopes of getting a pat for his witticism. Jules looks to the heavens as if he is expecting—or hoping—for divine intervention, perhaps a strike of lightning.
“When we get to the Exposition,” Jules turns and looks at me with pleading eyes, “perhaps you and Monsieur Wilde would care to look at the exhibits while I talk to Artigas.”
“No, no, wouldn’t hear of it,” Oscar says, echoing my sentiments exactly. “I’m not going to be dallying about while you are working. I shall be right there, shoulder to shoulder, comrades in arms, and all that. Besides, I’ve already seen the chocolate Venus de Milo.”
Only the French would think of advertising chocolate as a work of art. With bare breasts.
“The Tower of Babel”…
The undersigned citizens, being artists, painters, sculptors, architects, and others de- voted to and desirous preserving the amenities of Paris, wish to protest, in the name of our national good taste, against such an erection in the very heart of our city, as the monstrous and useless Eiffel Tower, already christened … “The Tower of Babel”…
How much longer is the City of Paris to be a play-ground for these barbarous and sordid imaginations which disfigure and dishonor her? For the Eiffel Tower, which even commercially minded America rejected, is a public dishonor to our city. All our historic buildings, our monuments of rare and appealing beauty, are dwarfed and humiliated by this monstrous apotheosis of the factory chimney whose odious shadow will lie over the city …
—Plea to the Exposition Director in opposition to the Eiffel Tower, signed by artists and writers and published in Le Temps, 1887
52
The Paris World Fair, L’Exposition, spread over two hundred and twenty-eight acres. “What a dazzling sight.” Oscar waves his arms, as if a squire showing his domain. “There is something for just about everyone in the world. Industry and the arts on the Champs de Mars, horticulture on the Trocadéro, agriculture on the Quai d’Orsay, colonial exhibits, evil military rubbish, health and social welfare on the Esplanade des Invalides. At one end of the Champs de Mars is the largest structure at the Exposition, the Palace of Machines. On the other end you have the world’s tallest structure, the Eiffel Tower. It’s truly wonderful,” Oscar sings in his melodramatic voice.
As we make our way down the Champs de Mars we pass structures that house attractions. Eastward along the Quay are the food products and agricultural exhibits from all over the world. Most impressive is a huge oak wine barrel capable of holding the equivalent of 200,000 bottles, elaborately carved and gilded with coats of arms of the wineries of Champagne.
Cafés along the way are crowded and overflowing. People are eating wherever they can find an empty spot. Sprawled all over the lawns and steps of exhibit halls are picnics of cold meat, cheese, fruit, and wine.
On the Esplanade des Invalides, the most colorful and aromatic exhibits come from colonial pavilions: smells of Oriental spices, North African couscous, the beat of tom-toms, Polynesian flutes, the cry of a muezzin from a minaret, the concussion of a copper drum at a Cambodian temple.
I have to agree with Oscar; the exposition is nothing like I’ve seen before. While Jules stops for a moment to enjoy the nubile young women from Java and Tahiti perform exotic native dances with authenticity that no doubt offends prim and proper ladies, I am fascinated with Rue du Cairo, a reproduction of a Cairo street: swiveling belly dancers, including Aiousche, the top attraction, beggars demanding baksheesh, carpet sellers hawking their wares, donkeys braying stubbornly, Turkish delight sweets, hot mint tea, and bitter coffee.
“You must see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show starring Annie Oakley at the Neuilly Hippodrome,” Oscar tells us. “I was out West once, boomtowns, cowboys, Indians, all that sort of thing.”
“Perhaps another time,” I murmur. We are definitely not going to see Bill and Annie. Thank goodness Oscar has forgotten I told him I got shooting lessons when I wrote a story about their show. The moment Annie sees me she’ll scream my name and run to me.
As we approach the Palais de Machines it looms up as a grey colossal volume. Unlike the rest of the exposition the enormous structure, at first sight, has a cold ambience—plain and austere. But the closer we get, the extensive detail with decorative moldings, ornamental pedestals, and arches embellished with different shades of variegated foliage becomes apparent. At the eastern entrance stand two nude sculptures representing Steam by Henri-Michel-Antoire Chapu, and Electricity by Louis-Ernest Barrias.
Jules says, “You can get a bird’s-eye view of the hall by riding on an electrically operated platform high above the machinery. It carries visitors across the length of the building at a height of twenty-two feet.”
There’s pride in Jules’ voice and I realize why. A number of the machines in this vast hall, including a “moving sidewalk,” made their first appearance on the pages of his books.
“Isn’t there a horseless carriage with an engine powered not by steam, but gasoline?” I ask Jules.
“Yes. It is called a Benz. There’s great potential for such a machine.”
“Really? I heard it’s a big toy for a rich man. Why anyone would want to drive a carriage powered by a noisy, smoking, smelly engine when they can drive one drawn by a horse? Besides, these horseless carriages will do nothing but pollute our air, create noise and havoc in the streets, and probably incur unnecessary cost.”
“Indeed.” For a moment I believe I have left Jules speechless. “Look, Thomas Edison has all of his inventions on display. The phonograph is my favorite. I believe this is one invention you can’t condemn.”
A large crowd has gathered at the exhibit; some people have on earpieces to listen to recordings.
“These … these mechanical monsters,” Oscar says, waving his walking stick at the rolls of machinery, “are slavers of man, not his liberator. They are distractions, not provocateurs of great ideas. Without them—”
“All this,” Jules waves his walking stick at the rows of exhibits, “is the work of mere lice, parasites on this great living planet hurtling through the heavens. We believe we are so important in the cosmic scheme, but in reality we are insignificant parasites on Mother Earth, bloodsuckers that may some day be shaken off.”
When Jules finishes being philosophical, Oscar stops and pulls out a piece of foolscap from his pocket and makes a note.
I edge closer to Jules. “You know he’s going to repeat your words in a boulevard café by night’s end.”
A small satisfied smile teases the corners of his mouth. “I read that tripe in this morning’s newspaper. They are the words of Henri Vallance, the philosopher. Everyone who hears our friend will know he stole the thought.”
“As I was saying,” Oscar expounds, “man has been enslaved by his own unbridled urge to invent machines—”
“And without them those shiny shoes you wear would be gone and you would be walking barefoot,” Jules retorts. “The extravagant clothes on your back would be replaced by animal skins, and instead of taking a train and boat back to London, you would have to walk and swim and kill your food along the way.” He points his walking stick to our right. “Artigas’ exhibit entrance is in this direction. Perhaps you
can keep in abeyance your quibbles on the evils of the Industrial Age until after we have dealt with one of its worse offenders.”
We go through an exhibit hall housing French military artillery pieces and machine guns that make modern warfare so deadly.
Oscar waves a generous hand at the killing machines. “These toys of grown men in uniform are not the future of war. Someday each side will send a single chemist onto the field of battle carrying a bottle containing a compound so lethal it will wipe away whole armies.”*
Jules stops and stares at Oscar. “Where did you hear that?”
Jules’ body language is so abrupt, Oscar is taken back. “Why, I suppose I deduced it from what is going on in the world.” His eyebrows shoot up. “My good man, no doubt I’ve been influenced by your books, the ones from my youth and the ones my wife is already putting away for my own sons. Captain Nemo and his terrible killing machine, the Nautilus, rockets to the moon, the city-killing weapons in The Begum’s Fortune—”
“My books were written to entertain, not terrify.”
“And they certainly accomplished the purpose of entertaining. Captain Nemo is an interesting villain, certainly not an Othello or Cesare Borgia, but nonetheless a knave with many facets. He has the mind and soul of an anarchist, a staunch defender of personal liberty, and while the terrible means by which he extracts justice and vengeance are not ones most of us would condone, he is truly a revolutionary, a man who on the one hand wavers between love and hate, pity and revenge, but on the other is above such petty human weaknesses.”
Jules retorts defensively, “Nemo does not attack. He defends when he is attacked.”
“But there’s violence in him, he’s an archangel of vengeance for the deaths of his family and those of his comrades, yet,” Oscar waves his hands in the air as if he’s conducting a symphony of his words, “this sometimes cruel tyrant of the deep is devoting his life to battling the tyranny of nations who put great warships on seas. And despite his sailors, Nemo is a man all alone. Ultimately, there is just him and the sea.”
The Alchemy of Murder Page 27