Angels of Music (51 page)

Murmurings among the chorus. Falke and Favraux sputtered.

Antinea raised her hand. She was intent on Erik and Alraune. Nothing else would mar her enjoyment of the Fall of the Phantom.

Olympia moved, striding towards Erik.

‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ she said. ‘I hope we shall be the best of friends.’

Alraune grinned like a fiend, teeth red. Erik seemed to relax, like a python’s victim succumbing at last to the crushing coils. Blood seeped across his starched shirt-front and stained his perfectly tied white tie.

‘It is a pleasure to meet you…’

The mannequin made a fist and punched Alraune in the face. The
pop!
of the German girl’s nose breaking was like a pistol shot.

‘I hope we shall be the best of friends.’

Olympia tore Alraune away from Erik and tossed the scrap of a girl off the roof.

She
wasn’t
who she seemed, but she was
to be trusted
.

Kate stood, helping Irene up. The others scrambled around.

Unorna pressed her hand to Erik’s wound and was sheltered under his cloak. Mrs Eynsford Hill tripped Assolant and kicked him when he was down. Thi Minh scooped up the General’s pistol and fired a warning shot that tore Favraux’s hat from his head.

Antinea was enraged. She swore violently in a language which wasn’t Atlantean. It might have been Corsican or Sicilian.

Dr Falke, sensing the whole coup teetering, fiddled urgently with his bat-rocket. His armature hissed as he worked, as if he were steam-powered. His bird-men assisted, clumsily. They rushed through a process which should be carried out with more care.

Whatever the weapon was, it was about to be fired.

Kate, Irene and Olympia ran towards Falke’s crew.

Antinea shouted.

Kate didn’t even have an instant to wonder what she meant to do before she had her hands on Falke’s backpack and started pulling wires. Irene got to his legs and twisted his metal braces.

The old man keened in frustration.

Olympia tossed bird-men the length of the vat. They crashed and skidded on ice. The fish-nun’s mouth gaped and she barked like a seal, then ran off, scattering Jesuits and Camelots like a ball crashing through skittles.

A fuse fizzed. A clockwork whirr sounded.

‘You’re too late,’ crowed Antinea.

Olympia – whoever or whatever she might be – threw herself onto the bat-rocket, shattering its works with her armoured body, smashing her head against the fuse. A small explosion broke the thing into pieces. A burning wing spun round and round across the ice like a runaway Catherine wheel. Fragments stuck into Falke’s chest and he died, unable to fall. His locked metal braces held him in place, a slumped statue.

Olympia’s head was on fire. She plunged her face into meltwater to extinguish the flame. She lay, breathing more like an injured person than an automaton, steam rising from her blackened mask.

Thi Minh, Erik, Unorna and Mrs Eynsford Hill fought bat-men and frog-men at close quarters. Everyone slid around on the roof, losing their footing. A bat-man toppled, wings torn apart by the wind, and screamed all the way down – which gave his comrades cause to distrust their equipment.

Irene boxed Favraux’s ears and administered several kicks to his upholstered trousers.

Kate took the pages Mrs Eynsford Hill had written and gave them to Erik.

‘It’s her plan,’ she said, nodding at Antinea.

Behind his mask, Erik chuckled. He crumpled the pages up and tossed them over his head – where they caught light and burned with a purplish magnesium flare. Answering flares rose from rooftops all around… Cheers sounded from across the square, then across the city.

The rooftops were swarming.

White dots appeared in the dark… on the roofs and in the square below, and the streets feeding into Place de l’Opéra.

‘The Grand Vampire has opened his roost,’ said Erik.

Kate had forgotten the persuasive power of the Phantom’s voice – that suave purr with strange glottals as he compensated for his ruin of a mouth… deep, beautiful, perfectly cadenced speech… reassuring and all-encompassing as if directed precisely into her soul… unearthly, inspiring, terrifying.

Erik had brought them all in with just a voice.

‘And
Les Vampires
hold the rooftops of Paris,’ he continued. ‘Fantômas is abroad tonight, and Judex the Avenger… and the Angels you couldn’t net, Lady Yuki and Riolama and Elsie Venner… and others, old friends and foes united with us against you… Irma Vep, Rouletabille and Belphégor. Everywhere, your allies are confronted and checked and beaten. The company of the Opéra have pulled down your gaudy throne and tossed your choir into the street. Gendarmes and
apaches
together are trouncing your Camelots du Roi. Your traitors in the army have been rooted out and will be cashiered. Your frog-men and bird-men are routed. This is not your city. It never will be.’

Explosions and alarms sounded. But also songs – ‘La Marseillaise’, of course, and ‘Auprès de ma Blonde’, but something else too… a section from
Don Juan Triumphant
, voiced by people who
understood
, who believed in phantoms.

Kate saw what the white dots were. Masks!

Luminous, greenish-white masks. Worn by men and women in black cloaks and hats. A hundred phantoms – a thousand! ten thousand! – marched against the armies of Atlantis. Erik had his own plan, a game inside the stratagem laid against him. He had gulled his tricksters and surrendered to draw them into a trap. He was of the opera, after all. This was not a political coup, but a theatrical coup – a mastermind’s master-stroke. A final flourish when all seemed lost, and the curtain rung down to thunderous applause.

Kate cheered for the Phantom.

Antinea rose from her throne.

She was alone now – allies dead or fled or useless.

But she had one final move.

She flung off her furs. A set of fish-scaled wings popped out of her armoured carapace.

She threw herself into the air and screeched across the roof, claw-gauntlets out. She would tear off the Phantom’s mask… and his head!

Erik pushed Unorna aside and grabbed Antinea’s arms, holding her talons away from him. The Queen’s impetus lifted them both up and over the balustrade.

Kate stopped breathing as they hovered in space. Antinea’s wings flapped, once – then failed! Fabric ripped.

They plummeted, each firmly gripping the other, picking up speed, cloak and wings in a ragged tangle…

There was a splash as they fell into the flooded Métro works. The current whirled and eddied around the deep pit. For a moment, an arm thrust up out of the water, holding up a mask… then it was sucked under.

Erik and Antinea were gone.

E
VENTUALLY, THE WATERS
receded, the lights burned again and damage was assessed. Kate sent informative articles about the disaster to
The Clarion
and a confidential report about everything else to the Diogenes Club. Periodicals were filled with photographs of Paris under water, which also appeared on popular postcards. When over, the flood seemed a strange dream. People needed pictures to remind themselves the Eiffel Tower once stood in a lake.

Commissions of enquiry probed How the Flood Happened. Editorials suggested What Should Be Done to Prevent the Flood Happening Again. Wrecked businesses and the temporarily – or permanently – homeless demanded assistance and compensation. Supplies of disinfectant were distributed, and battalions of concierges and housewives set about Making the Smell Go Away. Looters were tried and convicted quietly, to protect them from angry citizens who couldn’t find the silver coffee pot left behind when they were forced to abandon home. The courts also welcomed a new breed of
blagueurs
– chancers who put in bogus insurance claims for non-existent lost property. By Mardi Gras, the Seine was down around the Zouave’s ankles. Paris managed a modest celebration – though the Prefect of Police banned confetti-throwing, for fear of blocking just-unclogged drains.

Few remembered New Atlantis. Casualties of the aborted coup were written off as flood victims. General Assolant was awarded another medal, for stalwart service during the late emergency (he had been wounded, after all), then quietly transferred to a post where he could do no more harm. Other conspirators returned to respectable life, shaken and afraid of consequences – but scarcely ashamed or even dissuaded from trying something similar again. Immediate threats were quashed, though. The Fellowship of the Frog disappeared, and many wrote them off as a myth. The Camelots du Roi were lauded for their patriotic spirit.

The Opéra season resumed with a gala performance to raise funds for flood relief. Reigning divas shared the stage with performers called out of retirement for the occasion. Irene Adler appeared low on the bill, singing ‘Hello! My Baby (Send Me a Kiss by Wire)’ – and received offers from cabarets and variety halls to perform again. The haughty sniffed that Tin Pan Alley wasn’t opera. Kate supposed Irene didn’t care. Carlotta joined Margarita da Cordova in the ‘Flower Duet’ from
Lakmé
. The former prima donna was note-perfect for the first half of the song, then croaked pathetically like a frog… while the chandelier above the auditorium shook alarmingly.

Was the house now haunted by the
ghost
of the Phantom?

Everyone looked to Box 5, which was – genuinely – empty. Modest obituaries had appeared. Everyone knew Erik was dead, but few wished to speak of him.

After the gala, a small, elderly fellow with a sad face approached Kate in the lobby. He plainly knew her, though she couldn’t place him. He said it was shocking what passed for entertainment these days and argued earnestly for stringent censorship. Only when he moved on did she realise who he was. She’d never seen his face, but the voice couldn’t be mistaken. Jacques Hulot… Guignol! He’d shut the
Théâtre des Horreurs
because of competition from the flickers.

Later that night, Kate attended another reception, under the opera house.

The lagoon was low. Repairs had been made.

She joined Irene, who still wore her gala dress, among the women on the dock. Her old friend Yuki was here, but not Clara Watson. Yuki passed on a rumour that Clara had installed herself as absolute ruler of a fearsome tribe inhabiting an ancient jungle temple in the Protectorate of Cambodia. The Japanese Angel had duelled frog-men in Montmartre. Mrs Eynsford Hill introduced a chittering, endearing creature as Riolama. The bird-girl had harried Camelots in Bercy, fending them off while the dynamos of the power station were started up again.

Irene also had a guest. A black-veiled, newly widowed Countess de Chagny. Her husband caught his death of a chill while protecting his estates from a swarm of bedraggled Parisian flood refugees. Kate had a sense of occasion at meeting the first Angel. Irene talked over everything Christine said.

Irma Vep, spectacular in a sheer black leotard and batwing cape, represented
Les Vampires
, who had come out of the flood quite well. On the principle that the drowned can’t pay protection money, the Grand Vampire had ordered his legions to contribute to life-saving efforts.

Kate recognised many of the company – but by no means all of them. Here was Hagar Stanley, the Romany genius, casting a valuer’s eye over everyone present… Elsie Venner, the whatever-she-was – more terrifying even than the late, not-to-be-mentioned Alraune ten Brincken… a repaired Olympia, up on her points and whirling like a figure atop a music box… dark, sombre Sophy Kratides, with her impish four-year-old Moria… the modern dancer Lavinia King and the ragtime gal Trudy Evans… the physicist Marie Curie and the alienist Sabina Spielrein… anarchists and princesses, and anarchist princesses… girls from the corps de ballet and the chorus who might yet show talents… smart young women who typed, bicycled, drove automobiles and demanded the vote… mature ladies who’d discovered aptitudes for detection, violence, disguise and daring. Angels all. Or potential Angels.

If there was still an Opera Ghost Agency.

A lantern moved across the subterranean lake. A gondola approached.

A masked, cloaked figure stood up in the boat. She wore a plumed hat.

La Marmoset, Queen of Detectives, Mistress of Disguise.

She had been Erik’s Secret Angel throughout
l’affaire Antinea
, holding herself rigid and unblinking, looking out through Olympia’s glass eyes, marking Alraune’s moves. The German girl had thought too little of the doll. Balsamo, her mistress, had thought too much of the Angels, wasting her cunning on vengeance rather than committing fully to her Ascent.

Had Erik known what might happen – to La Marmoset and to himself?

A woman who seldom showed her true face was burned beyond recognition. Under her mask, she wore bandages. One of her eyes was stained yellow.

Erik was gone – though his body, like Jo Balsamo’s, had not been found. To stay open for business, the Opera Ghost Agency needed a new Phantom…

…and a new Persian. Irene was averse to staying in one place too long. A young composer called Berlin wanted her to be first to sing his new song ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Clarinet’ – which Kate was sure no one would ever hear again, even if he did pay attention to Irene and change the title to ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. It fell to Unorna – the Witch of Paris, now – to take over the Persian’s table at the Café de la Paix. Monsieur Gustave ensured there was a fresh cloth on it every morning.

From among this crowd of women – former and present Angels, and women who had not yet heard the call – La Marmoset would choose three.

Kate had not left her name in the ring. She was needed at home. Charles’s cipher telegram outlined a series of baffling crimes which required the attention of the Diogenes Club. Objects of little value stolen from impossible places. He didn’t say as much – in a telegram, how could he? – but she knew he missed her.

Kate was already thinking. Who would – indeed, who
could
– steal an ordinary thimble from the Queen’s sewing room at Windsor Castle? An empty inkwell from inside the most secure vault of the Bank of England? And, most disturbing of all, a cigar-cutter from the Inner Chamber of the Diogenes Club itself?