by Claude Izner
Scrambling from the cab at the Pont d’Iéna, Victor made for the Tower at a run. Owing to a combination of panic and thirst, his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, and his throat was on fire. He had a strong premonition that something terrible was about to happen. Ignoring any complaints, he elbowed his way through the tide of humanity held by barriers at some distance from the pillars. Amidst the noise could be heard discordant sounds of wind instruments being tuned up by a band. About thirty republican guards were perspiring in their uniforms, posted there to maintain order and facilitate the entry of officials to the proceedings. Out of breath, Victor reached the area where the guests had to present their special passes. He waved Gouvier’s and found himself squeezed into one of the lifts between a tuba and a bass drum.
In a little room on the third platform of the Tower, a man of about sixty knotted his cravat in front of the mirror in his bathroom. Reluctantly he pulled on his frock coat, donned a top hat and examined himself critically, cursing the ceremony that forced him to put up with the intense heat dressed like this. Unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it. He went through into a sitting room furnished with sofas and armchairs.
From a round table covered with photographs and papers he picked up a photograph of a man in the prime of life, smiling broadly, and read the dedication.
Dear Friend,
I am very honoured to celebrate your Tower with the phonograph which we will install in mid-air, at three hundred metres, to sound the ‘boom’ of the cannon fired to signal the end of the Universal Exposition of 1889. In anticipation of this momentous day, I am continuing my research into the improvement of my kinetograph. As you are so well aware, the life of an inventor is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Sincerely,
Thomas Alva Edison
Well, I certainly agree with him about the perspiration, thought Gustave Eiffel, as he replaced the photograph and headed out to the platform where the lift awaited him.
Draped in red velvet, a podium had been set up at the entrance to the Flemish restaurant. The heat was so great that the guests avoided lengthy greetings to save their breath. They hurriedly made for a row of chairs, but were turned back by waiters in green livery protecting this special area, which was reserved for officials. There were protests, grumbles and stirrings in the crowd, whilst the courageous ones among them, who had not flinched from coming up on foot, were entertaining themselves by identifying the fashionable people.
‘The Comtesse de Salignac and her niece Valentine, a very eligible young lady,’ someone said.
‘Very eligible she may be, but she’s not a pretty face!’ someone else replied.
‘And that one who’s wiping his bald head under his topper is the Duke of Frioul!’
‘The tall thin one who looks like a goat, that’s Blanche de Cambrésis.’
‘And her friend Adalberte de Brix. They say she’s buried three husbands!’
Victor had wandered as far as the podium. He scanned the crowd, despairing of finding the person he was looking for in that patchwork of faces. Suddenly he caught sight of some marguerites amongst the stove-pipe hats. Bent over her sketchpad, Tasha was urgently drawing with her charcoal. Not far from her, Marius Bonnet, Eudoxie Allard and Antonin Clusel were whispering to each other. Victor attempted to join her, but then a male figure caught his eye. The man was standing behind the Le Passe-partout team at the corner of the restaurant. The garlands of flags hanging over the restaurant’s wood panelling cast shadows over his face. The knotted cravat on his shirt produced an incongruous flash of colour amongst the sombre frock coats. Victor recoiled as if he had been hit in the stomach. Only one person would wear such a loud pink silk cravat: Kenji Mori.
Someone shouted his name.
‘Monsieur Legris! Cooee!’
Eudoxie was waving wildly at him. Marius, Antonin and Kenji all turned their heads towards him. One of the three men raised a hand, inviting him over. Victor gasped. Gloves. The man was wearing thick gloves. Who had mentioned gloves …? A cab driver. The cab driver involved in the Ostrovski affair! Gloves in this heat … Gloves to protect himselfl
Victor realised the danger of the situation, but was so dazed he could do nothing. It was him!
The applause died down and the fanfare started with the opening bars of La Marseillaise. As Gustave Eiffel went up onto the podium, there was a sudden movement in the crowd. Taking advantage of the commotion, Victor made for Tasha, then suddenly changed course to the right, strode all along the gallery and reached the north staircase leading to the second platform. He went up a few steps without bothering to see if the man was following him. He was certain that he would. Come on, you bastard, come on!
He had to lead him away from Tasha at all costs. He spun round and bounded up the steps towards the souvenir shop. Glancing in the shop window, he saw that the man in the gloves had taken the bait. Now all Victor could rely on were his legs. A lift arrived from the ground floor. He threw himself into the crowd which emerged and mingled around them.
A voice sounded in his ear: ‘It’s a small world, isn’t it, my friend?’
Victor turned. The man in gloves smiled, his hands deep in his pockets. Victor forced himself to look at him. ‘Gouvier gave me his invitation. He said that —’
But he was unable to finish his sentence. The man crushed his foot with his heel, pressing down with all his weight. Victor yelled and tried to get through the people, but the pain slowed him down. He saw the man holding something in the palm of his hand. He succeeded in getting to the south pillar but stumbled against a woman and stayed still, waiting for the needle soaked in curare to sink into his flesh. He had time to remember that one day he had found on the banks of the Seine a fish rejected by the fisherman and still alive, only the whites of its eyes visible, its mouth perforated.
The man was coming closer, smiling. Victor had never felt such hatred. He wanted to express it by cursing at him but before he could, a shadow appeared. It raised its arm and with a karate chop, felled the man in gloves, who collapsed like a marionette. Victor, watching the scene, saw it as a succession of images, each momentarily suspended before being replaced by the next in muffled silence. It was like a real chronophotographic sequence: the incredulous expression of the man, features contorted in rage, the implacable force of the assailant, the hand knocked off course, the tattooing needle embedded up to the hilt in the thigh through the finely striped material of the trousers.
Marius Bonnet’s face wore a final expression of surprise. As he had planned, death had come to the meeting, but he was the one who had been struck down by the velvet glove.
Gradually Victor began to hear sounds again: there was a commotion and shouting. He took a few steps, intending to pick up his Panama, but his muscles refused to obey him. He looked down at the gasping body on the floor, then back up at Kenji.
‘Good timing,’ he managed to say blankly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Saturday 2 July
THE Comtesse de Salignac had divided up the territory. Raphaëlle de Gouveline had been assigned to the shelves on the left, Adalberte de Brix and Blanche de Cambrésis those on the right. Mathilde de Flavignol, seconded by Valentine, was raking conscientiously through the bookcases in the middle.
‘Hurry up. Look, he’s coming back!’ the Comtesse shouted in her role as lookout. ‘So did you find Which One?’
‘No sign of it. But this one looks quite good: The Rape of Lucrece by William Sha — Shakes —’
The bookshop door opened and in came Joseph, waving a copy of Le Passe-partout.
‘A special edition about the business on the Tower!’
‘Let’s see! Let’s see!’ the women cried.
With a wave of his feather duster he made them step back.
‘A bit of quiet, please! Silence! The article is signed “Antonin Clusel”. I know him. He came here. He’s an acquaintance of Monsieur Legris’s.’
‘And where is Monsieur Legris?’ the Co
mtesse asked.
‘At police headquarters. Inspector Lecacheur called him in, along with Monsieur Mori. What a business!’
Joseph sat down on his stool, unfolded the newspaper and read out:
‘MURDERER CONFESSES EXCLUSIVELY TO READERS OF LE PASSE-PARTOUT
‘In the last ten days, several deaths have occurred in unusual circumstances which have sent the Universal Exposition into mourning, and mystified the police. Was it a succession of accidental deaths caused by bee-stings or a series of planned murders? Antonin Clusel lifts the veil on this mystery, by revealing to the public the confession of Marius Bonnet, which he had left him. Bonnet met his end yesterday afternoon on the first platform of the Eiffel Tower.’
‘When I think we were there, it sends shivers down my spine!’ exclaimed the Comtesse.
Lowering the newspaper, Joseph looked at her sternly. ‘Do you want to hear the murderer’s posthumous confession or not?’ he asked caustically.
‘Certainly, my friend, do go on.’
‘In that case, I want to be able to hear a pin drop, do you hear?’
He sat back on his perch and started to read Bonnet’s confession:
‘Have you ever felt the horrible sensation of iron claws tearing your body apart? Have you felt that you were suffocating, and that in your distress you were unable to react because you were so paralysed by pain? This is what I felt for the first time last year, when I attended the opening of the Institut Pasteur.
‘My doctor informed me that I was suffering from angina, something that could kill me if I continued to burn the candle at both ends. But was I going to give up journalism and everything that makes life interesting? Of course not. As my life expectancy was seriously limited, I decided to jump a few stages and immediately realise my life-long dream of owning a newspaper that would be more popular than Le Petit Journal.
‘I succeeded in obtaining a rich backer in Constantin Ostrovski. He financed me privately by giving me a personal loan. I signed a promissory note that I would honour the debt on 31 December 1889. Shortly after the launch of Le Passe-partout, in April, he reneged on the agreement and demanded that I repay both the capital and the interest, or else he would shut down the newspaper. When one’s spent twenty years feeding popular taste, one has no illusions about human nature. With a little diplomacy I managed to get a few more weeks’ grace. I immediately saw there was only one possible alternative to paying: ridding myself of him. I was going to commit the perfect crime, a motiveless crime, and at the same time I would send the circulation of Le Passe-partout sky high by giving my readers a mystery as disturbing as Jack the Ripper. Very soon my plan was ready. It consisted in eliminating a certain number of individuals with nothing in common except that they were present in the same place at the same time. Of course Constantin Ostrovski would be one of them. Utterly disorientated, the police would search in vain for the logic behind these murders.
‘What weapon would I use? A revolver? Too noisy. A knife? Too gory. Then I remembered that Ostrovski had a taste for unusual objects. Amongst other things he had a collection of gourds and pots he had bought from a Venezuelan dealer. He had once shown me the contents: some brown, crumbly substance, mixed with earth, which he called “Death in a velvet glove”. He said it was the sap from a plant that kills very quietly — curare, used by South American Indians. I pointed out the danger of storing something this toxic so casually, but he replied that one would still need to know how to prepare the fatal dose.
‘I read a large number of works about poison, especially those by Claude Bernard. I learnt how to obtain a solution that could be administered by injection from some pure curare simply by boiling it in distilled water and then filtering it. It was easy to steal one of Ostrovski’s ceramic pots. The next question was, how to inject the curare? With a Pravaz syringe? With a trocar? I wasn’t sure what to do. Perhaps I could get something from a pharmacy? No, too risky. Then fortune smiled upon me. In my friend Victor Legris’s bookshop, there’s a display cabinet where his business associate, Kenji Mori, has on show all his travel souvenirs. When I saw the tattooing needles he had brought back from Siam, I almost cried with joy: I had the ideal weapon.’
‘That’s monstrous!’ Joseph cried.
‘What a terrible world we live in,’ said Valentine.
‘Indeed, Mademoiselle. It’s best to escape from it when possible,’ said Joseph, pleased that he worked amongst books.
He went on:
‘I now needed to test the strength of my curare on a human guinea pig. I refer you to a short item in Le Figaro of 13 May: “CURIOUS DEATH OF A RAG-AND-BONE MAN. A rag-and-bone man from Rue de la Parcheminerie has died from a bee-sting …” A bee? Not at all! That was me! My method had shown itself to be reliable; now I just needed to carry out my plan.
‘Ostrovski had been chosen by the editorial team of Le Figaro de la Tour as their Man of the Day, which meant he would necessarily be signing the Golden Book. This small ceremony was to take place before lunch on 22 June. So I decided to murder the signatories whose names appeared in the book immediately before and after his.
‘I concocted an alibi. On the pretext of celebrating the fiftieth edition of Le Passe-partout, on that day I invited my editorial team along with Messieurs Legris and Mori for a drink at the Anglo-American bar on the first floor of the Tower.
‘I got there first. Mixing with the sightseers on the second platform, I watched the signatories, particularly the woman in red with the children. She was standing in the queue immediately in front of a big fellow in a pith helmet, who in turn immediately preceded Ostrovski. When she went back down to the first floor, I followed her. The gallery was teeming with people. I went up to the bench she was sitting on, pretended to trip, and pricked her on the nape of the neck. Unfortunately I had a bit of bad luck and the needle slipped through my glove and broke. I got the point back but I lost the handle. I had no time to waste and met my friend Victor at the entrance to the Anglo-American bar.
‘When the body of the woman in red was discovered, I was the first to question the children and find out their names. That evening I posted two anonymous letters, addressed to L’Éclair and my own newspaper, which gave the impression that Eugénie Patinot had been killed because she knew too much.
‘Was it cunning or caution? Inspector Lecacheur decided to favour the theory of death from natural causes. What did it matter? Their simplistic explanation meant I could fan the fires of the controversy in my articles, heightening the public appetite for the sordid or irrational side of the case. The print runs of Le Passe-partout increased dramatically.
‘I then went to find out the names of my next victims in the Golden Book and discovered with astonishment that my illustrator, Mademoiselle Tasha Kherson, was amongst the signatories on 22 June. Had she seen me there? I had everything at stake and, in a jokey fashion, I reproached her for cheating on Le Passe-partout with the Golden Book. She laughed, she found the whole thing absurd: writing one’s name, profession and address down just to prove that one had the hundred sous needed to go up the Tower. If her neighbour had not insisted, she would never have drawn that caricature. In any case he had used a pseudonym, Boris Godunov. I noticed that was the name that immediately followed Ostrovski’s.
‘I had no problem in finding out where John Cavendish, the man in the pith helmet, was staying. But before killing him I needed to steal another tattooing needle from Victor Legris’s shop. I managed this quite easily the very same morning I sent a telegram signed Louis Henrique, requesting Cavendish’s presence at the Colonial Palace. Everything happened without a hitch, and the American breathed his last at the very moment that Tasha Kherson appeared on the scene.’
‘The little redhead,’ said Joseph thoughtfully as he turned the page.
‘I arranged a meeting with Ostrovski to return the sum he had lent me. We had decided to bring our arrangement to a close in a cab. I brought out a bundle of papers and demanded to see the document I had signed. He complied, and
I pricked him on the throat. When I rummaged through his pockets he was already unconscious. I found a calling card in the name of Victor Legris, which annoyed me. The cab left me outside the Magasins du Louvre, then continued on its way to Quai de Passy. I returned to my apartment, changed, and lay down for a short while as I was tired. Mid-afternoon, I joined the team at the pavement tables of Le Jean Nicot. Victor Legris happened to be passing by and he sat down with us. In the course of conversation, he mentioned the death of Jean Méring the rag-picker and Henri Capus’s doubts about the bees.’
‘Méring? I’m the one who mentioned that to the boss. I even lent him the notebook where I’d noted it down!’ Joseph exclaimed.
‘You’re intelligent, aren’t you?’ whispered Valentine in admiration.
Joseph blushed and carried on:
‘I was in a panic. Victor seemed to be suggesting that there was a link between the death of the rag-picker and the deaths at the Expo. Victor, whose calling card was in Ostrovski’s pocket. Victor, whose needles I had stolen. How could he know about things that the press had never mentioned? I decided to visit Capus. There was no chance that he would identify me. On the day of Buffalo Bill’s arrival, I had pricked Méring before he’d joined him. Capus told me that a fellow journalist had come by the previous day to ask him some questions. He’d written his name down: Victor Legris from Le Passe-partout. I was frightened, I lost my self-control; this man knew too much. I grabbed a scalpel that he was using to dissect a rat and I slit his throat.’