They found Joey Buquet with his neck snapped, lying backstage under one of the curtains. It was a neat job- efficient, clean, most likely done without much pain to the poor unfortunate Joey. If you were cold-blooded enough, you could almost admire the skill it must have taken.
Suicide was everyone's first thought. Although Joey didn't have any real reason to kill himself, he didn't really have a reason to live, either. An aged bachelor, living in a crowded tenement building, supporting himself by pulling ropes at a burlesque show and trying to scare the chorus girls. And if I hadn't had a friend with an interest in quick, artful deaths, that's what I also might have thought.
My name is Johnny Ledoux. I'm known as The Persian in certain circles because of my mother's ancestry. It's a nickname I picked up back in the war- it might be meant as an insult, but theater never taken it as one.
I'm a private detective, or at least I used to be. Mrs. Giry, the theater's choreographer and a woman of some influence, got me hired to act as the security after some nasty incidents with the local mob types. I agreed for reasons of my own, which will eventually become clear. My official statement on Joey's death was suicide, and that was good enough for her.
Mrs. Giry's a nice old girl, and I don't mind working for her. The theater's managers control the financial aspects, and let her make most of the artistic decisions. Her rules for me were that I always appear respectable and sober, keep a sharp lookout for troublemakers, and keep my hands off her daughter. She eventually dropped the last rule, after it became clear that her daughter had no intention of keeping it.
The chorus girls say the place is haunted. I believe them. What's more, I happen to know who's haunting it. But so far, he hasn't caused too much trouble, other then an occasional demand for money, which I usually end up paying. It's generally best not to let the managers know about the demands, since they just got out of paying protection money to the Guildicci family by giving one of their daughters a place in the show. She has a good voice, so it wasn't much of a compromise.
And if the Guildicci girl hadn't gotten sick the night of the show, and Christine never taken her place, maybe things would have stayed the same. Unpredictable, but reasonably safe.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. I should probably start on the night of December the fourth, 1943, when I first met the man who would become the Ghost.