Before him stretches a heavy sea of pitch. Sluggishly undulating, inscrutable, black and menacing. A sea full of corpses, wrecks, shadows and secrets navigated by the silent monoliths of ghostly tankers. At his feet the surging water leaves a trembling fringe of foam. Cox considers the angle at which the waves are coming in. If Starr had drowned at this spot, the current would immediately have driven her body to the east.
He climbs on to the breakwater, overgrown with seaweed and moss, and ventures on to the backbone of the stone construction, which disappears into the sea like a giant dead reptile. The worn stones under his leather soles are slippery and he clings on to the wooden stakes that grow out of the back of the monster like spikes. A body wedged into this concrete and bluestone chaos could serve as food for the crabs for months, unnoticed and slowly rotting away. Taking care not to slip off, he edges step by step towards the end of the breakwater. Suddenly, barely twenty yards from the end, he sees a strange apparition emerge from the eddying water. The creature is bigger than a normal man, and hops lithely from one rock to the other, stops, peers around fearfully, crouches down, bounces up again, freezes. It is as if it is searching for something between the heaped up blocks. Cox hides behind one of the wooden stakes. The moon breaks through the clouds and in the moonlight he catches a clear glimpse of the monster: its body is covered with scales, spotted with mussels and tiny snails. Its arms and legs are abnormally elongated. A spiky comb, running down its back to form a sort of tail, like an iguana’s, is growing out of its slimy, earless egg-shaped skull. Its lanky fingers with their crooked light-blue nails are connected by a fluorescent web. The feet are like shiny fins. Its nose is no more than two small slits, the mouth resembles the beak of a sunfish and the lidless eyes are like the dead eyes of a snake. Its breast is protected by an immobile, horny plate. It breathes through gills where its cheeks should be.
Cox dares not move, but the creature has clearly smelt his presence. It bends at the knees, jerks its head from side to side like a lizard scenting danger, and then looks steadily in his direction.
“The Gill Man,” whispers Cox, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
He recalls discussing a fragment of Jack Arnold’s 1954 film with his students as part of his course on the myth of Beauty and the Beast in American and European cinema. It was the sequence in which the monster, played by John Agar, swam like a torpedo to the surface from the unfathomable depths to carry off the beautiful Julie Adams, a scene of violent sensuality that Starr had watched with unconcealed and morbid pleasure. Had the Gill Man ambushed her while she was swimming on the night of 14th October to chain her up in his underwater cavern filled with pearls and sea anemones? Was that why her body had never been found?
Cox ventures to take a step forwards.
“Mr Agar?”
The human reptile does not move a fin, ready to attack with a lightning leap.
“Mr Agar, I am a great fan of yours, I saw all your movies. Could we have a word together? It’s about my fiancée…”
Instead of replying, the monster makes a hissing sound, flicking out its forked tongue. Perhaps it is not the actor at all that Cox is standing face to face with but the real Gill Man. If that is so it would be best to make for safety as soon as possible. He tries to turn and flee but slips on the damp moss and hits his head on one of the wooden stakes.
When he regains consciousness, shivering, the rising tide has half-covered the stone blocks and he is lying among drifting seaweed in shallow water. He is bleeding heavily from a deep cut above his left eyebrow. He can hear the voice of his mother who told him as a child not to play on breakwaters, and picks himself up with difficulty. For his lecture he had put on his best suit, which is now sticking to his body like a sodden rag, looking as green as the moss. In the distance he can make out the triumphal frontage of the Astoria, the only building on the promenade that is still illuminated, and where carefree people are noisily partying.
Cox stumbles towards the hotel where everyone knows him and he can have his injuries seen to. His right foot catches in a piece of material sticking out of the damp sand. He pulls it out of the sand and immediately recognizes the missing belt from Starr’s bathrobe, which seventy-one years to the day after Starr Faithfull’s body was discovered on Long Beach has finally been washed up on Koksijde beach.
When Cox enters the Astoria lobby he thinks he must be in the imperial palace on Planet Dagobah. Wherever he looks he sees hideous monsters, extraterrestrial creatures, man-apes and mutants. He moves reluctantly towards the bar, recognizing on the way Frankenstein’s monster, the Mole Man, Fu Manchu, King Kong in conversation with Doctor Mabuse and the Alligator Man, a silent couple of Gamians, a group of murderous Diaphanoids, a couple of sloshed werewolves, a robot of silver-plated cardboard, Count Dracula, a platoon of chimpanzees from Planet of the Apes, some slimy Martians and a lonely Cyclops in polystyrene. With his blood-soaked shirt, the gaping wound on his forehead, his damp, bedraggled clothes, and the salt and sand sticking like mildew to his hair and skin, he does not look any more appealing than the rest of them. But no one looks round at him, as if his wilted exterior is just a clever disguise. Until the general manager, dressed as Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon, notices him and hurries over.
“Professor! What an honour! You are without a doubt the most successful and realistic zombie of the evening!”
Cox does not understand what is going on and looks around puzzled. Behind the reception desk a man with a fly’s head is sitting, waving at him with an arm covered in prickly hair.
“Monsieur François,” says the general manager. “Didn’t you recognize him?”
“No. Could you possibly explain the meaning of all this?”
“I don’t understand your question, Professor.”
“I mean, who are all these people? And why is everyone dressed up?”
“But you are dressed up yourself!”
“Not at all! This is a real wound, this is real blood! And this was my best suit! I fell over on a breakwater because one of these imitation monsters scared the life out of me!”
“Wait a minute… Didn’t you receive our invitation?”
“What invitation?”
“To our first science fiction ball. Sponsored by Nutella and the Meteor Cinema.”
“No I did not! I was in the area for a lecture and after the reception went down to the beach to enjoy the breeze,” Cox says, lying. “And because it had got too late to go back to Antwerp I thought I would spend the night at the Astoria.”
“And you were right. There is always a room for you here. But first we need to clean up that nasty cut above your eye.”
A Godzilla-like figure waddles up to Cox and says: “Your make-up’s fantastic. Minimalist but powerful. As far as I’m concerned you deserve the Nutella prize.”
While Cox is having his wounds seen to in the general manager’s office by a doctor in a Yoda mask, he asks if Superintendent Lejeune happens to be there.
“He’s spent the whole evening in the bar. Perhaps he’s still there,” replies the general manager.
“I’ll go with you,” says the doctor, “otherwise they won’t let you in.”
The Bogart Bar has been rechristened the Lucas Bar for the occasion. It is an exclusive area admitting only members of the Ostend Star Wars Fan Club, who would not mix with the other guests for anything. Behind the bar, Nick is mechanically mixing cocktails in a shaker in his gilded C-3PO suit. Opposite him, Lejeune is chatting with Princess Leia. Cox recognizes him immediately, despite his Jabba the Hut costume, which unfortunately barely differs from his everyday appearance. In the corner where the card players usually sit, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, Darth Sidious, Chewbacca and Boba Fett the bounty hunter are deep in conversation around an ice-cold magnum of Veuve Cliquot, illuminated by the glow of their fluorescent light sabres. John Williams’s soundtrack to Return of the Jedi is blaring from the loudspeakers.
“The gentleman is with me,” says the doctor on encounte
ring a suspicious look from Luke Skywalker.
“The usual, Professor?” asks the unchanging C-3PO.
“Yes please, Nick. Good evening, Superintendent.”
“Mr Cox!” cries Lejeune, without moving his plastic pustule-covered drooling lips. “Who would have thought it. May I introduce Princess Leia?”
Cox turns to the young woman whose hair is plaited over her ears with two round combs. He recognizes Inspector Fontyn under a thick layer of white make-up.
“Have you been in an accident?” asks Fontyn in his high voice.
“I slipped over.”
“On the Ice Planet Hoth, no doubt! It can be dangerously slippery there sometimes!”
The superintendent bursts into loud laughter, shaking his shapeless foam-rubber body up and down.
Cox realizes that this is a bad time and place to have a normal conversation with the superintendent. In fact he is so exhausted and confused that he no longer remembers what he had wanted to tell him so urgently anyway.
“I found this on the beach,” he says for want of anything better, and shows Fontyn the wet belt from the bath robe that he still has in his pocket.
“What’s that?” asks Lejeune.
“I don’t know.”
“I may be mistaken,” says the doctor, “but it looks like the ribbon used to tie up Queen Padmé Amidala when she was captured on planet Naboo.”
“You should know,” says Cox.
Ten minutes later he is lying in his own room on the bed where Starr had never slept. When the doctor noticed that his legs were about to give way and he was clinging on to the bar for support, he had helped him up to the first floor and given him a sleeping pill.
“If you still feel dizzy in the morning, give me a call. It could be light concussion.”
The last thing Cox sees before he falls asleep is the friendly Yoda bending over him and tucking him in with a comforting look, as if he were a sick child.
25
Gloria Grahame
Sunday, 9th June 2002
When I awoke this morning in a bed stinking of rotten seaweed and dead crab, looked at the balcony door and saw, framed in a sky-blue rectangle, the ghost of Starr standing there inviting me to go swimming, I realized that just like Debbie Marchal she had been murdered. Her gaze, before she disappeared from my life, was that of a woman in love and nothing in her behaviour indicated that she had been planning to leave me or, even less, commit suicide. I must thank Starr for the most brilliant, intense moments of my grey existence and if, despite my grief and confusion, I am still alive today it is because I think of her every day and experience those sunlit hours again in my thoughts. When I was in the car driving back to Antwerp I thought of confessing everything to Luyckx. But I realized that my story would sound incoherent and incredible. He would probably not give it any consideration but show me politely to the door. “Your women don’t bring you any happiness, Mr Cox,” I could hear him say, “but we have a rule: no corpse, no murder. Go home. Believe me, women come and go. I’m willing to bet that your girlfriend will show up sooner or later.” Whatever the case, I ran the risk of becoming a suspect again. I decided I would first set everything down on paper, which for me is the only way to get some order into the chaos in my head. All the way back to Antwerp I listened to the soundtrack that Gato Barbieri composed for Last Tango in Paris.
I now possessed enough clues to confirm my hypothesis. The confusing resemblance with the tragic figure of her namesake, the parallel with the murky character of Gloria Wandrous in BUtterfield 8, the date of 8th June, when both the body of Miss Faithfull was washed up on Long Beach in 1931 and Starr’s belt was found seventy-one years later on the beach at Koksijde, the two words on my bathroom mirror: perhaps these did not amount to scientific proof, but for me there could no longer be any talk of coincidence. The logical explanation would therefore be that her murderer secretly knew her and copied the mysterious murder of Starr Faithfull for her murder. As if he had dreamt up the end of an unfinished story. Stan Larsky, who had confessed to the many murders he was accused of but had never admitted the Marchal case, had already been arrested the night that Starr disappeared. I am therefore certain that Debbie Marchal was disposed of by the same individual, who during that fatal weekend of 13 – 14th October was roaming the empty streets of Koksijde like a bloodthirsty predator. But why Debbie first? Was it just coincidence or was this death too part of the killer’s macabre screenplay? Unless, once again, he was inspired by a film, just as with the earlier murder of Marion Mees, which clearly referred to Hitchcock’s Psycho. If, with a little luck, I can prove this, then I will probably have established a link between the three murders. And once I know for sure that this link exists, I shall consider whether to go to Luyckx or not.
Cox switches off his computer and walks into the bathroom to tend the wound on his head. He feels a sense of relief now that he has accepted the death of Starr. And excitement too at the thought that he is going to conduct his own investigation without being embroiled in the pointless boasting of a show-off like Luyckx.
He opens the window, waves at Mrs Kountché, who as usual is spying on him from her balcony, and sits down at his desk with a blank sheet of paper.
Just as you try to remember a sequence of film with your eyes shut – an exercise at which he never fails – he now endeavours to recall the images of his encounter with Debbie Marchal.
It was terribly dark in the bar that evening and she was sitting in a ray of cold light that formed a kind of crown around her hair. That typical effect of contrasted lighting at which the great names such as Walter Lang, Joseph Biroc or Guy Roe excelled. Her behaviour was seductive, haughty, irresistibly artificial. She barely moved – and when she did move it was with that calculating lethargy with which the deadliest femmes fatales strike their prey. Now he can see it again clearly before his eyes. It was as if he had landed in one of Hathaway’s films and a Gilda-like goddess had stepped down from the screen to take her place beside him, like a diabolical angel, at the Bogart Bar. He sees her draw a Winston from an ivory cigarette case. He sees himself slide off his barstool and take a couple of steps to offer her a light. Just as clearly he perceives her face in the glow of the flame of his lighter. She does not look like Rita Hayworth but has her allure. So whom does she resemble? He remembers saying something at that moment. Something about the way she smokes. “You smoke just like Gloria Grahame,” he hears himself mumble: that was it – “You smoke just like Gloria Grahame.”
The problem is that Gloria Grahame never shot a film with Hathaway.
In the Fifties she was one of the icons of film noir. She worked with great names like Josef von Sternberg, Maxwell Shane and Elia Kazan. Her last role on the big screen was as Debby Marsh in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat. Cox opens his eyes and stares at the patch of sun falling on his blank piece of paper. That was the film in which he saw her smoking years ago – in that distinctive sultry way, in Walter Lang’s chiaroscuro lighting, during a Fritz Lang retrospective in Brussels. With eyes half-shut, blowing smoke rings through pursed lips, her head thrown back. The only film in which her character has the same name as Debbie Marchal. Now he understands why that beguiling, timeless vision, that evening in the Bogart Bar, made him think immediately but unconsciously of Gloria Grahame.
But that still proves nothing, and because he no longer knows the plot by heart, he decides to look up his old course on film noir. He finds what he’s looking for on page forty-six:
THE BIG HEAT, 1953
DIRECTOR Fritz Lang
SCREENPLAY Sydney Boehm
BASED ON THE NOVEL BY William P. McGivern
CAMERA Walter Lang
MUSIC Daniele Amfitheatrof
SETS William Kiernan
EDITING Charles Nelson
SYNOPSIS: Detective Sergeant DAVE BANNION, played by Glenn Ford, is leading the investigation into the suspicious suicide of his colleague, TOM DUNCAN. But he is ordered by his boss to let the case drop. LUCY CHAPMAN, DUNC
AN’ S mistress, played by Dorothy Green, is nevertheless convinced that his widow BERTHA, played by Jeanette Nolan, wants to use her late husband’s fake farewell letter to blackmail the gangster MIKE LAGUNA, played by Alexander Scourby. When LUCY’ S body is discovered, BANNION decides to pursue the investigation despite his orders. He visits LAGUNA, who with his gang holds both the local congressman and the police in his power. He accuses him of LUCY’ S murder and threatens him. LAGUNA’ S response is swift: he blows up BANNION’ S car with a bomb, causing the death of his wife KATIE, played by Jocelyn Brando. BANNION demands an investigation into his wife’s murder. When this is refused, he accuses his boss of shielding LAGUNA and is dismissed.
He hides his daughter with his wife’s parents and returns to town to avenge his wife. He discovers that the sadistic killer VINCE, played by Lee Marvin, and his girlfriend DEBBY, played by Gloria Grahame, are involved in the case. He is about to get her to talk when VINCE, furious with jealousy, throws boiling coffee in her face. BANNION takes care of her and learns that VINCE and LAGUNA are the perpetrators of the three murders of DUNCAN, LUCY CHAPMAN and his wife. DEBBY murders BERTHA DUNCAN in turn to get hold of her husband’s fake farewell letter in order to bring down LAGUNA. Then she lures VINCE into a trap and throws a jug of boiling coffee at his face, but misses. Without hesitating, he guns her down. BANNION appears at that moment and arrests Vince after a violent fight. DEBBY dies in a corner of the room, covering the burns on her scarred face with her mink in a last fit of vanity.
NB: The film was produced for Columbia by Robert Arthur and was premiered on 14th October 1953.
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