Phantom Of Manhattan

  That’s about it, young people. Within hours the story of the assassination of the diva broke over New York. It was put down to a crazed fanatic, himself shot down at the scene of his infamy. It was a version that suited the Mayor and the city authorities. As for me, well, it was the one story in my whole career I never wrote up even though I would have been fired if that were known. Too late to write it now.

  EPILOGUE

  THE BODY OF CHRISTINE DE CHAGNY WAS LAID TO rest beside that of her father in the churchyard of a small village in Brittany from which they both came.

  The vicomte, that good and kindly man, retired to his Normandy estates. He never married again and kept a picture of his much-loved wife beside him at all times. He died of natural causes in the spring of 1940 and never lived to see the invasion of his native land.

  Father Joe Kilfoyle stayed on and settled in New York where he founded a refuge and school for the destitute, abused and unwanted children of the Lower East Side. He refused all preferment in the Church, and remained simply Father Joe to generations of underprivileged kids. Throughout, his homes and schools remained remarkably well endowed but he never revealed where the funds came from. He died, full of years, in the mid-1950s. For his last three years he was confined to a home for old priests in a small town on the coast of Long Island where the nuns who looked after him reported that he would sit on the open deck, wrapped in a blanket, staring eastwards across the sea and dreaming of a farm near Mullingar.

  Oscar Hammerstein later lost control of the Manhattan Opera to the Met, which drove it out of business. His grandson, Oscar II, collaborated with Richard Rodgers to write musicals in the 1940s and 1950s.

  Pierre de Chagny completed his schooling in New York, graduated from an Ivy League university and joined his father at the head of the enormous family corporation. During the First World War both men changed the family name from Muhlheim to another, still widely known and respected in America to this day.

  The corporation became famous for its philanthropy across a wide range of social issues, founded a major institution for the correction of disfigurement and created many charitable foundations.

  The father retired in the early Twenties to a secluded property in Connecticut where he lived out his days with books, paintings and his beloved music. He was attended by two veterans, each cruelly disfigured while fighting in the trenches, and after that day in Battery Park never wore his mask again.

  The son, Pierre, married once and died of old age in the year the first American landed on the moon. His four children live on.

  THE END