Description:
Inside the dim backstage corridors of the Opéra Garnier, Inspector Morel begins to sense that the violinist’s disappearance is more than a cold-footed artist fleeing the spotlight. A strange detail in the dressing room sets the tone for what’s to come.
Chapter 2: A String Left Untuned
Room 3 was colder than the hallway.
The walls were lined with cracked mirrors and half-drawn velvet curtains. A few dressing lights still glowed faintly, buzzing like tired wasps. On the table, among crumpled sheet music and a silver cigarette case, sat an open violin case — empty, but not clean. One of the silk loops inside had snapped, hanging like a cut nerve.
Morel ran his gloved hand along the fabric. “He left in a hurry,” he murmured. “Or someone made sure he did.”
There was no sign of struggle — no overturned chair, no broken glass, no blood. But the air was wrong. Still, heavy, and not with perfume or powder. It smelled like wet leather and sweat, like someone who’d waited too long in silence.
He moved to the desk. The score on top was an original composition — “Nocturne pour une ville morte” — dedicated, in neat ink: “To L. M.”
He paused. His own initials.
Coincidence? Or a message?
A light knock at the door broke his focus.
It was Claire Bresson, the opera’s stage manager — a tall woman in her forties with sharp features and sharper eyes. She held a clipboard like a weapon.
“I told him to take a break,” she said. “He hadn’t slept in two days. Looked like hell. Thought it was nerves.”
“Did he say anything before he disappeared?”
She hesitated. “He said… he’d gotten a letter. No sender. Just a wax seal. Red.”
Morel’s jaw tightened.
Red wax in Paris meant only one thing to him. Intelligence. Or worse.
“Can I see it?”
She shook her head. “He burned it.”
Of course he did, Morel thought. Dead men don’t keep paper trails.
He stepped back, looking once more at the room, the violin case, and the music. Something wasn’t being played yet. A note held in silence. And Morel hated silence — it meant someone else was conducting.