Angels of Music Page 2

‘What did I say?’ whined Irene. ‘Everyone knows the guy was ga-ga for the dame. Did you ever see Baudelaire? Weirdest-looking turkey this side of the state fair, mooning over this overpriced sporting gal. Most ridiculous thing you ever heard of. Just like Beauty and the Beast!’

  An exhalation of impatience hissed through the speaking tube.

  The Phantom had a particular, personal dislike of the Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont fairy tale known far and wide as La Belle et la Bête. When the management attempted to revive André Grétry’s Zémire et Azor, a once-popular opéra comique inspired by the story, the production was dogged by a run of bad luck. At the end of the dress rehearsal, the luckless tenor cast as Azor discovered that the inside of his beast mask had been cruelly coated with indissoluble glue. The prank became unpleasantly apparent when he attempted to tear off his mask to take a bow. No understudy would take the role on opening night, and the piece was replaced at the last moment by a less controversial item from the repertoire, Daniel Auber’s Fra Diavolo, ou L’Hôtellerie de Terracine.

  Irene thought over her comments about ugly geniuses smitten with beautiful women, looked again at the silhouette beyond the mirror, and paled in rigid terror. She had spoken without thinking, which was unlike her.

  Without the benefit of ‘music lessons’, Irene was less schooled than Christine and Trilby in the discipline expected of Erik’s operatives.

  Eventually, the hissing became a normal susurrus, and Erik resumed.

  ‘It is true that the Salon Sabatier has been the haunt of poets and artists. La Présidente has admirers among our greatest creative minds.’

  ‘I know all about the minds of poets and painters,’ said Trilby. ‘Filth and degeneracy is what goes around in their clever little brains. Enough scribblers and daubers have trotted after me. Ought to be ashamed, so they should.’

  Trilby spat in her hand and crossed herself. It was something her father often did when pledging to creditors that funds would be available by the end of the week, just before the O’Ferrall ménage moved to a new, usually less salubrious address.

  ‘Our client requires us to display great sensitivity and tact,’ decreed Erik.

  ‘None of the tittle or the tattle,’ said Christine.

  ‘Exactly. In the course of this investigation, you might well become privy to information which la Présidente and her particular friends…’

  ‘Johns,’ put in Irene.

  ‘…would not wish to be generally known.’

  ‘Have you noticed how these fancy fellers always think their wives don’t know a thing?’ said Trilby. ‘Bless their hearts. They’re like tiny children. Wouldn’t they be surprised if they knew what their missuses got up to while they’re tomcatting about town?’

  All three laughed. Christine, it had to be said, frequently did not quite ‘get’ the meaning of her friends’ comments – especially when, as was their habit, they spoke in English – but was alert enough to conceal occasional ignorance by chiming in with musical giggles. Her chief trait was adorability, and foolish fellows were already composing remarkably poor sonnets about the smallness of her nose with ambitions towards epic verse on the subject of the rest of her anatomy. Trilby was older than the others, though no one would ever tell to look at her. Her greater experience of the artistic life inclined her to be protective of her baby sisters. Foolish fellows in her presence tended to be struck dumb, as if she were a vision at Lourdes. Sometimes, a glazed look came into her eyes, and she seemed a different, more ethereal, slightly frightening person.

  Irene, in years the youngest, was a harder nut to crack, and men thought her handsome rather than pretty, as dangerous as alluring. She put it about that she fled her homeland after knifing a travelling preacher for whom she had been shilling. It was considerably more complicated than that. She often imagined returning to New York on the arm of one of the crowned heads she had seen in the rotogravure. In her copy-book, she had already designed an Adler coat of arms – an American eagle, beak deep in the side of a screaming naked Prometheus. A foolish fellow who stepped out with her tended to find some unknown apache had lifted their note-case, snuff-box, cuff-links and watch during the course of a delightful evening with a disappointing curtain.

  ‘It is a matter of a man and his wife which has been brought before us,’ announced Erik. ‘The man of some distinction, the woman an unknown.’

  The Persian undid the ribbon on a large wallet, and slid out clippings from the popular press, a wedding brochure, photographic plates and other documents. These were passed among the girls.

  Some excitement was expressed at a reproduced portrait of a handsome fellow in the uniform of a brigadier of the armies of the late Emperor. There was cooing of admiration for a curly moustache and upright sabre. With a touch of malice, the Persian handed over a more recent likeness, in which the golden boy was all but unrecognisable. These days, the soldier was an enormous, shaggy-browed, weathered hulk, a pudding of flesh decorated with innumerable medals.

  ‘You recognise Étienne Gérard, retired Grand Marshal of France, still reckoned one of our most influential citizens,’ said Erik. ‘No one is as canny as he when it comes to badgering the right politician to change a procurement policy or effect a strategy of preparedness.’

  ‘He started shouting “the Prussians are coming, the Prussians are coming” just after von Blücher bloodied his nose at Waterloo,’ said Christine. ‘I had an uncle like that.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Trilby, ‘the Prussians really were coming.’

  ‘That doesn’t make the old man any less a booby.’

  ‘You’re behind the times, Chrissy,’ put in Irene. ‘Gérard stopped tooting that particular trumpet a few months back. He’s a changed man since he got hitched to this little social-climber. Now, he’s big on beating swords into ploughshares and insisting the French people have no greater pal than Bismarck.’

  The wedding brochure commemorated the joining-together of Grand Marshal Gérard with his bride, Poupée Francis-Pierre.

  ‘He’s over ninety and she’s what… sixteen?’ said Trilby.

  ‘Precise details about Madame Gérard’s age, background or qualities are hard to come by,’ said Erik. ‘Such information is one objective of our investigation.’

  ‘I heard she was a dancer,’ said Christine, looking at a studio photograph of the bride. ‘Looks like she’s made of porcelain. You’d think she’d snap if the old goat so much as touched her.’

  ‘Is she one of la Présidente’s dollymops?’ asked Irene. ‘Some addlehead dotards go for that rouge-cheeked widdle girlie act.’

  ‘Madame Gérard is not a former ornament of the Salon Sabatier,’ said Erik. ‘Indeed, she is the cause of some consternation among the girls there. Before his nuptials, the Grand Marshal, despite his advancing years, was an especially favoured and enthusiastic regular customer.’

  ‘Tarts like ’em old and rich,’ said Trilby. ‘They can’t do much, but pay well over the odds.’

  Irene laughed, and Christine joined in.

  ‘Though not of an artistic temperament,’ continued Erik, ‘Grand Marshal Gérard found Madame Sabatier’s establishment more to his liking than many rival houses run to cater to more military tastes.’

  ‘Boots and whips,’ shuddered Irene.

  ‘Subsequent to his wedding, he has not visited the Salon.’

  ‘No wonder. He’s getting poked for free at home.’

  ‘La, Irène, you say such things,’ tittered Christine.

  ‘Madame Sabatier reports that losing a longstanding patron to marriage is an accepted risk of her business. However, she takes pride in the fact that, with this single exception, her clients have returned within three months of their honeymoons, and been more generous than before in the matter of recompense and gifts, usually with an added exhortation to increased discretion.’

  Christine laughed out loud, musically. ‘The Madame is deluded. Look at Gérard’s life, all the way back to the last century. All those expl
oits and adventures. He’s obviously a reckless romantic.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Trilby. ‘The old idiot’s probably in love with the minx.’

  ‘I’ll bet nuggets Petite Poupée has been down to the dressmakers to see how she looks in black,’ said Irene. ‘Then steered by the apothecary’s on the way home. If used in excess, those boudoir philtres for the use of senior gentlemen are bad for the constitution… so I hear.’

  ‘If that is the case, we are required by our client to intervene,’ said Erik.

  ‘I’ll say,’ put in Trilby. ‘Can’t let some filly get away with murder. We’ve got a reputation to think of.’

  ‘Does Madame Présidente fear for Gérard’s life?’ asked Christine.

  There was a pause. Breathing could be heard through the tube.

  ‘It may come to that. At present, she is more concerned that the old fellow is not “acting like himself”. She takes a keen interest in the defence of France…’

  ‘Sausage-eaters are notoriously rough on whores and stingy about paying.’

  ‘Thank you for that insight, Irene. “Adler” is a German name, is it not? As I was saying, Étienne Gérard’s change of mind on matters military and political troubles Madame Sabatier more than his absence from her customer register. She believes the Grand Marshal might have been “got at” in some way…’

  ‘Hypnotised,’ said Christine, thrilled.

  ‘Mesmerised,’ said Trilby, dreamily.

  ‘Doped,’ said Irene, cynically.

  ‘She wonders if the Grand Marshal even is the Grand Marshal.’

  ‘Murdered and replaced by the mad twin from the attic,’ suggested Christine, who read a great deal of sensation fiction, avidly following every feuilleton in every periodical in Paris. ‘Possessed by one of those invisible horlas one hears of and forced to do the bidding of some creature from beyond the veil.’

  The Persian gathered back all the documents, and resealed the packet.

  ‘Erik,’ said Irene, ‘are you sure this is a job for the Agency? It sounds mighty like some scorned comare, sulking because Sugar Daddy has cut off the cash flow, out to do dirt to the chit who has stolen him away. Shouldn’t they settle it with a decent knife-fight and leave us out of it?’

  The Persian produced several more wallets.

  ‘The Grand Marshal is not an isolated case.’

  III

  THE MARRIAGE CLUB had international members, though all were often found in Paris. Aristide Saccard, the daring international financier, a man who would never escape the soubriquet of ‘shady’; the Duke of Omnium, an English cabinet minister whose speeches were rumoured to have the mystic power of sending entire Houses of Parliament into restful sleep (‘If Planty ever had to declare war,’ sniped one critic, ‘we’d have to wake up the enemy to shoot at him’); Chevalier Lucio del Gardo, a respected banker no one outside the Opera Ghost Agency would have believed moonlighted as a needlessly violent burglar known as ‘the Spine-Snapper’; Walter Parks Thatcher, the American statesman and banker; Simon Cordier, behind his back called ‘Monsieur le Guillotine’, a magistrate and sculptor, renowned for cool, balanced and unsympathetic verdicts in capital cases; and Cardinal Tosca, the Papal Legate, reputedly the greatest virtuoso of the boudoir to come (or be chased) out of Italy since Casanova.

  All were getting along in years, widowed or lifelong bachelors, and had recently taken to wife much younger, socially unknown women, or – in the Cardinal’s case – brought her into his household as official servant and unofficial bed-warmer. All had reversed long-held public positions since their happy unions, made peculiar public statements or financial transactions, been far less often seen in society than before (Gérard was not the only old bridegroom to be missed at his favourite brothel) and were reported by estranged friends and relations to have ‘changed their spots’. All, it transpired, had first encountered their current spouses at soirées hosted, on an absurdly well-appointed barge in the Seine, by one Countess Joséphine Balsamo. Some said the Countess was a direct descendant of the purported sorcerer Cagliostro. It was believed among the peers of la Présidente that the Countess was directress of an unofficial wedding bureau, schooling girls plucked from orphanages or jails in the skills necessary to hook a prominent husband, arranging discreet disposal of the lovestruck old men, then taking a tithe from the widows’ inheritances. A flaw in the theory was that none of the husbands, as yet, had died in the expected mysterious circumstances – several long-term moaning invalids had leaped from apparent deathbeds and taken to cavorting vigorously with their pixie-like sylph brides.

  Christine held, against experience, to the possibility that nothing more was amiss than a collection of genuine May to December romances (‘More like March to Next February,’ commented Irene) which should be protected from the jealous wiles of Erik’s client. Trilby considered malfeasance was likely on the part of these men of wealth and influence, and that the Countess Joséphine was simply a well-dressed procuress with a dubious title. She felt the true victims of the Marriage Club were the unfortunate, nearly-nameless children given over into the beds of men who purchased them as they might a hunting dog or a painting. Irene suspected everyone was up to no good, and wondered what their angle on l’affaire Balsamo ought to be. She was as much magpie as eagle and it occurred to her that this case should afford access to households where valuables might be carelessly strewn about for the filching.

  The Persian, through his police and government contacts, had obtained a list of the Countess’s holdings. Few of her interests were in the name she most commonly used. These papers were passed through a shutter, to the chamber behind the mirror.

  ‘This seems the most likely “lead”,’ said Erik, after a perusal. ‘École de Danse Coppélius. The Countess is a “sleeping partner”. Young women of barely marriageable age and malleable personality might be found in a dancing school, hein?’

  The Persian showed again the photograph of Poupée Gérard. In the corner of the picture were scratched the initials ‘É.d.D.C.’

  ‘It’s a perfect front,’ said Irene, getting the talk back on track. ‘Haul ’em in, paint ’em up, sell ’em off.’

  A lever was thrown, and two wardrobe doors sprung open, disclosing three varied sets of female attire and one suit of male evening dress (with turban). The girls knew at once which were their costumes. The Persian took the turban.

  ‘Christine, Trilby,’ said Erik, close to the glass, eyes shining. ‘You will try to enrol at the École Coppélius. Christine, at least, should be able to pass an audition if dancing is actually required, while Trilby can certainly be passed off as bride-to-be material.’

  The girls looked at each other, not sure whether to be offended by Erik’s implications. Then Christine was struck by the loveliness of her new dress, and forgot any sleight.

  The shutter opened again. A newly struck, gilt-edged invitation card lay within. The Persian picked it up by forefinger and thumb, careful not to smudge the ink. Erik had a printing press in his lair – along with much other apparatus somehow smuggled below for the use of the Agency.

  ‘That,’ said Erik, ‘is for the Countess’s Summer Ball, to be held tonight on her famous barge. She expects the pleasure of the company of Rhandi Lal, the Khasi of Kalabar, and his daughter, the Princess Jelhi.’

  Irene held up a silken sari, pressed her hands together in prayerful submission, and bowed mockingly at the mirror, eyes modestly downcast.

  ‘Try not to overact, Miss Adler.’

  IV

  WITH HER JEWELLED headdress, scarlet forehead dot, exposed midriff, kohl-lined eyes, near-transparent costume and sinuous walk, ‘Princess Jelhi’ was instantly popular, attracting a platoon of admirers in white tie and tails or dress uniform. Most of the men had swords: as a consequence of jostling for position among the upper ranks, several duels were likely.

  As Irene flirted and fluttered, the Persian scanned the ballroom.

  The dancing floor was not the classic square, but
an oblong. Brassbound porthole-shaped windows above and below the waterline reminded guests that they were on the river. The mooring was secure and the barge heavy in the water: only the slightest motion confirmed that the company was not on dry land. The theme of the ball was Childhood Remembered, and the room was dressed as a giant’s child’s playroom. Ten-foot tall wooden soldiers and other outsized toys stood around, as conversation pieces or to excite wonderment. In the centre of the floor, a gigantic, stately top spun on its axis, ingeniously weighted not to stray from its spot or fall over. Above it all shone a giant, crescent-headed Man in the Moon. A wooden spoon on wires shovelled snuff into a lunar nostril.

  Irene lifted a bare foot, showing off her painted nails and oddments of paste jewellery from the opera house’s vast store of dressing-up kit. The motion parted her sari, affording a glimpse of shapely inside-leg. Gasps rose from her admirers and she tittered modestly at the ‘slip’, chiding the gallants in delightfully broken babytalk French.

  The Persian looked about for anyone not enraptured by the Princess. If the business of this ball was fishing for fiancés and an uninvited interloper was raiding the stock, the fleet who held rights in these waters would be out of sorts. The Countess Joséphine had not made an entrance, but the Persian knew she would be watching. Erik was not the city’s only addict of secret panels, two-way mirrors, listening tubes and portraits with removable eyes. Any descendant of the mountebank Cagliostro would be mistress of such matters. The single exposed eye of the snuffling Man in the Moon glistened like a lens.

  Irene Adler could be relied upon to glance at a crowd of gentlemen and single out the most distinguished victims – taking into account inherited or acquired wealth, ancient or modern title, achievements on the field of battle or in the arts, and degree of commitment to their current marital state. At a masquerade where everyone was dressed up as what they were not, she could spot a Crown Prince through a throng of mere Viscounts and chart a course which would lead inevitably to taking the prize. Within minutes, she had dismissed the also-rans and narrowed the field down to the three men in the company worth bothering with.