ACT TWO: LES VAMPIRES DE PARIS
'Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen. Just a word before you go. We hope the memories of Dracula and Renfield won't give you bad dreams, so just a word of reassurance. When you get home tonight and the lights have been turned out and you are afraid to look behind the curtains and you dread to see a face appear at the window… why, just pull yourself together and remember that after all
there are such things.'
John Balderston, on Dracula (1927)
I
In the Eighties, the tune changed. The mad whirl of Paris became madder still. Those who saw their way to fast fortunes took every opportunity to puff up portfolios of dubious stock. At the end of each trading day, the speculators of the bourse de commerce waded through knee-deep drifts of tickertape, stepping over the bodies of those whose brains or hearts had burst. Fending off weariness with sniffs of cocaine, these young men – the sons of shocked, seething, respectable fathers – would repair to cafés, cabarets and casinos and conduct a nocturnal ronde of seductions, ruinations and foolish wagers. Monies gained by day on the market were thrown away by night on the card table or at the wheel. More than one chancer lost his clients' funds before dipping into his own reserves.
A generation of artistes maudits – poets, painters, novelists, composers, actors, musicians, singers – were culled by absinthe and venereal disease, which ran through the city like a flood from the sewers. Many were driven mad by their muses even before their minds and bodies rotted from the green fairy or the pox. Fashions were set in suicide. Certain bridges became so popular with self-murderers that they were roped off from before sunset till after dawn. Fine sets of duelling pistols were broken up as the down-at-heel-and-drooling patronised pawnshops to spend their final francs on 'just the one' gun and 'just the one' ball.
Beyond electrically illuminated districts where money and madness burned bright were freezing, nighted slums. The poor and wretched were made poorer and more wretched by savage government measures. Influenced by mine-owners, industrialists and colossi of capital, the Opportunist Republicans eagerly pledged the full forces of the state to stamping out a strain of rebellion which sprung up in the blighted north and threatened to take hold throughout the country.
The Army of the Republic was ordered to Montsou to put down a miners' strike with a ferociousness in excess of measures taken against rebel tribes in North Africa. There were French men and women who grew to hate and fear the tricolour flown by troops who marched towards them with bayonets fixed. Émile Zola looked to the miners, utterly defeated, and wrote, 'Men were springing forth, a black avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next century, and their germination would soon overturn the earth.' Withal, it was a gay time – the Belle Époque.
In opera, audiences of the eighties applauded Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Delibes and Massenet. Cults sprung up around Berlioz and Bizet, dead too soon to enjoy the success in revival of works scorned on their premieres. The reign of Verdi, longer even than that of Victoria of Britain, continued, but the spectre of Wagner stalked Europe – ominous, rumbling chords beneath soaring arpeggios. Claques feuded and divas drove managements to distraction, but houses were packed.
The Opera Ghost Agency remained in business… though, as might have been expected, there was a turnover. In time, the first Angels moved on and were replaced by others, all talented and intrepid, each unique and extraordinary. The departure of Christine, his first protégée, left the Phantom bereft behind mask and mirror. He steeled his heart when selecting those who followed her. His first trio were singers, but the next line-up included a dancer. Then, Erik considered the dramatic arts – a veil will be drawn over the sorry debut and finale of Sybil Vane – before looking to other disciplines. Some specialists were engaged briefly, for a specific performance; others proved versatile enough to be held over for lengthy runs.
At the time of l'affaire du vampire, the Angels of Music were La Marmoset, Sophy and Unorna. On a variety bill, they could pass for an actress, a knife-thrower and a conjurer.
La Marmoset was the finest detective of either sex in Paris, which – whatever claims a patriotic English press might make concerning a certain resident of Baker Street – was to say the world. Once an independent investigator, often consulted by the Sûreté and the Deuxième Bureau, her agency was dissolved on the occasion of her marriage to one Mr Calhoun, a wealthy American whose current whereabouts were not known. Their union, evidently, had not been happy. The O.G.A. counted itself fortunate to have a Queen of Detectives on its lists. Other employers would scarcely have been as understanding of her habit of going disguised at all times. Fewer men had seen her true face than Erik's. She owned up to many names and identities, though it seemed likely she was really Camille Bienville… or perhaps Tampa Morel… or any one of a dozen other young women with convincing documents, childhood memories, elderly relatives who would verify their identities on stacks of Bibles, and press cuttings supportive of whatever pasts they claimed.
Sophy Kratides was first to point out that La Marmoset's London rival might be all well and good should you need one variety of cigar ash distinguished from another but was of singularly little practical use in more pressing matters. Coming to London as a naïve Greek lass, she had been seduced by a scoundrel, Harold Latimer, who imprisoned her in the household of a loathsome, tittering fellow named Wilson Kemp. The rogues starved and tortured Sophy's brother, to make him sign over family money due to her. The Great Detective Sherlock Holmes amused himself by picking at threads dropped by a Greek interpreter and arrived at the scene of the abduction too late to prevent the murder of Paul Kratides. Furthermore, Mr Holmes, his reputedly cleverer brother and the dogged bobbies of Scotland Yard didn't trouble to prevent the culprits leaving the country, spiriting Sophy along with them.
The impotence of such vaunted upholders of the law inspired her to a harsh assessment of herself. She detested being bundled up like a parcel and written off as a fainting damsel in distress. So, she made her first venture into extrajudicial execution, arranging the scene so the official verdict was that Latimer and Kemp had quarrelled and stabbed each other to death. Discovering unexpected talent and an inner reserve of Greek fire, she turned professional and rose to the first rank of a lucrative trade newly open to women in this changing century – assassination.
Unorna, the so-called Witch of Prague, bore the stigmata of heterochromia iridis. Her eyes were different colours – one a clear cold grey, the other a deep, warm brown so dark as to seem almost black. Born on the 29th of February in a bissextile year, she had only just passed her sixth birthday but was a grown woman. The girl with the strange eyes had made a profound study of the occult. Her home city was the site of the magical feats of Rabbi Loew, Johannes Kepler, Scapinelli and Dee. In Prague, the golem was vivified, the Voynich Manuscript decoded and the Philosopher's Stone hidden. Raised in the alchemical tradition, Unorna was apprenticed to the dwarf sorcerer Keyork Arabian. Latterly, she roamed the world, adding to her store of arcane knowledge. She learned the power to cloud men's minds in the mountain lamaseries of Tibet and collected strange orchids from the mangrove swamps of the Andaman Islands. She read the Scroll of Thoth in the secret vaults beneath the great pyramid and tracked the
wendigo through the forested territories of the Canadian North-West. An adept of the art of mesmerism, she commanded the attention of Erik – whose mastery of the field was formerly unrivalled – by outstaring him. She offered her services to the O.G.A. in exchange for tutelage in certain practices of Australian aborigines. The Phantom, she believed, had mastered the disciplines known as the Voice, the power to persuade, and the Shout, the power to destroy.
It is often said that men like Erik never change, never learn – for, as geniuses and prodigies, why should they? But Irene Adler's declaration of independence, Trilby O'Ferrall's fading talents and Christine Daaé's ultimate defection persuaded him to moderate his puppet-mastering. Wind-up dolls had their uses, but clockwork women could only achieve so much. Olympia was not one of his favourite agents, though she was effective in some cases. Impossible to seduce or strangle, the dancing mannequin was fetched out of her cabinet on occasion to tempt and trap gentlemen who were inclined to emulate Bluebeard and stock their cellars with murdered wives. For all that, she was pretty but dull. Erik understood what Trilby's previous tutor meant when – with her declarations of devotion hollow in his ears – he declared, 'Ah, but it is only Svengali talking to himself again.'
With the Witch of Prague, our Phantom could not work his spell… so, with La Marmoset and Sophy, he would not. Opera itself was changing. Traditionally, producers conducted themselves like the late Emperor, peering down at an army from a hilltop, imposing their iron will upon underlings who would pay the butcher's bill on the battlefield. Many an impresario kept a portrait or a bust of Napoléon in his study, and would in private moments turn his hat sideways and put his hand inside his buttoned jacket to see how it felt. Now, a new breed of director whispered suggestions rather than barked orders, coaxed with sugar lumps rather than broke with the whip. Work was done in collaboration rather than by decree. Erik's first Angels of Music were biddable chorus girls; now, he dealt with potential or actual prima donnas.
The Persian, perhaps, was subtly influential in this change. With the Phantom behind the mirror, he was charged with day-to-day business, issuing emoluments and expenses, meeting with clients, even approving or vetoing cases taken on by the Opera Ghost Agency. He had Erik's trust.
Most mornings, the Persian would be in the Café de la Paix from eleven o'clock till noon, drinking bitter coffee, eating almond biscuits, and reading the papers. Those who wished to engage the Agency were invited to approach him.
On a day in late September, the Persian sat at his usual table, sipped his usual coffee, nibbled his usual biscuit and unfolded his usual Figaro to find an unusual envelope slipped into the newspaper. Impressed in the black wax seal was the outline of a bat.
The mark of Les Vampires.
Inside was a card which bluntly stated:
'The Grand Vampire wishes to meet with the Director of the Opera Ghost Agency, on a confidential matter.'
The Persian tapped the stiff card against his teeth.
A rare occasion, he concluded.
For this, Erik must come up from his cellar.