Angels of Music

by Kim Newman

  To Kate, it seemed every one of the deaths was enacted on the tiny stage. Berma appeared as the Spirit of Liberty, tricolour sash barely wound across half her torso, and was shot down. She danced at half-speed to the drum-rattle of rifle discharges. Ribbons of thin, scarlet stage blood splashed around. The orchestra played ‘La Marseillaise’ out of tune. The prima diva of horror – who had been earlier tortured, violated, shocked, throttled, mutilated, dismembered, disfigured and degraded – received wild applause for her last death scene of the evening. Even Morpho’s claque joined in. Funeral garlands were thrown on the stage. Without breaking character, Berma died under a pile of black and red flowers.

  This piece was closer to home than mediaeval dungeons or exotic locales of Guignol’s other horror tableaux. 1871 was within the memory of much of this audience. They’d lived through the Commune, lost friends and relatives, suffered wounds. In all likelihood, some of the moneyed, middle-aged folk up in the circle had taken part in the slaughter. A pack of bourgeois women had poked a dead Communard general’s brains with their umbrellas, while regular army officers arranged the efficient execution of whole districts.

  As the barricades fell, the bickering Committee of Enquiry into the lunacy of Bertrand Caillet remained in session. Proceedings were disrupted by fist-fights, a duel, assassination and the purge. Through an error of transcription, a Monsieur Dupond was thrown before a firing squad convened for a Monsieur Dupont. Enfin, the senior judge – who’d absent-mindedly signed the death warrant of the Archbishop of Paris while listening to Caillet’s confession – proclaimed himself insane in a vain attempt to evade his own executioners. When Guignol took the judge’s head, no one was left to rule in the case of the sad, forgotten prisoner. A venal turnkey (Morpho) let Caillet go free.

  The dazed maniac was drawn by his lusts to his old stamping grounds. Caillet arrived at Père Lachaise Cemetery as the last of the Commune’s National Guard were put against its wall and shot. No one paid the amateur of murder any attention, except a guard dog which bit him as he was rooting in a grave for a sufficiently putrid corpse. The ragged ghoul succumbed to this festering, untreated wound and joined the pile of corpses.

  At last, Guignol – who played the guard dog himself – was making a point; albeit while dancing in entrails and tearing the eyes out of dwarves, nuns and a disapproving censor. If Bertrand Caillet was a monster on the strength of his crimes, what was to be said of the politicians and generals who could have a hundred people – a thousand, thirty thousand, a million, ten million! – eradicated at the stroke of a pen? The tableau vivant returned, but poisoners, stabbers and stranglers were replaced by politicians, judges, officers, priests and newspaper editors. Their hands were red with stage blood.

  The human waxworks went unnamed, but Kate recognised many. The Minister Eugène Mortain, famous for surviving corruption scandals and maintaining a dozen mistresses at the public expense; the examining magistrate Charles Pradier, who vowed to restock Île du Diable with journalists who argued the innocence of Dreyfus or the guilt of Esterhazy; General Assolant, recalled from Algeria after a run of harsh police actions and put in charge of the Paris garrison to maintain public order; Père de Kern, confessor to government and society figures, and reputedly the most depraved man in France, though always humble in public; and Georges Du Roy, publisher of La Vie Française, L’Anti-Juif and the children’s story paper Arizona Jim.

  Solemnly, Guignol passed amongst the wax monsters, awarding each a rosette and ribbon, inducting these worthies into the Légion d’Horreur!

  Kate hadn’t expected the detour into political agitation, if indeed this was that. How was Guignol getting away with it? Newspaper offices were burned to the ground and journalists submitted to the system of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether for less. For an institution eager to make powerful enemies, the Théâtre des Horreurs was surprisingly un-persecuted.

  Even before the attack on the people best placed to have the place shut down, the programme seemed calculated to offend everyone – Catholics (especially Jesuits), Protestants (especially Freemasons), Jews (no surprises there), atheists and free-thinkers, conservatives, moderates, radicals, anyone not French enough, anyone not French at all, the medical profession, the police, the law, criminals, cannibals, the military, colonialists, anti-colonialists, the halt and lame, circus folk, animal lovers, people who lived through the Paris Commune, the friends and relatives of people who failed to live through the Paris Commune, women of all classes, drama critics.

  In a city where a poetry recital or a symphony concert could set off a riot, this house was tolerated so completely that she sensed an invisible shield of protection. Was the Théâtre des Horreurs so profitable it could afford to bribe everyone? Including the Paris mob, who were notoriously easier to stir up than buy off.

  In parting, Guignol sang a song whose last refrain was – loosely translated – ‘If these shadows have offended, you can all go stuff yourselves!’

  The curtain came down. Thunderous applause.

  ‘I didn’t like it at the end, Papa,’ said one of the fat round children. ‘When it made my head hurt from thinking.’

  The fat round father fondly cuffed the lad around the ear.

  ‘There, that’ll take the ache away.’

  Guignol poked his head out of the curtain to take a last bow.

  After some minutes of capering and farewell, Guignol departed and the house lights came up.

  III

  THE SHOW LET out after eleven o’clock. Kate kept her head down and made for the Sortie.

  To escape the theatre, she had to run a gauntlet of minions in Guignol masks hawking souvenirs: Toby jugs with Guignol features; phials of authentic Théâtre des Horreurs blood; postcards of the stars in sealed packets so you didn’t know what you were getting (how many leering Morphos did a collector have to buy to secure that elusive bare-breasted Berma?); tin swazzles seemingly designed to drive parents to acts of infanticide suitable for dramatising next season; and enamel pins with Guignol faces or bloody pulled-out eyes.

  Succumbing, she purchased a profusely illustrated pamphlet featuring photographed scenes, with diagrams showing how effects were done. It might come in handy in the investigation. She was convinced a connection existed between the crimes in the streets and the crimes on the stage. It was as if the real horrors extended the argument of the Ballade de Bertrand Caillet. Doubtless, victims didn’t care much whether they were killed to make a philosophical point or just plain ordinarily murdered.

  Leaving by a side door, she saw a cluster of devotees around the artists’ entrance. Some wore amateur horror make-up as if hoping to audition: dangling eyeballs, running sores, vampire fangs. A mec in a short-sleeved sailor shirt showed off a raw tattoo of Guignol’s grin. Others wore cheap masks and competed – despite their lack of swazzle – to imitate Guignol’s voice. A tipsy toff in evening dress struggled with a huge bouquet of black roses. Kate suspected Stage Door Jeannot was an admirer of the much-abused Berma. He looked more like the recipient than the disher-out of consensual floggings.

  Back on Rue Saint-Vincent, she clocked Yuki’s headdress bobbing in the distance. She paused a moment to consider her options. They were supposed to make their separate ways back to the pied-à-terre the Persian had rented for the purposes of the investigation. Kate had memorised a few routes.

  Ideally, she’d have liked a stroll by the Seine to clear her head.

  The Théâtre des Horreurs was overwhelming. An evening with the smell of offal, that funny smoke and packed-in patrons would make anyone light-headed, even without the parade of tortures.

  She passed gay cafés and cabarets, but horrors had soured her outlook. Her glasses weren’t rose-coloured, but blood-smeared. Music and laughter sounded shrill and cruel. Pretty faces seemed cracked and duplicitous.

  Guignol peeped from posters. She thought she saw him in the crowd. It wasn’t unlikely. Many cardboard masks were sold in Impasse Chaplet.

  She took precautions
against being followed, as much for practice as genuine caution. In the front door of a restaurant and out through the kitchens – even a glimpse was enough to dissuade her from going back for a meal – and a quick change on the hoof. She reversed her distinctive check jacket to show anonymous green.

  She found a table in the corner of a busy courtyard and ordered anisette.

  No one tried to pick her up, which was obscurely depressing. If she could sit by herself in a French café and not be bothered, she must be a fright indeed.

  She was thirty-two. No age at all… though her soonest-married school friends had nearly grown-up daughters and sons. As an unmarried, ‘unconventional’ woman, she was accustomed to importunage on a daily basis – in England, let alone Paris. Being Kate Reed was like being a coconut in a shy. Every other chap thought it worth a throw. If the shot went wide, no harm done, old girl. The ‘respectable’ gents were bad enough – the husbands of her school friends, or even their fathers – but the men who made her skin crawl were the firebrand stalwarts of causes she supported – Irish home rule or women’s suffrage – who felt she owed them a tumble because they said the right things on platforms. From now on, she would recommend that these pouncing comrades take a run at Clara Watson, connoisseur of exquisite tortures.

  An accordion played. The performer was the image of a music hall Frenchman, down to the beret and waxed moustache – though he’d left his string of onions at home. He was wringing out the ‘Valse des Rayons’ from Offenbach’s Le Papillon. Space in the courtyard was cleared for a couple to enact the famous apache dance. A slouch-hatted, stripy-shirted rough slung his long-legged partner about in a simulation of violent love-making, in time to repetitive, sinuous music. The fille alternately resisted the crude advances of her garçon and abased herself in front of him. Throughout, a lit cigarette dangled from the corner of the man’s mouth. He puffed smoke rings between cruel kisses. Even dances in Montmartre involved punches, slaps, knees to the groin and neck-breaking holds. The girl pulled a stiletto from her garter, but the mec snatched it away and tossed it at a wall. It embedded in a poster of Guignol.

  Kate sipped her anisette, which stung her nose and eyes as well as her tongue. It was but a step from this anise-flavoured, watered cordial to absinthe. Which led, popularly, to syphilis, consumption and death.

  The dancers finished, and were clapped. They collected coins. Kate gave the girl a sou and hoped the bruises under her powder were from overenthusiastic rehearsal.

  The point of Guignol’s Caillet play was that horror was unconfined. Not limited to one madman, not on one small stage. It was all about, all-pervasive, in the statues of Saint Denis toting his raggedly severed head and the ritualised domestic abuse of the apache dance. The Reign of Terror and the Commune were done, but Guignol’s Chevalier de la Légion d’Horreur were ensconced in positions of power. Georges Du Roy could throw honest ministers to les loups but maintain Eugène Mortain in office. Riots erupted whenever the Dreyfus case was argued. War with Germany was inevitable one week, then alliance with Germany against Great Britain was equally inevitable the week after. Père de Kern was appointed Inspector of Orphanages. Horrible whispers spread about his night-time surprise visits to his little charges, though even Zola didn’t dare accuse him in print. A military coup which would have installed General Assolant as a new Napoléon had recently collapsed at the last minute. Kate liked to think herself a reasonable person, but she was working for a faceless creature who supposedly dropped a chandelier on an opera audience because he didn’t like the casting of Marguerite in Faust.

  Was it all in fun?

  The horrors were certainly not confined to Paris. The British Mr Punch, Guignol’s cousin, knocked his Judy about as much as any apache panderer did his tart… and killed policemen, judges and crocodiles. In the East End, Kate spent too much time with women nursing black eyes after trying to stop their old men blowing the rent money going on beer to find Punch and Judy shows very amusing. At least, the apachette fought back.

  She looked about the courtyard. People were having a good time, even if their pockets were being picked. Despite the horrors, life went on, mostly merrily. Dance done, the performers were drinking together, the girl flirting with her partner and the musician. Kate’s jangled nerves calmed, and she tried to shrug it all off.

  The stiletto had been reclaimed from the wall. A tear-like triangular divot showed brick under Guignol’s eye.

  Kate thought about the eyes of Guignol, the living eyes in the papier-mâché face. She thought she’d know those eyes again. But would she, really? Guignol was in disguise when he took his mask off. He might be anyone.

  The programme and pamphlet were no help. There were notes about Berma, Phroso, Morpho (a veteran disfigured by Riffs, apparently) and others. Even Dr Orloff, the resident physician, had a write-up. Guignol’s biography was of the character not the performer. Guignol was himself, not who he had been… Jean-François Someone or Félix-Frédéric Whoever. Under Berma’s photograph was a paragraph about her early life and career. She’d played in other companies, rising from Cleopatra’s asp-delivering handmaiden to Juliet and Desdemona, before her engagement at the Théâtre des Horreurs. Under Guignol’s picture was a list of crimes. Credited as writer and producer of the show as well as its proprietary spirit, he had sprung from nowhere to take over the remains of the late Monsieur Hulot’s company.

  The craze burned throughout Paris, exciting much commentary. W.B. Yeats, Gustav von Aschenbach and Odilon Redon hailed Guignol as a genius, though Kate would have laid money they wouldn’t have him round for dinner. Paul Verlaine and André Gide lampooned Guignol as a fraud, though the inconsistent Gide also said he loved the imp like a brother. Léo Taxil had boosted the Mad Mountebank of the Théâtre des Horreurs in his periodical La France Chrétienne Anti-Maçonnique, then claimed to have invented Guignol… only to discover his creation had ‘escaped into the wild’.

  She was no wiser about the masked man.

  Thinking about Guignol made her jittery. It was too easy to imagine that face – those eyes – looking at her from a dark corner or between a press of people. Kate still felt he, or someone wearing his face, was nearby… and could lay a hand on her at any moment.

  Was that why she wasn’t being preyed on? A greater predator had marked her as his own.

  She poured the last of the water into the last of the anisette and drank up. Then she left, hurrying towards the rendezvous of the Angels.

  Was she being followed still? Had she ever?

  It was as if Guignol were waiting wherever she turned. In the limelight, up on a stage, his atrocities were often absurd. In spite of herself, she had laughed. In the dark, a step or two off the main street, the clown would not seem funny.

  Kate felt a chill up one arm. She looked down and saw the sleeve of her jacket – and the sleeve of her blouse – had three long slits, as if claws of supreme sharpness had brushed her when she was distracted, cleaving cloth but not skin.

  She heard the laughter of Guignol, but could not be sure it was in her head.

  IV

  MADAME MANDELIP’S HÔPITAL des Poupées was in Place Frollo, a triangular ‘square’ even further off Rue Saint-Vincent than Impasse Chaplet. The small shop was seldom open for business and got little passing traffic. The front window was crowded with dusty dolls. All the fixed smiles and glass eyes reminded Kate of her childhood playroom. She’d been afraid of the old-fashioned, slightly battered dolls her aunts kindly passed on. The effect of the frontage was deliberate – to ward off the curious. If there ever had been such a person as Madame Mandelip, she was long gone.

  Kate was last home to the safe house. She rapped on the door, to the rhythm of the first line of ‘La Donna è Mobile’ from Rigoletto. She could never repress a smirk at the childish trimmings favoured by the overgrown boys of the Diogenes Club and the Opera Ghost Agency. Secret knocks, passwords, invisible ink and codes, not to mention false moustaches and – inevitably – masks. The blade u
p her sleeve reminded her she wasn’t immune to the appeal of deadly play-acting.

  The Persian let her in. He was Erik’s cat’s paw. Few took his master for more than a myth, but the Persian was familiar around the Opéra and the city, trusted to collate reports from the songbirds, often an intermediary or bill-collector. One theory was that he was a ventriloquist, and the mask behind the dressing room mirror simply an articulated puppet. Kate knew that wasn’t true, but saw how the notion could get about.

  Olive-skinned and unostentatious, the Persian was sometimes addressed as Daroga. That wasn’t his name but a title – police chief. Erik and he had served the Mazanderan Court many years ago, though they were no longer welcome there. Far-fetched rumours of their doings in Persia had reached the Diogenes Club. Reputedly, Erik fled the Court with a potion of longevity stolen from the Khanum, the Shah’s mother. That would explain how the Director of the Opera Ghost Agency seemed not to get older over the decades. Another fine wheeze for not seeming to age would be to wear a mask and seldom even show that in public.

  Clara and Yuki took tea.

  ‘So, ladies,’ Kate asked, ‘what did we think of the play?’

  Clara Watson grimaced. ‘I was bored… except for the eye-gouged dwarf. He was adorable.’

  Yuki shook her head, rattling tiny bells set among her flowers. ‘I did not understand much. There was no honour, just wasted effort. And to cut off a head… it is not so easy as they make out. Even with a sharp sword. The head does not come off like a doll’s, at the merest love tap.’