Chapter Twenty-Seven

Erik

"Good morning, Mr Danton." Mrs Johnson entered my office carrying an armful of post. "Here's your mail."

Due to invasive construction work that was being done to my apartment at The Grand Circle, the previous night I had actually slept in my office at the Imaginarium, high above the small kingdom I called my own. Consequently, I had asked Mrs Johnson to collect my post from the Grand Circle and bring it with her.

This summer season, the Imaginarium was far more popular than the last, thanks to an expensive advertising campaign and, of course, Christine Daaé's performances with us in the Spring. Other singers who would not have considered adding a freak show to their list of touring venues had approached me through their managers, asking if they could also grace the stage of my concert hall. It was thrilling, and a little overwhelming.

"Thank you, Mrs Johnson," I shifted some of the papers on my desk to make room. Bills, I could see as she set them down, and another large, thick envelope from Kirkbride which must contain further notes from Meg's therapy sessions with Dr Lockwood. "Will you make me some more coffee, please?"

She lifted her eyebrows. "Are you sure? This would be your fourth coffee before noon."

"Mrs Johnson, I believe I hired you to handle my correspondence, run errands and see to my needs. I do not remember commenting on my caffeine intake to be part of your job description."

"As you wish," she replied, and left the office.

I reached across the desk for a paperknife, and began with those envelopes that were clearly bills. Taking a ledger from my drawer, I noted down the creditors and the amounts owed, and the dates the payments were due. My accountant, Mr Spalding, would double-check that all was in order and make sure the bills were paid.

Finally, I opened the envelope from Kirkbride, and saw that it also included an invoice, since it was time for fees to be paid for Meg's housing and treatment. I let out a low whistle, even though the amount did not come as a surprise. Even with assistance from Lucy Phelps, who was independently wealthy, Meg's care was causing a substantial dent in my finances. However, I would pay whatever amount it took to have Meg healthy and whole, perhaps better than she had been since she was a small child.

I thanked Mrs Johnson when she brought in my coffee, and sipped it as I scanned over the transcripts Lockwood had enclosed. He had been talking to Meg about her parents, her upbringing, and even though I had known Claude Giry, I was still surprised by how much of an impact he had made on Meg's young life. To know that she was watching his suicide was, I thought, one of the most selfish things I had heard of. But perhaps when someone is so deeply smothered by their depression that death seems the only alternative, there is no room left for considering the feelings of those left behind. I had never experienced such urges, and could not relate to them.

There were updates about the pregnancy, which appeared to be progressing normally with no causes for concern detected, and I said a silent prayer of gratitude for that. Becoming a parent was frightening enough as it was without the possibility that the baby was doomed before it even entered the world. Deep within my soul, fear still nourished itself; that the child would inherit from me the deformity that had made me hounded and hated throughout my life, or that it might inherit from Meg such an unstable mind. It took an astonishing amount of energy to keep such thoughts at bay.

There was a change in the text as Lockwood related Meg appearing to enter into a state of shock without provocation, and I frowned over the lines of the transcript that followed, and then felt my blood begin to boil as I comprehended what I was reading.

"Mrs Johnson!" I thundered. She put her head around the door, alarmed by my tone.

"Yes, Mr Danton? What's wrong?"

"Does Thomas Seymour have a telephone line?"

"I believe he has a connection to his home, yes."

"Telephone there and find out where Seymour is. I need to talk to him immediately about a matter of the gravest importance!"

"Yes, sir," she retreated from the room and I heard her pick up the telephone.

Seymour arrived in my office some thirty minutes later, holding his hat in his hand and sweating even in his light grey linen suit. I was standing in front of the desk, my hands behind my back, every muscle in my body tensed.

"Mr Danton, what is it, what has happened? Has there been some sort of accident?"

"That would depend on your definition of an accident," I replied coldly. "It seems to me that what happened was quite deliberate.

"But was has happened? Has someone been hurt? I didn't see any emergency personnel when I entered the Imgainarium."

"We are here to talk about Meg."

Seymour sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Danton, I have told you all I can about my relationship with Miss Giry, there is nothing more to tell, you know it all."

"As it turns out, I do not know that. You remember the day that Meg cut her wrists?"

"I remember watching Christine Daaé perform, yes, but I did not speak to or approach Miss Giry. Why?"

"There was a guest at our show that day, the first day to feature Christine Daaé, but when the show was over, it was Meg Giry she asked to see. Meg admitted her to her dressing room. Her name was Mrs Angela Merriweather."

Seymour nodded, but still looked confused. "Angela is my daughter. I told her for a long time that she should visit the Imaginarium. She rarely goes to theatres and so on without her husband, but they are not joined at the hip and I thought that she would enjoy your masterpiece, especially the performance of such a celebrated singer as Miss Daaé."

"What your daughter enjoyed, Seymour, was going to Meg Giry's dressing room and telling her that your wife died as a result of your affair with her."

He stared at me, all the colour draining from his face.

"What?"

"That is what your daughter, Mrs Angela Merriweather believes, and what she told Meg."

"I don't understand!"

"You already told me that you used that brothel as a place to find models for your artwork and that Meg caught your eye. Mrs Merriweather told Meg that her mother, your wife, found pictures of Meg that you had kept to yourself, that you were masturbating to, and that they had driven her into an early grave! Did she go screaming to you with these revelations? No she did not. She went to Meg and told her that she was responsible for taking another person's life!"

"My wife died during childbirth, Danton, Meg had nothing to do with it!"

"I am sure that you are correct, but your daughter feels differently." My eyes burned into his. "Meg slit her wrists, Seymour, because Angela made her believe that she was guilty of a murder. She made Meg believe that she was of no more use in this world and decide to end herself. A little girl found Meg, Seymour, and I had to act immediately to save her life. That is what your daughter has done."

Seymour sank down into the visitor's chair, his face the colour of parchment and a line of sweat beading his brow.

"I'm so sorry. What—what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to give me Mrs Merriweather's address."

"Absolutely not," he looked up sharply. "So that you can go and berate her? Take out your famous temper on her? I'm not allowing a man who would beat a child anywhere near my daughter."

"Oh, you have made it perfectly clear that you think me beating a girl in my care is a monstrous act, but perhaps if you had exercised corporal punishment with your own offspring than your Angela would never have felt that she could speak to Meg the way that she did! It is impossible that Meg caused your wife's death. But your daughter nearly caused Meg's. But that is not the point. I am going to find Angela Merriweather's address, with or without your assistance. I am going to go to her, and I am going to take her to Kirkbride so that she can apologise to Meg face to face."

Seymour shook his head slowly. "I don't know how you could force Angela to do anything, nor that it would help matters."

"It would help Meg to hear that her accuser was wrong, Seymour! She is in such a delicate state right now, at the point in her therapy where it seems to me that she can either recover, or fall apart and become completely lost to sanity. If you ever cared for her, then you will do anything you can to aid in her recovery."

Seymour swore under his breath and rubbed his brow, then looked up at me.

"I'm not going to give you my daughter's address, but I will take you to see Angela, and we will speak to her together. I don't think that you confronting her alone would have a very positive outcome. I can also ensure that she does not simply slam the door in your face."

I had not anticipated company on this venture, but could see that he had a point.

"Very well."

We took a cab across the Brooklyn bridge and into Manhattan, through its busy heart and then on to an area with huge, residential buildings that clearly belonged to people of means and looked like they had been built when the Founding Fathers were creating the building blocks for what they hoped America would become.

I was not at all surprised when the door to one of those homes was opened by a butler, who greeted us in an accent so superior that, even though he was a good ten inches shorter than I, I could still sense him looking down his nose at me.

"Mr Seymour, good afternoon. How can I help you?"

"My friend Mr and Danton and I would like to see my daughter. Is she at home?"

I frowned; Seymour and I were not friends.

"Certainly sir, I will let her know that you are here. You may wait for her in the library."

And so we waited, in a room smaller than I had anticipated with one wall occupied by an enormous window displaying the summer street outside, and the opposite window occupied by an equally enormous fireplace. The other two walls were covered floor to ceiling with shelves, laden with volumes, and even the door that we entered through turned out to be part of a bookcase. I wondered whether Mrs Merriweather was the reader, whether it was her husband, or whether the books were an inheritance and were merely collecting dust.

When Angela Merriweather arrived, wearing a fashionable pale purple summer dress and with lilac blooms in her hair, she was delighted to see Thomas Seymour.

"Father, what a pleasant surprise," Her expression faltered when she saw me. "And who is this?"

"Angela," Seymour kissed her on the cheek and extended a hand to me. "I would like to introduce you to Mr Erik Danton, he owns the Imaginarium on Coney Island."

"Oh, yes, I have been there. I saw Christine Daaé perform once. A pleasure to meet you, sir."

"Perhaps if circumstances were different then I might say the same, Mrs Merriweather." It was as polite a reply as I could manage, and she blinked at me in surprise.

"What does that mean?"

"Angela, love," Seymour moved slightly so that he was standing more in between his daughter and I. "The day you went to see Christine Daaé perform, you also went to the dressing room of the leading lady, is that right?"

She looked at him, and her expression turned cold and angry. "Yes, I went to talk to the little whore."

"Angela!"

"Well, that's what she was, you cannot deny it. Did you put her up to it, then?" She looked around Seymour to me. "Was she helping to fund your freak show with all her charms?"

"I knew nothing about it," I grated. "And I would certainly never condone her choices."

"You talked to her," Seymour pressed on. "And you told her about the deaths of your mother and baby sister. You went so far as to tell her that those deaths were Miss Giry's fault, directly."

"I thought that they were!"

"No, they weren't," he replied quietly. "Your mother's death was a tragic outcome that could not be prevented, despite the doctor's efforts. She haemorrhaged, Angela, you know that, and it is no-one's fault."

"Whatever the cause, you blamed Meg," I growled. "And what you did to her destroyed her."

"Oh, I think that highly unlikely. Girls like that a streetwise, they can look after themselves."

"Almost immediately after you left that dressing room, Meg picked up a piece of glass and slashed her own wrists. A six-year-old child found her lying in a pool of blood, she very nearly died! And now she is undergoing treatment at the Kirkbride Psychiatric Hospital, all because you chose to release your vitriol and spite!"

"Mr Danton—" Seymour began, but I had taken a step towards Angela Merriweather and was glaring into her face.

"I know that you were still grieving the loss of your mother, but did you know that Meg had recently lost her mother too? Do you think that when a girl sells her body, it is because she wants to? Do you truly believe, Angela Merriweather, that the whore is to blame and not the client? In this case, your father?"

"You can't talk to me like this!" Angela retorted. "I won't be spoken to like this in my own home! Father, Mr Danton is not welcome here again and I think it best that you both leave now!"

"Angela, you can't just dismiss this," Seymour's tone was sharper. "A woman nearly died, and unlike what she may have done, you were directly responsible. The three of us are going to Kirkbride Psychiatric Hospital, right now, where you will apologise to Miss Giry."

"I'm not going to a lunatic asylum," Angela protested. "And I can't go anywhere 'right now', I have plans."

"Consider them cancelled," he told her. "Go and get your purse."

"Father—"

"I will have no more argument!"

She looked surprised when Seymour raised his voice, but at last she obeyed.

Angela did not look at either of us during the journey to Kirkbride, instead gazing out of the window in silence, her entire body tense, angry and resentful, clearly still under the impression that she had nothing to apologise for.

When we arrived, she got out of the four-wheeler and stood looking at the asylum, before turning away from the entrance and walking across the lawn that lay like a green velvet carpet in front of the building, studded at its edges with the priceless jewels of blooming summer flowers. Angela reached a white iron bench and sat down upon it, arms and legs folded and looking like a petulant child.

"I told you, I'm not going in there," she said. "If you want me to speak to this Miss Giry of yours, then you go and fetch her out here."

"Angela," Seymour began.

"No, I'm absolutely serious. I am not entering a lunatic asylum."

"I'll go," I rolled my eyes and glared at the young woman, and then turned and entered Kirkbride. The nurse at the reception desk was the same one who had been stationed there when I first brought Meg to the asylum so many months earlier, and she smiled at me.

"Mr Danton, good afternoon. Is there something I can do for you?"

"Can you tell me if Miss Giry is currently in a therapy session with Dr Lockwood please?"

The nurse reached beneath the reception desk for a tome that looked large enough to list the names and addresses of every contact in New York state, opened it towards the end, and ran her finger down columns and columns of figures.

"Giry… Giry… today's date… No, she had an appointment with Dr Lockwood yesterday and has another with him tomorrow, but she doesn't have one today."

"Where might I find her?"

She frowned at me. "Our patients are not prisoners, Mr Danton, they're not confined to specific areas of the building at specific times of day. Besides, we try to adhere to strict visiting hours, so it would be better for you to return between three and five o'clock this afternoon."

"Enough of this," I muttered, and started to head for the staircase.

"Mr Danton, where are you going?!"

"To find my ward; I don't have time to adhere to your schedules."

"Sir, you can't just—"

But I was already taking the stairs two at a time.

I had already mounted the stairs to the second floor when I remembered that Meg had moved rooms, and retraced my steps. 1D, I remembered, and was pleased to confirm it when I entered the room to see the unframed portrait of Meg and Antoinette Giry propped up on the bedside table.

Meg was not there, but her roommate was, sitting on the bed and reading. She looked up at me in surprised, and I found that I had completely forgotten her name.

"Mr Denton, what are you doing in here? You can't just barge in like this, do you people have no manners at all?"

"Danton," I corrected automatically, choosing to ignore the last part of her remark. "I'm looking for Meg Giry, do you know where she is?"

"Of course you are," the woman rolled her eyes. "If she's not crying on Lockwood's shoulder, than she's probably hogging the music room or prancing around in the garden. What do you—"

I didn't stay to hear the rest of her question, but instead returned downstairs and headed for the music room. I could hear the piano being played, but the skill of the musician—or rather, lack thereof—told me that it was not Meg before I even put my head around the door to check.

There were three patients in the room, one mangling Mozart on the piano, and there was a synchronised scream when my masked face appeared in the doorway.

"Do not fear, ladies, I am not looking for you."

I left them to their confused stuttering without further ado, and stopped short when the huge orderly, Rowley, stepped into my path.

"Mr Danton, can I ask why you are striding around this establishment upsetting people? Poor Nurse Donovan is really quite alarmed."

"It was not my intention to alarm anyone, but I need to speak to Marguerite Giry urgently. I know that it is outside of visiting hours, but it cannot wait."

He nodded slowly. "Very well, then. I'll go with you, just to be on the safe side. Have you checked the gardens yet? I believe many of the women are out enjoying this glorious sunshine."

"It was my next stop."

"Come with me, then."

We did indeed find Meg in the garden, sitting on a bench by the rose beds, cradling her baby bump with one hand and a copy of Through the Looking Glass in the other, from which she was reading aloud. She looked worried when she saw Rowley and I together.

"Erik, what is it, what's wrong?"

"There's nothing wrong, so to speak," I assured her. "Forgive me for arriving here unexpectedly like this. Thomas Seymour and his daughter Angela Merriweather are here to see you."

"But I don't want to see them," she replied, "and it's outside of visiting hours anyway."

"Meg, please, I have had to pull too many strings as it is just to get the woman here. This won't take long."

Meg sighed, put a bookmark between the pages to mark her place, and slid the small book into her pocket. Rowley led us around the side of the building and through a gate which connected the rear garden to the front and began to increase his speed as we heard raised voices, Seymour consoling and Angela angry.

"Honestly, ma'am, I have no idea what you're talking about. We're here to visit Marguerite Giry."

"You, see this exactly why I didn't want to come here!"

Meg's roommate was standing on the lawn in front of Seymour and Angela, her stance combative.

"I just want to truth!" She cried.

"Now then, now then," Rowley jogged slightly to join them. "What's going on here, Mrs Maynard?"

"I know you're all lying to me!" There were tears in her eyes, and as she turned towards us, she extended a hand and pointed at Meg. "You!"

"Me?" Meg looked alarmed. "What have I done?"

"You've had your fun, but it's time to stop now. I know what you're up to."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're pretending to be me."

"That's ridiculous," Meg gave a nervous laugh, which only seemed to upset Mrs Maynard further. "Why ever would you think so?"

"I know so! I know that there have been visitors coming here asking for Tillie Maynard, and the staff send you to the visitor's room instead! People are looking for me! Why are you keeping them from finding me?!"

"Tillie, I don't understand," Meg took a step towards her, but Mrs Maynard jerked away as if she was brandishing a weapon.

"Don't touch me, you lying bitch! You're lying to everyone, making them think that you are me so that you'll get to leave with them! Admit it!"

"I cannot admit what isn't true, Tillie," She protested. "When I go to the visitor's room it is because someone has arrived asking to see Meg Giry, because that is my name. I have lots of friends and colleagues living in Brooklyn and I guess that now I seem to be getting better, they are more willing to come and see me."

"Meaning that because I am a nervous wreck no-one will come to see me?!"

"That's not what I meant at all, I—"

"Just shut up, you whore! I'm going to get to the truth, one way or another. And when I do, may God help you."

"Alright, that's enough," Rowley took Mrs Maynard by the arm and gently but firmly pulled her away from our group. "Mrs Maynard, let's go back inside, and we'll see if your attending physician is available to talk to you. You've got Dr Lockwood, haven't you? Look, you can see that these people are genuinely here to see Miss Giry, there has been no deception."

She looked around at us, her eyes burning with unspoken accusations, but let Rowley lead her back into Kirkbride. Meg sighed, rubbing her brow, and then looked up at the three of us.

"Mr Seymour, Mrs Merriweather. I wish I could say that it was good to see you, but I have a feeling that it won't be. What is all this about."

"Meg," Seymour took a step towards her. "I know what Angela said to you on the night that she visited your dressing room, and we are here to tell you that she was wrong. You had nothing to do with my wife's death; and Angela is here so that she can apologise to you properly."

He looked to his daughter, and she looked back at him, and then at Meg.

"I didn't know what happened to you," she said at last. "I wanted you to hurt, like I was hurting, but I never imagined that you would try to…" she trailed off, unable to find a euphemism that she deemed appropriate. "I didn't think that what I told you would result in you being sent to a lunatic asylum."

"I'm not a lunatic," Meg told her quietly. "I'm ill, and I was sent somewhere that can make me better. Even poor Tillie there is not truly mad, just very damaged by the things that have happened to her. Now, I need to get something clear in my own mind, Mrs Merriweather. Your mother died in December of 1899, and that's when you found out that your father here had been visiting prostitutes. Why did you wait for over a year to confront me?"

"I didn't know who you were," she muttered. "I saw you in his drawings, and I thought I'd never see you in real life. It was quite a shock to see your picture in the papers."

"And why did you come to shout at me, and not at him?" Without looking away from Angela, she pointed at Seymour.

"You're the whore," she replied without hesitation. "He was the client."

Meg's eyes glittered with tears. "And so you blamed me for doing the only work that I could do at that time, instead of someone who could have been frequenting such establishments and sleeping with Gods knows how many women, for years. Because you love him, and you didn't want to think badly of him, you put all the blame onto me."

Tears were also shining in Mrs Merriweather's eyes. "I didn't know you would try to kill yourself," she repeated. "I wouldn't do that to anyone; it would make me a murderer."

"Do you still blame me for Elizabeth Seymour's death, and that of your baby sister?"

"I wish I could blame you," Angela answered. "I wish I could blame him," she pointed at her father. "But there were complications with Mama's pregnancy and with the birth that were the true cause of her death. I wanted to blame someone when I came to your dressing room. I still do. But I don't believe that you are directly to blame for her death."

"Tell her," Seymour was glaring at his daughter.

"I am sorry, Miss Giry, that I told you that you were responsible for the deaths of my mother and sister. It's not true. You didn't kill them. And you have my word that my father and I will be discussing his infidelity and the impact it has had on his family." She glared back at Seymour.

Meg nodded slowly. "Thank you. Excuse us for a moment."

She took me by the sleeve and tugged me away from the others so that we could speak privately, and she chose French rather than English.

"I'm not sure how much sincerity I can read into this, especially since it seems to me that she has been marched here against her will."

"You have her apology," I answered. "And assurances that you were not responsible for the two deaths that put a guilt so heavy upon your shoulders that you thought the only way to escape it was to end your own life. Can that not be enough?"

"I don't know," Meg's dark eyes were troubled, but before she could say more, one of the nurses came storming towards us.

"What is all this?" She demanded, the lace around her cap quivering with her fury. "Mr Danton, we cannot have you disrupting Kirkbride like this!"

"Disrupting Kirkbride?" I echoed. "I hardly think—"

"We have rules in place, Mr Danton! You can't just arrive here at any time you choose, we have set visiting hours for a reason!"

"Mr Danton had a matter of urgency to discuss with me, Nurse Barber," Meg was wiping her eyes.

"Maybe so, but evidently Mr Danton has been roaming our halls and upsetting our patients and staff." A slight exaggeration, I thought. "I must ask you all to leave now, and return during the specified visiting hours."

"I apologise for any disruption we may have caused," I turned on the superficial charm that was so easy for me to adopt around women, and so difficult around men. "I assure you that we meant no distress to your staff or patients. We'll go now, and return at a more appropriate time. Meg, please think about what has been said today."

"Goodbye, Meg," Seymour said, and his gaze upon her seemed to hold a desire that could never ben fulfilled. Angela simply nodded, and under the stern glare of Nurse Barber, they climbed back into the four-wheeler.

Meg took my hand to prevent me following.

"One last thing, Mr Seymour, Mrs Merriweather."

"Yes?" They leant forward to see her through the doorway of the carriage.

"I know that I have no authority to tell you where you should and should not go, but I think it best that we do not meet again. Of course I cannot prevent you from visiting the Imaginarium, Mrs Merriweather, and I have no desire for you to withdraw your funding from it, Mr Seymour, if Erik is still willing to accept it. But I do not think that either of you should seek me out in the future. Even if you are trying to be friendly, as I know that you are, Seymour, I think it would be better if you just leave me alone."

"As you wish, Miss Giry," Seymour sounded surprisingly emotional. "I am sorry that our friendship has had to end on such bad terms. I will wish you the best of luck in your recovery, your pregnancy, and your future endeavours."

Angela Merriweather nodded in acknowledgement of Meg's words, and I leaned forward to whisper in Meg's ear.

"Good girl," I told her approvingly, then gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before joining the father and daughter in the carriage.