Author's Note: Michael has some lines... which he insisted upon, and I was helpless to resist. Hope they are worthy of a giggle. Please mention the ones you spot!


The Wall


Michael Carriére lay sprawled on the sofa in Julien's parlor, freshly bathed and cards written out for whenever the others returned from… who even knew? He spent enough time roughing out in the cold, not bothering too much with the seeking out an inn or a room somewhere.

Warmth and comfort become a luxury to him now, as his let his mind drift through thoughts and theories as he rested with his eyes closed. His interaction with the man in the mask rolled over his mind again and again, searching for some detail he might have missed.

A question he forgot to ask. A gesture made; a word spoken. Something, anything that would illuminate him to more of this mystery.

Distant, Michael heard the locks to the front door jiggle and turn, then footsteps on the floorboards of the foyer accompanied by familiar voices.

Footfalls approached, but Michael kept his eyes shut beneath the weight of his arm, blocking out the light as he snoozed and brooded.

"You look like hell," Robert commented. Despite the gruff words, the glimmer of relief in that silky voice was not lost on Michael.

"Curtesy of Monsieur LeRoi. It is lucky that I was the one who followed him. He would have killed you," Michael goaded as he dropped his arm and blinked until his eyes started to adjust to light again. "He doesn't like you, at all. 'I had hoped you were that other one,' he said."

"And why is it you are not dead?"

Michael sat up slowly, glance between Julien and Robert and scratched the underside of his chin with the backs of his fingers, much like the mafia boss they had arrested last year. "I made him an offer he couldn't refuse," he said in an accented rasp to emulate that crime lord who aimed to expand into Paris.

Robert and Julien merely stared at him as though he had gone mad.

"Where is your sense of humor?" Michael asked, and continued to receive that stare. "Oh right… you have none."

"I have humor, just not yours," Robert wittily snipped back as he went to sink into another chair and reached for an ink pen and the stack of cards that Michael had not yet put away.

Michael shook his head. "I appealed to his wish to find out who killed the de Chagnys, particularly, Christine, on a hunch."

"An accurate one at that," Julien complimented as he took his seat. "What did you learn?"

"In short," Michael began as he took as sip of his brandy that was on the low table filled with case files that had been gone through in his absence. "His name is Erik, and he was the Phantom. Which seems to be something you, and I'm guessing Herbert, were already suspecting after Robert briefed you?" he motioned to the files he did skim through.

Julien nodded.

"He claims his encounter with Christine and Charles was by happenstance, which seems to be something he genuinely believes. I have my own suspicions on the matter though."

"What of the boy?" asked Robert.

"Alive and well. I saw them playing in the snow yesterday afternoon. The boy does have bruises, but seems comfortable in Erik's presence."

"That is a relief." Julien breathed. "Were you able speak with the boy?"

Michael shook his head. "No. Erik was quite…guarded. I will go into more detail once Herbert gets here."

The front door opened and closed again.

"Speak of the devil, and he shall arise," Robert muttered as he wrote his notes on the cards.

"Speak for yourself!" Herbert called from the foyer.

"Do lock up, you are the last one in," Julien called.

Soon enough, the four men were crowded in the small parlor, writing out singular thoughts to cards. It was the simplest way to move and reorganize details and meld them together as they collectively briefed each other on the information that had learned over the past few days. It helped to bring them all to the same level of understanding in their investigative efforts. As the cards were written, they were first arranged on the table or floor, then moved to the Wall.

The Wall was where they collected their thoughts, ideas, and formulated their timeline. It was their road map to the plethora of information and was the best way for them to start piecing together the puzzle of information as it stood. Now, that map was stretched years rather than days. The first dates went back ten years, there was no way around that detail.

January 7th, 1897: The starting date where matters began to climax at the opera, which also seemed to set the current events into motion. Christine Daaé vanished from stage during the prison scene of Act V in the course of a brief power failure that cast the house into total darkness.

A trapdoor was to blame.

Raoul de Chagny was passionate and unraveling by the vanishing act, Mifroid was dismissive off him in the notes taken, liking to the notion that Raoul was a lovesick boy who was delusional. It mattered not to if he encountered the ghost named Erik at a graveyard before. Graveyards were where one met a phantom after all.

Because of Mifroid's obtuse nature, de Chagny had vanished with Khan down into the cellars of the Opera and promptly vanished too, leaving Carriére, Mifroid, and others searching for them with little luck.

This was also the last time Philippe de Chagny was seen alive.

January 8th, 1897: Christine Daaé, Raoul de Chagny, and Nadir Khan emerged from the cellars. Weary, disheveled, and not at all talkative about what transpired below. Mifroid likened the situation as a play to bring fame to Daaé and the Opera house through scandal.

February, 11th, 1897: Philippe de Chagny's body is discovered at the shore of the underground lake, lain on the old Communard Road. A relic of Paris's bloodied history from the 1870s.

Raoul de Chagny grew talkative again, quick to blame the Opera Ghost for all his woes and the death of his brother, but the Ghost's name was not mentioned ever again.

February 15th, 1897: Raoul de Chagny went silent again, unwilling to speak on the matter further, despite their efforts.

Interviews with Christine Daaé and Nadir Khan in the days that followed yielded little results as well. Largely silence and Christine's assertion that "It was not him!" without ever giving a name to 'him.'

But that was where the more interesting story seemed to unfold in regards to Erik and the de Chagnys.

As comments gleaned from Erik, Meg Corbin, and Nadir Khan were pieced together, the story went as follows:

Erik, the Opera Ghost himself, was very much in love with the young Christine Daaé. So much in love that he lost the will to live to point of spite. While Khan tried to keep the man alive for reasons unknown to the investigation, Erik recovered enough to somehow barricade Khan from his home beneath the Garnier.

It was believed that this was approximately when Erik may have encountered Philippe's body, days before its discovery by authorities. If certain statement were to be believed.

After the body's discovery, Christine had gone back to Erik for reasons unknown. Where it was thought an affair between them occurred. Where if true, it seemed to give cause as to why Raoul de Chagny seemed to fall silent again about everything come February 15th.

Whatever happened next was unknown beyond that the affair seemed to end suddenly when Christine Daaé did not meet Erik at the train station. As such, Erik vanished for months and contact with Mlle. Daaé was cut completely.

Records showed Daaé as marrying de Chagny at the start of April. Charles de Chagny was born October 15th. Interesting dates indeed.

By Madame Corbin's account. Christine was forever changed by what happened in that year. The marriage, while loving, seemed to have been an arrangement, to which the Inspectors were inclined to agree. Dark days followed Christine, where in unguarded moments she was observed to be sad. In more ways than just a mother losing a child perhaps. Interesting enough that the de Chagny's had chosen not to proceed with having any more children. An uncommon practice in most marriages, even after the loss of a child.

By Khan's account, his contact with Erik and the de Chagnys were fleeting and kept strictly separate. Not mentioning one to the other, thinking it best that Erik and Christine de Chagny were kept parted. Why did the de Chagnys seem so intent on finding Erik?

The answer was almost glaring, although it was only by speculation.

"I knew he was lying. Khan knew why they were seeking out this Erik, but he wouldn't tell us," Robert growled as he methodically paced with steepled fingers. "Why would he lie to us about that."

"He did not want Erik to know, or us," Michael said as he stared at the Wall that held so many more notes that he was still processing. "But he knows… he was, very protective of the boy. Ready to kill me on the spot, numerous times. I think it likely Christine told him before she died."

"Which confirms what Khan said about his nature as well," Julien intoned as he studied the wall as well, sipping his brandy. "This is something that has to stay in this room. We cannot breathe a word of it to anyone. It is likely to cause scandal that we don't need and what Raoul de Chagny seemed to want to protect Christine and Charles from. At this juncture, it bears little weight on this case, only rules out our Opera Ghost, for now. Too much is pointing away from him."

"Christine was looking for him. Which suggests that she and Raoul may have had some bit of information that Erik was out there," Michael motioned to pins on a large map they also had on the Wall. "Seems too much effort to seek him out so diligently to merely inform him that he had a child with her? Why bother telling him or looking for him at all unless she loved him? If what Madame Corbin's insinuates is to believed."

"If she loved him, why didn't she meet him at the train?" Robert challenged.

Michael shrugged, "An accident?"

"Case please," Julien sighed. "Ponder the romance another time. As it stands it has little bearing in finding out who would kill them. I am more interested about this… unspoken debt which no one seems to have an idea about as of yet. What could it be, and to whom is it owed if it is so generational?"

"Roseline de Faure." Herbert said as he stared at the card in his hand. "Madame Corbin mentioned that Roseline was at the wedding of Christine and Raoul. But she did not know that Roseline is a missing person, and that neither Christine or Raoul made mention of her afterwards. Not even her disappearance. It struck me as odd."

"Roseline," Robert repeated thoughtfully, and stooped to search the piles of files for her case.

"Curious for the lack of mention on that sister…" Julien began. "Debts, Philibert, Philippe, Roseline, Eveline, Raoul…" he said softly before moving to search through files as well. "Eveline and her family died after Roseline vanished, didn't she?"

"What of Philippe's death? Do we have a date on that from the examiner, or do we just have a missing date?" Michael said as they are were now searching through the stack.

"Roseline de Faure, reported missing May 16th, 1898," Robert read as he pulled the file from the stack.

"Eveline du Bouvier died in her sleep July 24th, 1903, after her family died that June in the carriage accident," said Julien.

"Philippe… Missing January 7th, 1897, recovered February 11th…" Michael read, skimming over the reports and began to study the grisly pictures in the file. "…Blunt force trauma to the head, water in the lungs…bruising," Michael turned the page, searching for information. "He was waterlogged and bloating, cold temperatures slow decomposition but water can… confuse estimates."

"Go on," pressed Julien as Herbert came to stand beside Michael, looking over the file as well.

"Best estimate… he died that week, between the 3rd and 7th." Michael said after a stunned pause.

"Of January or February?" asked Robert.

"February… but this doesn't make sense, that's basically a whole month missing, that we missed?"

"Look," Herbert said as pointed to a picture that had Philippe in the morgue on an exam table, a faint line on his inner forearm. "Didn't Christine have that same cut?"

Michael gave a slow nod as the others gathered.

"Why wasn't it noted in this report?" Michael wondered aloud.

"Good question," Herbert agreed.

"I want every file and dates we have for every de Chagny we have, including extended family that share the bloodline," Julien said in quiet authority. "Every death, everyone missing. I want to get as much information and timelines we can before we go back to Khan or Erik. I have no doubt they know something more, whether they know it or not. We also need to revisit our persons of interest from the Opera. Philippe was held somewhere and I want to know where."