a/n: Thanks again to everyone who has reviewed the story! Really, your advices are making this an awesome tale. The next few chapters will come a bit more slowly as I change their order, and I apologize that the newest one is so short, but please continue to leave your comments!
Chapter 18: Captain Lefevre is Missing
Mechnikov answered the door himself, still wearing his starched lab coat. He recognized the uniform of his visitor—a high-ranking officer of the Sûreté—before he remembered having seen the man's face before.
"Commissioner Mifroid! This is a surprise, Monsieur! ... Er, but Mademoiselle Alice is not in."
Mifroid's friendly grin collapsed into a look of genuine concern. "Not in? But where could she be?"
The biologist shrugged then gestured for the commissioner to enter. "She wasn't in when I awoke this morning. I thought perhaps she'd had a fit of homesickness and had gone to visit you or Madame."
Mifroid took hold of his host's arm. "This is serious, Monsieur! A captain of mine, Lefevre, has been missing since Saturday. My men tell me that he went to investigate that séance at the Garnier. He hasn't returned! Something deadly must have happened at the Opera!"
"Perhaps something happened to your captain before the séance," Mechnikov suggested, "I was there that night, and I never saw any officers."
"His mission was not for an audience, if you take my meaning, Monsieur," Mifroid responded curtly. "Let us take each other into the strictest confidence: My men assure me that Lefevre went in but did not come out. I'm also informed that you and Alice attended the séance as well. If she is missing, you can understand my concern."
"Rest assured, Monsieur, she returned with me that very night. She also joined me the following morning, when we accompanied the Opera managers to pay a call on a Russian composer. She did not disappear in the Garnier!"
"But she may have gone back there this morning! She's gone to the Opera before, from your house, in secret!"
"No, no, Monsieur. I'm an early riser and spend all day at home with my experiments. Your daughter is never out of my sight, except on Sundays when she goes to church and a few times she's gone home to visit or to bring some item."
Upon hearing this information, the commissioner crossed his arms. "Monsieur, she has never come to see us since she moved to your house! My wife, like you, spends her days at home, and hasn't seen her."
"What? Where did Mademoiselle go, then?"
"To the Opera, where else?" cried Mifroid. "This ghost business, and the murders related to it, are an obsession with her."
"And was she seen in church on Sundays, or did she sneak off then as well?"
"I couldn't say, Monsieur. My wife and I attend service at the Madeleine, but Alice prefers the Saint Louis d'Antin."
Mechnikov nodded and passed his fingers through his wiry beard. "Yes, that's where she told me she goes. But please calm yourself, Monsieur. It may be that she went to the d'Antin this morning and not to the Garnier. She wouldn't have been able to get inside the Garnier anyway, at so early an hour."
"Wrong again, Monsieur!" moaned the commissioner. "She has found some secret entrance—I don't know exactly how she gets inside, but she's able to go in anytime, night or day!"
Mechnikov laughed, with mirth so strong his entire body shook and tears appeared in his eyes. "She's certainly a clever girl! Though I had no idea she was more intelligent than the Sûreté! It's clear that she has been investigating the Opera mystery privately!"
"Oh! It's all a joke to you, Monsieur, but she's put herself in a lot of danger! It's murder we're investigating, and the criminal is still somewhere in the city—perhaps even hiding in the cellars of the Opera! Alice may have left this morning to play the part of the police again, and fallen into the murderer's trap!" he held his head in his hands as his indignation over Mechnikov's remarks gave way to concern for his daughter.
"Monsieur, it is not yet noon. Let's wait awhile and see if she returns from her errand. If she's not here within the hour, we will search for her. And as it seems that the Sûreté is on much less favorable terms with the Opera managers, I will go with you to look for Mademoiselle Alice at the Garnier, if it comes to that." As he said this, in his most rational and calming tones, the biologist lead Mifroid into his parlor and seated him in a wingback chair.
Mifroid sighed and removed his cap. "I'll wait a half-hour, and no more. And it will give me an opportunity to ask you about the séance."
"The managers were adamant that no police attend."
"That is precisely why we want to know about it."
Mechnikov lowered himself onto the sofa and wiped his clammy palms on his knees. He began to recount for the commissioner the events that had transpired on that stormy night, starting with the list of the attendants and the mysterious combustion of the Don Juan manuscript. Mifroid produced a small notebook from a pocket of his coat and wrote feverishly as Mechnikov continued the narration in his methodical and detailed manner.
There was so much strangeness in the story that even Mifroid considered whether the Opera could indeed be haunted by a real phantom. He listened with interest when Mechnikov stated that Berthelot and M. Curie had removed some of the manuscript's ashes for analysis, and made a note in his little book to pay both men a visit. He also planned to interview the managers, to learn exactly how they had obtained the Ghost's score. And it was also noteworthy to the commissioner that the Persian had attended. How he had learned of the séance was still a mystery to everyone.
Mechnikov had reached his description of the violin music and his explanation of how he had identified the composer, when the front door opened and Alice burst into the parlor. From the expression on her face, Mifroid realized immediately that his daughter was distressed. He leapt to his feet and all but flew to her side.
"Alice!" he cried, "Where have you been? For God's sake, tell me where you've been!"
For a moment, her tense features took on an appearance of absolute despair. Where had she been? It had taken her a few moments to find the pressure point above the corkscrew staircase and climb up into the velvet interior of Box 5. From there, she had made her way to the Haussman exit, losing her way more than once as she navigated through those dark and twisting corridors.
He hadn't followed her.
What had transpired in the Garden Beneath the World had utterly destroyed her spirit—not even the lonely, feared, and disfigured Opera Ghost would have her! She could not return home in such a state of mind. For a time, then, she had escaped to the only place she knew where her heart would find rest.
"I...I was at the Church of Saint Louis d'Antin."
Indeed, much like when she'd escaped to the chapel's quiet hall as the laughing stock of the Sûreté—and like so many other emotional moments which are not recounted in these pages—Alice forgot the time while she spent tearful hours nursing her wounded feelings.
She had not intended to confess her feelings to Erik. In that moment, she merely spoke her heart, and only realized her true feelings after she had spoken. Yet what had she accomplished? The lonely man had desired a friend, and she had all but thrown herself at him!
He had behaved like a gentleman, and she could not be angry with him for his polite refusal. Nevertheless, her broken heart could not understand why he had rejected her advances. It must be, she reasoned, that another had captured his heart before she'd even appeared.
Or had he found something dislikeable in her?
"You don't know how relieved I am to see you safe, my dear," Mifroid sighed, drawing her back from her silent brooding. "Captain Lefevre is missing, and I believe he disappeared in the Garnier!"
"The Garnier?" In an instant, her own concerns evaporated, and she began to worry what Lefevre had found—if he had indeed ventured into the Opera's cellars.
Mifroid, mistaking her alarm as fear for the missing captain, repeated for his daughter the same explanation he had given not an hour earlier to Mechnikov. He embellished it a bit, hoping to impress upon her the danger that Lefevre may have met with in those mysterious cellars. Yet if her behavior betrayed her increasing anxiety, it was only because her father's words confirmed her fear that the captain and the Phantom had crossed paths.
"We may all be in danger—even you, Alice. Those dusty cellars you've been diving into are probably hiding a murderer."
"Papa! I haven't been—"
"Don't lie!" he scolded. "I knew you wouldn't be able to put this case to rest, and so I had Lefevre follow you. You can't sneak past the Sûreté, Alice! If something has happened to Lefevre, it's on your account."
"No, Papa! The séance was in the Grand Foyer, and I stayed in Dr. Mechnikov's sight all evening!"
"It's true, Monsieur," the biologist interrupted. "I'll swear to it."
"It doesn't matter," growled the commissioner, his eyes hard as steel, "I'm taking you back home, where I can keep an eye on you!"
Mechnikov was quite disturbed by the sudden loss of his assistant, and threw out his arms. "Let's not be too drastic, Monsieur. Lefevre might still turn up—perhaps he is still investigating something in the Garnier. And bringing Mademoiselle closer to the Opera can hardly make her safer!"
"Her proximity to the cellars matters less than her access, Monsieur," the commissioner remarked, pointing to the microbiologist. "This arrangement with you has given her too much freedom. Pack your things, Alice!"
She fled to her small room, unable to disguise her frustration. From the bottom of a drawer, she withdrew a set of notes that she had scribbled while researching a cure for Erik's disfigurement. Knowing that the commissioner would search her things for clues of her visits to the Opera cellars, she carefully folded her notes and pressed them into a treatise on acids that she had borrowed from Mechnikov's library. Then she returned the heavy book to the shelf. The iron key she tossed behind the volumes—she certainly had no more need of it! The rest of her things she packed quickly, then left with her father for the Rue Scribe.
She rode back to her family home in heavy, drooping silence. Every hope which she had brought with her to the biologist's doorstep had vanished all in one day. She remembered her first, liberating breaths in Mechnikov's library, and her excitement upon seeing the laboratory. Even her tiny bedroom had been cozy. Yet her independence had been all too short.
She had also believed that she could impress the commissioner by exposing the Opera Ghost, never expecting that her hunt would evolve into a romantic encounter. Neither outcome, however, was to be. A failure on every count, she was not even capable of curing Erik's deformity.
Alice climbed the steps to her father's house with her head hung in sadness.