Free Angels of Music by Kim Newman Page B

to prosecute Hohner on other charges… leaving seven women, at least, unavenged. La Marmoset reckoned the family of one of his other victims must have decided on a point of honour that he should pay for them too.
    On the same principle, La Marmoset – present in the habit of a nun – made a show of drawing a pistol and firing in the direction of the perch from which the fatal shot had come. The response was a bullet in the dirt at her feet.
    It was like one of those duels where the parties have thought better of some silly quarrel and choose to discharge in the air then share breakfast. Both women could have made their shots tell.
    Neither Queen of Detectives nor Mistress of Assassins felt a need to take the matter further. The inquest was less a formality than usual. The executioner complained of blown-out brains spattered all over his nice shiny blade. The Sûreté wittered about tracking the killer’s client but didn’t put in any work on the case.
    Justice had been served.
    The Persian left the two new Angels alone together, though both assumed Erik was listening.
    Sophy did not look like an assassin, which was among the reasons why she was a very good one. She had thick, dark hair and a way of arranging herself side-on to present a slender target. She could turn up an inner light that made her a centre of attraction in any room, and fade it down to become all but invisible. An enviable knack – to let people see but not notice you. La Marmoset usually had to employ the more tiresome, limited method of wearing a dress and hat which matched the wallpaper.
    La Marmoset raised her veil to show her unadorned face. Sophy looked at her, from several angles, and nodded.
    ‘Nice,’ she said, ‘but it isn’t you.’
    La Marmoset knew what the other woman meant and wasn’t offended.
    The matter of Mr Calhoun was raised.
    ‘Your husband, you…?’ The Greek woman made a twisting gesture with her hands and a
kkkrrkkk
sound at the back of her throat.
    Knowing she needed Sophy’s trust, La Marmoset gave a single nod.
    ‘Good,’ said Sophy. ‘Me also. He was no husband, my Harry Latimer, but… you know how such things happen.’
    La Marmoset did.
    ‘Your Mr Calhoun – justice was served?’
    La Marmoset thought about it.
    What had separated her from a policeman or an examining magistrate was that justice and law were beside the point. As a detective, she was interested in truth alone. What was done with truth was up to others. It had not been her decision to prosecute Frederick Hohner only for the crime which could easily be proven against him.
    With Mr Calhoun, that was changing. She had tried and convicted and carried out the sentence herself.
    ‘A court might not think it, but… yes. Justice was served.’
    ‘Good. With Kemp and Latimer, also. We are friends now.’
    The women embraced.
    Both had crossed lines, from victim to avenger, from detective to (she admitted) murderess. Sophy had become more herself – indeed,
only
herself – after being taken for granted by men who presumed on her. They hadn’t noticed Sophy in the corner as they argued about arrangements concerning her without consulting her. Even Paul Kratides didn’t think to ask his sister whether their money was more important to her than his life. How surprised had Latimer and Kemp been to wake up with knives twisting in their bellies? Did they even realise who was ending their wicked lives?
    With less clear-cut right on her side in the matter of Mr Calhoun, La Marmoset had become no one… though she saw her friend, in tiny moments of inaction, envied her fluid identity, her ability to take off one mask and put on another. For Sophy, there was too little joy in justice. The Opera Ghost Agency, which at least required her to do things other than kill people, was drawing her out of the numbed shock she still felt at her brother’s murder.
    La Marmoset and Sophy had worked together on complicated matters and, at the conclusion of every case,