The Legacy of Erich Zann and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Read online

  I knew that I was incapable of holding my own in a discussion of that high-flown sort with Dupin, but I felt that I ought to try, if only in the hope of giving him a further opportunity to come clean about the nature of the thorn that had somehow pricked the flank of his consciousness. It happened that I had recently read Maine de Biran’s Nouvelles Considérations sur les rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme, and I was on the point of improvising a hazardous discourse of the potential relevance of the famous physiologist’s reflection on the phenomena of sleep when the bell at the house’s coaching-entrance rang.

  I must confess that my initial reaction to that unexpected ring was mixed; I was surprised and annoyed, as might be expected, but also perversely relieved by the suspension of a discussion that had started so well but had developed in such a way as to threaten to take me far out of my intellectual depth.

  Although the town house had a lodge, I had never bothered to employ a concierge, any more than I had ever bothered to accommodate a carriage-horse in the stables or hire a groom. This rarely presented any problem, as my only regular caller was Dupin. As I got up from my armchair to answer the door myself, Dupin quipped, presumably in casual reference to the initial topic of our discussion: “Speak of the Devil and you see the tip of his tail!”

  I certainly did not repeat that observation to Monsieur le Préfet, when that worthy gentleman inquired politely whether Monsieur Dupin might perhaps be present.

  Under different circumstances, the Prefect would surely have demanded to speak to Monsieur Dupin in private, but we were in my house, not Dupin’s apartment in the Rue Dunôt, and Dupin was too comfortably ensconced in an armchair, sipping a glass of cognac and smoking Turkish tobacco to be easily budged. Perhaps, had he known what the Prefect was about to say, he would have decided differently, but in the event he loftily informed the august gentleman that I could be trusted with any confidence he cared to share—and once I had been admitted to the conspiracy, there could be no question of expelling me.

  “Bernard Clamart has been murdered,” the Prefect told Dupin, evidently believing that there was no time to beat about the bush. “He was clubbed to death in the consulting-room below his apartment in the Rue Serpente earlier this evening—two or three blows, delivered from behind to the top and back of his head. His papers were scattered in all directions; there is no way to tell whether any are missing, or, if so, which. His pocket-book was stolen from his coat pocket, but numerous heavier objects of value were left behind.”

  Although Dupin had been discomfited already, this news seemed to shatter his composure completely. I had never seen such a dark shadow overtake his expression and weigh upon his attitude. I had always thought his fundamental equanimity and casual indolence proof against any challenge, but this news brought him to agonized attention as if he were the leg of a dead frog stimulated by a Galvanic current. For two or three seconds, he seemed to be literally fearful. Then he mastered himself, with a visible effort, and muttered: “I must not let myself by startled by a mere coincidence! Only fools see the hand of fate in such arbitrary connections.”

  I could tell that Monsieur Groix was as surprised by the extent of Dupin’s consternation as I was—but I could also see that he had expected his news to be more disconcerting than the announcement of any common-or-garden murder, and he too seemed to have a personal interest in this particular crime.

  Dupin narrowed his eyes slightly as he strove to focus his thoughts, carefully mustering his powers of methodical concentration. “Was the murder weapon still on the scene?” he asked, in a businesslike fashion.

  “Yes,” said the Prefect. “It was a heavy brass candlestick taken from the mantelpiece. The Commissaire summoned to the scene found it in the fireplace, where the murderer must have dropped it after making use of it. It was lying alongside a candle that must have been displaced when he picked it up.”

  “Was the Commissaire able to ascertain whether the candle was lit when the murderer first picked it up?”

  “It appears so. The flame had gone out, but there was wax pooled beneath the wick, and there were congealed droplets spattered around the hearth. The Commissaire concluded, from that fact and the general condition of the notary’s cadaver, that the murder must have been committed after dusk, and no more than three hours before the discovery of the body. How long the murderer remained on the scene after striking the fatal blows is difficult to ascertain, but the concierge chanced to see someone she did not recognize descending the external staircase from the private entrance to Clamart’s consulting-room and moving away in great haste between five and ten minutes after Saint-German-de-Près had chimed the half-hour after nine.”

  “Is that why she went to Clamart’s consulting-room and discovered the body?”

  “Principally, yes. In fact, she sent the scullery-maid up to Clamart’s apartment to enquire whether he wanted supper. Clamart was in the habit of descending to the house’s communal kitchens in search of sustenance when the same clock chimed nine, and the fact that he had not done so, although he was known to be at home, provided the pretext for the staff to exercise their slight concern. The concierge summoned the Commissaire immediately after the maid had found the body, and the Commissaire immediately sent word to me, in accordance with standing orders.”

  “Clamart was on your notification list, even after all this time?” Dupin queried.

  “Yes, of course,” the Prefect confirmed. There was a slight tremor in his voice. “Since the first day of my appointment, he has been on my list of persons of special interest—as you and Palaiseau have also been.”

  I knew Bernard Clamart by reputation, as a notary of long experience and considerable repute, but the name Palaiseau struck a very different chord in my memory. I knew that I had heard it or seen it printed within the last few days, but I could not immediately remember where, or in what context.

  “Did the concierge give the Commissaire a description of the person she saw descending the staircase?”

  “A very slight one—it was dark, and the street-lighting in the Rue Serpente is poor. The person was short and slender, but bundled up in a heavy overcoat, with a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over the face.”

  Monsieur Groix seemed to be thinking of something other than the description, in spite of its obvious importance to the investigation. Dupin had been staring into the fire while he focused his attention on the details of the crime, putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but he suddenly looked up into the face of his visitor, and doubtless read more there than I had been able to detect

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Dupin asked the Prefect, frank alarm suddenly returning to his voice, even more sharply than before. “Something that complicates the affair, and increases its urgency?”

  2.

  Dupin had judged the Prefect’s expression correctly; consummate politician as he had to be, Groix had given himself away even to me. Obviously, there was something else: something that seemed, at least to these two sharers of some long-held secret, to make the murder of a man with whom they were both acquainted seem even more urgent.

  “Yes, alas,” the official confessed. “When the notification of Monsieur Clamart’s murder came through, I was mid-way through reading a routine report submitted by a sergent de ville, whose area of responsibility includes Père Lachaise. He had been notified of an unlicensed excavation in a wooded corner of the cemetery, which had not been registered as a violation when it was first discovered because no grave was supposed to be located there, although the sergent de ville found a coffin hidden nearby when he found time to investigate. The coffin had been opened, but the bodily remains were still there.”

  “Zann’s remains?” Dupin asked, dully, obviously not expecting any contradiction.

  “I’ll need to see the coffin for myself in order to be sure, but I presume so.”

  Dupin sighed deeply. “More than coincidence, after all,” he murmured. “The superstitious are wont to say that t
hese baleful reminders always come in threes.” He tried, in vain, to revert to his normal laconic manner in order to ask: “Has anyone made enquiries at the Préfeture recently, regarding the grave or the deposition?”

  “Not exactly,” the Prefect replied.

  “Why not exactly?” Dupin wanted to know.

  “No one has been to the Préfeture directly, Monsieur Dupin—but enquiries have been made at the Académie and the Opéra as to the fate of Monsieur Zann, and the director of the Opéra took the trouble to send a note to my secretary asking whether the Prefecture had any details of his death or his testament. My secretary replied, in all innocence, that there was no record in the Prefecture’s files of the death or the testament, but that there was no surprise in that, if there had been no criminal circumstances involving either. He had no way of knowing about the deposition. No one at the Académie was able to furnish any information, of course, and as the enquirer seemed more than respectable....”

  “Who was it?” Dupin demanded, curtly.

  “Nicolò Paganini, the famous virtuoso,” the Prefect replied. He seemed surprisingly meek under this intense interrogation, given the gap in status between the two men—which was certainly not in Dupin’s favor. I immediately understood Dupin’s reference to reminders coming in threes, although it was he, not I, who had introduced Paganini’s name into our earlier conversation.

  “I know who Paganini is,” Dupin remarked, presumably to forestall the explanation that the Prefect might otherwise have felt compelled to make.

  “That will save us a little time,” Monsieur Groix said, dryly. “The maestro was very anxious to know the whereabouts of any unpublished music left behind by his fellow composer for the violin. He was, it seems, prepared to search high and low during his brief stay in the capital—but the momentum of his tour has now carried him away to London.”

  “Paganini’s interest is understandable, even if all he knew of Zann were rumors picked up in his homeland,” Dupin admitted, nodding his head slowly. “It was probably pure speculation on his part that Zann might have written something down during his exile in Paris...but that is one way in which rumors may be started, harmless ones and deadly ones alike.”

  “If that’s all there is...,” the Prefect murmured, plainly wishing that it was.

  “Have you sent warning to Palaiseau?” was the interrogator’s next question.

  “Yes—and I left a man on your landing in the Rue Dunôt, and another watching the front door of the house.” The Prefect finally turned the tables on his consultant by demanding: “Do you have any idea who might have done this, Dupin, or exactly what they were looking for?”

  “No to the first question,” said Dupin. “As for the second, to borrow your own expression, not exactly. As you have evidently deduced yourself, the murderer was almost certainly looking for some record or souvenir of Zann’s music. Whoever he is, he does not know enough to be sure that none was buried with the corpse in Zann’s coffin, but he has evidently been able to discover where the unmarked grave was. Perhaps we should have excavated it with our own hands...professional gravediggers have never been famed for their discretion, and although the two we employed were not supposed to know who they were burying, curiosity might have driven one or both of them to find out. The name would not have seemed significant at the time, but is memorable enough to have rung bells when Paganini started his enquiries during his stint at the Opéra.”

  “The murderer must know more than any tattling gravedigger could have told him” the Prefect pointed out, “if he knew that Clamart was the lawyer who had custody of Zann’s testament.”

  “Not necessarily,” Dupin replied. “Of the five of us who were present at the burial, Clamart was by far the most likely to have been recognized by one or other of the hirelings. You held a much less prominent position then, and were not well-known even in the Palais de Justice, while Fourmont was an obscure physician and Palaiseau was only a minor player in the orchestra of an obscure theater on the Boulevard du Temple.”

  That remark reminded me where I had seen the name Palaiseau before. It was inscribed on the program that I was still carrying in my jacket pocket. Palaiseau was the name of the violinist to whose accompaniment the Devil in angelic guise had sung his remarkable cantata, the nature of which was transformed as he played from the tacitly paradisal to the subtly diabolical. The Délassements-Comique was located at number 76, Boulevard du Temple—a suitable locale for such a drama. The Boulevard du Temple was popularly known as the Boulevard de Crime, partly because of the melodramatic productions mounted in its theaters and partly because of the rather unsavory clientèle that some of those theaters and the drinking-dens in the nearby side-streets attracted. No one had been much surprised that Fieschi’s attempt to assassinate Louis-Philippe had been made by means of an infernal machine mounted in a second-floor window of the Boulevard du Temple, within a stone’s throw of the Délassements-Comique. It did not seem unusual that the Prefect of Police would know the name of an old habitué of the quartier, but it did seem odd that Dupin knew it too, and I was inevitably driven to wonder whether Palaiseau and the mysterious Zann might be the manifest genius and the ostensible genius that Dupin had mentioned en passant a short while before.

  “And you were as completely in the Parisian shadows as you still are, in spite of your impending American celebrity,” the Prefect added to Dupin’s observation, with a censorious sideways glance at me. None of my literary accounts of Dupin’s exploits had yet been translated into the great man’s native tongue, and only two had so far appeared in print in America, but the Prefect had obviously heard rumor of them—not unexpectedly, given that he figured as a minor character therein, although I had reduced his name to a mere initial for reasons of diplomacy. After a slight pause, Monsieur Groix continued: “Your opinion is, therefore, that the murderer is unlikely to know of our involvement, and thus unlikely to direct his attention to either of us?”

  “How can we possibly make an accurate assessment of that likelihood?” Dupin riposted. “Did Clamart have any other evident injuries?”

  “No,” the Prefect said.

  “There is no reason to suppose that any attempt was made to extract information from him by the threat or exercise of violence?”

  “No readily-apparent reason. Clamart was a sturdy fellow, in spite of his years, and he had a loyal staff. Had there been any sort of confrontation, he wouldn’t have been easy to subdue and the sound of a struggle would have brought his valet hurrying downstairs and his coachman bounding upstairs to his aid. That was presumably why he was hit from behind, without procrastination.”

  “But the murderer did not take a weapon with him for that purpose,” Dupin pointed out. “The candlestick was surely picked up at hazard, in response to a hastily-made decision, unless....”

  “Unless what, Monsieur Dupin?” the Prefect inquired—very politely, I thought, in the circumstances.

  “Unless the candlestick was merely used to obscure the imprint of another weapon, or to deflect attention from a less obtrusive wound for which a careful search might otherwise have been revealed. Has the body been taken to the Morgue yet?”

  “No—but if you wish to look at it while it is still in situ, we shall have to make haste.”

  “Then we shall make haste,” Dupin decided. “The fresher the trail is, the easier it will be to pick up and follow. We could, of course, wait to see whether or not the murderer will come to us...but anything to do with Zann’s memory might turn out to be darkly dangerous, and if it is possible to seize the initiative, that is what we must do.”

  “I thought you might say so,” the Prefect said. “My carriage is waiting outside.” He shot another significant glance at me, but did not saying anything to me or my guest. He simply looked back at Dupin expectantly, as if to ask for his permission to order me to stay behind.

  “Too late,” said Dupin. “He’s heard more than enough to rouse his curiosity, and perhaps too much to guarantee his sa
fety. If the murderer, whoever he is, does know of my involvement in the Zann affair, he will surely know that I was in residence here for some months, and that I am a frequent guest in this house. If he suspects that I might have hidden something here, my American friend could be in as much danger as I am. I would hate to think that he might be bludgeoned to death without even knowing why. He must come along, so that we can keep an eye on him.”

  “Very well,” said the Prefect, obedient even to his interlocutor’s whims.

  I put on my winter coat, donned thick gloves and a felt hat, and selected a swordstick from the rack in the hallway. Dupin smiled, but retained his own perfectly ordinary cane; he preferred brain to brawn as an instrument of competition—although I dare say that he might have developed more careful habits had he actually been forced to confront the Rue Morgue murderer, rather than identifying the brute from a safe distance.

  As we went out to the Prefect’s carriage, I whispered: “You will explain all this to me, won’t you, Dupin?” I was genuinely worried; he had, after all, refused to talk about his relationship with the Prefect before, even though I was very well aware of the perennial delight he took in demonstrating his esoteric knowledge and powers of ratiocination.

  “Of course, old man,” he said. “I’ll tell you the whole story, as soon as I have an opportunity. This business might simply have been promoted by Paganini’s enquiries, which were surely innocent, even though their sequel has proved tragic. If so, the whole thing might fizzle out and come to nothing.” He seemed far more hopeful than confident of that, but I was left in no doubt that it was his preferred alternative.