The hours passed slowly. It must have been half past eleven when he distinctly heard someone moving in the room next to his. The footsteps were light and furtive. Hadn’t Christine gone to bed? Without thinking what he was doing, Raoul dressed quickly, taking care to make no noise. Then, ready for anything, he waited. But ready for what? He had no idea! His heart missed a beat when he heard Christine’s door creak on its hinges. Where could she be going at this time of night when everyone in Perros was asleep? He half opened his door and in a patch of moonlight glimpsed the white figure of Christine gliding cautiously along the corridor. She reached the stairs and went down them. Above her, he leaned over the banister. Suddenly he heard two voices talking urgently. He caught the words: ‘Don’t lose the key.’ It was Mme Tricard’s voice. Then the door overlooking the harbour opened and then closed. Everything went quiet once more. Raoul hurried back to his room, ran to the window and opened it. The white figure of Christine stood on the deserted jetty.
The first floor of the Setting Sun Inn was not very high and the branches of an espaliered tree enabled Raoul to leave the premises without the landlady’s suspecting that he was gone. Which was why, next morning, that good woman was dumbfounded when he was carried back, half frozen and more dead than alive. She was told he’d been found lying on the steps of the altar of Perros’s little church. She hurried upstairs to give the news to Christine who came down at once and, helped by Mme Tricard, anxiously lavished every care on him. It was not long before he opened his eyes and he came round completely when he saw her lovely face looking down at him.
So what had happened? Several weeks later, when the tragedy at the Opera forced the authorities to intervene, Inspector Mifroid interviewed the Viscount de Chagny about the events of that night at Perros. This is how it was transcribed for the case file (Box-mark 150):
‘Qu. Did Mlle Daaé not see you leave your room by the unorthodox route you chose?
‘Ans. No, sir, she did not. I made no attempt to muffle the sound of my footsteps and I soon caught up with her. I asked just one thing of her, that she turn round, look at me and know it was me. I’d just finished telling myself that I’d been quite wrong to be following her and that the sort of spying I was doing was unworthy of me. But she didn’t seem to hear. In fact, she behaved exactly as if I wasn’t there. She retraced her steps along the jetty and then suddenly headed very fast up the road. The church clock had just struck a quarter to twelve and I had the feeling that this was the reason why she was walking so quickly, for now she almost broke into a run. In this way she arrived at the entrance to the cemetery.
‘Qu. Was the gate open?
‘Ans. Yes, Inspector. I thought it strange but it didn’t seem to bother Mlle Daaé in the least.
‘Qu. Was there anyone in the cemetery?
‘Ans. Not that I saw. If there had been, I’d have seen him. The moon was very bright, dazzling almost. It was reflected by the snow and made the night even lighter.
‘Qu. Could anyone have been hiding behind the graves?
‘Ans. No, sir. The headstones there are small, poor affairs and they were completely covered by the blanket of snow and just their crosses showed above ground. The only shadows were those made by those crosses and the two of us. The church was brilliantly lit. I’ve never seen such a light night. It was very beautiful, very clear and very cold. I’d never been in a graveyard at night and I had no idea you could find they could be so bright, a kind of “light that weighs nothing”.
‘Qu. Are you superstitious?
‘Ans. No. As a matter of fact, I’m a practising Catholic.
‘Qu. Describe your state of mind at the time.
‘Ans. My head was cool and I was quite calm. Admittedly, Mlle Daaé’s highly unusual foray threw me badly at first. But when I saw her enter the cemetery I assumed she was there to discharge some pious vow or other over her father’s grave and thought this so natural that I stopped worrying. But I was surprised she hadn’t heard me walking behind her, for my boots crunched on the snow. Still, I imagined that her mind was entirely occupied by her sacred mission. So I decided not to intrude and when she got to her father’s grave, I remained a few paces behind her. She knelt in the snow, crossed herself and began to pray. Just then, midnight struck. The third stroke had not died away when she suddenly raised her head. She gazed up at the heavens and stretched her arms out to the moon. I had a sense that she was in a kind of trance. I was still wondering what had happened so suddenly, so decisively to induce such a state when I found myself looking upwards too. Bewildered, I glanced all around me but my whole being seemed drawn by an invisible power, an invisible power which was making music! And such music! We knew it! Christine and I had heard it when we were children. But never had M. Daaé’s fiddle sung with such divine fire! All I could think of was what Christine had told me about the Angel of Music. I had no idea what to make of those unforgettable sounds which, if they weren’t pouring directly out of heaven, gave no indication of where else they could be coming from. Not from the here below, that’s for sure, for there was neither instrument nor hand nor bow on earth capable of it. I remember what the sublime music was. It was the Resurrection of Lazarus.* M. Daaé used to play it to us when he was feeling sad and meditative. If Christine’s “ghost” had been real, he could not have played it any better on the dead fiddler’s instrument. We were so overwhelmed by its invocation of Jesus that I almost expected to see Christine’s father’s grave open at our feet. I also recalled that M. Daaé had been buried with his violin. I’ll be frank. I have no idea, at that eerie but radiant moment, in that small graveyard in the back of beyond, next to a heap of skulls which grinned through their unmoving jaws, no idea at all how far my imagination ran away with me nor where it stopped.
‘But the music ended and my wits returned. I thought I detected a sound from somewhere near the pile of bones.
‘Qu. You heard sounds coming from the bones?
‘Ans. Yes. I had the feeling the skulls were laughing now and despite myself I felt a cold shiver run up my spine.
‘Qu. And didn’t you stop and think that the celestial fiddler who had bewitched your senses might have been hiding behind those bones?
‘Ans. I did think that, Inspector, so much so that it never crossed my mind to follow Mlle Daaé when she got to her feet and made her way calmly back to the gate. She was so absorbed that it’s not surprising she didn’t see me. I didn’t move but locked my eyes on the rampart of bones. I was determined to get to the bottom of this strange business and find answers.
‘Qu. And what happened next that led to your being found next morning lying half dead on the steps of the high altar?
‘Ans. It happened so fast… A skull landed at my feet… another rolled down… and another… It was as if I was the jack in some ghastly bowling game. It struck me that a careless movement had destabilized the structure behind which our ghostly fiddler had hidden. This became all the more likely when suddenly I saw a shadow pass across the brightly lit wall of the sacristy.
‘I was off like a shot. The shadow had already pushed the door open and had gone into the church. I ran in after him. He was wearing a cloak. I was quick enough to grab one end of it. By this time we had reached the high altar and there the light of the moon coming through the east window shone directly on us. As I wouldn’t let go of his cloak, the shadowy figure turned and the cloak flapped open and, Inspector, I saw a hideous death’s head which stared at me and burned as hot as all the fires of hell. I thought I had Satan himself by the tail! I’m as brave as the next man, but confronted by this apparition from beyond the grave, I must have passed out, for I remember nothing more until I woke up in my room at the Setting Sun Inn.’
CHAPTER 7
A Visit to Box 5
WE left Messrs Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin at the moment when they had just decided to ‘take a closer look’ at Box 5 on the grand tier.
Leaving behind them the wide staircase which leads from the lobby
next to their office to the stage and its various sub-units, they crossed the ‘floor’ (the stage), reached the front of the house by the subscribers’ door and entered the auditorium through the first corridor on the left. They made their way through the front rows of the stalls and gazed up at Box 5. They could not make it out very well partly because it was half dark inside and also because the red-velvet front armrests of all the boxes were covered by huge dust-sheets.
At that point, they more or less had the vast, shadowy hall to themselves and were surrounded by deep silence. It was the quiet hour, when the stagehands go off for a drink.
The entire crew had temporarily vacated the stage, leaving the set partially erected. A few shafts of light (it was pale and sinister and might have been stolen from a dying star) had squeezed through an aperture somewhere and lassoed the cardboard battlements of an ancient tower that stood on the stage. In that artificial night, or rather false daylight, everything acquired strange shapes. The material covering the seats in the stalls turned them into a raging sea whose grey-green waves had been instantaneously immobilized by the secret order of the Giant of the Storms who, as everyone knows, is called Adamastor.* Richard and Moncharmin were shipwrecked victims of the frozen chaos of a canvas sea. They struck out strongly towards the boxes on the left like sailors who have abandoned ship and make for the shore. The eight great columns of polished Vercors marble thrust upwards in the shadows like fantastic piles shoring up the looming, crumbling, bulging cliff whose geological strata were represented by the curved, parallel, sinuous lines of the balconies of the three tiers of boxes. From the top, from the great height of the cliff, lost in M. Lenepveu’s copper ceiling,* faces scowled down, leering, fleering and jeering at the disquiet of Messrs Richard and Moncharmin. Yet the faces belonged to classical personages who were normally very well behaved and their names were: Isis, Amphitrite, Hebe, Flora, Pandora, Psyche, Thetis, Pomona, Daphne, Clytia, Galatea and Arethusa. Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora (known to all on account of her box) peered down at the two new Directors of the Opera House who had finally found a piece of wreckage to cling to and from it were silently scrutinizing Box 5 on the grand tier.
I said that they were uneasy. At least I assume they were. Moncharmin certainly was, because he admitted he had been affected. This is how he put it:
‘All that Phantom of the Opera nonsense (such style!) which had been kindly foisted on us after we took over from Messrs Debienne and Poligny doubtless played some part in upsetting the balance of my imagination and, I dare say, my eyesight too. Was it the unusual circumstances in which we found ourselves plus the extraordinary silence which made such an impression on us? Were we the objects of some kind of hallucination brought on by the half-light in the auditorium and the near-darkness filling Box 5? Because I saw, and M. Richard saw it too at the same time, a figure in Box 5! Richard didn’t say anything. Neither did I. But we both instinctively clutched each other by the arm. We waited for a while, without moving, our eyes still glued to the same spot. But the figure had disappeared. We went back out through the corridor, where we discussed our impressions and tried to describe the mysterious figure. Unfortunately, the figure I described did not correspond in any way with the one Richard had seen. Mine was a kind of death’s head resting on the front armrest of the box while Richard’s was an old woman who looked rather like Mme Giry. In the end, we concluded we’d been the victims of a trick of the light. Laughing like lunatics, we rushed straight up to Box 5, walked right in and found no figures of any description inside.’
All of which takes us into Box 5.
It was exactly the same as all the grand-tier boxes. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the others.
M. Richard and M. Moncharmin, ostensibly highly amused and still having a laugh, made a great show of moving the furniture around, lifting the dust-covers and the chairs. They peered very closely at the one in which the voice usually sat. But they concluded that the chair was blameless and found nothing magical about it. All in all, the box was the most ordinary of all the boxes, with its red hangings, chairs, carpet and armrest covered in red velvet. After inspecting the carpet with the greatest care and finding, here as elsewhere, nothing special, they moved down one floor into the box directly under Box 5 in the grand tier. In this ground-floor box 5, which is located near the exit from the orchestra stalls, stage-left, they found nothing worthy of note either.
‘All these people must think we’re fools,’ M. Richard concluded. ‘It’s Faust on Saturday. We shall both watch the performance from Box 5 on the grand tier!’
CHAPTER 8
In which Messrs Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin have the audacity to stage Faust in an ill-fated theatre with catastrophic results
BUT when they arrived in their office on the Saturday morning, the Directors found two copies of a letter from the Phantom. It read as follows:
‘Dear Directors,
So is it to be war?
If you still want peace, these are my terms:
There are four conditions:
1. Box 5 to be restored to me. I want it reserved for my exclusive use as of now.
2. The role of Marguerite to be sung this evening by Christine Daaé. Do not worry about Carlotta. She will be indisposed.
3. Mme Giry to be reinstated immediately. I require the excellent services of my faithful box-attendant.
4. I am to be informed, by a letter which Mme Giry will deliver to me, that, like your predecessors, you undertake to accept all the conditions set out in my memorandum of agreement in respect of my monthly allowance. I will leave instructions at a later date regarding the method by which the money will be paid to me.
Failure to comply will mean that tonight’s Faust will be staged in a theatre that is cursed.
You have been warned!
P. of the O.’
‘Oh this Phantom business is too much!… It really is!’ Richard cried furiously, shaking his avenging fists and thumping them down on his desk.
At that moment, Mercier, the Administrator, entered the office.
‘Gentlemen, Lachenal is asking to see one of you,’ he began. ‘He said it’s urgent. He looks very shaken.’
‘Who is Lachenal?’ growled Richard.
‘He’s your head groom.’
‘What do you mean, head groom?’
‘Well, sir,’ explained Mercier, ‘the Opera employs several grooms. He’s the head one.’
‘And what does this groom do?’
‘He’s in charge of the stables?’
‘What stables?’
‘Yours, sir. The Opera’s stables.’
‘There are stables at the Opera? By God, I never knew that! And where are they?’
‘Underground, on the Rotonde* side of the building. It’s an important unit. We have a dozen horses.’
‘A dozen horses? Why, for heaven’s sake?’
‘For the processions in La Juive, Le Prophète* and so on. We need trained horses that are used to “treading the boards”. We employ grooms to train them. M. Lachenal is a highly skilled trainer. He used to be Franconi’s equestrian director.’*
‘I see. And what does he want with me?’
‘I’ve no idea… but I’ve never seen him in such a state.’
‘Show him in!…’
M. Lachenal marched into the office. He was holding a riding crop in one hand and with it flicked his boots crossly.
‘Good morning, Lachenal,’ said Richard, slightly awed. ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’
‘I’ve come, sir, to demand that you get rid of the whole lot of them.’
‘What? You want me to get rid of all the horses?’
‘Not the horses. The stable-men.’
‘How many stable-men are there, M. Lachenal?’
‘Six.’
‘Six stable-men! That’s at least two too many!’
‘They are established posts,’ Lachenal broke in, ‘created and forced on us by the office o
f the Arts Ministry. They are currently filled by government nominees and if I may venture to…’
‘I’m not interested in the government!’ Richard said peremptorily. ‘We don’t need more than four stable-men for twelve horses.’
‘Eleven!’ said the head groom.
‘Twelve!’ repeated Richard.
‘Eleven!’ repeated Lachenal.
‘But the Administrator told me you had twelve horses!’
‘I did. But I’ve only got eleven now. Someone stole Caesar!’ M. Lachenal thwacked his boot loudly with his crop.
‘Caesar’s been stolen?’ cried the Administrator. ‘Caesar, the white stallion we use in Le Prophète?’
‘There’s only one Caesar,’ said the head groom curtly. ‘I worked for Franconi for ten years and I’ve seen some horseflesh in my time and I can tell you, there’s only one Caesar! And now someone’s gone and stolen him!’
‘How?’
‘How should I know? Nobody has any idea! That’s why I’ve come, to ask you to sack the lot of them!’
‘What do the stable-men say?’
‘Nothing sensible… some accuse the extras… others say it was the porter in Administration.’
‘The porter in Administration!! I can personally vouch for the man!’ protested Mercier.
‘But surely, M. Lachenal,’ cried Richard, ‘you must have some idea?’
‘As a matter of fact I do!’ Lachenal interjected, ‘and I’ll tell you what it is. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no doubt about it!’ He came up close to both Directors and whispered in their ears: ‘The perpetrator was… the Phantom!’
The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics) Page 11