J. du Roi
L
WHAT A CATCH!
The golden Shiva is found! Was the ‘Crime of the Century’ on the rue de Grenelle the work of a madman?
Yesterday, 17 March, between five o’clock and six o’clock in the afternoon, 13-year-old Pierre B. was fishing by the Pont des Invalides when his hook became snagged so firmly at the bottom of the river that he was obliged to wade into the cold water. (I’m not so stupid as to just throw away a genuine English hook!’ the young fisherman told our reporter.) Pierre’s valour was richly rewarded: the hook had not caught on some common tree root but on a weighty object half buried in the silt. Once extracted from the water the object shone with an unearthly splendour, blinding the eyes of the astonished fisherman. Pierre’s father, a retired sergeant and veteran of the Battle of Sedan, guessed that it must be the famous golden Shiva for which ten people had been killed only two days earlier, and he handed in the find at the prefecture.
What are we to make of this? For some reason a criminal who did not baulk at the cold-blooded and deliberate murder of so many people has chosen not to profit from the spoils of his monstrous initiative! Police investigators and public alike have been left guessing in the dark. The public appears inclined to believe that belated pangs of conscience must have led the murderer, aghast at the horror of his awful deed, to cast the golden idol into the river. Many go so far as to surmise that the miserable wretch also drowned himself somewhere close at hand. The police, however, are less romantically inclined and they discern clear indications of insanity in the inconsistency of the criminal’s actions.
Shall we ever learn the true background to this nightmarish and unfathomable case?
A bevy of Parisian beauties
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PART ONE
Port Said to Aden
Commissioner Gauche
At Port Said a new passenger had boarded the Leviathan, occupying stateroom No. 18, the last first-class cabin still vacant, and Gustave Gauche’s humour had immediately improved. This newcomer looked highly promising: that self-assured and unhurried way of carrying himself, that inscrutable expression on the handsome face which at first glance appeared altogether young, until the subject removed his bowler hat, unexpectedly revealing hair greying at the temples. A curious specimen, the commissioner decided. It was clear straight away that he had character and what they call a past. All in all, definitely a potential client for papa Gauche.
The passenger walked up the gangway swinging his holdall while the porters sweated as they struggled under the weight of his ample baggage: expensive squeaky suitcases, high-class pigskin travelling bags, voluminous bundles of books and even a folding tricycle (one large wheel, two small ones and a bundle of gleaming metal tubes). Bringing up the rear came two poor devils lugging an imposing set of gymnastic weights.
Gauche’s heart, the heart of an old sleuth (as the commissioner himself was fond of testifying), had thrilled to the lure of the hunt when this newcomer proved to have no golden badge - neither on the silk lapel of his dandified summer coat, nor on his jacket, nor on his watch chain. Warmer now, very warm, thought Gauche as he vigilantly scrutinized the fop from beneath his bushy brows and puffed on his favourite clay pipe. But of course, why had he, old dunderhead that he was, assumed that the murderer would definitely board the steamship at Southampton? The crime was committed on 15 March and today was already 1 April. It would have been perfectly easy to reach Port Said while the Leviathan was rounding the western contour of Europe. And there you had it, everything fitted: clearly the right kind of character for a client, plus a first-class ticket, plus the most important thing - no golden whale.
For some time now Gauche’s dreams had been haunted by that accursed badge with the acronym for the steamship company of the Jasper-Artaud Partnership, and without exception his dreams had been uncommonly bad ones. Take the most recent case, for instance.
The commissioner was out boating with Mme Gauche in the Bois de Boulogne. The sun was shining high in the sky and the birds were twittering in the trees. Suddenly a gigantic golden face with inanely goggling eyes loomed up over the treetops, opened cavernous jaws that could have accommodated the Arc de Triomphe with ease, and began sucking in the pond. Gauche broke into a sweat and laid into the oars. Meanwhile it transpired that events were not taking place in the park at all, but in the middle of a boundless ocean. The oars buckled like straws, Mme Gauche was jabbing him painfully in the back with her umbrella, and an immense gleaming carcass blotted out the entire horizon. When it spouted a fountain that eclipsed half the sky, the commissioner woke up and began fumbling around on his bedside table with trembling fingers - where were his pipe and those matches?
Gauche had first laid eyes on the golden whale on the rue de Grenelle when he was examining Lord Littleby’s mortal remains. The Englishman lay there with his open mouth frozen in a soundless scream - his false teeth had come halfway out and his forehead was crowned by a bloody souffle. Gauche squatted down on his haunches: he thought he had spotted a glint of gold between the corpse’s fingers. Taking a closer look, he chortled in delight. Here was a stroke of uncommonly good luck, the kind that only occurred in crime novels. The helpful corpse had literally handed the investigation an important clue and not even on a plate, but on the palm of its hand. There you are, Gustave, take that. Now may you die of shame if you dare let the person who smashed my head open get away, you old blockhead!
The golden emblem (at first, of course, Gauche had not known that it was an emblem, he had thought it was a bracelet charm or a monogrammed hairpin) could only have belonged to the murderer. But naturally, just to be sure, the commissioner had shown the whale to the junior manservant (what a lucky lad he was - 15 March was his day off and that had saved his life!), but the manservant had never seen his Lordship with the trinket before.
After that the entire ponderous mechanism of the police system had whirred into action, flywheels twirling and pinions spinning, as the minister and the prefect threw their very finest forces into solving the ‘Crime of the Century’. By the evening of the following day Gauche already knew that the three letters on the golden whale were not the initials of some high liver hopelessly mired in debt, but the insignia of a newly established Franco-British shipping consortium. The whale proved to be the emblem of the miracle-ship Leviathan, newly launched from the slipway at Bristol and currently being readied for its maiden voyage to India.
The newspapers had been trumpeting the praises of the gigantic steamship for more than a month. Now it transpired that on the eve of the Leviathan’s first sailing the London Mint had produced gold and silver commemorative badges: gold for the first-class passengers and senior officers of the ship, silver for second-class passengers and subalterns. Aboard this luxurious vessel, where the achievements of modern science were combined with an unprecedented degree of comfort, no provision at all was made for third class. The company guaranteed travellers a comprehensive service, making it unnecessary to take any servants along on the voyage. ‘The shipping line’s attentive valets and tactful maids are on hand to ensure that you feel entirely at home on the Leviathan,’ promised the advertisement printed in newspapers right across Europe. Those fortunate individuals who had booked a cabin for the first cruise from Southampton to Calcutta received a gold or silver whale with their ticket, according to their class - and a ticket could be booked in any major European port from London to Constantinople.