by Kim Newman
Could he have summoned a vampire to dispose of his arch-enemy?
‘Want to go into your dance?’ prompted La Marmoset.
She hadn’t wanted to risk it – for obvious reasons – in a citadel of the unhappy dead like the Morgue. This wasn’t an ideal situation, either – but Unorna felt obliged to make the effort.
‘It’ll look like I’ve fallen asleep,’ she told La Marmoset and Sophy. ‘Don’t let me fall off my chair and do myself an injury.’
They promised to look out for her.
Unorna sat back and opened her mind to the vibrations in the hall.
She did not intend to enter a full trance, merely to test the aetheric waters.
She rose above herself and looked down.
There were ghosts in the room.
Some chairs were occupied by indistinct forms, tethered here because they lacked the will to go anywhere else. The locomotives in the photographs puffed. All these ghosts seemed made of steam…
The ghost of the railwayman’s lost arm was attached to his shoulder, a transparent tube with an inflated glove at the end of it, flapping like a flag in the wind. His friend’s face wasn’t handsome under his blur of scarring, though. A bright eye shone through his patch. The fellow might be faking it for a pension.
Giovanni Jones was red from head to foot, and dripping. Blood invisible to everyone else – and to himself – seeped from every pore, and pooled around his shoes. The residue of undetected crime. Bat-winged imps buzzed around the singer. If he were stalked by the bloodless shade of Anatole Garron pointing and intoning ‘Thou art the man!’ Jones could not have looked more guilty.
Unorna knew even the police thought it worthwhile to have a long, hard talk with the man who most loudly expressed the opinion that the Great Anatole ought to be killed on the night he actually was. La Marmoset admitted most murders could be solved by arresting the victim’s worst enemy – but cases like that seldom came to the Agency. They were called in when it wasn’t so simple. Jones was on friendly terms with Camille de Rosillon, who had died before Garron inherited the kilt of Macbetto. If Jones were the vampire, he must have another motive. Unkind critics often pointed out how poorly cast he was as seducers like Don Giovanni or fighters like William Tell. It was hard to believe the balloon-shaped baritone spent the after-hours crawling up walls or leaping between tall buildings.
He was guilty of something, though. Then again, so was everyone.
Before coming to Paris, Unorna gave little thought to crime. Her interest in sin was spiritual rather than legal. Working with the Opera Ghost Agency changed her mind. Her sisters had been hurt, spiritually and physically, by men. Crimes had been committed against them.
They were good at what they did because the memory of pain was a spur. La Marmoset, Angel of Light, had a mania for finding out how a thing had been done and who was to blame. Sophy Kratides, Angel of Vengeance, was set on the righting of wrongs through bloodshed.
What Angel was Unorna?
She thought of herself as the Angel in a Mist. It was not necessary she knew everything… or that she turned the wheel of justice. She was here to help when matters weren’t clear, when light could not be shone and vengeance was futile.
Erik called her the Angel of Magic.
Her path was solitary, but at this stage she needed to be with others. She was learning.
She sank back into herself.
The room was slightly less sparsely populated than before, but there were still more empty seats than occupied.
‘What have you seen?’ Sophy asked.
‘Gio Jones, covered in blood,’ she whispered.
La Marmoset made a face. ‘This is in a dream, right?’
Unorna allowed that it was not literal blood.
La Marmoset shrugged.
‘The fellow at the back is wearing an eyepatch over a good eye,’ Unorna said.
‘I know,’ said La Marmoset. ‘He’s someone in disguise. His scars are crepe.’
‘Any ideas?’
La Marmoset inclined her head. ‘Ayda’s from Les Vampires, checking up on us… so he’s not one of them, unless he’s checking up on her. He’s too good at make-up to be a policeman, so he might be another consulting ’tec, out to rook us of our fee. Or he could be someone from the opera company.’
‘I think I’ve seen him before, with more of a face.’
‘Or less of one,’ said Sophy, oddly.
Under Unorna’s influence, she was starting to have insights. Or starting to think she was.
A small, bald man took the podium and introduced himself as Henri Paillardin of the Society for Rational Psychical Research.
‘I have investigated many a haunting and can report that, invariably, it comes down to something up with the plumbing… or doses of strong spirits of the drinkable rather than the intangible kind. Our proud motto is ‘There Is Always an Explanation’. With great pleasure, we welcome the distinguished Professor Madame Van Helsing of Leiden…’
The lecturer made an entrance to polite applause.
She wore a tweed caped overcoat and a matching skirt.
A little ghost boy trotted about five feet after her. Unorna had noticed him at the ball – he was attached to Madame Van Helsing. A dead son, probably. Not an uncommon form of haunting, and relatively benign. In most cases, a vague sense of presence serves to soften the curse of grief.
As the Professor approached the podium, a reedy fellow darted out and thrust an open book at her, also presenting a reservoir pen and beseeching the distinguished visitor for an autograph.
She examined the book, which bore the title Ziekten van den Bloed en Ziel.
‘I write this not,’ she snorted. ‘Ordure of a horse, it is.’
‘But… but…’ gasped the bibliophile, pointing to the name Professor Van Helsing, embossed under the title.
‘That my husband is.’
The autograph-seeker’s face fell and ink squirted out of his pen onto the floor. He wrapped his book back up in brown paper and left the room.
‘So it’s started well,’ said Sophy.
M. Paillardin coughed to cover embarrassment and whipped up more applause, which was grudging this time.
Madame Van Helsing climbed the podium. Her tame ghost sat on the floor, playing with a phantom cup-and-ball toy.
‘There are such things not,’ said Madame Van Helsing. ‘Such things not… as vampires.’
Several hands shot up.
‘We’ll take questions at the end of the session,’ said Monsieur Paillardin.
‘Such things are, however, as vampire rumours. And they do much harm. Some among you may think it amusing to believe, or pretend to believe, in vampires and goblins…’
Madame Van Helsing took the same line on the undead as La Marmoset and Dr Dieudonné. Unorna was not prepared to go so far. She had not met a vampire – that she knew of – but had seen things which would shake a Society for Rational Psychical Research. In Norway, she had certainly met a goblin.
‘These madnesses come in fashions. Don Quixote tilted at windmills in the belief that giants they might be… irresponsible pseudo-scientists now put about romances which would inspire a modern-day Quixote to chase after vampires. Corpses animated by demons, who blood drink and in coffins rest by day. Where is there harm, you might ask? Here – here there is harm!’
The Professor rattled the podium, gripping fiercely.
‘There is a vampire delusion running among us now,’ she continued. ‘All Paris knows of the dead men drained of blood.’
‘It’s a publicity stunt for the Paris Opéra,’ shouted someone at the back. ‘They’re putting on Le Vampire…’
‘Publicity for Le Vampire’s not much good if you haven’t got a Lord Ruthven,’ said Sophy.
‘It should be banned, I say,’ said a tiny, angry-looking woman. ‘No good will come of it. Think of the children. You tell ’em, Prof. No good.’
‘Regrettable is it that vampires parade on stage,’ agreed the
lecturer. ‘Regrettable more is that to the stage they are not confined.’
The little ghost boy nuzzled the Professor’s skirts like a kitten. She was insensible to his presence. Unorna wondered at the effort of will it must take to ignore an attendant spirit like this. She was certain the child would be apparent to Madame Van Helsing if only she paid attention.
‘What about the Black Bat of the Rooftops?’ asked Rival.
‘A foolhardy adventurer in silly clothes,’ said the Professor.
‘The two dead men, drained of blood, grinning like it was Christmas, throats gashed by sharp fangs…’
‘Murders plain ordinary.’
Two more people got up and walked out.
‘This in Paris has happened before… with tragic outcome. Twenty-five years ago, inspired by a course of lectures given at the Sorbonne by my deluded husband, this city set out to find a vampire who did not exist… Innocents were accused. The mob was set off. There were tragic outcomes.’
A coughing started up in the room. Giovanni Jones seemed to be choking on that bone again.
‘The extent full of those horrors have never revealed been. When I began my research into the scare, it was only a horror historical… but now, with the fresh killings, it has become a horror present. We must not again let happen the worst.’
Jones was doubled over now, racking with coughs.
Ayda fetched him water from a jug on a sideboard. He looked up, clutching his stomach. Blood was dripping from his lips.
Unorna started.
‘Yes,’ said Sophy, ‘I see it too. It’s real this time.’
Jones brushed aside the jug, which exploded on the floor, and tried to stand.
Madame Van Helsing and Monsieur Paillardin looked at this interruption with annoyance.
Jones got to his feet. The blood was all down his front now.
His eyes were wide with pain, but he was smiling.
‘Sacrebleu!’ gasped the one-armed old railwayman. ‘He’s a bloody vampire!’
XI
LA MARMOSET AND Unorna warily approached the stricken Giovanni Jones.
Sophy Kratides held back. When there was commotion, someone had to pay attention to everyone else in the room. Commotions were also distractions.
The suspicious one-eyed railwayman assumed a savate stance. Grey powder shook out of his hair.
Madame Van Helsing frowned at the interruption.
M. Henri Paillardin of the Society for Rational Psychical Research fainted dead away in terror. He seemed to have run out of rational explanations.
Ayda Heidari had a small pistol in her hand.
Fair enough – Sophy slid a jack-knife out of her sleeve.
Jones flailed, beating away people who might have helped him. His eyes were red as his shirt-front.
The smile was widening, as if fishhooks inside his cheeks were tugging his lips.
He was a big man – well-cushioned but towering, surprisingly powerful. His lungs were capacious enough to produce a voice which filled the auditorium of the Paris Opéra, after all. La Marmoset ducked under his elbow and tried to get a hold on him.
Croaking, he pushed her away.
He would not be told anyone was trying to help. He saw only enemies around him.
‘This outrageous is,’ declared Madame Van Helsing. ‘I must be let finish. Heard must be truth.’
That ship had sailed and sunk, Sophy thought.
Jones blurted up a mist of blood. He roared and charged like a blinded bull elephant, ploughing across the room, knocking chairs and patrons aside. The plainclothes policeman got tangled up in his chair and fumbled for a whistle.
The doors were flung open and Jones staggered onto the street.
La Marmoset gave Sophy the nod. She was best placed to follow.
Pulling on her coat and scarf, Sophy left the railwaymen’s institute.
A trail of blood was on the pavement.
She wasn’t the only person following the tracks. In the gutter, she saw an eyepatch and a half-mask of crinkled crepe.
The fake railwayman had a head start.
She walked briskly down the street. If she ran, she’d attract attention. Someone would get in the way.
The institute was near the Gare du Nord. Crowds were coming to and from the station even in the middle of the evening. She lost the trail amid so many scything feet and sweeping dress hems… but found it again, only to realise that it petered out.
Was Jones poisoned or possessed?
The frontage of the station was illuminated like a theatre. Carriages were lined up for disembarking passengers.
She found the railwayman’s old coat stuffed into a street waste bin.
Crowds passed on all sides. Her quarry had got away.
‘That lady’s got a knife,’ said a small child in a sailor suit, pointing.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said his mother. ‘She’s much too respectable. Look at her.’
Sophy had jammed her knife up her sleeve.
She had lost Jones and his other pursuer, though. She did not like to lose people – unless it was on her terms.
La Marmoset would probably be able to identify the fake railwayman from his coat. Perhaps he had stained it with a unique blend of tobaccos or had his name written in onion-juice in mirror writing inside a pocket. By the time the Queen of Detectives had made her deductions, it would be too late for some poor soul, though…
She was being unfair, she knew. Not all Great Detectives were alike.
Under the coat, she found the imposter’s clay pipe. She noticed the bowl was empty and still white. Picking the thing up, she found it wasn’t a real pipe but a disguised blowdart gun. So, Giovanni Jones had been stuck with something poisonous.
At least she had learned – detected – something, even if she’d lost the trail.
Something small and furry darted between her feet. And another one. There were squeals and squeaks all around… rats! Speeding towards the station, whiskers twitching, cramming into the gutters and grates, as if summoned by a rat-horn inaudible to human ears. The vampire’s familiars.
‘There are people up there,’ said the observant little boy. ‘On the front of the station.’
‘Ridiculous,’ said the mother. ‘The nonsense I have to put up with!’
‘But, Maman…’
The child was hauled away, wailing at the injustice.
Sophy looked up and saw the sharp-eyed lad was right again.
Surmounting the station were nine commanding statues: eight representing destinations in other countries, the central figure standing in for Paris herself. Below, on the façade, fourteen more modest statues represented less important cities; on a narrow ledge between these minor arcana, under the great clock, people were struggling.
Giovanni Jones… three women in white, agile like acrobats… and a masked man, all in black with a billowing cloak.
The women were the Countesses Dorabella, Clarimonde and Géraldine. Up to no good, Sophy would be bound – though she hadn’t expected their high-living would stretch to high-flying.
Were they more familiars of the Black Bat?
Sophy couldn’t read the situation.
The struggle was a mess. She couldn’t tell whether the Countesses were attacking Jones while fighting off the man in black, or the victims of a combined assault by the vampire singer and his dark master, or were getting between the two strange men, to protect one from the other, or keep them apart for their own ends.
She was the wrong Angel for this. La Marmoset or Unorna would both know what they were looking at.
Others in the crowd had happened to look up. Soon, everyone on the street was staring. Whistles sounded, so the police were on their way too.
‘The vampire… the vampire…’ went the whisper, which became a cry.
Yes, but which was the vampire?
Gasps of alarm rose as Countess Clarimonde lost her foothold and tumbled backwards… then gasps of wonder, as she seemed to catch on invis
ible wires and propel herself up to get a firm grip on the neck of the statue representing Rouen. She held on so hard that the crowned head came off. She caught the stone head in one hand and bowled it like a cannon-ball at the man in black. He deflected it with one ribbed cape-wing, and it smashed through a window. Shards of glass pattered down onto the pavement and people backed away.
The other Countesses grasped perches with their toes and clawed at the Black Bat with dagger-nails.
Were these really the frivolous playthings of a Romanian nobleman? They were more like harpies!
Jones dangled, limp as a deflating gas-bag. His braces were hooked on the sword-pommel of the statue representing Lille. He still smiled.
The man in black wore a snarling mask with shiny dark glass over the eyes and flared batwing ears. His chin and mouth were exposed.
All the better to bite you with?
Sophy assumed the Black Bat had worn the railwayman disguise.
His intricate cloak-wing contraption reminded her of a Da Vinci drawing. He wore a tight tunic with double rows of shiny buttons. Odd implements hung from a tool-belt. His boots had springs in the heels and his gauntlets had suction cups in the palms. The outfit should have been unwieldy, but he moved with practised ease, swatting the bothersome women.
The Countesses were barefoot, their shift-like evening dresses hiked up over their white limbs.
They already had admirers below, for their déshabillé… and the possibility that jewels might fall from their tiaras into eager hands.
How had they got up there?
Sophy scanned the front of the station, and saw a ladder…
She ran towards it.
Countess Géraldine got her hands around the throat of the man in black, hissing at him through gleaming teeth. Ungallantly, he punched her in the ribs and she sailed off into space, only to be caught by Countess Dorabella.
This seemed a personal fight.
Sophy had almost got to the ladder when Giovanni Jones’s strained braces snapped. The big baritone fell onto a carriage, crushing the wooden roof. The startled horse reared and neighed, and the coachman had to fight to keep the beast from bolting.