Angels of Music (15 page)

‘Misfortune means publicity,’ said La Marmoset, ‘and publicity means ticket sales.’

‘The newspapers have already changed headlines from “Will there still be
Le Vampire
at the opera?” to “Who will be
Le Vampire
at the opera?”’ said Sophy.

‘That puts me in mind of a riddle,’ said La Marmoset. ‘All right, here it is… What have we three in common with the Management of the Paris Opéra?’

Unorna and Sophy didn’t know.

‘We’re all looking for a vampire.’

They all laughed.

‘Just the one?’ said Sophy. ‘Witches and Angels come in threes. Vampires might too.’

Unorna, previously, hadn’t laughed much. Her fellow Angels might vex on occasion, but she had learned from them that it didn’t hurt to smile.

‘Hold up, driver,’ said La Marmoset. ‘This is the place.’

They got out of the carriage on Boulevard de la Chapelle and paid off the driver.

They were outside an institute for retired railwaymen. A poster announced: ‘I Do Not Wish to Believe – Fallacies About the Undead Exposed’ – a lecture by Professor Madame Saartje Van Helsing, University of Leiden. The illustration was a black bat with a red X superimposed.

‘Why are we here again?’ Sophy asked La Marmoset.

‘The lecturer’s husband, the more famous Professor Monsieur Abraham Van Helsing, likes to quote our poet Baudelaire, who said “the finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist”. It’s the epigraph of his book about diseases of the blood and soul.’

‘I see,’ said Sophy, not seeing at all.

La Marmoset spread her hands and looked at Unorna.

‘Sophy,’ said Unorna, ‘we have a vampire problem, do we not?’

Sophy nodded.

‘Who in Paris is trying hardest to persuade us that vampires do
not
exist?’

‘Madame Van Helsing.’

‘Yes… and why is she determined to prove the non-existence of something most people profess not to believe in anyway?’

Sophy smiled, getting the point. ‘A vampire might want us off the scent. That blonde coroner sang the same song earlier.’

Leaving the Morgue, Unorna had noticed Dr Dieudonné in a broad hat and tinted glasses – though the sun was close to setting – in earnest conversation with Inspecteur d’Aubert.

‘She merely hummed the tune,’ La Marmoset said. ‘Professor Madame will make a symphony of it, I believe.’

They went into the hall. A few elderly characters turned to stare – Unorna suspected they were the first women under the age of sixty ever to set foot in the place.

The walls were decorated with photographs of hulking, obsolete locomotives which – according to the whiskery pensioners – were more magnificent than those currently in use. Safety regulations were killing the railways, Unorna overheard. The veteran who expressed this sentiment lacked an arm. The nodding fellow who agreed with him wore an eyepatch and was scalded across half his face. He sucked on a long-stemmed clay pipe.

According to the programme La Marmoset picked up, the hall was used for debates on topics of the day, small social events, amateur theatricals and lectures by distinguished experts in fields of interest. Judging from the sparse turnout, interest in Professor Van Helsing’s field was limited.

Autopsies were a bigger draw than debunking lectures.

Besides the retired railwaymen, who probably came to every event held in their hall, there were few patrons. Jacques Rival of
La Vie Française
, an inky youth who had been at the autopsy, was here to fill in a boxed footnote to a larger article on the burgeoning vampire scare which would bear the byline of a more established reporter. The Professor’s ‘There are no such things’ quote would be printed in far smaller type than the screaming ‘Can such things be?’ headline.

Even in Prague, Unorna had noticed this phenomenon of the popular press – people who believed in nothing professing to believe in anything, for the sake of a
story
. Even before teaching her how to draw a basic pentacle, her tutor Keyork Arabian told her that the first lesson of modern magic was never to talk to the newspapers.

Sophy nudged Unorna and nodded to draw attention to Ayda Heidari, who slipped in quietly and sat next to a gent given away as a police spy by the size of his boots. She was not the sort of vampire Madame Van Helsing professed did not exist. That Ayda was here suggested the Grand Vampire was keeping an eye on the investigation. Bored, she stole the flic’s wallet and put it back in a different pocket.

The only real surprise appearance was a tall, wide, soft fellow with a yellow crown of hair and a corset-defeating
avoirdupois
– the baritone Giovanni Jones, hated rival of the late Anatole Garron.

He did not seem to be the type to be interested in vampires… or, rather, to be interested in vampires not being real. Though, now Unorna saw him here, it came back to her that the official biography in the opera’s brochures mentioned Jones had an interest in weird and arcane matters dating back to his student days, when he had been torn between studies of music and metaphysics.

Could he have summoned a vampire to dispose of his arch-enemy?

‘Want to go into your dance?’ prompted La Marmoset.

She hadn’t wanted to risk it – for obvious reasons – in a citadel of the unhappy dead like the Morgue. This wasn’t an ideal situation, either – but Unorna felt obliged to make the effort.

‘It’ll look like I’ve fallen asleep,’ she told La Marmoset and Sophy. ‘Don’t let me fall off my chair and do myself an injury.’

They promised to look out for her.

Unorna sat back and opened her mind to the vibrations in the hall.

She did not intend to enter a full trance, merely to test the aetheric waters.

She rose above herself and looked down.

There were ghosts in the room.

Some chairs were occupied by indistinct forms, tethered here because they lacked the will to go anywhere else. The locomotives in the photographs puffed. All these ghosts seemed made of steam…

The ghost of the railwayman’s lost arm was attached to his shoulder, a transparent tube with an inflated glove at the end of it, flapping like a flag in the wind. His friend’s face wasn’t handsome under his blur of scarring, though. A bright eye shone through his patch. The fellow might be faking it for a pension.

Giovanni Jones was red from head to foot, and dripping. Blood invisible to everyone else – and to himself – seeped from every pore, and pooled around his shoes. The residue of undetected crime. Bat-winged imps buzzed around the singer. If he were stalked by the bloodless shade of Anatole Garron pointing and intoning ‘Thou art the man!’ Jones could not have looked more guilty.

Unorna knew even the police thought it worthwhile to have a long, hard talk with the man who most loudly expressed the opinion that the Great Anatole ought to be killed on the night he actually was. La Marmoset admitted most murders could be solved by arresting the victim’s worst enemy – but cases like that seldom came to the Agency. They were called in when it wasn’t so simple. Jones was on friendly terms with Camille de Rosillon, who had died before Garron inherited the kilt of Macbetto. If Jones were the vampire, he must have another motive. Unkind critics often pointed out how poorly cast he was as seducers like Don Giovanni or fighters like William Tell. It was hard to believe the balloon-shaped baritone spent the after-hours crawling up walls or leaping between tall buildings.

He was guilty of
something
, though. Then again, so was everyone.

Before coming to Paris, Unorna gave little thought to crime. Her interest in sin was spiritual rather than legal. Working with the Opera Ghost Agency changed her mind. Her sisters had been hurt, spiritually and physically, by men. Crimes had been committed against them.

They were good at what they did because the memory of pain was a spur. La Marmoset, Angel of Light, had a mania for finding out how a thing had been done and who was to blame. Sophy Kratides, Angel of Vengeance, was set on the righting of wrongs through bloodshed.

What Angel was Unorna?

She thought of herself as the Angel in a Mist. It was not necessary she knew everything… or that she turned the wheel of justice. She was here to help when matters weren’t clear, when light could not be shone and vengeance was futile.

Erik called her the Angel of Magic.

Her path was solitary, but at this stage she needed to be with others. She was learning.

She sank back into herself.

The room was slightly less sparsely populated than before, but there were still more empty seats than occupied.

‘What have you seen?’ Sophy asked.

‘Gio Jones, covered in blood,’ she whispered.

La Marmoset made a face. ‘This is in a dream, right?’

Unorna allowed that it was not literal blood.

La Marmoset shrugged.

‘The fellow at the back is wearing an eyepatch over a good eye,’ Unorna said.

‘I know,’ said La Marmoset. ‘He’s someone in disguise. His scars are crepe.’

‘Any ideas?’

La Marmoset inclined her head. ‘Ayda’s from
Les Vampires
, checking up on us… so he’s not one of them, unless he’s checking up on her. He’s too good at make-up to be a policeman, so he might be another consulting ’tec, out to rook us of our fee. Or he could be someone from the opera company.’

‘I think I’ve seen him before, with more of a face.’

‘Or less of one,’ said Sophy, oddly.

Under Unorna’s influence, she was starting to have
insights
. Or starting to think she was.

A small, bald man took the podium and introduced himself as Henri Paillardin of the Society for Rational Psychical Research.

‘I have investigated many a haunting and can report that, invariably, it comes down to something up with the plumbing… or doses of strong spirits of the drinkable rather than the intangible kind. Our proud motto is ‘There Is Always an Explanation’. With great pleasure, we welcome the distinguished Professor Madame Van Helsing of Leiden…’

The lecturer made an entrance to polite applause.

She wore a tweed caped overcoat and a matching skirt.

A little ghost boy trotted about five feet after her. Unorna had noticed him at the ball – he was attached to Madame Van Helsing. A dead son, probably. Not an uncommon form of haunting, and relatively benign. In most cases, a vague sense of presence serves to soften the curse of grief.

As the Professor approached the podium, a reedy fellow darted out and thrust an open book at her, also presenting a reservoir pen and beseeching the distinguished visitor for an autograph.

She examined the book, which bore the title
Ziekten van den Bloed en Ziel
.

‘I write this not,’ she snorted. ‘Ordure of a horse, it is.’

‘But… but…’ gasped the bibliophile, pointing to the name
Professor Van Helsing
, embossed under the title.

‘That my husband is.’

The autograph-seeker’s face fell and ink squirted out of his pen onto the floor. He wrapped his book back up in brown paper and left the room.

‘So it’s started well,’ said Sophy.

M. Paillardin coughed to cover embarrassment and whipped up more applause, which was grudging this time.

Madame Van Helsing climbed the podium. Her tame ghost sat on the floor, playing with a phantom cup-and-ball toy.

‘There are such things not,’ said Madame Van Helsing. ‘Such things not… as vampires.’

Several hands shot up.

‘We’ll take questions at the
end
of the session,’ said Monsieur Paillardin.

‘Such things are, however, as vampire
rumours
. And they do much harm. Some among you may think it amusing to believe, or pretend to believe, in vampires and goblins…’

Madame Van Helsing took the same line on the undead as La Marmoset and Dr Dieudonné. Unorna was not prepared to go so far. She had not met a vampire – that she knew of – but had seen things which would shake a Society for Rational Psychical Research. In Norway, she had certainly met a goblin.

‘These madnesses come in fashions. Don Quixote tilted at windmills in the belief that giants they might be… irresponsible pseudo-scientists now put about romances which would inspire a modern-day Quixote to chase after vampires. Corpses animated by demons, who blood drink and in coffins rest by day. Where is there harm, you might ask? Here – here there is harm!’

The Professor rattled the podium, gripping fiercely.

‘There is a vampire delusion running among us now,’ she continued. ‘All Paris knows of the dead men drained of blood.’

‘It’s a publicity stunt for the Paris Opéra,’ shouted someone at the back. ‘They’re putting on
Le Vampire
…’

‘Publicity for
Le Vampire
’s not much good if you haven’t got a Lord Ruthven,’ said Sophy.

‘It should be banned, I say,’ said a tiny, angry-looking woman. ‘No good will come of it. Think of the children. You tell ’em, Prof. No good.’

‘Regrettable is it that vampires parade on stage,’ agreed the lecturer. ‘Regrettable more is that to the stage they are not confined.’

The little ghost boy nuzzled the Professor’s skirts like a kitten. She was insensible to his presence. Unorna wondered at the effort of will it must take to ignore an attendant spirit like this. She was certain the child would be apparent to Madame Van Helsing if only she paid attention.

‘What about the Black Bat of the Rooftops?’ asked Rival.

‘A foolhardy adventurer in silly clothes,’ said the Professor.

‘The two dead men, drained of blood, grinning like it was Christmas, throats gashed by sharp fangs…’

‘Murders plain ordinary.’

Two more people got up and walked out.

‘This in Paris has happened before… with tragic outcome. Twenty-five years ago, inspired by a course of lectures given at the Sorbonne by my deluded husband, this city set out to find a vampire who did not exist… Innocents were accused. The mob was set off. There were tragic outcomes.’

A coughing started up in the room. Giovanni Jones seemed to be choking on that bone again.

‘The extent full of those horrors have never revealed been. When I began my research into the scare, it was only a horror historical… but now, with the fresh killings, it has become a horror present. We must not again let happen the worst.’