A Solo For The Living

by Tango1

The first kiss turned a ghost into a man. The second turned a girl into a woman. Two kisses, a ring, a backward glance: on such things do lives turn. In the real world outside the opera, two people struggle against themselves - while around them, France careens into military disaster. Some RC, mostly EC. WIP.

72. The Anatomy of Loyalty

A/N: Behold! A brand new chapter, which turned out to be long enough for two. I hope you enjoy it. Please do take a moment to let me know what you think!

Trivia: Lots for this chapter, but I'll try to keep it brief. Doctor Samuel Gross was a real physician, the head of the American Medical Association no less, and later the subject of a very famous medical painting, "The Gross Clinic", which depicts a 19C surgical theatre. Medical education for women, as mentioned here, was very limited and ad hoc, but in the US by 1870 there were several hundred female physicians, including 137 fully qualified doctors (MDs). Anatomy was indeed a popular hobby among 18C aristocratic women, and the countess who was reputed to travel with a cadaver in the back of her carriage for the practice of anatomy was Anne-Josèphe de Coigny. On a different topic, the property requisitions described here were seriously debated at this stage of the siege, and the story of General d'Exéa's reluctance to commit his troops is also largely true.

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Chapter 72 — The Anatomy of Loyalty

"Anatomy lectures!" Raoul missed a step in surprise, and instantly felt Geneviève Edmonds clench his elbow, concealing his stumble from what few onlookers were around at the early hour, before it could cast doubt on the fullness of his recovery. He glanced sidelong at her as they continued along the ambulance path, puzzled by her help, but her face was shaded by the peaked hat that protected her from the still-falling snow, and nothing in her attitude suggested she would welcome the question.

The paths had not yet been cleared that morning and they made two sets of crunching prints in the fresh snow, keeping up the pretence of old acquaintances out for a dawn walk while Geneviève assessed his progress against the two weeks that were Doctor Swinburne's condition for approving his return to duty.

"A lecture series in America," Raoul repeated, misliking the sound of Geneviève's news. Perhaps it had nothing to do with whatever offer had been made to Andersson, and yet... "That must require passage out of the city. Is it possible?"

Geneviève shrugged. "Doctor Swinburne could hardly have accepted if it was not."

"And he has accepted?"

"Assuredly."

"I cannot believe it of him." Raoul dropped his voice as they passed the busy entrance of the officers' tent, where there were too many ears. "Even if the Prussians were to allow him out, Swinburne would never leave Paris while so many rely on him here."

"The letter was signed by Doctor Samuel Gross himself, in Philadelphia. His anatomy clinic is renowned; nobody would refuse such an opportunity."

"You say it was written in Latin. Perhaps a simple misreading—"

Geneviève laughed low. "How you underestimate your obliging informant, Raoul! My Latin is more than adequate to the task, I assure you; and I know Doctor Gross. A fine surgeon. I'd thought to attend his anatomy lectures myself before I learnt that Doctor Swinburne was establishing his surgery here. And I do not regret returning to Paris," she added sharply, as though expecting him to suggest she must regret it. "What I am learning here cannot be gleaned from any lecture, and Doctor Swinburne's bone-setting methods are unique."

Raoul was silent, uneasy at the matter-of-fact reminder of her time in America, and doubly uncomfortable at the mention of her medical interests. 'The daughter of such a family!' his mother would have exclaimed, and Raoul had to admit he too found it eccentric. Anatomy might have been a pastime for some noblewomen of the ancien régime – he recalled stories of one countess so fond of dissection she never travelled without a cadaver in the back of her carriage – but he did not for a moment imagine Geneviève to be such a woman.

"In any case," Geneviève continued, "There may be no need for Doctor Swinburne to leave during the siege. The lectures are not until February."

"That is a scant few weeks away."

"Yes. I can hardly believe it is December…" Geneviève's gaze swept over her domain of the ambulance tents and she slowed her steps, watching the snow settling on the canvas roofs. "Strange, isn't it, to think that there is a time when all this ends? And it must come soon, I think, now the sortie is lost. Our food supplies will not last much longer."

Raoul refused to let his thoughts follow that direction. "We still hold the forts and most of the cannon, and there's men aplenty. We could mount another sortie."

"Oh, I hope not!" Genevieve said with feeling, "I do hope not." She saw Raoul's expression and gave a mirthless laugh. "You think me unpatriotic."

He did not deny it.

"Perhaps I am only tired. I saw the war in America." She made an impatient gesture. "They were all such patriots, Captain Edmonds included. Such complete and utter patriots. No, let us be honest with ourselves – we have a few short weeks before the bread runs out, if the Prussians don't flush us out before that with cannon. If Doctor Swinburne is thinking of a future beyond the war, then he is wiser than either of us."

Raoul kicked at a patch of trodden snow with the toe of his boot, sending a piece of footprint flying along the path. "You speak very calmly of the fall of France."

She seemed surprised. "Would it help if I were to rend my clothes and run howling through the streets? Our world is gone, Raoul. I have already mourned it once, when its loss was mine alone, when I was the one leaving it behind as I sailed away from France, yet I never dreamed that I should outlive it. All the old salons, the glittering parties, the Opéra… You were a patron, were you not?"

Raoul felt like he had been punched. His heart set to racing.

"Briefly."

Geneviève gave him a sympathetic look. "Gossip crosses the Atlantic faster than you might suppose. I heard of your engagement, and no doubt the news was all the noisier in Paris. It is over then; and she is back on the stage?"

Raoul was silent. He could not think what he could say to that. The facts, so baldly put, were unpleasant enough; he had no way of knowing what more might have reached her ears and no intention of adding to her store of gossip. Inanely, he thought of Christine as she had been in Perros: a slight girl with the sea breeze tangling her curls, singing on the beach.

Geneviève let the silence stretch, but to Raoul's surprise, did not pry further.

"He left me too," she said quietly, after a few steps. Her voice had changed; all traces of Paris society or American bluntness were gone. "He left me for the war. Ironic, isn't it? He'd wanted freedom."

She smoothed her glove absently, in the place where a wedding band might have once been, then gave a shudder as though throwing off a reverie. "They came to see me together after you left the Ambulance, you know – Miss Daaé and her lover. They meant to find you at Henri Guyon's address. An unlikely couple."

Raoul found he was listening intently, though he tried to conceal it, as Geneviève directed their steps to a smaller path. She seemed to be choosing the detour deliberately, to add another minute or two to their walk.

"Doctor Swinburne has taken an interest in his case, though I confess I cannot think why he should consider it remarkable. A war wound, I presume?"

Raoul selected his words, wondering how much she knew of the pact Andersson seemed to have made with Doctor Swinburne, and how much she might be willing to say. "Andersson fought at Sedan. Doctor Swinburne has an interest in his case, you say?"

"Hmm, it would seem so. He has been corresponding with Doctor Gross about it, at any rate."

"The anatomist?"

"The same. You seem troubled."

"A little." A leaden fear settled in the pit of Raoul's stomach, but he did not dare press for details. If Andersson was the subject of the doctor's letters, there could be no doubt that Swinburne's interest was more than a passing whim.

"Madame Andersson remains a good friend of mine," he said eventually, in what he hoped was a casual tone. "I would hate for her to be upset by curious enquiries about her husband. If you happen to see another such letter…"

"Don't worry. I shall let you know."

They had arrived at the tent Geneviève used as her office, and Raoul had never been more grateful for the opportunity to change the subject.

"There are rumours Guyon's regiment is returning today," he said apologetically. "I must see if he is back safely. I thank you once again for your kindness, and for the pleasure of your company."

"Oh, not at all. The pleasure is mine. It has been a long time since I've talked with someone from – before." Geneviève held out her hand, not like a lady expecting a favour, but as one who offered friendship. Raoul took it hesitantly, uncertain of what she intended – and snatched his hand away. Inside her glove, her fingers had felt too strong, like a surgeon's, and an image flashed through his mind of her using them to wield a scalpel.

Geneviève misinterpreted the gesture, covering her bare ring finger with her other hand. "I hope my frankness did not distress you. We forget the world sometimes, here in the Ambulance."

"Not in the least," Raoul said. He found himself taking her hand again, and now that he knew to expect it, its strength was not at all unpleasant. He tightened his hold.

He could not be certain, but he thought Geneviève's fingers returned a brief squeeze, secret, even as she bid him a cool goodbye outside her tented office. The snow was falling like a curtain by then, concealing everything from view, and Raoul told himself it meant nothing; a fleeting acknowledgement of a world now gone – but the sensation of that briefest contact remained with him for some time. It was a thrill, however small, to be touched.

He was scarcely conscious of having navigated the whitened boulevards and closed the heavy outer door to Guyon's apartment building behind him, when he became aware of a cacophony of voices coming from above.

His astonishment was complete when he discovered the source of the noise was the very same apartment where he stayed.

No servant was at the door when he came in, and he stood for some time in the entrance hall, as the snow on his coat turned to droplets, observing in increasing consternation the scene in the dining room ahead. The double doors had been thrown open and the room was packed by a multitude of unfamiliar characters of every sort and stripe, some in hats and gloves, some in work blouses, most in kepis. The snowstorm had dimmed the daylight, and both chandeliers were ablaze above the table: a staggering waste of their remaining fuel that was as incomprehensible as the scene they illuminated.

"Ah, Chagny!" Guyon cried, appearing between the doors in a sudden whirl of his officer's coat. He caught the doorframe for support. His hands were black with gunpowder and he had a week's growth of moustache and beard, and what looked like old blood on the side of his uniform. He was also undeniably drunk. "Come in and join us, come!"

"Join you?" Raoul struggled to make sense of the scene. "Who…" He gestured at the dining room behind Guyon. "You returned this morning?"

"At dawn – lucky, half the regiment lost – but that's not important." He waved it off vaguely. "Well, come on then! Come and take a seat. Now you're here, we're quorate."

"Quorate? What for? Sounds like you're opening a session of the Montmartre Committee…" He broke off. At the table was one face he did recognise: Jean Gandon.

Guyon took Raoul's shoulder and fairly dragged him into the dining room, towards the table that was a jumble of notebooks, newspapers and empty wine glasses. One place only, in front of Jean, had been swept clean and held a large map of Paris and the surrounding fortifications. Three bronze statuettes and an overflowing ashtray had been put to use as paperweights holding down the corners.

"Lieutenant de Chagny!" Jean greeted him warmly, rising in his seat to offer Raoul his hand across the table. In contrast to Guyon's mad energy, he appeared to be at his most sober and focused. "It's good to see you looking so well recovered. You've arrived at a critical moment – we were about to take a vote."

Raoul shook Jean's hand, finding it impossible to do anything else in this extraordinary situation.

Several of the others around the table added their greetings; now he was in the room, Raoul recognised four or five of them: Montmartre men and one or two women as well; mostly the bookish type rather than the soldiers he had come to know a little in the weeks since he had spoken at Andersson's hearing. The clerk who had taken down Andersson's evidence was there, a few of the local teachers and, asleep in an armchair with an empty bottle at his elbow, Pierre Ballard of the Folies.

"What a crowd," Raoul said under his breath to Guyon, but he either did not hear or chose to ignore it.

"Lieutenant de Chagny," Guyon declared to the assembly, "was not privy to our discussion and so can judge fairly whether or not we are on the right track here. Chagny, sit down, here." He thrust a velvet-upholstered chair towards Raoul, placing it opposite Jean. "You're a sensible man. Tell us what you think."

Raoul sat, mostly because he was not certain he could trust his bad leg to support him through any further surprises. At once a glass of wine was put in front of him, along with an open accounts book, and he realised too late that in accepting a seat he had in effect acknowledged himself one of the party.

If this was a conspiracy to overthrow the government, he had just become a co-conspirator.

With increasing dread, Raoul looked down at the book on the table in front of him. It seemed to be full of addresses. He turned the page. The addresses continued on page after page – dozens of them – and it made no sense. If this was a revolutionary cell Guyon had brought to his house, whose were the addresses?

"Every one of them left Paris before the lines were cut." Jean tapped the page in front of Raoul, stretching across the table to turn a page. "Good houses, most of these, well provisioned. Everything simply left to rot while the owners turned tail and bolted for their seaside villas. Fully stocked cellars," – here a ragged chorus of approvals indicated the wine, "and plenty of coal."

Guyon picked up the thread, seating himself beside Raoul. "It's a simple plan. So simple that it is unconscionable that Trochu's office has not given the order. The only order that could save us."

"And that is what, exactly?"

"Subdivide the abandoned goods. Confiscate the lot, and divide it fairly among those of us who still care for Paris: her last defenders."

"Abandoned goods," Raoul echoed. "You are proposing to loot homes."

"Only of those who left," said the clerk sitting next to Jean, as another muttered, "Turned tail and ran."

Raoul tried to contain his anger. "Is my address on your proscription list?" he demanded of Jean. "I dismissed my servants before I took up my commission and ended in Sedan. Are my belongings forfeit?"

Jean only rested his forearms on the table, slow and heavy. "It is not an easy decision. Nobody wants to go the way of the Jacobins in '94. But tell me, Lieutenant, what choice do we have? The people have been living on scraps for weeks; our death rate is such that I fear to return home from the mairie because I know – I know! – Louise will give me more names. Families, little children in our street and the next, widows, girlfriends, those who don't have even the daily few sous allotted to the National Guard. What are we to do for them when there is nothing left? Must we surrender them to the mercy of the Prussians and hand over Paris, with our fortifications still whole and our guns still un-fired?"

Raoul felt his anger crumbling under the weight of Jean's earnest words. It was true; thousands were dying of hunger and disease and cold, and it was the weakest who were hardest hit: what the men of the National Guard could endure, the children and the frail could not. After all, he had emptied his apartment's coal cellar for Christine and the Girys, but what of the others?

"We still have cannon and half a million able, willing men in this city," Jean concluded. "Paris must not do as Bazaine did in Metz and be taken with provision remaining. We must endure."

Raoul looked again at the book of addresses. "And you believe the winter stores from a few cellars will feed them all?"

"Of course not," Guyon put in, picking up his glass and downing the remaining wine in one gulp. "But it will buy us some time. Time enough to plan a true mass sortie, instead of this half-hearted operation we had from Ducrot. We can win this, Chagny. You must believe we can win this, or we are lost before we start! That is what happened, you know." He twirled the stem of the wineglass between his fingers. "We were so close, at Villiers, a hair's breadth away. General d'Exéa was supposed to be waiting, but the traitor hesitated. He saw us struggling and he must have thought, why bother, we are lost anyway – but we were not, Chagny! Picture it if you will, that frozen mudscape as far as the eye can see, with nothing left of the village, only broken walls and doors hanging open, snow; we've had nothing, no blankets for two nights… And he doesn't come. We hold off the Württemberg division, we keep going, we keep looking for those bloody reinforcements, and there is nothing. He came, eventually, with only half the men he promised. By then, it was too late."

Guyon raised his empty glass, as in a toast – and with sudden horrifying strength, smashed it to the floor.

The room became quite still. Nobody moved. The shattered lead crystal lay shimmering on the parquet in a myriad fragments, spattered here and there with purplish red droplets of wine, brilliant in the blazing light from the chandeliers.

A small scuffling sound came from the direction of the armchair. "God in Heaven," said Pierre Ballard, awake, looking down at the shards of glass around his boots. He moved his feet and blinked at the room, incredulous and pitiable, and Raoul momentarily thought of the way this same man had been able to give life to Christine's concert in the midst of devastation. Now he was lost. Looking around the room, Raoul wondered how many others felt the same.

Guyon sat stone-faced at the table amid the gaping silence, and Raoul knew none of them – not even Jean, serious and sympathetic, reaching across the table with a new glass – could understand what had possessed Guyon just then.

Raoul understood. But he no more wanted to share in the horror than Guyon would be willing to speak of it, and he remained as he was, waiting to see what would happen.

In the event, nothing happened. The smashed glass was left where it had fallen, as Guyon took the new one from Gandon, drained half at once, and sat nursing the rest as the discussion returned to the estimates for tonnes of fuel and other provisions required to hold out for another month, or six weeks perhaps, and whether this might suffice to raise a new sortie larger than the last.

A small cough sounded behind Raoul.

Grateful for the distraction, Raoul turned to it at once and found himself face to face with Guyon's old servant, Maurice. Maurice looked carefully only at Raoul, avoiding the gathering around him, and everything about him, from his spotless old jacket to his carefully shaven face seemed to be sagging somehow, as though some internal support had been taken from within him. He seemed to have aged a decade since breakfast that very morning.

"Madame Andersson here to see you, Monsieur le Vicomte. I showed her to your sitting room."

Raoul frowned in consternation; it took a moment to connect the name with Christine, and another to recall that she had indeed promised a visit, but he was already getting up from the chair. "Yes, of course."

From the corner of one eye he saw Jean note his departure regretfully, but he made no move to interrupt their discussion as he followed Maurice from the room, bits of glass squeaking under their feet.

"She has been waiting for a little while already, Monsieur," Maurice fussed, as they left the lights behind and Raoul found his eyes readjusting to the modest candlelight in the rest of the apartment. "I did not like to interrupt the, uh – commotion." His pressed lips and accusing voice left Raoul in no doubt as to how much of this 'commotion' he had observed and what he thought of it.

"You must excuse Monsieur Guyon. He is recently come from battle."

"Monsieur, if I may…" Maurice hesitated near the door to the sitting room. "What make you of that lot of vagabonds the master has brought in here? A foul bunch, if I may be permitted to say it."

Raoul shook his head. "It is best you do not say it, Maurice. Guyon would not take it kindly, right now."

"You know he has emptied the cellars of half our stores, this very morning. The lot of them were in the cellars before the master so much as set foot in the house."

Raoul paused with his hand on the door handle. "What stores?"

"Coal, oil, cured meat – two joints! – potatoes, turnips, what little we had in the way of carrots and such, I really could go on for some time, Monsieur. These are things Pélagie in the kitchen and I had accounted for most particularly, as you know the times are not what they ought to be for proper provisions. And now there is this talk of taking more and more things, from all over Paris as I understand. I am not a learned man, Monsieur, but I flatter myself that Monsieur Guyon could not find fault with my service over the years, nor poor Pélagie's."

"Of course not," Raoul reassured him, "I can't imagine there is any fault here at all."

"If that be the case, on what may we still count if he has it in his head to fritter away our stores and, I daresay, his resources, on the likes of that lot over there?" Maurice made a tiny gesture in the direction of the dining room. "At this rate, we shall have nothing left."

Raoul tried to find something comforting to say to that, but he had to admit the old servant's fear seemed not unjustified. "I will do what I can," he promised vaguely, and tried not to feel too disquieted by how much happier Maurice appeared at that. He only hoped the promise was not as empty as he feared.

Maurice reached over to open the door for Raoul, and stepped aside smartly.

"Madame Andersson, Monsieur le Vicomte."

"Raoul." Christine rose from the chair by the window, where she had been looking at the street below. Her hair was braided tightly in a crown over her head, and she moved so easily in the pale light from the window that Raoul was at once conscious that even here, far from any stage, he was in the presence of a star.

It's over then, and she is back on the stage? Geneviève had asked of him. No, he now answered to himself. Christine had never left it. Music was the world where she belonged.

"Are you well?" he asked, coming to join her by the window. She held out her hands, and he kissed both together, feeling faintly absurd in this role of a friend entertaining another man's wife, but conscious all the same of the propriety their situation demanded.

"Well enough," Christine said, and her smile touched him with as much warmth as ever. And as ever, there was a shadow of sadness behind it – and as ever, Raoul could not help but want to take away whatever troubled her and bury it somewhere far, far away, so that she might be safe.

Still, it seemed to him there truly was something worrying her this morning: hardly surprising, considering she must have heard at least some of the goings-on in the dining room.

"It seems you have guests," Christine said, following the direction of his gaze. "I had not realised Henri Guyon had returned. Meg seemed not to be expecting it this morning. She'd received a letter saying he might not be back for some time."

"Ah." Raoul hastily sought for some explanation of Guyon's conduct, but found he could not, at that moment, summon up the good manners to make excuses for him, between the notions of looting and the servants' complaints, and now neglect of Meg, a woman in whom he had claimed an interest.

Besides, Guyon was hardly the worst of it. What of Christine's own husband? The morning's rumours about Doctor Swinburne's curiosity and his letters to the American surgeon crowded into his mind, and try as he might, Raoul could not dismiss them as mere speculation. Anatomy lectures. He had not forgotten how Andersson had stood in the street, wild-eyed, conscription letter in hand, convinced that his own worth as a medical specimen could purchase the safety of his new life with Christine. Ruinous and desperate as his plan had been, it might yet have succeeded had Christine not countered it with her own. But what had transpired in the Ambulance that day, before Christine had taken Andersson as her husband?

Raoul moved another chair to the window beside Christine's, and they both sat. His leg was starting to throb in earnest. "Christine, listen. I need to tell you something."

"About them?" Christine tipped her head curiously in the direction of the buzzing conversation from the dining room. "I thought I heard Jean Gandon's voice earlier. What are they all doing here?"

"No, it's not that." Raoul clasped his hands in his lap, knotting and unknotting the fingers. Christine was looking at him with trusting, serious eyes, and he could not for the life of him think of how to warn her without adding to her burden. "I walked to the Ambulance this morning," he began.

"Without crutches?" Christine cried, with such delight that for no reason at all Raoul felt his heart lifting. "But that's wonderful! Raoul!"

It was plainly impossible to worry about anything when Christine was beaming at him, and he found himself grinning in return. Christine put out her hands and he stood up like Lazarus, muscle cramp forgotten, and on a whim, still holding her hands, spun her suddenly around and around, sliding on the polished parquet like ice, until they were both breathless and laughing like maniacs.

"We'll frighten the servants," Christine said, unrepentantly. Her braid had come undone and curls flew around her head in every direction. She looked like a mischievous twelve-year old. She looked… happy.

The prickle of guilt Raoul felt was enough to bring him back to reality, and with it, the pain in his leg returned in force. He caught his breath and tried not to show it, but it was too late; Christine's smile faltered and she hurried to move his chair nearer as he stumbled into it.

"It's all right," Christine said, returning to her own chair. "It'll just take more time, that's all. But it's wonderful all the same, it really is."

Raoul nodded, taking refuge in the pain from having to speak. It was beneath him perhaps, but he could not now bring himself to raise the fears that he had meant to speak of, and in truth, it might yet be nothing more than hearsay. It would be unpardonable to worry her now, before he'd had time to look into things more thoroughly. He owed her that, and he at once determined that he would say nothing until he was absolutely certain of the situation.

"You're right. I'm regaining strength every day, a little at a time. This much I'll say for Andersson, he was right; walking does help."

He spoke without thinking, and at once regretted it, for Christine's face seemed to cloud over and she looked away. Behind the window, the snow had cleared and the sky was now a pallid blue above the roofs of the buildings across the street. She winced, as if considering some uncomfortable news of her own. When she spoke, her voice was so low that Raoul scarcely heard it above the low hum of conversation from the dining-room.

"Erik didn't come home last night." She turned back to look at him, helplessly. "Is that to be expected? I left the Variétés yesterday evening, for good I think—"

"You did?"

"—Yes, perhaps; I'll explain later but, Raoul… Erik did not come. Not to the Variétés, not to the apartment at night. He was not seen in Montmartre either; Meg was there this morning to visit Monsieur de Gas and spoke with Louise."

"I see," Raoul said slowly. He was more than bemused: for all Andersson's faults, failing to shadow Christine's every footstep was surely not one that he could be justly accused of. Sudden disappearances were certainly within his power, but to vanish from Christine's side without warning, when he was clearly wanted there, less than two weeks after marriage, seemed utterly without precedent.

"You will say I am being too anxious for him, and perhaps it is true. He is not – helpless. But since the wedding he has been scrupulous in every duty, perhaps even to a fault…"

Raoul caught the hitch in her voice. "What has he done?"

"Nothing!" Christine said adamantly, "Nothing at all. He has been occupied with trying to find us a home. It matters to him, far more than to me I suppose, that we should live… Properly."

Raoul now found himself in the strange position of having to agree with Andersson in his absence. "That seems sensible."

"I know. You see, I told you there is nothing to fault him. But now he is gone."

"It has been less than a day," Raoul said gently.

Christine tugged at her curls, then quickly pushed them behind her ears, and rose from her chair. "You're right. Erik is a man like any other; he will have some reason, and I must wait – like a good little wife – to be told afterwards what it is that delayed him. No doubt it will be something sensible, proper, and for my own good."

Raoul struggled from his own chair. "Lotte, don't." He held onto the chair back. "Don't do this. Look, you are right to worry. If there is anything I can do to help, then you know you can rely—"

A drumroll of noisy footsteps in the hall interrupted them. Raoul and Christine looked up towards the partly-open doors, in time to see the arrivals. A thickset young man with a heavy plaid blanket tied around his overcoat for extra warmth headed briskly towards the dining room, followed by two smaller men, and a few steps behind them, an angry and frightened-looking Maurice.

Raoul touched Christine's shoulder to indicate she should wait here, but she was already moving towards the doors with him.

"I tell you, it weren't natural!" The man in the plaid had planted himself in the middle of the tall doorway, blocking most of the dining room from view, so that only the curtained windows and ceiling were visible above him. The others clustered around, with Maurice hovering anxiously in the background.

"A moment now, come and sit down, and tell it as you saw it," came Jean Gandon's voice, measured and calm.

"What the bloody hell do you think I'm doing!" the man fumed. "I tell you clearly, with all due respect and that, the building was locked up when we left the cellar last night. There's nobody there, everything under lock and key. And then this idiot here," he cuffed one of the other men over the back of the head, "says, 'reckon I dropped my tobacco there yesterday'. So, we go back there, mercy's it's on the way. Everything just as we left it: padlocked on the outside, this moron's tobacco pouch on the doorstep. Not a footprint in the snow. And then – I tell you exactly as we saw it—"

"Heard it, more like," said one of the smaller men, and the other cursed and made a superstitious gesture that caused Maurice to step further back behind him and mutter to himself.

"Yeah, heard it." The big man wiped his hand over his forehead, as if to ward off some sound that still puzzled his hearing. "Damned if you tell me we're all three of us mad, cause you know us, Gandon, we're steady men all, and there was nothing to see. But then we hear a sound from upstairs, and we look up – nothing there, every window blank, only from somewhere comes that god-damned heavenly music!"

Swiftly Raoul clapped a hand to Christine's mouth before she could cry out and attract their attention. Her eyes were huge and he dropped his hand at once, but the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up and he knew exactly what she, too, was thinking.

"And I know what you're going to say," the man was continuing, "But I was sober as a judge, word of honour. Everything just as we left it, locks and all. But there was something in there, not natural, some thing making music as you'd never hear on this earth. I swear I thought it'd make my heart stop."

"So what did you do?" came Henri Guyon's question behind them, in a mildly entertained tone that Raoul thought much closer to his normal self than he had seemed earlier.

"Left them locks alone is what we did." The man raised his hand as though to cross himself, then seemed to think better of it and scratched his ear. "Left 'em alone and came here."

Someone within moved and the men proceeded further into the dining room. As the doors were closed behind them, Raoul heard Jean Gandon saying, "Well – no harm done then. Now you're here, let's have a look at the rest of the addresses. Think you can manage another tonight?"

"Raoul," Christine said very quietly next to him. "Can you find out where they went?"