by Kim Newman
Looking up, she saw the Countesses leaping from statue to statue, and the Black Bat silhouetted against the sky. He was on the cornice, next to the great shield-bearing statue of Paris. His cloak-wings spread and he launched upwards, catching the wind like a kite. He flew out of sight.
The Countesses were gone too – through the broken window into the station.
Only Jones was left behind.
Sophy got to the carriage just as the singer rolled out of its wreckage like several sacks of potatoes.
He was still smiling. His throat wasn’t cut but pierced – two deep holes gouged into his jugular vein.
‘Ho, let me through,’ said a woman. ‘I’m a doctor.’
‘It’s not a doctor he needs,’ Sophy said.
‘He needs the kind of doctor I am,’ said Geneviève Dieudonné. ‘I’m the coroner, remember?’
Sophy looked at the French woman, who knelt by the body.
She pulled on thin white cotton gloves and touched the neck-holes with the tips of two fingers.
‘I thought as much,’ she said. ‘The murderer was in too much of a hurry to make a mess of the throat this time, so we can see the real fatal wounds.’
‘A vampire bite?’
The coroner flashed a sharp smile up at Sophy. ‘There’s a resemblance to the traditional two little punctures, isn’t there? Lord Ruthven and Mircalla Karnstein couldn’t have done it more neatly… or obviously. Because they’re not so little, these punctures. They are, in fact, enormous.’
She easily slid her fingertips into the wounds, then took them out again.
‘Imagine having teeth this size,’ she said. ‘You’d never be able to close your mouth.’
Gendarmes gathered around, accepting the coroner’s authority. La Marmoset and Unorna were also here. Drawn to the station by the hullabaloo, they’d witnessed the aerial spectacle.
Dr Dieudonné took hold of Jones’s face, feeling the stretched cheek muscles.
‘Here’s that smile again,’ she continued, ‘and the lack of lividity which suggests enormous loss of blood.’
‘He was poisoned,’ said Sophy. ‘Shot with a blow-dart.’
‘Poisoned and bled out,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘A touch excessive, though it squares with the possibility of venom in the wounds of the other victims.’
‘Was the old railwayman a vampire?’ asked Unorna. ‘Did you see?’
‘He flew away,’ said Sophy. ‘His wings were mechanical.’
‘That explains a lot,’ said La Marmoset. ‘We’ve been chasing a very ingenious, inventive fellow. But it’s stage magic, not sorcery.’
‘The Countesses don’t use tricks, though,’ put in Unorna. ‘They could hardly have secretly strung the front of the Gare du Nord with the invisible wires they use in the circus. And those are never really invisible.’
‘I don’t know about the women,’ admitted Sophy. ‘But the bat-creature of the rooftops is a human man. Madame Van Helsing said his clothes were silly, but she’s wrong. They’re very clever.’
Dr Dieudonné stood, brushing dust off her knees.
The coroner looked at Sophy, La Marmoset and Unorna, smiling brightly, eyes a-glitter behind dark spectacles.
‘You’re those Opera Angels, aren’t you?’
XII
IN LA MARMOSET’S previous experience, coroners sat in their nice cold morgues and waited for bodies to be delivered before involving themselves in criminal investigations.
Geneviève Dieudonné was a new breed, evidently. She preferred her murder victims fresh-killed, and was interested in things beyond the simple – or, as in this case, not so simple – means of death.
She was unusual in several ways. Most of them suspicious.
Dr Dieudonné kept turning up in l’affaire du vampire, like a new-minted silver coin in a purse full of dull brown change. At Garron’s autopsy, La Marmoset saw how deft the doctor was. Now, she noticed she was also quick.
Standing over the bulky body of Giovanni Jones, the coroner had already made notes, which – with a trace of ghoulish excitement – she was eager to share with the Opera Ghost Agency.
‘As I was telling your colleague, the murderer didn’t have time to finish with this one. Perhaps now we can see what he’s really up to.’
‘He?’ prompted La Marmoset.
‘Murderers are usually he…’
Sophy snorted at that.
‘Vampires can be women,’ said Unorna. ‘The Karnstein case…’
‘I’m aware of it,’ said the coroner, off-handedly. ‘If there was such a person as Mircalla Karnstein, she wasn’t typical. Your usual vampire is a fatal man. Lord Ruthven, Sir Francis Varney, Arnold Paole, Ezzelin von Klatka…’
Dr Dieudonné seemed as eager as Saartje Van Helsing to dismiss the existence of vampires… unless they were men. In which case, she’d happily hoist the lot of them on poles.
‘…rotting dead-alive aristocrats, leeching the blood of peasants. It’s easy to see how the tales got started. The myth is a caricature of social injustice, is it not? Vampire stories tell us the rich are literally apart from the rest of humanity. Not really people, but monsters or devils. Predatory parasites. Spreaders of venereal disease. I’m surprised Émile Zola hasn’t written a novel about vampires.’
The gendarmes strung ropes to keep back badauds, the specific breed of Paris bystander who gather and gawk at any opportunity. Word spread that the vampire had struck again, and this new victim was also a famous opera singer. When people heard which famous opera singer, interest faded into disappointment. It would have been so much more titillating and horrifying to see the Great Anatole dead in a gutter than the plump has-been Giovanni Jones. Even in obituaries, he was upstaged.
‘I’d like to get Monsieur Jones to the Morgue now,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘With every passing moment, he can tell us less.’
La Marmoset realised what struck her as strange about Dr Dieudonné. The coroner thought like a detective.
‘Surely, he can’t tell us anything any more,’ said Sophy.
La Marmoset and Dr Dieudonné looked at her with similar indulgence.
‘She means the condition of his corpse gives things away,’ said Unorna, ‘not that he can literally talk. You know, it’s what she’s always looking for… clues.’
The police requisitioned a luggage cart from the station. Dr Dieudonné supervised as two brawny gendarmes tried to heft the literal dead weight off the flagstones. Giovanni Jones was not easy to get a grip on.
There was no dignity in death.
At last, the sweating flics wrestled Jones into the cart. His arms and legs flopped over the sides.
A keening moan came from his open mouth.
La Marmoset jumped. Several in the crowd screamed.
‘He’s not alive,’ said Unorna. ‘I can tell.’
‘Just wind from inside,’ said Dr Dieudonné, pressing fingers against his chest to be sure there was no heartbeat. ‘Not uncommon, but you never get used to it.’
‘You said the throat-cutting might be to hide the real killing wounds,’ reminded Sophy, pointing to Jones’s neck.
‘Yes. Here they are, fresh and unobscured. A breakthrough in the case.’
‘Isn’t there another possibility? That the vampire drank the blood of the earlier victims, then cut their throats… to stop them coming back!’
La Marmoset looked at Jones. Was something stirring inside this hulk?
‘One way to become a vampire is to be bitten by another vampire,’ said Unorna.
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Dr Dieudonné. ‘Just being bled doesn’t pass on the condition. There must be an exchange of blood. Even that doesn’t always work.’
‘You sound as much an expert as Madame Van Helsing’s husband,’ observed La Marmoset.
Dr Dieudonné regarded La Marmoset shrewdly. The living snagged her attention less easily than the dead.
She paused for thought. Then smiled.
‘In my profession,’ sh
e said, ‘you learn gruesome things. Facts and fables. Little suitable for polite company. As you can imagine, I don’t entertain much.’
‘You’re not married?’
‘No. Odd, that. You’re… widowed?’
‘Separated.’
‘My condolences… or are congratulations in order?’
‘We’re all better off without Mr Calhoun.’
La Marmoset thought she and Dr Dieudonné had the measure of each other.
‘Delightful as this has been, ladies, I must accompany Monsieur Jones to the Morgue. If you run into Raoul d’Aubert, you might tell him about these developments. I’ll work through the night and get my report on his desk by morning. I’m a little surprised he’s not here already.’
So was La Marmoset.
D’Aubert had known Giovanni Jones… and Camille de Rosillon and Anatole Garron. They were university contemporaries. As was the Austrian lawyer, Dr Falke.
The vampire was fishing in a small pond.
The police carted away the corpse, making slow progress through the terrified, fascinated crowds. Dr Dieudonné scrounged a tarpaulin to throw over the dead man.
The coroner turned and saluted the Angels, then was on her way.
‘There’s something about that woman,’ said Unorna. ‘Chilly.’
‘I don’t know,’ said La Marmoset. ‘I get the impression that if any of us weren’t here, she’d have a job with the Opera Ghost Agency. Whatever it is about her… we all have a touch of it too.’
‘From what I saw this evening, I shouldn’t be surprised if Erik sacks us and hires the Countesses,’ said Sophy.
‘I envy them,’ said Unorna. ‘Where they come from, they don’t have to pretend not to be what they are. They’re indulged, protected. We’re out in the wild.’
‘What are they?’ La Marmoset asked.
‘Children,’ said Unorna, ‘of the night… and what a racket they make!’
La Marmoset hadn’t taken the Countesses seriously – but this skirmish with the Black Bat showed them to be formidable. She put them back on her list of suspects.
‘So, Detective Majesty, where next?’ asked Sophy.
‘Police Headquarters, obviously. We need to see Inspecteur d’Aubert.’
Sophy – who didn’t like the police – pouted.
‘I don’t see why,’ she said. ‘Erik went above his head to get us on the case. We aren’t civil servants. We don’t need to report to him.’
‘We’re not reporting to him. We’re interviewing him. Three of his classmates are dead… which makes him either the most likely next victim or a prime suspect.’
Sophy couldn’t disguise her pleasure at the thought of a dead or arrested police inspector. But La Marmoset thought it best not to take her into a nest of gendarmes, and there was another lead to follow.
‘Unorna and I will run over to the Préfecture now. You see if you can find Dr Falke. He’s been in and out of this business too, so he’s another candidate for either the Morgue or the guillotine. I’m starting to put together a puzzle picture… it seems to go back twenty-five years.’
‘To d’Aubert’s student comrades?’ prompted Unorna.
‘Yes, and Madame Van Helsing’s Paris vampire scare. We should find out more about that.’
Thanks to the Communards burning down the Préfecture de Police and its archives – a loss criminologists lamented more than the destruction of the Library of Alexandria – it was frustratingly difficult to find accurate details of cases before 1871. Setting aside whatever nonsense appeared in the sensationalist press, La Marmoset usually had to rely on the shaky memories of old thief-takers and older thieves.
‘Right ho,’ said Sophy. ‘Meet you back at the Opéra. Remember to keep looking up. The bat flies!’
She pointed at the sky.
When La Marmoset looked back down again, Sophy was gone. She practised tricks like that. Good girl.
La Marmoset and Unorna took a fiacre back to Île de la Cité. The new Préfecture was on Place Louis Lépine. A former barracks, the building was fortified enough to hold off a concerted attack from the streets. No one was going to burn this one down.
Of course, if the enemies of order were flying these days, they’d have to bar the upper windows and skylights.
Walking into the front hall, La Marmoset was greeted heartily by comrades. Once, she’d seen more of this place than her own home. She’d spent nights in the cells, in disguise as a rowdy tart, worming secrets out of other prisoners, and once even aiding a daring escape. She’d used the shooting range in the basement and the observatory on the roof. She’d had her own office, and established an elaborate identity as her own flirtatious secretary, Mimi Bienville. More young officers asked to step out with imaginary Mimi than her real boss.
Signing in at the front desk ahead of them was Inspecteur Bec. A bald, jolly fellow with a prominent moustache and an even more prominent nose, he was a policeman who’d rather let a bank robber get clean away than work a minute past his allotted shift. When assigned a case, his first impulse was to find another officer to take it off his plate. Amiably perplexed by crimes, he felt no personal enmity for law-breakers and seldom troubled to make an arrest or turn over a dossier to an examining magistrate. Nevertheless, he was frequently decorated and promoted. He cheerfully gave the impression that the police budget was perfectly adequate and crime no very great problem, which made him more congenial to superiors than detectives who had the poor taste to frighten politicians with talk of criminal conspiracies like Les Vampires.
‘Hullo,’ said Bec, spotting La Marmoset. ‘I thought you were retired. Have you come to report your husband missing, ha ha ha?’
He must be the last man in Paris not to know that Mr Calhoun actually was missing.
‘I did that several months ago, Bec.’
‘Oooh – come to check up on us, then? I’m sure we shall run the rascal to ground. We’re the Sûreté, you know. Perfect fiends for locating missing persons. I believe we have a whole department for it. Who’s your pretty little friend? Is she down a husband too, or just reporting a missing kitty-cat?’
‘I’m not married,’ said Unorna.
‘Don’t look at me, Mademoiselle,’ chuckled the inspector. ‘There’s a Madame Bec at home and she has very definite views.’
‘Unorna has no cat either,’ said La Marmoset, impatient. ‘Though she is a witch, and ought to have a familiar.’
‘Don’t we still have laws against that sort of thing? Sorcery and necromancy. Is she turning herself in?’
La Marmoset wondered why the vampire had spared Inspecteur Bec.
‘We’re here to see Inspecteur d’Aubert,’ she said.
‘Funny you should ask after Raoul,’ he responded. ‘I’ve been called away from hearth and home to cover his shift because he seems to have gone missing. Very unlike him.’
…And very unlike Bec to volunteer for extra duty.
‘Madame Bec is in a bate about it because her parents are visiting. I suppose that makes me a suspect in the disappearance. If you’d met my wife’s papa, you’d say I had a huge motive to get Raoul out of the way.’
Unorna’s eyes rolled upwards. La Marmoset wondered whether Bec was sending her into a trance. Or was she summoning dark powers to give him hives or curdle his cows’ milk?
‘You’ve heard that Giovanni Jones has been murdered?’
‘We’ve had reports from half of Paris about a flying monster and three wicked angels,’ said Bec. ‘Say, that wouldn’t be you lot? The Opera Popsies.’
‘No – it’s another outfit. Tourists.’
‘Rum do. This city gets crazier by the minute.’
‘It was always crazy. You just learn to see it more clearly.’
Inspecteur Bec looked at her with a smile.
‘I daresay you’re right, Madame. You usually were. By the way, you’re not the first to come in here asking after Raoul. He’s popular with the ladies tonight. Another party is waiting for him to co
me back.’
Bec nodded sideways and La Marmoset followed his direction.
On a hard bench sat Saartje Van Helsing, glum and determined.
‘Can you find us a room, Inspecteur?’ La Marmoset asked. ‘We’d like to talk with the Professor.’
Bec saluted. He was only too happy to dodge another possible case – especially something as noxious and likely to lead to reprimand and recrimination as l’affaire du vampire. He believed in the old gendarme’s maxim of only going after the crooks you know you can catch.
‘I believe I have just the place for your tête-à-têtes. From now on, we shall call it the Ladies’ Lounge.’
XIII
IN THE FOYER of the Préfecture de Police was a kiosk selling cigarettes, newspapers and souvenirs. There were similar kiosks in every public building in Paris, from the Opéra to the Morgue. While the beak-nosed bald policeman talked with Madame Van Helsing, La Marmoset went to the kiosk. She returned with a postcard which she gave to Unorna.
‘When I prompt you, describe this face,’ she said.
Unorna looked at the card. Then La Marmoset took it away.
‘Remember, you have great psychic powers.’
‘I don’t make claims like…’
‘Just for this evening, you do.’
Inspecteur Bec escorted Madame Van Helsing past the front desk.
La Marmoset and Unorna followed. They went along a corridor and up some stairs. The policeman showed the Professor through a plain door, then looked back and beckoned La Marmoset.
They were ushered into a windowless room lined with bookshelves and furnished with comfortable chairs and a well-upholstered divan. Books and magazines had long since overflowed the shelves and were piled in stacks where a visitor might trip over them.
Madame Van Helsing was not pleased to see the Angels.
‘Raoul d’Aubert I wished to talk with,’ she said.
‘He’s not available at the moment,’ said Inspecteur Bec. ‘La Marmoset is taking over his duties for the evening. She’s our finest lady detective so she will be most suited to handle your delicate matter. Rest assured, she’s as dogged as any man… and a sight daintier than our clod-hopping officers. By the way, La Marmoset, whatever happened to that girl who worked for you when you were here… the delightful Mimi?’