Beyond Rue Morgue Anthology: Further Tales of Edgar Allan Poe's 1st Detective

THE PURLOINED FACE By STEPHEN VOLK

Many mysteries came to the door of the man in the Rue de la Femme-sans-Tête. The district we lived in, the Île de la Citée, once thronged with thieves, whores, and murderers, but was now hemmed in by the gray edifice of the Préfecture de Police, law courts, and offices of civil servants, a bastion against the unrestrained and malevolent. Safe, but also strangely chill. He and I often yearned to stray into areas of the dissolute, vulgar, and unpredictable. At other times tales of the aberrant and profane beat a path, unbidden, to our door.

To relieve his inveterate boredom — and for the purpose of my further instruction in the science of “ratiocination”—Poe had set up a mirror at the window by which to observe the street below. When the brass bell rang unexpectedly at the porte-cochère on that particular April morning, echoing through the apartment, he asked me to report my observations in the short time it took for Le Bon to descend the stairs and return with our visitors.

“A man and a woman,” I began, squinting down at our guests. “She seems nervous, delicate, uncertain…”

“‘Seems’ is not a fact,” Poe interjected.

“Very well. I’d say from their relative ages he is her father. She wears a coat from Le Bon Marché and a black veil over her face, which indicates she is in mourning. I deduce therefore it is her husband who has died, mysteriously, and it is for that reason they have come. The man is around fifty-five years of age, rotund, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Balzac. Well-fed, and well off, by the cut of his jib. Overcoat worn over his shoulders in the manner of a Hussar. A definite military man. From his sallow skin tone and black hair there is Indian blood in his family tree, or Eurasian, possibly. And — hello? — a dash of red on his cravat. Blood? Good grief, perhaps the perpetrator of the deed is presenting himself to us with all the brazen aplomb of a murderer who thinks he is beyond the powers of detection…”

“Brilliant! That was truly instructive.” Poe jumped from his chair and combed his thin, paper-white hair in the mirror. “Instructive in how to arrive at an entirely erroneous conclusion. Remind me not to ask you to fetch me black peppercorns in a field of rabbit droppings.” I tried not to affect the disgruntlement of a schoolboy handed back homework that fell ruefully short of the mark. “That is not blood on his cuff, but strawberry conserve. To be exact, the one served with a kipferl at the bijou boulangerie on the Rue Bertrand Sluizer. Furthermore, he uses mustache wax by Marie Helene Rogeon, is a Corsican, has three brothers, lived in Avignon, the son of a shoe-mender, ran a ballet company, married a woman called Mathilde, and has five children. All girls. None married. Though one is the fiancée of a locomotive driver.”

“Heavens above!” My head was spinning. “How on earth…?”

Poe’s laugh was high and shrill as he slapped me on the shoulder. “My dear Holmes, forgive an old Southern gentleman his petty amusement! How could I resist teasing you when such an opportunity presented itself? I saw from the reflection that the man is Olivier Guédiguian, manager of the Opéra de Paris. The reason I know is very simply I have met him before, at the very boulangerie I mentioned: his habitual haunt for petit dejeuner. During our conversation he imparted a good deal about his life. At the time he was worried about a malignant superstition having a grip on his stage workers that some kind of, ahem, specter was causing damage and maladies of all descriptions. I was able to convince him that it was nothing but a series of accidents and coincidences, each perfectly explicable in its own right, but overall signifying nothing. And certainly nothing supernatural—the very word being a contradiction in terms. Metaphysics and philosophy! Why will people waste my time with trivialities!” We heard footsteps on the stair. “And by the way, the dress is from La Samaritaine, not Le Bon Marché.”

I was speechless in the briefest pause before Poe’s negro servant opened the double doors and ushered Monsieur Guédiguian and his female companion—veiled companion — into our presence. A parrot called Griswold squawked a few bars of the “Marseillaise” before chewing on a ball of nuts. There is no brass name-plate with Dupin etched on it down below, but it is curious that those who need his assistance always find him, one way or another.

Guédiguian untied his scarf and rolled it in a ball.

“Monsieur Dupin?”

I have described elsewhere how Edgar Poe lived beyond the date chiseled on his gravestone in Baltimore. Far from being, as is popularly believed, the drunken victim of a “cooping” gang at the elections in October 1849, he encountered that night, by remarkable coincidence, his doppelgänger, complete with a one-way ticket to Europe, and sensing escape from the rigors of his former life, swapped clothes with the dying inebriate, abandoning his old identity for an unknown future. He made Paris his secret home, at first in self-imposed exile at the Hôtel Pimedon, aided by his friend and translator Charles Baudelaire, assuming — with typical playfulness and black humor — the name of his famous detective of “Rue Morgue” fame: Dupin, and occasionally, under that appellation, helping the French police with their more baffling investigations, as food for a brain no longer with an appetite for mere fiction.

“Monsieur Guédiguian. My pleasure, yet again.” As he shook his hand Poe saw our guest eyeing the thin young man standing at the window — myself. “This is my assistant, Monsieur Holmes. He speaks French like an Englishman, but is a master of discretion, as are all his countrymen. You may talk freely.”

I met Poe in the guise of “Dupin” when I first came to Paris in my early twenties{See “The Comfort of the Seine” in Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes—ed. J.R., Campbell and Charles Prepolec (Edge Publishing, 2011)}, and once within the penumbra of his intellect, having succumbed to his alluring devotion to hisscience, was unwilling—unable—to leave until I had learned all I could from the great man’s unparalleled talent for deduction. Little did I know how that learning — or that friendship — would change my life forever.

“Allow me first to introduce Madame Anais Jolivet.” Guédiguian touched the woman in the veil lightly on the elbow as he led her gently forward. She shuddered with every step as if treading on broken glass, so much so that, had she not possessed a curvaceous and upright frame, I might have taken her for an old crone.

Poe, as was his custom, took her hand to kiss it, and I saw instantly that the hand was not only shivering, but bandaged. She quickly inserted it in her fur muff as Guédiguian guided her to a seat, puffing up a cushion before she settled in it.

Sitting on the arm of her chair, the man seemed exhausted merely from being in her presence, and I feared he would not find the wherewithal to speak. She certainly showed no willingness to do so. It seemed as though all her physical effort went into holding herself in one piece, and a gust of wind might make her tumble down before our eyes. I also realized that the dress I took to be black was in fact navy blue, with tiny embossed fleurs-de-lis that sparkled like stars in a summer night. And who, I asked myself, dresses in navy blue whilst in mourning?

“Tea?” enquired Poe as Madame L’Espanaye, the maid, entered with a pot of Darjeeling. “Or something stronger? A glass of Virville? Pernod?” He was a teetotaler since his resurrection, but did not begrudge the pleasures of others, and kept a moderate cellar.

The woman looked up at Guédiguian like a frightened puppy.

“Water,” he said. “And a drinking straw. If you please.” He took her other hand gently in his own as the maidservant quietly exited, closing the doors after her. “I don’t recall precisely how much you know about opera…”

“I know,” said Poe, “by a certain deportment and an assessment of the capacity of the lungs that I am in the company of a prima donna.”

I could not tell if the woman blushed behind her veil, but her chin sank slightly and she let go of the manager’s hand in order to avail herself of a handkerchief.

“But, monsieur, that term only puts her within a category of greatness,” said Guédiguian. “Madame Jolivet is beyond that. Madame Jolivet is immortal. We are blessed that she walks the streets of this fair city and does not sit in Heaven making the saints weep. When she played Gounod’s Juliette she raised the roof of the Theâtre-Lyrique. Her Marguerite in Faust was outstanding. Those who missed her Pamina in Die Zauberflöte or the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro missed the supreme roles of the supreme soprano of her generation.” I could see my elderly friend sinking in his armchair, his forearms making a bridge and his fingertips touching and separating with patient regularity as he listened. “She is a monument, sir. A monument! To both coloratura and dramatic intensity. There is… not another lyric singer… alive… who is… who can rise to the demands of…” The impresario’s shoulders sank and he pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

“Not at all,” I offered, sitting at the nearby bureau and opening my notebook.

Poe leapt from his chair the moment Madame L’Espanaye knocked and snatched the tray from her. He knelt in front of the veiled woman’s chair and placed it on a foot stool. The glass filled, he inserted the straw and held it out to her. The merest croak of thanks — not even that — emerged from her lips. I would not have credited it as a woman’s voice, had you pressed me. And possibly not even human.

She lifted the veil an inch and put the straw in her mouth.

“No,” said Guédiguian as he saw Poe reach out his hand, but it was too late to stop him.

“I must.”

The veil was raised, in the manner of a groom lifting the veil of his bride on their wedding day to plant a kiss on the lips of his betrothed. Nothing can be more grotesque or appalling an idea in view of what actually greeted our eyes.

I beheld the face of a rotting corpse. No. Half a face. Which, far from diluting the impact, only served to throw it into heightened obscenity by contrast. One eye was lustrous, that of a poor, frightened doe, the other lidless, shriveled, and blistered. The skin on one side flawless and pure, that of a beautiful woman, yet on the other — pitiful thing! — almost non-existent. She was eaten to the bone. I can only describe it, absurdly, as resembling the surface of a burnt sausage. Even that is inadequate. Her right cheek was gone, a flayed cavern in which I could count the teeth in her jaw and see her pink tongue wriggling, her right ear nothing more than a gristly stump. All this absorbed in an instant, and not forgotten in a lifetime.

I heard a death rattle, which was Madame Jolivet breathing with the horrid restriction her injuries compelled. Yet she held Poe’s eyes without self-pity. And to his credit, he did not avert his gaze.

“Who did this?”

“We do not know.” Guédiguian whimpered and sandwiched his hands between his thighs. “That is why we are here. It happened three weeks ago. Madame has not been well enough to move until today.”

“You’ve spoken to the police?”

“We told them everything.”

“Tell me everything.”

“We had just begun rehearsing La Traviata. I had fired the conductor for being a drunk.” Guédiguian began to pace back and forth behind her chair, occasionally tweaking it with his fingers as if to steady himself on a rolling sea. “I was calling in favors from old friends to ensure the production didn’t run off the rails, but everybody was excited about Madame playing the part of Violetta. I knew it would be a complete triumph.”

“How many of the cast had worked with Madame before?”

“That is not vital at this moment.” Poe cut me off, his eyes never leaving the diva. “Please describe the incident as clearly as you can remember it.”

“I must speak for her,” said Guédiguian. “The merest exertion of the vocal chords causes her unbearable agony. She will never sing an aria again.”

“Madame, not only has your body been cruelly abused,” said Poe, “but so too has your soul. In that regard, justice is your only balm and my expertise — my considerable expertise— is at your service. Are you happy for Monsieur Guédiguian to continue on your behalf?”

Now self-conscious, the woman lowered the veil before nodding. Her face covered, she became perfection once more. And I could breathe freely.

Poe turned to the manager. “Pray continue.”

“One day during rehearsals, at about four in the afternoon, Madame retired to her dressing room for a nap. She gave her boy a swift instruction that she was not to be disturbed. She undressed, put on her dressing gown, and lay on the day bed while upstairs the new conductor, Francesco Mazzini, put the orchestra through their paces. Half-dozing some minutes later— but not too much later, because the music had not changed, it was still ‘Sempre Libera’—she remembers hearing the door open, thinking nothing much of it — perhaps it was the boy again, with flowers from an admirer, after all a day did not pass without her receiving some token or other. Suddenly, but not with horror, she felt liquid on her face. It had no obvious odor. Though momentarily startled, she presumed it was water— though why anybody would splash water on her face mystified her. She could only think it was a silly prank. Hardly had that thought begun to materialize when the substance began to burn. And when it did not stop burning, and when she felt the cheek under her fingers turning to mud, she screamed. Screamed till her lungs burst. Horribly, for a few seconds the singers next door took the high notes to be her practicing, then the truth…” The man’s thick hair hung lank. “I’m — sorry…”

“Please, monsieur,” Poe urged. “For Madame.”

“There is little more to tell.” Guédiguian waved a hand spuriously. “The hospital did what they could. They still are doing. But her face is a ruin. Her life is a ruin. They can rebuild neither. If she had a husband… but now…” He swallowed the thought, shaking his head, regretting he had even given it form. “Who would do such a thing? Who?”

“The police conducted interviews?”

“Endlessly. The chorus were becoming hoarse from repeating where they were and with whom. I think the paperwork must be longer than La Comédie Humaine.”

“Word count is only an illusion of achievement,” said Poe. “Over time, and with increasing desperation, the core, the essence, becomes obscured like a diamond lost in a bush of thorns. What is the name of the officer in charge?”

“Bermutier.”

“Henri Bermutier. Not the sharpest bayonet in the army, but count yourself lucky you didn’t get that lazy pig Malandain.”

“It was Bermutier who pointed us in your direction, Maestro. He said if any man in Paris could find the solution to the mystery, it was C. Auguste Dupin.”

“Naturellement.” Poe explained that his method demanded he have unfettered access to the scene of the crime, and our new client assured us of his every co-operation, together with that of his numerous employees, whether performers or artisans. “The tea is stewed to the consistency of an Alabama swamp. I shall get us a fresh pot.”

“We — we shall decline your kind offer, monsieur…” Guédiguian accurately read the signal of his companion tugging his sleeve. “We have to go. Madame, you see, she is tired… The slightest exertion…”

Speaking for Poe and myself I said we understood completely and any other questions could be answered in the fullness of time.

Neither had removed their coats. Guédiguian offered La Jolivet his arm. Once more Poe took the lady’s hand and kissed it, and I sensed she was thankful that he did. Charm sometimes trumped his insensitivity. Otherwise life in his company, frankly, would have been intolerable.

“There is something else I should say, which I fear will shock and displease you.” Guédiguian turned back, knotting his scarf. “This incident has rekindled backstage rumors of a fantôme. Tongues are wagging that the production is cursed, that the opera house is haunted, that this is merely the beginning of a concerted spree of malevolence from beyond the grave…”

“It always displeases me,” sneered Poe, lighting a cigarette from a candle, “when I have it confirmed that the imaginative excesses of the poorly educated know no bounds. But shock? No. I would have been shocked had they not.”

“But — beyond the grave? Monsieur Dupin, I confess to you, I was brought up in fear of the Church and in fear of God…”

“Then good luck to you.” Poe jangled the bell-pull to summon Le Bon. “But there is no beyond in matters of the grave. There is only — the grave. The Conqueror Worm and all his wriggling allies in decomposition. If this abominable act tells us anything, it is that the creature we seek is flesh and blood.”

“I wish I could be so certain.”

Behind Guédiguian, the woman’s back was turned, like a silhouette cut from black paper. A long curl of fair hair, colorless as flax, lay on the night-blue of her shoulder. The man placed his hand against her back, and they were gone, like phantoms themselves.

“The quantity used was small, so the assailant must have been close. Very close.” Our carriage took us at speed down the Avenue de l’Opéra. To Poe the imposing five-story buildings either side, which had eradicated the medieval city at the mercy of Haussman’s modernization, were invisible. “Sulfuric acid, by the lack of odor. Used to pickle silver by jewelers. Readily dissolves human tissue, prolonged exposure causing pulmonary incapacity and tooth erosion. Severely corrosive to most metals, and shows an unquenchable thirst. If a flask of it is allowed to stand uncovered, it’ll absorb water from the air until the container overflows, so must be handled with the utmost care. In highly diluted form it is available as a medical laxative. Used in horticulture to eradicate weeds and moss. Also as a drain cleaner…”

“Paris has good need for drain cleaner, I’ll give you that. It out-stinks London.”

“London has a perfume by comparison.” He blinked languorously, acknowledging my presence for the first time in minutes. “Paris was born in filth and blood and other liquids, my dear Holmes. Violence is its beating heart. And freedom will be the death of it.”

The Opéra Garnier was not to my taste, but had to be admired. A triumph of engineering, indeed of artistic will, it captured something, if not everything, of its era. Completed only a few years before, the neo-Baroque masterpiece had been commissioned by Napoleon III as part of his grandiloquent and massive reshaping of Paris, designed unashamedly as a flamboyant riposte to the established opera houses of Italy. Over a fifteen-year gestation, its construction had been held up by multifarious incidents and setbacks, from mundane lack of funds to upheavals such as the Franco-Prussian War and the demise of the Empire in favor of a new Republic. As a visual statement, its Imperial glory suddenly spoke only of the former regime in all its dubious splendor, and the politicians, freshly warming their rumps in the seats of office, were inherently ill-disposed toward its existence. The most that was done, in the end, was to change the Opéra’s official name on the entablature fronting the loggia from “Academie Imperiale de Musique” to “Academie Nationale de Musique.” Happily for the craftsmen involved, a difference of only six letters.

Personally I saw the edifice before me as a resplendent example of grandeur and folly in roughly equal measure. With sunlight gilding the figures of Music and Dance on the façade and Apollo atop the dome, it was almost impossible to conceive that such an odious crime could have happened under the aegis of such gods and noble virtues.

“Another disfigurement. Almost a prediction, if you believe such nonsense.” As we climbed the steps to the entrance, Poe pointed out Carpeaux’s sculpture, which had so shocked the Puritans of Paris in its erotic depiction of La Dance that ink was thrown over its marble thighs. “Ink. Acid. I know some critics where the two are synonymous.”

If we had doubted the atmosphere of superstitious dread permeating the company, we soon found it illustrated when the doorman almost leapt out of his skin at the sound of our rapping. Poe introduced himself — as “Dupin,” naturally — and proceeded to interrogate the individual, a sapeur-pompier with a wooden leg, about his actions on the afternoon in question. The fellow was adamant that nobody had entered or left the theater on his watch and he himself never strayed from his post until the doors were locked.

We ascended the Grand Staircase with its balustrade of red and green marble and two bronze female torchières in the direction of the foyers.

Poe sniffed like an eager bloodhound as we were surrounded by immense mirrors and parquet, more colored marble, moulded stucco, and sculptures.

“These are the mirrors in which the audience watch the show before the show.” He looked at the vast room in reflection, and at his own. “This is where they see each other, and themselves. And find themselves on the upper step, or the lower. The inane dance of the socially inclined and the artistically disinterested. I’d wager by law of averages that of the myriad citizens crammed in here on opening night, at least five are murderers.”

“A sobering thought.”

“On the contrary, a thought to turn one to drink,” said Poe. “I should know.”

We had lied to the doorman. Our appointment with Guédiguian was at three. It gave us a full hour to explore unhindered, an opportunity my colleague took to with relish. He had been given extensive floor plans of the Opéra, but nothing, he said, was a substitute for the application of the senses. If there were gods that deserved statuary, Poe declared, it was Sight, Smell, Touch, Taste, and Hearing.

And so we roamed the interweaving corridors, stairwells, alcoves, and landings. Before long it was not hard to imagine a clever infiltrator scampering from floor to floor or room to room unseen. Skulking round the Romano-Byzantine labyrinth, several times I wished for Ariadne’s ball of twine, fearful that we had lost our way, while Poe counted his footsteps into hundreds, storing myriad calculations of I-knew-not-what. But then, I seldom did.

A swell of music rose up and I was momentarily reminded of the old adage of a dying man hearing a choir of angels. The gas-lit passageway gave the notes a dull, eerie resonance, making it tricky to know whether the source was near or far. But when Poe opened a door and we stepped into a fourth-level box overlooking the stage, the voices and orchestra took on voluminous proportions.

The tiny figures before us were dwarfed in a five-tier auditorium resplendent in red velvet, plaster cherubs, and gold leaf. The magnificent house curtain with gold braid and pom-poms was raised above the proscenium. And presiding over all — in fact partly obscuring our view — hung the magnificent seven-ton crystal and bronze chandelier which alone, if you are to believe the controversy, cost thirty thousand gold francs.

I am marginally more familiar with La Traviata now than I was then, and could not have told you in those days they were rehearsing Act Two, Scene Two — the soirée at Flora’s house, in which Alfredo, here a beefy man with the build of a prize-fighter, sees his love, the former courtesan Violetta, with Baron Douphol. After winning a small fortune from the Baron, he bitterly rounds up the guests to witness her humiliation— “Questa donna conoscete?”—before hurling his winnings at her feet in payment for her “services.” Whereupon she faints to the floor.

“She faints in Act One, too,” said Poe, paying less attention to the stage than he did to the fixtures and fittings of the box. “Never a good sign.”

“More to the point, Guédiguian hasn’t wasted any time in finding a new Violetta. I presume that’s her understudy.”

Poe arched an eyebrow.

As we listened to the guests turn on Alfredo — singing “Di donne ignobile insultatore, di qua allontanati, ne desti orror!”— Poe could no longer bear the pain and left the box, muttering that high art was invariably highly dull. The art of the street, the Penny Dreadful and barrel organ, he found more rewarding, he said — and more honest. “I don’t know about you, but I have seldom been accompanied by an orchestra in my moments of intimate passion.”

“But is there a clue in the play?” I caught up with him in the corridor.

“Why would there be?”

“I don’t know. Do you? I’ve never stepped in an opera house before. I don’t even know what La Traviata means.”

“The Fallen Woman. It is based on La Dame aux Camélias, a play in turn based on a novel by Dumas, fils—in turn based, some say, on a lady of his own acquaintance. The play was a big success when I first arrived in Paris, especially after it was vilified by the censors.”

“For what reason?”

“A high-living prostitute depicted as a victim of society? Especially when she never sees the light? In London, I believe they tried to get an injunction to stop it. But then, it is never entirely a bad thing for a work of art to be pilloried by the Church. In America they say the plot is immoral, though no worse than Don Giovanni. Here, it was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place de Chatelet with Christine Nilsson in the title role. Too chaste-looking for a harlot, if you ask me.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes, which is why I abhor opera with every fiber of my being. Rarely does an art form offend all the senses at once, and the buttocks more than any. Nothing less than the crucifixion of Christ should last more than forty minutes. And God forbid that Judas should sing about it. Though, given time, I’m sure he shall.” Keeping up his sprightly pace, he turned a corner. “The truth is, my dear Holmes, I endured this mellifluous obscenity once and did not care for it. In fact, I walked out.”

He strode on several yards before replying to my unspoken question, but did not turn to face me.

“You see… the soprano was too old, too obese… almost to the point of being flabby, to play — to conceivably play, with any hope of conviction — the part of a young woman dying of consumption.” His face creased and twitched with the most intense inner agitation. “That she sang with such — abnormal gusto, with superhuman energy — with such buoyant, lustrous, glowing health. And the fact that she was applauded. That people cheered…”

He had told me before of Virginia, his cousin and child bride. Her icy pallor, cheeks rubbed with plum juice to fake a ruddy complexion. Her dry lips enlivened briefly with the color of cherries. The coughing of blood onto a pure white handkerchief. He had also, once, intimated that the disease gave spells of excitement, even desire; that there was an aphrodisiac quality to the fading bloom. I think it was this that haunted him most of all. I cannot imagine what he had suffered. To bear helpless witness to a death so inevitable yet so gradual. To see loveliness — one’s very reason for living — wither on the vine, and all around feel harangued by the prejudice of others, not knowing whether to blame habits or heredity or himself. Then to be there as the leaf takes to the wind, leaving its heavy load behind…

“From the opening music we are in the presence of death. Eight first and eight second violins portray the frail consumptive. Curtain up on a party scene. We are told the hostess is seeing her doctor. I know that feeling well. I have been in that scene, that room, many times. She wants to enjoy life fully because it is fleeting. Parties will be the drug to kill her pain. I understand that too. They drink a toast because love is life. Fervido. Fervido… A fever… A passion…”

The female voice rose again, distant as the angels.

“It is a lie, as all Art lies. There is no aria at the end. There is only the incessant coughs, the swelling of joints, the loss of weight, the cadaverous emaciation, delirium, torment — and, if one is lucky, the uttering of a lover’s name.”

Straightening his back he walked on, anxious not to meet my eyes, though he would never have admitted it. No more was said on the subject. He had closed a heavy door and I knew I could not open it. Only he could do that, when — and if — he wished.

We found a staircase. Narrow. Badly lit. And descended.

I made to speak, but Poe raised a finger to his lips. We entered the auditorium and the music swelled louder.

We crept nearer to the stage, where Laurent Loubatierre, the tenor playing Alfredo, stood delivering an aria. We settled into a couple of seats off the central aisle, far enough back not to be noticed by the several people with their backs to us who formed a meager audience — costumier, copyist, dramaturge, dance manager, and so on. Or so we thought.

Poe sank in his chair, thin neck disappearing into his collar, long white hair sitting on his shoulders, and eyes heavy-lidded like those of a slumbering owl. I had placed my notebook on my knee, when I was aware that the tenor’s notes were falling flat, and looked up to see Loubatierre pinching the bridge of his nose, blinking furiously, then shading his eyes with his hand as he advanced to the footlights.

“I am sorry, Maestro! But this is impossible! I cannot work with such distractions!” He peered out, pointing in our exact direction, straight past the hapless conductor. “Who are these people? You! Yes, you sir! Both of you! Who invited you here? On what authority…?” He became apoplectic. “Somebody fetch Guédiguian! Fetch him immediately!” The assorted lackeys threw looks at each other and one, by some mute agreement, ran out to do his bidding. “I cannot continue — I refuse to continue — until you reveal yourselves!”

“I shall, gladly.” Poe spoke calmly, examining his fingernails. “When the cast of this opera reveal themselves and give a true account of their movements on the day Madame Jolivet was attacked.”

“How dare you! This is outrageous!”

“The ravaging of a beautiful woman’s face is outrageous, Monsieur Loubatierre. Your indignation merely ludicrous.” A couple of ballerinas in the background looked at each other, open-mouthed. And if Loubatierre was already red-faced with anger, he was now virtually foaming at the mouth.

“You told the police you visited Monsieur Rodin the sculptor at his atelier on the Left Bank to sit for him, but according to my enquiries Monsieur Rodin has been in Italy and only returned yesterday, for the unveiling of his L’Âge d’Airain at the Paris Salon.”

“I don’t have to account for my whereabouts to you!”

“You might find that you do.”

“Who is this man? That is an unspeakable accusation! I have a good mind to thrash him within an inch of his life!”

“I would very much prefer an answer,” said Poe with lugubrious contempt. “Need I point out the truism that a man who has recourse to violence usually has something to hide?”

“Beckstein!” Loubatierre, supremely flustered, addressed the most smartly dressed and rotund of the assembled, whom we later came to understand was the opera house’s dramaturge. “Throw him out this instant! I insist! I insist!”

The singer turned his back sharply, appealing with extravagant gestures to the gods. Other members of the cast hurried on in their tights, bustles, and blouses, trying their best to placate him, though he shrugged off, equally extravagantly, any attempt to do so. Poe, to my amazement, started to applaud and shout “Bravo! Bravo!” which served only to agitate the performer further. The poor man was incandescent to the point of immobility.

“Monsieur!” Guédiguian arrived, puffing. “What is the cause of all this—?”

“Exactly.” Poe rose to his feet and shot his cuffs. “Monsieur Loubatierre’s behavior is inexcusable.”

The tenor rounded on him now, head down and ready to charge off the stage, had he not been held back.

“Monsieur Dupin! Really!” blubbered Guédiguian, whose own cheeks were reddening. “Perhaps you can explain—”

Poe cut in before he could finish, with his habitual air of distraction. “Perhaps you can explain, monsieur, why we were able to wander every floor of this building with impunity, not once being asked our identity or purpose of our visit till now. But to wander with impunity is one thing, to escape the building without being seen by the watchmen at every exit, quite another. If we solve that conundrum, we solve the crime. Now, I should like to question the understudy. What is her name?”

Bamboozled, Guédiguian could do nothing better than to answer the question directly. “Marie-Claire Chanaud.”

“Excellent. Where is she?”

Guédiguian appealed to his staff for an answer.

“She… she is not here, monsieur,” said Beckstein in a thick German accent.

“Not here?” Poe approached the orchestra pit, and I with him. “Then where? Backstage? Bring her out. It is imperative.”

“No, monsieur. She has been working very hard. She complained of a dry throat. With nerves, as you know, the throat tightens. And a singer is an athlete. They must take care of their most delicate instrument. We thought it best she went to the dressing room to rest…”

“You left her alone? Unprotected?”

I barely had time to register the ferocity in Poe’s face as a clatter of footsteps drew my eyes with a whiplash to the wings, where a small boy ran onto the boards, almost tripping over his clogs in his haste. The entrance was so dramatic that for a split second I took it for a part of the rehearsal, until I saw his blanched face and the tiny hand pressed to his chest as he tried to catch breath, ripping the cloth cap from his tousled head as he cried out to Guédiguian:

“Monsieur! Monsieur! He’s struck again, sir! The Phantom!” His eyes were unblinking and his lip quivering. “He’s struck again!”

Alarm taking hold in the auditorium, Poe and I wasted not an instant in thundering downstairs and through coffin-narrow corridors in pursuit of the lad, who moments later stood aside in terror of seeing what revolting scene might confront him in the dressing room.

Inside, we saw what he had seen — a large bunch of flowers tied in a red bow propped against the mirror, shriveling on bending, blackening stalks as we stared at them — a sickening picture of decay seen through some kaleidoscope free of the strictures of time, speeding toward dissolution. Beside it, the open pages of a poetry book lay sizzling, Gérard de Nerval’s Les Chimères turning to acrid vapor in the air. Poe coughed into his handkerchief. I moved forward to enter, but he extended an arm across my body to block the way.

The chair was overturned.

The dressing room—empty.

With a terrible, rising certainty that the understudy had been abducted, I ran to the Stage Door, only to find it bolted.

“Here!”

Returning, I saw that Poe had whisked aside the curtain of an alcove to reveal the trembling singer standing there in nothing but her underwear, having narrowly escaped having her face ravaged by the same demon who had attacked Madame Jolivet. He picked up a cloak and wrapped it round her shoulders.

“Did any of it touch you? Madame? Are you hurt in any way?” She shook her head. “Are you sure? If it fell on your skin… or eyes…” He turned to the loons congregated at the door. “Water! Get water! Now!” She stepped forward, but sagged into his arms.

I grabbed the chair to prop it under her before she fell. “Stand back! She needs air, can’t you see? Clear the way. We need to get her out of here.”

The two of us lifted her under the armpits and knees and deposited her gently on a wicker basket in the corridor. She was light as a feather.

“Open the Stage Door and let the fumes out. And nobody go in that room. Be careful how you touch anything.”

In a few moments water came, and a sponge, and I ran it over her forehead and cheeks. “Did you breathe it in?”

Again the young soprano shook her head, her blue-black curls, which fell considerably below her shoulders, shining. In this semi-swoon, with her almost painted eyebrows and porcelain skin, extreme thinness, and long neck, I suddenly thought her the perfect picture of the phthisic beauty of consumption. Uncomfortably, it made me look over at Poe, who was glaring at her.

“There was no note with the flowers. Who sent them?”

“Dupin!” I protested.

“Allow her to answer, Holmes, please.”

“In truth, I do not know,” Marie-Claire said. “I simply came to my dressing room and there they were.”

“From an admirer,” I suggested.

“Precisely,” said Poe, crouching at her side, resting the flats of his hands on the silver wolf’s head of his walking cane.

“The door was bolted!” snapped the stage doorman, Christophe. “You saw it yourself, monsieur. Nobody could have left without me seeing them, I stake my life on it! Nobody living!”

“Tell me what happened,” said Poe to the young woman.

“My dresser, Rosa, helped me change out of my costume.” Marie-Claire regained her composure admirably, perhaps because her leading man, Loubatierre, now held her hand. “The girls took it away to do some alterations. I ate some fruit and felt a little better, but didn’t want to sleep any more so I read my book and combed my hair. It is foolish, but that has always calmed me, ever since Maman used to do it when I was little. I think the motion is soothing; it clears the mind. Well, I was gazing at my own reflection, not especially thinking about anything. Perhaps I was wondering who sent the flowers. Many things. Or perhaps nothing. Sometimes nothing at all goes through this head of mine.” A smile flickered, accompanying the most nervous of giggles. “Then…”

“You monster,” snarled Loubatierre. “Is it really necessary to put Madame through such torture?”

“It is,” insisted Poe. “Continue.”

“Then I dropped my bookmark and bent to pick it up. I heard a splash, sat up straight again wondering what it was, and I saw this most horrible sight, of the flowers dying, evaporating right before my eyes. Something prevented me from touching them. Thanks be to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And in the mirror I saw behind me, perched on my reflection’s shoulder, such a face— indescribable! With holes for eyes. Empty sockets, and… and a beak, like some storybook witch, not even human at all, more like a bird — a bird with green scales and no eyes. I don’t know what it was, but it was the face of some kind of devil, of… of pure darkness…”

Loubatierre kissed her tiny fist.

“I dare not even think what might have happened if I wasn’t wearing this.” Marie-Claire touched the crucifix on a chain around her neck then kissed it. “It saved me.”

Loubatierre, the bear, embraced her.

“In the name of Pity,” said Poe, “please do not burst into song.” He turned to me. “The flowers were not from an actor. To an actor, flowers before a performance mean bad luck. But they’re from someone who knows this opera enough to send camellias. So he is someone already in the building. But that is not our culprit. Come with me.” He strode to Christophe and addressed him: “Look directly into my eyes and tell me, what color are the buttons on my assistant’s waistcoat?”

“Brown.”

“And how many are buttoned? Keep looking into my eyes.”

“Two.”

“There is nothing wrong with your vision. Where were you standing or sitting?” The man shuffled into his position behind the shelf of his booth. “And you did not leave? Nothing distracted you?” The man screwed up his beret in his fists and shook his head. “Then if someone entered you would have seen them.”

“Madame saw nobody. I saw nobody. The thing cannot be seen. Doors and walls are nothing to the Phantom. That much is certain.”

“Nothing is certain,” said Poe.

An hour later we were in the Opéra manager’s office. His hand shook as he poured brandies, and to my astonishment expressed concern that the production would be ready for opening night in a few days time.

“Monsieur.” I stepped forward to stand beside the chair in which Marie-Claire sat. “You cannot seriously be considering that can happen, even as the remotest possibility, while this criminal is at large and his intent against Madame could hardly be more clear.”

“Please, Monsieur Holmes, do not impugn my sensitivity. No man could be more appalled than I, but my position here means I have to think of the Palais Garnier.”

“You value the fortunes of the Palais Garnier above a life?”

“Of course not. I nevertheless have to bear in mind that if opening night is canceled, people will ask why. The natural consequence of that is the future of the Opéra may be called into question. The government is all too eagerly looking for the appropriate excuse to shut us down. I have to think not only of Madame — with the greatest respect — but every soul working under this roof.”

“In any case…” Marie-Claire rose to her feet. “I’m sorry gentlemen, but there is no question of my not playing Violetta on opening night. Monsieur Dupin, I appreciate your efforts as a detective, and those of Monsieur Holmes today, but I have waited my entire life for the opportunity to sing this part.” Her back ramrod-straight, from a frail, petite girl she took on the aspect of an Amazon. “As I see it, if we let the fiend stop us, whoever or whatever he might be, then the fiend has won.”

“Admirable,” said Poe, resisting a smile as well as the brandy snifter. “Foolish, but admirable.”

“But be under no illusion regarding our gratitude, Monsieur Dupin, nor our desperation. Our safety — Madame’s safety — is now entirely in your hands.” Guédiguian let the import sink in as the golden liquid trailed down his throat, and my own. Marie-Claire had downed hers in one gulp and returned the glass to its tray before we did.

“My father taught me that.”

“My father taught me Shakespeare,” said Poe. “He was an actor, but a bad one. You should always have enough gum on your beard when you play Lear, or hilarity ensues. Not what the Bard of Avon had in mind. Though entertaining enough to a four-year-old standing in the wings.”

Marie-Claire smiled, but I thought of Poe’s mother, an actress too, he’d once told me. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought before of his obvious connection to the world of theater. It was in his blood: literally so. She too had died of consumption — his “Red Death” to be — coughing up blood on stage as little Eddie watched, mouthing her lines, the audience not even knowing something was wrong as she slumped in agony, thinking the acting peculiarly good that night in Richmond during Romeo and Juliet. Inconceivable to think of it other than as a ghastly foretaste of Virginia and the tragedy to come. The first of a catalogue of losses that were to blight Poe’s life, and to this mind, the anvil that forged him. The reward being a great writer. But what a price. Too, too much a price, for any man…

C. Auguste Dupin took the fingers of Marie-Claire Chanaud and pressed his lips to them. Her arm was barely bone in her sleeve, the hand itself as fragile as the skeleton of a bird. Her skin white and untarnished, the perfection of a tombstone freshly carved. Her eyes lustrous with the burning of night.

“The curtain will rise,” said Guédiguian.

“The curtain has risen,” corrected my friend the detective with an expression I could not decide was one of fear or of singular anticipation. “Our characters are on stage. Our villain is waiting in the wings. After the interval, we shall begin Act Three. I simply hope we have not paid to watch a tragedy.”

I knew things were amiss whenever he asked me to talk rather than listen, and that night as the gliding Le Bon lit candles and Madame L’Espanaye served us a supper of oven-warm bread and Normandy camembert so ripe it ran from its skin, he demanded to hear my theory.

“Theory?”

“Yes, Holmes. Theory. Of this elusive Phantom. You have been silent. I hope you have been thinking, but possibly I’m in for a disappointment.”

“Well…” I had been caught on the hop. Again the schoolmaster and pupil. I lit a pipe of Altadis Caporal, an earthy tabac gris. “I think there’s a productive line of enquiry in the fact that Guédiguian, the manager, comes from Corsica. From what I have read, certain Corsican families who get money by extortion and intimidation operate within a secret code called vendetta—members are obliged to kill not only anyone who besmirches the family honor, but anyone in their family, too. Slights and grievances go back decades. There have been four thousand murders—”

“Mostly garrottings and stabbings, with the odd blinding.” Poe took the pipe from my mouth, filled his cheeks, and handed it back without a word. “The Corsicans are a predictable bunch. And they like the victim to know precisely why they’re doing it. Rarely cultivate a sense of mystery. Quite the opposite. But well done. We can now rule that out. Anything else?” He descended low into his armchair, crossed his legs and put his hands behind his head before expelling the smoke, which rose in an undulating cloud to the ceiling.

“I noticed a proliferation of tattoos amongst the men working behind the scenes. Also the swaying gait common to seamen. According to my researches, many of the stage crew are traditionally hired from ships in port. If a seafarer was seeking revenge against somebody — a captain perhaps, responsible for the loss of a ship… We could look at the records of shipwrecks, the names—”

“And entirely waste our time.”

“Forgive me, but why ask for my deductions, if you seek only to dismiss them?”

“I seek only to arrive at the truth. And they are not deductions, Holmes, they are suppositions. Flights of fancy. I have told you before that guesswork is the recourse of the buffoon or the police inspector. When we use my methods, we build our house on sound foundations or none at all.”

Poe flicked the tails of his coat and sat on the piano stool at his writing desk with his back to me. He lifted a candle-stick to his elbow, unscrewed an ink pot, and started to scratch with his pen, but the real purpose, I knew, was just that — to have his back to me.

I tapped my pipe bowl against the fire surround, but did not take myself off to bed as he perhaps wished. Stubbornly, I stayed. I hoped he might, as a clever man, draw some conclusion from that. But his pride excelled his wisdom that night.

“This Phantom…”

“Phantoms! Demons! Ghosts!” He rubbed the back of his neck without turning. “Do not desert C. Auguste Dupin for the realm of actors and unreason. If that is your desire, Holmes, I tell you now — go home to London. I have no more to teach you.”

A lump came to my throat. He was goading me, but I refused to rise to the bait. I would not be his mental punch bag.

“I intend to stay.”

Poe did not reply. He remained sitting with hunched shoulders and the sound of his scribbling nib in the candlelight. I intuited, however — intuition being only a hop and a skip from guesswork, as he might say — that his change in mood was not about me, and not entirely about the nature of the mystery that was testing us so sorely, either.

He crossed the room and yanked the servant cord. When Le Bon came he asked him to deliver a message by hand the following day. “To Colonel Guy Follenvie, postmaster at the Place de Ravaillac. Tell him to meet me on the opening night of La Traviata at the Palais Garnier on Friday. The details are enclosed. And remember to tell him to bring Madame Lop-Lop.”

“Madame Lop-Lop?” I sniggered, perplexed.

He ignored me. “Are my instructions clear, or are they not?” Le Bon said they were.

“I have an appointment tomorrow with a saddle maker, name of Hermès,” Poe continued, this incongruous piece of information as mystifying to me as the first. “Do not let me sleep after nine. I shall take coffee but no toast. Holmes can do as he pleases.”

His tetchiness with the negro confirmed what I had begun to suspect: from what Poe had said in the shadowy corridors of the Opéra Garnier, I knew he had turned over old soil, and that the bones of the most painful recollections imaginable, that of his long lost love, his first and only love, Virginia, had been unearthed. To my dismay, far from being a hero of vast intelligence and indefatigable vigor, the figure in the semi-gloom — Dupin, Poe — now looked like a husk of humanity. Not a god of the dark imagination or giant of literature, but instead a brittle insect crushable under foot.

I stepped closer. “Can I get you—?”

“No.”

Reluctantly, I left the room and went to my bed, but did not sleep.

Lying awake, I pondered whether, for all his absolute faith in the appliance of “ratiocination” and his unwavering dedication to that skill in his latter years, the Socrates to my Plato had increasingly built a dam to keep the vast lake of his inner feelings at bay, at no inconsiderable cost, and — after his sudden ill temper tonight — if unchecked or unheeded, one day that dam might burst.

My private concerns over my mentor’s wellbeing only contributed to my further ill ease as opening night drew closer. I slept badly, drank excessively, and by the time we arrived at the Opéra Garnier, my nerves were so jangled that the gas-lights of the boulevards swam in my face like Montgolfier balloons. The conflux of so many carriages dispensing their chattering cargo was so overwhelming, I felt palpitations. So unsure of my grip on my senses was I that I swear I saw a man in a peaked cap taking a pig for a walk.

“Lo! ’tis gala night…”

In the cab, Poe lifted a mahogany box onto his knees, unclipped the brass catches, and opened it. Wrapped in red satin lay two flintlocks I recognized immediately as Denix French dueling pistols.

“Our difference of opinion has come to this?” I mused, not entirely seriously.

Poe, stern-faced, handed me one. “I can think of no man I would rather trust when cogent thinking runs aground and the only logical recourse is to a lead ball and gunpowder.” This was as much as I could expect as an apology for his recent behavior, and rather more than I was accustomed to. “My home country is big on these things. I hear they often use them in lieu of democratic debate.” He blew down one barrel, then squinted along the length of the other. “I’d have picked up a gun for the South in the war, had I been on the right continent.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

He pouted indignantly. “I went to West Point, I’ll have you know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Kicked out for insubordination.”

“Now I’m starting to believe you.”

Dressed for the opera in top hats and capes, we joined the milling throng and were carried by the flow of the crowd up the Grand Staircase. It was mildly ironic to think all these theater-goers done up to the nines were coming to see a tale about disease, death, and prostitution, but such is the wonder of art— or of beautiful music, anyway — to make anything palatable.

We met Bermutier in Box “C,” as planned, from which we could watch the seats filling below. If the policeman had nerves half as frayed as I did, he concealed it well. He reported that, according to “Dupin’s” explicit instructions, there were thirty men in plain clothes placed in strategic positions around the building. Poe repeated his insistence that they be in sight or earshot of each other and Bermutier confirmed that they were, several with Garde du Corps du Roi firearms secreted about their persons, and all with batons and whistles. The one thing they lacked, he said, was any rough description of what this malefactor might look like.

“Monsieur Holmes will tell you,” said Poe, to my evident surprise.

“Me?”

“Yes, my friend. I guarantee that within the minute you will be telling Bermutier here exactly what our criminal looks like.” He looked down upon the audience as he spoke. “What manner of man could hide in a room unnoticed? Hide under the dressing room table, perhaps, invisible? Slip under the Stage Door shelf, unseen by an eagle-eyed doorman? And slip away again, below the eye-line of you or me?”

“Someone of exceptionally, I don’t know — small stature…” An idea went off in my mind like a struck match. “Good God! You can’t mean — a dwarf!”

“Yes. A dwarf. When you remove the impossible… What was your phrase, Holmes? I thought it was rather good…” Poe unfolded a large sheet of paper from his inside pocket and thrust it at Bermutier. “Holmes and I are going to take up position outside the dressing rooms. Your men are covering the back-stage areas and front of house. I’ve marked this architectural plan with red crosses where I’ve seen trapdoors or manholes down to the underworld. That’s where he will make his escape.”

“Underworld?” I was shocked.

“There is a subterranean lake under this building. A labyrinth of canals and vaults almost the equal of that which is above ground. His hiding place, if not his habitation.”

“The Phantom was under our feet all the time!” I said.

Bermutier folded the plans and stuffed them in his pocket, tugging the brim of his hat as he headed to the door.

“Take the utmost care, Bermutier,” said Poe. “He does not want Violetta to sing tonight. He intends his desecration of beauty to be complete.”

The dressing rooms were busy as we took up our positions near the Stage Door. Loubatierre, in his wig as Alfredo, emerged to make his way upstairs, taken aback to see C. Auguste Dupin, detective, walking toward him.

“Merde,” said Poe. The traditional “break a leg” of French actors.

“Merde,” repeated the primo tenore grudgingly, and was gone.

Dressers and wardrobe mistresses with peacock feathers and robes flitted to and fro. A man in a waistcoat continually checked his watch. Christophe was ensconced in his position. I casually asked after the small boy. “We never saw him again. His mother sent a letter saying he was too afraid to come back.” Neither of us found that wholly surprising.

“We would do best to split up,” Poe said to me. “You stay here, outside the door. I shall position myself in the dressing room with Madame Chanaud.” He checked the hammer action of his pistol, turning to go, but I caught his arm.

“You do not believe in demonic forces, and neither do I. But these acts are no less than atrocities. Mindless atrocities. Is it conceivable that pure evil can manifest in a human being?”

“Evil is a convenient label invented by the sanctimonious to describe the unfathomable.” He walked to the dressing room door and knocked. “There are only deeds, which we may define as good or bad according to our nursery training and the books we read. The deeds of human beings upon each other and the infinitely complex or infinitesimally simple reasons they commit them.” He knocked a second time and entered.

I felt strangely alone. As if by magic the corridor was deserted. The chaotic movement of figures all round us had abated: they had all flown to their posts. Actors waiting in the wings for the action to begin — as were we all. Nervous — as were we all. Fearful — as were we all.

Now the man checking his pocket watch was me.

Above, muffled by distance and woodwork, I heard the orchestra practicing in short, unpredictable bursts. Discordant notes seeped through the building and into my bones.

Walking to the Stage Door to test the bolt, I passed the dressing room door, but could hear no voices within. Christophe’s chalky pallor matched my own.

I heard a clatter of footsteps from the dark. I caught a rake of a man by the wrist and asked his name. He said, “Rennedon.” He stuttered that he had to give Madame her fifteen-minute call. I told him to do it quickly and go.

When he came a second time he looked frightened of me and retreated a step or two. He held up the five fingers of one hand. I jerked my head with approval. He rapped on the door and delivered his message.

“Five minutes on stage, Madame Chanaud!”

Again, I heard no voices from within.

I wondered whether the two were talking in the dressing room or sitting in silence, Edgar Allan Poe and his new dark maiden, the uncanny mirror of his beloved. He could not save his sick wife, and now another young woman played a dying consumptive. Could she be saved? And if not, if he failed, if his old enemy, Death, took her, as well…

The strings, having tuned up, fell into a chasm of silence.

At that point my concern became acute. Minutes had elapsed since the rake-like man had rattled off. Why did Marie-Claire not emerge? Surely she would be late for her all-important entrance. What was delaying her? It was then that I heard, as if in answer to my unspoken query, the loud bang! of the Stage Door.

I spun round. Saw it swing back into place. The chill draft of night hit me. In the same instant, paralyzed, I saw that the bolt had been lifted.

My hand pulled out my flintlock and held it at arm’s-length. My mind was racing. Had they not been speaking because the fiendish assailant was already in the room? Had I been pacing, stupidly, and checking my watch while — God in Heaven, was I already too late?

“Holmes! Holmes!”

Poe’s cry was one of — what?

I ran to the door, pistol outstretched, and kicked it wide—

The sight that confronted me shocked me to my core. Never, in the many cases I have encountered over the years as a consulting detective in London, in Sussex, or on Dartmoor, was I more stricken by utter horror.

Marie-Claire stood facing me, immobile. I recognized the lilac “courtesan” gown worn by Violetta in Act One, the bell-like shape of the crinoline, the tight-fitting lavender bodice with pagoda sleeves buttoned to the pit of the throat in a white collar, the leghorn hat ribboned in silver-gray tilted off her braided sausage curls. Yet it was not the lack of movement that pinned me to the spot, for she stared at me from a face not merely painted with the stark white of greasepaint, but a face that bubbled and collapsed, the hissing of a deadly steam rising not only from the cheeks and withering locks, but from the breast of the bodice itself, swathing the entire head in a pall of vapor.

No sooner had I absorbed the nightmare image than her hands tore the front of the bodice asunder, popping the buttons and ripping away the collar.

Pulling my cuffs over one hand, I reached out to help — but the swing of her arm knocked mine away.

The features were falling asunder. Nose. Chin. One eye, a hollow, slid… Then to my amazement Marie-Claire’s gloved hands — no, gauntleted hands — tore off her face and flung it aside.

Fizzing, it broke apart against the wall and fell to the floor. A plaster of Paris mask made by any of a dozen workshops along the Seine. The wig of sausage curls came off next, hurled after it, sizzling on the floorboards like a cut of beef on a griddle.

The figure hastily disrobed a leather balaclava to reveal a thin mop of snowy white hair. Even the leather, extending as it did over the shoulders, was blackened and burning in patches where the acid had eaten through the clothing, and Poe wasted no time in divesting himself of it, and the thick brown gloves with it. Last to be thrown aside in a heap were the goggles as he stepped out of the hoops of the crinoline cage.

He ran to a bowl of water and up-ended it over his head, shook the water out of his hair and flattened it back with his hands.

“Did you see it? What did you see?”

“Nothing!”

We were in the corridor. I still brandished my pistol. Christophe the doorman looked like a startled sheep.

“Tell Monsieur Bermutier, the policeman, that the Phantom is in the building,” said Poe. “Tell him Monsieur Dupin says the devil has been foiled, but he has escaped underground. It is imperative he send all his men in that direction. All his men. You understand?” The man nodded. “Tell him they must descend to the lake. Immediately! Or he will get away. Go. Go!”

The man shot off. I started to follow him, but Poe caught my arm.

“No. We go this way.”

He swept out of the Stage Door entrance into the dark, not pausing to answer any of the questions rushing through my mind. Not least: if the prima donna was not in the dressing room, where was she? In the hands of a terrible abductor? And if the monster was secreted, as he had just said, in the Opéra, or under it, why on earth were we running away from the place as if our lives depended on it?

As we took to the street I kept up with the detective, an incongruous if not ludicrous sight in his flapping skirts and petticoats. Even with trousers and boots underneath, his long white hair and jagged elbows gave him the appearance of a spirited old maid.

Poe dropped to one knee, and I almost fell over him.

He picked up an object from the ground. A theatrical mask with green feather-like marks, eye holes and a large hooked beak.

“Papa guinea! Onward!” Poe cried, inexplicably. “Keep up with the pig!”

At first I thought that this was some strange colloquial expression in the French vernacular to which I had not previously been exposed, but no. What we had to keep up with was indeed just that — a pig. A very fat, very pink pig, whose curl of a tail and rear end I now could make out wobbling in and out of the shadows cast by the street lamps ahead.

I was convinced I was going mad. No, that I had gone mad. The process was complete and unequivocal. But it was there, in front of me. A pig on a leash, no less, with a man in a peaked cap in tow, keeping up a brisk walking pace with the animal, its ears flapping and its snout rubbing along the pavement like a bloodhound. Poe following — in the billowing dress of a courtesan. And I following him.

On the boulevards people were laughing and drinking in the harsh, false glare of the cafés as if the garish reds and golds of the theater were bleeding out after us. The signs were phosphorescent — names like La Barbarie, Sans Soleil, or La Bataille — the eerie glow of absinthe and folly, of love affairs not yet begun and long ended. And not a single soul batted an eyelid at three men hastening past, one at least half dressed in ladies garments, with a pig at the end of a rope.

Then I glimpsed him.

The dwarf!

Far ahead, almost out of sight. Scurrying along low to the ground, head down, swathed in a scarlet hood and cape. And soon just that, a swirl of red, lost into the crepuscular haze as the Boulevard des Italiens became the Rue St. Marc.

Soon we had left the bright lights of the cafés behind, and lost sight of the hooded bloodstain to whom we were giving chase. Solitary women now lingered in the shadows, hands extending for money, but we hurried past them, interested only in where this path, and this misshapen gnome, clothed in his Red Death cowl, was taking us, and if, in some nether-region of Poe’s “ratiocination,” this insanity — this unparalleled absurdity— made sense.

Whatever trail the beast was following, and clearly the scent was still in its nostrils, took us to the grim environs of the Rue St. Denis of notorious repute, den of vice since medieval times, and the expectation of such did not fall short. Almost every doorway was adorned with a streetwalker showing a leg or sometimes a bare, grubby breast to advertise her wares, with the shamelessness of the desperate and misbegotten. I shuddered at the rough brush-strokes of rouge that were intended to rouse passion, but instead only invoked, to this young observer at least, an overwhelming disgust, tinged with pity. But these specimens — variously termed comediennes, lorettes, grisettes, les codettes, or (most dismissively of all) les horizontals—did not crave my pity and likely would have bitten my fingers off if I had offered a helping hand.

Our four-legged companion, moving at great speed, spurred only by the occasional “Allez!” or “Vite!” from its master, led us via a murky alleyway to the Rue Blondel.

Its snout dragged us to a doorway with red faience tiles on its façade. Snorting, it tugged the man in the peaked cap through into an ill-lit stairwell, where he was unceremoniously grabbed by a bald, nattering Chinaman with rolled up sleeves and the girth of a pannier horse. Poe thrust his arm against the ogre’s chest, but one might as well have tried to keep a mastiff at bay with a pipe cleaner. The thug pawed it away effortlessly, and was about to punch him in the nose and quite possibly take the head from his shoulders in the process when, registering that his assailant wore a flouncy pastel-colored dress, he simply burst into laughter. The hearty guffaw was cut short when the barrel of my pistol made a cold circle against his temple.

A wrought-iron staircase led upward.

The pig was first up it. The man second. Poe third. “Don’t touch it!” And I came close after, backward, making sure I did not step on the empty bottle of sulfuric acid lying there, still hissing. I kept the oriental giant in my sights the whole way. Even with his animal intellect he knew better than to follow, and I fear I would have put a bullet in him with not a vast amount of provocation.

I pulled aside a red curtain sticky with grime and heard screams ahead. Shrill, girlish screams, and those of men — and of a dwarf, for all I knew.

A cigar-smoking man hastened to pull up his trousers, probably convinced I was a policeman. He stood with his hands in the air and just as quickly his trousers fell.

In another room a fat woman, suddenly shrieking as she saw me, rolled her doughy frame off the bed, revealing a skinny old man secreted in the pillows under her.

My cheeks did not blush so much as burn.

As I followed Poe and pig, each doorway I passed was a window into debauchery. If this was where so-called gentlemen came for their treats, then their play was beyond anything I would have credited, had I not seen it with my own eyes. My education with Poe had been extensive, but this was tantamount to setting foot on another world — not unlike his fantastical account of a trip to the moon.

Pistol in hand, I gaped into unexpectedly grand, if faded, salons with walls adorned with voluptuous nymphs lolling on clouds and men — or gods — endowed with the envy of Priapus. Through another open door I saw a man biting the cloth off sumptuous bosoms while a second woman wore a strapped-on phallus in lurid pink. Then there were the tableaux vivants—the Crazed Nun, The Naval Officer’s Homecoming, The Naughtiest Boy in School — which added theatricality to ardor, setting copulation and flagellation in a variety of frankly highly unlikely settings for the purpose of pepping up the proceedings. I will not dwell on the proliferation of nakedness or the contortions exhibited, but will remark only that the excitement of the physical organs of both genders was not only evident, but in the main exposed to view with little attempt to recover dignity, or any semblance of embarrassment.

So this was the dwarf’s abode? One of the maisons d’abattage or “slaughterhouses” I had heard about, where a man took a number and waited in line for a woman who had up to sixty passes a day? Where adulterers from the mansions of the Champs-Élysées, or off-duty soldiers with a franc in their pocket came to roll their clothes into a ball?

A door slammed and the pig squealed. I elbowed past a square-shouldered female sucking an opium pipe.

Ahead of me, the man in the peaked cap was yanking the leash so hard that the pig was standing on two legs, its corkscrew tail vibrating excitedly. He slapped its ears as if admonishing a disobedient infant. In front of him, Poe was holding open a door, the room beyond him thick with darkness.

I snatched a candle from the pipe smoker. Holding it aloft, I joined my friend, who had now lowered to his knees. I shone it over his shoulder. Its glow made a halo of his cloud-white hair, and fell beyond, picking out a shape in the far corner of the room.

A shape I immediately recognized as the dwarf’s all-encompassing scarlet cape. A tiny human being was under it, knees tucked up to its chest, trembling, its lungs clearly gasping for air after the exertion of running through the streets, and a kind of throaty sobbing emitting from it in bursts. As my candle entered the room, the hooded head sunk down so that its face was even more completely hidden in shadow.

Poe crept toward the huddled figure on his hands and knees.

I caught his shoulder with my free hand. “Be careful. He might be armed.” I drew my dueling pistol, but he placed a hand on the barrel and pushed it away.

“Stand back,” he whispered. “As far back as possible.”

Reluctantly, I obeyed. The candle went with me, and the pistol went back in my coat.

The retreating amber glow threw Poe’s shadow longer over the filthy floorboards and onto a grim, stripped bed, its mattress a continent of stains and mildew. The shape, the scarlet bundle, sat sandwiched between it and the peeling wall. The dwarf did not move as Poe moved closer. It merely continued to shudder.

My hand slid into my waistcoat and derived some small comfort from the butt of the Denix.

He moved closer still. I wished I could be sure that this wasn’t some damn foolish action of a madman I was watching. The death — the second and final death of Edgar Allan Poe, more than worthy of his outlandish fiction: at the hands of a maniac dwarf.

“Don’t be frightened.” The master of the macabre spoke so softly now I could hardly hear him. “We are not here to harm you…”

He rested back on his heels and reached out one hand. A slender hand, a womanly hand, with the long fingers of a pianist. Or so he was told by a gypsy reading palms in Philadelphia.

My finger dug down for the trigger.

I expected the dwarf to galvanize as the hand grew closer, but it did not. I expected the Phantom to jump forward, to grab, to bite, to resist, to run in sudden desperation to escape — but it did none of these things. Somehow satiated, repentant, inactive, or resigned to its fate, it only breathed. And its breath was a thin kind of mewling.

I imagined the grotesque mockery of human physiognomy that would be revealed under the hood, but what I did not— could not — imagine was that, when it was pulled back, the face was that of a little girl no more than eleven years of age.

The gentle mewling continued as she rocked back and forth, the candlelight picking out in silver the pearls of tears coursing down her pretty cheeks as I stepped into the room.

When we left the building at dawn a battalion of street sweepers had begun their daily grind, moving as a mechanical phalanx down the width of the cobbles, brooms sweeping the dirt in front of them in semicircles, pushing all the rubbish into the gutter with the same rhythmic motion of reapers in the field. We saw them on every road on our way home, working like puppets. But all I could think of was the dingy room that lit up as I walked in to it, a faded sampler and a map of the world on the walls, furnished as it was with a rocking-horse, an abacus, a wooden Noah’s Ark, and a family of china-headed dolls, in a vile parody of a nursery.

“The pig is a much maligned species.” Poe took a curl of sugared orange peel from the tray proffered by Le Bon and dropped it into his open mouth, the sunlight from the window making it a curling sliver of gold. “Just because it lives in its own feces, people presume it is dirty. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact it is very clean, and highly intelligent. More intelligent than a dog, and it has a more acute sense of smell than a dog, which is why I have undertaken experiments in their relative use to the police. Unfortunately they are not as loyal and obedient as dogs, but once on track are far more reliable than an average black-and-tan Beauceron — though perhaps not as manly at a law enforcer’s heel. However, because of their poor eyesight they can detect food with astonishing precision: the reason why for centuries they have been employed to forage for truffles up to three feet underground. The female is used because the smell resembles the male reproductive organs. Dogs, I’ve found, are, by and large, not sexually excited by fungus.”

“Madame Lop-Lop…” I elaborated for the benefit of Guédiguian, who perched his coffee cup on the arm of his chair as I added cream to mine.

“Madame Lop-Lop indeed.” Poe sipped his own. “She was used to great effect in uncovering explosives being shipped via Marseilles by a gang of anarchists. They can be trained, you see. In this case, with a reward of food over several weeks, trained to sniff out explosives. Soon afterward she retired, as did Colonel Follenvie, who received a bullet in the leg and took on the old sow as a pet. But her usefulness as a bloodhound was proven. The best snout in Paris. Reason enough to lure her out of retirement for one last case. I devised a concoction of chemicals, tactile enough to stick to the sole of a shoe. Then I knew we could trace our Phantom wherever he, or she, fled…”

Guédiguian shook his black locks with their sheen of macassar oil. Poe’s racing intellect and breathless reasoning often left people bewildered bystanders. Today was no exception.

“There were distractions. There always are. The wasteful detritus of any investigation. The tenor Loubatierre being absent and refusing to give an explanation: that confounded me until I had Le Bon follow him, and found he was visiting his ailing father at the mad house in Bicetre. He simply wished to keep the stigma of insanity in his family a private affair. The other being the dramaturge Beckstein’s unrequited love for Madame Chanaud. It was he who sent the mysterious flowers with no card: camellias in symbolic celebration of her role on stage. On our first visit to the theater I noted he wore a pale pink camellia flower in his buttonhole — Lady Hume’s Blush, if I’m not mistaken — a secret signal to our ingénue that he was in love with her. If she did but care, or even notice…

“Anyway, unimportant! The crucial fact, as Holmes now knows, was Marie-Claire saying that the intruder’s face was level with her shoulder. Common sense dictated that only three possibilities existed: the figure was on its knees (unlikely in the extreme); it was a dwarf (which I considered highly fanciful); or else it was a child. From her description I had no doubt the infiltrator wore the traditional mask of Papageno the bird-catcher, birdlike itself. Confirmed when we were told the name of the previous production at the Garnier: The Magic Flute.

“The problem of the bolt on the Stage Door then presented itself. Yes, a wire from outside poked through the crack could yank up the bolt to allow entry — any pickpocket in Pigalle could show you that trick in five minutes — but why and how was the bolt shut immediately afterwards? At that stage I could not dismiss the notion that Christophe might be an accomplice. Which is why I could not tell you, my dear Holmes, of my plan on opening night. Your most minute gesture or reaction might have betrayed to the doorman the fact that the prima donna was not in her dressing room, and as a direct result our elusive Phantom may have been alerted and the chance of capture jeopardized.” Poe saw my displeasure. I could not disguise it. “Do not sulk. You thereby give the evidence that my decision was correct. It is not a fault, my good friend, but an observation and an accurate one: you wear your heart on your sleeve, and could no easier lie or deceive than you could remove the beating heart of a starving orphan. Where was I?”

“The bolt,” said Guédiguian. “Which was locked.”

“Which was locked because Christophe locked it. The man had not seen the Fantôme enter or leave — or rather he did see it leave, in that he saw the door open and close. Mystified, and thinking he would be blamed for being inattentive when the screams went up, he simply threw the bolt himself and claimed, because he had to, that the door had been closed the whole time. Self-protection being the most powerful of motives.

“My plan then was simplicity itself. The first priority was to remove Madame Chanaud from any possibility of danger. To that end I arranged that she be secreted in your office with two armed guards on opening night. I then went to a saddler to acquire protective clothing, impenetrable to the acid, and a plaster mask, lest the perpetrator see me in the mirror.

“That the criminal was a child I was certain, but a child is not a natural aggressor, it is a natural victim. What was the catalyst for such monstrous acts as these? I needed to know and my fear was that the clod-hopping police force would get in the way. It was imperative to misdirect them, and so I invented the ruse of the underground ‘lake’—a fabrication. The most cursory investigation into the building of the Opéra revealed that when Garnier first cleared the ground, water constantly bubbled up from the swamp below. All attempts to pump the site dry failed miserably. Wells were sunk, eight steam pumps were put into operation, to no avail. The only solution was to construct an enormous concrete tank, called the cuve, to relieve the pressure of the external groundwater and stop any of it rising up through the foundations. But there is no lake, no labyrinth—”

“And no Phantom,” I added. “Just an insane and frightened child.”

“Do you want cream?” Poe addressed our guest. “Sometimes the bitterness of black is too much for a person to take. I confess to having no such qualm. It’s the sweetness that I often cannot take. The universe is black. Blackness is reality. It’s a flavor I prefer untarnished.”

I had no idea if he thought he was being amusing, but Guédiguian gave a polite smile as if he was.

“Well, the main thing is, thanks to you and Monsieur Holmes, Madame Chanaud sang Violetta on opening night.”

“So I believe,” said Poe. “That was the precise intention.”

“And I have to say she was magnificent.” Guédiguian puffed his chest. “You can never be sure with the claque, but the whole of Paris is enraptured by her. I’ve never seen a success like it. She said to tell you her dream had come true after all. And to say when she sang her final aria, Monsieur Dupin, she sang it for you.”

Poe tilted his head in the most miniscule acknowledgment, his eyes a little shinier than they were before. He shifted in his chair and examined his cuffs.

“I feel I have endured an earthquake, or a volcano,” said Guédiguian, standing. “I felt at times the lava might consume me. But now all is well. The threat has passed. The mystery is solved. And what a mystery! It remains only for me to thank you for saving my business.” He extended a hand to Poe, but the writer only stared at it.

“A pity I cannot save your soul, monsieur.”

The opera director took a faltering step backward.

“Monsieur Guédiguian, if I were truly covering my tracks, I should enquire as to the motive for the crime. That would be the thought and action of an innocent man. Though I doubt you would know too intimately the actions of an innocent man, would you?”

Guédiguian retreated to his seat, ashen, and sat with his hands between his knees. “I swear. It is not—not what you imagine…”

“I am not prepared to imagine, monsieur.” Poe stood and buttoned his jacket. “I am only prepared to know. And I know I am right in thinking you have bedded both Madame Jolivet and Marie-Claire Chanaud, her former understudy. As well as many singers before them, probably. Perhaps they see it as no less than their duty, and you as no more than your privilege.”

“Please…” Guédiguian began sweating profusely and took out a handkerchief to stem the tide.

“‘Please’? It is not a question of please…” Poe refused to back off. “What I also know is that you regularly frequented the premises of Madame Floch on the Rue Blondel, known as ‘Tante Berthe’ to her girls. I’m afraid she was very illuminating when I said she might be implicated in some exceedingly violent crimes. Extremely eloquent and forthcoming.”

“Don’t…” The opera manager cringed, holding his skull in torment. I could only stare as the Master rounded on him, unabated.

“She would not normally divulge the names of her clientele, but for me she made an exception. She said you were amongst that fine coterie of men who have certain proclivities. That is, an insatiable longing for young flesh. To use the untouched and the unknowing for your gratification and—”

Guédiguian shot to his feet. “You can prove none of this! This is preposterous! I am not listening to another word! Who said such—?”

“I heard it from the lips of a child.”

Guédiguian stammered. “A child? What child?”

“The child whose bed you took, whose chastity you took, whose childhood you took, for the price of a few francs.”

Afraid the opera manager might become aggressive, I got up and stood between them, holding him by the upper arms. He barely made a show to get past me as soon as he saw in my eyes that everything Monsieur Dupin the detective knew, I knew. I think he saw the plain disgust there. As Poe had said earlier, I was fairly inept at masking my emotions. And didn’t care if he did see.

“I do not sit in moral judgment. That is between you and your Maker, if you are foolish enough to believe in one.” Poe stood at the window, the profile of his supercilious nose against the sunlit panes. “Over weeks and months you visited this child. You knew her in every carnal and intimate fashion. Sometimes you took a toy or doll. She didn’t understand she was the merest plaything to you, an object to satisfy your lust. To her, you became special. She looked forward to your visits. I will not say you hurt her, though many others did. On the contrary, perhaps you were the first to show her the illusion of love. Perhaps that was your downfall. You thought nothing of her, but she loved you. And, in time, came to be sad when you left, and one afternoon followed you.

“That day, having crept into the opera house, invisible, she espied you with Madame Jolivet in all her finery. A beautiful woman adored by the gentleman she thought was hers. She thought, ‘Why not me? Would he truly love me if not for her?’ The hatred and envy festered in her. She was an orphan. She had not known love, and all her young life had only known those who wanted to use her as a commodity. She saw prettiness and wanted to make it ugly. She wanted those bright, successful women who lit up the stage, and your life, to feel as mutilated and destroyed as she herself was by the countless men who passed through her room. She wanted—”

“Stop!” Guédiguian wrapped his arms around his head. “Stop! In the name of Heaven and all its saints — must you torture me? I am not a criminal!”

“You took what was not yours.”

“As a hundred men do in Paris every day!” He scowled. “And worse!”

“I say again: your morality, or lack of it, does not interest me. You can discuss that with a priest, or some other ne’er-do-well. I am, however, interested in your culpability. In respect of your… addiction — and I am far from able to pronounce on anyone’s addiction to anything — setting in train the events that have generated such pain and anguish.”

“Then I am culpable. There. I have said it. Could I have known? No! Could I have stopped it, had I known — perhaps! But I did not know! I. Did. Not. Know! How could I? She—”

“Say her name.”

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“What was her name?”

Guédiguian crumbled. His shoulders heaved and he let out a strangled moan. I helped him to his chair. He slumped in it like a sack.

“Édith.”

“Édith Dufranoux,” said Poe. “She came with it, according to Madame Floch. But if you ask me, her real name, like her true family, is lost on the winds of time.”

Guédiguian wiped a slime of spittle from his lower lip. His eyes could no longer meet ours. I wished I felt an ounce of pity for him.

“You see, monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Holmes,” said Poe. “They do not all wear wolf skins. Some wear the utmost fashion in respectability. You do not need to open the covers of a book of horror stories by Poe. You need only look in the mirrors of the Opéra Garnier.”

“You are not privy to my mind, Dupin,” Guédiguian spat.

“I very nearly am. Do not be sure about that. I am the Man of the Crowd. I walk in many shoes. That is my business. To understand pure logic one must understand its opposite, perversion, when pure instinct is unleashed, unrestrained. The tragedy is, you could not have known the harvest your libidinous appetite would reap.” Poe’s words took on a melancholy tone as he stared out of the window at a passing world blissfully unaware of the dark, impish secrets we discussed. “You were haunted by the phantom of all kisses: obsessive love.”

The opera manager covered his face with his hands.

“What will happen to her? The police…”

“The police know nothing,” said Poe. “About you, or about her. As far as Bermutier is concerned, the Phantom of the Opéra Garnier escaped from their clutches, disappearing forever. A mystery unsolved. I bade him persuade his gendarmes not to divulge any details of the crime to the presse, but that may be a vain hope that some juice does not seep out of the apple barrel…

“As for the girl, earlier this morning I took her to a woman I know at the Hôtel Dieu, the last bastion of ‘La Couche,’ as it is known, the old Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés created as a refuge for the abandoned waifs of the city, amongst other things to prevent them being purposefully maimed and sold as beggars. I have no idea whether she has a chance there of a ‘proper’ or ‘decent’ future — whatever that is. She may end up a wastrel or die of cold and hunger on the streets, or drowned in the sewers, or be sold to peddlers and mountebanks for money-making purposes. Or become an opera singer. I can only say that for now she has food and water, the prospect of friends and even adults who do not despise her, and schooling in the ways of Christianity. For a while, at least, she will be safe. Beyond that, her life is her own.”

“Can I see her?”

“If you do, I will see to it that everyone in Paris knows what I know.”

The opera manager choked and swallowed. “Did she — did she say anything about me?”

Poe glared at the man. “She asked if she would go to the guillotine for her crimes. She said she wouldn’t mind if she did. She said she had no fear of dying because she was dead already.”

Guédiguian closed his eyes. I cannot remember clearly what he said after that, but he was a man diminished, and the conversation over. In a fatuous gesture to make amends, he proposed, mumbling and almost incoherent, that he would donate some of the opera’s profits to the poor, to the workhouse, perhaps expecting us to cry “Bravo!” Poe greeted it with the silent disdain it deserved, and I think thereafter Guédiguian found it difficult to sit much longer in our presence. It took every atom of politeness I could muster to shake his hand, but for all his insistence that he had no morality, Poe did not.

I attempted to give back the gift he had brought us — people often did, as C. Auguste Dupin accepted no fee for his services— but Guédiguian showed me his palms. He did not want it and was now eager to go. When the door closed after him I was left with it in my hands.

“Stradivarius,” Poe commented. “You should take it up. There is a power in music ‘to soothe a savage breast.’”

He took the rolled-up play bill Guédiguian had brought advertising La Traviata—a memento of our adventure, he had said — unfurled it briefly, glimpsing the name of Marie-Claire Chanaud as Violetta, then placed it next to the violin case.

“You knew it was a child all along,” I said, gazing into the fire to stop my upset from showing. “Poe, I am constantly amazed at your capacity for casual cruelty. You were prepared for me to… to ridicule myself by talk of a… a maniac dwarf?”

“To feel ridiculous is a very small price to pay, my dear Holmes. It was necessary for you to appear to deduce that fact convincingly in order to send Bermutier on a hunt for the proverbial wild goose. Before condemning a child to the punitive forces of law and order, I needed to know why it had chosen such vehement and intractable actions.”

“Then you see yourself above the law?”

“Not above. Parallel to. Let us debate this another day. Today I find it tiresome. Let us just say I wanted the whole picture to be complete. I am sorry I allowed you to feel foolish—je suis desolé!—but it was to that end, I promise. I would never be cruel unless it was for the greater good. Well, almost never.” And my anger could almost never sustain itself when I saw that dark twinkle in his eye.

Without calling Le Bon, he fetched our coats from their pegs.

“Will he live with his shame?” I asked, inserting my arms in the one he held up for me.

“Of course he will,” said Poe, doing the same in reverse.

“I shall never be able to listen to opera again, after this vile business.”

“Crime is vile in all its manifestations. Mysteries abound. We are adrift in an ocean of unknowing. The only respite is to solve them. And until we conquer the great question of non-dimensional creation, the seeking of those solutions will be the essence and eternal vexation of Man. Come, let us go to the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, to the Restaurant Morot, and talk about the rigors of decapitation. There’s a murder in Le Figaro today and I’m convinced they have the wrong man. You remember? With its dark fittings and the hat racks above the tables it’s like dining in a railway carriage. Vidal will always find a table for me, and he serves the best pig’s ears in Paris. You can drink, and I shall watch.”

“Amontillado?”

“Please. That is beneath you.”

He took my arm. His own was thin. He was a skeleton in a suit by sunlight. It brings a tear to my eye now, but I hardly noticed then a frailty that was increasing with the passing years. Years all too few.

We were, of course, too late. Out of gossip and half-truths the myth was born. If accidents happened at the theater, the stage hands would still ascribe it to their Fantôme. He had escaped, but not into the non-existent lake — into stories. Descending with his disfigured face and mask to his watery home. And coming to haunt us from the pages of a book, and the flickering screen.

In the months that followed we had other cases, including that of an extraordinary patient of Dr. Charcot at Salpêtrière, the “Gates of Hell” affair, and the spirit photography of Monsieur Boguet, but none pierced my heart quite as much as the tale of Olivier Guédiguian, whose mask disguised a monster, and little Édith Dufranoux, the true Phantom of the Opéra de Paris.