Eau de Morgue

by Arthur T. Harris

Edgar Allan Poe was both a master of the detective story in its pioneering aspects and a superb science fiction writer. Witness THE NARRATIVE OF A. GORDON PYM. Arthur T. Harris seems to have taken a leaf from the late genius of the high, pale brow and raven locks and presented us here with a science fantasy so chillingly unique that he has even dared to call it EAU DE MORGUE, in obvious tribute to Poe’s THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. Need we say more?

Vengeance can be very complete when it ends with a refrain to the tender lyric: “All of me!”

Now then, where were we? Oh—we weren’t; you didn’t introduce yourself. To clear that up—I’m Jan Mystel. You are Detective Sergeant Kurt Milbach. And you’re right. I was in a brawl last night!

Huh? You don’t know anything about it? That isn’t what you’re here for? Just possibly I won’t have to call a lawyer, Sarge. My conscience is reasonably clear, but heaven only knows what my subconscious has been up to!

You’re asking me, did I know the Duchess of Dunscombe? I sure did, Pops, and the pleasure was all hers, if any. She was the rich, decrepit old biddy who dug up the loot for Madame Outre’s store. I had to be polite.

You say she’s disappeared too? I hope it was prolonged and painful! No, I don’t read the tabloids. It happened last night, eh? She just vanished—pouf! You checked her medicine chest at the Hotel Coq D’Or—nembutal, seconal, veronal, even a vial of methedrine. The ol’ gal liked her kicks up and down, eh?

And also a four-ounce bottle of Madame Outre’s Shangri-la Bath Salts. Cap off, empty, on the side of the bath tub. You made a chemical analysis of the residue—no dice. Still, it was the only link between Madame and the Duchess, if indeed it’s any clue at all.

Sure, Sarge—I understand. You have got to milk every shred of evidence till the cow dries up. Okay. Pardon me while I shave and shower. I’ve got to catch an afternoon class today. Meanwhile I’ll tell you what little I know....

About eight months ago, I finished a four-year hitch in the Air Force. I took my discharge pay, found this cold-water cubicle in the Village and moved in. Relaxed—and got to know half a dozen barkeeps. To give myself an objective I drifted into a little theater outfit, and signed up for a college course in radio-TV writing.

And ran out of dough.

One warm night I was coddling a beer at the Cote d’Azur. That’s just off Sheridan Square, you know. The fellow who runs it, Mack Carr, used to fly with me in Korea. Well, I’m sour and disgusted with myself, see ... and this group of five old biddies comes trooping in.

They’re dressed and they talk and they act like Ladies’ Day at the Vienna Opera, year eighteen ninety-three. All but one. She just smiles quietly, as though nursing happier memories. But it turns out she’s the object of the gabfest.

After the initial cackling died down, I made out, from snatches of personal history, that the girls were interested in the damnedest things: the Russian philosopher Ouspenski, Yoga and yogurt, occult seances, strange gypsy herbs and potions.

I bought another beer and moved over to the next table.

It seems that the Duchess and Madame Outre had been friends in Budapest, before the war. Then Hitler upset the apple cart and the Duchess hurriedly married a British Embassy chap, name of Dunscombe. That gave her diplomatic immunity and when war came, she got out on a sealed train and wound up in London.

Not so the Madame. In Budapest she’d apparently presided over her own private seance, which was subsidized by the Hungarian elite. It was she who’d advised the future Duchess to wed the English diplomat. Anyway, Madame Outre eventually went to a concentration camp, and was down to eighty-five pounds at war’s end.

Somehow she outwitted the Russians and got to Paris. There she fell in again with the Duchess, whose husband had taken a postwar Foreign Office job. The Duchess became her “sponsor,” helped round up a new set of clients, and the old Budapest seance was revived.

Well, there’s probably more to it than that. But about a year ago the Duke was shifted to a U.N. post here in New York, and the Duchess’s entourage came along for the ride.

And that brings us up to date, to the Cote d’Azur, me with my warm beer and the old biddies gabbling away like mad and collecting a larger audience by the minute.

It seems that back in Budapest, Madame Outre had dabbled in perfumes, scented bath salts, and stuff like that for special friends. Now the girls, the Duchess in particular, were urging her to open a little shop in the Village. The Duchess up and proclaimed she’d be the bankroll.

You get the drift, Sarge. Here am I, half in the bag, in a boite full of characters, with impressionistic paintings on the walls, a “bulletin board” tacked up with personal notes, apartment-swap deals, little theater announcements, abused-car ads, old stove and refrigerator deals. Add to that Madison Avenue publicity boys in crewcuts and charcoal suits; blonde nymphs in pony hair-dos and tight, oh very tight, suntan slacks; stevedores just off the docks; long-haired ex-G.I. art students—the whole gang, and the Budapest biddies to boot!

My ears must have been wagging like red flags at a rifle range when Madame Outre spoke up.

“C’est fini,” she said. “We shall have a shop, oui. Parfums from my own formulas, oui. And even, mayhap, a young man to assist during busy hours.”

She lifted her martini toward me in an amiable toast. I must have blushed like a kid.

“Me and my big ears,” I mumbled.

“We are a bunch of magpies,” Madame Outre replied. “You could not help overhearing. Be so good as to join us, s’il vous plait!”

So-o-o ... that’s about it, Sarge. Just as casual as that. She offered me a part-time job, I accepted, and a week or so later we finished hammering up shelves, cleaning the fixtures, and setting out the stock.

We were in business.

At first, and of necessity, Madame had to buy from wholesale cosmetic and perfume houses. But after a month or so European chemicals, Bulgarian perfume oils et cetera began to come in. Madame had outfitted a little laboratory for herself, in the back, which was strictly “off limits.” I typed out business correspondence, I banked checks and cash, and I waited on customers.

But only Madame had the key to the little back room.

Suspicious, Sarge? Hell’s bells, man, I’ve told you the Madame trusted me. If she wished to dispense secret scents, and withhold certain trade formulas that was her business!

Okay, you’re just trying to do your duty. We’ll leave it at that. Pour me another coffee, huh? I’ll be right out of the shower.

Thanks. So it goes along that way for about six months, Sarge. Until the Duchess of Dunscombe starts getting big ideas. It seems the Duchess started to drag some of her hoitiest-toitiest Continental friends down to the Village.

They didn’t shop at Madame Outre’s. They patronized her, and her customers. You know, the Village kids who work for ad agencies, weekly magazines, research organizations. In the office, they’re cute. In the Village, they slip on dungarees and become part of the crowd.

Well, things began to get pretty sticky between the Duchess and Madame Outre. They came to a head—oh, about two weeks ago. I was in the storeroom, a little alcove in the rear adjoining Madame’s laboratory.

Around five o’clock the Duchess came flouncing in. “My dear,” she boomed, like a brass cannon, “my friends and I have decided you must—but you simply must—move uptown. To waste your time down here among silly little secretaries—ridiculous! Fantastic! I won’t hear of it another moment!”

Madame kept calm. “You forget,” she said, “that it was you who urged me to open up shop here. Since then I have found many new friends. I have become established. The Village is now part of my life.”

“Nonsense!” the Duchess flared. “This is no ‘life.’ It is a humiliation to me and my friends! What began as a lark has turned into a travesty! You will move uptown, to the East Sixties, and next week. I have already chosen the store!”

Well, Sarge, the old gasbag was making so much noise that people outside began to hang around for the fun. I dropped my work, picked up some bottles and went up front, ostensibly to fill in stock on the shelves.

The Duchess glared at me, knowing perfectly well what I was up to. But she did lower her voice.

“Very well, then, my dear,” she said—and so help me, Sarge, she didn’t speak. She hissed! “You choose to abandon me, my aid, my patronage, my friends. But if certain people were to learn about your background—!” And like a witch’s broom, she swept toward the door.

“A moment, please,” Madame Outre said, so coolly the temperature seemed to drop.

The Duchess halted, and half turned. Quietly, her shoulders held stiff and proud, Madame Outre came out from behind the counter.

“We have known each other for years,” she said. “Our long association makes it fitting that we part, if not as friends, then assuredly not as enemies. As the final act in our relationship I must beg you to accept from me a small but adequate gift. It will be mailed to you tonight.”

Challenged to keep her temper, the Duchess smiled back. But her wide gray eyes were cold with hate.

“As you wish, my dear,” she said. “As you wish.”

Satisfied, Sarge? Now look, I’m telling you. As soon as the Duchess took a powder, Madame Outre went to her laboratory, and was busy for about half an hour. Then she handed me a four-ounce jar of greenish bath salts—probably the same bottle you found by the Duchess’s bath tub. So I wrapped it carefully, weighed it, stamped it and on my way home deposited it in the package mailbox on the corner.

Next morning—that was Saturday, about ten days ago—I found Madame’s check for two weeks’ pay in the mail. It didn’t sound kosher, so I rushed over to the store—which she’s failed to open, then or since. Monday I cashed the check. You traced me through her bank, eh?

No, of course I didn’t go to the police! Madame wanted to do a quiet fadeout, and that’s her business. The trouble with this country is—too many amateur snoops are on the warpath.

So that’s all there is, Sarge. And until you mentioned it, I never made any mental connection between Madame’s disappearance and the Duchess’s vanishing act. How could I, when you only told me a half hour ago? Come again. You say there’s dirty work at the crossroads?

Sure, I’ll buy. I’m morally certain nobody did Madame Outre in. She simply up and took off. As for the Duchess, anything that old battleax got she deserved—provided there’s a corpus delicti, a body. But there isn’t. You said so yourself.

So how in hell—

What? You did find something? A three-carat diamond wedding ring, which the Duke insists she never removed from her finger—not even when she bathed? You found it in the bathroom, eh? Okay. So maybe, just this once, she took it off before she toweled herself, or whatever rich dames do when they want to rub clean.

So she left it on the washstand. Oh—she didn’t? You mean, there was evidence she’d taken a bath, had finished, pulled the plug, let out the water, and then stood up to dry herself?

Let’s get this straight. The Duchess disappeared last night. The story is in today’s papers. Okay. She was probably taking a bath—check. She used the soap in the soap dish, and there was a damp towel lying by the side of the tub. Plug drawn. The cops are called in, and go snooping for clues. They find her big diamond ring—huh? Not on the washstand, but wedged sideways against the metal stopper inside the open drain?

Okay! So she got too much soap on her hands. The ring worked loose and got lost, and she failed to notice it was missing. Then she dried herself, got dressed and slipped out to visit some of her rich oddball pals....

Huh? You say the Duke had to call hotel help to break down the bathroom door? You say that he was in their living-room when he heard a half scream, and came running? Then a funny gurgle, as of water leaving the tub. And then ... nothing?

And when the bellhops broke in, no Duchess? Only the ring, which you people found later? And the open, empty bottle of Madame Outre’s bath salts, which your chemists couldn’t analyze?

You mean—Sarge, you mean you think there’s a possibility she soaked herself in those bath salts, pulled the plug, stood up to towel herself and then began to dissolve —and went down the drain?

Oh, my God!