II

The Young Widow, Gilberte Lachaille, following the Persian's instructions, carefully made her way through the labyrinth beneath the Opéra, which the Phantom had once more returned to. She avoided the rat-traps, and negotiated several ingenious devices set to inconvenience mammals somewhat larger than the average sewer rat. Out of respect for poor Gaston, she wore a black dress. She left off the veil because it was dark enough under the streets of Paris. Gilberte did not care to vanish entirely into the shadows – though, it occurred to her, disappearance might be the whole purpose of the invitation from Monsieur Erik.

In the absence of the fortune her late husband's lawyers were withholding, she must find means of making a way in the world. Her hard-earned respectable name counted for little, though it was scarcely her fault – no matter what the Sûreté might imply – that her bridegroom proved incapable of surviving his own honeymoon. Without consulting her, the foolish soul had elected to fortify himself with a philtre to put 'lead in his pencil'. He had misjudged the dosage, to everyone's inconvenience – not least his own. For a reputed man of the world, Gaston turned out to be something of a stiff, in all senses of the term. Aunt Alicia said dead husbands were generally the best of the breed, but also conceded that society was liable to be leery of Gilberte for now. In Grandmama's day, you had to bury at least two husbands in mysterious circumstances before being categorised as a 'black widow'. In this impatient, young, electrified century, a single hasty funeral sufficed.

A skiff waited at the shore of the underground lake. She lifted her skirts and stepped in. No sooner was she settled than the boat began to glide soundlessly across the still surface. It was on a pulley, like a fairground ride.

Gilberte had heard whispers of the masked creature – Monsieur Erik, the Phantom – who kept a lair beneath the Opéra and retained the services of hard-to-place young women in a discreet agency which had been in operation for some years. Many and varied adventuresses had worked for the Phantom. The Angels might be fleeting but Erik's primary lieutenant was always the Persian. This fellow was known to
le tout Paris. Some believed him the true master of the Opera Ghost Agency.

The Persian stood on the jetty to which the skiff was pulled. Erik's assistant wore a heavy coat with a good astrakhan collar, and a fez. Gold dotted his person – rings, stickpin, shirt-studs, cufflinks, spectacles-chain, fez tassels, watch and fob, two prominent teeth. Courteously, the Persian extended a hand and helped Gilberte ashore. She thanked him, modestly.

He pressed his palm to a stone. A wall parted to give access to a large, comfortably appointed room. Gas-lamps burned, susurrating like serpents. Gilberte stepped in and cast an eye over fine old furniture, assessing values to the sou. These were the quarters of a well-off gentleman. The subterranean chamber was naturally bereft of windows and thus oppressive for her taste.

A portion of the room was curtained off by a thick but translucent hanging. A man sat in the antechamber beyond, lit from behind as if in a silhouette theatre. Her eyes went naturally to this figure, whom she took at once for the fabled Phantom. She did not immediately take notice of the two other women in the room.

'Madame Lachaille,' said the man beyond the veil, 'thank you for joining us this evening.'

It was a deep, mellifluous voice, precise and perfect. Through Mama, the contralto Andrée Alvar, she knew many singers. She recognised a musical quality in this voice. An odd catch suggested the speaker was compensating for a defect of the palate. Erik took care with certain consonants. Gilberte recalled the stories of the face some claimed to have glimpsed, and repressed a shudder.

She curtseyed as she had been taught – not submissively, but confidently. Grandmama would be proud. And Aunt Alicia. And Mama.

'Gilberte, you will be working with these women. Mrs Elizabeth Eynsford Hill…'

Mrs Eynsford Hill was impeccably – if too simply – dressed, and as blankly beautiful as a couturier's mannequin. The woman shook Gilberte's hand, firmly. She had a steel grip in her good green kidskin glove.

'It is a perfect pleasure to make your acquaintance, Madame Lachaille,' said Mrs Eynsford Hill, in English. 'I foresee we shall become fast friends.'

Her diction was classroom perfect, with a musical lilt as if she were hitting notes rather than uttering words.

Gilberte responded, also in English, 'That is my hope also.'

The woman paused, and repeated, 'That is my hope also,' parrot-fashion. It took Gilberte a moment to realise she had been perfectly imitated. Not just vocally; Mrs Eynsford Hill's expression had been Gilberte's, down to the trick of lowering the eyes while missing nothing.

'I beg your pardon. For such insolence.'

Now Mrs Eynsford Hill was 'doing' Erik. She spoke in masculine French, as if from beyond the curtain. As the Phantom, the Englishwoman pulled back her chin and sucked in her cheeks to create a deeper voice. Even those odd consonants were there.

'Elizabeth is showing off,' said Erik. 'It is one of her tells. Having discovered the extent of her talents, she needs an audience. Like many of my Angels, she has a theatrical inclination.'

'You are a widow, I perceive,' said Mrs Eynsford Hill, in what Gilberte now took for her own – if not her original– voice. 'I myself, sadly, am not.'

'My condolences.'

The other Angel cooed for attention.

'This is Riolama,' said Erik.

If the Englishwoman was so ordinary she seemed strange for the absence or concealment of lively qualities, this creature was a picture-book fairy come to life.

Riolama might have been taken for a child, though her large, active eyes were adult. Well under five feet tall, she wore a shimmering white-grey shift of fabric Gilberte could not identify (spider silk?), had a wild but untangled fall of dark hair and did without shoes. Her feet were not dirty.

The girl sprang from a tall stool and bent close to Gilberte, flitting like an inquisitive monkey or a bird. She was making up her mind, apparently. After a few seconds, she pecked a kiss at Gilberte's cheek and darted away, back to her perch, pleased.

'Rima likes you,' said Mrs Eynsford Hill. 'She's from Guyana, where the guano comes from. Or Venezuela, where various violent volcanoes are venerated. The territory is under dispute.'

The bird-girl tucked her head under her arm, then smiled. Gilberte felt a chill – it was her own once-upon-a-time smile, which Grandmama had schooled her out of. For their own good, girls do not show teeth. In this company, evidently, teeth were acceptable. Indeed, perhaps mandatory.

If whispers were true, the lipless Erik had no choice but to smile and smile. Beyond the curtain, behind the mask, was – she had heard – a skull with yellow eyes. The Phantom could take first prize in a grinning contest with the mediaeval clown Gwynplaine and the Bohemian Baron Sardonicus.

Gilberte was struck that the Englishwoman and the exotic girl both resembled her. Might she be reunited with unknown sisters? Her father, rarely mentioned by the female relatives who raised her, could conceivably have sojourned in London or Caracas.

She had an inkling Mrs Eynsford Hill was not as high-born as her too-correct accent would suggest. In Gilberte's experience, the upper classes were as slovenly as the lower orders in their speech – only their vocal tics and mispronunciations tended to be called mannerisms rather than mistakes. Like Gilberte, the Englishwoman had been taught how to speak to impress others rather than express herself.

'Ladies,' said Erik, 'if we might proceed. It is best we talk English. It is not, of course, a musical language, but it is in this instance the tongue of our enemy.'

Gilberte had high marks in English.

Curtains parted to reveal a screen. The Persian worked a cinematograph projector and images came to life.

The mode was more Lumière than Méliès – snatches of actuality caught by the camera, rather than a staged artifice. A fat man in a straw hat grinned next to a half-crated statue twice his size, like a big game hunter proud of his latest bag and eager to gloat among his clubmen.

'This is Charles Foster Kane,' said Erik. 'He is an American.'

'All too plainly,' commented Mrs Eynsford Hill.

In another scene, Kane – in a shiny silk hat and a fur coat that looked like a whole bear – stood outside the ruins of a castle in Spain. Workmen carried away and crated up huge stone blocks.

'Mr Kane has an acquisitive nature,' continued Erik, 'and a limitless source of wealth. A gold-mine in Colorado.'

Now, the man was in evening dress, squeezed between girls wearing little more than feathers. Gilberte recognised the upstairs rooms at Maxim's. Several of her contemporaries could recount adventures at this locale.

Kane posed with a group of sharp-eyed, ferociously moustached men outside the offices of a newspaper.

'Shortly before the turn of the century,' said Erik, 'a correspondent of the New York Inquirer cabled Kane, claiming he could write prose poems about the scenery in Cuba but "there was no war". Kane responded: "You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war."'

Kane watched troops in Boy Scout uniforms board a ship. Then, he was laughing with Theodore Roosevelt on a podium draped with flags. They made a matched pair of ferocious little boys.

'Mr Kane did indeed provide the Spanish-American War. In this new century, his tactics have moderated. At least, he spurred his own country to fight over Cuba. Now he intends to foment an Anglo-French War.'

Gilberte exchanged looks with Mrs Eynsford Hill.

'Why would he wish such a thing?' Gilberte asked.

'Mr Kane is a patriot,' said Erik. 'With Europe in flames, America would become the pre-eminent world power. The upstart nation, scarcely more than a century old, would dictate its whims from Nanking to Nantes. A continental war would, not incidentally, sell a great many newspapers.'

On the screen, the American was at a zoo alongside a pinch-faced lady Gilberte took for Mrs Kane. He pointed out a cockatoo, which was dragged by a keeper – silently screaming and flapping – from a branch. It was shoved into a canary cage and presented to the magnate.

'Bad man,' said Riolama. 'Mean to bird.'

Gilberte was surprised the girl could speak.

The cinematograph presentation concluded.