Angels of Music (12 page)

‘I say, Inspecteur, isn’t that one of those vampires,’ she said.

D’Aubert looked around, just in time to miss Ayda Heidari absconding. She had stolen the champagne glass from out of his hand – just for practice, La Marmoset suspected.

‘There are not such things as…’ began Madame Van Helsing.

‘Professor, in Paris we have another type of vampire,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘A notorious band of criminals. They call themselves
Les Vampires
.’

Madame Van Helsing smiled in thin-lipped triumph.

‘My point is made and lined underneath,’ she told Falke. ‘This is how notions get put about. Brigands claim to be blood-drinking spooks when perfectly ordinary men they are. Your Countess Mircalla Karnstein, for one, was a pathological erotomane with a fixation on young girls.’

‘…Who committed crimes over four hundred years.’

‘Her descendants inherited her delusion.’

‘Camille de Rosillon
was
drained of blood,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘I should know. I looked for it.’

‘It is my belief that the Count was murdered in a butcher shop, hung up and bled out into a trough.’

‘You can’t prove that,’ said Falke.

‘And you can’t prove otherwise,’ said the Professor.

Madame Van Helsing was so sensible it might count as a form of madness. La Marmoset wondered how she would react to the sort of magic Erik was capable of. The Phantom could make a long-dead parent whisper a forgotten childhood endearment in her ear trumpet. Would she simply be blind and deaf to things in which she did not believe? Or would her mind crack, sending her off to the nearest asylum?

Falke was diffident and distracted, but only on the surface. He slouched, as if trying to seem shorter than he was, and gave off the air of being puffy and out of shape. When La Marmoset brushed his arm while reaching for champagne, she felt an electric tingle. He had solid muscle. She knew the type. The skin on his knuckles, though expertly made up, was broken. This was a man who got into – and won – fights, not just a fellow who scored points in drawing room arguments and won settlements in petty sessions court.

Dr Dieudonné was too young to have been through medical school – no easy task for a woman, even in this changing century – and had risen to the trusted position of coroner in Paris without having a powerful patron. Someone considerably better connected than an inspecteur de la Sûreté. She was new to her post too. Camille de Rosillon was the first important corpse to show up on her slab. They had only the doctor’s word that the Count arrived in her morgue without blood.

If La Marmoset were on a case, she would say she had three fine, plump suspects.

The Countesses let up a shriek of laughter as another hapless man escaped from them. Their kisses left raw, angry marks on his neck. He would have trouble explaining the love-nips to his wife and his mistress.

Six fine suspects, La Marmoset corrected herself.

She mentally added the Marquis de Coulteray, who was waving bloody hands at the Princess Addhema and Countess Cagliostro… then gave up. She had been right earlier.
Everyone
was a suspect, and there were unsolved crimes enough to go round.

A hush spread through the crowd as the chamber orchestra who had supplanted the piper stopped playing. Glasses clinked and conversations dwindled. Even the Countesses stopped laughing and paid attention. A lone jeer came from Giovanni Jones, who got self-conscious as people stared at him and shut up.

Eventually, there was appropriate quiet.

Firmin Richard, Director of the Opéra, stood halfway up the stairs, a full glass in his hand. Beside him, out of make-up and giddy with success, was a broadly grinning Anatole Garron.

‘Our old friend is finally living up to his potential, Raoul,’ said Falke to Inspecteur d’Aubert. ‘Well I remember how Anatole and Jones strove to top each other in the bars and salons around the Sorbonne, duelling not with pistols but Schubert
lieder
. Strange to think that all these years later, the old rivalry persists. One up, the other down…’

D’Aubert was somewhat chilly at Falke’s mention of their student days – which, it seems, involved a number of now-prominent people.

La Marmoset scented a mystery there. And added two more suspects to her list.

She must stop this. She should be Queen of Not On Duty tonight.

Yet what Unorna had said about
Macbeth
stuck in her mind. The ‘Scottish play’ was often connected with strange events.

Crimes had been committed, perhaps.

M. Richard proposed a toast…

‘All hail Anatole, Thane of Glamis…’

‘Hip hip…’ cried the crowd, raising high their glasses.

‘All hail Anatole, Thane of Cawdor…’

‘Hop hop…’

‘All hail Anatole Garron, Vampire Hereafter!’

‘Hurrah,’ responded the hall before they realised quite what they were hurrahing.

Only Madame Van Helsing didn’t drink. Her glass froze on its way to her mouth.

‘A
vam
-pire!’ she expostulated. ‘A
VAM
-pire!’

Inspecteur d’Aubert reached into his tunic and pulled out a crucifix. He then put it back again and continued as if nobody had noticed.

Everybody had.

Dr Dieudonné shrugged and tossed back her drink.

The Countesses whooped and called for more champagne and tossed coins and trinkets at waiters. Their lips got redder as the evening wore on, La Marmoset noticed. Bluestockings tutted at their antics and were seen off with thumb-through-the-fist salutes.

M. Richard continued, explaining what he meant.

La Marmoset looked at Garron, who was quite flushed – or else hadn’t scrubbed off all the stage blood.

‘With our star ascendant, it has been a matter of some urgency – and heated discussion – in the offices of the Paris Opéra as to how the Great Anatole might follow up the triumph of
Macbeth
. After consideration, and in full consultation with the man himself, we have decided the next production of this house will be an entirely fresh staging of Marschner’s
Le Vampire
… and Anatole Garron has agreed to take again the leading role of Lord Ruthven.’

Black banners unfurled from the ceiling to reveal fifty-foot tall long-faced caricatures of Anatole Garron with red eyes and fangs. A thousand black paper bats powered by elastic bands fluttered down onto the heads of the delighted, alarmed, surprised assembly. The Countesses leaped in the air and caught the toys in their little fists and mouths like children playing with snowflakes.

Cleaners sighed. La Marmoset knew they’d be finding the blessed bats in unlikely places for months.

‘If I have stirred you as Macbetto,’ began Garron, slightly hoarse, ‘I shall terrify you as Ruthven. All Paris will learn to tremble in fear at the scratch at the window, the shadow in the corner, the soft breath at the throat… for this is to be the Age of the Vampire!’

Cheers rose – suggesting a greater general enthusiasm for the opera than Erik had shown. What would the Phantom think? Would he be torn between admiration for the singer and concern over his indifferent taste in vehicles?

Still, what else was there for the Great Anatole? He couldn’t play Marguerite.

‘I say,’ drawled Dr Falke, ‘not to be cynical, but do you think the Paris Opéra might be – ahem – cashing in on this vampire murder? If so, an argument could be made that it’s in rather poor taste. What with poor Camille’s killer still on the loose. Irresponsible, even.’

‘It’ll all have blown over before
Le Vampire
opens,’ said Inspecteur d’Aaubert.

Giovanni Jones slunk by, dagger bent out of shape, openly weeping. Des Esseintes, Queen of the Nile, had a comforting, bloody arm draped across the eclipsed baritone’s shoulders.

La Marmoset watched them go.

‘We know what Garron did to play
Macbeth
,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘What do you think he would do to play
Le Vampire
?’

A
T THE END
of each evening, the rubbish of the Palais Garnier – champagne bottles, torn programs, scribbled-on scores, broken toy bats – was carried to a yard behind the building. By dawn, a pack of children would have picked through the garbage for saleable or edible scraps. These efficient, meticulous, cunning little creatures could turn a profit from almost anything discarded by the Paris Opéra. Sometimes, little remained to be carted off to the barges which went up and down the river, removing the detritus of the greatest city in the world to foul islands of refuse upwind of fastidious folk who didn’t want to know of such places.

The Opéra yard was the sweetest-smelling rubbish tip in Paris, thanks to the heaps of discarded flowers. Many of the corps de ballet simply returned to florists at quarter-price the nightly bouquets sent by their admirers in the Jockey Club. More sentimental girls let tributes adorn their dressing rooms a few days before tossing them away. The children were careful with the flowers. Single uncrushed blooms were prized. They could be sold on the streets as
boutonnières
– or, if cadet
vampires
were involved, waved in front of the noses of tourists to distract them while tiny hands lifted watches and purses.

On the morning after the
Macbeth
ball, the children discovered a man among the flowers. Nothing more could be stolen from him. He was white as marble, naked, smiling. A deep red crescent was cut across his throat.

The children all recognised the dead man…

Around the corner, Simon Buquet was sharing a smoke with Macquart, the old soldier who kept the stage-door. A rag-picker marched up, tugged Buquet’s sleeve and offered to sell him some news. It was, she said,
very important
news. The little perisher’s solemn look persuaded him not to cuff her round the ear. He dropped a few coins into her outstretched hand.

‘The Great Anatole is dead, m’sieur,’ she said. ‘Killed by the vampire!’

Knowing the child wouldn’t dare make up something like that, Buquet allowed her to lead him to the rubbish yard. Though white as a fish belly, the dead man was who she said he was. Buquet judged that he had bled out, but no blood pooled around him. As one would expect of a vampire’s victim. Buquet crossed himself and paid the bearer of bad news again. She ran off with her tribe.

Buquet found a horse blanket to throw over poor Garron.

Officially in charge of a scenery construction gang, Simon Buquet was the house’s top bully-boy. A less-refined establishment would call him a chucker-outer or a trouble-stopper. A patron who tossed bottles at an unpopular comedian found an interview with Monsieur Buquet but a brief stop-off en route to an urgent appointment with his dentist. He was kept busy ensuring that the house was relatively free of posh tarts, pickpockets, bogus performers’ agents, embittered former employees and the more obvious ticket touts. Vendors of pirated song-sheets, pesterers of ballerinas and troublemakers in the employ of rival houses knew to stay well out of his way. The house was still haunted, but Buquet’s crew could do little about that. A wary truce existed between them and the Opera Ghost.

As a young man, Buquet had been chief of La Firme, the rowdiest of claques. His hooligans disrupted many a performance with fireworks, fought running battles with rival factions in the auditorium and the Place de l’Opéra, and were paid handsomely to applaud Carlotta and hiss her rivals. A difference of opinion as to whether the ballet should be given in the first or second act inspired La Firme to such a riot at the premiere of
Tannhäuser
that Wagner permitted no further Paris productions in his lifetime. Curiously, this commended Buquet to the Management, who were glad of the excuse not to deal with the impossibly demanding German. An invitation was extended and, following the example of crook-turned-thieftaker Vidocq, the master of the mob crossed the lines, transferring allegiance from the stalls to the house.

This was far from the first suspicious death Simon Buquet had come across in the course of his duties.

He summoned Macquart to stand guard and prevent the corpse being hauled off to the barges. Then, he roused a call-boy who was asleep on a coil of rope in the wings and entrusted him with a scribbled note he insisted be given only into the hands of Monsieur Richard or Monsieur Moncharmin.

As an afterthought, he allowed that once the note was delivered, the lad should fetch the police.

The sun rose.

The terrible news spread around the house almost at once. Emotions were loudly expressed. Opera folk vented feelings so broadly that, in comparison, an Italian at a wedding seemed like an Englishman playing poker. Shock, at the loss of a colleague. Amazement, at his sudden fall, in the moment of his greatest triumph. Terror, that no one could now think themselves safe from the vampire.

Weeping and wailing came from the ladies’ rehearsal room. Garron had been a favourite with the chorus. His precipitate rise to fame had stirred ambitions in passed-over understudies. What roles might they command if certain divas patronised the restaurant where Giovanni Jones ate that fatal stew!

Enquiries arrived by messenger from baritones – asking with some tact if and when auditions were to be held for the suddenly vacated plum role of Lord Ruthven in
Der Vampyr
. Deliveries of black flowers came from the Great Anatole’s many admirers. Crowds of women in tartan and black gathered in Place de l’Opéra to mourn.

As under the Hôtel Meurice after the death of Count de Rosillon, a frenzy of rats swarmed in the sewers and tunnels beneath the Opéra. Extra catchers were called in but superstitiously refused to work. Rats in a place visited by a vampire were vicious beyond the norm.

Through the fog of hangover, folks struggled to remember the end of the previous evening’s festivities. When had they last seen Anatole Garron? Was he dizzy from the success of Macbetto and giddy at the prospect of Ruthven? Or momentarily sober, a bat-wing shadow falling across his face as an omen of doom. At the ball, had he come to blows with croaking, accusing Giovanni Jones?

Everyone agreed that the baritone had joined d’Aubert and Falke, stout comrades of his student days, in impromptu renditions of the songs of his youth. Those who paid attention thought the Great Anatole might have been interested in toasting an immediate future with the slender, calculating Ayda Heidari?