The Curse of the Grand Guignol

by Anna Lord

  “I see a butterfly,” he said, smiling. “However, I notice it is titled: Hurt Singer. What is it meant to represent, by the way?”

  “Madame Hertzinger lying dead on the pavement.”

  “One of the victims of the Marionette Murders?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, dear, - what do you see Countess Volodymyrovna?”

  “I see a murderer.”

  “Hmm, and what do you see, Dr Watson?”

  “I see a mess. Is it possible to have a look around the hospital?”

  “Certainly, let me give you a guided tour of mente capti French style first. The hospital per se is in the other wing. Here, because of my special study, we have the asylum. You will not be in any danger but I recommend you don’t wander off on your own.”

  They walked along a wide clean gallery either side of which ran cells for the mentally ill. There were small windows set into the doors for ease of viewing the inmates, both male and female, although many of the doors stood open and some of the less dangerous patients who had been at the asylum for a decade or more roamed the corridors at will and others even had the freedom of the grounds.

  “Do you get many visitors?” enquired Dr Watson, thinking that Salpetriere was no house of horror, and a far cry from Bethlem Hospital in London, more famously known as Bedlam, a byword for insanity and chaos.

  “Oh, yes, the spectacle of madness is eternally fascinating to those who see themselves as sane and the trade in lunacy has always been lucrative. Asylums are funded largely by visitors. How did Mr Porter put it: ‘The frisson of the freak show’? However, here, you will not see any chains, stocks and manacles, no patients routinely bled, blistered and bruised for the sake of curing them. They may be restrained but only if they are a danger to themselves and others. We prefer to study mania rather than punish it. There are great leaps being made in the study of the human mind. Ah, here comes Little Marianne. Guard your reticule, la comtesse.”

  Little Marianne hung back shyly, her eyes downcast. She approached sideways like a crab, scuttling quickly, pausing in her tracks, then moving off again. Like a child she closed her eyes to avoid being seen. If I cannot see you, you cannot see me! She might have had the mind of a child but when she scuttled into an arc of light it was plain to see she was an old woman. Her small delicate hands were wrinkled and covered with liver spots; her neck wrinkled.

  “Have you had your bath today, Little Marianne?” Monsignor Delgardo’s voice was surprisingly paternalistic.

  The old woman dropped her gaze and nodded shyly.

  “Was it nice and warm?” he teased.

  Little Marianne gave a shudder.

  Monsignor Delgardo laughed and walked on. “We believe in cold-bathing. All the inmates take a cold bath once a day.”

  “Even in winter?” The Countess noted how Little Marianne’s downcast beady eyes were riveted to her reticule.

  “Yes. I highly recommend it. I take a cold bath every day too. It stimulates the senses. Those who are out of their wits benefit from the curative shock to the nervous system even more. We have no miasmatic vapours or effluvial elements here. We lead by example. Windows open for fresh air, clean living. Dr Sigmund Freud, the controversial German doctor, studied here under the late Dr Charcot. We are making great strides in the treatment of mental illness.”

  “Do you adhere to the humoral theory?” asked Dr Watson knowledgably, watching as the queer little woman scuttled around the corner yet continued to keep an eye on them. She was like a baby playing hide and seek. She covered her eyes with her hands whenever she thought anyone might be looking at her, yet there was method in her madness. It was an effective way of avoiding eye contact with those she might not wish to see.

  “As far as diet is concerned - yes? We do not advocate starvation, as was once the accepted norm, but the avoidance of rich food is essential.”

  “You do not practice deprivation?”

  “We do have solitary confinement for those who are a danger to others.”

  “What about drugs? Are drugs routinely administered?”

  “Those with no control over their bowels, and those who are incontinent, are routinely given emetics and purgatives, but generally we do not keep our patients sedated. Shall we cross over to the hospital section now?”

  As they passed through a door at the end of the gallery the Countess thought she spotted a petite, pretty, blonde woman, as agile as an acrobat, whom she had never actually met but still easily recognised – ducking through a side door, disappearing into the wing they had just exited.

  “Oh, dear, I think I must have left my gloves in your office, Monsignor Delgardo.”

  “Are you sure? I thought you were wearing them when we left.”

  “As you can see, I definitely do not have them on.”

  He checked her bare hands and, after apologizing, volunteered to retrieve them.

  “Nonsense,” she said with determined insistence. “I shall go back for them myself. I know Dr Watson is very keen to see your surgical ward. He has been talking of nothing else all morning. I shall meet you in the front garden by the statue when you are done. I’m afraid surgical wards always make me queasy – all that blood.” She pulled a distressing face.

  He reached into the side pocket of his long black robe. “Here is my key. Just make sure to lock the door when you come away.”

  “Of course,” she assured.

  She re-entered the gallery in time to see Kiki darting down some stairs. After retrieving the gloves hidden in her coat pocket, she hurried to the same staircase, pulling the grey suede gloves on as she went. They had not been given a guided tour of the lower level, only the ground floor and the one above. She assumed it housed the coal cellar and various storerooms.

  There were fewer gas lamps at the bottom of the stairs and the scarcity of windows made it even darker. Where previously the walls had been like a blank white canvas which bounced the light back and forth, these walls were smudged grey. The feeble light that percolated thus far seemed to have the life sucked out of it. It was rabbit warren of tight corridors with low ceilings, damp floors, and fetid vapours. Silence reigned except for the plink-plink-plink of droplets of water. The Countess soon lost sight of Kiki.

  She was about to concede defeat when a queer voice startled her.

  “Cigarette?” The voice was low and strained, as if the speaker was being throttled and fighting for breath. “Spare a cigarette, madame?”

  It was Little Marianne, more shrunken and more wizened in the grungy grey light.

  The Countess steadied before lighting a cigarette, hoping the offering would not be used to set fire to the asylum.

  The mad old loon puffed on the gasper as if her life depended on it. “This way,” she whispered after the third ferocious inhalation.

  The Countess was tossing up whether it was wise to follow a mad woman down a dark labyrinth to God Knows where when the old woman croaked, “Kiki.”

  “You know where Kiki went?”

  The other nodded, and for a moment the Countess felt unnerved and frightened. Her queer guide looked like a life-size marionette whose bobbing head was about to fall off.

  The old woman led her down a short maze of tight corridors then stopped suddenly and indicated a door before scuttling off sideways in the opposite direction to the one they had come.

  It was with trepidation that the Countess pushed open the door, holding onto her last indrawn breath. She couldn’t say who was more startled. Though on reflection, it was probably Kiki.

  “Close the door,” Kiki hissed. “Before the matron comes past. Who are you?”

  “Countess Volodymyrovna.”

  “Oh, I recognise the name. No one in France has a name like that. Raoul told me you are investigating the Marionette Murders along with your lover.”

  “Travelling companion,” she corrected.

  “Really? You were at the salonniere the other night?”

  “Yes, you didn’t go?”

>   She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Salonnieres are boring. La marquise is boring. She puts ground up nacre on her face. She mixes it with rouge.”

  The tiny cell contained a single metal bed covered with a thin mattress made of ticking. There was no bed linen. On the bed was a young woman. She was lying on her back and her wrists and ankles were bound with leather straps to the four corners of the bed. Covering her body was a prickly grey blanket. Her eyes were open but they looked glassy and blank. She might have been dead but for the fact she was still breathing, her chest rising and falling shallowly, visible only because of a shaft of watery light that leaked in through a dirty window the size of a handkerchief.

  “Who is she?” asked the Countess.

  “My sister - Coco.”

  “How did she…I mean what’s wrong with…What happened to her?”

  “She fell off the trapeze. That was two years ago. She was not crippled but she was in a lot of pain. She started to drink white absinthe and then she began mixing it with opium. She became wild when she couldn’t have it. Like an animal. There was no money to pay for more and more opium every day. She started to sell herself. First in a brothel and then on the streets. She was badly beaten many times and almost died. The police brought her here because she was a prostitute. Serge pays for her treatment.”

  “Monsieur Serge Davidov?”

  “Yes, he knew us both when we worked in the circus. When he came and begged me to work in le Cirque du Grand Guignol I agreed as long as he paid for Coco to be looked after.”

  “Why is she restrained?”

  Kiki pulled back the blanket to reveal her sister’s wrists. “She will get splinters of wood or glass to stab at her wrists. Sometimes I think it might be for the best to let her die. Is that awful? Am I an awful sister? I feel bad that she fell instead of me. Shhh, someone’s coming!”

  Footsteps came and went. Whoever was outside, paused and walked on.

  Gently, Kiki touched her sister’s pale forehead and caressed the long stingy hair splayed out across the thin mattress. “This place is awful but where else can Coco go? Did you know the Grand Guignol on rue Chaptal did an act set in an insane asylum not long ago?”

  The Countess shook her head.

  “A pretty young girl is set upon by two jealous old crones. They blind her using scissors. Everyone laughs as blood gushes out of her eyes. Sometimes I dream I am that girl.”

  “Does Monsieur Delgardo know your sister is here?”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t like me to visit Coco because he knows I have dreams about being that girl and he worries for me. You must never say you saw me here.” She glanced nervously at the door and appeared to shudder.

  “Are all the prostitutes kept on this level?”

  “Oh, no, it is just the girls Monsignor Delgardo is looking after. The prostitutes are kept at the back of the hospital. There are hundreds of them. Hundreds and hundreds. What are you doing here?”

  “I came to give Monsignor Delgardo a painting for his office. My travelling companion, Dr Watson, is being given a tour of the hospital by the Monsignor. I spotted you and wondered what you were doing here. An insane asylum is not normally a place a young woman visits without a chaperone.”

  “I come alone every day. I want to make sure Coco is…is…comfortable. I should get going. If Monsignor Delgardo is busy in the hospital with your companion he won’t see me.” She kissed her sister on the forehead then moved quickly to the door, opened it, and checked the corridor. After a brief pained look back at her sister, she fled.

  Alone in the cell with the hapless Coco, the Countess checked the girl’s pulse. It was weak. She struck a lucifer and held it to the girl’s eyes. There was nary a flicker. Perhaps Kiki would get her wish after all. Her sister might die at any moment. She wondered what sort of ‘looking after’ Monsignor Delgardo was really doing down here. There was no way this had anything to do with his research. Coco did not look like a megalomaniac.

  The Countess had a quick glance in some of the other cells on her way out. The doors had no proper locks with keys, merely bolts for ease of incarceration. The inmates were all female and all strapped to their beds. They looked as emaciated, drugged, and near-dead as Coco.

  Nausea threatened to overwhelm her as she rushed up the stairs and out into broad daylight, gulping back a huge mouthful of cold winter air that burned her throat and lungs and made her grateful to be alive and healthy and sane. Agitated and sickened by what she had seen, she took a quick turbulent turn around the garden to gather her thoughts and make sense of them.

  Little Marianne was standing by the sun dial, eyeing her sideways, suspiciously.

  The Countess lighted two cigarettes.

  “You know how to keep secrets, don’t you?” she said as she passed the second cigarette into the wrinkled old hand.

  Little Marianne nodded, and once again she looked like a demented marionette whose lolling head was about to fall off.

  Chapter 11 - Invitations

  “I see you found your gloves.”

  “Yes,” she replied, looking directly into the eyes of Monsignor Delgardo as she handed back the keys, hoping he would conclude by her forthrightness that she had nothing to hide. “And I think you’re right about the butterfly.”

  “Butterfly?”

  “I now see a butterfly in the splatter too.”

  “I hope you haven’t been waiting long?” intervened Dr Watson by way of apology for taking longer than he expected. “There was a lot to see in the hospital. It is state of the art. The understanding of epilepsy and the study of the effects of syphilis on the brain is much further advanced than anything in England.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we allow Monsignor Delgardo to get on with his important research?”

  Smiling charmingly, the Countess slipped her arm through Dr Watson’s elbow. “By the way, Monsignor Delgardo, I believe you also have prostitutes here at Salpetriere.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “We didn’t see any during our tour.”

  “They are housed behind the hospital. Everything used to be mixed. Patients, lunatics and prostitutes all in together, but these days we prefer to keep them separate. Besides, there are so many prostitutes these days, if we let them go where they want they will soon take over.”

  “Why so many?”

  “They came in droves after the Panama Affair. There were so many on the streets the government didn’t know what to do with them all. Most of them were diseased and quite wretched. By the way, I’d prefer it if you refrained from giving cigarettes to the mental patients. They tend to set fire to their beds.”

  Dr Watson waited until they were in the landau. His voice was disapproving. “Did you give a lighted cigarette to one of the mental patients?”

  “Yes, but I don’t understand how Monsignor Delgardo knew it was me; there were dozens visitors walking in the gardens.”

  “He probably saw you from one of the windows. Who did you give it to?”

  “Little Marianne.”

  “Good grief! The mad crab-woman! And what was that odd remark about the butterfly?”

  “Odd?”

  “I recognize the tone of voice you adopt when you are embellishing. And don’t bother denying it.”

  She had already decided not to mention to her companion about her visit to the lower level so she could hardly admit she said it so that Delgardo would think she went back to his office when in fact she did no such thing. But there was something else about the way he’d said ‘butterfly’ in the first place.

  “If one is aware that ink blots, or in this case splatters, indicate a state of mind or a hidden emotion that can be used to determine thought disorder, then it stands to reason one would make up something innocent and banal to appear to having morally appropriate thoughts that are not disordered. I think he said butterfly because it sounded nice.”

  “And you said murderer. Is that because you wanted to sound un-nice or because you think he is our murderer?
”

  “I don’t know. It just came out. Maybe the blots or splatters do actually work in some subconscious way. We drop our guard and blurt out things before thinking.”

  “I get the impression you don’t like him.”

  “I like him less now than when I first met him.”

  “Well, you might not like him but you have to admit if he is the murderer we are back to having no motive and no one who could help him move the dead bodies.”

  “Not unless he roped in some lunatics. Do you feel like paying another visit to the theatre tonight? If not, I can go with Mahmoud.”

  He expelled a weighty breath. “I’ll go – it’s not as if I have anything else to do.”

  She gave his arm a gentle squeeze to show her appreciation. “I feel like giving a party.”

  “Don’t tell me you plan to hostess a salonniere after the show tonight?”

  “No, I’m thinking of hostessing a Gobolinks party on the eighth of December. It will have to be during the day as most of the guests will be busy at night either performing on stage or committing murder.”

  He tried not to laugh. This business was serious. But he couldn’t help himself.

  When they arrived at rue Bonaparte he decided to question the coachman.

  Yes, the coachman was certain someone had been being followed them from the Hotel de Merimont the night of the salonniere, what’s more, he though it again yesterday when they went to the Canal Saint-Martin. And yes, he thought the man following them in a hansom cab had an unusually dark face. In fact, if he didn’t know better he’d have said the man was wearing a black mask like Claude Duval the highwayman, except they didn’t have highwaymen anymore and men didn’t go about wearing black masks. And he swore on his mother’s grave he hadn’t even been drinking.

  The Countess went immediately to her aunt’s study and set about writing out invitations to her Gobolinks party. It was not the sort of party that required a large number of guests. Five at most, plus herself and Dr Watson. That made seven. More than enough and besides, the pied-a-terre did not lend itself to large gatherings.