“This is useless,” Teddy Verano said. “We must talk to Agnes.”
“Yes, I agree, but how? She’s sick, very sick, as I understand it. You want to bring the police into it?”
Teddy Verano turned to him in the shadows, silently holding out a cigarette.
“You could have brought the police into it yourself, Monsieur Lefort, but your concern was, and still is, to avoid any scandal. You wanted everything to stay quiet about Madame Lefort’s grave.”
“Yes, you’re right. That is my concern.”
“You wanted to trust me, and I thank you. Therefore, until further notice, we must act alone. However, I will tell you that it’s not impossible that, at some point, I might find it necessary to inform a certain chief of police who is a friend of mine. Then you’ll have to accept my decision. Understood?”
“You’re clear as a bell, Monsieur Verano.”
“I don’t like blunders. I’m starting to think none of this is terribly abnormal, but it is peculiarly upsetting. I don’t like necrophiliacs and I suspect that’s what we’re dealing with here—a jerk like this is the lowest of the low among criminals.”
“You told me two hours ago that you were thinking of some kind of sorcery.”
“And for you, that’s all make-believe, right?”
Jean-Michel nodded.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but you don’t know the subject very well. Just like you, I think that there’s nothing that is truly supernatural in nature, which would be a contradiction, but there’s certainly many things around us, influencing our lives, that we don’t or can’t see. Certain people, since the beginning of the world, have tried, and often succeeded, in taming these forces and using them for their own benefit. They are usually dangerous. Their applied form of science, that they make up, is what we usually call magic. It’s empirical science but science all the same.”
Jean-Michel opened his eyes wide.
“What about my poor wife?”
“Well, there are all kinds of vampires, from the traditional ones who feed on blood to survive, all the way up to the ones who steal bodies or souls. In this case, we may be dealing with a new kind of vampire, a vampire photographer if you will. Yes, I know, it sounds like a joke. Monsieur Lefort, an old ghost-filled castle, a romantic setting, a haunted house, an alchemist’s crypt, are all a little outdated when it comes to horror. But these people still exist. Now they have modern laboratories, they make movies, they do… God knows what? But they are here, in our lives, around us, next to us, with us. And believe me, they are no less dangerous than before.”
Jean-Michel Lefort, the rationalist, the man of the mechanical world, said nothing. But he felt shivers run down his spine.
CHAPTER V
The fair had moved on to Montdidier. That was where Teddy Verano found it.
What was he going to be looking for?
He did not know himself. He did not even really know what its connection was with the case, but he felt there was some link between the two affairs: both had taken place while the fair was nearby, or at least in the vicinity. Péronne, Senlis. And now Montdidier.
It had not been very hard for him to follow the tour. There were colorful posters up almost everywhere trying to advertise the stunning program of all the attractions. He gave another case, the job of tailing a candidate for divorce, to Gerard, his stepson, who was more than ready to give up his studies to start working full-time as a private detective. He also neglected to recontact Jean-Michel Lefort. Sometimes, Teddy Verano preferred to work alone. And he did not know what lead to follow yet...
But what did it matter! What he needed was to soak himself in the environment of that fair, which seemed to be connected to two strange cases, each one concerning a dead young woman and a mysterious photographer.
In less than an hour and a half, as always on the unavoidable motorway, he had reached the town of Montdidier, sitting on a little hill for centuries, proud to be the birthplace of Parmentier.8 The sky was gray and the ground muddy where the last snowfall was melting, waiting for the next. Teddy Verano parked the DS and headed for the field of stalls where he trudged around for most of the day.
He had an idea, a very vague idea. Fairs usually travel with photographers. He found two, watched them for a long time, and challenged his professional conscience to the point of getting his picture taken. He talked a little to the photographers and, with two horrible pictures in his pocket, he had to conclude that he had drawn a blank. The two photographers, one of which was woman, seemed perfectly harmless, neither one being anything like a necrophiliac.
Of course, he would have been a pretty mediocre detective to linger over such appearances, but, after all, the trail of intrigue would have been too obvious if it had brought him straight to the guilty party.
He hung around the displays, dreamed a little in front of a futuristic railway from the year 2000, the haunted house, and the flying saucer bumper cars. He gave a look of brotherly sympathy to the strip-tease show and declined an offer from an old, obese coach looking for a sparring partner for the pseudo-wrestling matches. While two “plants” in the crowd took up the challenge that they were paid for, Teddy Verano, listening with one ear to the growls coming from the animals, ended up at the Crucifer Circus. One show had ended and another one was about to begin.
The circus was a small one. The train of caravans of yesteryear had been replaced by half a dozen huge, well-kept trailers bristling with television antennas. Behind the canvas tent, he saw the animals, off to the side, and the boards flapping in the icy wind, sometimes giving a peek at the cages where the Bengal tigers were pacing.
Among all the hollering, he heard to a barker, a long-winded clown who had replaced the portable megaphone of old with an electric microphone, an instrument that had to be credited with the power of rendering the human voice totally unintelligible.
Teddy Verano was starting to get bored. He wandered between the circus rings and found himself near the platform where the performers went back inside to prepare for their acts and where the barker was inviting the public to “squeeze into the best seats.”
Teddy Verano followed the crowd, paid an ageless cashier with outrageous make-up, who was already shriveling up and whose clothes, like all “beauty” tricks, tried desperately hard to claim that she was born beyond the Pyrenees. He was nice, as always, with the fair sex, and received a killer wink in return. Then he climbed into the stands, on the third row.
The barker showed up, doubling as the Ringmaster. He was assisted by a traditional little clown in a bright red suit full of sequins. It was a small, bent gentleman, who seemed to limp, and “fix” himself constantly to stand straight.
Teddy Verano watched this scarlet clown and his very talented tumbling, although the jokes shouted at him by the Ringmaster sounded more like swipes from an outdated almanac. Under the white and red-striped mask, the clown’s ugliness was striking. His eyebrows and the section around his eyes were all the color of fire, which made him look more disturbing than funny.
The Ringmaster’s body was hidden under layers of plastering but, on closer inspection, Teddy Verano decided that he, too, was little favored by nature.
Now he became struck by all the faces of the artists who made up the troupe. The face of the amazon could have been slender and pretty, but was marred by an interminably long nose. The two acrobats were a well-built couple, but the man had a horrible lazy eye, and the woman a birthmark that covered half her face. Such as it was, they were talented, and their trapeze act was dizzying.
Teddy Verano, who loved artists, gave them a roaring applause along with the rest of the audience, who knew a quality act when they saw one.
Quality was also present in the magic act. The magician, dressed in a dinner jacket, had a jutting chin and big lips; his assistant was none other than the cashier, whom Teddy found even more wilted, more ravaged than before, despite her age when the women of our time are in full flower. They gave a curious exhibit
ion of mental telepathy and Teddy Verano thought, not without surprise, that outside of the tricks, the well-known “keys,” this woman seemed to possess authentic powers of divination.
The Ringmaster and the scarlet clown continued their pranks between the acts. They also played a kind of sketch, of questionable taste, making fun of doctors. The Ringmaster, of course, played the patient, and the scarlet clown used the most scatterbrained means to try to heal him of an imaginary sickness; he got huge laughs from the audience, but not from Teddy Verano. In the forced comedy, he saw a deep sadness and he could not stop watching the little figure who looked like a bouncing flame, and the face which must have been hideous in its natural state, whose make-up only rendered more frightful. When the clown passed close to the stands, on seeing his face up close, a child started howling, and its parents had to take him out.
Kids have these instincts..., Teddy thought.
He was no longer having fun and no longer applauding.
Next, he saw a family of acrobats, father, mother and two children. Dreadful faces, a totally bald man with the face of an albino who managed to find a one-eyed wife and give birth to an ugly girl, whose outlandish features, combined with her father’s pale skin, excluded her from any desire, and a boy who alarmingly combined the features of both parents and his sister. Talented, for sure, spinning, leaping, flying around, forming anatomical spindles and human pyramids with mastery. But ugly, very ugly, hopelessly ugly.
Teddy Verano had no desire to joke about it, even being alone. His usual good mood melted away before these aesthetic disasters.
A real museum of horrors. As if the circus owner did it on purpose.
Then, the performers set up the scene for the big act, the star attraction, namely the exhibition of big cats presented by the “world-famous” tamer, Crucifer himself.
Since this was the name of the circus—Teddy remembered seeing the posters in Péronne and Senlis—he must certainly be the boss of the troupe.
The stagehands set up the cage. Then, led by the inevitable Ringmaster and scarlet clown, came all the others who had quickly slipped on appropriate outfits. There was the gorilla-chinned magician, the lazy-eyed trapeze artists, the albino acrobats, father and son, completely hairless and their heads glistening in the spotlights.
The hideous group disturbed Teddy Verano. He tried not to dwell on it, listening instead to the small orchestra playing Les Saltimbanques. It was the right choice. Teddy Verano remembered seeing the comic opera at the Porte-Saint-Martin theater, with unforgettable performers; he smiled at the happy memories to dissipate his unease.
All of a sudden, he scolded himself. Was he here to lounge around or to find a clue about the photographer of the dead?
He examined the orchestra, or rather the young woman, whose only job was to start the turntable. He was not surprised to see her thin shoulders holding up one of those angular faces, completely chinless, that make the male sex flee at first sight.
There’s certainly no one here pretty enough to compensate for the others.
For the men, it might have been acceptable; but this was the first time that he attended a circus performance of any kind with such a festival of ugly women.
When the Ringmaster, who had amused the public with some lame jokes while the cages were set up, announced the great Crucifer and his partner, Miss Mahlia, he finally hoped to see a pretty girl.
Crucifer entered and, at first, Teddy Verano thought he was a rather handsome man. Tall, solid, with a hard profile, a little gypsy-like with his curly black hair. But when Crucifer walked around the tent in the traditional blue uniform with gold buttons, boots and a whip, the detective saw his other profile. Furrowed with horrible scars, likely the remains of some savage attack by one of his favorite cats. The eye had been spared, but it opened in a marred, tortured flesh that was gruesomely swollen with deep, red ravines.
And then, there was Miss Mahlia.
One of those stunning silhouettes of women. In a sequined black tutu, she was led by the scarlet clown who, fighting the sway of his twisted legs, and with his weird make-up, looked like some cheap Quasimodo presenting a genuine Esmeralda.
With her beautifully styled blonde hair (could it be a wig?) the ravishing Miss Mahlia came forward. The gossamer tights highlighted the splendor of her legs, and the very low cut corset revealed a chest of classic beauty. Her graceful arms and elegant neck, slightly tilted, helped create an aura of desire in idealization.
Only, she wore a mask—and for Teddy, the reason was obvious.
If she doesn’t show her face, even when the act is finished, it’s because this Venus must really be a monster.
He thought of nothing but this during the show: two lions and two tigers together “for the first time in the world,” as the Ringmaster announced.
Crucifer forcefully controlled the movements of the rather cranky animals that must have been suffering from the cold. They responded to his orders without much enthusiasm, but the gladiator stood firm.
And during this time, Miss Mahlia performed under a spotlight. A fairly boring dance made up of a simple series of pretty poses. But the incomparable beauty of the woman’s body, drifting among the massive bodies of growling flesh, had a striking effect.
The chinless girl stopped her “orchestra” while Miss Mahlia leaped onto a stool that Crucifer invited the beasts to surround, placing their monstrous paws around her graceful legs.
At that moment, Teddy Verano looked to see who was working the spotlight. He saw the scarlet clown, adding this other job to that of official joker. In spite of the shadows around the improvised technician, the detective was struck by the glare of his eyes. The gruesome figure was ogling Miss Mahlia, whom he was in charge of lighting up, and all the passion that an abject man can feel towards a desirable woman shone through his pupils.
Well, well... Maybe that proves that Miss Mahlia may not be as hideous as I thought...
The act went on. Teddy Verano noticed nothing more of interest. He did not particularly admire Crucifer’s agility, Miss Mahlia’s grace, or their courage. He was eager for the show to be over, and get back to work. Luckily it did not take long. The final applause died out as the crowd poured out into the chilly air. Teddy Verano slipped around by the trailers.
Night had fallen. It was cold. The wind was blowing again and flapping the canvas tents. In their cages, the wild cats growled, angry at being cold.
CHAPTER VI
One after another, the stalls went dark as the interminable garlands of lights went out, as well as the colored neon tubes and arc light that just a minute before were stabbing through the cold and sad night.
Teddy Verano walked noiselessly around the Crucifer Circus, in this part of the fairground where only the carnies roamed; they had not really stamped down the snow, so there was enough of it to muffle the sound of his footsteps.
As he approached the trailers, he had the weird sensation of seeing huge puddles of darkness forming before his eyes. This phenomenon was due to the gradual disappearance of the bright zones, as the stalls switched off their garish lights. After the sparkling, artificial warmth of the fair, here was the triumph of the night and cold again.
Teddy Verano raised the collar of his overcoat. He thought, for an instant, of going back to where he had left his DS, near an intersection that sloped down into the town itself.
Forget it. I’ll only be here for a few more minutes.
If it worked... What he intended to do was quite simple. He just wanted to try to get a closer look at the private life of the circus people. There had been nothing out of the ordinary, however, during the performance. Not the least incident, the slightest clue, nothing that seemed to have any connection to the fatal night when poor Agnes in Péronne had lost her marbles, or to the violation of Viviane Lefort’s grave.
And what if tonight, something happened?
He pictured them all. He thought about them. About their faces, their mutilated, ugly, deformed faces, about this
carnival of monstrosities that the strange Crucifer seemed to maintain around him for some kind of dark purpose.
Ugly women and hideous men. And Miss Mahlia…
Mahlia, whose gorgeous body gave a glimpse of the forbidden fruit, and who made a little knot in his throat with her black tutu and sequined corset. Mahlia, whom the scarlet clown, chasing her with the spotlight, had spied on with his greedy eyes. Mahlia, who wore a mask…
But her figure…
Teddy Verano shrugged. He had seen so many pretty women in the course of his career! And although he had been faithful to Yvonne since he had married Gerard’s mother, he had still added a few pretty numbers to his collection. And yet, deep down inside, he could not get rid of the image of Miss Mahlia dancing among the wild animals; he tried, in vain, to find what this vision conjured up for him...
It had not struck him at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced he had seen Mahlia before, Mahlia in her black diamonds, Mahlia the partner of the disfigured lion-tamer, Mahlia, who…
Idiot! You’ve never seen this girl before.
He smiled silently to himself.
But right now, you’re going to see her again!
He heard the muffled roaring nearby, behind the flapping canvas. He was in the very center of the group of trailers making up the Crucifer Circus. But he saw nobody. The fair was staying for two or three more days, and since they did not have to break down the tents, the performers must have gone back to their respective trailers, which was normal in this weather.
All of a sudden, he jumped. Over the deep growls of the wild cats, still moaning and crying out their nostalgic rage in this freezing world so hostile to them, a loud argument had broken out, coming from one of the trailers.
Instinctively, Teddy Verano flattened himself against the nearest one, that was dark and quiet, and then clearly saw, right across from him, another trailer, whose small window was lit up. A dark figure crossed it. The figure of a man, all worked up and shouting.
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