The Curse of the Grand Guignol

by Anna Lord

  He was Napoleon with an equal number of medals on both sides of his imperious barrel chest and a monster black hat that sat astride him like a mythically beastly bicorn.

  Champagne flowed. They took their seats around the dining room table and prepared to have childish fun when Raoul Crespigny, grinning as impishly as a naughty schoolboy, dropped a deliberate clanger, designed to excite and unnerve.

  “Are you going to tell everyone why they were invited here to your jolly party for the eighth of December?” he addressed to his hostess with dangerous politeness.

  Black ink splattered across the table and all over other people’s papers as everyone looked up quickly with impassioned alarm.

  For a brief moment the Countess’s remarkable poise faltered but when a terrible genie is halfway out of its bottle there is no putting it back. She held her nerve.

  “Certainement,” she smiled enigmatically; eyeing the curious little party with an air of elegant omnipotence. “There will be another Marionette Murder tonight.”

  She waited for the gasps to subside.

  “But what has that to do with us?” questioned the Red Eminence.

  “The murderer has been re-enacting a part of the horror show staged at rue Ballu. He murders his victim according to script. He always strikes on the opening night of the new performance. That will be tonight.”

  “That’s absurd!” shouted Davidov with all the fury of a war general.

  “No it’s not,” calmly countered la marquise, who had grasped the significance of the invitees more swiftly than most. “Countess Volodymyrovna has rightly pointed out the similarity between the horror show and the murders. I noticed it myself when I read of the murders in Le Temps yesterday. Perhaps she thinks we can help narrow down the culprit who is trying to ruin le Cirque du Grand Guignol.”

  “Oh, yes, well, that’s different,” muttered the Napoleonic lookalike, backing down. “I thought Crespigny meant we were invited so that a guilty person could be tricked into confessing like in those ridiculous English detective plays. I directed one once in Minsk. It was a triumph despite the woeful plot. You could spot the killer in the first act.”

  “No,” said Crespigny weightily, explaining himself, “I meant it was time the Countess confessed she is investigating the murders on behalf of the Sûreté National and that she suspects one of us.”

  “One of us!” came the indignant chorus.

  “But I have nothing to do with the Grand Guignol,” pointed out Radzival in a level-tone, allowing the truth of the statement to speak for itself.

  “And I,” said la marquise with regal gravitas, “could hardly murder large men and string them up.”

  “No one is accusing you, dear lady,” assured Dr Watson, picturing the party descend into a witch-hunt.

  “No one is accusing anyone,” said the inspector morosely – mainly because they had not a skerrick of proof.

  “Who the blazes are you anyway?” demanded Delgardo magisterially, turning as scarlet as his robe, glaring forthrightly at the interloper he believed might be a scribbler from the gutter press. “I don’t believe we were introduced.”

  “It’s Sherlock Holmes!” laughed Crespigny.

  “Who?”

  “The great London consulting detective and friend of Dr Watson!” Crespigny’s voice continued to ring with cynical amusement.

  “But he speaks fluent French with an impeccable accent.” Radzival, ever the disciplined courtier, was observant to a fault.

  “I am Inspector Didier de Guise,” confessed the man in the spotlight, bracing for hoots of laughter, and it didn’t take long for ignominy to rear its ugly head.

  “It’s Pierrot!”

  “I thought it was Cucurucu!”

  “No hare’s tail on your hat tonight, inspector?”

  Not everyone joined in the lampooning. Radzival, mindful of falls from grace, declined from making insulting remarks that chipped away at a man’s dignity. La marquise, a true Gallic blue-blood of exemplary breeding never mocked those beneath her; it was simply bad manners.

  The Countess interrupted the cruel jest. “Who is it that paints the backdrops for the theatre?”

  La Noire, who had been observing the comical pantomime with a glass of champagne in one hand and one eye on the door for Mahmoud, and enjoying everyone’s discomfort immensely, was the first to register the question. “Vincent, Felix and Hilaire.”

  “Why do you want to know that?” barked Davidov belligerently, feeling especially militant in his bicorn hat. “Do you suspect the trio of circassiens?”

  “I suspect everyone and no one at this stage,” said the Countess.

  “That must be because you have no proof,” reasoned Delgardo, feeling a touch more relaxed now that the man in the check coat turned out not to be a journalist out to smear his good name. “Is that why you chose to hold a Gobolinks party? To try and force one of us to reveal our innermost emotions and deepest secrets through our own ink blots?”

  “What are you talking about, Monsignor Delgardo?” said the Marquise de Merimont. “I don’t understand. How can ink blots force someone to reveal an emotion, a secret?”

  “A game of Gobolinks is not as innocent as it appears,” explained her librarian.

  “But a Gobolinks party is harmless fun,” persisted la marquise.

  The librarian looked earnestly at the Countess. “Shadow-pictures can reveal something dark about our shadow-selves – is that it?”

  The Countess nodded solemnly. “Yes, I admit I was hoping to learn more about each of you through your ink blots.”

  “That’s ludicrous!” cried the regal lady. “I never heard such nonsense in my life!”

  “Not so ludicrous, la marquise,” said Monsignor Delgardo. “It is an accepted method of psychological evaluation. It has been used successfully to uncover the disordered thoughts of mental patients.”

  “Mental patients!” blasted the war general, leaping up from his chair. “Is that why we have been invited! So that we can be assessed like a bunch of lunatics! If you’re in on this Delgardo, you can forget that booth!”

  Delgardo looked frightened. “No, no, this has nothing to do with me.”

  “I bet you planted the idea in the Countess’s head,” continued Davidov, frothing at the mouth. “Your type is good at that sort of thing. You dealers of psychology are all shamans and witch-doctors.”

  “Sit down, Davidov,” said Crespigny tiresomely. “You will give yourself a seizure and you look ridiculous in that hat when your head bobs back and forth. Besides, the murderer is not a mental lunatic. Far from it. The murderer is clever, calculating and creative. Isn’t that right, Inspector de Guise?”

  “Yes, that’s a good way to describe our murderer.”

  “But he must be a lunatic,” interrupted La Noire, joining the debate, “normal people don’t go about mutilating corpses and making them look like puppets.”

  “They do if they’ve got good reason,” said Crespigny.

  “Good reason?” questioned the librarian, meeting the playwright’s gaze. “There can never be good reason for such horror. The man is a monster.”

  Crespigny did not back down. “Perhaps our murderer has his reasons.”

  “Stop calling him ‘our murderer’,” rebuked Davidov. “You make it sound as if he is one of us.”

  “But that’s just it,” argued Crespigny. “He has to be one of us. He is privy to the plays before they are enacted on stage.”

  “Impossible!” cried Davidov. “I keep them locked up.”

  La Noire drained her champagne flute. “Kiki,” she said darkly.

  Those who had their backs to the Negress turned around sharply.

  “What about Mademoiselle Kiki?” pressed Delgardo.

  “Kiki knows what’s going to be acted on the stage,” she said.

  Davidov slammed his fist down, knocking over his own bottle of ink. Fortunately the tray spared black ink spilling onto the table. “The Humboldts are behind it! They a
re always hanging around the theatre like a bad smell! They must have threatened her! They are the murderers! Bloody anarchists!” He glared at the inspector. “What are you waiting for? Go and arrest them!”

  “As soon as you give me proof,” said the inspector, wishing he could pin it on the three men who had lately made his life hell and ruined his career. He pictured himself back in the fold of his feckless famille, ensconced in the noble bosom of card sharps, embezzlers, forgers, and aristocratic prostitutes. The Grossetestes made the Humboldts look like pillars of the community. His siblings would revel in his disgrace. They would slap him on the back and congratulate him for finally giving up on an honest career.

  “Surely,” said Delgardo, anxious for Kiki’s fragile mental state in light of her recent tragedy, “the police can easily link the three anarchists to the victims. Weren’t they all rich citizens – the sort revolutionaries hate most? Kiki would have no grudge against them. She must have been threatened, as Monsieur Davidov rightly pointed out. The poor girl must be terrified out of her wits.”

  Davidov started frothing again. “Arrest them I say!”

  Dr Watson, having observed the Countess wave away Mahmoud, the footmen and the maids so as not to interrupt the heated discussion, decided to dispense champagne himself. Throats were dry and tempers were running hot. It seemed to work.

  “Calm down, Monsieur Davidov,” said the librarian. “This is not Russia. The police do not go about arresting citizens without good cause.”

  “Quite,” said la marquise, her voice resolute. “We have moved beyond the dark days of the revolution when the citizens of France could be incarcerated on the whim of those in power.”

  Davidov took a deep breath and emptied his glass. “I’m not saying guillotine them without trial. I’m saying arrest them and interrogate them. Search their café. Find proof. It will be there somewhere. Mark my words.”

  Dr Watson refilled the director’s glass.

  The Countess made a suggestion that set off a series of grateful sighs. “Shall we adjourn to the salon for afternoon tea? We can then return refreshed and finish our game.”

  “What!” barked Davidov; the one abstainer of gratitude; emptying his second glass in one fell swoop. “So you can read things into our ink blots and pin the crimes on us?”

  “Have you got something to hide?” challenged Crespigny, allowing the ladies to exit the room first.

  That comment silenced the director and anyone else who might have objected on similar grounds. Anyone who refused to finish the shadow-picture game would now look like someone with something to hide.

  Exotic objets d’art scattered about the salon provided a distraction as delicacies were served along with coffee and a selection of teas. Tempers cooled. La marquise showed a lot of interest in the ikons. Davidov thought he might be able to work them into one of the plays. Delgardo was fascinated by the Egyptian scarabs. Davidov thought he could work them in too. Radzival, who had once owned a valuable collection of Ormolu clocks, displayed his vast knowledge of the workings of the timepieces to Crespigny. La Noire managed to corner Mahmoud by the fireplace and seemed riveted when he explained about the different phallic objects. When Mahmoud retreated, La Noire sashayed up to the Countess.

  “You think it could be Vincent, Felix and Hilaire doing the murders,” she said huskily, “that’s why you asked who painted the backdrops?”

  “I wondered about the backdrops, because whoever painted those had to know in advance about the plays that were going to be performed, though not the entire play.”

  And that’s what bothered her. The murderer had to know the entire play to borrow the most pertinent bits from it.

  Delgardo was listening; his oily tone was on the sarcastic side. “You can hold another Gobolinks party and invite them, oh, but unfortunately it will be too late for victim number six.”

  “You will have to invite Laszlo and Salvador too,” intervened Davidov sardonically. “They used to be in the circus with the others. They put together the trapeze for Kiki and Coco. They make all our props: the fake head, the fake tongue, the fake member, the window, the swing, everything. And they are always whining about how I don’t pay them enough.” The director turned to his playwright. “Hey, Crespigny! You can write a play about a circus clown who gets stabbed by a knife-thrower!”

  Crespigny, who was appreciating the finer points of Ormolu clocks – the exquisite gilding, the superb rococo detailing, the burnished effect - scowled at the interruption. “I might write a play about a Russian peasant who gets crushed by an elephant in a church filled with ikons and then mauled by lion as he crawls to the altar.”

  Iron eyebrows brushed off the insult. “There are no elephants and lions inside churches.”

  “There might be if they escaped from a circus,” offered La Noire sweetly.

  “The peasant might even be crucified in the final scene,” suggested Radzival, entering into the ridiculousness of the fantasy scenario.

  Crespigny laughed heartily and slapped the librarian on the back. Radzival appeared to blush at the rough contact or perhaps the fact he was thrust suddenly into the limelight. He blushed some more and took a step back when the playwright gave him an impish wink.

  “Yes!” exclaimed Davidov loudly, happy to take centre stage. “We haven’t had a crucifixion! If you finish it with a rape on the altar that would be the coup de grace!”

  Dr Watson had heard enough. He excused himself from the salon to look in on Xenia.

  The Marquise de Merimont was not as appalled as the doctor expected. Her soft sea-green eyes were sparkling avidly.

  “Instead of viewing the Marionette Murders as a threat to your livelihood,” she addressed to the director, “you could capitalize on them.”

  “How do you mean?” said Davidov, sounding interested.

  “You could make use of them in your promotions. Contact the newspapers and point out the similarity of the murders to your plays. The audiences will come on droves. Queues will be stretching to the Boulevard de Clichy. You will be more popular than the gang on rue Chaptal in no time at all.”

  Davidov punched the air triumphantly. Napoleon at the end of his Egyptian campaign could not have been more over-joyed. “You’re right! Why didn’t I think of it! The return on your investment, la marquise, will be enormous! And I could afford to take the show to America!”

  “America?” echoed la marquise weakly, the sparkle going out of her skin.

  “Yes! Straight after the Paris Fair next year!”

  La Noire gave a little clap and did a shimmy. “I can go home famous! Not just a cheap chanteuse or…” She stopped abruptly and looked around for Mahmoud, her voice dropping. “Or a two-bit actress no one has ever heard of.”

  “Let’s go and finish those ink blots!” shouted the director like a general rallying his troops for victory. “I’ve got a show to put on tonight!”

  The mood lifted. No one felt under threat. It was tacitly agreed that either the Humboldts or the circassiens were guilty. Everyone set to work creating a poem to match their blot.

  Dr Watson rattled off the first thing that came into his head. He was disgusted with the people he was being forced to entertain and wanted this party to end as soon as possible. Apart from la marquise and the librarian, he didn’t think the others possessed a shred of morality between them. And he was none too certain about the Marquise de Merimont. She had sounded quite gleeful in the salon when outlining how Davidov could profit from the murder of innocent souls. And she did go every night to the theatre. That spoke volumes for her true character.

  He formed a new theory. He wondered if la marquise paid the Humboldts or the circassiens to murder people to promote the theatre she financed. She probably knew lots of respectable elderly citizens who could be lured to dark and sinister places in the middle of the night for the purposes of mutilation and murder. She probably watched under cover of darkness, the same way she watched the horror plays from her private booth.


  Dr Watson rattled off the first rhyme that came to him:

  This and That

  An eye for an eye

  Tit for tat

  This or That?

  Davidov thought his blot looked like a Golem:

  Unshaped Shem

  Vulgar clay

  Met and emet

  Death and Truth

  Kneaded from Adam

  Dust to dust

  Judenhass.

  Inspector de Guise was out of sorts and out of inspiration. His mind was drawing blanks just as it had been from the start of this terrible business. Nothing made sense:

  Two wrongs don’t make it right

  Oh, yes they do!

  Two wrongs make a right

  Tu quoque!

  The Marquise de Merimont was seeing moon rabbits. Her whole life seemed meaningless, a fading fantasy; her youthful dream dying before her eyes, the world spinning inexorably away from her:

  Lonely rabbit on the moon

  Blind, deaf, mute, old

  Far, far away

  All alone

  Dead.

  Raoul Crespigny felt his muse return. Life was suddenly golden. Time was on his side. He dipped his quill in the ink and wrote as furiously as the bard:

  Murder most foul

  Alas poor Yorrick

  Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage

  One may smile and be a villain

  Good night sweet prince

  Flights of angels sing thee to thy bed

  To die to sleep

  And in that sleep of death

  What dreams may come

  Conscience makes cowards of us all

  Be not my sins remembered.

  Monsignor Delgardo decided it might be wise to stick to butterflies. He set out to create the most boring imagery imaginable, the sort that would draw no attention to itself; words such as luminous, diaphanous, temporal and ephemeral were purged in favour of the banal:

  Butterfly flits

  By and by

  Flutterby Butterfly

  fly, fly, fly.

  Monsieur Radzival’s blot looked like an angel. He had long ago given up believing in angels so it surprised him to see one. He was more accustomed to seeing devils: