Disclaimer: I don't own Phantom, though I often wish I did.
Note: Once again, I corrected typos and added details on 4/13/2008. The plot hasn't changed yet.
Elizabeth Smythe was a scientist of sorts, a woman who looked at the world logically, carefully, with an eye to detail. She was a realist, and though she enjoyed a good story as much as any human being does, she was not the type who fell to believing them. Certainly, she might shiver on a cool night after hearing a horrifying yarn, but she could also attribute it to the combination of the chill in the air and a trick that a part of her own mind might play on another part of the same. Faced with a startling situation she often jumped as instincts will have any man or woman do, but immediately thereafter she stood her ground, even ventured closer. One might imagine her with her children huddled about her—if she'd had any children to speak of—crying out "but Mama, Mama, the terrible crone will eat us alive!" and she, laughingly, leading them to show them an old scarecrow or a piece of laundry which had escaped the washerwoman's line. And it is with that same fearlessness that one should imagine her as she pushed open the second door, though it was naturally without anyone gathered round her imploring her not to do so that she did so, and entered the room and looked around.
The room was almost entirely black. The walls were not black themselves, but the heavy draperies which hung on all sides of the room—though there were, naturally, no windows this deep below the surface—were wholly sable. A dark red canopy hung in the center of the room gently concealing instead of a bed a coffin.
"What a dark and sinister production this must have been" remarked the lady softly as she entered the room. For although she considered herself a rationalist, she had not entirely abandoned her appreciation for the arts, and she was certainly capable of comprehending the mood of the set onto which she had just stepped. As she walked the perimeter of the room, she lightly touched a large music staff that decorated the wall. Having been trained to play the piano at an early age by her governess—as were most young ladies in Britain—she was able to sound out the tones. She had never been a talented musician, as she was far more interested in the sciences, but she was able to hum the first few bars and thought she recognized the familiar haunting tone, though she could not place exactly where she had heard it. She moved from the staff and continued her circuit of the room observing a huge pipe organ that covered one full wall of the room. She admired it appreciatively but stayed away from it. To hear it's tones in these depths would undoubtedly surpass even her ability to repress the funerary atmosphere of the place. Instead she walked purposefully across the room, the heels of her boots making a pleasant clomping sound on the hardwood floor much like the footsteps of the headmistress of a school during an examination. She smiled to herself that the sound was entirely out of place here in this apparent mortuary. She was still smiling as she approached the coffin.
And here her smile faded rapidly—for lying in the coffin was a body, what appeared to be a deceased body, and she trembled slightly as she recalled the murders about which she had read in the papers. Could this be the body of some poor unfortunate who had been recently—or perhaps not so recently by the look of it—murdered by whomever was the perpetrator of the crimes of which she'd read?
A prop, she told herself, for perhaps they could not spare an actor to play only a dead man. A prop... and yet she knew better. The poor soul. And so her explorations had ended, for today, anyway. She must report the body to the authorities and guide them back to retrieve it. There would be a full investigation, which would further postpone any possible purchase of the opera house, which could in fact be a good thing perhaps, since this might be a worthless investment after all. At any rate, she could wait. She was a patient woman and had made a life of her ability to wait and her refusal to let disappointment deter her. She turned to go, then abruptly turned back. Something about the corpse drew her back in sorrow.
"You poor soul" she whispered to the body, and she fell to her knees and murmured a blessing in a strange and ancient language. She bowed her head and wept, not only for the man in the box, but also for the secret dead of her own past.
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