Psychomania: Killer Stories Read online

  “I do not think that, but I believe someone is trying to exploit their acquaintance with you to make a point. Do you know of anyone who bears a fanatical grudge against you, or even a fanatical obsession for you?”

  “Alas, no! Those days are long past. Success of course breeds enemies, but once one becomes eclipsed, as I have been by the likes of Signor Verdi and Herr Wagner, one’s foes lose interest. In the past there were people whom I have had to cross. There have been divas of course! Ah, those delicious sirens! Those fearful harpies! There was that soprano at the Opéra, La Santelli, who lost her upper register almost overnight and became a contralto. She was very indignant about having to play supporting rather than prima donna roles as a consequence. But then, she was always insupportable even as a soprano. She had to go.

  “Then there are the aspiring composers. Oh, dear! How can one let them down gently? I had one come to me, a gentleman too, the Marquis de Saint-Loup, a friend of our Emperor, I understand. It was three years ago, shortly after the death of my poor dear colleague Meyerbeer, and this Saint-Loup had written a solemn funeral march in his honour. After he had played it through to me on my pianoforte he asked my opinion and I said: ‘Well, my dear Marquis, I think on the whole it would have been better had you died and Maestro Meyerbeer had composed the march.’

  “Sometimes my wit gets the better of my good nature, I am afraid, but I do not consider those to be grounds for such atrocious homicides. My dear friend, I am afraid I have been of no help to you.”

  “On the contrary, Maestro, you have given me much food for thought.”

  “Do not wait another ten years before you visit me again, my friend. I hardly dare admit it to myself, but I am not long for this world. Olympe tries to hide the truth from me, but I know it well enough. The sins of youth have caught up with me.”

  The sins of youth! Les péchés de la jeunesse!’ The phrase echoed in Dupin’s mind. But then, why now?

  Dupin took a carriage to the Commissioner’s office in the Faubourg Saint-Germain as he had promised. When he arrived there the place seemed to be in some confusion. In the Hall Dupin made himself known to the Commissioner’s Deputy who was glancing apprehensively up the stairs. The sound of a violent argument could be heard coming from the office on the first floor.

  “Commissioner Viardot is up there with the Marquis,” said the Deputy Commissioner.

  “Saint-Loup?” suggested Dupin.

  The Deputy Commissioner nodded.

  “I should like to meet the good Marquis,” said Dupin and, before the Deputy Commissioner could prevent him, he was bounding up the stairs, two steps at a time. He knocked at the door of Viardot’s office and, without waiting for a reply, entered.

  Standing either side of a desk was the robust form of Commissioner Viardot and that of a tall, dandified, red-faced man in his late-fifties, with elaborately coiffed ginger mustachios and whiskers. His once-handsome face was now raddled and scarred by drink and debauchery, but his pale blue eyes burned fiercely. He turned on Dupin.

  “How dare you enter without permission, monsieur!”

  “Is this your office, Monsieur le Marquis?” enquired Dupin coolly.

  “Is this—! How dare you, monsieur! And who are you, may I ask?”

  “This is the Chevalier Dupin, Monsieur le Marquis. The man I told you about. The celebrated private investigator.”

  The Marquis de Saint-Loup jammed a monocle into his left eye socket and studied Dupin with what he imagined to be a highly satirical expression.

  “Ah, yes, indeed! The soi-disant hero of the Rue Morgue, eh? And what are your conclusions this time, monsieur detective? Is it to be another homicidal orang-utan?”

  “I assure you, Monsieur le Marquis,” said Dupin smoothly, “that no one answering to your description is under suspicion at this present moment.”

  For some ten seconds Saint-Loup was speechless and his face went an even deeper shade of red. Finally he muttered: “If you were not utterly beneath my notice, Dupin, I would demand satisfaction from you.”

  “If I had not more pressing matters on my mind, Monsieur le Marquis, you would receive it,” replied Dupin. A cold silence followed.

  “I have told Viardot here,” said Saint-Loup eventually, “that I want to see an arrest for these outrages within twenty-four hours. He may make use of your services, for what they are worth, if he so wishes. He may call upon the Devil himself for all I care, but let this matter be cleared up without any further delay. Is that understood? You seem to forget that the honour of France and of the Emperor are at stake. Good night to you!” And with that he swept from the room.

  “You should not have provoked him,” said Viardot.

  “I apologize.”

  “Sometimes I think he is not quite sane. Especially when he is in liquor. You doubtless noticed—?”

  “Yes. I caught a whiff of his breath as he went past. He too is a devotee of the Green Fairy. But there is all the difference in the world, my dear Viardot, between a gourmet and a gourmand. Well, what have you discovered?”

  “You were quite right. The Rossini operas that you mention have been performed at the Opera in recent years, but there were others.”

  “In heaven’s name, which others?”

  “I do not remember.”

  “Then find out! Find out their casts, the circumstances of their production. Anything you can. Don’t you see? If this killer strikes again, it will be in the pavilion of a nation where a Rossini opera has been set. There is some method to the killer’s madness, but I cannot yet quite see what that method is. Meanwhile, your men must be vigilant both tonight and tomorrow night. I feel sure that the killer will strike again before July the first, the day on which Rossini’s Hymn is to be performed. One more thing: did you notice the Marquis’s teeth?”

  “His teeth? What about them?”

  “They are black.”

  “So they are. What of it?”

  “There, I believe, you have the key to the whole mystery. As yet, I can prove nothing, but a little more research may yield results.”

  “But black teeth—?”

  “Les péchés de la jeunesse, my dear Viardot. The sins of youth! Till tomorrow. Be vigilant!”

  ~ * ~

  “I don’t do anything funny like that. I’m a nice clean girl, I am.”

  “But I have heard different, mademoiselle.”

  “Oh, who from? I’ve got my principles same as everyone else. There are certain things I will not do.”

  “I pay in gold. Look!”

  “Well, I might. But I want to be treated with respect.”

  “You will receive the respect you deserve, ma fille. Have another drink.”

  “I don’t mind if I do.”

  “That’s better. We could have a little singsong afterwards, couldn’t we?”

  “You’re a strange one and no mistake.”

  “And you’re a dirty little girl, aren’t you? Dirty down below. Dirty all through. But I’m going to clean you out. Good and proper. With my little—”

  “No—!”

  ~ * ~

  Paris, June 30th, 1867

  That morning Dupin rose early and went to the Opera. There he spent time talking to whomever he could find: scene painters, stage hands, musicians, singers, particularly those who had served in that great theatre for a long time. Several times he dispatched messages to Commissioner Viardot’s office requesting that he be informed of any developments.

  Finally he returned to his apartment in the Rue Saint-Honoré to wait impatiently for Viardot to summon him. He barely touched the exquisite little supper that his manservant Marcel placed before him. The clock in the façade of the nearby church of Saint-Roch, where in 1763 the Marquis de Sade had been married, chimed eight... nine ... ten ...

  Suddenly there was a knocking at the apartment door. Marcel let in Commissioner Viardot and showed him into the library where Dupin was sitting disconsolately over
a fine Armagnac. He looked up eagerly.

  “He struck again last night. The same hideous methods,” said Viardot.

  “Last night! Then in God’s name, why have you only just told me?”

  “We found the body but an hour ago. Yet it has been there for eighteen hours at least. It had been hidden by a display of regional crafts in the French Pavilion. A member of the public, a lady, discovered it quite by accident.”

  “Have you detained the lady in question?”

  “No.”

  “Ah! Never mind. In which part of the French Pavilion was the body found? Devoted to which region of France?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It could matter very much. It could mean everything.”

  “The body was found hidden under a display of wines.”

  “Wines! But from what district?”

  “The Loire Valley, I think.”

  “The Loire! Of course! And close by, models of chateaux—”

  “Correct—”

  “Amboise, Chinon, Fourmentieres? The district of Touraine.”

  “Yes, but what— ?”

  “Of course! Le Comte Ory! Then tonight the killer will strike once more, and I know where. Is your carriage waiting down below?”

  “It is.”

  “Then we haven’t a moment to lose. We will stop off at your office only to summon as many men as we can.”

  “But where then?”

  “To the Swiss Alpine village in the Exposition, of course! Pray God that we are in time!”

  ~ * ~

  In the carriage, as they hurried once again towards the Exposition in the Champ de Mars, Viardot turned to his friend Dupin.

  “I know that you like to keep your reasoning to yourself, but I must beg you to explain why we are hurrying towards the Swiss Alpine village.”

  “It is very simple. Le Comte Ory is set in the district of Touraine in the Loire Valley. It was the last but one opera that Rossini wrote specifically for the Paris Opéra. (I exclude the pasticcios of course.) The two previous ones were Moïse (a version of Mosè in Egitto) and Le Siège de Corinth. So the last three victims were killed in the locations of these three operas in sequence. And what is the last opera that Maestro Rossini composed for Paris?”

  “Of course! I know that. It was Guillaume Tell. And so, the Swiss Alpine village!”

  “Precisely. But there is a further question. Why did the killer conceal the last body, a thing that had not been done before? My conjecture is that our criminal reckoned that we would guess where the next assassination would take place. The clues had become too obvious. Therefore the killer needed to delay our arrival at the scene until the dreadful work was done.”

  “It seems a very risky procedure in any case. There must be something more behind it than that.”

  “Oh, I agree! Dear God, can’t your coachman go any faster?”

  At the entrance to the Champ de Mars Dupin and Viardot alighted and were met with about twenty gendarmes. Viardot instructed them to make their way as swiftly and unobtrusively as they could towards the Swiss section.

  There were still plenty of revellers about, wandering through the strange, artificially cosmopolitan avenues and piazzas. Few people noticed the purposeful way in which Dupin and Viardot hurried towards the Swiss Alpine village in the far west of the Champ de Mars.

  On arrival they found that most of the gendarmes had got there before them.

  With brisk efficiency Viardot spread out his forces and the posse embarked on a thorough search of all the dwellings in the Swiss section. It was a kind of street, decked out with all the picturesqueness of an idealized mountain community. Bright flowers (mostly artificial) erupted from window boxes and hanging baskets. At the end of the street was a wooden chalet with a veranda and, set into its steeply pitched roof, a gigantic cuckoo clock.

  “Stop!” said Viardot, pointing to the chalet. “Do you hear singing coming from that building?”

  It was a faint sound, but eerily clear in the half-darkness. A deranged sound it was, cracking at all the high notes, half-sobbing at times. Its tones were drunken, self-pitying and desolate. All those who heard it shuddered.

  Dupin murmured: “If I am not mistaken it is ‘Ah, Mathilde, je t’aime et je t’adore’ - Arnold’s aria from the first act of Guittaume Tell. But execrably sung.”

  “Dear God! And I know by whom!” said Viardot.

  The next moment he was expertly directing his men to surround the chalet while he, a revolver in one hand, a lantern in the other, mounted the steps of the chalet. Dupin followed him, unsheathing as he did so the blade from his silver-topped cane.

  The door was ajar and they entered. Viardot’s lantern threw fantastic shadows around the dark interior, and up into the imprisoning latticework of its roof beams. Lying on the black, polished wooden floor in front of them lay what looked at first like a confusion of lace petticoats and tawdry finery, dashed and slashed with blood. It was the body of a young woman, almost a girl. The face when at last seen was too horrible to contemplate. The eyes were mere holes of scrambled dark red sinew, the ears had been severed and were lying neatly to one side along with the girl’s tongue. Her mouth was filled with bloody froth. Over this was crouched a tall man in dandified clothes, still crooning his wretched approximation of Rossini’s aria.

  It was the Marquis de Saint-Loup.

  He looked up slowly at Viardot and Dupin, blinking a little. He appeared to be in a dream, not fully aware of the situation in which he found himself.

  “Ah, good evening, messieurs,” he said in a breathy, quavering voice. “I have been expecting you.”

  By this time the room had become filled with gendarmes, many carrying lanterns, all stunned into silence by the spectacle that confronted them.

  “Monsieur le Marquis de Saint-Loup,” said Viardot in a sonorous voice, “I arrest you in the name of the law for the brutal murder of this unfortunate woman and for the slaughter of six others.”

  Saint-Loup was becoming conscious of his position. He began to rouse himself; his eyes flashed with indignation.

  “This is an outrage! Ridiculous! How can you think this has anything to do with me?”

  “Then how do you come to be here, Monsieur le Marquis?”

  “Damnation take it, because you and that fellow Dupin summoned me here!”

  “We did nothing of the kind, Saint-Loup, and you know it. Have you any proof that we did?”

  “Ten thousand thunders, Viardot, I don’t need any proof! I am the Marquis de Saint-Loup and you, monsieur, are an impudent beggar who is about to be relieved of his position.”

  “I think not, Monsieur le Marquis. Officers, take him away!”

  ~ * ~

  Paris, July 1st, 1867

  At ten o’clock that morning Dupin was sitting in Commissioner Viardot’s office. Viardot’s manner was brisk and complacent, but his friend noticed a residual sense of unease.

  “Of course,” said Viardot, “it is something of an inconvenience that the culprit is the Marquis de Saint-Loup, a favourite of the Emperor himself and on the steering committee of the Exposition. However, there is no doubt about his guilt. I have had him thoroughly examined by a doctor and it is quite clear that he is clinically insane.”

  “The consequence of the tertiary stage of syphilis, no doubt.”

  “That is correct. How did you know?”

  “His teeth. I told you they were black: the blackening occurs as a result of ingesting mercury. Mercury is believed to be a cure for the disease, though I have my doubts. You know the old grim jest: one hour in Venus, and the rest of your life in Mercury.”

  “It explains everything. He was taking collective vengeance on these girls for giving him the disease. That was his motive. His position gave him access to all the national pavilions: his means. The obsession with opera and the works of Rossini gave him his method. Finally, he is discovered almost red-handed as it were. Thanks t
o you, my dear Dupin, we have an open and shut case from which not even influence in high places can extricate him.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “You have your doubts, Dupin?”

  “I have no doubt that the Marquis de Saint-Loup is the ultimate cause of these dreadful events, but was he the perpetrator? That is a different matter.”

  “How so?”