The Performance Begins

Friday came too quickly.

Violet spent Thursday in the darkroom, developing and printing the photographs of Mary Hutchins's and Annie Chapman's death scenes—not for the police, but for herself. Evidence of location, of staging, of the pattern Moreau had established. She printed them carefully, noting every detail, and tucked them into an envelope marked Private.

If things went badly at the theater, if Moreau somehow managed to—

No. She wouldn't think that way.

Thursday evening, Artie helped her prepare Bernie's disguise with even more care than usual. The binding corset pulled tight. The false beard applied with extra spirit gum. Bernie's best suit brushed and pressed. The camera equipment cleaned and checked and checked again.

"You look like a proper professional," Artie said, studying her critically. "Flanahan won't suspect a thing."

"That's rather the point."

"And if Moreau does suspect?"

"Then I'll improvise." Violet—Bernie—checked the false beard one more time in the mirror. The reflection showed a young man, serious and professional, with ink-stained fingers and a photographer's eye. Nothing of Violet visible. Nothing that could give her away.

Except the fear in her eyes. That was all Violet, all woman, all terrified.

She made herself smile at Artie. "I'll be fine. Flanahan will be there. Moreau won't try anything in a crowded theater. I'll photograph the performance, see if I can spot anything incriminating, and get out."

"And if you can't get out?"

Violet touched the charm Madame Helena had given her, now hanging beneath Bernie's shirt where no one could see it. "Then you and Madame Helena will tell Flanahan everything. About Bernie, about my gift, all of it. He'll need to know if..."

She trailed off.

"Don't." Artie's voice was fierce. "Don't you dare talk like that. You're coming back here tonight, safe and whole, and we're going to have tea and you're going to complain about how boring the performance was."

"I hope you're right."

"I'm always right," Artie said, and the joke fell flat between them.

The Grand Guignol Theatre looked different at night.

Gas lamps flickered along the facade, casting dancing shadows that made the building seem almost alive. A queue had formed at the door—well-dressed patrons eager for their evening's entertainment of carefully staged horror. Bernie joined the queue with camera case in hand, trying not to stare at the entrance where Moreau stood greeting arrivals.

He was dressed in evening wear tonight, black coat and white gloves, his dark hair slicked back from his angular face. He moved with easy grace, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the arriving patrons—every inch the gracious host, the cultured artist welcoming guests to his vision.

And beside him, just arriving, was Detective Flanahan.

The detective looked deeply uncomfortable in his formal coat, like a man stuffed into clothes that didn't fit his nature. His blond hair had been combed into submission—barely—and his scarred face bore an expression of grim resignation. When he saw Bernie in the queue, surprise flickered across his features, followed quickly by something that might have been relief.

"Mr. Abrams." Flanahan made his way over, nodding to Moreau as he passed. "Didn't expect to see you here with all the crowd everywhere. Though you did mention photographing the production."

"Aye." Bernie kept her voice gruff, professional. "Good money in theater photography, if you know how to manage the lighting. You're here in official capacity then?"

"More or less. Captain wants eyes on the show; make sure there's no trouble." Flanahan's gaze flicked to Moreau, then back to Bernie. His expression was carefully neutral, but there was a kind of watchfulness to him—the way a good copper looked at any situation that felt slightly off. "Though I'd rather be anywhere else. Never did care for horror shows."

"They're just playacting," Bernie said. "All stage tricks and pig's blood."

"I know." Flanahan's jaw tightened. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."

The queue moved forward. Moreau caught sight of Bernie and his smile widened—genuine pleasure mixed with what seemed like professional excitement.

"Ah, Mr. Abrams! You came. And Detective Flanahan, what an honor to have the Metropolitan Police in attendance." Moreau's accent thickened with his enthusiasm, his hands gesturing expressively as he spoke. "I trust you will both enjoy the performance. We have spared no expense in creating authentic horror. Gothic romance at its finest—passion, tragedy, the sublime terror of the human condition."

"I'm sure," Flanahan said dryly.

"Your ticket, Mr. Abrams." Moreau handed Bernie a slip of paper with a flourish. "Balcony seat, excellent view for photography. Though I must warn you—flash powder during the performance itself may startle the audience. Perhaps save it for after, when the actors can hold position for you?"

"Of course." Bernie accepted the ticket. "I'll be discreet."

"I know you will." Moreau's dark eyes met Violet's with what seemed like genuine warmth. "You appreciate theater, I think. The transformation of raw emotion into art. You'll understand what we're attempting here—to make beauty from darkness, meaning from suffering."

"I'm looking forward to it," Bernie said, and was surprised to find it wasn't entirely a lie. Whatever else Moreau might be, he clearly believed passionately in his work.

Inside, the Grand Guignol's theater proper was a study in red and black. Velvet curtains, lacquered wood, gas lamps turned low to create an atmosphere of anticipation. The seats were filling quickly—society types mixed with slumming gentry, all eager to be shocked and horrified in safety.

Bernie found her balcony seat easily enough. Perfect position for photography, as Moreau had promised—a high-level view of the stage, clear sightlines, and room to set up the tripod. She began unpacking her equipment, very aware of Flanahan sitting below in the orchestra section, his blond head visible even in the dim light.

The lights dimmed further. Conversation died to whispers.

The curtain rose on a set depicting a Victorian drawing room—elegant, richly appointed, but with something subtly wrong about it. The wallpaper's pattern seemed to shift in the gaslight. The portrait over the mantelpiece showed a woman whose painted eyes seemed to follow the audience.

And standing center stage, wearing formal evening dress, was Moreau himself.

"Ladies and gentlemen," his voice carried effortlessly through the theater, rich and compelling. "You are about to witness a tale of beauty and horror, of love and madness. The story of Lord Ashford and his beloved Isabella—a woman who desired perfection above all else, and the man who loved her enough to grant her wish."

An actress entered from stage left—young, pretty, dressed in an elaborate gown of deep crimson. She moved with practiced grace, her gestures theatrical but controlled.

"My lord," she said, her voice carrying the exaggerated emotion of melodrama, "I cannot bear it any longer. Look at me—these hands that age and wither, these eyes that dim with passing years. I am losing my beauty, and with it, your love."

"Never," Moreau purred, moving toward her with the kind of intensity that made the audience lean forward. "My darling Isabella, you are perfection itself. But if it troubles you so—if you truly wish for eternal beauty—then I know a way."

Bernie's hands tightened on the camera. The setup was familiar—too familiar—but the execution was pure gothic romance. This wasn't about surgery or dismemberment. It was about obsessive love, about a man driven to dark arts by his devotion.

The performance continued. Lord Ashford revealed his plan—he would preserve Isabella's beauty forever, but at a terrible cost. She would have to sacrifice her mortality, her humanity, her very soul.

"But you will be beautiful forever," Moreau's character whispered, circling the actress like a devoted supplicant rather than a predator. "Never aging, never fading. A work of art eternal."

The actress—Isabella—agreed with the kind of desperate longing that made the melodrama work. And then came the transformation scene.

The lights shifted, throwing dramatic shadows across the stage. Moreau produced a vial of dark liquid—poison, elixir, blood, the play left it ambiguous—and Isabella drank it with theatrical anguish. She collapsed upon a velvet couch, her body going still, her chest ceasing to rise.

And Lord Ashford wept over her corpse, genuine grief in his performance, before the scene shifted to something stranger.

The set transformed around them—stagehands working with impressive efficiency to replace the drawing room with what looked like a chapel, candlelit and gothic. Isabella's body remained on the couch, now draped with white silk like a funeral bier.

And Moreau began to speak—not to the actress, but to the audience, breaking the fourth wall with unsettling directness.

"You see the paradox, yes? To preserve beauty, we must end life. To keep perfection, we must embrace death. Isabella is more beautiful now than she ever was living—untouchable, unchanging, eternal." He gestured to the actress, still maintaining her death pose with impressive stillness. "I have made her immortal through art. This is not murder—it is transformation. Creation."

The audience shifted uncomfortably. Some looked away. But most remained riveted, caught between horror and fascination.

Bernie, watching through the camera's ground glass, felt her certainty waver.

The play wasn't about surgical removal or collection. It was about preservation through death—keeping a loved one perfect by ensuring they could never change, never age, never become less than ideal. Lord Ashford's love was possessive, obsessive, ultimately destructive, but it was still love.

Was this Moreau revealing his own psychology through art? Or was it just gothic melodrama, the kind of dark romance that had been popular for decades?

The performance continued through a second act showing Lord Ashford's gradual descent into madness, haunted by Isabella's preserved corpse, unable to let her go. The ending was ambiguous—did he join her in death? Did he continue his lonely vigil forever? The curtain fell on Moreau kneeling beside the couch, one hand on the actress's cold cheek, his expression equal parts devotion and despair.

The audience erupted into applause—enthusiastic, slightly scandalized, exactly the reaction Moreau clearly wanted.

Bernie sat frozen in her seat, the camera forgotten beside her.

She'd come expecting confirmation. Expected the play to be a confession, a boastful display of his crimes translated to stage. Instead, she'd gotten a sophisticated gothic romance about the dangers of obsessive love and the human desire to preserve beauty against time's decay.

It could mean everything.

It could mean nothing.

The lights came up for intermission. Bernie descended from the balcony, threading through the crowd of patrons exclaiming over the performance's intensity. Found Flanahan in the lobby, looking thoughtful rather than disturbed.

"Well," the detective said when he saw Bernie, "that was more sophisticated than I expected."

"You were expecting cheap thrills?" Bernie asked.

"Something like that." Flanahan glanced toward the theater doors where Moreau had emerged to accept accolades from his admirers. The director was in his element, gesturing animatedly as he discussed themes of preservation and mortality with a cluster of well-dressed patrons. "He's educated, clearly. That wasn't just playacting—that was someone who understands literature, philosophy."

"Does that make him less likely to be a killer?" Bernie asked carefully.

Flanahan's blue eyes met hers. "Makes him more dangerous if he is one. Intelligence and madness together—that's a lethal combination."

"The play..." Bernie hesitated. "It wasn't what I expected."

"No surgical scenes. No dismemberment." Flanahan's voice dropped low. "Just gothic romance about preserving beauty through death. Which could be innocent inspiration from penny dreadfuls, or..."

"Or his actual philosophy, dressed up as fiction." Bernie finished the thought.

They stood in silence for a moment, watching Moreau charm his audience. He was good at it—warm, engaging, and passionate about his art. He looked nothing like a monster. He looked like what he claimed to be: a theater director and actor staging dark romance for entertainment.

"I still think he's worth investigating," Flanahan said quietly. "But I'll need more than a disturbing play. Half the theaters in London stage darker material than this."

"What about backstage?" Bernie asked. "The props, the workshop. Could there be something there?"

"You're suggesting we search his property based on a hunch?"

"I'm suggesting we look where we have permission to look." Bernie gestured with the camera case. "He invited me to photograph the production. That includes backstage shots for promotional purposes. And you're here as official police presence. Nothing suspicious about two professionals doing their jobs."

Flanahan studied Bernie for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Right. But we do this carefully. If Moreau is innocent, I won't have it said we harassed an artist without cause. And if he's guilty..." His jaw tightened. "Then we need evidence that will hold up in court."

"Agreed."

The theater bell rang, calling patrons back for the second act.

Bernie followed Flanahan back inside, camera case heavy in her hands, Madame Helena's charm warm against her chest beneath Bernie's shirt.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Moreau was just a talented director with a taste for gothic horror. Maybe Annie and Mary had met someone else at the theater—another patron, a stagehand, someone connected to the Grand Guignol but not its director.

Maybe.

But she had to be sure.

The second act was even more disturbing than the first.

Lord Ashford's madness deepened, his obsession with Isabella's corpse taking on grotesque dimensions. He spoke to her as though she were alive, arranged her in different poses throughout their home, insisted she was more perfect in death than she'd ever been living.

And then came the twist that made Bernie's blood run cold.

A young woman appeared—Isabella's sister, come to find out what happened. Lord Ashford saw her and his eyes lit with terrible recognition.

"You have her hands," he whispered. "Isabella's perfect hands. Before age had marked them."

The audience gasped.

"And Margaret, your cousin—she has Isabella's eyes. The same deep blue, unmarred by time."

Bernie's hands clenched on the camera.

"I could..." Moreau's voice took on a dreamy quality, his character lost in mad fantasy. "I could gather the pieces. Find each perfect part from different women, preserve them, create a new Isabella—one who could never age, never change, built from beauty eternal."

The sister character fled. Lord Ashford pursued. The scene dissolved into chaos—screaming, struggle, the lights going dark as violence was implied offstage.

When the lights came up, Lord Ashford stood alone, covered in stage blood, holding what was clearly a prop hand. He looked at it with wonder and horror mixed.

"I have begun my collection," he said to the audience. "And I cannot stop until it is complete."

The curtain fell.

Then rose one last time as Moreau returned and began cutting and shaping the corpse of Isabella, his hands moving deftly as he assembled his ideal mate in a laboratory setting. It was the showpiece moment the audience had come to see-but it was horrific in its specificity.

The applause was more scattered this time, more uncertain. Some audience members looked genuinely disturbed.

Moreau’s measured movements, the horror of his barbaric surgery—a travesty of love run mad. Moreau cut and sliced the tender form of his love to the gasps of the audience, clearly relishing each slice of the knife, secured in the artificial scene onstage.

Which was repeated four times to exacting effect. Eyes. Hands, tongue and, most shockingly, the removal and replacement of the heart.

Bernie sat in the balcony, her heart hammering against her ribs.

“My beauty,” Moreau gasped as he finally raised Isabella’s reconstituted corpse upwards into his arms and he kissed her, his hands sliding beneath the shift, suggesting greater intimacies.

Greater transgression after death.

The audience gasped, understanding full well what was next.

And the lights crashed down. Leaving the theater in dark.

Isabella’s sobs echoed throughout the theater.

The audience erupted in applause.

This wasn't just inspiration from penny dreadfuls.

This was a confession disguised as art.

Or was it? Violet forced herself to think clearly. The play could still be coincidence. Gothic horror often featured similar themes—obsession, preservation, the collection of beautiful things. Moreau could have drawn from the same cultural well as the actual killer without being the killer himself.

But the specificity. The hands, the eyes. The exact parts that had been taken from the real victims.

Bernie packed up her camera equipment with hands that didn't shake—Bernie's hands never shook—and made her way downstairs to find Flanahan.

The detective's face was pale beneath his tan.

"Did you see—" Bernie began.

"The collection motif. The specific body parts." Flanahan's voice was barely above a whisper. "Christ, Bernie. Either Moreau is our killer, or he knows who is."

"We need to search backstage."