Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Epoque Paris by Levingston Steven

Author:Levingston, Steven [Levingston, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780385536042
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

Sûreté chief Marie-François Goron lay in a darkened room at home, frustrated and restless, recovering too slowly from his nasty bout with the flu and subsequent eye affliction. However powerful his resolve to direct the hunt for Michel Eyraud, his debility proved stronger. “I was gravely ill,” he recalled in his memoir.

The search for Eyraud centered on New York. He had posted his letters from there, and reports had come from guests at hotels and boardinghouses who had encounters with a man fitting Eyraud’s description, and from New York City police who were doing their part to reel him in on behalf of the Paris Sûreté.

But where Eyraud was hiding now was anyone’s guess. American detectives had found traces of him in both New York and Montreal. But those trails led nowhere. Was he still in New York? Was he hiding in Canada? The anonymity of big cities could help protect him. Had he gone south to Mexico or farther, into Colombia or Argentina? His potential playground was vast. He spoke the languages of Europe and the Americas, and changed identities with the ease of a stage actor. There was another possibility: In his letter to Goron in January he had vowed to rush back to Paris to defend himself if Gabrielle ever showed up and accused him of the crime. Had he read Gabrielle’s testimony in the newspapers? Was he headed back to Paris? Taking no chances, French police put the nation’s ports on alert.

The press aided the dragnet: Eyraud’s photo was everywhere; police and the public across the world knew his face; his celebrity would make it impossible to hide. “The truth is, Eyraud is very actively sought: be it in London or in America,” Le Gil Blas wrote. “It’s possible that in the coming days Gouffé’s assassin will be behind bars.”

The prefect of police, Henri-Auguste Loze, acting in Goron’s stead, dispatched two Sûreté agents to New York. Léon Soudais and Emil Houlier—the former balding, the latter with a walrus mustache—set sail on February 2 aboard City of Paris, the roomiest, most luxurious steamer on the seas. The vessel stretched 560 feet and accommodated 1,371 passengers on its four decks. The main saloon had a vaulting ceiling and stained glass, and was illuminated by incandescent lights. In the smoking room 200 passengers lounged in red leather chairs.

On February 12, as the agents docked at New York, news came from London that Eyraud’s arrest was imminent in a local pub. Parisians braced for a big break. But the following day, Le Figaro cooled expectations: “Yesterday, rumors circulated of the arrest of Michel Eyraud in London. This information is wrong. One is still without news of Gouffé’s murderer.”

Meanwhile, Soudais and Houlier had checked into the Hotel Martin on University Place, signing the registry under the pseudonyms Léon Jolivet and John Johnson to avoid tipping off the press and alerting Eyraud. At the French consulate they introduced themselves to the consul general, Viscount Paul d’Abzac, who put his resources at their disposal.

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