by Vina Jackson
‘Oh yes.’
‘But I know you are a man who appreciates women deeply. Something we have in common.’ He smiled at Dominik, with a look of complicity. Of course he had recognised him. He had known all along.
‘You knew—’
‘Who you are? Naturally. I have a memory for faces.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘We all have our secrets, our dark places,’ LaValle said dismissively. ‘No one was hurt and much pleasure was enjoyed. Let other people judge …’
‘Are you still … in contact with the group, the women?’ Dominik enquired.
‘No, everyone just drifted away in different directions after a time. No offence, but Miss Zahova would have made a wonderful addition to our parties. Did you ever think of bringing her along? I’ve always found that musicians make for the best submissives – no logic to it, more gut feeling – and—’
‘I hadn’t met her then. We met later,’ Dominik interrupted LaValle.
‘Shame.’
‘So,’ Dominik hurried to change the subject, ‘tell me about the Angelique.’
Born in 1844, Paul Bailly was a man who suffered badly from wanderlust. He trained in the craft of violinmaking in his hometown of Mirecourt in the French provinces and later in Paris with the famed luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume and the legendary Jules Galliard.
A restless and romantic soul, Bailly had a particularly turbulent love life, and moved endlessly across France and later England. In Paris he met and fell head over heels in love with a young English au pair, Lois Elizabeth Hough, who was working for a wealthy French family out there.
He followed Lois to London when she returned, but their relationship didn’t work out and he soon moved to Leeds. There, he worked for a local company manufacturing musical instruments, although no violin from this period bearing his signature has ever been seen, leading to speculation that he worked there on menial tasks and neglected his art.
After a time, Bailly was next heard of back in Paris in the 1880s, his most prolific period and one that was reflected in a series of exquisite instruments on which his reputation was established. It was also in Paris that he met Angelique Spengler, a woman married to a famous theatrical impresario, Hughes Caetano.
Angelique was an extraordinary beauty; in contrast with her rough and ready husband who controlled several Paris theatres and was said to have strong connections with the Paris underground sex trade. In all likelihood, political connections helped Caetano expunge anything illegal from the records. But his reputation was one of a fierce and jealous man. Rumour had it that he had acquired Angelique, straight from her convent education, as settlement for a gambling debt with her impoverished father.
How Bailly and Angelique met was uncertain. Possibly a concert. But when they did, sparks flew and they quickly became lovers. What with her husband’s possessiveness and position in society, it was inevitable that the affair would eventually be discovered, and so it was. Bailly was set upon by thugs in the hire of the husband and badly beaten. The story goes that his right wrist was broken, and that as a result he never made any further instruments from that date onwards, and certainly no violins with his name have ever surfaced since that time.
Incensed by her husband’s actions, Angelique succeeded in breaking into his safe, and with the stolen money, she and Bailly fled to America.
Caetano’s reaction was swift as soon as he discovered where the fleeing couple were and some of his acolytes were despatched to New York where Angelique and Bailly were quickly located. Angelique was abducted while Bailly was out working, and she was never seen again. Some said she was executed and her body dumped in the Hudson, while others told a tale of revenge and degradation in which the once beautiful young woman was forced into sexual servitude, initially in Chinatown and later in Tijuana in Mexico. But, as LaValle said, these sorts of stories are passed from mouth to mouth over the years and can sometimes be subject to much in the way of disinformation, and truth is often the first to suffer.
At any rate, and maybe this was also a form of punishment in the vengeful Caetano’s mind, Bailly was left unharmed, aside from the terrible anguish of having lost Angelique and worrying about her fate. In due course, Bailly returned to France but was never involved in the violinmaking trade again.
‘Fascinating,’ Dominik said when LaValle had finished his story. ‘But what about the violin you call the Angelique, then?’
‘Ah,’ LaValle said. ‘This is where it becomes even more interesting …’
Some years later, a decade after the turn of the twentieth century, a violin bearing Bailly’s name and no visible year of manufacture appeared in an auction at Christie’s. Experts were puzzled. It was recognisable as Bailly’s handiwork, but the wood used for its manufacture appeared to be of a different provenance than all the other instruments he was known to have been responsible for. In addition, the curves of the violin in question were ever so slightly different – more subtle, rounded, sensual one expert claimed, as if the way the wood had been carved into shape had been inspired by a woman’s body. At which stage someone claimed the reasons for the discrepancy was that this particular instrument had originated during the time of Bailly’s affair with Angelique and had been influenced by his love for her. It was unanimously agreed that this was the very last violin ever crafted by Paul Bailly. And so, for lack of any evidence to the contrary, a legend had been born and the violin acquired a name.
Which is where the story takes a more sinister turn.
The collector who won the auction for the Angelique later became one of the first English officers to be killed in the trenches in the First World War. Not an uncommon occurrence but for the fact that the next two owners of the instrument, the first inheriting it and then another purchasing it from the deceased’s family, would suffer a similar fate. So far, just bad luck during the course of a bloody period of history. However, after the war had come to an end, the violin fell into the hands of a British family who all died in a house fire at their country estate – the instrument having remained safely at their London house. But when the beneficiaries of the estate came to retrieve it, it could not be found. It had been stolen.
The Angelique was next heard of in France. To compound the coincidences, the next owner was a Parisian politician and collector who died in the arms of his mistress within weeks of acquiring the instrument. It appears that, to compensate for the loss of a benefactor, the courtesan in question quickly grabbed the violin and other moveable items in her lover’s collection and spirited them away before reporting the death and the body. The violin’s whereabouts for the following ten years are unknown, but it next turned up in Germany, owned by a high-ranked army officer who became involved in one of the rare plots to overthrow Hitler and ended up hung on a meat hook for his involvement. The authorities impounded his belongings and the violin came into the hands of the governmental authorities. It was stored in a museum near Hamburg, which ended up being looted by the Russian Army.
The next time a record of the violin appears was in more peaceful times in the 1950s, where it was owned by the Christiansens, a well-to-do Hannover family, none of whom died an unnatural death over the course of three generations. The violin was passed from child to child, until it came into possession of Edwina Christiansen.
The name of the last proprietor of the violin, according to its certificate of provenance, Dominik remembered.
Edwina was the wild child of her bourgeois family, and by all accounts an outstanding beauty. During the 1960s she had come under the influence of an older man, an American, whom she had met in San Francisco. But their relationship was unconventional and very far from respectable. To cut a long story short – ‘Maybe you could write it all into your novel,’ LaValle had suggested – Edwina had been turned into his whore.
‘What about the violin?’ Dominik asked.
‘It remained in Germany, while Edwina was in America. She just happened to own it; it had been passed on to her by her father. She
actually never played it, or any instruments, at that.’
‘What happened to Edwina?’
She’d ended up killing her American lover. The circumstances were murky and Edwina, at her trial, had been steadfast in refusing to answer any questions, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The case had made newspaper headlines for a few weeks, if only because of the sordid backstory that was unveiled by the prosecution as much as the accused’s spectacular beauty and sadness.
Disowned by her prudish family and alone in a foreign country, Edwina had not stood a chance.
She died in prison a decade or so later. Back in Germany, her relatives, embarrassed by the whole farrago, drew a lid over the episode and Edwina’s belongings went into storage, with no attention to the Bailly violin. It was only when the building in which her affairs were kept was threatened by demolition a few decades after her death – the area it was sited in was pinpointed for regeneration – that distant relatives arranged for a lawyer to dispose of everything as he felt best.
‘That was how I came into possession of the violin,’ LaValle said. ‘It was listed in the estate disposal catalogue as a Bailly, with no indication of its particulars, as the lawyer involved had no idea of either its history or its value.’
‘And when you first saw it, did you realise it was the Angelique?’ Dominik asked.
‘Not initially. I’d acquired a lot of other instruments as part of the transaction and I knew I already had buyers for most of them, so I didn’t give the Bailly too much thought initially. But when I did, I realised it was the instrument so many had talked about in the trade because of its uncommon history. Now I don’t believe in curses and all that, but I was thinking that I might actually keep it for myself, and not put it on sale, but before I had a chance to do so, that fool of an assistant who thought he was being clever, sold it. To you.’
‘The Angelique.’
‘Yes.’ LaValle grinned. ‘So, might I ask if the instrument has brought Miss Zahova any bad luck?’
Dominik considered his words carefully.
‘Well, she’s become quite famous since. Maybe others have been affected, though …’
LaValle looked him in the eyes.
‘I hope you’re not superstitious. It’s just coincidences, you know. Although all these silly stories certainly give the instrument an interesting reputation. And beautiful objects do attract thieves, these days. If she were willing to sell, I’m sure it would manage at least five or six times what you paid for it.’
‘I don’t believe it’s a question of money, Mr LaValle,’ Dominik said, standing. ‘But it’s been a most interesting story. Thank you for your time.’
‘I hope I’ve satisfied your curiosity,’ the dealer said.
‘Absolutely. You’ve given me much to think about. Truth can be stranger than fiction, can’t it?’
‘It certainly can,’ LaValle agreed. ‘And have you got enough material for your novel?’
‘A start, I believe.’
Outside, the sound of the rain was like a tattoo on the Highgate Village roofs, but Dominik knew he now needed some fresh air to contemplate everything and decide what his next step should be, and whether he should warn Summer about the violin. He also knew that appearing out of the blue with silly stories about curses, thefts and dead lovers was not likely to endear him to her or make him welcome again.
In dreams came confusion.
Not helped by the sharp onset of a strong migraine which suddenly flared up with little warning, the tale LaValle had unfolded and the automatic reflux of memories of Summer, Dominik’s night turned into a complicated jumble of emotions and irrational images.
He saw Summer as Angelique. In old-fashioned clothes he had never seen her wear before, images conjured up by old movies in the style of Gone with the Wind and Merchant Ivory. She wore a white crinoline dress, tight at the waist, and what looked like a bustier beneath compressing her breasts, squeezing them upwards to give the impression she was more ample than she actually was. She was sashaying across the newly mown grass of the Heath in her finery, and through the walls of sleep, Dominik could even smell the distinctive odour of cut grass. His vision cut to the clearing and the empty bandstand under a sky of pure blue, with the white stain of Summer in Angelique’s dress ascending the stone steps. He stood a hundred yards away, an invisible spectator, rooted to the spot and unable to move.
A black violin case lay across a velvet-covered piano stool at the centre of the stand. In his dream, Summer as Angelique ran towards the violin, but out of a curtain of darkness, two men appeared to halt her progress, shielding her, blocking her way. They were dressed all in black. One had a moustache, the other a scar. Melodramatic operetta villains ticking all the clichés in the book.
Summer screamed, but Dominik, locked in a shell of silence, trying desperately to run towards the bandstand, to Summer, could not protect her.
One of the men slapped her, the other violently tore the top of her dress away from her body, releasing Summer’s breasts, proud and fragile, her dark nipples emerging from the corset in which they were sheathed. It must have been a cold morning as even from where he stood, Dominik could see the goosebumps spreading across her bared skin.
The other man picked up the violin case and handed the Bailly to Summer. Her body shook with tears as she slowly brought the instrument to her chin, straightened, and adjusted its position. As she began to play, the first man, the one with the Mexican moustache, conjured a sharp knife seemingly out of nowhere and quickly slashed the dress at the waist, leaving Summer naked but for period white stockings attached to a similarly white garter belt that encircled her thin waist.
Under the gaze of her captors, she began to play.
Even though the dream was silent, Dominik imagined the music rising from her fingers and the dark orange wood of the instrument, flowing downwards like rivulets of rain, dancing, coming alive, floating upwards in minuscule cloud formations until it formed a halo above the bandstand, a rainbow of sounds that spread like a blanket over Hampstead, and then all of London.
In his sleep, the vision of Summer, now naked apart from the white garter belt and stockings, the forest fire of her pubic hair raging in the pale landscape of her body, and playing her Bailly with her eyes closed, lost to the silence of the music, made Dominik hard. He moved his hand down to his cock to verify his arousal. As if in response, the men on either side of Summer on the bandstand unzipped their own trousers and moved towards her, malicious intent dancing in their eyes.
Dominik wanted to rush towards her, to help, but in an instant the whole scene disappeared before his eyes and he was back in his bed, eyes wide open, awake. The collar of the T-shirt he had been sleeping in was damp with sweat.
It was a dream. Or a nightmare. Dominik took a sip from the glass of water by the bed. It was three in the morning and in the darkness of his room, visions of Summer, pursued by men, lost, alone and violated, her precious violin smashed to pieces on the ground, filled his mind.
Dominik and Lauralynn were sipping coffee at the kitchen table.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, why shouldn’t I be?’
‘I thought you had company last night. You were rather noisy.’
‘Was I?’
‘I swear I once heard you scream,’ Lauralynn said. ‘It certainly woke me up. I had to restrain
myself from coming upstairs to check your bedroom.’
‘No, I was alone, probably just some nightmare.’
‘You were damn loud …’
‘Sorry.’
‘I must say you also look a bit rough this morning.’
‘Just slept badly. Still suffering from a bad migraine.’
‘Poor you,’ Lauralynn deadpanned.
‘Thanks for the sympathy.’
‘My pleasure.’
Lauralynn emptied her cup, went for a refill, then walked with it upstairs to the room she had made her own, leaving Dominik on his own, a prey to
reminiscences and a terrible feeling of foreboding.
He had mentioned to LaValle that he was not superstitious, but what remained in the dark corners of his mind of the bad dreams, and the images that had followed in their wake, now left him anxious. About Summer and the violin. Curses were something that happened in books, not in real life, surely.
But what if something were to happen to her? He knew he would feel responsible and wouldn’t be able to live with it.
Should he warn her?
Contact her again after all this time? Disrupt her life?
He heard Lauralynn’s phone ring in the distance. Her ringtone was a thumping piece of disco music so much at odds with her restrained cello playing. He tried to remember whether she was working today or would be hanging around the house. He felt like company.
He moved to his top floor study to check out the notes he had jotted down yesterday following his meeting with the instrument dealer. He wouldn’t be able to use the story of Angelique, the Bailly violin, wholesale in his novel. He would have to embroider it, gather in a lot of historical details and weave an interesting set of characters around its story. But he knew it could certainly form the basis, the skeleton of a book. He enjoyed research and was aware that a lot would be required if he tackled a variety of periods, but that was also a challenge he would relish.
The one thing he would have to be careful about was to avoid any characters too similar to Elena, who had been Summer’s recognisable counterpart in his Paris novel.
As much as he would have wanted to do so.
Writing about her was not only a form of exorcism but a way to keep her alive in his mind. Her flame, her features, her skin, her smell, memories he couldn’t just let go. Even if it was all tinged with pain.
He sighed, shuffled the sheets of paper and pulled the laptop closer. He created a new document, his fingers hovering over the keyboard as he tried to come up with an appropriate title for the folder.
He was typing away half an hour later, now oblivious to the rest of the world, when he heard the tap-tap at his study door. It was open, but Lauralynn was being considerate.