Floats the Dark Shadow (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Swarming city—seething with dark dreams

Here, even in full sunlight

Pale specters stalk each passing stranger.

~ Charles Baudelaire

ASTONISHED, Michel stared at the woman who burst into his office at the morgue. She wore a scarlet shawl tossed over a nun’s habit. Her face was heavily made up, with pink circles of rouge and lips painted maroon. A prostitute with peculiar customers? Then he saw that dark lines bled down the sides of her cheeks where tear streaks of mascara were smudged, and her eyes were red with weeping. She was out of breath, almost gasping, pressing a hand to her side as if her corset pinched her. She must have run here from the detectives’ headquarters.

“Inspecteur Devaux?” Her voice quavered.

When he nodded warily
,
she thrust a note at him. Michel opened it, read it, and crumpled it in his fist. The woman made a small mew of fear. He smoothed his features along with the note and read it again.

Devaux—

Come to the Grand Guignol. Now. Someone tried to grab Lalou Joliette’s daughter.

Blaise Dancier

Only an attempt, he thought, relief tightly woven with concern. The child was safe.

“I’ll come.” Michel nodded to the woman who took a deep breath and dashed out the door, not waiting for the ride he’d have offered. Not a prostitute, but one of the actresses from the Grand Guignol, he realized, remembering the clash of costume and garish makeup.

Lalou Joliette was Dancier’s most recent mistress and a rising star. Probably this was an attempt to get ransom from Dancier. Stupid. But stupidity was rampant. Could this be related to the other abductions? Unlikely but not impossible. The other children were from poorer families. Was the attempt on her child revenge for Dancier’s tip about the children? Almost impossible, though Dancier had been asking questions. Michel needed to leave a man in place at the morgue, so he decided to go alone. First he sent a note to Cochefert, explaining why Dancier needed help and asking for two men to follow to the Grand Guignol. He penned a second note to Huysmans, postponing their meeting until tomorrow, then headed out the door.

When he told the cab driver the Grand Guignol, he got a cheeky grin. “A little early for a show, isn’t it?”

Michel ignored him and clambered inside. The man sensed his impatience and set off briskly. Le Théâtre du Grand Guignol was on the bottom edge of Montmartre in a seedy neighborhood. Michel knew that Dancier’s investment had proved an instantaneous success. There was nothing else quite like it. Three or four short plays alternated horror with bawdy comedy—screams of terror with screams of laughter. But gruesome gore was the irresistible centerpiece. The Grand Guignol bragged that every night someone was carried away in a faint.

The driver let him off at the mouth of rue Chaptal. The theatre, once a derelict convent chapel, stood at the end of the cobbled cul-de-sac. Michel glanced at the alley walls as he walked but saw no winged cross. A man came across the courtyard and opened the iron gate. They had only a passing acquaintance, but he recognized Oscar Méténier, one of the owners, by his fabulous handlebar moustache. Michel received a terse
thank you
for his swift arrival.

“Dancier is with Lalou and her daughter.” Méténier admitted him and secured the gate behind them. His dark eyes were filled with concern. “I’m keeping this locked for now.”

“Post a guard. I have men coming.”

“I’ll send out a stagehand.”

Oddly enough, Méténier was the son of a police commissioner. Once he decided the theatre was his true calling, he’d made dramas from the seamy side of life he’d seen working for the police force. His daring
Mademoiselle Fifi
had been the first prostitute to saunter across the stage in Paris. She wasn’t a courtesan—the romantic Camille and others of her ilk had long been acceptable—but a coarse street walker. But his whore was still a heroine. The audience cheered her murder of a
German officer. It was almost thirty years since the war, but Germans had not been forgiven for their bombardment of Paris.

Méténier led him across the courtyard. “We have delivery men in and out all the time, especially Mondays. New props. Fabric for costumes. Materials for the sets and lighting. This creature hid behind a bouquet of flowers in case anyone noticed him, but no one did.”

Michel felt a surge of frustration at that. He said nothing, but Méténier glanced at him and nodded. “It’s always the way, isn’t it?”

“More often than not,” he acknowledged.

Méténier paused to unlock the carved oak door of the theatre. The door was under an archway and there, toward the bottom of the stone portal, Michel saw the winged cross drawn in charcoal. His heart stuttered then began to beat more rapidly. Keeping his voice even, he asked, “Have you seen that mark before?”

Méténier glanced down and frowned. “No. I’ll send someone to wash it off.”

“Don’t,” Michel said sharply then added, “Wait till it’s been photographed.”

“If you wish.” Méténier studied his face for a moment, then motioned him inside. After seeing the winged cross, Michel felt his senses heightened. The click of the key as Méténier relocked the door seemed sharp as the cock of a pistol.

Michel did not tell him not to mention the mark to Dancier. There would be no surer way to have the information passed on. Money trumped any loyalties left from an abandoned career in police work. Méténier led Michel into the tiny oak-paneled lobby. “This is where he tried to seize her. She plays here when rehearsals are in progress.”

The air smelled of dust, paint, sweat, flowers—and chloroform. There was a scattered bouquet cast at the foot of a wrought iron staircase. The rag lay nearby. The kidnapper had not seized an unexpected opportunity, as with Alicia. This time, he had come prepared, with chloroform at the ready, flowers for concealment. Michel went over and examined them. “The bouquet is trampled. Is this where they struggled?”

“Probably. Darline usually sits on the staircase steps with schoolwork or her toys. The kidnapper must have thrown the flowers down when he grabbed her.” Méténier rubbed the back of his head, cleared his throat. “I do know Blaise trampled them afterwards.”

Dancier was in a frenzy of rage. Michel was not surprised. He looked at the flowers again. White stocks gave out a hint of cool spicy fragrance. Mixed in were some daisies, a pink tulip, baby’s breath and ferns. Even trampled he could see that that most of the blossoms were faded. These were flowers from a poor seller who could not afford better blooms. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of such flower girls the kidnapper might have bought them from. The chloroformed rag was a cheap washcloth, impossible to trace. The flowers were at least possible. “The little girl plays here alone?”

“After school and on holidays, if her grandmother isn’t free to watch her.”

“Frequently?”

“Often enough for someone to notice.”

“How old is she?”

“Ten, I believe.”

“But she managed to escape?”

“Yes. I’ll let her tell the story, it’s worthy of the Grand Guignol—except for the happy ending.” A smile flashed across his face.

“Did anyone see the kidnapper?”

“No, our attention was on the rehearsal and then on Darline. Blaise did chase after him—but he had no luck.”

Michel decided to talk to Blaise Dancier and the little girl Darline, rather than gather any more secondhand information. He took a moment to embed the layout of the foyer in his mind then walked farther into the theatre. The would-be kidnapper must have paid his francs for a view of the interior of the building. The mood was Gothic, for Méténier had retained the interior of the chapel with its elegant spandrel ceiling. At night, the audiences sat on wooden pews and gawked at angels overhead. Murals depicted the seven deadly sins. The small size of the theatre, the smallest in Paris, would only increase the impact. The Grand Guignol had fewer than three hundred seats, and the stage looked no more than twenty feet square. The players were all but in the audience’s lap. Getting splashed with fake blood or struck with a bouncing sheep’s eyeball would be a common event.

Turning to Méténier, he asked, “Do you remember if the door opened? I would think he’d check to see how many were inside and how close they were to the foyer.”

“My attention was on the stage. I didn’t see or hear anyone until Darline ran through the door screaming.”

Looking about, Michel saw a few stagehands working quietly and some of the actors sitting in corners talking. Just then, the men Cochefert had sent arrived. There was the photographer from Alicia’s case, and also Hugh Rambert, who had done several interviews. Good choices. Michel asked Méténier to wait and took the two men back to the lobby.

“No body?” The photographer looked about, puzzled why the scene was deserving of his efforts.

“Attempted kidnapping. The man is dangerous,” Michel said sharply.

“Yes, sir.” The photographer looked unconvinced.

“Do not discuss the case with anyone. Refer them to me if need be.” He wanted to limit the information going to Dancier. “I want photographs of the flowers and the rag you see here. And I’ll want a photograph of the interior of the theatre, just what you can see from the door. But first, inside the archway of the door, there is a chalked cross with wings. Take a photograph of that as well.”

Both men paled. They remembered the mark on Alicia’s tombstone. The photographer nodded soberly and began to set up his equipment. Michel took Rambert inside the theatre. The young officer possessed a husky build and a placid face, handsome but also slightly silly. His ingenuous gaze proved invaluable in interviews with the bourgeoisie, and criminals underestimated both his competence and his tenacity. “Inspecteur Rambert, please interview all the stage hands and actors you see here. See if they remember anyone suspicious wandering about in the last few days.”

“Yes, sir.” Rambert went off immediately.

Michel rejoined Méténier, who led him backstage, past painted backdrops, tables of props, and racks of costumes. There was a room for the bit players to change and do their makeup, and three or four doors with names stenciled on them for the stars. Méténier knocked at the one with the name Lalou Joliette.

Inside, Dancier’s voice snapped, “Come in.”

“I’ll be on stage if you need me.” Méténier hurriedly departed.

Michel opened the door and paused on the threshold, wondering if the kidnapper had ever made it this far when scouting the theatre. It was another miniscule room, already crowded with Dancier, radiating fury, the softly sobbing Lalou Joliette, and her daughter. The actress sat at her dressing table. When Michel entered, she turned and pressed trembling hands to her bosom. Tears glistened in her eyes, but no mascara was smudged. Her daughter sat on a chair behind her, but seeing a strange man, slid off it to bury her face in her mother’s shoulder. The actress wrapped her arms around the girl with equal parts maternal tenderness and theatrical awareness. Michel thought the theatricality looked more like second nature than cold calculation. The mascara had probably been cleaned with the same automatic professionalism.

Behind Lalou were several costumes on hooks and stands. Michel noted a streetwalker’s outfit of cheap satin, ripped and torn, and a pink froufrou negligee for a romantic farce or seduction scene. A dressmaker’s dummy wore a silvery knit simulating chain mail.
There was a small open case filled with what must be doll clothes, for an elegant china doll lay atop them.

Dancier managed the introductions. “This man is going to help us,” he told Darline then glared at Michel as if he no longer believed it.

“You must protect us, Inspecteur Devaux.” Lalou gave him a beseeching look from velvety brown eyes.