Angels of Music

by Kim Newman

  ‘I am especially familiar with the rooftops of that district,’ Gilberte claimed.

  She was also appropriating an alias, but a shadowier one. Irma Vep was perpetually high in the councils of Les Vampires. She was a thief, or perhaps several thieves, or perhaps just a cast-aside bodystocking and mask anyone might pick up and put on. Irma sometimes represented herself as Pia Verm, Vi Marpe, Miep Vrå, Mira Pev, Vera Mip, Marie Pv, Eva Prim, Virma Ep or Ma Viper. Gilberte thought the game silly and jokingly suggested she call herself Anna Gram instead.

  However, the man with the clutching hand was impressed.

  Relations between the Opera Ghost Agency and Les Vampires were relatively cordial. Gilberte was borrowing the Irma Vep name with permission.

  Riolama peeked out from behind Elizabeth. She wore a sailor suit and had been persuaded to don oversized workman’s boots painted pink. She looked no older than twelve.

  ‘This is Rima, an auxiliary member of the, ah…’

  Gilberte crooked her forefingers and put them in front of her eye-teeth while opening her eyes wide – the universal underworld sign for Les Vampires.

  Bennett looked at the waif as if she were an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top. Gilberte knew instantly that he was one of those – once a girl turned thirteen, she was of no interest to him. American rogues in his line often wheedled to be appointed as guardians to underage heiresses and were torn by contradictory impulses. Should they rope in a defrocked clergyman and force the girl into marriage at dead of night, or set the fuse to the dynamite and strand her in an abandoned mine?

  ‘What a gathering of like souls!’ Bennett announced, in a high-pitched voice which didn’t quite match his sinister looks. ‘I was on the boat train from London with Madame Sara, Sir Dunston Gryne and Simon Carne. Imagine: the Sorceress of the Strand, the Azrael of Anarchy and the Prince of Swindlers in one place! Dr Materialismus is here, and Abijah K. Jones, the Devil Bug. If only the crowds out on the promenade knew who was among them? What a cut-up that would be! I daresay many would expire from sheer fright to think their sleeves had been brushed by the likes of Baron Maupertuis or Dr Quartz or Wizard Whateley! Professor Fate and Sir Cuthbert Ware-Armitage have been delayed, because their motor-cars collided on the road from Dieppe and they are conducting a duel. But the Assassination Bureau, Ltd. has opened a stall disguised as a gypsy fortune-teller’s, and is advertising cut-rate offers.’

  The hand remained stuck out stiffly, quivering with Bennett’s excitement to be in such company. Gilberte judged him a minor villain – he was like several women in Aunt Lucia’s circle who were overly eager to list invitations they had received from prominent people and always worked ‘as I was saying to such-and-such-a-person-far-more-distinguished-than-you’ into their chatter.

  Bennett was also slightly deluded about the company, which was marginally less distinguished than the American believed. The current Grand Vampire deemed Kane an upstart amateur and had happily turned his invitation over to the Opera Ghost Agency. Since Professor Moriarty went over the waterfall, there was an unofficial contest for the title of worst villain of the age. The Lord of Strange Deaths, from China, and Dr Mabuse, from Germany, were leading candidates. Some would argue for Dr Nikola or the Countess Cagliostro. None of them were here. This was a Great Gathering of Second-Raters.

  Beneath his hat brim, Bennett’s eyes wandered sideways to see if anyone more famous had come into the lobby. Finally, he fixed on someone.

  ‘You must excuse me,’ said Bennett, bowing slightly. ‘I see Raymond Owen – a countryman of mine, with similar interests. We must confer on matters of mutual concern. Tethering to railroad tracks has proved a more unreliable method of solving a problem than those of our stripe might wish.’

  He hopped off, with a gait that suggested his left leg must suffer from the condition affecting his right arm.

  Gilberte looked at Elizabeth and Riolama.

  They had passed their first test, and were accepted by at least one of this wicked company.

  Haghi struck a bell, summoning a minion to escort the ladies to their suite.

  V

  ‘IN XANADU DID Kubla Khan a sacred pleasure-dome decree…’

  The words were written in incandescent bulbs over the doors of the Casino.

  Gilberte had learned Coleridge off by heart in her English class. It was supposed to be a stately pleasure-dome.

  The foyer was lined with peculiar contraptions. Patrons fed them with coins, yanked a crank-handle, and peered through a window as wheels whirred, then ground to a halt displaying miniature playing cards. If the centime-stuffer was fortunate enough to get a winning hand, the machine spat out tokens redeemable only at the bar in the Casino. The machines made a horrid, grinding, clanking sound. Their devotees had an impatient, haggard look she found quite disturbing.

  ‘In America, they automate everything,’ she mused.

  ‘Not everything,’ said Elizabeth. ‘There will always be a place for the human touch.’

  Interspersed with the gaming machines were Mutoscopes, which worked on a similar principle. Coins unlocked a mechanism, and working the handle ran a strip of pictures past a peep-hole. The Dance of the Nile. The Execution of Marie Antoinette. Madame at her Bath. Facing the Firing Squad. A Maiden Surprised by a Satyr. Gentlemen cranked vigorously, and peered at the tiny, flickering action. Live women could stroll past au naturel without distracting these addicts from their chemically graven images.

  As Irma Vep and Edda Van Heemstra, Gilberte and Elizabeth wore black and white evening dresses with matching domino masks.

  Riolama was back in the suite, taking one of her bird-naps.

  In the main salon of the Casino, fortunes were won and lost the old-fashioned way at baccarat or roulette tables. A hall the size of a railway station was lit by a multi-faceted globe, which was studded with electric bulbs and mirrors. This interior sun revolved slowly, wavering lights over tiers of gambling concourses, probably to the fury of people trying to concentrate on their cards or the wheel. Gilberte trusted the sphere was fixed more securely to the ceiling than the famous chandelier at the Paris Opéra.

  They passed through the busy hall to the inner sanctum. A brass-bound door, emblazoned with the most elaborate K yet, was guarded by a big-browed, jut-jawed giant in evening dress. He was covered in the flip-book. Edda was supposed to know him from a previous exploit.

  ‘Voltaire,’ Gilberte whispered to Elizabeth. ‘Strong-arm man for hire. You shot him in the head in New Orleans. He’s had metal teeth put in since then.’

  ‘Daa-hling,’ said Elizabeth, very loudly, ‘you’ve done something marvellous with your mouth.’

  Voltaire grinned, showing sharpened steel.

  ‘Most ferocious,’ Elizabeth commented. ‘And this, of course, is, ah, Irma Vep …’

  Elizabeth presented their special board, and the giant – who obviously thought less of being shot in the head than many folks of Gilberte’s acquaintance – opened the door to the private salon.

  It was theatrically gloomy. Kane had stripped hangings, murals, frescoes and candle-sconces from an abandoned Transylvanian castle and reassembled the décor in this conference room.

  A huge oak table, suitable for a Viking feast, already accommodated many masked or veiled men and women. A Neolithic altar, grooved and stained by centuries of ritual murder, was set at the head of the table, like a lectern.

  Elizabeth and Gilberte took the seats allotted to Edda and Irma. Masks nodded at them. Some of the veiled ladies wore enormously feathered hats. A few villains laid daggers, pistols or exotic devices on their place-settings.

  An oversized hairy hand waved at them from the end of the table. Bennett must be pleased to be included in the inner circle. They were near the top of the table. Elizabeth had a corner seat, across from a leonine fellow in a papier-mâché Guignol mask. To Gilberte’s left was a ramrod-straight, severe young woman sewn into a tight-fitting gown composed of metallic plates. She wore a metal mask studded
with rivets.

  A middle-aged, white-haired fellow with arthritic hands stood by the altar. Henry F. Potter, a banker, was associated with Kane in usury and union-busting throughout the American Mid-West. He had a reputation for dispossessing widows – which, since her bereavement, Gilberte took exception to. In vaudeville parlance, Potter was the ‘warm-up’ act.

  ‘Friends,’ coughed Potter, ‘now we are all present, I suggest we take off our masks. There should be no need for disguise in this company.’

  To emphasise the point, the banker slipped off a bandit domino which was useless for concealing his identity. She had thought he was just wearing thick spectacles.

  Up and down the table, veils were lifted, hats removed and masks slipped off.

  Most of the names Bennett had dropped were present: Madame Sara, Dunston Gryme, Dr Quartz, Simon Carne, Baron Maupertuis. Gilberte recognised others from the flip-book: William Boltyn, an American patron of science who claimed to be wealthier even than Kane, along with his pet engineer Hattison; Gurn, promising mercenary and murderer; General Guy Sternwood, hero of the Spanish-American War according to the Kane papers but ‘the Blundering Butcher of Las Guasimas’ in every other record of the conflict; sleek young Senator Joseph Harrison Paine, the tycoon’s bought-and-paid-for voice in Washington; and Julian Karswell, the English diabolist.

  Kane’s company took in vastly disparate political interests. The woman in the metal dress was Natasha Natasaevna di Murska, sworn enemy of kings and capital. Her father, the mysterious Natas, was mastermind of an international organisation called (unsubtly) The Terrorists. Natasha glared fierce hatred at the plutocrats, robber barons and aristocrats who formed the greater part of Kane’s company. Gilberte trusted the Princess of the Revolution hadn’t been allowed to bring any of the bombs she famously liked to throw at oppressors of the people into this room.

  The fellow opposite Elizabeth took off his Guignol guise to reveal a second mask underneath – a tight-fitting, rough-stitched leather hood with slashes to show his teeth and eyes. He was the Face, whose page in the Agency’s flip-book of notable fiends, mercenaries and masterminds was mostly blank. His true features were seen less frequently even than the baleful skull of Monsieur Erik. He put it about that he was so transcendently handsome that normal life was impossible – women and men, equally besotted, would abase themselves in his path wherever he went. Gilberte had heard some good stories in her time, but that one took the madeleine.

  Potter rapped the altar with knobby knuckles.

  Voltaire wound up a phonograph and that dratted ‘Oh, Mr Kane’ tune sounded out, played as pompous fanfare. The already dim room-lights lowered and bright spots flared on the altar. Charles Foster Kane himself appeared, arms outstretched, in a dazzling white suit, grinning like an imbecile, enjoying himself immensely. He swept off his straw hat and waved it. He was at once a politician, a pastor, a song-and-dance man and chairman of the board. Gilberte wondered if they were supposed to applaud.

  A glance up and down the table showed most of the company were also sceptical. But they stayed. Kane clearly had a species of magnetism. Money, ignorance and energy were a potent combination and – if what she had seen at Royale-les-Eaux was anything to go on – might soon surge around the world.

  ‘Hiya, fellers – and, especially, feller-esses,’ said Kane. ‘Welcome to the Inner Circle of the Most High Order of Xanadu. I just made that up, you know. Most of you folks are used to secret societies and such, stretching back hundreds of years. I reckoned it’d be a comfort to have a new one to sign up to. I’ll have X buttons made up…’

  Gilberte suspected there’d be a K on the pommel of the X.

  ‘We’ve a whole pile of doings to get through today, so I’ll try – against my natural instincts – to be brief. I’m a newspaperman, so I ought to know not to waste words gussying up the message with flowery language. We want a war, right?’

  A few mumbles, and a little bark of excitement from General Sternwood.

  Kane made an exaggerated show of disappointment.

  ‘Come on, Inner Circle, I know you can do better than that! We want a war, right?’

  ‘Right,’ shouted all the Americans at the table, in enthusiastic unison.

  ‘I suppose so,’ conceded the English Carne.

  ‘It is inevitable,’ decreed the Hungarian Natasha.

  ‘Ma foi, maybe,’ shrugged the Belgian Maupertuis.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said Kane. ‘I knew you had it in you. Whoo, this is a tough room. Do you like the room, by the way? The late Count had cobwebs and bats and rats – I even found a dead armadillo behind a sideboard – but I’ve spruced the old rags and stones up. Anyway, to the point, this war… I know you all take the New York Inquirer, so I’ll hurry through the setup. Last year, we ran a serial in thirty-two breathless instalments, thrilling our readers with “The European War of the Future”. It was a lulu! Wore out three writers. I had them run around interviewing experts in politics, munitions, naval warfare, airships, finance and all manner of things you wouldn’t even think of – like military cuisine and fashions in uniform boots, ladies – then doled out their findings in an exciting, rapidly paced tale. We presented the serial as if they were reports from an actual, live war. Nations fell under the savage lance, dashing cavalrymen charged at each other like total lunatics, nuns were violated by heathen grenadiers – always a popular line – and the crowned heads of half-a-dozen countries wound up rolling together in a wicker basket…’

  Natasha Natasaevna di Murska allowed herself half a smile at the thought.

  ‘I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before! We found readers cared more about this made-up war than real ones in Africa and South America. We had better illustrations and more heart-rending quotes. And white people being massacred. Naturally, the boys and girls in the drug-stores and on the street-cars are clamouring for a sequel. What, I hear you ask, could be bigger and better and more popular than an invented European War of the Future? That’s right, mes amis and amigos… a real-life, actual European War of Right Now. Which is what we are going to deliver.’

  General Sternwood – who, of course, wouldn’t have to fight in this war – applauded. Perry Bennett flapped his normal hand against his clutching one.

  ‘I’m just a sawdust-on-the-floor kind of fellow who misses the spittoon as often as he gets a bull’s eye,’ continued Kane, ‘but I’ve learned the value of buying the best help there is on the market. I did that with my serial, and I’m doing that with my war. So, I’d like those of you who have already contributed to Plan Thunderbolt to stand up, introduce yourselves and shoot us the low-down on how we’re going to pull it off. In case you were worried, I will be back later – talking about something I know you’ll all be much more interested in than strategic details – the money. So long, now.’

  Kane sat down, and the spotlights – hung from a rail in the ceiling – wandered around the room. A small, monkey-like fellow up in the rigging pulled levers and ropes to get the effect. ‘Evil’ Emeric Belasco, a young man with an especially vile reputation. He had two pages in the flip-book, just listing the variety of his crimes.

  The light came to rest on Elizabeth.

  Gilberte found it hard to breathe, but her companion was perfectly prepared.

  She stood up and announced her alias. ‘You know my record,’ she said, offhandedly. ‘The Lavender Hill Gold Caper. The Larrabee Inheritance Swindle. The Tiffany Early Morning Diamond Snatch. The Charles Bonnet Art Forgeries.’

  Heads nodded. Among murmurs of admiration were a few mutters. Some of these folk only now discovered Edda Van Heemstra had bested them in previous dealings. The Rembrandt in Boltyn’s collection had been scarcely dry when sold to him – dashed off by the talented Bonnet, one of Edda’s several ‘fathers’.

  Elizabeth let the grumbles die, and got to business. ‘Through the strategic seductions of two junior clerks and one senior forward-planner in the British Ministry of War, I have obtained these d
ocuments.’

  She laid a folder on the table.

  ‘These are photographic copies, of course. But excellent.’

  The folder was passed to Madame Sara, the designated specialist in forgery of government papers. She also did teeth, Gilberte understood. That would explain why the suspiciously golden-haired Italian-Indian adventuress set up shop in London’s Strand. The English were notorious for their teeth. The Madame paged through the documents.

  ‘I have the authentic seals,’ Elizabeth continued. ‘And the proper ribbons. The British are, as we know, obsessed with ribbons.’

  Madame Sara nodded, satisfied.

  ‘Thank you, Edda,’ said Kane. ‘You’re a living doll.’ Elizabeth sat down. ‘Now,’ continued Kane, ‘our expert on the big game of politics, Senator Paine, will explain the significance of these purloined papers.’

  The light fell on the prematurely white-haired American dignitary. He was sitting next to the Sorceress of the Strand.

  ‘In all nations, Ministries of War sit around during periods of prolonged peace, irritably finding projects to justify their existence,’ began the windy Paine, as if addressing his Senate. ‘Great Britain, possessed of an Empire, rarely has periods of prolonged peace…’

  Gurn grunted. He had begun his murdering in the South African conflict.

  ‘However, when the British Ministry of War has a spare moment, their armchair generals like nothing more than the drawing-up of contingency plans, which is to say imagining what wonderful new wars might be embarked upon. For reasons few can explain, it costs as much to compile a folder such as the one we have here as it does to make a battleship. Thus are military budgets rubber-stamped cheerfully by parliaments and despots alike. Sometimes, as with the Boer War, a conflict might be a long time coming. Plans can be framed well before the outbreak of hostilities. But, there are also nasty surprises. Sudden diplomatic rows get out of hand. An unkind word about an ambassador’s wife’s hat and the Balkans goes up in flames. From Cleopatra’s nose to Jenkins’ ear, wars have sprung up from trifles. So, ministries play games of “let’s pretend” and plan what they would do under certain contingencies. Let’s pretend… resurgent Viking hordes ravage Scotland! Which regiments would be mobilised, what lines of transport must be kept open, where would artillery be deployed?’