The Alchemy of Murder (38 page)

Scholl nods in their direction. “Guy de Maupassant and his newest la fem, the wife of Lapointe, the banker.”

I lift my eyebrows and Scholl leans closer and whispers, “It’s all right, Mademoiselle, she loves her husband. She loves him so much, she uses the husbands of other women in order not to wear out her own.”

Scholl and Jules have a good laugh.

“I think I’ve heard his name. He’s a writer, isn’t he?” I ask.

“Yes,” Scholl says surprised again.

Once again I show off only because it really ruffles my feathers the way men think of woman. “Before I left for Paris, I read a short story of his called, ‘Boule de suif,’ Ball of Fat. The tale brought both tears and anger from me. It concerns a prostitute traveling by coach during the Franco-Prussian War. She is well treated by her fellow French passengers, who want to share her provision of food. A German officer stops the coach and refuses to let it proceed unless she has sex with him. The other passengers, anxious to be on their way, induce her to satisfy him. After the deed is done on their behalf, they ostracize her for the rest of the journey.”

Scholl looks at me with new respect, “That was one of his best.”

“Yes. I think it was a brilliant piece of writing—sad, but brilliant.” Had I not been wanted by the Paris police, I would have gotten up and commended Maupassant for his genius.

Scholl smiles. “Well, the woman with him does not know what she is getting into. Maupassant has boasted that he is going to take vengeance on women for giving him the big pox by passing it onto any woman who will sleep with him.”
*

50

After we leave Scholl at the café, Jules and I walk down Avenue de I’Opera in the direction of the Seine. We’re early for our meeting with Wilde and decide to walk off some of the time before grabbing a carriage. My head is swirling with questions and theories, and I’m eager to address them to Jules, but from his grave countenance it’s obvious he’s not in the mood to talk. I really have to bite my tongue.

There are two issues that perplex me. As a reporter I learned that there are no innocent coincidences. Malliot has to be the ex-policeman who asked about me at the café where I checked on the prostitutes. Now the question is
why?
Why does the cannon king care about what I am investigating? I wish I could discuss this with Jules, but then he’d start asking me questions I don’t want to answer.

Besides, this raises another question about Jules. What is the connection between him and Artigas? Obviously there’s bad blood between the two. But what? My mind is volcanic and ready to explode. I can’t take it. I need answers.

“Jules, I’m beginning to suspect that you’ve been withholding information from me. As my mother would say, every time this man Artigas’ name is mentioned, you dance like a cat in a frying pan.”

“A cat in a frying pan?”

“It’s an old American expression.” Actually, I’d only heard my mother use it, but it sounds old to me. The tapping of his cane becomes more aggressive; I’ve hit a nerve.

“There’s another old expression, American and French. It’s called sticking your nose in places where you shouldn’t.”

Amazing. He talks about how he came to Paris to kill a man and cannibals eating his brains and he thinks I should ignore it? Impossible.

“Excuse me for saying this Jules, but I don’t think—”

“Strange.” His mind is talking aloud, as my mother would say when I interrupted her in mid sentence.

“What’s strange?”

“That Perun would associate with the likes of Artigas. They’re enemies. In the eyes of an anarchist, Artigas is a capitalistic enslaver of the common man, the very sort of moneyed plunderer the anarchist wants to kill. And anarchists are the greatest threat to men of Artigas’ ilk. They live in fear and surround themselves with bodyguards because they know any one of them may be the next victim of the radicals.”

“Then why would Perun work for Artigas?”

“Maybe,” Jules muses, “he isn’t working for him. Maybe he’s working
with
him. Or even better, Perun could be spying. Perhaps Artigas is developing a new killing weapon, the sort of thing an anarchist group would love to get their hands on.”

As I give this idea a bit of thought, Jules’ walking stick continues to tap the ground with a thoughtful, almost nervous cadence that I have observed occurs when he is engrossed in solving a problem.

“Jules, whenever Artigas’ name is mentioned, you become rather, uh, disconcerted. You react as if there is bad blood between you. We’re conducting an investigation together and this man suddenly fits into it. Don’t you think it would be unfair for you to withhold information from me?”

“Keep information from you?” He laughs. “Mademoiselle, dealing with you is like peeling an onion that changes each time a layer is exposed. If you told me it’s daytime, I would have to check to see if the sun is in the sky.”

Obviously, this is not the time to discuss Artigas with him.

51

At the Procope we find Oscar surrounded by a group of people, including waiters. They have gathered by his table listening to him expound on the subject of aesthetics, which I think has something to do with the philosophy that only beautiful things matter. It is not brains or hearts that count, but surface beauty. If a woman is not beautiful, if a flower is not lovely, they are worthless. Apparently no one has told Oscar that beauty is only skin deep … and that his surface skin is not so very pretty. But, I must admit, his voice is beautiful.

Oscar doesn’t talk, he sings phrases, his tongue is a conductor’s baton that brings together ideas and sounds from a dozen different parts of his brain at the same time. There is something grotesque and yet appealing about this huge creature who expresses himself with extravagant gestures and poetic license. I have to admit that he is a strange bird, but the more I am around him, the more I find to admire and adore. Deep down I believe he has a heart of gold. The only way to place him in a scheme of killing prostitutes would be if they were talked to death.

“Ask your friend to meet us outside. I have some questions I didn’t get the opportunity to ask him last night.”

I don’t need to know the reason why Jules doesn’t want to be seen with Oscar in the Procope. The man is a verbose peacock anywhere in public. He draws attention like a naked woman.

At my signal Oscar joins us outside, walking through the crowd as if it is the Red Sea parting for him. He beams at Jules. “I heard a waiter refer to you as Jules Verne. How delightful to meet the man who wrote those books of my childhood about balloon trips and projectiles to the moon. Why, I thought you were dead!”

“After making your acquaintance, Monsieur, I’m certain that I have died and gone to hell.”

So much for camaraderie. We start walking to a café a few blocks away.

Oscar has exchanged his green overcoat for a deep purple, almost black cape that falls to his shoe tops. Under the cape he wears a forest green velvet coat, lilac shirt, dark grey beeches, white stockings, and patent leather shoes. His hat is oversize and extravagant, a chevalier’s hat, the same lilac as his shirt and with a red feather stuck in it. All in all, he looks as inconspicuous as a P. T. Barnum parade.

“Your friend who was murdered, did he ever mention having a Russian friend?” Jules voice is gruff, as if he would prefer to shake the information out of Oscar.

“Russian? No, is this mad killer Russian?”

“We’re not certain.” The gruffness in Jules’ voice doesn’t subside. “Did he ever mention a chemist? Or someone involved in science in any manner.”

“No Russians, no chemists, although a Russian contact would not have been surprising, there’s quite a few Russian students in Paris. Isn’t Paris rather the institute of higher learning for the Russian upper classes.”

It isn’t a question, but it throws me for a moment. Oscar’s use of an Irish colloquial sentence structure is just his way of showing his ability to talk like the lower classes. In other words, another way for him to dazzle a listener by making them think about what he’s saying. He starts a dissertation on the Russian university system and Jules interrupts.

“I’m sure your café acquaintances will find that information fascinating. As to your friend whose life was taken, describe the circumstances of the crime.”

Oscar sighs, in pain from the memory. I don’t believe he’s faking. He is simply a dramatic person—melodramatic at that. Maybe it’s his way to handle the hurt.

“Jean-Jacque was found still dressed in his female attire in a small, dark alley off of Boulevard de Clichy. His abdomen had been laid open, but there was so little evidence of bleeding in the alley. The police surmised he had been murdered elsewhere and his body was dropped in the alley afterward.”

“Does he live near the alley?”

“Heavens no, Jean-Jacque was a person of breeding. The area where his body was found houses the poor and other of God’s unfortunates.”

Jules taps the sidewalk with his cane. “Interesting. How did his body get placed in that alley? Even on the Butte, one would not drag a body down the street. I wonder … why did the killer find it necessary to transport the body in some manner to that spot?”

“To discourage a police investigation,” I suggest. “He’s always struck in poor areas and chose victims whose death would raise less of an outcry than the deaths of respectable people. He may have met Jean-Jacque at Place Blanche or anywhere, even across town at Boulevard Saint-Michel and lured her—him.”

“Lured to where? To the killer’s dwelling? Does that mean the killer lives in an area near the alley?”

“The crime could have been committed in a fiacre on the way there,” Oscar offers.

“The fiacre would have been bathed in blood and reported to the police. The killer could have had his own private carriage, but that would involve an accomplice since a driver would probably be needed.” Jules turns to me. “I agree that the motive for leaving the body in an alley would be to discourage a thorough police investigation. But the body would have had to be transported there in some manner. We can hardly assume that the killer threw the body over his shoulder and carried it there or took a fiacre with a dead body. It’s easy to conceal a dead body in a carriage driven by a coachman, but less so in a small self-driven rig. He either has a carriage—”

“Or, as you suggested, lives in the area,” I interrupt. “But, if he has a carriage, we can assume he’s a person of considerable means. If that’s so, why would he live in a poor area?”

“Easier to hide his evil doings,” Jules says.

The remark stops me dead cold. “Yes. He must live very near the alley. Transporting a dead person more than a few feet is very difficult. We have to go immediately and take a look at this location.”

Jules grabs my arm. “After we finish with Artigas at the Exposition.”

“We’re going to the Exposition.” Oscar smiles with delight.

“
We
don’t all have to—”

“Since Artigas has such an evil reputation, perhaps the three of us should go together,” I suggest, in the hopes of maintaining peace.

“Not Count Artigas himself, you say. I’ve seen the man around the Café de la Paix. Rather an unpleasant sort, no culture really, isn’t he just a bag of money. How is he mixed up in all this?”

I fill Oscar in on what we learned about Toulouse’s picture.

“Louis Pasteur? The scientist? So the old fossil’s still with us. Found a cure for dog bite a few years ago, didn’t he. Perhaps someone should be searching for a cure for man’s bite.”

He beams at us, no doubt in the hopes of getting a pat for his witticism. Jules looks to the heavens as if he is expecting—or hoping—for divine intervention, perhaps a strike of lightning.

“When we get to the Exposition,” Jules turns and looks at me with pleading eyes, “perhaps you and Monsieur Wilde would care to look at the exhibits while I talk to Artigas.”

“No, no, wouldn’t hear of it,” Oscar says, echoing my sentiments exactly. “I’m not going to be dallying about while you are working. I shall be right there, shoulder to shoulder, comrades in arms, and all that. Besides, I’ve already seen the chocolate
Venus de Milo
.”

Only the French would think of advertising chocolate as a work of art. With bare breasts.

“The Tower of Babel”…

The undersigned citizens, being artists, painters, sculptors, architects, and others de- voted to and desirous preserving the amenities of Paris, wish to protest, in the name of our national good taste, against such an erection in the very heart of our city, as the monstrous and useless Eiffel Tower, already christened … “The Tower of Babel”…

How much longer is the City of Paris to be a play-ground for these barbarous and sordid imaginations which disfigure and dishonor her? For the Eiffel Tower, which even commercially minded America rejected, is a public dishonor to our city. All our historic buildings, our monuments of rare and appealing beauty, are dwarfed and humiliated by this monstrous apotheosis of the factory chimney whose odious shadow will lie over the city …