Angels of Music

by Kim Newman

  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.

  III

  IN THE LAST century, Royale-les-Eaux had enjoyed a vogue as a watering place for the wealthy and listless. Mama had sung
a season at the Petit Opéra, attached to the Grand Hôtel and the Casino. The burglar Théophraste Lupin had lifted jewels and broken hearts among the ladies who flocked from Paris and further afield to summer balls, concerts and gaming tourneys. Their excuse was the local springs, reputedly a tonic for intimate diseases. In 1890, the waters ran dry and nothing could be done to make them flow again. The Société des Bains de Mers de Royale, who governed far more than the baths, suffered a decline reversed only by the miracle of a Yankee deliverer.

  Charles Foster Kane had lighted upon the town and made it his European compound. What could not be bought was leased. A motion was before the Société to change the resort’s name to Europa-Xanadu, to further the connection with the magnate’s Florida fiefdom. Royale-les-Eaux was an outpost of Kane’s empire, an American colony in the old world. Having relocated castles from Spain, Hungary and Scotland to serve as guest-houses, he was filling the halls with works of art purchased or looted from the great collections of the continent. A reserve was stocked with wild boar (a hardy local breed crossed with Australian razorback) suitable for stalking, shooting, scoffing and stuffing. An army of cronies, hangers-on and minions easily filled the place. However, showing the democratic impulse of his peculiar country, Kane decreed his private realm be open to the general public.

  As soon as the Angels alighted from the train at the Gare de Royale-les-Eaux, it became apparent that apparent madness was founded on solid business practice. Scrubbed and smiling youths of both sexes, with a stylised ‘K’ on their tunic breasts, besieged new arrivals. They offered to carry baggage (for fifty centimes), sell post-cards (for fifty centimes), provide ginger beer or gelati (for fifty centimes), serve as guides to the town (for fifty centimes an hour), secure seats at ‘exclusive’ high-stakes gaming tables (for fifty centimes!), or effect introduction to suitable temporary companions (for considerably more than fifty centimes). It was impossible to take three steps in this town without spending money, as if every franc in every pocket were magnetically drawn to the millionaire’s already-overflowing coffers.

  Such a shame the fellow was inconveniently married. No, that was beyond consideration. Money was beside the point. One did not marry an American, any more than an orangutan. There were standards.

  The Persian had wisely left all gold accoutrements behind save his teeth (and kept his mouth firmly shut to hide them). He swept licensed, uniformed pick-pockets out of their way and located an elderly railway porter. The fellow wore the K-brand, but had plainly been at his post long before the new regime descended. The Persian extended a handsome bribe to make sure their trunks arrived inviolate at the Grand Hôtel. He whispered something terrifying in the porter’s ear – presumably invoking their phantom patron – to persuade the man it would be best to follow instructions to the letter.

  Outside the station, the tiny town was a Babel. Purple-liveried cowboys cracked whips and held up signs to direct crowds this way and that. Royale-les-Eaux was a combination of Wild West ‘wide open town’, Tartar war camp and storybook enchanted kingdom. Bath-houses and hotels had sprouted towers and castellations, some of stone and some merely wooden stage flats, to become every possible variety of gaming-hall, bordello or museum of curiosities. A bandstand in the Venetian style stood outside the concourse. An orchestra in harlequin costumes played while dancing girls hopped around behind a singer in a striped jacket and jaunty hat. Over and over, they performed the town’s new anthem, alternately in French (‘C’est Monsieur Kane’) and English (‘Oh, Mister Kane’).

  When the song came round for the third time, Elizabeth said, ‘I will find out who wrote that tune, and have Rima drop him in a South American river for the piranhas to devour. Then I shall have his polished bones set in a xylophone which I will sell to a ragtime band.’

  Every fourth or fifth building was a peculiar type of café, surmounted by a wrought-iron K inside a circle – the Mark of Kane. Here, patrons queued for thin meat patties and salad leftovers served inside limp circles of bread, along with deep-fried potato peelings unworthy of the name pommes frites. This fare was handed over in boxes made of folded newspaper (New York Inquirer overruns, Gilberte supposed). No plates or cutlery were involved. Customers fetched their own food and found their own tables, if they could – so waiters need not apply for employment. Cheap trinkets were given as prizes to those who gobbled their Fatty Feast within the shortest time. It would take a diamond pendant to make Gilberte start a Burgher Kane meal, let alone finish it.

  She dreaded to imagine what went on in the kitchens. Rumour was that the cowboys herded animals into giant mechanical pens where many whirling blades rendered them – bones, skin, hooves, eyes, bowel contents and all – into a thick liquid which was splashed onto grills to create the circular patties. The Burgher Kane slogan was ‘over twenty-two thousand sold’. Such cafés were supposedly popular in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. From Royale-les-Eaux, Kane intended to expand across Europe. A conquering army could do no more harm.

  With dignity, Elizabeth walked down the street, flanked by Gilberte and Riolama. The Englishwoman ignored everyone who tried to importune her, Gilberte kept an eye out for potential assassins, and the bird girl was nervous in this crowded, cacophonous jungle. Impertinent comments were addressed to the ladies by idlers. The Persian saw to it that every insult was punished with a withering glance or, if appropriate, a cuff.

  Gilberte herself had to thump a masher with her parasol before they reached the Grand HÔtel.

  IV

  THE LOBBY WAS dominated by a twice life-size painting – a poor copy of Hals’ ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ with Kane’s face replacing the original sitter’s. The curlicued K was everywhere, on doorknobs and antimacassars and wood-panels and the carpet. Gilberte wondered whether the American insisted employees have his mark tattooed on their shoulders like slaves or branded into their thighs like cattle.

  At the front desk, Elizabeth announced herself as ‘Miss Kathleen Ruston’, an English lady whose charitable foundation provided improving literature for bereft children in uncivilised quarters of the world. The little flutter Elizabeth allowed into her voice suggested Miss Ruston found Royale-les-Eaux backward enough to be in need of a tract or two.

  A sharp-eyed female receptionist saw through the imposture at once. The real Miss Ruston was detained in Huddersfield by a mystery ailment not unconnected with doctored gin. From her reticule, Elizabeth produced a lacquered oblong, embossed with a gold K – a 1,000 francs board from the Casino. A gilt design on the reverse, resembling an octopus, distinguished it from the ordinary run. The receptionist noted this, and signalled for a superior – a sleek-haired, hollow-eyed young man with a sharp-pointed false beard.

  ‘I am Haghi,’ he said. He might have been German or Arab or any nationality. ‘Mr Kane trusts you will enjoy your stay, and extends the invitation to join his other “special guests” in the private salon this evening. Okee geluk, dama.’

  ‘Dankzegging, mens,’ Elizabeth responded, sotto voce.

  Their host had arranged that Miss Ruston be indisposed, so her identity could be usurped by a Dutch lady who bore a passing resemblance to the philanthropist but was quite a different character. Edda Van Heemstra – dancer, courtesan, thief, blackmailer and trafficker in government secrets – was not a person to be entrusted with a charitable foundation. Her notion of ‘improving literature’ ran to illustrated editions of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or My Nine Nights in a Harem. Detained during a stopover in Paris, Mevrouw Van Heemstra currently enjoyed the hospitality of locked apartments in the sub-basement of the Opéra. Erik provided choice wines from his private cellar and an extensive collection of phonograph recordings for her entertainment.

  On only a few moments’ acquaintance, Elizabeth had Edda off perfectly, though her Dutch vocabulary was limited to pages of common words and phrases torn from a Baedeker’s Guide to the Netherlands. Gilberte admired the performance. Elizabeth was successfully impersonating a Dutch harlot imperfectly posing as
an English prude. No wonder she scarcely remembered who she really was.

  Among Kane’s special guests, Edda was high in the magnate’s councils. She had been entrusted with procuring documents central to his plans.

  The register was presented. Elizabeth signed with a flourish. Forging signatures was another of her talents. Gilberte was beginning to feel Grandmama and Aunt Alicia had neglected vital aspects of her education.

  ‘Eddie, you are a sight for sore eyes,’ brayed a loud, American voice.

  Gilberte tensed. This would be a real test. Someone who knew Edda Van Heemstra.

  Assembling a dazzling coquette’s smile, Elizabeth turned to greet the man who had addressed her. Gilberte saw in her companion’s eyes that she had no idea who the fellow was.

  Well dressed but for a shapeless slouch hat which put his face permanently in shadow, the American thrust out a paw, as if expecting ‘Eddie’ to shake it like a man. His hand was several sizes too large for his body, thickly furred, with diamond-shaped horny nails. A malformation of the tendons made the fingers curve claw-like, as if he were perpetually clutching an invisible throat.

  The hand was his tell. While Elizabeth was practising her Dutch, Gilberte had gone through a flip-book memorising faces, aliases and histories. Erik had excellent, up-to-date intelligence: Haghi, the deferential hotelier, was – without the goatee – also Nemo the Clown, an expert hypnotist, basket-weaver and revolver shot. Gilberte was a fast learner, too. It was her duty of the day to steer Elizabeth through a crowd of ‘known associates’.

  ‘This must be the famous Perry Bennett,’ Gilberte announced, extending her own languid, gloved hand to the clutcher. ‘Edd, you must introduce me.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes focused. She followed Gilberte’s lead.

  ‘Mr Bennett, my companion represents an organisation which must be well known to you, though its name is not spoken even in this company. May I present Mademoiselle Irma Vep of Montmartre.’