Angels of Music Read Free

enough to conceal occasional ignorance by chiming in with musical giggles. Her chief trait was adorability, and foolish fellows were already composing remarkably poor sonnets about the smallness of her nose with ambitions towards epic verse on the subject of the rest of her anatomy. Trilby was older than the others, though no one would ever tell to look at her. Her greater experience of the artistic life inclined her to be protective of her baby sisters. Foolish fellows in her presence tended to be struck dumb, as if she were a vision at Lourdes. Sometimes, a glazed look came into her eyes, and she seemed a different, more ethereal, slightly frightening person.
    Irene, in years the youngest, was a harder nut to crack, and men thought her handsome rather than pretty, as dangerous as alluring. She put it about that she fled her homeland after knifing a travelling preacher for whom she had been shilling. It was considerably more complicated than that. She often imagined returning to New York on the arm of one of the crowned heads she had seen in the rotogravure. In her copy-book, she had already designed an Adler coat of arms – an American eagle, beak deep in the side of a screaming naked Prometheus. A foolish fellow who stepped out with her tended to find some unknown
apache
had lifted their note-case, snuff-box, cuff-links and watch during the course of a delightful evening with a disappointing curtain.
    ‘It is a matter of a man and his wife which has been brought before us,’ announced Erik. ‘The man of some distinction, the woman an unknown.’
    The Persian undid the ribbon on a large wallet, and slid out clippings from the popular press, a wedding brochure, photographic plates and other documents. These were passed among the girls.
    Some excitement was expressed at a reproduced portrait of a handsome fellow in the uniform of a brigadier of the armies of the late Emperor. There was cooing of admiration for a curly moustache and upright sabre. With a touch of malice, the Persian handed over a more recent likeness, in which the golden boy was all but unrecognisable. These days, the soldier was an enormous, shaggy-browed, weathered hulk, a pudding of flesh decorated with innumerable medals.
    ‘You recognise Étienne Gérard, retired Grand Marshal of France, still reckoned one of our most influential citizens,’ said Erik. ‘No one is as canny as he when it comes to badgering the right politician to change a procurement policy or effect a strategy of preparedness.’
    ‘He started shouting “the Prussians are coming, the Prussians are coming” just after von Blücher bloodied his nose at Waterloo,’ said Christine. ‘I had an uncle like that.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Trilby, ‘the Prussians really were coming.’
    ‘That doesn’t make the old man any less a booby.’
    ‘You’re behind the times, Chrissy,’ put in Irene. ‘Gérard stopped tooting that particular trumpet a few months back. He’s a changed man since he got hitched to this little social-climber. Now, he’s big on beating swords into ploughshares and insisting the French people have no greater pal than Bismarck.’
    The wedding brochure commemorated the joining-together of Grand Marshal Gérard with his bride, Poupée Francis-Pierre.
    ‘He’s over ninety and she’s what… sixteen?’ said Trilby.
    ‘Precise details about Madame Gérard’s age, background or qualities are hard to come by,’ said Erik. ‘Such information is one objective of our investigation.’
    ‘I heard she was a dancer,’ said Christine, looking at a studio photograph of the bride. ‘Looks like she’s made of porcelain. You’d think she’d
snap
if the old goat so much as touched her.’
    ‘Is she one of
la Présidente
’s dollymops?’ asked Irene. ‘Some addlehead dotards go for that rouge-cheeked widdle girlie act.’
    ‘Madame Gérard is
not
a former ornament of the Salon Sabatier,’ said Erik. ‘Indeed, she is the cause of some consternation among the