Angels of Music (22 page)

Sophy lingered a moment by a rack of cloaks, helmets and devices.

‘His wings,’ she said. ‘And other things we could use.’

A noise from below suggested the Countesses might have settled their differences and tired of the stale blood of the dead. They would be coming for a reckoning.

‘Angels with wings,’ mused La Marmoset.

The Countesses, spattered with blood, were at the end of the passage.

Sophy took a bat-winged ball from a rack, twisted its top, and pitched it. It burst to release clouds of thick, foul smoke. The Countesses choked on it.

Leaving behind the rest of Falke’s gear, Unorna, La Marmoset and Sophy made it up through a skylight onto the roof.

The sun was rising. Unorna had an idea this would confine the Countesses – night-birds, or bats or whatever – to the shadows of the house. They could pursue no further. When they recovered from blood delirium, they might or might not want to take up the fight again. She thought it most likely they’d tell themselves it was a draw and leave well enough alone. The Angels would have new stratagems to deal with them if they pressed the matter.

‘Is it over?’ asked Sophy.

Unorna looked to La Marmoset.

‘This is an act curtain,’ said the Queen of Detectives. ‘But the opera never ends.’

T
HE
C
AFÉ
S
AINT
-F
LOUR
Musette, once the haunt of
Le Gang de Schubert
, had become better known as the Brasserie des Martyrs, patronised by Baudelaire and Vallès. Now, it was the Divan Japonais, decorated in a supposed Japanese style which strayed all over the Orient. The crockery was Chinese willow-pattern. The waitresses wore hobbling kimonos. Tiny trees grew out of porcelain pots. Paper lanterns hung from the ceiling.

La Marmoset thought it appropriate to have this meeting where she now knew the story began. Dr Falke’s house was only a few minutes’ walk from his old watering hole. He had never really got beyond his student days.

As befits a Phantom, Erik hadn’t deigned to communicate since the conclusion of the case, but the Persian assured the Angels that their patron was pleased with the outcome. He didn’t hold the deaths of two baritones against them. The Opéra could always find more baritones.

The Grand Vampire had no cause to complain. He had hired the O.G.A. to stop Inspecteur d’Aubert’s campaign against
Les Vampires
. Being dead, he was no longer making a nuisance of himself. Inspecteur Bec, his replacement, was a more live-and-let-live policeman. If
Les Vampires
didn’t bother him, he was inclined to leave them alone too. The Sûreté had learned its lesson. It was a devil to make charges stick when witnesses suddenly became scarce and even the sorely aggrieved were unwilling to co-operate in cases against the organisation.

Unorna showed Sophy how to take tea in the Japanese fashion. The young woman was well travelled. In Falke’s house, she had impressed La Marmoset. At a point when the methods of detection – the rational vision of the world espoused by Madame Van Helsing – were of limited use, her sensitivities came into their own.

The Countesses had left Paris. Apparently, a terse note signed with the letter D had been delivered to the House of de Rothschild Frères, terminating their line of credit. They packed their long trunks, leaving behind heaps of new clothes in lieu of a settlement of their hotel bill, and took an express train to Transylvania to await punishment when their master came home.

Dr Geneviève Dieudonné arrived late in the afternoon, just as the sun was setting. Ayda Heidari, representing
Les Vampires
in an unofficial capacity, joined the party soon after. All the masterminds – Erik, the Grand Vampire, the brains of the Sûreté – were happy to move on and not think about
l’affaire du vampire
. It was left to the women to put the last pieces of the puzzle together.

‘The case is still open,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘With Bec in charge, I doubt there’ll be new developments. I performed Raoul’s autopsy, and – thanks to your report – can at least put the method of murder on the record. They showed me that mechanical blood-sponge device, but wouldn’t let me cut it up to see how it works. It’ll end up a curiosity in some museum of horrors.’

‘What about Falke’s body?’ asked La Marmoset.

‘That’s a bit of an issue, actually,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘It wasn’t where you left it. Most of the evidence you described – the mechanical wings, the masks and cloaks – were gone.’

‘He was dead,’ said Sophy. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Are you a qualified coroner?’

‘No.’

‘Then you’re not sure. Though you’re probably not wrong. You won’t be surprised to learn the most popular theory with the sensationalist press is that the Vampire Black Bat of the Rooftops can’t be killed.’

‘He’s not up there anymore,’ said Ayda. ‘We would know.’

‘There was some delay in having the police go over the house,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘Possibly, other official bodies got there first and rooted around in Falke’s treasury of inventions. In which case, in a year or two, Moroccan rebels will learn to fear flocks of night-flying Foreign Legionnaires.’

‘I knew we should have taken some of his toys,’ said Sophy.

‘Do you really want a flying Phantom?’ asked Ayda.

Sophy shrugged. La Marmoset knew Sophy was taken by the notion of flight. Falke had offered her wings. She would always wonder what she had missed.

Probably, a painful fall to Earth after the fashion of Icarus.

Even if
Die Fledermaus
was still somehow alive, he was finished with Paris. La Marmoset had put together most of the story and understood what had driven him mad – his own culpability as much as his friends’ cruel joke.

‘What about her?’ asked Unorna.

The Witch pointed to the wall where, between snarling Japanese demon masks, hung a bas-relief of
L’Inconnue de la Seine
… unknown no longer, if only within their limited circle.

Caralin Trelmanski.

‘Shouldn’t we say who she was?’ suggested Sophy.

‘We know her name,’ said La Marmoset. ‘But we don’t know who she was. Unorna and I don’t use the names we were born with.’

‘Or the face, in your case,’ said Unorna.

‘But that doesn’t make us unknown. As
L’Inconnue
, she’s famous… as Caralin, she’d just be nothing. The victim of a prank.’

‘More than one prank,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘I looked for her. At the Morgue, we have had several bodies on ice for decades… she isn’t one of them. After her face became famous, she was lost. I hate to think of what kind of admirer would steal her, but such things happen. It may be she was taken away to preserve her from the
badauds
. Falke may have done it, to give her a proper burial or keep her as a memento in a trophy room we’ve not yet found.’

‘Or she could have walked away,’ said Ayda. ‘And there are such things as… vampires.’

Dr Dieudonné smiled over her tea.

‘She had a stake put through her heart,’ said La Marmoset. ‘Traditionally, that keeps vampires in their place.’

‘According to the autopsy report, Falke bungled the impalement,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘He was a law student not a medical student. He shoved his stake through her
lungs
. Nasty way to die, for a human being…’

‘If there are vampires, your group should change its name,’ La Marmoset said to Ayda. ‘You came out best this time, with a Black Bat of the Rooftops for competition. If you were up against a Mircalla Karnstein or a Lord Ruthven, who knows how it would have ended?’

‘We were confident of success,’ said Ayda.

‘Why?’ asked La Marmoset.

‘Because, for once,
Les Vampires
were watched over by Angels.’

‘I
RENE
A
DLER
,’
SAID
the Persian.

‘Irene Norton,’ said the woman who had sat at his table. ‘I’m a married lady, now.’

‘I’d heard. My congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’

The Café de la Paix was busy, as ever. It was the hour when he accepted approaches. The Opera Ghost Agency had nothing much on, and the current Angels – Ayda Heidari, Ysabel de Ferre and Hagar Stanley – were idle. That was not good for them – or Paris.

He smiled to see Irene. She was, he admitted, one of his
favourites
.

But she was not expected.

‘Was there not an…
understanding
between you and Monsieur Erik?’ prompted the Persian. ‘You were to confine your activities to other countries?’

‘I’m married. I’m through with
activities
.’

‘A fine point. Not one I would want to argue with our patron.’

Irene frowned. Her perfect mouth almost pouched into a moue.

She was older, of course. As was he.

Everyone got older – with a few mysterious exceptions, like the Countess de Cagliostro … and the Phantom of the Opera. The Persian understood Erik had stolen something from the Khanum which froze him in time.

It wasn’t just the tiny traceries around Irene’s eyes and the tighter corset. She was different. Her way of speaking was changed.

No longer an American eagle, she was an Englishman’s wife.

A Norton.

The Persian had followed her career, of course. Erik had him keep track of all the Angels, fallen or flown. Cuttings books were maintained. Irene had triumphed modestly as a singer, and immodestly as an adventuress. He knew of her liaisons with crowned and uncrowned heads, her coups in Europe and the Americas. She had amassed and lost several fortunes.

But all that was apparently done with. The cuttings book could be closed.

The Persian had been surprised to read notice in the London
Times
of her marriage to an English solicitor of no particular distinction.

Geoffrey Norton. No,
Godfrey
Norton.

That was that.
Finis
to Irene Adler.

Irene Adler had been the toast of Europe,
habituée
of courts, palaces and great opera houses. Mrs Godfrey Norton would queen it over a villa in a London suburb. Irene Adler made demands of ambassadors and princes. Irene Norton would approve menus and keep an eye on the servants. Church on Sunday morning, and roast dinner on the table after.

And children. Lots of brats, taking after the father – handsome, but running to fat.

‘I am not in town to tread on toes,’ she said. ‘God – my husband – has taken a position in Paris. With Liddle, Neal & Liddle, the bankers. He doesn’t know about the
understanding
and, speaking plainly, wouldn’t understand it.’

‘The mists part,’ said the Persian. ‘You announce your presence and wish to petition for leave to stay?’

‘Mists be damned,
Daroga
. I wish to petition Erik… as a client.’

The Persian ordered another pot of coffee.

‘It’s God, of course,’ said Irene. ‘I’m sure he’s keeping something from me. Something secret.’

The Persian lifted an eyebrow.

This Angel had fallen indeed. The Irene Adler he knew would not permit a man to keep secrets from her.

Of course, any man who could get Irene to marry him must be quite a character. The Persian hadn’t thought there breathed a man extraordinary enough to pull wool over her eyes, to give her the runaround she had given men in the life she said she was through with.

The English had songs about birds in cages – the sort of sentimental nonsense Erik wouldn’t consider music. Surely Irene’s eagle wings could not be clipped by something as mundane as marriage?

‘Something criminal?’ he prompted.

‘Something diabolical,’ she said. ‘It must be. He’s so calm. So sure of himself. So sure of
me
.’

‘What does he know about…’

‘My
past
? Everything.’

‘
Everything
?’

‘Everything. Well, except… a few things he wouldn’t understand. Things he wouldn’t believe. You know what I mean.’

‘Yes.’

‘I heard the Agency chased a vampire a few years ago. That sort of thing.’

Irene lit a cigarette.

‘What do you know about
his
past?’

‘What is there to know?’ she said, puffing. ‘He’s an English solicitor. He went to a school. He played something called rugby football. He joined a respectable firm. He has several aunts. I’ve met them. They’re authentic.’

‘And his present?’

‘After that business with the King of Bohemia, I had to quit England. We were newly married. God proposed we extend our French honeymoon and looked for a job here. Liddle, Neal & Liddle have a Paris branch. They needed someone to handle legal affairs. Boring transactions. Deeds and bonds and the like. God speaks French, by his own lights. So we’re here.’

‘
Bienvenue à Paris
.’

‘Ha ha ha. That’s exactly how God speaks French.’

The Persian saw Irene was as close to distraught as she could be. She finished her cigarette as if setting a record and started another. If any other woman – lately married, but a few months beyond the honeymoon – were to sing him this song, he’d assume her husband had taken his first mistress and advise her to pick up a fencing teacher or an unpublished poet.

But no one – not even an English solicitor – would marry Irene Adler and take a mistress.

The woman was one of the original trio. Perhaps the cleverest, most devious operator ever attached to the Agency. Subsequent Angels all pressed him for memories of her. In tight spots, they asked, ‘What would Irene Adler do?’ Ysabel de Ferre, who didn’t care for
anyone
, wanted to grow up to
be
Irene Adler.

Irene had fought Countess de Cagliostro and walked out on the Opera Ghost Agency… outshot all comers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and stolen A.J. Raffles’s cufflinks from the shirt he was wearing… matched wits with Professor Moriarty
and
Sherlock Holmes, and got the better of both of them… gone up in a balloon and down in a submarine, and set the fastest time from Berlin to Warsaw in a Benz Motorwagen… been courted by plutocrats and pirates… had crown jewels pressed on her as keepsakes by besotted royals and showed spirit by tossing them into north Italian lakes. She had played many sides against each other and taken trick after trick for her own.