If the opera didn’t start, it would be enough for Charlie just to sit here and admire the theatre of Palais Garnier. Above her, a huge domed ceiling swirled with painted angels, cupids and lovers, a giant chandelier dripping from the peak. The curve of the balcony was trimmed with ornate gold paint, and ribbons of red velvet chairs marched in neat arcs all the way down to the stage, where burgundy curtains remained shut, concealing the settings behind.
Violet handed Charlie the gilded program that was sitting on the seat and said, ‘Don’t make me read this. Please tell me this isn’t a three-act musical about a killer.’
‘Opera!’ hissed Charlie as she elbowed her friend in the ribs and studied the program to paraphrase it in English. ‘This is Dukas’s first opera, based on the French fairytale where Bluebeard’s sixth wife finds and liberates her predecessors, who were hidden in the castle’s dungeon.’
‘By Bluebeard, presumably?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought Bluebeard was a monster. Didn’t he kill all his wives?’
‘Well, for dramatic effect, they are alive in the opera, as obviously they play some part when Ariane releases them.’
‘Don’t spoil it for me!’ Violet put her hands over her ears in protest.
‘Hardly. It’s one of the most famous fairytales of all time.’
‘I know,’ replied Violet. ‘French kids have that jumpy song they do on the footpaths on the way to school. It’s creepy.’
‘It is creepy,’ agreed Aleksandr. ‘People have a morbid fascination with death.’ He shivered. ‘After death, monsters seem to have a life they don’t deserve. Their myth romanticises the horror.’
Charlie nodded and studied her friend, his handsome aquiline nose, his excellent posture and kind, sparkling eyes. Charlie knew Aleksandr had lost his parents when he was just a little child in Russia. She tried to imagine how he’d lived his days with poverty and trauma threaded just under his skin. How a small, orphaned, Russian boy had become the quiet darling of Paris society. The young boy who’d grown up with his aunts and grandmother in a concrete shell now spent his days surrounded by colour, texture and some of the most powerful women in the world. Charlie had the feeling those women loved Aleksandr for his kindness and discretion—the way he made them feel—rather than just his spectacular gowns.
She ran her hands under her bust and over her hips and felt all the darts and seams in the dress. Secret folds that tick-tacked together to make her feel powerful. Womanly. Beautiful.
She smiled at Aleksandr and replied, ‘We make monsters into fairytales to make them palatable. To digest the horror. We come to watch this opera as we know we will feel a sense of catharsisat the conclusion of Act Three. The audience walks away sated. Justice has been served. Ariane has all the agency in this story—not her captor Bluebeard.’
‘Hear, hear.’ Violet slapped her leg in support.
‘If only it was so simple,’ said Charlie, ‘to write that happy ending in real life. So often over the years in the newspaper I’ve written about women who’ve had their freedom stripped from them. Monsters who’ve beaten them … and far worse.
‘We grow up with all these fairytales with princes … But you know sometimes, they turn out to be a frog in real life,’ said Charlie as her voice caught in her throat. Her own marriage had been a dizzy coupling that led to a hasty marriage that she’d thrown herself into, believing the fairytale with every piece of her heart. She’d emerged broken in ways she still didn’t understand … and it was taking all of Paris’s magic to put her back together again. She ran her fingers over her dress as though it were a talisman as she gathered her thoughts.
‘Some women don’t get an ending at all,’ Charlie whispered as her disappointment and guilt over Maisy Bell’s failed ransom drop buzzed in her veins.
‘I know things end badly for some women.’ Violet squeezed Charlie’s knee. ‘But we are all lucky that you are here, writing the stories that matter. I know the Maisy Bell story is unfinished … but at least you gave her a voice when all the men who should have been fighting for her were looking the other way.’
‘It doesn’t feel like enough. There must be more to Maisy’s story. She doesn’t deserve for it to end in a park with a scribbled note and an anonymous errand boy.’ Charlie’s chest tightened as she thought of the picture of young Maisy Bell she’d tacked to the wall in her office cubicle.Missing.
Inspecteur Bernard had raised the possibility with a weeping Clementine Bell that the ransom note and the disappearance of Maisy may be two different cases. Perhaps the ransom note was from a couple of chancers who had somehow caught wind of a missing heiress and saw a way to make a quick 5000 francs. But then they got spooked by all the people obviously watching Clementine Bell. Five thousand francs was not enough of a lure for a gaol sentence.
Both police officers still believed—at least in part—that Maisy Bell was a lovestruck tourist. They romanticised her as a giddy young girl with her head turned by an older lover. A young woman craving adventure, who broke away from her overbearing aunt. A young woman whose skirt was too short. Who was asking for the wrong kind of attention. As if the length of her skirt was the problem, not the fact that men felt the need—believed they deserved—to have a say in what a suitable skirt length was.
A missing foreigner. A short skirt. An inexperienced woman who was dizzy with the sophistication of Paris.
That’s not the impression Charlie had of Maisy Bell. From Charlie’s view of Maisy at the Ritz, the woman had self-possession.She was clearly well educated, articulate and stylish, and she’d dreamed of becoming an actress. Maisy had gumption.
Where was she now? She studied the crowd for Maisy’s face, to no avail.
Charlie brought her fingers to her lips as the orchestra played the first chords, cymbals clashed and the curtains started to part. Ripples of excitement pulsed along the curved rows of seats from the stage right through to the balconies. As the music soared and the librettos began, Charlie lost herself in the music. In the story. Sometimes the music was energetic and jittery, at other times, it was so haunting and ethereal she could feel it in her bones.
As Bluebeard raged and threw himself across the stage, she saw that behind the monster was loneliness. Ariane was vulnerable, vengeful and her power gathered force along with the music in each act. Secrets were stolen, vulnerabilities exposed, jewels dangled and teased. Dukas’s opera felt raw and powerful.
At one poignant moment in the third act, when the violins were playing a particularly dark, soulful piece, Charlie stole a glance at Aleksandr and Violet, who were sharing a look so intimate it made her stomach flip and she had to turn her head the other way.
When she’d steadied herself, Charlie resumed looking at her dear friends under the cover of darkness. She wondered at their love story, which had evolved from casual lovers to business partners, to this intimate shape she wasn’t sure even they themselves saw yet. It’s amazing the secrets you could keep from others, but also yourself.
After the applause died down, Charlie sank back in her burgundy velvet seat and sighed as the image of Clementine Bell’s crumpled face on the park bench drifted through her mind. ‘I can’t stop thinking about Maisy Bell. The ransom drop was a farce.’