Angels of Music (7 page)

The Countess halted her work on the machine, a trickle of blood leaking from one of her eyeholes.

The voices soared, a wordless sound, two tones entwined. Edison bulbs burst. Champagne flutes flew to splinters. The faceplates of the last brides shattered, showing the intricate works beneath. Even their glass eyes burst.

Irene jammed her fingers into her ears, trying to shut out the pain.

Trilby and Christine, unaffected, seeming to be able to do this without breath, took the sound up to a peak. Somewhere on the barge, something major broke.

Another shrill note came, from Erik’s flute, cutting through his protégées’ voices, shutting them off.

And Christine and Trilby were fully awake, bleeding and puzzled.

‘What happened?’ Trilby asked Irene.

‘You went away for a while,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine now.’

Trilby realised she was holding a broken head, had a moment of disgust, and dropped the thing.

‘
Zut alors
,’ said Christine. ‘What a shambles!’

The Countess was gone, her throne descended into a trapdoor, a smear of thick blood marking her trail. Erik was vanished too. During the
mêlée
, he had fixed his detonator box to a clockwork percussionist, wiring its hand to the grasshopper switch and setting an hourglass timer which was already close to running out.

‘We’d best tell everyone to abandon ship,’ ordered Irene.

* * *

Most of the company were in the main ballroom when Erik’s explosives went off. There was a great grinding sound as the greater works of the barge misaligned and tore themselves to pieces, wrecking whatever purpose they might have had. More explosions followed.

Christine, Trilby and Irene were in a corridor, which ought to lead up to the deck and safety. They found the doorway barred and bolted. The Countess evidently took the ruin of her schemes personally. The incandescent lamps wavered, and they were ankle-deep in cold water. Then the floor listed, and the water flowed away. The girls found things to hang onto.

‘I think our music master might have planned this phase of the evening rather better,’ observed Irene. ‘We’re quite likely to drown.’

‘Have more faith, Irène,’ said Christine, cheerfully. ‘Something will turn up.’

They were looking at a foaming torrent advancing up the corridor. Something broke the surface angrily – one of the toy soldiers, or at least the top half of one. It thumped against a wall, turned over, and sank.

‘How sad,’ said Christine. ‘I love a man in uniform.’

One of the porthole windows broke inwards, and a rope ladder descended.

A familiar face loomed through the aperture, a beckoning arm extended.

It was the Persian! Alive!

‘Ladies, time to leave this playroom.’

He did not have to say it twice.

O
NLY TWO OR
three of the Marriage Club were drowned, and they weren’t among those who’d be most missed. The hero of the hour, feted as such in the popular press, was the aged Étienne Gérard. Shocked to his senses by cold water, the one-time Brigadier laboured fearlessly at great risk to his own life to aid his fellow guests in their escapes from the fast-sinking barge. Some wondered why such a noted gallant managed only to rescue wealthy, famous,
male
members of the party from the depths, leaving scores of poor, obscure, young wives to the Seine. No corpses were ever recovered, though broken mannequin parts washed up on the mudbanks for months. It was another of the mysteries of Paris, and soon everyone had other scandals, sensations and strangenesses to cluck over.

The Persian reported that he had been fished out of the river by his old friend, Erik – who effected emergency medical assistance, before taking the unusual step of venturing himself onto the field of battle.

Back at the Opéra, quantities of brandy were consumed, and repairs were made to the persons of the lovely ladies who had done so much for a world which would never know services had been rendered. As dawn broke, baskets of fruit and pastries were delivered, with a note of thanks from Madame Sabatier, who also enclosed a satisfactory banker’s draft.

After hauling cardinals and bankers out of the cold water, the newly-widowed Grand Marshal Gérard – if one could be widowed after marriage not to a human woman but a long-case clock with a prettily painted face – repaired to the Salon Sabatier, paid in advance for the exclusive company of three of
la Présidente
’s most alluring
filles de joie
, and promptly fell into a deep sleep that might last for days. That certainly counted as a happy outcome.

The only pall cast over celebrations came when Irene announced that she felt it was time she quit the Opera Ghost Agency to venture out on her own. Christine and Trilby wept to hear the news, and bestowed many embraces on their friend, not noticing that she was unable to control a shudder when they touched her. Irene could not look at their active, lovely, characterful faces without recalling the expressionless, bloodied masks of skin that took their place when three shrill notes sounded. Not to mention the proficiencies in arts devastating and deadly they exhibited under the influence. Either of them could have had Owney Geoghegan’s title away from him with one arm tucked into the back of their skirt.

The Persian understood and conveyed Monsieur Erik’s good wishes.

‘He suggests, however, that you limit your field of operations.’

‘I should stay out of Paris?’

‘He thinks… France.’

‘Very well. There’s Ruritania, and Poland, and London. All a-swim with opportunities.’

Irene left the building.

Behind his mirror, Erik knew regret. But he understood the American was not like his other girls. There was steel in her core, which made her unsuitable for ‘music lessons’, the specialised training he deemed necessary for his most useful Agents. That steel would never be bent entirely to his purpose, and might eventually bring them into conflict… as he had been brought into conflict with Joséphine Balsamo.

The Countess Cagliostro was, of course, still at large, and liable to be unforgiving now her carefully contrived plan of world domination was sunk at the bottom of the Seine. She would probably be suffering from a splitting headache, too, and be unhappy at the loss of her marvellous barge and so many toys. This was no time for the Agency to be under-strength.

The
feuilleton
was not over.

F
OR DAYS
, C
HRISTINE
and Trilby moped and were inconsolable. Every little thing was a reminder of something sweet or amusing Irene had said or done, and would set them off in further floods of tears. Other ladies of the chorus assumed their hearts had been ordinarily broken, and dispensed wisdoms about the untrustworthiness of the perfidious male sex.

Then, the bell sounded. Not for ‘music lessons’, not for an exploit, but a simple summons.

As they walked down the corridor to Dressing Room 313, they came upon a familiar, shambling, bent-over figure. Christine, acting on instinct, took him by the throat and shoved him rudely against the wall.

‘No more, please,’ said Cochenille, squirming.

Temporary repairs had been made to the mannequin, but he was still not in peak condition. As Christine pinned him, Trilby rolled up her sleeves, intent on smashing his face to bits again.

‘Ladies, let him be,’ said the Persian, looking out of the dressing room. He had been in a conference with Spallanzani and Coppélius. ‘These gentlemen have made a break from their former employer.’

Christine dropped the gasping Cochenille. His hand came off, and he picked it up and stuck it into his pocket. Trilby gave him a kick and he scurried away, followed by the doll-makers, who gave the girls a wide berth as they passed out of sight. Trilby gave their backs the Evil Eye Stare.

‘We have come to an arrangement,’ said the Persian. ‘Advantageous for our Agency.’

Trilby and Christine entered the dressing room.

On the divan sat a small blonde girl, dressed all in white, posed like a ballerina in a tableau.

‘She’s not a doll,’ said Christine. ‘She can’t be.’

The girl’s head moved and she blinked. There was no clicking or whirring.

‘She must be the original, from which the mannequin-makers copied,’ said Trilby.

The girl’s chest swelled and contracted with breath. She gestured, showing the suppleness of her fingers. She picked up an apple from
la Présidente
’s basket, flicked out her nails and rolled the fruit in her hand, letting the peel slither away from the flesh in an unbroken ribbon, then crushed it to juice with a sudden, powerful squeeze.

Christine and Trilby walked around the divan, observing the newcomer from all angles, wondering at the ingenuity of her manufacture.

‘This is Olympia,’ said Erik, from behind the mirror. ‘She will be joining us for “music lessons”, and taking the departed Miss Adler’s place in our roster of agents.’

Olympia curtseyed.

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

‘Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen. Just a word before you go. We hope the memories of Dracula and Renfield won’t give you bad dreams, so just a word of reassurance. When you get home tonight and the lights have been turned out and you are afraid to look behind the curtains and you dread to see a face appear at the window… why, just pull yourself together and remember that after all
there are such things
.’

John Balderston,
Dracula
(1927)

I
N THE EIGHTIES
, the tune changed. The mad whirl of Paris became madder still. Those who saw their way to fast fortunes took every opportunity to puff up portfolios of dubious stock. At the end of each trading day, the speculators of the
bourse de commerce
waded through knee-deep drifts of tickertape, stepping over the bodies of those whose brains or hearts had burst. Fending off weariness with sniffs of cocaine, these young men – the sons of shocked, seething, respectable fathers – would repair to cafés, cabarets and casinos and conduct a nocturnal
ronde
of seductions, ruinations and foolish wagers. Monies gained by day on the market were thrown away by night on the card table or at the wheel. More than one chancer lost his clients’ funds before dipping into his own reserves.

A generation of artistes maudits – poets, painters, novelists, composers, actors, musicians, singers – were culled by absinthe and venereal disease, which ran through the city like a flood from the sewers. Many were driven mad by their muses even before their minds and bodies rotted from the green fairy or the pox. Fashions were set in suicide. Certain bridges became so popular with self-murderers that they were roped off from before sunset till after dawn. Fine sets of duelling pistols were broken up as the down-at-heel-and-drooling patronised pawnshops to spend their final francs on ‘just the one’ gun and ‘just the one’ ball.

Beyond electrically illuminated districts where money and madness burned bright were freezing, nighted slums. The poor and wretched were made poorer and more wretched by savage government measures. Influenced by mine-owners, industrialists and colossi of capital, the Opportunist Republicans eagerly pledged the full forces of the state to stamping out a strain of rebellion which sprung up in the blighted north and threatened to take hold throughout the country.

The Army of the Republic was ordered to Montsou to put down a miners’ strike with a ferociousness in excess of measures taken against rebel tribes in North Africa. There were French men and women who grew to hate and fear the tricolour flown by troops who marched towards them with bayonets fixed. Émile Zola looked to the miners, utterly defeated, and wrote, ‘Men were springing forth, a black avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next century, and their germination would soon overturn the earth.’

Withal, it was a gay time – the
Belle Époque
.

In opera, audiences of the eighties applauded Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Delibes and Massenet. Cults sprung up around Berlioz and Bizet, dead too soon to enjoy the success in revival of works scorned on their premieres. The reign of Verdi, longer even than that of Victoria of Britain, continued, but the spectre of Wagner stalked Europe – ominous, rumbling chords beneath soaring arpeggios. Claques feuded and divas drove managements to distraction, but houses were packed.

The Opera Ghost Agency remained in business… though, as might have been expected, there was a turnover. In time, the first Angels moved on and were replaced by others, all talented and intrepid, each unique and extraordinary. The departure of Christine, his first protégée, left the Phantom bereft behind mask and mirror. He steeled his heart when selecting those who followed her. His first trio were singers, but the next line-up included a dancer. Then, Erik considered the dramatic arts – a veil will be drawn over the sorry debut and finale of Sybil Vane – before looking to other disciplines. Some specialists were engaged briefly, for a specific performance; others proved versatile enough to be held over for lengthy runs.

At the time of
l’affaire du vampire
, the Angels of Music were La Marmoset, Sophy and Unorna. On a variety bill, they could pass for an actress, a knife-thrower and a conjurer.

La Marmoset was the finest detective of either sex in Paris, which – whatever claims a patriotic English press might make concerning a certain resident of Baker Street – was to say the world. Once an independent investigator, often consulted by the Sûreté and the Deuxième Bureau, her agency was dissolved on the occasion of her marriage to one Mr Calhoun, a wealthy American whose current whereabouts were not known. Their union, evidently, had not been happy. The O.G.A. counted itself fortunate to have a Queen of Detectives on its lists. Other employers would scarcely have been as understanding of her habit of going disguised at all times. Fewer men had seen her true face than Erik’s. She owned up to many names and identities, though it seemed likely she was really Camille Bienville… or perhaps Tampa Morel… or any one of a dozen other young women with convincing documents, childhood memories, elderly relatives who would verify their identities on stacks of Bibles, and press cuttings supportive of whatever pasts they claimed.