by Kim Newman
The rooftops were swarming.
White dots appeared in the dark… on the roofs and in the square below, and the streets feeding into Place de l’Opéra.
‘The Grand Vampire has opened his roost,’ said Erik.
Kate had forgotten the persuasive power of the Phantom’s voice – that suave purr with strange glottals as he compensated for his ruin of a mouth… deep, beautiful, perfectly cadenced speech… reassuring and all-encompassing as if directed precisely into her soul… unearthly, inspiring, terrifying.
Erik had brought them all in with just a voice.
‘And Les Vampires hold the rooftops of Paris,’ he continued. ‘Fantômas is abroad tonight, and Judex the Avenger… and the Angels you couldn’t net, Lady Yuki and Riolama and Elsie Venner… and others, old friends and foes united with us against you… Irma Vep, Rouletabille and Belphégor. Everywhere, your allies are confronted and checked and beaten. The company of the Opéra have pulled down your gaudy throne and tossed your choir into the street. Gendarmes and apaches together are trouncing your Camelots du Roi. Your traitors in the army have been rooted out and will be cashiered. Your frog-men and bird-men are routed. This is not your city. It never will be.’
Explosions and alarms sounded. But also songs – ‘La Marseillaise’, of course, and ‘Auprès de ma Blonde’, but something else too… a section from Don Juan Triumphant, voiced by people who understood, who believed in phantoms.
Kate saw what the white dots were. Masks!
Luminous, greenish-white masks. Worn by men and women in black cloaks and hats. A hundred phantoms – a thousand! ten thousand! – marched against the armies of Atlantis. Erik had his own plan, a game inside the stratagem laid against him. He had gulled his tricksters and surrendered to draw them into a trap. He was of the opera, after all. This was not a political coup, but a theatrical coup – a mastermind’s master-stroke. A final flourish when all seemed lost, and the curtain rung down to thunderous applause.
Kate cheered for the Phantom.
Antinea rose from her throne.
She was alone now – allies dead or fled or useless.
But she had one final move.
She flung off her furs. A set of fish-scaled wings popped out of her armoured carapace.
She threw herself into the air and screeched across the roof, claw-gauntlets out. She would tear off the Phantom’s mask… and his head!
Erik pushed Unorna aside and grabbed Antinea’s arms, holding her talons away from him. The Queen’s impetus lifted them both up and over the balustrade.
Kate stopped breathing as they hovered in space. Antinea’s wings flapped, once – then failed! Fabric ripped.
They plummeted, each firmly gripping the other, picking up speed, cloak and wings in a ragged tangle…
There was a splash as they fell into the flooded Métro works. The current whirled and eddied around the deep pit. For a moment, an arm thrust up out of the water, holding up a mask… then it was sucked under.
Erik and Antinea were gone.
XII
EVENTUALLY, THE WATERS receded, the lights burned again and damage was assessed. Kate sent informative articles about the disaster to The Clarion and a confidential report about everything else to the Diogenes Club. Periodicals were filled with photographs of Paris under water, which also appeared on popular postcards. When over, the flood seemed a strange dream. People needed pictures to remind themselves the Eiffel Tower once stood in a lake.
Commissions of enquiry probed How the Flood Happened. Editorials suggested What Should Be Done to Prevent the Flood Happening Again. Wrecked businesses and the temporarily – or permanently – homeless demanded assistance and compensation. Supplies of disinfectant were distributed, and battalions of concierges and housewives set about Making the Smell Go Away. Looters were tried and convicted quietly, to protect them from angry citizens who couldn’t find the silver coffee pot left behind when they were forced to abandon home. The courts also welcomed a new breed of blagueurs – chancers who put in bogus insurance claims for non-existent lost property. By Mardi Gras, the Seine was down around the Zouave’s ankles. Paris managed a modest celebration – though the Prefect of Police banned confetti-throwing, for fear of blocking just-unclogged drains.
Few remembered New Atlantis. Casualties of the aborted coup were written off as flood victims. General Assolant was awarded another medal, for stalwart service during the late emergency (he had been wounded, after all), then quietly transferred to a post where he could do no more harm. Other conspirators returned to respectable life, shaken and afraid of consequences – but scarcely ashamed or even dissuaded from trying something similar again. Immediate threats were quashed, though. The Fellowship of the Frog disappeared, and many wrote them off as a myth. The Camelots du Roi were lauded for their patriotic spirit.
The Opéra season resumed with a gala performance to raise funds for flood relief. Reigning divas shared the stage with performers called out of retirement for the occasion. Irene Adler appeared low on the bill, singing ‘Hello! My Baby (Send Me a Kiss by Wire)’ – and received offers from cabarets and variety halls to perform again. The haughty sniffed that Tin Pan Alley wasn’t opera. Kate supposed Irene didn’t care. Carlotta joined Margarita da Cordova in the ‘Flower Duet’ from Lakmé. The former prima donna was note-perfect for the first half of the song, then croaked pathetically like a frog… while the chandelier above the auditorium shook alarmingly.
Was the house now haunted by the ghost of the Phantom?
Everyone looked to Box 5, which was – genuinely – empty. Modest obituaries had appeared. Everyone knew Erik was dead, but few wished to speak of him.
After the gala, a small, elderly fellow with a sad face approached Kate in the lobby. He plainly knew her, though she couldn’t place him. He said it was shocking what passed for entertainment these days and argued earnestly for stringent censorship. Only when he moved on did she realise who he was. She’d never seen his face, but the voice couldn’t be mistaken. Jacques Hulot… Guignol! He’d shut the Théâtre des Horreurs because of competition from the flickers.
Later that night, Kate attended another reception, under the opera house.
The lagoon was low. Repairs had been made.
She joined Irene, who still wore her gala dress, among the women on the dock. Her old friend Yuki was here, but not Clara Watson. Yuki passed on a rumour that Clara had installed herself as absolute ruler of a fearsome tribe inhabiting an ancient jungle temple in the Protectorate of Cambodia. The Japanese Angel had duelled frog-men in Montmartre. Mrs Eynsford Hill introduced a chittering, endearing creature as Riolama. The bird-girl had harried Camelots in Bercy, fending them off while the dynamos of the power station were started up again.
Irene also had a guest. A black-veiled, newly widowed Countess de Chagny. Her husband caught his death of a chill while protecting his estates from a swarm of bedraggled Parisian flood refugees. Kate had a sense of occasion at meeting the first Angel. Irene talked over everything Christine said.
Irma Vep, spectacular in a sheer black leotard and batwing cape, represented Les Vampires, who had come out of the flood quite well. On the principle that the drowned can’t pay protection money, the Grand Vampire had ordered his legions to contribute to life-saving efforts.
Kate recognised many of the company – but by no means all of them. Here was Hagar Stanley, the Romany genius, casting a valuer’s eye over everyone present… Elsie Venner, the whatever-she-was – more terrifying even than the late, not-to-be-mentioned Alraune ten Brincken… a repaired Olympia, up on her points and whirling like a figure atop a music box… dark, sombre Sophy Kratides, with her impish four-year-old Moria… the modern dancer Lavinia King and the ragtime gal Trudy Evans… the physicist Marie Curie and the alienist Sabina Spielrein… anarchists and princesses, and anarchist princesses… girls from the corps de ballet and the chorus who might yet show talents… smart young women who typed, bicycled, drove automobiles and demanded the vote… mat
ure ladies who’d discovered aptitudes for detection, violence, disguise and daring. Angels all. Or potential Angels.
If there was still an Opera Ghost Agency.
A lantern moved across the subterranean lake. A gondola approached.
A masked, cloaked figure stood up in the boat. She wore a plumed hat.
La Marmoset, Queen of Detectives, Mistress of Disguise.
She had been Erik’s Secret Angel throughout l’affaire Antinea, holding herself rigid and unblinking, looking out through Olympia’s glass eyes, marking Alraune’s moves. The German girl had thought too little of the doll. Balsamo, her mistress, had thought too much of the Angels, wasting her cunning on vengeance rather than committing fully to her Ascent.
Had Erik known what might happen – to La Marmoset and to himself?
A woman who seldom showed her true face was burned beyond recognition. Under her mask, she wore bandages. One of her eyes was stained yellow.
Erik was gone – though his body, like Jo Balsamo’s, had not been found. To stay open for business, the Opera Ghost Agency needed a new Phantom…
…and a new Persian. Irene was averse to staying in one place too long. A young composer called Berlin wanted her to be first to sing his new song ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Clarinet’ – which Kate was sure no one would ever hear again, even if he did pay attention to Irene and change the title to ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’. It fell to Unorna – the Witch of Paris, now – to take over the Persian’s table at the Café de la Paix. Monsieur Gustave ensured there was a fresh cloth on it every morning.
From among this crowd of women – former and present Angels, and women who had not yet heard the call – La Marmoset would choose three.
Kate had not left her name in the ring. She was needed at home. Charles’s cipher telegram outlined a series of baffling crimes which required the attention of the Diogenes Club. Objects of little value stolen from impossible places. He didn’t say as much – in a telegram, how could he? – but she knew he missed her.
Kate was already thinking. Who would – indeed, who could – steal an ordinary thimble from the Queen’s sewing room at Windsor Castle? An empty inkwell from inside the most secure vault of the Bank of England? And, most disturbing of all, a cigar-cutter from the Inner Chamber of the Diogenes Club itself?
Paris should be safe without her. Enough worthy candidates were ready to move into Dressing Room 313.
Thi Minh, survivor of the last trio, was a shoo-in…
Mrs Eynsford Hill was willing to return to the lists.
Maybe Irma Vep was inclined to transfer from Les Vampires…
If that was how the Agency was configured, Kate had confidence in it.
Irene was interested in the selection, but eager to get away. What was it she had to get away from… or get away to? It couldn’t just be a song. Even as it wasn’t just a cigar-cutter that recalled Kate to London.
The gondola reached the dock. The Phantom stepped out.
‘Ladies,’ she began…
NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
RANDY AND JEAN-MARC Lofficier commissioned an earlier draft of the first ‘Angels of Music’ novella for their anthology series Tales of the Shadowmen; Mike Chinn reprinted it in The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 2. Stephen Jones took ‘Guignol’ for his Horrorology collection. Thanks to them for the support and encouragement – and, of course, to Cath Trechman, Angel of Editing, at Titan. Thanks especially to Pierre Bouvet, for pointers on French language and Paris landmarks.
I first read an abridged translation of Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera in an anthology called The Ghouls, and the full book as Volume 34 of The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult (Sphere) in 1975. For Angels of Music, I’ve relied on The Essential Phantom of the Opera, annotated by Leonard Wolf, and a 2004 variant translation of the novel by Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier from Black Coat Press. During work on this novel, I watched all the available film versions of The Phantom of the Opera – none perfect, all interesting. It’s a property that has evolved since Leroux published it, with each adaptor adding something new or emphasising something different. I still see Lon Chaney’s face behind every Phantom mask – but there’s a real Scenes We’d Like to See moment at the end of the 1943 Claude Rains film where Christine (Susanna Foster) walks out on both her smothering suitors and decides being an opera star is better than a stifling marriage, even to someone who doesn’t have to wear a mask.
Naturally, I recommend George du Maurier’s Trilby; Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, ‘The Greek Interpreter’ and ‘The Sussex Vampire’; F. Marion Crawford’s The Witch of Prague (another Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult volume); Albert W. Aiken’s ‘La Marmoset, the Detective Queen; or: The Lost Heir of Morel’; Fergus Hume’s Hagar of the Pawn-Shop; Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Octave Mirbeau’s Torture Garden (and Oscar Méténier’s stage adaptation); the Lady Snowblood films; Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami; Colette’s Gigi; George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (especially with Shaw’s Preface and Notes); W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions (and Epstein’s Riolama statue – still in Hyde Park); H. H. Ewers’ Alraune; E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘The Sandman’ and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann (and the Powell and Pressburger film, with Moira Shearer’s definitive Olympia) and Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas, Les Vampires and Tih Minh (thanks to Yung Kha for putting me right on how that should be spelled).
Among many books consulted (not to mention the Internet), I found especially useful stuff in Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson’s Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror, Jeffrey H. Jackson’s Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910, Susan Kay’s Phantom, Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier’s Shadowmen and Shadowmen 2, Jess Nevins’ Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, Piers Paul Read’s The Dreyfus Affair and Graham Robb’s Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris.
Other Angels – Claire Amias, Chiara Barbo, Saskia Baron, Liz Beardsworth, Lauren Beukes, Anne Billson, Jamie Birkett, Prano Bailey-Bond, Susan Byrne, Pat Cadigan, Cat Camacho, Hayley Campbell, Katharine Carroll, Simret Cheema-Innis, Sarah Cleary, Ellen Datlow, Meg Davis, Sarah Douglas, Val Edwards, Jennifer Eiss, Angela Errigo, Manon Fargetton, Mélanie Fazi, Jo Fletcher, Amanda Foubister, Kathy Gale, Ellen Gallagher, Lisa Gaye, Jane Giles, Lydia Gittins, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, Jen Handorf, Nicole Helfrich, Susannah Hickling, Roz Kaveney, Leigh Kennedy, Grace Ker, Roz Kidd, Vivian Landau, Amanda Lipman, Maitland McDonagh, Maura McHugh, Cindy Moul, Silja Mueller, Helen Mullane, Julia Newman, Sasha Newman, Violet Newman, Helen O’Hara, Katya Pendill, Marcelle Perks, Sarah Pinborough, Rhianna Pratchett, Jenny Runacre, Deborah Salter, Alice Scarling, Hayley Shepherd, Lynda Rucker, Martina Seesto, Mandy Slater, Sylvia Starshine, Catriona Toplis, Sara Tracy, Lisa Tuttle, Kat Wearne, Miranda Wood, Ally Wybrew.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KIM NEWMAN IS a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, the Anno Dracula novels and stories, The Quorum and Life’s Lottery, all currently being reissued by Titan Books, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles published by Titan Books and The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as Jack Yeovil. The critically acclaimed An English Ghost Story, which was nominated for the inaugural James Herbert Award, and most recently, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School are also published by Titan Books. His non-fiction titles include the influential Nightmare Movies (recently reissued by Bloomsbury in an updated edition), Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Horror: 100 Best Books (with Stephen Jones), Wild West Movies, The BFI Companion to Horror, Millennium Movies, BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Doctor Who, and the forthcoming Video Dungeon, a collection of his popular Empire magazine columns of the same name.
He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines, has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, and scripted radio and television documentaries. His stories ‘Week Woman’ and ‘Ubermensch’ have been adapted into an episode of the TV series The H
unger and an Australian short film; he has directed and written a tiny film Missing Girl. Following his Radio 4 play ‘Cry Babies’, he wrote an episode (‘Phish Phood’) for Radio 7’s series The Man in Black.
Follow him on Twitter @annodracula. His official website can be found at
WWW.JOHNNYALUCARD.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
THE SECRETS OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL
BY KIM NEWMAN
A week after her mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school, Drearcliff Grange in Somerset.
Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special, the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians. Several of the pupils also have special gifts like Amy’s, and when one of the girls in her dormitory is abducted by a mysterious group in black hoods, Amy forms a secret, superpowered society called the Moth Club to rescue their friend. They soon discover that the Hooded Conspiracy runs through the school, and it’s up to the Moth Club to get to the heart of it.
‘Kim Newman stands among speculative fiction’s finest, and his new book is no less impressive than the best of the rest of his writing…I had a hunch it would be wonderful and it was.’
Tor.com
‘I can see myself re-reading this book time and again.’ Fantasy Book Review
TITANBOOKS.COM
AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY
BY KIM NEWMAN
The Naremores, a dysfunctional British nuclear family, seek a new life away from the big city in the sleepy Somerset countryside. At first their new home, The Hollow, seems to embrace them, creating a rare peace and harmony within the family. But when the house turns on them, it seems to know just how to hurt them the most – threatening to destroy them from the inside out.