"I am sure you will manage in whatever conditions you find yourself in." And with that, The Vicomte shooed me upstairs to work.
The thing about maps is: they only work is you hold them the right way around. And I wasn't. After walking around, through and past dank, dark and dreary stone corridor after corridor even I had to admit that maybe – just maybe – I was lost. At the very least I was nowhere near where I wanted or had intended to be. As if the Prima Donna's dressing room would be hidden away back here with the resident bugs and dry rot.
The stone passageway suddenly turned and I found myself standing in an atrium of sorts. The walls stretched up into the dusty black, ending in – I assumed – the same cathedral style as the rest of the Opera House. Following my little torch light across the flagstone floor I made to traverse through the atrium, fanning the dust I was kicking up away from my face as I went. I stepped (and occasionally tripped) over the occasional bit of lost stone, cracked mortar, a statue limb without the rest. Was that a head? I pulled my eyes up from the marble skull of Apollo or David or whoever it was and nearly collided the opposing wall.
Except it wasn't a wall. With the torch beam I traced a long, deliberately carved crack up, across, down, across again, and then up. The outline of a door. A pair of doors, in fact; hewn into the rock. Carved into the centre at almost eyelevel for an average man recessed a large ornate rose sliced in half by the join of the doors. Flanking the rose, carvings of the Greek theatre masks. Comedy upon the left. Tragedy upon the right. Even half filled with dust they were still pretty distinctive. One might have though this place forgotten for centuries were it not for the fact that the brass doorhandles were clean. Sure they weren't see-your-face-in-them shiny but they were devoid of the dust, cobwebs and general grit and grime of everything else around them. I mean, what sort of cleaner selectively cleans? Most unusual.
I took a step back and stood staring at it. All thinking processes went into hibernation. I couldn't shake that annoying nagging feeling that something just wasn't quite right. That something was very, VERY wrong but what the hell; let's open the mysterious door anyway. What an idiot. Must have been all those detective/mystery computer games.
So I grabbed the right handle and pulled. And pulled. And pulled again. Why don't you try pushing it you FOOL! Did I say that out loud or was I hearing things? I shrugged and pushed. Then it opened, grinding against the stone. Go figure. Using my shoulder as a door jamb, I snaked my torch into the room beyond, followed by my head. I couldn't see a thing! Stupid torch. A-ha! I spied a lamp beside the door. A tall, free standing light with a hanging crystal shade. Gold painted. Very tasteful. Very convenient. I peered into the hole in the top of the shade and switched it on. Chalk that up as another stupid, out of character moment I had had that week, I thought as I pummelled my palms into my eyes. Once I had regained the power of sight I blinked, bemused at what I had discovered. It was a dressing room. It was not the one I was looking for but it was more than adequate inspiration for a chapter.
Taking up the equivalent size of the door on the wall before me was a large mirror with a large frame. Well, how else was I supposed to describe it? In iambic pentameter perhaps? The mirror itself wasn't reflecting much, barely shadowy shapes. The frame was around four inches thick and made of iron or silver. I couldn't see the point of a mirror that large that didn't do what mirrors are supposed to do. Along the left wall sat a dark wooden dressing table. Upon it still sat the makeup, hairbrush, perfume and other typical dressing table things from its' previous owner, presumably. Before the table stood a pink, fluffy stool. Looked like an elephant had sat on a Tribble. It was pretty hideous. Along the opposite wall were racks of costumes; Georgian, Victorian, Elizabethan and Tudor style judging by the bustles, ruffles, lace and general look. Above and behind the racks were rows of wigs on head-shaped stands. Wigs of every colour and every style. Long plaited browns. Short curled blondes. Stacked on the floor in front of the racks were large round boxes and beside them large rectangle ones. Curious, I opened some up. To my relief, no creepy clowns or rats sprang out. The round ones were hats, the rectangle ones shoes. There must have been at least a hundred of each! I pulled out a particularly floppy black design, sat on the hideous stool before the dressing table mirror and tried it on. It flopped all right. Right down over my eyes. Amused with myself I started to giggle. Until I heard a second voice laughing at me.
With the back of my hand I levered up the front brim of the hat using the reflection in the mirror to scan the room. It was empty. I could have sworn I had heard a second giggle underneath my alto squeak. A bass tenor chuckle. I whirled around just in time to see the mirror slide backwards and to the left behind the wall leaving the frame as the edging to a stone tunnel. A stone tunnel from which a dark haired, masked, caped, impeccably dressed in an opera tux, six foot plus man was casually striding out, nonchalantly brushing a bit of stray mortar from his white opera gloves.