The Dream Killer of Paris

by Fabrice Bourland

  On the other side of the carriage, behind my friend, was the table of Mademoiselle Ida Petrini, a Franco-Italian actress of whom neither James nor I had heard; she was accompanied by her impresario who was making it a point of honour to talk loudly and with his mouth full, boasting of the starlet’s flourishing success. Further away, just finishing his meal, sat Mr Boormann, a successful American writer who was returning to the old Austro-Hungarian Empire to gather material for a new romantic novel. At the very end of the carriage were four young English academics going to Salzburg for a conference at Mozarteum University. They were immersed in a passionate debate. Just before the door to the kitchens was Mademoiselle Lisa Dampierre, a Parisian painter of about forty, accompanied by her maidservant.

  There were exactly seventeen passengers in the carriage. If they were added to the fifteen we had passed in the corridor to reach the dining car, it made thirty-two passengers out of a total of forty-one. And still no sign of the Austrian.

  A few minutes earlier Mademoiselle Dampierre had opened a book and begun reading avidly.

  ‘I would love to know what that young lady is reading,’ I mused out loud.

  ‘If you would allow me, Monsieur,’ said the waiter, bringing two glasses of a vintage cognac we had ordered, ‘Mademoiselle Dampierre is reading The Interpretation of Dreams by Professor Sigmund Freud.’

  ‘Dreams! Dreams again!’ muttered James before putting the glass to his lips.

  ‘Indeed, I believe I am right in saying that Mademoiselle Dampierre is going to Vienna to meet the famous doctor.’

  ‘Did she tell you that?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘No. But when she is not absorbed in that book, she continually rereads a letter sent from 19 Bergasse, Vienna IX. That is the professor’s address.’

  ‘You seem well informed.’

  ‘Oh, she’s not the first and she won’t be the last of that gentleman’s patients to take the Orient Express. I have been working on this line for ten years and I have come across several from France, England and America. Like Mademoiselle Dampierre, they spend the entire journey studying the great man’s work. You’d think they were sitting an examination. On the outward journey they are all silent, like this lady.’

  ‘And on the return journey?’

  ‘That depends. Some seem satisfied, others look even more depressed than when they left.’

  ‘You would have made an excellent detective.’

  The waiter thanked me with a bow, keeping his tray flat.

  As he went into the kitchens the train slowed down and pulled into Nancy station.

  ‘One of us should go on to the platform to see which passengers get off,’ said James, looking out of the window. ‘If you’re right and our chap is on the train, there’s nothing to say that he won’t break his journey here.’

  ‘Our man is going to Vienna, James. I’m sure of it. There really is no reason for him to get off here.’

  Herr and Frau Hersteinmeyer had returned to their compartment and I caught the attention of the waiter, who was busy clearing their table.

  ‘Do you know the name of an Austrian passenger travelling alone who has very strange eyes? We met him on the platform earlier at the Gare de l’Est. We would very much like to talk to him again.’

  ‘A passenger with strange eyes? Hmm! Sorry, I don’t know who you mean.’

  ‘Really? Have all the passengers eaten in the restaurant car this evening?’

  ‘No, Monsieur. Three passengers have remained in their compartments.’

  ‘Aha!’ I said, kicking James’s leg under the table.

  Stubbornly sticking to his plan, James was staring intently at the platform. He had to admit there was very little happening out there. In front of our window the conductor of one of the sleeping cars was chatting to the station master. Not far away five or six passengers had got off to stretch their legs and smoke in the cool Lorraine night.

  ‘Maybe the man I’m talking about is one of those passengers,’ I continued.

  ‘It could be the man in Compartment 3, Herr Kessling, in the middle carriage. He got on at Paris and I think he is going to Vienna. The other two are a Madame Blattensohn, a rich English widow, and her daughter who are going to Bratislava. I doubt you mean them.’

  ‘Herr Kessling you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen him?’

  ‘No.’

  The waiter moved away.

  ‘Did you hear that, James? Compartment 3, the middle carriage.’

  ‘Well! I think we should see for ourselves. Let’s go and knock on his door!’

  ‘Absolutely not! We should be as discreet as possible.’

  ‘What do you suggest then?’

  ‘It’s a long way to Vienna. Hunger will force him out of his lair. Let’s wait until tomorrow.’

  The station master blew the whistle for departure. The conductor and the passengers returned to their carriages and the train pulled out with a screech of steel, clouds of steam swirling past our window.

  No passengers had left the train and no new passengers had got on.

  My watch showed that it was a quarter to one. Since the stop at Nancy station the restaurant had emptied. We decided that it was time to go back to our compartment too.

  In the next carriage the corridor was completely deserted, apart from the conductor sitting on his stool reading the newspaper.

  We returned the conductor’s greeting and continued along the corridor, pausing in front of Compartment 3. What wouldn’t we have given to see through the polished wooden door! To finally find out what that monster looked like. To see his face.

  As the conductor was looking at us curiously, I pushed James forward and we went back to our compartment.

  On entering, we were pleased to note that the beds had been made up. The seat had been turned into a bed and an upper bunk had been folded out from behind a panel.

  I undressed quickly and threw myself on the bottom bunk. I was so exhausted that I put down my copy of Aurélia after only a few pages.

  For the first time in several nights I didn’t feel terrified of going to sleep. On the contrary, I was desperate for my consciousness to be suspended, to find that place, so near and yet so far, where (as I had only understood that day) lines could be drawn between the invisible planes of reality. The day had reconciled me to my dreams and it was from them above all that I expected further enlightenment – from them and from my stranger.

  It was a quarter past one when I fell asleep, rocked by the swaying of the carriages. However, for what seemed like an age, my sleep was too disjointed for dreams to take shape.

  On the upper bunk, James kept turning over. When the train stopped at the next station (Strasbourg probably, unless I had missed one) I saw him quickly climb down from his bed and disappear into the corridor. I had no idea what time it was.

  I had barely begun to enter the phase of active dreams when a jolt of the train woke me with a start. Shortly after Strasbourg, the train seemed to slow down again. Half asleep, I could just hear the voice of the conductor advising a passenger that it was nothing, only German customs at the Kehl border in the Baden region.

  Was it because we had now entered the land of National Socialism that I began to see a series of rambling visions of Hitler’s face and his dark army of Blackshirts?

  Over the last few months the press had given a lot of coverage to the Führer’s decree that non-Aryan people should henceforth be forced out of public office. It had left no doubt about his Greater Germany project, a vast empire where inferior races and classes would be excluded. Similarly, the day after the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June the newspapers had been quick to condemn the bloody purge of the Sturmabteilung.

  A noise in the compartment drove these troubling scenes from my mind. James must have gone back to bed earlier without me noticing because, opening one eye, I now saw him leave our compartment again and gently close the door.

  I made no attemp
t to understand what he was up to and went straight back to sleep.

  That was when I had a terrible dream, the venomous nature of which I have never forgotten; a nightmare which, masquerading as truth, began at the very moment when I thought I was waking up. It was as if dreams and reality, daytime and nocturnal life, had become one for me.

  DREAM 4

  NIGHT OF 20-21-OCTOBER

  Bedtime: 1.05 a.m.

  Approximate time when fell asleep: 1.15 a.m.

  Time awoken: 4.55 a.m. (Central European Time)

  I am stretched out on my bed, my thoughts all over the place. I feel that I have been thrown on to the shores of sleep by a wave of dreams with neither beginning nor end, dreams which became entangled and whose memory is already fading.

  I am not sure I am completely awake but I don’t think I am asleep either. I have the strange impression that I am floating in a sort of in-between place, an intermediate and worrying state. My eyes are wide open… at least I think they are.

  The regular rocking movement reminds me that I am on a train. Although the compartment is cloaked in darkness, I recognise the panelling of the walls, the designs on the marquetry and the white enamel basin. The scents of metal, wood and velvet mingle in the air.

  Suddenly, I detect a movement close to me and at the same time I have the very clear impression that someone is there. Is it my stranger come to visit me? No, I cannot see her opalescent aura. It is more like a diffused feeling of imminent danger. A lurking threat. Ready to pounce.

  It is only at that moment that I become aware of my true situation. My arms, legs and all the muscles in my body are turned to stone. I am unable to move, totally paralysed. Only my eyelids still function.

  Fear grabs me by the throat. At the same time, my head is filled with a high-pitched shrieking like a small animal. Is it the sound of the train screeching round a bend? Or the distorted echo of my pulse which is thumping like the beat of a drum? My hoarse breathing burning my lungs? But I am sure that it is not coming from me. So who from? Every passing second strengthens my conviction that there is a hostile presence near me.

  Again, I feel that something is moving in the compartment. With all my energy I try to lift my head to determine where the danger is coming from but I cannot. Out of the corner of my eye I just manage to glimpse the outline of a stocky body, no more than three foot tall – a child? A monkey? It has extraordinary strength; it throws itself on me and crushes my chest.

  After my aggressor has thrown me backwards with a violent blow, my head is crushed against the wall. In that position I cannot see it. I would have liked to look at it, to express my incomprehension, my hostility, my hatred. But even speaking or moaning is impossible; no sound comes out of my mouth.

  The smell of its skin repulses me. A damp odour of decay and wet hair. I am certain that I am experiencing the last moments of my life. There is no hope. All I can do is wait. I am frightened.

  With its full weight on me, the creature grabs my neck and begins to squeeze. A trickle of acrid bile rises in my throat. Despite the brutality of the attack, I do not feel any pain. My body is anaesthetised.

  I am finding it increasingly hard to breathe. I close my eyes. While death takes hold of me with all its might, a vague image of the stranger from the steamer, in her red satin dress, forms in my mind.

  I am intoxicated by the memory of her radiant face. A feeling of relief.

  Fear releases its grip.

  ‘You must believe in me, Andrew. Your life depends on it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I hear myself reply. ‘More than in anything.’

  Thanks to her, the strength to fight reawakens in me. I unclench my teeth, pull in my stomach and chest and, in a final burst of energy, manage to expel a powerful, guttural, primitive cry from the depths of my being.

  Immediately, I hear noises in the corridor. There is a blinding light. I cover my eyes with my hands.

  I am roughly shaken by the shoulders.

  A voice.

  ‘Wake up, Andrew! Wake up!’

  James’s face …

  What would have happened if my friend had not come back then? If my stranger from the steamer had not appeared? Was that the fear the Marquis de Brindillac had felt before he died? And the others?

  I had the ghastly feeling of having come back from the dead. My face, my neck, my chest bore no scars. All I had seen in the dream was only an illusion. And yet, that illusion had almost killed me.

  The conductor of the sleeping car appeared a few seconds after James. When I had managed to convince him that I was as well as could be expected, the conductor went to reassure the passengers in the neighbouring compartments who had been unceremoniously woken by my cry.

  Then I gave James a thorough account of my dream.

  ‘Do you really think that it’s Öberlin …or rather, Kessling, who’s doing this?’ he asked, sitting on the edge of my bed.

  ‘I am more convinced than ever.’

  ‘My word! How is he doing it?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I can assure you that we have been lucky. If you had stayed in the compartment you would certainly have received the same treatment and neither of us would be here to tell the tale.’

  James couldn’t help shuddering as he imagined the possibility.

  The brakes of the Orient Express screeched as we pulled into a station. The blind was lowered so we couldn’t see its name. In any case, we were too shaken, both of us, to take anything in.

  ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about Kessling,’ confided my friend. ‘I was only afraid of one thing – that he might give us the slip at one of the stops. In Strasbourg and then Kehl I went to check that he hadn’t got out. But there was no sound from his compartment. Everything seemed quiet. I even thought for a moment that you might have been mistaken, Andrew, and that our man was not even on the Orient Express. After Kehl I stayed in the corridor chatting to the conductor. That was when I heard your cry.’

  A whistle sounded on the platform.

  ‘At least we can be sure of one thing now,’ he muttered. ‘The Austrian is on the train!’

  Suddenly, James ran to the window as if a snake had bitten him and he raised the blind.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Baden-Oos!’ he roared. ‘The train has stopped at the station of

  Baden-Oos! What a fool I am!’

  It was only then that the gravity of the situation dawned on me. Luckily, my friend had enough energy for both of us. He threw himself out of the compartment and ran as quickly as possible towards the other carriage.

  I didn’t have the strength to follow him. I collapsed on the bed, my hands covering my face, praying that it was not too late, but James had barely left our carriage before the train began to move again.

  A few minutes later he returned, looking shaken.

  ‘He got away, didn’t he?’

  ‘When I arrived the door was open and the compartment was empty. In the time it took me to leap on to the platform, he had already disappeared.’

  ‘Did anyone see him?’

  ‘The conductor.’

  ‘Did he say what he looked like?’

  ‘About fifty, five foot eight, short hair combed back, greying temples. Kessling had come flying out of his compartment, a suitcase in his hand. He was barely dressed. The conductor confirmed that he should have stayed on board until Vienna.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Yes. He had puffy eyes, a wild look, like someone who had just woken up.’

  ‘What? Kessling had just woken up?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  It was only quarter past five in the morning but, for James and me, going back to sleep was out of the question. Until we had removed the threat of this sinister character, the gates of sleep would be barred; our lives were at risk if we ventured beyond them.

  We had to keep going. We knew that Kessling was heading for Vienna and that was where we would catch him. That day, the next day or another day.

&nb
sp; About twenty minutes later, the train stopped at Karlsruhe station.

  When the Orient Express arrived at Westbahnhof in Vienna on Sunday 21 October 1934 it was half past six in the evening.

  XVI

  THE NEED FOR SLEEP

  Beautiful Vienna! City of the Habsburgs. Capital of arts and music. City of Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Schönberg. Klimt and Schiele. Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Zweig. Fritz Lang and Freud.

  But sinister Vienna too. A gigantic metropolis where the new Führer had spent his youth and honed his racist doctrines. The centre of Pan-Germanism, nationalist leagues and sickening theories.

  The previous July, with the support of the Third Reich, the local Nazis had attempted a coup d’etat. The Austrian Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, had been murdered along with hundreds of other people, but it had ended in failure. Dollfuss himself, although opposed to the Nazis, was no better than them. Under his reign Austria had become an authoritarian regime, the right to strike and gather had been removed, and the leaders of opposition parties forced to seek exile. The Chancellor who replaced him was cut from the same cloth.

  Dark forces preparing to turn the world upside down!

  Outside the station the air was heavy, the sky black. It was pouring with rain. The street lamps had not been lit and in the distance, towards the Danube, monstrous shadows were lengthening over the old city. Immediately, I was seized with a premonition similar to the one I had had the day after I arrived in Paris when I had leant on the parapet of the Pont-au-Change, contemplating the river. This time the feeling was even stronger.

  We needed to find a place to stay quickly and come up with a plan.

  James hailed a taxi and we jumped in to escape the rain.

  ‘We’re looking for a hotel,’ explained my friend, miming to the driver. ‘Not ruinously expensive. Comfortable.’

  ‘Bitte schön?’

  ‘Hotel! Sleep! Schlaffen!’