AN~
I've always enjoyed the idea of Erik and Daroga teaming up to solve a mystery together, rather like Erik as Sherlock Holmes and Daroga as John Watson. So, now I am attempting to write one. Please do leave constructive criticism. I always look forward to it.
Disclaimer~ I do not own The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantome de L'Opera). If I did, I would either be dead (Gaston Leroux) or a knight (Andrew Lloyd Webber). As I am neither, you can be sure, I'm just a Phan.
Joseph Buquet's body swung back and forth before the Daroga's eyes, like a morbid pendulum. A thin glaze of sweat shimmered on his brow and his bulging eyes stared, unseeing, at the stone wall across from the set piece from Le Roi de Lahore. For a moment, all the Daroga could do was watch with sick fascination as the slow motion of the body marked the passage of time. His legs shook violently beneath him, and he caught himself on the side wall just in time to keep from falling to the ground.
The Daroga had seen many dead bodies in the course of his life. First in Persia, then on his journey to France. Even in Paris herself, he had seen corpses lining the street during the lengthy months of the Paris Commune. But to see a body beneath the opera house, strung up in the third cellar was completely unexpected and somehow, raw, as though every death he had seen before was polished by something unseen. This made Joseph Buquet perhaps the darkest corpse the Daroga had ever seen.
And he could have prevented it. Years before, he could have destroyed the very thing that had ended the poor man's life, for there was no mistaking the catgut lasso strung about the stage hand's neck.
It was him.
Gathering his wits and wiping his brow with his handkerchief, the Daroga pulled himself up. Try as he might, he could not brush the disgusted scowl from his lips. Although pity and anger ran through his veins in pulsing bursts, the most prominent emotion he felt was disappointment. The Persian had truly believed Erik capable of redemption, but it seemed as though the monster remained.
With a deep sigh, the Daroga mounted the stairs, his eyes stinging with something he convinced himself were not tears. He would find the police and they would take care of the body.
Oh, Erik, he thought, what have you done