Angels of Music (10 page)

Erik fell silent and shut his eyes.

The Persian knew he had not fallen asleep. He was thinking.

‘No,’ he said, at last. ‘With regret, we cannot take your case. Simple murders are outside our purview. The Sûreté are surprisingly good at solving them…’

The Persian conceded that this was generally the case, though the French police had their limitations and blindspots. The former Madame Calhoun and the in-all-but-name widow Latimer were walking around unarrested and unguillotined. Even the washerwoman in the counting-house of
Les Vampires
had shoved a postman down a well to prove herself qualified for her position.

‘The Sûreté believe they have
already
solved this murder. They believe
I
am the murderer. They will look no further for their culprit.’

‘I see their reasoning. Again, my sympathies.’

The Grand Vampire slumped on the sofa and spat out his teeth. His original set had been pulled long ago to accommodate the fangs, but he tired of them. They made his gums bleed.

The meeting at midnight was drawing to an end.

‘Little escapes
Les Vampires
,’ said the Grand Vampire, slyly, ‘under or above the roofs of Paris. When our sentries reported this bat-creature, we knew that inside the Spring-Heeled
Chauve-Souris
was a man. Can you guess who we first thought that man must be?’

Erik said nothing.

‘You, my dear Phantom,’ said the Grand Vampire, gums glistening red. ‘You.’

E
RIK HAD DECIDED
. So the matter stood.

Sophy Kratides cleaned her guns and kept her knives honed.

Inspector d’Aubert announced he was confident a significant arrest would shortly be made in the de Rosillon murder. No one in Paris held their breath.

Lesser vampires were hauled screeching into the sun and locked up. Some elderly criminals put aside vampire capes and dragged their old black coats from the back of the wardrobe. The Grand Vampire went underground.

Small items in the newspapers reported sightings of a bat-shaped man or a man-sized bat. A vampire scare took fire. Women wore garlic-smeared chokers until lovers complained. Godless roués sported silver crucifix tie-pins and carried hip-flasks of holy water filched from the font in Saint-Sulpice.

Many veiled ladies showed up for de Rosillon’s funeral. Afterwards, two fought a duel for the right to declare themselves his widow. Neither were hurt badly. Both soon found patrons to soothe their grief.

The Agency successfully concluded small cases. Unorna exposed ‘Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana’, a fraudulent medium who sold bogus maps to the lost treasure of Monte Cristo. La Marmoset solved a puzzling mystery which began with poisoned pet cats and thwarted an attempt on the life of a popular lady novelist who had just made a will in favour of her English butler.

For her part, and off the books, Sophy mercifully crippled a ponce who signed his name on girls with a branding iron. She left the women to dispose of him as they saw fit.

The Agency disapproved of side-ventures, but justice must be served as she saw it… not according to the dictates of a man behind a mirror.

Sophy was in two minds about masterminds.

But she liked La Marmoset – in most of her persons – and warmed to the strange-eyed new girl, Unorna. She was even fond of the Persian.

The world of the opera house was endlessly diverting. Coming and going by the stage door, she was often taken for a singer or a dancer. Like Erik, she was emotionally attached to the company – fiercely critical of missteps, yet partisan as the longest-serving claqueur. Protective of chorus and corps de ballet, she cast an eye over the crowd of young men who gathered at the stage door, cautioning girls against fellows who struck her wrong.

There were always one or two…

The great success of the season was a revival of
Macbeth
. Anatole Garron gave the performance of his career in the title role, and was widely praised and toasted. Erik sent a rare note of approval to Garron, who was suitably humbled. As a rule, the Phantom paid scant attention to baritones – or to male opera singers in general – but, like
le tout-Paris
, he admired the magnificent, murdering thane.

It was adjudged that Garron bettered Ismaël, who had originated the French version of the role some twenty years earlier. Then, the much-awaited piece was a sorry failure. Ismaël lived long enough to fume in silence as his successor took curtain calls. Even Signor Verdi, who would only really be satisfied if he could sing all the parts and conduct the orchestra himself, thought Garron ‘quite good – for a Frenchman…’

Wherever Garron went, the cry of ‘Macbetto’ followed him.

Couturiers put higher prices on tartan. The success set off a fashion for Scottish plaids.

In Dressing Room 313, the Persian read the latest notices. All the newspapers – and some of the newspaper
critics
– who had dismissed
Macbeth
as overblown and tuneless in 1865 now declared it a masterpiece. Throughout the run, the raves poured in.

But the house was not entirely happy.

With receipts up, everyone thought they should be paid more – but the Management always said expenses were up in excess of income.

And there were accidents.

‘In England, they say
Macbeth
is unlucky,’ observed Unorna.

La Marmoset, who wore a frock coat and trousers, cocked an ear. She was gumming a precise little goatee and moustache to her face.

‘In an English theatre, it is not done even to mention the title,’ Unorna explained. ‘When it
must
be talked of, actors call it “the Scottish play”.’

‘Pah!’ said La Marmoset, experimenting with a new character – a French literary lion with more opinions than published works. ‘The superstition of fools and dullards. For Anatole Garron,
Macbeth
has proved lucky.’

‘But only at the expense of some other fellow,’ said Sophy. ‘A
detective
might suspect someone jostled the hand of fate…’

Opportunity came late in Garron’s career. Aside from an early role in – strange to relate – Marschner’s
Der Vampyr
, he had seldom been given star parts. He was so convincing as a vampire, producers were reluctant to cast him as a normal man, yet Méphistophéles, a plum non-human bass-baritone role, was literally out of his range.

As
Macbeth
went into rehearsal, Giovanni Jones – the company’s premier baritone – happened to choke on a stew-bone and lose his voice. Jones’s Macbetto costumes were taken in for the less substantial Garron, who surprised everyone with his impassioned performance. All Paris applauded… except Jones, who remembered Garron had insisted he try the
lapin en cocotte
at the little restaurant in Impasse Sandrié. The bitter, laid-up singer muttered that his successor didn’t need acting ability to play an ambitious second-rater who’d go to any lengths to get a king out of his way and steal a crown.

‘It’s the nature of the piece,’ said La Marmoset. ‘All the witches and prophecies and ghosts and murders. Gloomy associations. The same with
Faust
and its devils. Bad things always happen when
Faust
is given.’

Sophy noticed the Persian shuddering at that.

‘So, when
Macbeth
is playing and a stagehand stubs his toe or a dancer’s brother falls over miles from the house or a bit of Birnam Wood catches fire… why, it must be the curse! The hens cluck and cross themselves and spit three times. Yet things are
always
happening, good and bad. They happen for reasons observable to the trained mind. When mishaps mishappen while a
comedy
is on stage, no one says dark forces are at work.’

‘There
are
curses,’ said Unorna, who was laying out a Tarot deck. ‘There are spirits all around.’

‘Are there vampires?’ asked Sophy.

The Witch of Prague shrugged slowly like a stretching cat. She gave one of her peculiar half-smiles. Her grey eye glistened and her brown eye gleamed.

‘I have no reason to believe there
aren’t
,’ she said.

Why was the Witch really here? Sophy half-thought her less interested in Erik’s reputed magic powers than in the tricks which convinced people he was a ghost.

‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,’ intoned Unorna.

‘That’s
Hamlet
, not
Macbeth
,’ said La Marmoset. ‘He is overrated, that Englishman. His comedies – ha! – they are not funny. His tragedies – heh! – they are not sad. And his histories – ho! – they are all lies. He is not fit to fill the inkwell of Pierre Gringoire or cut the quill of François Villon.’

La Marmoset was now completely a made-up character. Her hair was oiled and plastered, with a kiss-curl on her forehead. She even seemed to be balding.

Sophy admired her friend’s knack of disguise, but – in quiet moments – worried about it too. When she and Paul were little and pulled faces, their English nanny had an expression that frightened them: ‘When the wind changes, you’ll be stuck like that!’

What would happen to La Marmoset if the wind changed?

Unorna surveyed her scrying cards and frowned.

She gathered them up quickly, shuffled and laid them out again.

Then she meticulously tidied the pack and kept its secrets to herself.

‘We are bored,
Daroga
,’ said Sophy. ‘Find us something to do.’

‘Ah, the Angels are restless,’ commented the Persian. ‘And, as usual, Erik is occupied elsewhere. I find myself governess to girls who
all
act as if they’ve only just celebrated their sixth birthdays.’

The Angels laughed, but it was true.

Left to their own devices, they made mischief.

La Marmoset wrote anonymous letters to the newspapers, naming the culprits in open police cases. She could glance at the briefest report of a crime and pick out vital clues that had been missed. This hobby was not popular with the police… or criminals.

Unorna cultivated carnivorous orchids in a specially heated chamber beneath the boiler room. She fed them on rats bought from the house catcher at five centimes a rodent. From these blooms, she distilled potions which stank out the place.

Sophy threw on a shawl, put a bayonet in her reticule, and went about the city until she spotted a woman with a black eye or a thick lip. She would follow the poor soul to the man – husband, father or employer – who had hurt her, then cut off one of his hands and slap him with it.

‘Be patient and Erik will provide amusement… perhaps more than you would like.’

As if invoked, the shadow of the Phantom rose behind the mirror…

Sophy suspected he had ways of knowing what others thought, either by Unorna’s method of mental telepathy or La Marmoset’s method of observing telltale twitches.

The Angels and the Persian all noticed him at the same time.

‘Ladies,
Daroga
,’ he began.

The voice, a forceful purr, seemed to come from everywhere in the room at once. A trick of acoustics, or ventriloquism. Once, when the women thought themselves really alone, Unorna tried to match the effect – but had to admit defeat.

‘Tonight, the final performance of
Macbeth
will be given,’ intoned Erik.

Posters were up all over the building with ‘Last Night’ plastered across them. Scalpers offered tickets at twenty times the listed price. If not otherwise occupied by skirmishes with the police,
Les Vampires
would have counterfeited tickets and sold them at forty times the listed price.

‘I shall watch the performance,’ continued the Phantom. ‘As a special concession, you may join me.’

Box Five was permanently set aside for Erik’s use.

‘Afterwards, there is to be a masked ball to celebrate the great success.’

At the Paris Opéra, Sophy thought, there would be a masked ball to celebrate a great failure… or commemorate the opening of a ham pie.

‘I have approved of the production… of Garron… and we shall bestow upon the ball the honour of our attendance.’

Without the triviality of invitations, of course.

‘Costumes will be provided for you all. Tonight is the night of
Macbetto
!’

A
FTER TWENTY-SEVEN CURTAIN
calls, Anatole Garron was borne from the stage on the shoulders of the entire company. Applause thundered for a half-hour after his final bow. The huge, heavy curtains shook. The musicians of the orchestra pit left in their wax earplugs. Stage-hands up in the rigging clung dearly to ropes. Patrons with long memories made sure they weren’t sitting directly beneath the great, rattling chandelier. No one wanted to be added to the tally of accidents ascribed to the curse of
Macbeth
.

In Box Five, everyone was in a good mood.

Erik was in a trance, elbows on the plush velvet rest, tears trickling down his mask. Music reached his cold heart if all else failed.

La Marmoset delighted in pointing out clues left by the Macbettos which would have put a trained detective on their scent from the first alarm. Sophy enjoyed anything with murder, especially when the villain was exposed in the end and properly beheaded. Unorna hummed along with the witches, chorusing prophecies and incantations.

The Persian had stayed awake throughout.

He rarely mentioned his indifference to European music. The setting of the play – a French translation of an Italian opera set in an Englishman’s idea of Dark Ages Scotland – reminded him of the Mazenderan of his youth. He had first met Erik in that province, in the service of the Khanum. Beside that power-behind-the-throne biddy, Lady Macbetto was a merry milkmaid. The Khanum ruled through the proxy of her feebleminded son not her lackwit husband, and would have scorned Macbetto’s tally of a few ordinary dirkings as the fumbles of a mere starter. She took pride in killing with imagination and ingenuity. That was why she had employed a skull-faced foreign freak in the first place – to build palaces of the perverse and mazes of murder, for her own entertainment and that of her favourite daughter-in-law, the giggling, bloodthirsty little Sultana. Nothing he had seen during the Paris Commune was worse than the Red Nights of Mazenderan.