Inside the black Cadillac carrying her off at high speed Angelica tries in vain to clear up this important question. At moments her heart fails her, giving rise to sudden hot flushes, at the thought that she may just have been guilty of an unpardonable lapse: what if this alleged inspector were really the false doctor? In that case she ought under no circumstances to have got into his car. What will happen to her now? The man in the white suit is sitting stiffly erect beside the flat-capped chauffeur. She has been put in the back seat, where she is solidly flanked by two plainclothes policemen wearing very severe black suits and each holding her by one arm above the elbow. They did not even leave her time to put on her beach robe and sandals. She dare not utter another word, surrounded by these four silent and forbidding characters.
The windows of the large car with its deep leather upholstery being masked by thick red curtains, the girl can form no notion either of the direction in which they are travelling as they turn corner after corner or of the districts through which they are passing. The journey seems long to her; but equally they might be driving her round in circles. They arrive by way of an underground garage, which likewise prevents her from registering the external appearance of the building they have entered.
As soon as she has stepped from the car she is unceremoniously pushed along a complicated corridor to a completely white, cube-shaped cell in which the only furniture is a wrought-iron bedstead without either sheets or blankets, nor even a mattress, and a dressing-table in the same style, made of twisted rods of iron, it too painted black. More detailed observations are postponed till another time because the door now opens to admit a man in a white surgeon's coat, accompanied by a nurse. With movements that are quick and firm in the extreme, though devoid of any unnecessary brutality, they lay the prisoner down on the criss-crossed metal slats of the bed, take her pulse, measure her blood pressure, examine her nostrils, her open mouth, the insides of her eyelids. Then, still without a word being spoken, they roll her over onto her front and immediately give her an intramuscular injection in the upper part of her buttock by way of an opening in the bathing-costume that looks as if it was designed specifically for this purpose. The sudden, painful jab induces a brief lumbar spasm.
Angelica is so bewildered by everything that is happening to her that she submits to it as if she had come here of her own free will to undergo this medical examination. Is any other course open to her, in fact? But once her visitors have left the room an additional misgiving crosses her already clouded mind: haven't they just administered some truth serum that is going to make her betray her mistress's confidence? She has a further, vague impression of two staring eyes watching her as she lies on her bed of blackened steel, through the variable gaps between the swivelling slats of the judas; but she is already slipping off to sleep.
It is the two policemen dressed in black who wake her up, with a start. How long has she been asleep? She feels herself being handled like a rag doll and does not even notice, at the time, that they briskly snap a pair of manacles on her wrists in order to fasten her hands together behind her back. She becomes aware of this several seconds later as they drag her from the cell, still barefoot and in her immodest bathing-costume, to lead her at a run along the same narrow corridor with its sudden, innumerable, inexplicable right-angled bends . . .
The interrogation takes place in an immense hall with a high, vaulted, vaguely Gothic ceiling, a floor paved with uneven stones, and pillars as in a church. It is rather cold here, at least for so scanty a costume. The man in the white suit is sitting behind a large and luxurious Directoire-style desk made of mahogany with bronze mounts. It is the only piece of furniture to be seen in the whole enormous room. Angelique has been placed standing in front of her judge. Without having unfastened her hands, the two policemen who led her here subsequently disappeared in the shadows. For the only light, coming from several clusters of spotlights up in the flies, falls on the place where the accused is standing. She can, however, clearly make out the man sitting opposite her, thanks to the white cloth of his jacket and the little lamp that shines on the books and papers spread out on his desk.
After going through certain of these at great length, he finally looks up at his prisoner. The swiftness with which his subordinates, whether warders or doctors, execute every little gesture and shift of position is in contrast to their boss's habit of leaving an abnormally long pause for thought between each of his movements and utterances. This might be the first time he has set eyes on the girl, so prolonged is his inspection of her. Eventually, as if guessing her thoughts, he says simply, “You can't sit down, it's against the rules.” And he goes back to his files.
Abruptly his manner changes. In smoothly playful tones he says, looking up with a smile, “If you'd rather kneel, you may, though there's nothing to say you must!” But immediately he recovers his usual ice-cold demeanour, adopting a thoroughly lugubrious intonation to complete his sentence: “. . . in the present case, that is.” Angelica bites her lip. She is afraid she will start to cry. She tugs impatiently at her chains, which feel ice-cold in the small of her back and are not at all like the slim handcuffs in use with the police; on the contrary they seem more like heavy, antiquated armbands such as were worn by slaves or convicts, joined by three or four wrought-iron links. This detail suddenly disturbs her more than all the rest.
“I don't understand . . .” she begins; and she goes no further, surprised by the timidity of her own voice, which is almost inaudible. The inspector stares at her curiously. Then he gives a brief, mocking laugh. “Injection,” he says, addressing an invisible nurse who, appearing at that moment, perhaps deliberately sticks the needle in too slowly and then empties the syringe too fast; the girl gives a feeble cry of pain and protest. But this reflex action will be her last. She feels her will-power gradually ebbing away. A different type of drug must have been used this time, for why would they put her to sleep here? “A picture of docility,” the false inspector concludes.
After continuing to watch the patient closely for almost a minute to make sure she shows no further inclination to resist, he begins speaking in a hard, dry, mechanical voice: “Identification. Simply answer each of my questions with yes, not forgetting to add sir, for form's sake. Your name is Angelica Salomon. Salomon, not Salmon as wrongly indicated on your recent medical sheet.”
Then, abruptly, he again changes to a different register, and it is as if lost in a distant reverie that he utters the following sentence: “Salmon . . .Too bad . . .You might have been able to swim without the help of your arms . . . “ Angelica, not understanding, replies, “Yes, sir,” as to the previous assertions, though in a more uncertain voice. There is a silence. The man stares straight ahead of him, apparently not seeing anything any more. At last he looks down at his notes and resumes in an inquisitorial manner: “You recognized your photograph in last night's Globe. You've given up pretending it isn't you.”
He looks alternately at the girl and at the sheet of newspaper that he has unfolded in front of him, with or without his spectacles, which he removes and replaces several times to appraise the difference. “Indeed, as far as the face is concerned there's no doubt at all. Let's have a look at the rest.” He signals briefly with a hand and one of the policemen steps up to the prisoner, releases the spring of a flick knife, making the thin blade snap out, briskly severs the bathing-costume's only strap, and tugs at the material so roughly with both hands that it tears into three pieces, one of which is ripped away completely and falls to the floor while the two other, smaller pieces are left hanging in shreds over one hip and down between the thighs. Angelica is thus naked down to mid-belly, the rest of the costume only clinging to her skin thanks to the elasticity of the material and to the girl's chained hands, with which she is doing her best to hold up one of the shredded edges behind her back. The man who did it has disappeared as abruptly as he appeared.
Franck V. Francis stares intently at the golden-bronzed bosom, now and again transferring his ga
ze to the reference photo, this time without taking off his steel-rimmed spectacles. “Good,” he says, adding almost immediately, in the same official tone, “You have my congratulations!” He begins writing busily at the bottom of the open page of a large register.
This time taking his cue from a different document, he continues running through the record: “Your body, cast up by the high tide, was found near the middle of the long beach that stretches from the canning works to the disused fort. You had your hands fastened together behind your back . . . “ He glances at the person concerned in order to verify this last detail. “Yes, that's right,” he says and resumes reading: “. . . with fifty-amp electric cable, non-twisted. However, drowning does not seem to have been the cause of death, which may have occurred some considerable time before. Marks of strangulation (by hanging or otherwise) with a thick rope . . .”
The inspector stops to take a further look at the live object of the report, sees no marks on the neck, and looks back at his papers, which he begins to shuffle feverishly. Eventually he murmurs as if to himself, “No, come on . . . We're not there yet . . . “ Then, addressing the girl: “Forgive me, I had the wrong page. I resume: you worked as a welding operative in the old cannery by the seashore. You left that job two months ago to join Lord G.’s private secretariat. You are not surprised at this sudden jump up the social scale, which is all the stranger for the fact that the young lord is an out-and-out homosexual. Or at least was. . . , since (it's no use feigning astonishment) he was murdered in public only last night, while you were pretending to be asleep and we were drawing up your dossier.” He closes his notebook with an impatient movement, having completely recovered his self-assurance.
Angelica, frozen like a statue, no longer knows herself what she does know and what she does not. “Final point of the charge,” the inspector concludes, giving her a hard stare. “This does not appear in the report as yet, but we shall soon remedy that. You are suspected of having belonged, before you were taken on at the antiquated canned-fish factory, to a band of youths living wild. You know that the extermination order is still in force. And it would be a mistake to believe that your beauty will curb the executioners’ zeal. Your magnificent body, fine-textured skin, and indubitably attractive face will on the contrary ensure that your sufferings, and their pleasure, are both prolonged.”
These final sentences of his text seem all of a sudden to have wearied Inspector Francis beyond measure. He says, “Right! That's all for this evening.” He signals to the two policemen in black: “Take the young lady back to the room. You may violate her if you like. But nothing more for the moment.”
In the corridor leading to the cells three gentlemen in evening dress—tail coats, silk scarves, and top hats—no doubt on their way home from the gala re-opening of the Grand Lyric Theatre, pass Angelica with her warders on either side of her, moving aside to make room for them and politely doffing their hats to the girl without showing the least surprise at the pleasing spectacle of her nudity or at the medieval barbarity of her chains. The oldest of them, who could be about fifty, inquires quite naturally of one of the policemen which room she occupies, this detainee whose face he has never seen before. The man addressed answers in a deferential tone: “Not allocated yet, sir. She's undergoing provisional conditioning: her case is being investigated.”
“Well, hurry up and convict her,” says the man in the dress coat, delicately squeezing between thumb and forefinger, in a fatherly gesture of undeniable benevolence, a nipple that the narrowness of the passage brings within reach of his white-gloved hand. Angelica modestly returns his smile. “And if it's a death sentence to be carried out immediately, do please let me know in time nevertheless. I should like at all events to be present at the execution.” The victim-to-be lowers her head a little in confusion as if this were a mark of attention by which she must show herself flattered, to do with some school examination, perhaps in dancing or music.
“Wasn't it her photo in the papers yesterday?” one of the aides accompanying the chief commissioner of police then asks. “Yes,” replies the second warder, “in fact that's what made us smell a rat, in a manner of speaking.” “Drowned by a sex maniac, they say?” “Our thinking at the moment is rather that she was sacrificed in the course of some religious ceremony.” “Ah, very good,” the chief commissioner says approvingly. “She's certainly worthy of it.” And with this final compliment he bows once more to the stranger and walks off, flanked by his assistants.
As she completes the rest of the short journey with its unexpected bends Angelica wonders why, despite the clarity of mind she feels she has recovered, she is not more frightened by what she has just heard. Actually she had the impression they were talking about someone else. When, the armour-plated door of the white cell once closed, they brutally rip off the shreds of the torn bathing-costume that were still after a fashion shielding her most private charms, she merely casts her eyes down in an entirely natural access of modesty and abandons herself submissively and engagingly to the caresses of the two men in the various attitudes that they make her adopt, though without disencumbering her of her heavy manacles.
Meanwhile the judas opens wide for the issue of the daily meal. Although the gaolers need no longer fear the least rebellion on the part of their docile captive, they take pleasure in making her eat without freeing her hands, obliging her in consequence to grovel in front of her bowl where it has been laid on the floor, in addition spreading her knees as far apart as possible under threat of punishments of extreme cruelty should she soil herself in the process. Fascinated by her suppleness and by the persistent seductiveness of her more constrained postures, they afterwards lead her, in the same get-up, to the toilet, which is of the seatless variety, in order to see her crouch down with thighs apart and then make delightful contorsions in putting the paper to use.
Back in the room, after playing with her for a while longer, she still docile and smiling, they finally fasten her to the iron bed with her long legs quartered. A number of rings and straps are fitted all around it for this type of use. But today they content themselves with attaching her ankles to the two sides of the metal frame, pulling the broad belts of stiff leather tight enough to make the patient flex her knees slightly, so opening up her vagina more widely. Her hands, still chained behind her back, force her in addition to arch her body upwards, which narrows her waist even more and brings out the amphora-like swell of her hips.
At the base of her belly with its silky skin, ever so slightly paler as are her breasts and the insides of her thighs, the triangular fur of the pubis is the same bright red-blond colour as the tangled mass of curly hair, where beneath stray locks two huge green eyes shine brightly, widened now by fear of being left alone, a prey to drug-induced phantasms.
This is the state in which Dr. Morgan will find her when he enters the experimentation chamber some hours later.
So Dr. Morgan, before going to the laboratory where he conducts his experiments in tertiary dream behaviour, called at G. Court, where he met Chief Commissioner Duchamp for the routine investigation in connection with the dramatic death of the young lord. The presence of the forensic pathologist is in fact a pure formality since the death unfortunately leaves no room for doubt, nor does the precise time it occurred, nor does its immediate cause. But one never knows, says Duchamp with that man-of-the-world half-smile that makes him pass for shrewd and possessed of secret resources.
In any case he gives little credence to the official version of the loathsome crime, despite the victim's dubious morals, a delayed-action bomb of that expensive and sophisticated type in no way forming part of the usual villain's armoury. Questioning of the chauffeur and the three male servants has produced no result, nor has that of the many secretaries, chambermaids, and favourites who fill the vast mansion. All these people, quite understandably, are still distraught as a result of the crime, though not the very young mistress of the house who, for her age, is displaying exceptional coolness.
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sp; It is in the small yellow drawing-room, which is decorated with souvenirs of varying degrees of authenticity brought back from Turkey where the couple spent their honeymoon, that she receives visitors. After a certain amount of small talk of a metaphysical and condolatory nature, Duchamp asks abruptly, “What were your precise whereabouts when the explosion occurred?” “My precise whereabouts were the lavatory,” replies Lady Caroline with a note of challenge in her voice. The quick smile that passes over the chief commissioner's lips is like a nervous twitch. “And of course,” he says, “the noise of the booby-trap reached you there?” “Good heavens, yes!” “How long was it then since you had left your husband?” “About seven minutes.” Duchamp considers this, clearly making some nimble yet intricate calculation in his head on conclusion of which he says simply, “One of your prettiest secretaries has disappeared, has she not?”
But the young lady continues to reply without embarrassment: “Yes, I know: Angelica von Salomon.” “When was the last time you saw her?” “Early afternoon.” “Where was she at that time?” “In the mail room.” “You have no idea what she did subsequently?” “No. None.” Having spoken these words with finality, she adds almost aggressively, “I don't, however, see the connection.”
Duchamp considers her in silence for a moment, then the brief labial contraction that serves him for a smile once again crosses the lower part of his face. “As far as making connections is concerned,” he says, “you can leave that to us.” After quite a long pause, occupied by thoughts of his own, he resumes: “Have you known this Miss von Salomon long?” “A month and twenty-seven days.” “So you had never seen her before you took her onto your secretarial staff?” “I didn't employ her; my husband did. He didn't tell me who had recommended her.” Duchamp says nothing for thirty or forty seconds, then, after consulting the still silent Dr. Morgan with a rapid glance, he goes on: “Did her state of mind strike you as leaving nothing to be desired? Or do you think her capable of fugues, whims, attacks of nerves, dissociation, sleepwalking, sudden violent emotions, morbid erotic fantasies, or other things of that sort?”
Recollections of the Golden Triangle Page 11