City of Light

City of Mystery, Book 2

By Kim Wright

To my mother, Doris Biggers Wright Mitchell,

Who always encouraged me to read.

PROLOGUE

Paris

April 12, 1889

6:24 AM

When he first noticed her on the bank of the Seine, he thought that she was sleeping.

This was not uncommon.  Paris served as a beacon for any number of young runaways from the country, boys and girls alike drawn there by what they imagined to be the excitement of the city.  Or at least its anonymity.   The chance to reinvent oneself, to begin again on a clean white sheet of paper, to escape the banal brutalities of the rural life.  What they found instead were the banal brutalities of city life, which often necessitated spending the night in alleys, on benches, or down by the river.

But even when the officer drew close enough to see that the girl’s sleep was of the eternal kind, he was still not unduly alarmed.  Suicides were common in the Seine.  Bridges crisscrossed the river in steady patterned intervals, slanted like the laces of a woman’s corset, serving as a constant temptation to the unhappy.  And young girls are so often unhappy, are they not?  They grow restless and bored, they fight against the fates their parents have planned for them.  They love boys who do not love them back…or sometimes it is more the case of boys who love too ardently, who demand things that the girls are not prepared to give, things they do not yet fully understand.  And this, of course, opens the door to a whole new set of problems. The sort of problems that an inexperienced girl might imagine could only be ended with plunge into the river.  Down to the water, that great absolver of so many sins.

Her eyes were open, which distressed the flic, who was new to the police force and had not yet become accustomed to the blank and accusatory stare of the recently dead.  He moved quickly to push down her lids.  The flecks of dried foam around her mouth suggested death by drowning, the realities of which are not nearly as romantic as unhappy young girls sometimes imagine them to be.  She was still pretty, despite the film of spittle around her lips, the knotted tousle of her hair, the ill-fitting satin jacket which she had undoubtedly considered the finest thing she owned.  But it gave her away, even in death.  Showed her gaucherie, how desperate she must have been for glamour and how thoroughly she had failed to understand what Parisian glamour truly was.

The flic sighed and prepared to climb back up the bank to summon help.  Drowning it surely was, and most probably by her own will.   But there was still a ride to the morgue to be arranged, a quick autopsy, and paperwork.  Always the paperwork.  It bothered him to leave her like this on the bank, so pitifully alone, with her skirts snarled around her waist and her legs splayed rudely in the mud.  Touching her went against procedure.  Ever since the establishment of the forensics unit, the policy of the Parisian police was to leave bodies precisely as they were found.  Evidence must be made available in case the detectives deemed it worth collecting, even when the story of the death was as short and plain as this one appeared to be.  In truth, he shouldn’t even have closed her eyes.

But she was just a girl.  Pretty, and dead, and not that far from his own age and although it was early now, the slow rise of the sun was beginning to splash the city with a rose-gold light.  Within an hour the streets would be full of pedestrians. They would stop along the sidewalks and bridges to gawk down at the girl with her slender, dainty legs encased in their plum-colored stockings.  Yes, he hated to leave her thus exposed and open to ridicule while he went for help.  Help that would likely be slow in arriving, for there was no emergency here, was there?  Forensics may not even come in such a case.  Only the drivers of the mortuary wagon, those heartless beasts, and they would plop her on their stretcher with little regard for proper procedure and even less regard for the dignity of the dead.

He looked down at her and sighed again. She had not been in the water long.  She was quite unspoiled.  Without that red satin jacket – an unfortunate sartorial choice which would likely cause the authorities to draw quick conclusions about her life and thus her death – he might imagine her to be a virgin, someone’s sweetheart, a girl he would like to court.  Impulsively, he bent back over her. Yanked at the skirt which, trapped beneath her hips and wound nearly around her waist, did not easily release.

With a quick glance around him - for his position above her body could give rise to any number of unfortunate speculations - he stooped lower and slipped a hand beneath her thighs to help free the skirt.  Her body shifted.  Flopped abruptly to the side and in a moment of sheer horror he imagined her gathering momentum and rolling right back into the Seine - even, most dreadful possibility of all, taking him along with her.   He grabbed at her jacket frantically, pushed her chest into the mud to stop the slide, and then, in this moment where his body was almost on top of hers, in this absurd parody of love, he perceived her more clearly than he had before.

He froze, stared at her face.

It was impossible, and yet it was not to be denied.

He struggled to his feet. A noise escaped him.  A roar of rage, or perhaps it was more of a scream.  A sound that caught halfway up his throat and strangled him, closing off his air.  Although he brought his whistle to his lips, he seemed to have lost the force to blow it and, with a final glance, he left her there on the riverbank and went scrambling back up toward the street.

CHAPTER ONE

Paris

April 14, 1889

2:10 PM

The man was angry.  Beneath his well-cut clothes and the exaggerated, almost absurd courtliness of his manner, he was clearly little more than a bully.  The woman sitting opposite him at the café table was beautiful, but the way she clinched a glove in her left hand betrayed her anxiety and, even if it had not, the slight sucking in of her lower lip would have likewise given her away.  Her husband was not kind to her, this much was clear, but if Rayley’s limited experience of women had taught him anything, it was that they often gravitated toward men who were not kind.

Rayley Abrams had come here every Sunday, to this same café, since he had arrived from London five months earlier.  The food was good, of course, but the food was good nearly everywhere in Paris.  The true reason he was drawn to this particular courtyard was because it offered the perfect venue for people watching and for eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers.  Well, perhaps eavesdropping was not the proper word; despite his best efforts, Rayley understood barely a dozen phrases in French.  But it was almost as if his failure to grasp the words made it easier to understand the intent behind them.

For some things are far clearer in a foreign language, are they not?  Rayley did not know, for example, precisely what the angry man was saying to the beautiful woman and this very ignorance of the surface reality of their conversation freed him to plunge deeper, to notice gestures, body movements, subtle shifts in their facial expressions, to hear the rise and fall within the cadence of their lovely and incomprehensible voices.   They were a striking couple – without question the most beautiful people in this beautiful café in the most beautiful city in the world on a beautiful afternoon in April.

The woman glanced in his direction, and Rayley swiftly dropped his gaze back to the pages of his small red leather journal.  He had fallen into the habit of bringing it along on these Sunday excursions, but not because of any need to make note of his impressions. Hardly.  His memory for detail was legendary among his fellow detectives at Scotland Yard and Rayley, in fact, had often teased his friend Trevor Welles for the man’s compulsive need to record every interview, every theory and conjecture.  But now, miles and weeks out of London, Rayley found himself carrying a journal almost identical to the one Trevor had kept when they had worked together on the infamous and infamously unsolved case of Jack the Ripper.  For a journal, Rayley had found, also served as a companion.  When he was writing in it, he did not feel so noticeable and awkward here at his solitary table on the Rue Clairaut.

He was not lonely.  He would never use that word.  Being invited to study with the Parisian police was undoubtedly the greatest honor of his career and he knew how much Trevor and the others were depending upon him returning with a full knowledge of the latest techniques in forensics.  It was the singular subject - save perhaps for those most minor sciences of fashion and cuisine - in which the French had surpassed the English, and Rayley must not muff his chance.  His hosts had obliged him with a translator, who, if not inclined to gossip or chatter, did manage to convey the bulk of what Rayley needed to know in the laboratory. His work days were full of activity, but Sundays always seemed to stretch out flat and wide before him, much like the famed avenues of Paris, and he had created certain rituals to hasten the passing of his leisure. The long walks, the lunches at this café with a journal at the ready, his game of observing the people around him and imagining that he knew their lives.

Rayley let his eyes lift from his notes. The woman was no longer looking at him.  Most likely she never had been at all, rather simply gazing into the street beyond him.

Now that he considered the woman more closely, he wondered why he had been so quick to declare her lovely.  Taken in pieces, there was nothing exceptional about her.  Her hair was brown, as hair so often is.  Her skin was smooth and pale, but not without flaw.  Not without a slight pucker at the corner of her eyes which, along with the parenthetical lines around her mouth informed him that she was not a girl, but closer to his own age.  Twenty-eight, he guessed, perhaps even a well-tended thirty-two.  Her color of the eyes was blue, but not remarkably so, nothing to prompt comparisons to sapphires, or oceans, or the sky.  She had been clever enough to echo their color in her gown, which was cut in what he had come to think of as the French fashion, with the skirt narrower than those worn by the ladies of London, the neckline high and austere, the shoulders a bit broader. Another trick for the eye, a style designed to make the waistline of even a plump matron appear as narrow as that of her daughter.

He wondered what the woman would look like if she smiled.  Not likely to find out anytime soon, for she had returned to her soup, dragging her spoon through the broth in a somewhat dispirited fashion, as if she were searching there for something she didn’t really expect to find.

Observing without being observed in return was his profession and his passion.  The detective had once again gone undetected, which was the whole aim of the game, so Rayley couldn’t say why he picked up his journal with a similar expression of defeat.  Of course she hadn’t been looking at him.  Women rarely did.  He had hardly needed to cross the channel to confirm what he’d always suspected, that women of any nationality were unlikely to find him handsome, that his visage was in fact thin and owlish, with heavy spectacles and a weak chin.  He’d managed to avoid reminders of his ugliness well enough in London, but here in Paris the task proved nearly impossible.  The entire city was besotted with itself, hanging mirrors on every wall, creating reflections of reflections, as if the collective civic desire was not merely to provide a confirmation of its glory, but rather to render the beholder dizzied with rapture, unsure of what was real and what was illusion.

“Monsieur?”

The waiter had pushed over a cart and was drawing back the gleaming copper hood to reveal a selection of desserts, plump pastries with such colors and aromas that Rayley was immediately shamed by his earlier gloom.  What man could be downhearted in the midst of such bounty?   “Je veux…” he began, pointing at a cherry tart and the young man nodded, plopped the plate in front of him with an abrupt little clatter, and disappeared.

Je veux.  One of the few French phrases he knew, but undeniably the most useful.  Since his arrival in Paris, he had been reduced to the position of a child, a toddler pointing his chubby finger to demand a toy.  Reduced to the most primitive of longings, able to say only “I want, I want,” without the skill to clothe the nakedness of this need among further explanations and descriptions. Rayley picked up his fork.

The couple across from him had abandoned any pretense at conversation.  The woman now turned her attention to a notebook much larger than the one Rayley carried.  She sketches, he thought.  She is one of those innumerable Parisians who feels compelled to capture their city in chalk and charcoal.  The woman drew swiftly, decisively, her hand making broad strokes across the notebook, her expression serious. The man was reading a newspaper, leaning back gracefully in his iron chair, one leg crossed over the other at such an angle that Rayley could observe the pink blossoms crushed and impressed upon the soles of his shoes.   There was a flower market nearby and the wind coming from the river carried stray petals through the air, so many that the floor of this open courtyard was scattered with dots of white and rose and gold.  Such a surfeit of beauty, Rayley thought.  Enough so that we trod upon flowers, enough so that no one notices the waste.

The clouds had shifted and the sun was stronger now.  It fell across his face.  Rayley closed his eyes, pushed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, let the tartness of the cherries dissolve into the cream beneath them and the crunch of the crust beneath that.  One could so easily become intoxicated on sheer sensation, he thought.  One could become drunk with desire.  Because even though his analysis had failed to yield a single arguable reason why the woman across from him might be called beautiful - or at least notably more so than any other lady in this courtyard - something in her had drawn and held his attention.  He sat very still, waiting for the flavors to dissipate.  The cream first, then the crust, and the cherries he swallowed last of all.  Je veux, he thought.  Of all the pastries on this tray, of all the pedals in this street, of all the pleasures in this bright and spinning city, I want her.

When he opened his eyes, she was gone.

He put his fork down on the table.  This was another of his private little brags, that he could taste something without devouring it in its entirety, that he was capable of moderating even the most exquisite pleasure.  He had always known what it meant to have enough, and again he thought of Trevor, how lacking in restraint the man was, always reaching across the pub table to grab the unfinished portions of Rayley’s own meal, saying guiltily, “You don’t mind, do you, man?” as he popped the last bites into his mouth.  Trevor would go to fat before he was forty, to gout by fifty, and probably the grave shortly thereafter, but Rayley missed the man and indeed all the lads back in London.  Their cheerful crudity, their slaps and farts and beer and bawdy jokes.  The French were pleasant enough, he supposed, careful to see to the needs of their esteemed guest and fellow criminologist.  And yet the first day, when he had presented his credentials, branded with the golden crest from Her Majesty the Queen, had he imagined that the lips of the chief coroner had turned up in a slight sneer?

He certainly hadn’t imagined the snickering he’d heard later in the lab, the whisper of “Veek-tor-e-ah” drawn out in that damp French hiss, that sound that could make the names of the saints seem vulgar.  The Queen was not popular here in Paris.  Her refusal to attend the Exposition Universelle had been taken as a slap in the face, and Rayley shifted again in his seat, looking over his shoulder at the broad gray base of Eiffel’s half-constructed tower. With its four steel legs dug into the red soil, the base reminded Rayley of some great claw, a severed talon prepared to uproot anything that stood in its way.  The tower was little more than a machine posing as art, but the French were very proud of it and everything having to do with their upcoming world’s fair, their paean to scientific advancement and republican government.  A tribute to everything that was modern and egalitarian and free-thinking, and thus the opposite of Veek-tor-e-ah and the thin bookish detective who’d come cross the water bearing her seal.

The French police found him pretentious and old-fashioned, this much he knew.  He was never invited for a drink after work and they must stop off for a drink after work, must they not?  All detectives did.  Part of him wondered if their cool reserve might result from the fact he was Jewish, but this was unlikely, since the size and prosperity of the ghetto stood proof to the claim Paris was an ecumenical city, with opportunity – if not friendship - for all.  Once he had started to ask his translator what was the French word for “camaraderie” before he had caught himself just in time.  How they would have snickered over that.

The tart before him remained a nearly full red circle, only a single bite missing as proof of his presence, his carefully monitored appetites.  Rayley checked his bill and left coins, undoubtedly too many.  Closed his little journal and returned it to his breast pocket.  Rose and walked past the table the woman and the man had so recently vacated.  For just a moment he indulged himself there, let his hand drag along the back of the chair where she had been sitting, glanced down at the cutlery and dishes she had touched, the glass she had lifted to her lips.

And then he saw the picture she’d been sketching, a single sheet raggedly ripped from a notebook, left behind in what must have been a hasty departure.

Without thought, he picked it up and turned it over.

It was his own face.  She had been drawing him.

CHAPTER TWO

London

April 16, 1889

7:14 PM

Trevor Welles crouched low over the slate kitchen floor of socialite Geraldine Bainbridge and peered at the still form of her butler, Gage.  Blood was splattered across the front of the man’s starched white shirt and had puddled beneath his shoulders.

“Now,” he said.  “What can we conclude?”

“From the splatter formation, it’s clear that an artery was severed,” said Tom Bainbridge, Geraldine’s great-nephew and Trevor’s fledgling medical examiner.  “Most likely with a notched knife, given the ragged nature of the wound.”

“A bread knife,” Davy Mabrey ventured. “Taken from the block on the counter.”

Trevor nodded at the young bobby, then rocked back on his heels.  “And was the deceased attacked from the front or the back?”

“The front,” Davy said.  “That’s why the wound is deeper at the top, because it was the initial entry point and then the knife point was dragged, just so…” He crouched too and traced the imaginary arc of the assailant’s knife down the still form of the butler.

“I’d say from behind,” Tom said.

Davy frowned. “Why?”

“No defensive wounds. He didn’t see it coming, and thus there was no struggle.”

“You both make solid points,” Trevor said, rising awkwardly to his feet and using the sink, just for an instant, to steady his sizable frame. “Fortunately, there was a witness to the crime and perhaps she can tell us more.”

The eyes of all three men turned to the seated figure of Emma Kelly, Geraldine’s maid and companion, who had withdrawn to the rocker by the fire and was already shaking her head.

“I’ve told you,” she said irritably. “It happened so fast that I was too unnerved to notice anything.”

Even though he didn’t want to further distress the girl, Trevor knew he couldn’t let it go at that.  It was the fourth session of their Tuesday Night Murder Games and at the first three staged crimes scenes, Emma had been his star pupil, surprising everyone by outstripping the observations of both Tom, who was within a term of completing medical school, and Davy, who had two years as a bobby under his belt.  She seemed to have a gift for inference, so Trevor was sorry to see her so dispirited tonight.

It was his own clumsy fault.  He hadn’t wanted the excitement of their evenings to flag, so he’d upped the stakes.  Paid a boy from a theater troupe a few pounds to drop by Geraldine’s home in the fashionable neighborhood of Mayfair, where the forewarned Gage had left the kitchen door unbolted.  The lad had taken his task entirely more to heart than Trevor had intended, and had arrived in full stage make-up and an ill-fitting pirate costume.  No doubt indeed Emma had been startled and nothing short of terrified when he’d sprung through the kitchen door, shouting seafaring threats at Gage, who had responded with quite the performance of his own, letting fly with a fearful shriek before sinking to the floor.

They had timed the attack for the hour when Gage and Emma would be in the kitchen preparing the evening meal and Trevor had anticipated it as the latest and most demanding test of the girl’s powers of observation.  But when Trevor slipped into the kitchen he had found Emma pale and clammy, trembling so violently that he had escorted her promptly to the chair where she now sat.

Trevor silently cursed himself.  He’d become so obsessed with testing his three apprentices that he had failed to factor in that Emma’s own sister had been killed with a knife no more than six months earlier, the last known victim of Jack the Ripper.  Emma had assured Trevor that she wanted to join the Murder Games, and the initial thought was that her knowledge of foreign languages would prove useful to their studies of forensics, especially in light of the fact so many of the procedural documents Rayley Abrams was providing were still in their original French.  It had been an unexpected bonus when she’d furthermore proven a quick study at the simulated crime scenes.  She had been, in fact, the only one of the three to notice the fraying of the noose in the tableau Trevor had dubbed “Suicide or Something More Sinister?”

But this clearly had been too much – the actor rushing through the door, the fact the victim was her friend Gage, the choice of a knife as a weapon.  Emma had disconnected from the activity around her and now sat staring into the fire.

“You remember nothing?” Trevor questioned gently, lowering himself to the chair opposite hers.  “Perhaps the clothing?”

“He wore a red vest,” she said with a sigh. “His boots were…high.”

“High like those of a coachman?”

She paused. “No, more like a boatman.”

“His height?”

“Shorter than Gage, of course.  Everyone is shorter than Gage.  And taller than me.”  She glanced at Trevor, gave a bitter little laugh.  “Not very good, is it?”

He smiled.  “It does give us a considerable range.”

Emma turned in her chair and perused the crime scene.  “Close to the height of Tom, I’d say.  Yes, closer to Tom than anyone else in the room.  And he was young.  Not yet twenty.”

“Good,” said Trevor. “Very good. Hair?”

“Slicked back with oil.  Dark, but perhaps it only seemed that way because of the oil.”  She frowned.  “Could he have been wearing….he was very pale.  Unnaturally so.  Could he possibly have had white powder on his face?”

“He could and he did.  Excellent, Emma.”  Trevor felt a surge of optimism.  If she wanted to continue with the forensics team, Emma would have to face a death by stabbing at one point or another, so as difficult as the experience had been, at least it was now behind them.  He snuck a quick glance down at his pocketwatch.  He would have Emma questioned again in five minutes, this time by Davy.  It was part of a more personal experiment Trevor was doing on changes in recall over time.  He suspected that the truest impressions were the first, and that almost immediately thereafter the witness would have already begun to tell themselves a story about what they had seen.  A story which may be the mind’s attempt to comfort itself or explain away troubling details, and thus may fail to accurately reflect the true facts.

“Something here, Sir,” Davy called.  “We have possibly found the murder weapon.” He was standing by a wooden block in which the hilts of twelve knives, a full set, was visible. “Tom, I mean the medical examiner, Sir, estimates a blade length of six inches and only one of the serrated knives is that long.”

“It’s clean?”

“Yes, Sir, suspiciously so.  The cleanest in the block.”

“Ah,” said Trevor, coming to stand beside him.  “Used, wiped down, and concealed among the other knives.  Odd for several reasons, I would venture.  Why would the killer not bring his own weapon?”

Davy’s brow puckered.  “Didn’t intend to kill, Sir?  Didn’t expect anyone to be at home?”

“A robbery gone wrong,” Tom offered, looking up from the floor where he was bending over the supine form of Gage with a ruler, measuring the distance between blood spots.  “He encounters Gage unexpectedly and is forced to seize whatever’s close at hand.”

“Indeed.  See the bread on the counter?” Davy was gaining confidence.  One of the servants is slicing bread for dinner, thus a serrated knife is on the counter.  The killer grabs it up, does the deed, then wipes it down and replaces it in the knife block with the others.”

“It explains it all,” Tom said.

“Does it?” Trevor asked sharply.  “Even if I accept your unlikely premise that our would-be thief was unable to predict the presence of servants in a kitchen an hour before meal time, there are still many questions that remain unanswered.  Precisely where was the butler standing when the first blow was struck?  Why did he not fight back?  Did he die on the spot or move about after the first cut?  Could he possibly have struck a retaliatory blow?  What do the blood stains tell us?  And the maid…where was she in all this?  Why was she not beset upon too or why did she not attempt to come to the aid of her fellow?”

“She screamed,” Tom said.  “We heard her in the parlor.”

“Indeed.  But at what point did she scream? And if she was in the kitchen, why did the killer take the time to calmly wipe his knife and replace it in the wooden block?”

“I was in the pantry,” Emma called out from the hearth.  “I heard a scuffle and I –“

“Thank you, dear,” Trevor said tersely. “But my goal is for our young scholars to deduce that without your help.”

“Here’s how I see it,” Davy said.  “Emma was the one slicing bread and she stops, halfway through her task, to fetch something from the pantry.  The killer enters through the back door, intent on robbery, and sees Gage at the sink, his back turned toward him.  He seizes the knife Emma was using, swipes at Gage’s throat from behind.  Wipes the knife before he goes to replace it, although I’m not sure why.”

“A ragged cut from a serrated knife,” Tom added. “Normally not enough to kill a strong man.  But as luck would have it, he nicks the carotid artery, as evidenced by the arched spray of blood which presumably erupted as our victim turned and fell.  Let’s see, what then?  Emma reenters the kitchen to find Gage rapidly bleeding to death and the killer has just finished replacing his knife.  He recognizes that there was a second witness but, fortunately for her, he has already abandoned his murder weapon so this time he simply flees.”

“Better,” said Trevor.  “At least as far as it goes.” He checked his pocketwatch again.  “Now, Davy, begin your eyewitness interviews. The shock has passed and the young lady is admirably beginning to regain her memory.  Your task is to retrieve every shred she can produce about the appearance of this man.”

Davy promptly pulled out a small leather notebook, an item he had purchased only because he had seen Trevor use the same type many times, and went to sit opposite Emma at the fire.

“Should I take up the trail of footprints?” Tom asked.

“Footprints?” Trevor said.  “This case is designed to test wound analysis and blood splatter, not footprints.”

But Tom was still on his hands and knees. “They’re small,” he said. “Most likely a woman, judging by…”

“Geraldine,” Trevor bellowed, and a head popped through the door of the pantry.

“I’m sorry, darlings,” Geraldine said, although she didn’t look particularly so. “But someone has to see to dinner.”

“I shall do it, madam,” Gage said, raising his head.

“Nonsense, dear, you’re dead.  I hope everyone will be content with soup considering the recent demise of our cook.  How soon do you anticipate finishing up your little game?”

“We are finished,” Trevor said, struggling to mask his irritation.  “The crime scene has been contaminated.”

“Our witness has recalled something else, Sir,” Davy said from the hearth.  “She believes the assailant was wearing boots in the manner of a soldier.”

“She was closer the first time,” Trevor said wearily, waving them all out of the kitchen.

Fifty minutes later the corpse had changed his shirt and served them a light meal of soup and bread in the breakfast room.  Two glasses of a very fine claret from Geraldine’s cellar had left Trevor in far better spirits.

“The Tuesday Night Murder Games Club is called to order,” Trevor intoned.  He meant the solemnity as a bit of a joke, but the pronouncement sent silence around the table and everyone shifted in their seats toward him.  Evidence that the others cared for these evenings as much as he did was always gratifying to Trevor and was one of the reasons he found himself constantly looking for ways to intensify the challenges.

While planning this latest game with Gage, Gerry, and the overenthusiastic theater boy, Trevor had taken great pains in re-creating the crime scene precisely as Rayley had described it in his letter.  Returning the knife to its block, drawing a jagged wound on Gage’s throat, positioning him in the proper position, and meticulously placing drops of pig’s blood on the floor to correspond with the diagram Rayley had drawn.  The amount undoubtedly seemed excessive to someone who had never witnessed the explosive force of a ripped artery, and Gage had even raised his head at one point to look about the scene with dismay, evidently thinking of the mess he’d be left to contend with once he’d been returned to the world of the living.  After he had reproduced Rayley’s diagram, Trevor had opened the parlor door to let the shaken Emma and impatient Tom and Davy into the crime scene.  But of course the problem with such spectacular violence is that they would all undoubtedly expect more excitement next week, and Trevor could only hope the unopened letter in his coat pocket contained an even gorier and more perplexing crime du jour.

“At the risk of belaboring the obvious,” Trevor said.  “Rayley’s last letter was about the analysis of wound and blood spray patterns. The test of changes in witness memory over time was my own invention.  Admirable job, each of you.”

He did not have to add “At least as much of it as there was,” for Gerry immediately fell to guilt, as she was apt to do.

“Next time I promise I won’t step in all your lovely splatters,” she said. “I know I made a muddle –“

“Never fear, Geraldine. You open your home to us each week, providing superior food and wine, as well as your own very pleasing brand of hospitality.  You could waltz your way through a hundred bloodstains and your honorary standing in the Murder Club would not be in jeopardy.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Emma said.  “I was a proper fool of a girl, wasn’t I?  Screaming and fleeing and unable to remember a thing.”

“You were startled, dear,” Gerry said, patting her hand.

“But crime strikes unexpectedly, Gerry, that’s Trevor’s whole point,” Emma said.  It was clear she was still somewhat agitated by the manner in which she gripped her teacup and the way her eyes darted around the table, settling on no one.  “A suspect does not walk towards you slowly in broad daylight wearing a placard that reads ‘Criminal.’  They come in the dark, moving fast, often having taken pains to conceal their identity.  Is that why he was wearing makeup?”

“I’m sorry to say that particular fantastical touch wasn’t my idea,” Trevor told her.  He smiled with what he hoped was assurance, but her eyes had already moved on to Tom.

“But you’ve left us guessing,” Tom was saying.   “Why did the criminal wipe the knife and place it so carefully back into the block?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Trevor said, dabbing up the last bit of soup with a crust.  “I was hoping one of you could tell me.  The scene is precisely as Rayley described it.  A respectable French family in a better part of town, a cook and a maid in the kitchen just after six in the evening.  The maid moves into the pantry to retrieve some item or another, and while she is gone a man rushes into the kitchen, uses the knife on the cutting board to kill the cook, wipes it clean, and replaces it with the other cutlery.  She reenters just as he is leaving but she doesn’t recognize the man.  Question one:  why would a thief enter a kitchen at an hour when he would almost certainly encounter people in the process of preparing the evening meal?”

“Perhaps he was not a thief,” Davy said promptly.  “We went straight to that assumption, without much evidence to support it.”

“Then what was the motive?” Trevor asked.

“Could have been someone from the cook’s past,” Davy said, his voice a little more speculative.  “A man who bore him a personal grudge.”

“If confrontation was his aim then why would he show up without a weapon?” Emma asked.  “He seemed to grab the bread knife on impulse, and, as you say, it’s hardly a weapon of first choice for someone bent on murder.”

“And why wipe it down after he used it?” Tom said, putting his elbows on the table and leaning in. “I’m sorry to sound redundant but I find that the most puzzling part of our little experiment. The knife was already out, being used to slice bread.  Why not simply return it to the cutting board?”

“He feared the police could find fingerprints on the weapon?” Emma guessed.

“Your average criminal doesn’t know anything about fingerprinting,” Tom said skeptically. “The concept is in its infancy and seems to mislead as often as it solves.”

“But the French are very proud of it, are they not?” Emma said.  “No doubt any crime stories reported in the Parisian papers are those in which fingerprinting proved successful. The criminal element may be more frightened of the notion than they should be.  Or consider this.  By bragging about their new forensics techniques, the police may not be scaring off potential criminals at all, merely teaching them to wipe down any objects they touch.  Especially murder weapons.”

“Which exonerates the maid,” Tom said.

Emma frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Her fingerprints should be all over the knife.  It would be suspicious if they weren’t.  So she had no reason to wipe it clean.”

“You’re making the rather daring assumption that she was rational,” Emma said. “Or that anyone is can be rational in the middle of a murder scene.  She’s a maid.  Perhaps she just cleans things compulsively, as a matter of course, and has never heard the word ‘fingerprint’ in her whole life.”

“What do the French have?” Davy asked.

Trevor picked up the letter.  “From the blood splatter they conclude that the victim was struck from behind, spun and fell.  Just as you suggested, Tom, so bully there. They agree with our interpretation that the killer entered without a weapon and grabbed whatever was close at hand.”

“He came to see the maid,” Emma ventured.  “Entered at a time he knew she would be in the kitchen, but the cook was there too – which makes no sense.  It’s dinner hour, of course the cook would be in the kitchen.”

“No, I like where you’re going with that, Emma,” Trevor said, twisting in his seat to look at her. “I shall write and ask Rayley if anyone thought to inquire if there had been a change of plans.  Perhaps this was the cook’s normal night of leisure and our killer believed he would encounter the maid alone.  But he stumbles upon the cook instead.”

“A tryst gone bad,” Tom said.  “Possible.”

“So he’s dismayed to find the cook instead of his lover,” Emma said.  “That’s a disappointment to his romantic plans, but scarcely incentive to murder.”

“Besides,” Davy said, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table too, in a mimic of Tom’s casual posture. He’s becoming more comfortable in Geraldine’s home, Trevor noted with silent satisfaction.  Emma, who lived here, and Tom, who was a member of the family, walked through these large and elegant rooms with confidence, but the first time Davy visited he had been clearly intimidated by his surroundings, standing at attention like a schoolboy until Gerry had insisted he take a seat. They all came from such different walks of life, his three young charges, and yet the Murder Games were proving to be a great equalizer.

“Besides,” Davy was saying.  “If he was her lover, why would the maid tell the French police that she didn’t know him?”

This brought an explosion of laughter from around the table, Tom doubling over so far in mirth that he nearly tumbled from his seat.  “Davy, I hate to be the one to deliver the news,” Tom said, when he could finally talk.  “But sometimes the fairer sex is also the more devious one.  Women lie.”

“Well, in this case it would be rather warranted, wouldn’t it?” Emma said sharply, although she was wiping tears away too. “I can’t imagine telling your employer, much less the police, that your lover had killed the family cook.  Good cooks are too hard to find.”

“Presumably they are more plentiful in Paris,” Tom said.  “But Emma is quite right.  Perhaps the maid and the killer were in cahoots of some kind and when the caper went awry, she dared not confess.”

“Or perhaps they’re all just mad,” Davy said, showing great equanimity even after having been the butt of the latest joke.  “The French, you know.”

“The most likely theory yet, in my opinion,” Gerry said, with such a broad smile at Davy that the boy actually blushed. “They’re French and thus barking mad and that’s the whole of it.”

“Did she scream?” Emma asked.

“Letter doesn’t say,” Trevor says.

“You certainly let out a bellow, old girl,” Tom said, with a little wink that Trevor was the only one to notice.  “First the murderer yells out, then Gage, but your shriek was the one that startled Davy and me half out of our chairs.”

“My point precisely,” Emma said.  “Mine was the only one that was genuine. It’s a natural reaction to cry out when surprised, but if she knew the man in the kitchen she’d be less likely to scream.”

“Perhaps a spurned lover,” Tom said. “Bent on revenge.”

“Perhaps she threw him over for the cook,” Davy said.  “So when he enters – “

“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” Trevor said.  “You two should be writing penny dreadfuls, not working for Scotland Yard.  You raise an interesting point about the scream, Emma, but we must stick to what we can prove, or at least what we can deduce from the evidence.”

“I know,” Tom said cheerfully, leaning back to prop his boots on the seat of an unoccupied chair.  “Our concern is the how of murder, and not the why.  You’ve schooled us so thoroughly that I believe I mutter those words in my sleep.  But if all we have are the hows we’ve come to a bit of a dead end with this case, have we not?  Such a pity.  You won’t be able to write Rayley that the Tuesday Night Murder club has succeeded in solving a crime that stumped the Parisian police.”

Trevor laughed and folded up the letter.  “I do fantasize that someday I’ll provide Rayley with a tidy little solution, I’ll confess.  Well, we’re all new at this forensics business.  Perhaps we aren’t meant to understand everything yet.”

“You miss him, Sir, don’t you?” Davy asked. “Detective Abrams, I mean.”

“I do,” Trevor readily admitted. “We were never so good of friends until the man left town.  But I have his weekly letters, which are the very best kind of conversation, and perhaps the new case outlined in his latest letter has fully as much intrigue as The Affair of the Bread Knife.”

“I do hope the next victim is a woman,” Gerry said, drawing up her plump shoulders so that the feathers on her gown shook and trembled, giving her the appearance of a self-satisfied hen.  “I have always fancied a career on the stage.”

CHAPTER THREE

Paris

April 18, 1889

8:43 PM

“Bizarre and dreadful, are they not?”

Rayley wasn’t sure which startled him more, the boldness of the criticism or his surprise at hearing his own language.  But whoever had spoken the words was undeniably correct.  On the table before them were dozens of small replicas of what the Eiffel Tower was meant to look like upon completion, cast in any number of improbable forms.  Tea towels, flags, charms, hat pins, and clocks.  A particularly enterprising seamstress had even designed a dress with a layered collar emulating the extended triangular shape of Eiffel’s design.  Three women in this crowded room were in fact wearing that very fashion at the moment, straining to hold their necks above the collar like dogs in the leash, and apparently without the dismay that ladies normally displayed when they found a social rival in similar dress.  All of Paris was gripped in tower fever and it was indeed bizarre and rather dreadful.

A fresh-faced young man was holding out a hand to Rayley.  “Don’t tell me I guessed wrong,” he said. “You’re British, are you not?”

“It shows?”

“Absolutely,” the young man said, pumping with a vigorous handshake, and using his other hand to pat Rayley’s shoulder with the automatic intimacy people fall into whenever they meet a countryman abroad.  “Patrick T. Graham, London Star.”

“Rayley Abrams, Scotland Yard.”

Graham’s brows shot up and he gave a long low whistle. “Here tonight on duty?”

“A last minute invitation from my French hosts.  I’m not entirely sure why.  Your presence in this fine room is professional as well, I presume?”

“Of course.  Our readers can’t get their fill of information about the Exposition.”

“Even though the Queen does not approve?”

Graham laughed. His cheeks had that sort of perpetual flush that characterizes some men, as if they had just recently come in from a brisk walk along the river. “Especially because the Queen does not approve.”

“She hardly stands alone.”

“No crowned heads are expected to attend at all, and the French, pardon the pun, are royally pissed about it, even though they’re pretending not to care.”  Graham spread his fingers and ticked the countries off.  “Russia and Germany have also sent their regrets. Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden.  It’s as if all of Europe has turned its back on France in its moment of triumph.  Of course the savages of the world will be here in full force, with the Americans leading the charge as always.  We can expect a contingent of those countries in South America that no civilized person can name, Japan, and various rocky little islands from Southeast Asia.”

“The Americans have always been quick to claim spiritual kinship with the French,” Rayley said with authority, although in truth he had only met one American in his life.  A transplanted whore back in London, who’d exhibited the sort of stubborn refusal to listen to reason that Rayley considered the hallmark of her nationality.  The girl seemed to believe she was somehow immune to the Ripper, since up to that point he had murdered only British prostitutes. She’d been unmoved by Rayley’s warnings and openly amused by the sight of him unbuttoning his trousers, all the while lecturing her to be more careful when meeting strange men.  But, once this brief conversation was behind them, the girl had displayed such admirable enthusiasm for her chosen profession that Rayley had always thought the better of Americans for having met her.  “Both countries have an unnatural degree of interest in democracy, liberty, and fraternity, that sort of thing.”

“A kinship based on a mutual desire to show off is more like it,” Graham said with a snort and Rayley found himself laughing back.  “But the Americans are certainly sending France their best – Thomas Edison and his phonograph, James Whistler and his paintings, and the word is that Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley and a whole troop of those Indian fellows are going to drive a herd of buffalo down the Champs-Elysees. Or perhaps it’s bison. Whatever they call them. Can you imagine?”

“It should be quite the scene.”

“What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison, anyway?  Or are they the same beast?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Well, I won’t rest until I have the answer. I’m a newspaper man, and we can no more stop asking questions than we can stop breathing.”  Graham regarded Rayley with a sideways glance. “Rather like detectives, in that regard, I’d imagine.  So I’ll ask you the question that lures us all here tonight.”  He motioned Rayley closer for a slow whisper. “Will… he…finish…on…time?”

It was indeed the question of the hour.  There had been notable progress on the tower during the last few weeks, but even Eiffel’s most ardent supporters had begun to openly doubt the structure would be ready for its scheduled debut on May 9.  It now stood a strangely stark figure but, looking at the souvenirs spread around him, Rayley realized it was actually closer to completion than he would have guessed.  The tower would always be more about engineering than art, showing its cables and gears with impunity, forcing its observers to admire how it worked more than how it looked.  Even when finished, Rayley suspected the tower would never seem entirely so.

But just as tower fever was running high in Paris, so was tower anxiety, which was why Eiffel and the Exposition organizers had found themselves obliged to host this very party in the lobby of the Normandy Hotel.  It was a glittering event.  The room swathed in the national colors, waiters with trays of lobster and prawns circulating among the crowd, the string orchestra in the corner playing an endless series of songs by French composers.  All intended to assure investors, the press, and the most prominent citizens of Paris that on opening day the tower would be not only a beacon of progress but an elevated town square the likes of which the world had never seen, complete with promenades, shops, and restaurants. A pile of money was on the line.  Money and Parisian pride.  Although no one had directly said as much, Rayley suspected that he and the other high ranking members of the police force were invited here tonight in anticipation of possible problems.

“They appear to be ready to begin.  I should find my translator,” Rayley said, although he was a bit sorry to part from Graham and the first unfettered conversation he’d enjoyed for months.

“No call, old chap,” Graham said.  “My French is rather good, if you’ll trust me.”

“You speak French?”

“Have to, for the job.  You don’t?”

Rayley felt himself flushing but held it down.  His failings with the language had put him at a severe disadvantage on more occasions than he cared to count.  The official police translator only repeated the bare bones of conversations, leaving Rayley to grasp futilely at the deeper meanings.  Many times a long and quite possibly significant speech in French had been followed by an insultingly short translation in English, something like “He says no” or “Would you care for more wine?”  But Graham was an open and unguarded sort, clearly inclined to bombast and gossip, and Rayley had no doubt he would embellish his translations with precisely the sort of details he’d been starved for since November. Rayley nodded at Graham. The man’s arrogance was annoying, but at least he was British and thus annoying in a familiar way.

The orchestra stopped playing and a hush fell over the crowd.  It was just past nine, Rayley noted by the cluster of Eiffel tower clocks on the table beside him, and the speeches were getting underway with a surprising promptness.

Gustave Eiffel had made his millions as an engineer in the railway industry.  He’d risen to wealth and prominence by performing tasks others had deemed impossible, building bridges over seemingly uncrossable spans of water and weaving tracks around the most resistant of mountains.  Tall and handsome, with a crest of white hair, he entirely looked the part of a captain of industry as he strode across the small makeshift stage the hotel had provided.  A young couple trailed in his wake.

“His daughter and son-in-law,” Graham whispered. “Wife’s dead, but he’s eager to present as a family man. Trots them out for all occasions.”

Rayley nodded.  Eiffel was a messenger perfectly suited to his task, the ideal man to assure the nervous French that the tower would rise on schedule and that the world would subsequently bow at its feet.  Eiffel’s voice soon proved the proper sort too, confident without bravado and slowly-paced, betraying not the slightest hint of nervousness.  Graham provided whispered bits of translation, indicating that Eiffel was giving the crowd exactly the phrases that one might expect.  A centerpiece.  A sign.  A symbol.  Industry.  Democracy.  Progress.

The triumph of the modern world.

Was he speaking only of his tower or of the Exposition as a whole?  Rayley leaned in to ask Graham and froze before he could open his mouth.

The woman from the café was in the crowd.  Dressed in gold this time, with the same austerely high neckline as her first gown, the same exaggerated shoulders and narrow hips. Her hair more severely pulled back than before, with strands of pearls woven among the dark tresses.  She was standing close enough to the stage to indicate her status in the room, or more likely the status of her husband, the man whose arm was intertwined with her own.

Rayley forced himself to exhale.  It wasn’t surprising that she would be present at such a party.  Half of Paris was here, and – with the arguable exception of himself and Graham – most probably the better half.

The woman’s arm was linked through the man’s, but it was a casual linkage.  He was almost turned away from her, straining toward Eiffel, utterly unaware that he had a goddess for a wife.  She is his trophy, Rayley thought, but a trophy garnered from a contest long ago, taken in a victory he barely remembers.

Eiffel finished to applause and signaled toward another man, who began to move toward the podium with a heavy step and palpable dread.

“Otis,” Graham whispered. “The elevator chap.”

Even with his limited grasp of French and thus French gossip, Rayley knew at once what this meant.  Whether or not Eiffel would finish the structure on time might be arguable, but it had been painfully evident for months that his team was unable to engineer any reasonable means of transporting people up and down the frame of the tower. It had been a scandal when they’d had to call on the Americans for help, more specifically this man Otis who was now standing behind the podium.  Rayley felt for him with his thick, workmanlike coat and his stumbling French, which was probably scarcely better than Rayley’s own.

“Why have they had so much trouble with the elevators?” he quietly asked Graham.

“Can’t rise straight up,” Graham answered.  “They have to run along those strange sloping legs and go…what’s the word?”

“Diagonal?”

“Precisely.  Cables are engineered to go either up and down or back and forth, not both at once,” Graham said.  “Even the Paris papers have admitted it’s a slight complication.”

Rayley frowned. It seemed more than a slight complication. “So what happens if the tower opens and there are no elevators?”

“We climb, I suppose.”

The voice behind him was as cool and clear as water.  Since Eiffel had concluded and poor Otis had begun, the crowd was growing restless, seeking trays of food and drink, chatting right over his speech, turning the mood back into that or a party.  But Rayley was still stunned to find her here, at his elbow, her lips curved into a somewhat mocking smile.

“I suppose you two know each other?” Graham said.  “Of course you’ve met.  Oh, but you haven’t?  May I present Rayley Abrams of Scotland Yard.  And Rayley, this is Isabel…Delacroix.”

His hesitation on the last name struck Rayley as odd, even in this moment when so many other things were striking him as well.  For the woman had turned to him and offered her gloved hand.  Had murmured “Detective…” as if it were a glorious word.  Why would Graham not know her last name?  She was connected to important people, married to a man who apparently had strong ties to the Exposition, and besides, Graham seemed to know everyone in Paris.

Otis had finished.  Eiffel stepped back to the podium for a few final remarks, the sort that even Rayley could understand.  “A new France,” he had bellowed, evidently a scripted finale, for in the moment when he uttered the final word, champagne corks had gone flying from every corner of the room.  Within seconds, frothing glasses were being set up on bars and waiters were stepping forward with trays of food.  Someone, Rayley thought, with that parenthetical part of his mind that was still working, has gone to great expense and trouble for this evening.  Someone is very determined to ensure that all goes well.

“Would you like champagne?” Graham offered.

“Champagne is always nice,” said Isabel, and Rayley nodded. Graham left them in search of glasses and, at least for the moment, the two stood alone, an island in the sea of bustling, chattering Parisians.

“We’ve met before,” she said, her voice so soft he was forced to lean in to catch the words.

“In a way.  You sketched me. On the Rue Clairaut.”

“And did I capture you?”

There were many things he could have said in response to such a provocative verb, but what he chose was the truth. “I looked sad.”

She exhaled softly, turned away.  She had been flirting, he realized belatedly.  She had meant the remark in a sort of playful jest and he had failed to respond in kind, had crushed her gaiety as surely as rose petals beneath a man’s shoes.  But no, this made no sense.  She would not flirt with him.  Not here, in this crowded room with her husband so close by.  Not anywhere, if the truth be told.  Not ever.

“I thought you were French,” he blurted out.

“You overheard me with Armand?  It’s a natural enough mistake, I suppose.  But I assure you, Detective, that despite all appearances I am as English as a woman can possibly be.  Devonshire cream poured into a champagne flute.”  She laughed.  Angels and fountains and music…. those ridiculous things men say about a woman’s laughter.  They all came stampeding over Rayley like a herd of bison down the Champs-Elysees. And then she was leaning toward him, her voice a whisper in his ear, her breath evident and warm and the gesture so intimate that Rayley feared for a moment his knees might give way. “So are you disappointed?”

Before he could answer the wretched Graham was back upon them, clutching three champagne classes in a most awkward fashion and bearing fresh news.

“Guess what I’ve just heard,” he said, lining the glasses carefully along a small mantle, sloshing a little as he did so.

“Neither of us is good at guessing,” Isabel said, reaching for a glass. “It’s against the detective’s training and I gave up the habit as a girl.”

“They’re letting us go up.”

Rayley had no idea what he meant but Isabel’s attention snapped to the boy in an instant. “Up the tower?”

Graham nodded. “They want to prove it’s working, at least the elevators to the base, so they’ve invited the press to tour.  That way they can be sure that we shall cast the word far and wide that at sunrise on May 9 the tower will be operable.”

Isabel smiled, once again that private little catlike smile. “They wish to proclaim this even to the English?”

Graham was practically dancing. “Especially to the English.  And here’s the plum, the absolute plum.  We can invite guests. Will you go with me?”

“You” is a strangely ineffectual word, Rayley had often thought, one of the few failures of his most serviceable language.  Because Graham’s invitation was vague, possibly directed to both him and Isabel, possibly to just one of them.  But Isabel seemed less troubled by his intent, for she downed her champagne with a single broad gulp and said “I couldn’t refuse the chance to ascend the tower before anyone else, even though I’m still not entirely sure why they would allow you to bring guests.”

“It’s a privilege of the press,” Graham said.  “They test everything new on us and if it breaks, they count the casualties as an acceptable loss.”

Isabel laughed.

“So you’re in?” Graham said, looking from one to the other. “Shall we meet at the base of the tower Saturday morning, 6 AM?  Sorry for the appallingly early hour but we need to be out of the way before the workmen arrive.  You’ll join us, won’t you, Abrams?  Think of it.  The chance to see all of Paris lying silent at your feet.”

“Of course he’s in,” Isabel said.  “He’s with Scotland Yard and thus fears nothing.  Oh, I knew I was right to come across the room to talk to the two of you.  It was sheer homesickness at first, I’ll confess.  A desire to speak in my natural tongue.  But I think I also knew that something good would come of the chance to be again with my own kind.”

“Expatriates make strange bedfellows,” Graham said with a chuckle.  “I doubt that back in London any of us would consider the other two our own kind.  But here in Paris…”

“But here in Paris…” Isabel said, reaching for a second glass of champagne, the one intended for Rayley. “Here in Paris we are but three fish out of water and thus the best of friends. And now it appears we are off on a great adventure.”

“Your husband won’t mind?”

Rayley regretted the words the moment he said them.  Graham looked at him with such exasperation that he all but rolled his eyes.  I must seem like a stuffy old fool, Rayley thought.  A prude and a Puritan, a pensioner taking his two grandchildren on holiday.

“I’m quite sure he would mind if he knew,” Isabel said. “Oh dear. Are we running low on champagne?”

“Not for long,” Graham said, turning to gallop back toward the bar.  He shot Rayley a final glance that suggested he should try to do a little better this time, so Rayley swallowed his next question, which was “How on earth can a man not know if his wife leaves the house before 6 AM?”

Isabel was gazing at him quietly.  “You are coming with me, aren’t you?”

A shift from “us” to “me” but no indication of what it might mean.  Rayley nodded. “Might I ask you something?”

“Please do.”

“That day in the café…How did you know I was British?”

She laughed.  “By the way you spoke French.”

An hour later Rayley found himself packed into an overcrowded coach with a half-dozen French policemen of varying ranks crammed in around him.  Their voices were giddy from free drink, and for once he didn’t mind that he understood not a word of what they were saying.   He sat in silence, going over the evening again and again in his mind.  The improbability of it all.

Did he want to climb the tower?  Most emphatically not.

Would he climb it?

Yes. If he could climb it with her.

The coach was slowing down on the street where his boarding house stood and Rayley made a move to push to his feet. He knew from a rather humiliating past experience that the police coach would not completely stop, but merely slow, and that he would be expected to leap out at his doorstep.  He dug into his pocket for the key to the front door and his fingers grazed the latest letter from Trevor Welles, a letter that had arrived that morning and that he had not yet had the chance to read.

He pulled the envelope out, squinted at it in the irregular glow of the streetlight.  Trevor had scribbled something on the back of envelope, evidently a last minute thought.  The coach slowed.  Rayley jumped, landing lightly on his feet, and waved goodbye at the coach from which no one waved back.  He turned the envelope over in his hand, squinted at Trevor’s characteristic scrawl.

A single sentence.  A question.

Did the maid scream?

CHAPTER FOUR

Paris

April 19

10:20 AM

“Look through the report very carefully,” Rayley said to his translator, a nondescript young man named Carle.  “I want to know if there was anything on the maid’s hands.”

Carle obediently flipped through the papers. “It says they were clean, Sir.”

“I know.  But does ‘clean’ mean that there was nothing of interest on her hands or nothing at all?”

Carle looked at him with the flat expression of a man who is not paid to be curious.

“The report says the officer who originally examined her was Denis Rubois,” Rayley said. “Go and ask him. She was in the process of helping to prepare dinner when the murderer entered, so it seems there would be some residue from her efforts.  Flour or butter or blood, strings from a bean, juice from an apple. Something.”

Carle nodded and left the room, and Rayley picked up the papers on his desk, frowning once again at the line where the investigating officer had described the maid’s hands.  “Propre et blanc comme la neige.”  The small translation book he carried in his pocket informed him that the officer had described the maid’s hands as not merely “clean” but “clean and white as the snow.”  The sort of linguistic extravagance the French were known for, but perhaps a clue as well, for his time at the Yard had taught Rayley that sometimes the absence of something could be as telling as its presence.

They were bringing the maid back in for another round of questioning this afternoon, along with the family housekeeper, and Rayley had been invited to witness the interrogation.  If his hosts expected him to sit quietly in the corner, merely observing, they would be disappointed.  The scribbled question on the back of Trevor’s last letter had set Rayley’s mind in motion, propelling his thoughts in the very direction Trevor had no doubt intended.

The maid didn’t scream. This much at least was clear.  She did not claim to have screamed in her first interview and no one in the crowded household claimed to have heard her.  There were two possible explanations for why she would have responded to the presence of an armed intruder with silence.  Perhaps the girl was simply not a screamer by nature, even when frightened or startled.  Some people went mute in times of crisis.  Or, as Trevor’s question seemed to imply, perhaps she did not scream because she was not surprised to find the man in the kitchen.

He had his list of questions at the ready and, judging upon the speed with which Carle normally performed tasks, it would doubtless take him an hour to find Rubois and complete his humble mission.  In the meantime, Rayley could return to the other pile of papers on his desk, the ones he had taken care to conceal even from the disinterested eyes of Carle.  Ever since he had learned he would be ascending the Eiffel Tower, Rayley had been scouring the records room of the police station for everything he could find on the mechanics of elevators. He’d understood scarcely ten percent of what he’d read and the paltry information he had managed to glean had reassured him not a whit.

Most of the journalistic stories involving elevators were actually descriptions of the far more interesting subject of elevator accidents.   Rayley had found at least a dozen newspaper accounts of the ghastly demise of the Baroness de Schack at the Grand Hotel a decade earlier.  As the Baron and Baroness had been leaving their suite – which had been merely situated on the second floor, there’s the rub – the Baron had walked down the steps but the Baroness had opted to summon the elevator, which she shared with the operator and another nameless employee of the hotel.  For reasons which all the newspaper articles had failed to make clear to Rayley, the elevator elected not to descend as expected, but rather to rise with an alarming speed to the top floor of the hotel, where it struck a beam and them plummeted like a stone, dropping the Baroness and her two companions to a bloody death.   The accident had made all the major papers in Europe, and Rayley would daresay those in most of the world, both because of the titled status of the deceased and the particular horrors of death by cerebral congestion.  The reputation of the Grand Hotel had been tarnished for years.

So it was quite clear that elevators were infernal contraptions even when merely going up and down, but Rayley could not shake off the memory of Graham’s casual remark about the additional problems facing the engineers for the Tower. These elevators had to rise diagonally.  It seemed an utterly unnatural movement and the fact that the French had brought in the Americans to help accomplish the feat did nothing to settle Rayley’s nerves.  He knew all too well the dangers inherent in moving a thought from English into French and back, where a man could sincerely believe himself to be ordering lamb and instead be brought a bowl of turtle soup.  Engineering directions translated by someone like Carle was an appalling thought.

Speaking of which, the man abruptly appeared back at the door, causing Rayley to shuffle his papers guiltily.

“He said her hands were completely clean, Sir.  As if they had just been washed.”

“And no one found that odd?”

“That a kitchen maid would wash her hands?” Carle asked, with an ironic lift of an eyebrow, as if to imply such cleanliness might be a rare thing in England but certainly not in France.

“That she would stop to wash them in the middle of a murder investigation,” Rayley said impatiently. “Never mind.  I’ll save the rest of my questions for the interview.”

The maid and housekeeper were already seated in the interrogation room when Rayley arrived, perched on two wooden chairs which were positioned opposite the seven identical wooden chairs which held the officers.  It gave the impression that the women were facing a firing squad, an arrangement no doubt designed to intimidate suspects into full compliance and witnesses into full disclosure. Judging by the terrified looks on the women’s faces, the stratagem would undoubtedly work yet again.

He made his way to the center of the front row and lowered himself decisively into the only empty seat, waving Carle over to the corner.  Rayley’s presence on the front line of the interrogation seemed to startle the officers, just as he intended.  And he further seized the advantage by asking, “Might I go first?”

Without waiting for an answer, or even the translation of his question, Rayley turned toward the housekeeper and said “I apologize for the inconvenience of having to use an interpreter, Ma’am, but I am a guest in your beautiful city and regrettably unskilled in your language.”   Carle’s translation earned Rayley back a cautious nod from the woman, who had a simple country face.  Something in her manner gave Rayley a flutter of optimism.

“Was the night of the murder, by chance, an evening that Mr. Martin normally had at leisure?”

Carle repeated the question.  The woman looked surprised, then nodded.

“Then why was he in the kitchen?”

A peppering of French, then Carle said “The master of the house brought home a business associate for dinner unexpectedly. The lady of the house asked the cook, Mr. Martin, if he would agree to stay and prepare the meal, then take his leisure on the following evening.  He agreed.”

“And if there had been no unexpected visitor, what would have happened?   I suppose what I’m asking is, how would the family typically dine on the cook’s night off?”

The officer in the chair beside Rayley pointedly shifted his weight and the others began to exchange glances.  Their shock at having the interrogation usurped and their mannerly restraint in the face of what seemed to be utterly trivial questions would only last so long.  Rayley knew he would have to focus his thoughts very carefully.

“She says,” Carle reported, “that the family would either dine out on such an evening or the maid Jeanne Marie would prepare a light meal of stew or soup.”

“Ah, just as a family would manage the situation in London,” Rayley said, with what he hoped was a winning smile.  He was torn between his need to charm the housekeeper and his need to get on with the questioning before the French had him dragged from the room. “So normally on a Monday night, Jeanne Marie would have been in the kitchen alone?”

The officer beside him stilled and gave Rayley a little sidelong glance.   At least someone sees where I’m going with this, Rayley thought, as the woman listened to Carle’s latest question and then nodded.

“And in London,” Rayley went on, “the cook’s night off is also the night that certain kitchen housekeeping tasks are performed. The most thorough scrub of the week, the cleaning of the silver, that sort of thing.  Might I assume it works the same way in a Parisian home?  That anyone familiar with the household routine would have expected Monday night to yield a kitchen full of silver and a young girl alone in the room?”

One of the advantages of having to wait for the circuit of translations was that Rayley had plenty of time to observe the faces of the two women in front of him.  The housekeeper was maintaining her slightly quizzical frown, as if surprised to find herself in the presence of what appeared to be an English clairvoyant.  But at the mention of the household silver, the maid Jeanne Marie had jerked upright in her chair and gone, Rayley observed with some satisfaction, blanc comme la neige.  She was very young and remarkably ugly, but he supposed neither of these things precluded her from having a lover.  Or from plotting with that lover to steal from the very household that employed her.

The murmuring of the policemen around him was enough to indicate a general light was dawning on them all.  To take matters further on his own would be impolite and unnecessary, so Rayley merely smiled at the housekeeper and said “Merci, madame.”  The man to his left, whom he shortly realized was the same Claude Rubois who had originally examined the girl, sprang on the trembling Jeanne Marie like a wolf, and she promptly spewed out her whole story.  Rayley could glean a fair amount from context and the tone of her voice, but Carle later filled in the blanks.  The boy who had come to the door had been not her lover, but her brother.  And yes, the two had planned for him to perform his heist of the family silver on an evening when they believed she would be the only one in the kitchen.  Jeanne Marie had no way to warn her brother that the unexpected dinner guest had meant a change of plans and thus that the luckless Mr. Martin would also be present. When he found the cook washing clams at the sink the boy had panicked, performing a clumsy murder when a simple turn-and-run would have sufficed.  Emerging from the pantry to find their perfect crime had fallen to disaster, his sister had felt she had no alternative but to cover for him.  She had shooed the boy from the kitchen, wiped down the knife he had used, concealed it among its fellows, and then – small but fatal error – had washed her hands before summoning help.

The girl was led away.  Fairly gently, Rayley was relieved to note.  The housekeeper, sobbing, was taken off in a different direction.   A few more officers strode from the room in a hurry, evidently off to arrest the girl’s brother.  Rubois slapped Rayley on the shoulder, a gesture that startled him but he raised his eyes to see the man’s chin nodding in an unmistakable gesture of “Well done.”

And then they all were gone, even Carle, and Rayley was left in the room alone.  What else could he have expected?  He looked at his watch.  Barely four, but he felt an urge to celebrate.  He could eat at a better restaurant tonight, be supposed, or indulge in a complete bottle of wine.  But solitary celebration is a sad thing, so instead he rose to his feet and headed toward the door.  There was a telegraph office on the corner.  He couldn’t wait to tell Trevor.

CHAPTER FIVE

Paris

April 20

5:40 AM

She was both beautiful and smart.  A disastrous combination in a woman, one guaranteed to doom her to a life of disappointment, and life had been disappointing Isabel Blout now for thirty-one years.

There appeared to be only a certain amount of time she could spend with a man before ennui would begin to set in, as slow and persistent as mold on a cottage wall.  Mama had predicted - had promised, really – that a marriage between a groom of sixty-four and a bride of sixteen would most probably fail to survive the honeymoon.  But George Blout had lingered into an even older old age, occasionally still rallying to demand a particularly distasteful variation of his husbandly rights.  Her time with Andrew had been six years, five of them delightful.    Randolph eight, but with an extended break in the middle.  Three years with Carlo, two of them best forgotten. James barely one, and their bond was of a most unusual sort.  Unorthodox as it was, the intensity of their time together expanded his presence in her memory and made him seem in some ways the most significant of the lot.  Armand didn’t count. She had known him forever, since the fumbling days of her girlhood, and her business with him was of a totally different sort.

Anyone clever with mathematics would see the problem immediately.  For a woman who began her romantic life at sixteen, six and eight and three and one adds up to somewhat more than Isabel’s current age of thirty-one.

Yes, regrettably there had been a bit of overlap between the affairs and this had at times proven painful for both Isabel and the gentlemen in question.  Others might blame her for this pain and even for the familial and marital upheavals which so often accompanied her arrival in a man’s life, but Isabel did not blame herself.  She knew she had been dealt a most unusual and very tricky hand to play.  Beautiful and smart.   A woman should be one or the other, not both, or else she is in an impossible situation – attractive enough to draw men, but shrewd enough to see through them.  Once a woman realizes the frailties of men, her life can quickly assume a nightmarish quality.  It’s as if she is being given a series of gaily wrapped presents, and yet she opens them only to find each one empty, until the floor around her feet is littered with piles of tissue and with abandoned boxes.

Isabel had traveled a great distance.  Not just Manchester to Paris, obscurity to prominence, ignorance to sophistication, or poverty to wealth, although these transitions, and many others, were all certainly made along the way.  She often bemused herself with the fantasy that she would someday return to the town of her birth.  She would walk the streets in her finest clothes and wait to be recognized.  She suspected it would take some time.  Manchester was a small town, but yet her transformation has been so profound that she knew she may have to walk its streets many times before the citizens would recall her name.  All those spot-faced boys who’d thrown mud at her and sometimes worse, the ones that called her The Princess for merely daring to be different, for wanting more out of life than the men of Manchester could offer.  Her childhood tormenters would be old now.  Worn down by too many children to feed and life in the mill.  They might not know her at once but then, when understanding finally dawned…they would see a woman resurrected. They would grab at the hem of her gown and beg for healing.  They would reach to her like the lepers who tried to touch Jesus.

Isabel looked different, she knew.  Sounded different. Moved differently and carried fans and furs and ivory-handled parasols, all the talismans of her new life.  But, despite the trappings of change, her real journey had been an interior one.  For the past fifteen years, Isabel had been her own artwork, her own invention, her own opus.  She had created herself out of nothing, and this had taken a tremendous amount of energy.

The men she would be meeting at the tower… They were not the sort with whom she would normally trifle. The reporter, that boy, the kind of man who would still be called a boy when he turned fifty.  And the other, the detective.  She had noticed his solitude at the café Sunday last.   She had known who he was, of course, since Armand made such a fuss about gathering information on people, especially people who might prove useful at some point in the future.  Especially those who’d come from London, who might carry gossip and rumors about their heads like lice.

She had been instructed to spy on him and, as Armand so charmingly put it “to find the dirt.”  Armand believed there was always dirt.  But it had been the detective’s palpable solitude that Isabel had first noted. Perhaps she had even dreamed about him afterward. She did that frequently - dreamed of men she had only seen in passing.

It occurred to Isabel, as she dressed in the shadows of early morning, that she herself might have been for the first time in her life genuinely lonely.   For it was not only curiosity about the tower which drove her down the marble steps of her apartment and out through the heavy oaken door.  It had been some time since she had seen so much worship in a man’s face as she had seen in the detective’s.  Perhaps she was merely nostalgic for England or perhaps she was homesick for her own youth, the borders of which seemed to be receding even farther in the distance.  She would not take him as a lover.  He was too ugly, too small and serious and there was a high probability that he might expect the sort of things that she was ill-prepared to give.  But she would take him as a mirror.  She would hold him out from her at arm’s length and admire the image of her that was reflected in his sad and eager eyes.

6:02 AM

Working the early shift at the morgue was hardly the best job in Paris, but the workers shuffled in as the church bells struck six - silent, sleep-grogged, and resigned to their fates. Two unidentified bodies had come in during the night and would require embalming for display. Two more had gone unclaimed for more than a week and would thus be buried beneath generic crosses in the small cemetery across the street, deemed the Pauper’s Garden.

The burials were especially dispirited tasks, since each one marked a failure for the French police, who prided themselves on body identification.  But with the starting date for the Exhibition nearing and more people streaming into Paris each day, the count would certainly keep rising and, given the fact that many of the visitors were foreign -  vagabonds, gypsies, criminals, and itinerates seeking work - it was unlikely that many of the bodies which would arrive at the morgue in the next few months would ever be named or claimed.  The police and the morgue workers were braced for an onslaught of corpses, and some were concerned that the demand might be more than the patchy soil of Pauper’s Garden could bear.  There was talk of procuring land for a second cemetery, for just as the city was opening new hostels and cafes in anticipation of the visitors, so must they create accommodations for the anticipated dead.

But of course, even within the republic of the morgue, some bodies received preferential treatment, such as the corpse which had been held in its own marble vault since it had been found on the banks of the Seine on the morning of April 12.  This body had been embalmed, but it had not been put on display with the others, nor was there any talk of carting it out to Pauper’s Garden.  At the insistence of the supervising detective, it was even packed in ice to preserve it as perfectly as possible, although in anticipation of what fate, no one could say.  The marble vault kept the ice frozen rather well but even so, it had to be completely changed twice a day, with the origin of each new work shift and even now, two workers were headed toward the vault pushing a wheelbarrow.  It was a tedious task, for large quantities of ice were not easily obtained at 6 AM in Paris, but this was what had been ordered and what the morgue workers must do.

This corpse was special. It was bound tightly in muslin, wrapped with the care of a mummy.  In a mere matter of days it had achieved a certain notoriety among the workers and in a building where the dead were treated nonchalantly, the body in the marble vault was handled with care. They called her The Lady of the River.

6:05 AM

Across town from the morgue a group of seventeen people, including two representatives from Eiffel’s engineering firm, huddled at the base of the tower. Rayley, who arrived early for all engagements as a matter of habit, had been waiting for a half an hour when Graham blustered up amid a pack of his fellow journalists.

No Isabel.

One of the American engineers, a chap with the prosaic name of Thomas Brown, introduced himself and began listing the glories of the Otis elevator system, using short sentences, which were promptly translated into French.  He described the cable system as being “doubly safe,” wincing a little on the phrase.  A decade may be a long time in the world of engineering, but it is a mere blink of the eye in public memory and Rayley wondered how many in their little party were considering the fate of the Baroness de Schack on this particular morning.  No one was meeting anyone else’s gaze.  In fact, they stood in a small circle, eyes downcast, rather in the manner of a family gathered at a burial plot, preparing to drop roses on the coffin of a departed loved one.  Brown mumbled steadily through his prepared speech, striving to hit the middle ground between reassuring his audience while stopping short of scolding them for being anxious in the first place.

Through his research, Rayley knew that the Otis company prided itself on its stellar safety record, which was largely the result of having created and patented hoisting cables a certain design.  If a cable broke or was for any reason stretched too far, leaf springs were released, bringing the falling car to what was promised to be a slow and gentle stop.   Apparently the French had hired the American firm because of this admirable technology and then proceeded to doubt the very mechanism for which they had paid so handsomely, forcing the Otis company to not only install their patented hoisting cables but also a sort of rack and pinion halting device that Eiffel used on his railway ventures.  Thus, the tower could be touted as “doubly safe,” and thus Brown’s barely concealed dismay as he claimed it to be so.  Rayley felt sympathy for the man.  No one knew better than he how the French could both invite and exclude in a singular gesture.

“And so we begin,” said Brown. “Mind your step at the entrance, ladies.”

Ladies?  As he had been looking about for Isabel, Rayley had noticed only one female, an American, clearly the sort who favored votes for women and smoked cigars she detested in an effort to make some sort of philosophical point.  The young woman’s face was pretty but her hair was cropped short, barely past her ears, and the cut of her jacket struggled to conceal all evidence of her gender.  Graham, whose taste in women appeared to be truly catholic, had of course taken to the creature at once, attempting to draw her into a discussion about the difference between a buffalo and a bison.  To her credit, the woman had given him an incredulous look and moved to a different part of the circle.  She had proclaimed herself to be a reporter from the New York Times and probably knew no more about prairie animals than the rest of them.

But the Times reporter had been the only female in their midst when Brown had begun his speech and now he had used the word “ladies,” clearly plural.   Rayley stepped back to crane his neck and indeed, there she was, standing apart from the others.  She wore shades of purple.   An amethyst coat with a scarf of lavender above it, a hat of deep rose pulled low across her face, plum colored gloves. Or perhaps he merely imagined the colors.   Although the sky was slowly beginning to lighten, they still stood swathed in shadows.

At the translator’s invitation, the group began to shuffle toward the square box of the elevator, which Brown had explained could hold a maximum of sixty people for its two-and-a-half minute ascent.  Sixty would make you feel rather packed, thought Rayley, and the webbed metal design of the car was enough like being caged as it was.  He was struggling not to indulge his tendency toward claustrophobia and was relieved that no one in the group, save Isabel and Graham, knew he was a Scotland Yard detective. Should his nerve fail, he hoped to only humiliate himself, not the whole of his motherland and Queen. Isabel had walked straight to the corner, although whether or not to enjoy the view or to get a better grip on the handrails, he couldn’t say.  He found himself in the middle of the car, wedged between Graham and the girl from the Times, who seemed happy for his presence, if only as a buffer.

“I say,” Graham ventured, leaning across Rayley in fresh attempt to start up with her. “When Otis talked to your very own paper last year he said the Tower would never be built, that there was too much risk.   And now here his company is, all tangled up with Eiffel.  I suppose financial opportunity creates strange allies, does it not?”

The girl sighed and the elevator commenced with a jerk.  Rayley startled and his hands flew in the air, a gesture no one but Graham appeared to notice.

He grinned at Rayley and wove his way over to Isabel, who had yet to greet either of them.  It was a very odd business, Rayley thought.  She had been outrageously friendly in the hotel ballroom but was so aloof today.  Well, good luck to Graham if he was trying to engage her in conversation, because the minute the car began its ascent it became quite apparent that American leaf springs and French rack and pinion mechanics combined to produce a cacophony as loud as a runaway train.  The female reporter clamped her hands over her ears and within seconds half the men in the car had followed suit.  They were rising slowly and more steadily now, but the feeling of a diagonal ascent was disorienting and Rayley planted his feet a bit further apart and stared down at the boots of the man beside him, thinking that if he fixed his eyes on something still inside the car the motion might be less unnerving.  He was beginning to regret several of his decisions at breakfast.

Brown had said they would rise 275 meters. This information had meant very little to Rayley at the time and probably to none of the others as well.  If a man had spent his life no higher off the ground than a second story balcony or an oak tree climbed in childhood, 275 meters was a pointless measurement. They had all stood at the foot of the tower and gazed up at the base when Brown said this, but looking up, Rayley was beginning to understand, was quite a different thing from looking down.  For when he had tried to fixate on the boots of the man beside him, he had been forced to notice the sight of the ground below, visible between the slats in the elevator floorboards and steadily retreating, like something from a nightmare.

Rayley gasped for air.  Inhaled, tried to exhale. He had not wanted to perceive the slowly receding benches and sidewalks of the park beneath them, but now that his vision had locked on the sight, he seemed unable to look away, even though the rest of the occupants of the car were growing ever more jubilant.  For when the elevator cleared the tops of the trees, suddenly they could see all around them, farther than they had ever seen before. There were cries of delight beneath the drone of the engines.  Some people released one hand from the rail and ventured to point at a landmark or another. The Seine, a blue-gray ribbon.  Notre Dame, the Sorbonne, the Palais Royal.  Or perhaps their own apartment building or hotel, suddenly looking very small and insignificant against the spreading panorama of the city.

Rayley concentrated on the arithmetic. Two-and-a-half minutes was how many seconds?  Two times sixty and then thirty more…150 seconds, not so long.  He lifted his head and, very cautiously, looked at Isabel.

She was, in herself, a dizzying sight.  She had turned, her eyes darting over the sinking city with a slight smile on her face.  In profile, she looked like a cameo, her features perfectly proportioned, her dark hair tucked under her hat so that there was nothing to distract from the height of her brow or the almost architectural symmetry of her lips.  Only her hands, clad in their plum leather gloves, betrayed any anxiety, for she was clutching the handrail tightly as she rose on tiptoe to peer through the webbing of the elevator cage, straining to see more.  For a moment Rayley was distracted, lost count in his nervous march to 150 seconds, and he was surprised when the car gave a final delicate shudder and came to a stop.  The engines ceased to wail and in the sudden silence he sensed the pulse of his own ears.

“And here we are,” Brown said, as the jaws of the cage cranked open.   He said it casually, as if he made this harrowing ascent on a daily basis, which he probably did, and he was the first to step out onto the platform.  He looked back expectantly. “Ladies?”

For once the notion of “Ladies first” felt more like a gauntlet thrown to the ground than a social courtesy, but, for what Rayley suspected were utterly different reasons, both Isabel and the American journalist seemed up to the challenge. The reporter dropped her hands from her ears and stepped out, pointedly ignoring Brown’s offered hand.  Isabel followed, giving the man one of her casual, radiant smiles. Then, one by one, the men clustered within the elevator filed out and onto the platform of the Eiffel Tower.

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary” Graham muttered, and Rayley was in total agreement. The base of the tower stretched around them, laid out much like the promised city square, the comparison Eiffel had used on the evening when they all first met.  Brown began to walk the parameters, using a cane to point out where the restaurants would be, each at a different corner.  A British-American bar, a Flemish brasserie, a Russian restaurant, and, of course, a French one as well.  Each would have the capacity of seating 600 diners, he added, a figure that might have stunned Rayley had he not been concentrating so hard on controlling the impulse to scream.  Brown was walking slowly, flanked by the ladies with the men struggling to stay close enough to hear, for although it was a mercifully calm day, the wind at this height blurred his voice.  Rayley’s feet stumbled across the rough floorboards, which Brown had assured them were a temporary measure designed to protect the marble tiles beneath from the boots of the workmen. Worst of all, the entire structure was gently swaying, bringing back memories of his wretched channel crossing.

“Six hundred people in four establishments,” Graham said with amazement, as the group came to a stop on the corner where Brown said the Russian restaurant would be. “That’s over two thousand possible visitors in the restaurants alone.”

“Correct, Sir, but just a start,” Brown said. “There will be shops flanking the sides and an open area in the middle for musicales and entertainments. Just as a public park in any neighborhood, inviting thousands out to converse and mingle.”

A neighborhood dangling in mid-air, Rayley thought.  And with everything on a much larger, rather intimidating scale. He thought of the pub where he used to gather with Trevor and the rest of the boys back in London – well, in truth he rarely had joined them, but Rayley’s memory had been busily rewriting history ever since his feet had first struck the soil of France.  That pub could have housed no more than sixty men, elbow to elbow on a Friday night.  Picturing a place ten times larger strained his imagination, and he wondered what it would feel like to sit drinking in a bar that size, where there was no hope of ever knowing the man beside you, where the pub was not a reflection of its own small section of the city, with the same faces coming in each night, but was rather a bar floating above the earth entirely, enticing travelers from all corners of the world.  People who had never seen each other before, would never see each other again.  Would it change their means of interacting?  It seemed it must.  The Tower is not just a step in engineering, he thought.  A structure of this size has the power to recreate us socially, to change how we view our fellow man.

But his thoughts appeared to be exclusive to him, for the rest of the group was murmuring in satisfaction.  Most of them had little notebooks out and were scribbling down Brown’s every word.  He had moved closer to the periphery now, and was pointing at something in the distance with his cane.  Rayley hung back and, to his surprise, Graham lingered with him.  It was cold this high in the air, and Graham had pulled his scarf so that it covered the lower half of his face.

“What do you think?” he asked.  “A marvel, to be sure.”

“To be sure.  With the floor so incomplete, I’m surprised they have such a substantial railing.” Tilting his head, Rayley directed Graham’s attention to the elegantly wrought railing behind where Brown stood.  It stretched to the middle of the man’s chest, an artful tangle of filigreed steel. “It seems much higher than it would take to prevent someone from slipping.”

Graham shook his head. “It’s not to protect against an accidental fall, it’s to prevent leapers. Can you imagine how many people would be tempted?  Such a romantic way to say au revoir, not to mention the chance to get one’s name in the history books.”

“Lives have already been lost in the building, or so I would have to assume.”

Graham shrugged. “They admit to three, so I’d guess the number to be twice that.  The death of a few workers is to be expected in such an ambitious enterprise, I would imagine, and a price Paris is more than willing to pay.  For the public will be thrilled with the scope of this clean and modern new city in the air, the grandeur which appears to have been manufactured in an instant.”  Graham attempted to snap his fingers on the word “instant” but his woolen gloves hampered the drama of the gesture. “The elevator doors will open and they will immediately cease to question the risk or the cost.  It will seem as if the tower has always been here.  They will wonder how they ever managed to live without it.  This is what progress does, you know.  Each step into the future makes us ever so much grander and more demanding and thus ever so slightly less human.”

Rayley was surprised by this burst of philosophy from such an unlikely source. “When the elevator doors open,” he said, “I wonder how many of them will suddenly realize they have a fear of heights.”

Graham chuckled, his seriousness gone at once on the breeze. “It’s true,” he said.  “I’ve certainly never been this high before. Well, I once climbed a mountain on a trip to Scotland, but that’s rather a different thing, isn’t it?  Atop a mountain, you look down and see the ground and trees gradually sloping away, and here you look down and see nothing and nothing and then the ground.  There’s something unnatural about it.  It’s as if we are dreaming, is it not?  Tell me Abrams, do you ever fly in your sleep?  Because that is what it feels like to me, as if we are all suspended here in some collective dream.”

“I suspect Monsieur Eiffel would tell us that was precisely his point.”

Graham glanced toward the group.  “Ah dear, I see the photographers are setting up, so I’d better go and make sure my lad has his lens pointed the right way.   He’s a fool, you know, mentally infirm even by the limited standards of his profession. They all claim to be perfectionists, but I think it’s just a cruel desire to make people stand in ludicrous positions for a long period of time while they keep their heads beneath their cloths and laugh at us.  Excuse me.”

“Indeed.”  Rayley rocked back on his heels with a sigh.  He had gotten a little more comfortable with the wind and the cold and the slight sway of the boards beneath his feet but he had forgotten about the damn photographers. Now they would be stuck here for much longer, perhaps an hour. He dug in his pocket for his watch.

“He has a private apartment at the top, you know.”

She had appeared at his side just as she did the first time – abruptly, without warning.  He wondered if she somehow calculated it, if she had trained herself on ways to approach men with stealth, the better to overwhelm them with the unexpected gift of her beauty.

“Eiffel,” she continued, when it became clear Rayley was not capable of answer.  “It’s only for his most select guests.  It’s on the third level at that point in a building I believe engineers call the tippy-top.”  She laughed, showing small, even teeth.

“The elevators go higher?”  It was a stupid question, since they clearly didn’t, but it was the only thing he could think of to say.  If he ever managed to get back to London, he would spend more time with the other detectives, Rayley vowed to himself.  He would insist that they teach him how to talk to women.

“Oh no,” she said. “You ascend on foot.” She pointed to a spiral staircase near the center of the platform, far away from where the photographers and journalists had clustered.  They were determined to show the background of Paris in their shots and were thus setting up along the guardrail.  They’d all seemed to simultaneously realize they must perch their cameras on platforms in order to shoot above the railing, a complication for which none of them had prepared, and everyone was scrambling around looking for boards and boxes the workmen might have left behind in order to create makeshift risers.   There was also the issue of having a human in the foreground by the railing to create scale, so there appeared to be a debate as to who might volunteer.  After a brief moment, the young American woman agreed to serve as a model for them all and earned a round of hearty, if somewhat glove-muffled, applause.

Clever girl, Rayley thought. She would have her picture in every paper of the civilized world within the week.

He turned back to Isabel, whom he suspected might be joking, or trying to test just how gullible he truly was. “How many people know of the existence of this apartment?” he asked.

“Very few. I understand it’s beautifully outfitted, can you imagine?  Sofas trimmed in velvet, cut crystal glasses on the shelf, and the most wonderful art.”

Rayley was relieved that his frantic newspaper reading frenzy of the last few days offered him the chance, for once, to make a sensible response. “I understand he has quite the collection.”

“Of art?”

“Among other things.”

They smiled as if they were a pair of conspirators, and Rayley relaxed. That was a far better attempt at this flirting business. For he knew that Gustave Eiffel, despite playing the grieving widower and devoted papa, was also known to keep company with the most glamorous women of Paris.

“He calls it his aerie,” Isabel said.  “Accessible to his most select circle of friends.  But the second level of the tower is open to all.”

“Only to the mad,” Rayley said.  He had read quite enough about the second platform, which was said to have a view of the city that would stop the heart.

“So shall we?”

“What?”

“Shall we climb?”

“Oh, no. God no.”

“But we have plenty of time.” She made a slight gesture toward the journalists, photographers, and engineers.  “They aren’t paying any attention to us at all.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to leave the group,” Rayley said and was immediately shamed.  He sounded like a nervous schoolboy.  “I don’t think the second level is open,” he amended, although that remark sounded scarcely better.

She laughed again. “None of this is really open, is it?”

“We’re here as guests. So if we should be found-“

“Fine, Detective. I’ll go alone.”

Oh God, Rayley thought.   Ohgodohgodohgod.  Because, with a defiant glance at the others, who were all literally focused on the American reporter, Isabel had begun to walk toward the spiral staircase.  He had two options.  He could either go with her or let her climb alone.  No, now that he considered, he supposed he had three.  He could walk over to Brown and inform on her.

All of the choices were equally unappealing.

She’s pulling a bluff, he suddenly realized. The calculated use of the word “detective,” obviously designed to shame him, had instead given her away.  She doesn’t truly intend to climb a half-built staircase that most likely leads to nowhere, he thought.  It’s a test.  We will get no more than a few steps up and she will turn to see me behind her.  She will relent and we will laugh about this later.  I will have gained her respect and we shall raise champagne in some bar, some properly-sized bar located on the ground, and we shall toast each other’s courage.  And we will laugh about later too, years from now, perhaps on lazy Sunday mornings spent in bed.

The last thought only seized the most peripheral part of his mind for Rayley was not a delusional man.  He knew that in the real world, in the Paris sleeping below them and in the London sleeping across the channel, he stood not a shred of a chance with a woman like Isabel Delacroix.  But the fantasy was enough to get his feet moving.  He approached the staircase and, with a sharp exhalation, put his foot on the first step.

She was no more than two or three feet above him.

It was a tightly-wound spiral, with each step not quite large enough to accommodate a man’s foot.  The heel of his boot hung off the back of the step, forcing him to lean forward onto the balls of his feet, keeping one hand on the flimsy railing and the other on the more substantial center post.  In this pose it was almost impossible to avoid the sensation that she was in his arms, for he had caught up to her quickly.  This was a good thing, for if she now lost her footing, she would tumble directly onto him.  An appealing thought, followed by the less satisfactory question of whether or not in this bizarre hunched position he would have the strength to catch her.  Rayley had a brief vision of the two of them rolling head over heels back to the platform while a dozen reporters and photographers turned to watch.

But as for now, her feet were just above him, her legs not only visible, but unavoidable.  He should be a gentleman and stay close enough to catch her and being a gentleman at this small distance offered the bonus of periodic glimpses of ankles and even, once or twice, the flash of a calf.  He quickly saw that the climb was arduous, each step steeply pitched and the spiral forcing them to twist and lean ever more to the center.  Surely she will stop soon, Rayley thought.   No more than ten feet should be enough for her to make her point, to know that if she is determined to do something foolhearted, I will come with her.  Even if I don’t want to.  Even if my hands are shaking and my breath is in my throat.

Her feet.  Her ankles. Her legs.  He could not not look.  Her foot was long and not as delicately shaped as one might expect. The ankle was sturdy, the leg above it showed sinew and muscle.  She has worked at some point in her life, he thought with surprise. This is the leg of a barmaid, a housekeeper, a farmer’s wife.  A woman who has used her body for more than caviar and clothing.

“How high do you intend to go?”

The question cost him.  Not just pride, but oxygen.  He had monitored his exhalations for some time to save up the breath to ask it, and he was relieved to find his voice did not sound strained.

She merely laughed, a sound which appeared to cost her nothing.

“Why do you think the steps are so narrow?” he asked.  He knew the proper answer. The spiral was wound tightly to minimize the swaying of the staircase. The question was only a desperate attempt to slow her down.

“So that you can’t change your mind,” she called back wickedly.  “Rather difficult to turn and go back, wouldn’t you say?”

He nodded, although he knew she couldn’t see him.  He was already tired and he could think of nothing in his experience exactly like this.  They plodded upward, past the makeshift ceiling of the first platform, through layers of steel and cables and yet she did not stop.  Rayley knew he couldn’t look down.  The sight of the floor below him, the ground yet farther beyond that….if he stopped he knew he would never start again.  He would die, just here, on this staircase, with the hips of Isabel Delacroix bobbing above his head.

And then, suddenly, light and air. They had broken through the layers of construction to the base of the second platform.  And Isabel stopped.

“Astounding,” she said, and this time she made no effort to conceal the gasp in her voice.

Rayley turned his head slightly and saw that she had used the perfect word.  The city had grown even smaller, the details even less visible than from the platform below.  Paris becoming an impressionistic jumble of shadow and colors, worthy of its greatest artists.  If the view from the first platform made you feel like a giant, this vista turned you into a god.  He thought of Graham’s remark that being so high was like dreaming, but Rayley had never been granted a dream as grandiose as this.

Isabel twisted and sank down to one of the steps, squeezing as much of her hips onto it as she could.  Rayley kept his arms braced against the center pole and the handrail, leaning forward, and it occurred to him that this would be the perfect position in which to kiss her.  If he ducked his head only a few more inches, their faces would be brought together.  But she might refuse, perhaps even scream.  God forbid, maybe even push him.

She belonged, after all, to another man.

“Shall we climb higher?” he said.

He would spend the rest of his life wondering why he had said this.

She shook her head.  Her hat had gone askew in the efforts of her ascent and small wisps of hair were coming loose from beneath the brim.  There was a flush in her cheeks and even – impossible to ignore at such proximity – a glimmer of perspiration on her upper lip.  “I don’t understand the aerie,” she said, when she had caught her breath. “This is the perfect view.  To go yet higher would be…a waste.”

“Yes,” he said.  “You would see less and less of the earth, only more of the clouds.  A man would climb higher only so that he could say that he had.”  He looked down at her.  “Or a woman,” he added.

“Or a woman,” she echoed softly.

“So are you suggesting that if Gustave Eiffel ever invites Isabel Delacroix to his aerie, she will decline the chance to see his Whistler?”

He said it lightly, his second attempt at gay banter, for even if she was simultaneously in his grasp and beyond his grasp, he wanted to know that in this rarified moment he had been able to flirt with her.  That he had momentarily escaped the caged confines of his detective’s brain.   That she had taken him, so to speak, to new heights.

But she frowned, turning her chin away from his.  “A Whistler?”

With her connections to society, Rayley was surprised she hadn’t caught the reference. The man’s name was in all the papers. “James Whistler,” he said.  “A portrait painter of some renown and an exhibiter in the American pavilion.   Rumor has it that he’s gifted one of his pieces to Gustave Eiffel in tribute. Tribute for the Tower, that is, and I suppose everything.  Everything Eiffel has done.”

“Ah,” she said.

“It was meant as a jest,” Rayley said weakly, for he knew that if one had to announce that a remark was humorous, this rendered it no longer so.  “I’m sure there’s no way Eiffel would put a truly valuable painting in a place where no one would ever see it.  No one except certain guests of a certain sort, that is, ladies who he –“

To his relief, Isabel turned her face back to him, saving him from having to say more, or of making an even more disastrous conversational error.  She wears powder, he realized.  Lip rouge, and a dark line of some sort, drawn very fine and close to the base of her eyelashes.  But all applied so expertly, with such a light and subtle hand that he had never noticed until this moment, when the light was so sharp and unforgiving and her face was just inches from his.

“I shouldn’t say that I would never go to the aerie,” she said.  “It’s just that the circumstances would have to be extraordinary.”

She was looking him right in the eye.

“Besides,” she added, “the name is Blout.”

It was his turn to frown.

“My name,” she repeated calmly, “is Isabel Blout.”

“You aren’t married to him?”

“My husband might object. Come to think of it, so might his wife.”

Rayley’s head once again was spinning.  He had a thousand questions but they died mute on his lips.  He merely stared at her, face to face, here on this spike rising into the heavens, here on this staircase that led to places they knew neither of them would ever go.

“He is your lover?”

“We might have used that word once.  Long ago.  Not now.  No, not for some time.”

The silence stretched between them.  She continued to gaze steadily at him, the corner of one lip slightly lifted.

“Then why have you come here?” he finally asked her. “Why are you in Paris?”

Her eyes were damp with tears, or perhaps it was just the wind. “I wanted to find the truth.”

“How very odd,” Rayley said. “That’s why I’ve come as well.”

CHAPTER SIX

London

April 22

9:15 AM

“So, I take it we’ve a new case?”  Trevor asked, sliding into one of the three wobbly chairs gathered around the battered table in the Scotland Yard Laboratory of Forensics.  A rather ostentatious name for a cold, badly lit room that was in truth little more than an alcove off the mortuary.  But the laboratory, primitive though it may be, was Trevor’s unofficial reward for his work on the Ripper case the previous autumn, and he never descended the stairs which led to his small kingdom without pride.

“Cleveland Street, Sir,” Davy said in a neutral tone of voice, sliding a file across the table.

Trevor struggled to keep his face equally nonchalant, although he felt like cursing.  For the last two weeks the papers had been full of the scandal, so he’d suspected the case would find its way to the forensics laboratory eventually. The disadvantage of running a unit founded on the basis of the Ripper killings was that the rest of the Yard now considered forensics to be the repository of all that was sensationalistic and bizarre. Trevor had hoped he would be given a chance to work on a series of more conventional cases – your everyday murders, so to speak - and gradually gain the respect of his fellow detectives upstairs.  When they saw how useful forensic science could be to their inquiries…

But, alas, it was not to be. They would take any case that drew the interest of the Queen, no questions asked, and when Trevor had read the preliminary report on the Cleveland Street affair, one name had leapt out at him.  The same name that seemed to be tied to all the truly lurid stories of London, and the minute he had seen it, he’d known the Queen would expect him to devote everything he had to the matter.  After all, Her Majesty herself had approved the funds which paid his salary, as well as that of Davy.  Tom, who had the advantages of both a family trust and the eternal hospitality of his Aunt Geraldine, served the unit as a volunteer. Little wonder that the officers upstairs all but guffawed in Trevor’s face whenever he used the term “my team.”  Although insightful beyond his years, Davy was a mere bobby and Tom, for all his swagger, was not yet through university and thus only a medical examiner in the loosest possible sense of the term.  Even when Rayley returned from Paris and joined them, but they would still be a pitiably small and ragtag force.

Well, there was Emma too, in her unofficial capacity.  Trevor supposed the name for what she did would be “consultant,” an admirably vague word that seemed to cover any number of unorthodox arrangements. Emma may have worked with them in the privacy of the Tuesday Night Murder Games, and she may have in fact proven the cleverest of the lot, but a twenty-year-old girl could hardly saunter into Scotland Yard and down the dungeon-like steps which led to this small room.  Dainty and petite, with her large eyes, pointed chin, and small mouth, Emma looked precisely like what she was – the respectable daughter of a schoolteacher, the genteel companion of a society matron, a young woman who could be counted on for discretion and propriety.  Only a few people, including the three men at this table, had ever seen the other side of her.

They had joked many times that Emma should put on britches and tuck her hair under a cap, that she should unsex herself and join them in laboratory, but today Trevor was glad that this was only a joke.   Whatever was in the files before him now would be troubling enough to deal with even without the presence of Emma Kelly.  Trevor put his palms on the folder and paused a minute before opening it.  There would be personal accounts, record books, drawings of the property, and pictures.  Photography, he had often mused, was a double-edged sword of an invention, producing crime scene images of the sort Trevor found impossible to forget even after the files had been closed and put away.  The blank-eyed gazes of the Ripper victims still followed him in his sleep.

“They’ve brought one of them in to a holding cell,” Tom said, his voice as carefully even as the others.

“Victim or suspect?”

“I’d imagine that’s for us to decide,” Tom said.  He and Davy had read the file before he arrived, Trevor realized, along with the stack of folded newspapers on the counter.

“So in the interest of time, why don’t you two tell me what are we dealing with?”  Trevor asked, sighing as he slid the unopened folder back toward Davy.   “I mean, besides a bunch of buggered young boys?”

Paris

9:20  AM

The pounding on the door brought Rayley out of his reverie. He’d gotten used to a leisurely breakfast, since the French started their work day far later than the British.  The one thing he could say for his landlady was that she provided a superlative variety of pastries for her tenants, as well as a passable attempt at British tea.  Rayley was still sitting down in the common room, making a half-hearted stab at reading the morning papers when the pounding at the front door had begun.

Shooting him a dour glance, the landlady stomped to her foyer.  He’d gathered she considered it beneath her station to be renting rooms to a policeman in the first place, but Rayley was in all other ways the ideal tenant – quiet, neat, and prompt to pay.  And in the months he had been in Paris this is the first time anyone had come knocking at all, much less in this brusque manner.

When she jerked open the door, two officers walked in.  One of them Rayley recognized from the station, since the man was almost comically rotund and spoke a bit of English.  The other, judging by his jacket, was higher in rank.

“A body, Sir” the chubby man said.  “At the river.  You must come.”

“Me?  Why?”  Rayley had risen to his feet as they entered and he now tossed his napkin to his breakfast plate in some confusion.  He carried no authority with the Paris police.  Judging by the nods and smiles in the corridors, he had risen slightly in their estimation since the business with the stabbing of the cook, but he was still surprised to find himself summoned to a crime scene.

“He’s one of yours, Sir,” the man said, his eyes darting around the room, the weight of his body swaying slightly between his widely-planted feet.  The familiar nervousness of a street cop in the presence of a superior, trying to do it all exactly by the book.   It was good to see that some behaviors, at least, appeared to know no nationality.

“One of mine?”

“Yes, Sir,” the man said, his gaze coming to rest on Rayley’s half-finished pastry.  “English.”

London

9:35 AM

“So what led the officers to Cleveland Street in the first place?” Trevor asked as he wove his way through the byzantine hallways of the Scotland Yard basement, Davy and Tom lagging behind.

“Sheer chance, Sir.  Some sort of petty theft reported at the London Central Telegraph Office,” Davy said, stepping forward and falling into pace with Trevor. “The coppers were talking to all the delivery boys, trying to see who among them might have taken the money, when they came across fourteen shillings in the possession of a boy named Charlie Swinscow.   Fourteen shillings was more than the amount stolen, and quite a bit more than one would expect the lad to have in his pocket for any reason.”

Trevor nodded.  Fourteen shillings would be the equivalent of several weeks’ worth of wages for a telegraph delivery boy.

“A constable brought him in for questioning,” Davy continued.  “And Charlie admitted that he got the money from a man named Charles Hammond, who operates what apparently is some sort of male brothel run out of 229 Cleveland Street.  I mean male brothel not in the sense males are the customers, Sir, but that they are also the…um…providers who…”

“Quite,” said Trevor.

Davy soldiered on.  “Anyway, our Charlie named several other boys his age and said they were all procured, I believe the word is, Sir, all procured into service by an older lad who worked for the General Post.   The post and the telegraph offices are in the same building, so the boys in question would have known each other, thus making it easy for the older boy to recruit the whole lot of them at once.”

“Gives rather a new meaning to the term ‘mail service,’ does it not?”  Tom called up cheerfully from behind them.

Trevor pointedly ignored him.

“And the age of this Charlie Swinscow?”

“Fifteen.”

Trevor winced.  He himself had grown up in the country, in a simpler time and place.  At fifteen his idea of criminal activity was sneaking off from the village schoolmaster to go fishing, and his entire sexual experience had consisted of a kiss he’d exchanged with that same man’s daughter. The kiss had been brief and clumsy, even a bit off the mark, but the memory of it had informed his nocturnal fantasies for months afterwards.  No such innocence existed for the children of London.  “And the brothel owner?  The procurer?”

“Not sure the exact age on Hammond, Sir, but he’s an adult.  By the time the bobbies went to Cleveland Street to check Charlie’s story, Hammond had evidently gotten wind of the trouble. They found the house locked up and the man disappeared.  We’ll round him up, of course. The procurer from the General Post is eighteen or so, although he seems to have given us the slip as well.  Charlie claims no one has seen him near the place for the last two weeks.  Name of Henry Newlove.”

“Newlove?”

“Yes, Sir.  Newlove.”

“Not a word from you, Tom,” Trevor said.

“I promise that for once I wasn’t going to make a joke,” Tom said.   “Didn’t figure I had to.”

Paris

9:45 AM

The body of Patrick Graham lay on the banks of the Seine, legs sprawled, arms flung wide, face turned up to the sky.  From a distance, he looked like a man merely flattened from a night of heavy drink, but as Rayley and his escorts cautiously picked their way down the steep bank toward the river, the uglier truth became more apparent with each step.

Death has a certain smell.  Moldy of course, the aroma of decay, but that comes later.  In the beginning there is something faintly metallic about it, as if the air around a dead body is shimmering with the departing energy of what was once a human life.  Rayley was not sure he believed in souls, much less any evidence of a soul departing, and yet he had noticed it many times, this strange sense of movement around a still body.  The Parisian police stood back to let him pass, and a momentary silence fell on the group.  Rayley dropped to his knees, heedless of his tweed trousers, and turned Graham’s face toward his.

The man’s complexion, once florid and bursting with youth, was now greenish-gray, the features so bloated that Graham looked Mongoloid, his eyelids stretched into slits, his cheeks hanging with an unnatural fullness.  Rayley put one hand on Graham’s chest and the other hand on top of that one, then used the full weight of his own body to give a strong push.  A murmur ran through the French who evidently thought he was trying to resuscitate a corpse, but, with the third push, Rayley was rewarded with a spurt of water from Graham’s lips, dark as brandy and foaming.

Graham was in the same suit he’d worn two days before, when they’d climbed the tower, Rayley noted, rocking back on his heels as the French began to chatter again.  The body clearly had not been submerged for long and the presence of water in the lungs… Well there had been some, certainly, but not as much as you’d expect and probably not enough to prove Graham had been alive when he entered the river.  Isabel had described the three of them as all being like fish out of water.  And now Graham had gone from a fish out of water to a man who’d found entirely too much of it.  Rayley glanced at the body again, then at the river.

The Seine ran tranquil, at least in comparison with the Thames, and at this particular pass the river was neither broad nor, judging by the succession of boat markers, particularly deep. If Graham had somehow stumbled and fallen in, if he had jumped or been tossed from one of the bridges, this alone should not have led to his death.  His hands and feet were unbound and bore no evidence of ever having been restrained, so why had he not merely paddled his way to one of the shores?  It was unlikely the man had been completely unable to swim and besides, if he had struggled over time, his lungs would have given up far more water than this single little squirt of fluid.  Graham had most likely been dead, or at least dying, when he entered the river.

Rayley carefully lifted the head, but saw no evidence of a blow.  On the hill behind him a few of the young officers were emptying a satchel, a leather folder which had evidently been found along with Graham’s body.  The contents must have provided his name and nationality and thus caused the French to summon Rayley.  But it must have held these other papers too, which the flics were carefully peeling part from each other and spreading along the bank, securing each sheet with a pebble.  It was probably a pointless task, since any words once written on those papers had surely been obliterated by the river, but Rayley was still relieved to see them making the effort.  For Graham had said other things that first night too, had he not?  Something about how newspaper men wouldn’t stop until they had gotten all the answers.  At the time, Rayley had dismissed it as boyish boast, Graham’s silly attempt to elevate his own profession to the status of Rayley’s.  It was hard to imagine that the man, whose primary interests appeared to be flirting with American journalists and passing along gossip, might have stumbled onto a real crime or that such a crime could have led to his death.

But anything was possible.  At least at this stage of the investigation.

London

9:55 AM

The boy who rose from the bench to greet them may have claimed to be fifteen, but he looked closer to twelve.  Slender, pale, and blond, his eyes of that transparent hazel color Trevor associated with the working classes.  He chewed his lower lip as the officer unlocked the cell door to let Trevor, Tom, and Davy in, and the minute the man was out of sight he exploded into protest.

“I swear I didn’t steal the money, Sir.  On me Mum’s grave, I swear it.”

“Sit down, son,” Trevor said.  The boy was evidently still confused about why he’d been brought back in for questioning a second time, for he launched into a rambling, tear-filled explanation of how he would never cheat the telegraph office, how the coin in his pocket was an extra gratuity for services rendered, how they could ask the maid at the door if that wasn’t just what she said to him.

“No one is accusing you of stealing any money,” Trevor said. He had yet to introduce himself or the others, but Charlie Swinscow didn’t seem interested in such formalities.  He had sunk back down to the narrow bench and was wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “But we do need to understand how you came to be in possession of such a sum.  Fourteen shillings is rather a lot for a boy your age to be carrying about, is it not?”

A strange emotion flickered across Charlie’s face, a mixture of shame at war with pride. “Friend gave it to me.”

“What is your friend’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, but he would have to be a very good friend to give you fourteen shillings, would he not?  I suspect what you’re saying is that he made you promise not to say his name.”

The pale eyes were fixed on a spot on the floor.  The boy remained silent.

“We’re not after you, Charlie,” Davy said.  “Or any of your friends who deliver telegrams with you.  We’re after the men who give you money.   You have nothing to fear.”

The eyes flickered. “’Tis a crime.”

“True,” Davy conceded.  “But there are small crimes and big crimes, and Scotland Yard only cares about the latter.”

“The police might see you as more of a victim than a criminal,” Trevor said, picking his words carefully and trying to cut Davy off before he promised too much.  Charlie was quite right – homosexuality was indeed a crime, as was prostitution.  Leading to incarceration and hard labor in the hands of an unsympathetic judge and it was impossible to predict how a judge might approach a case such as this one.  Female prostitutes were rarely prosecuted, which was probably why Davy had rushed to assure the boy that the Yard would take little interest in the case.  But Trevor was not at all sure his superiors would view male prostitution as an analogous crime.

“Victim?”  Charlie asked warily.  The word seemed to stir up the same sort of war of emotions that had followed the mention of the fourteen shillings.

“We need two things if you are to help us,” Trevor said.  “And, in turn, to allow us to help you.  Our medical officer here is Thomas Bainbridge and he will examine you to corroborate that the events you described actually took place.  Do you understand?   Any evidence he finds will only serve to verify the truth of your statements and this will all go to your favor.  The second thing we need is the name of the man who gave you the money.”

“I done told the copper.  Charles Hammond.”

“Yes, yes indeed, you did tell the copper. But we need the name of the man who gave the money to Mr. Hammond.  The one you were with when you earned it.”

The eyes met Trevor’s directly, the quivering chin lifted. “’Twas more than one.”

A beat of silence filled the cell.

“Then we’ll need as many names as you can recall,” Trevor said.  “It isn’t just you, Charlie.  We’ll be talking to Henry when we find him and the other lads who work for the telegraph as well, so no one will know who tells us what.  There will be no um, no social repercussions for your willingness to cooperate.”

Charlie was still staring at Trevor, an ironic smile playing around the corner of his thin mouth, as if he were wondering if Trevor could possibly be as much a fool as he appeared. Then, slowly, his eyes moved to Davy and finally to Tom.

“You’re the one who’s a doctor?”

PARIS

10:10  AM

“I’ve done all I can here,” Rayley said aloud, privately thinking it wasn’t much.  He could only hope the body would yield more information when he got it to the morgue and could cut off the sodden clothing and conduct a proper examination.

Carle, who had arrived a few minutes earlier, relayed the message to the flics, who were standing by with a canvas stretcher.  Apparently, based on little more than his shared nationality with the corpse, the French were more than happy to let Rayley handle the transfer of the body.   He knew he shouldn’t be surprised.  Graham was a foreigner, a reporter, middle class at best.  It was hard, based on the paltry evidence given up by his body, to even determine if a crime had occurred.  So the officers standing on the sidewalk above were literally turning their back on the affair, off to find other victims who were more interesting, or at least more French.

Even the crowd watching from the far bank had dispersed, and as Rayley looked across the water, his eyes fell on one of the few remaining gawkers.  A young boy, sitting on the bridge, with one arm draped around an ornate black lamppost and his legs dangling over the side.  Rayley squinted into the sunshine.

There was something familiar in his form.  Rayley was almost certain he had seen him before.

Was he a messenger, a waiter, a carriage boy?   Could he possibly have been one of the young men who had served champagne at the party on the night Rayley and Graham had first met?   Rayley felt a rush of anxiety.  He and Trevor had always suspected the Ripper attended the crime scenes in Whitechapel, that he wouldn’t have been able to resist the chance to slip back and admire his handiwork one more time.  The two detectives had stood shoulder to shoulder in the blood-stained street and surveyed the jostling crowd, certain that somewhere among the eager onlookers was the perpetrator himself, the secret guest of honor at a party he’d created.

But no, Rayley thought, actually shaking his head to clear the thought.  He was being paranoid. The boy on the bridge was a slight lad, surely unable to subdue the strapping Graham or carry his body down to the river.  Rayley signaled, and the flics sprang forward with the stretcher, eager to get on with it.  He took one final look at Graham’s face before the rough green blanket was raised.

I won’t leave Paris until I find the man who brought you to this water, Rayley silently promised the body.  Perhaps you were a fool, but you were my fool, just as the fat man said.  You deserve better than this.

CHAPTER SEVEN

London

April 22

3:40 PM

“Do you know a woman named Isabel Blout?”

Geraldine looked up from her tea, surprised at Trevor’s question.  “What business could you possibly have with Isabel Blout?”

“Rayley Abrams met her in Paris and has written asking if I could learn anything of her history.  I take it she’s a bit of a socialite.”

Geraldine paused to consider before she spoke - a rare event for her, and duly noted by Trevor.  “I scarcely know the girl, but calling her a socialite stretches the truth,” she finally said.  “Isabel married one of the richest men in London and was thus afforded the invitations and privileges one would expect…”

Trevor tamped at his pipe thoughtfully, knowing full well where Gerry’s unfinished sentence had been headed.  “So she was invited to all the right parties but was never fully accepted into the inner circles of society.”

Gerry nodded. “Her story didn’t sit quite right among his friends. Too many unanswered questions, you know, and society tends to like its questions duly answered. They prefer for people to marry their own kind.”

“What sort of questions did people ask?”

“The first question was why, after all this time, George Blout had married at all.  Confirmed bachelor, you know, rarely seen outside the confines of his men’s club,  and far past the age where anyone would expect him to walk the aisle, much less to take on a girl with such an obscure background.  She came from Manchester, I think.  Perhaps Liverpool.  One of those towns where they…you know, darling.  One of those places where they make useful things.”

Trevor sat back, the picture unfolding swiftly before him.  A factory town, sprung up around a port.  A city of industry, billowing smokestacks and dirty streets.  Brutal repetitive work that began in childhood and ended, more often than not, in premature death.

“She had a notably beautiful face.  Enough so that George must have convinced himself that her origins didn’t matter,” Geraldine continued.  “Heaven only knows how she found her way to his table but they married when she was no more than sixteen and he was…well, George is older than me, I believe, which would have made him well past sixty when he took his bride.  If memory serves, it was a bit of a scandal.”

Trevor smiled. “If memory serves, indeed.  I’ve never known you to be scandalized by scandal, Geraldine.  I’m surprised you didn’t invite the old duffer and his sooty child bride to tea.”

Gerry chuckled.  “Perhaps I would have, but George Blout and I hardly frequent the same social circles.  Our politics differ, especially when it comes to the care and sustenance of the working class.”

“Well he certainly cared for and sustained one of them.  How did he make his money?”

“Mills, I believe. Textiles.”

“Located in Manchester?”

Gerry looked at him archly.  “So you’re implying he marries a girl straight out of one of his own factories, a girl whose family he has exploited for years?  Perhaps you’re right, although it would be a strange selection for either of them, wouldn’t you say?”

Trevor shrugged. “Not everyone is as politically motivated as you, Geraldine.  Nor as dynastically blessed.  Imagine a girl coming up poor with no prospects.  She’s pretty, but she knows that beauty will soon be swept away by the same hard work that ruined her mother and indeed every woman she knows.  She might be willing to put aside her resentment for a way out of her situation.  And I take it this Blout man left her well-situated.”

Gerry looked surprised. “He didn’t leave her at all.  George is every bit as alive as I am.”

“But Rayley implied that – “

“Isabel Blout is a bolter.”

Trevor frowned, unfamiliar with the term.

“A woman who bolts, darling,” Gerry explained.  “Leaves.  Runs away.  Is just suddenly, simply gone.”

“She went to Paris on her own?”

Gerry shook her head with exasperation, and leaned forward to refill her tea cup.  “Ran off with some sort of French merchant, a man whose origins are every bit as murky as her own.  The sort who tosses about his money but has no family and thus no comfortable explanation for how this money came to be.  Her departure left George supposedly quite humiliated…as you’re thinking he no doubt deserves to be, and I quite agree.  A man who marries a child must prepare himself for the day that child grows up.”

“Quite,” said Trevor, although he felt a dash of sympathy for Blout.

“George’s interpretation of the events undoubtedly differs from my own,” Gerry said.  “Rumor claims that no one is allowed to say her name in his presence and that he has struck every memento of her existence from his home.  He’s even selling the Whistler.”

“Whistler?   I say, Geraldine, whistlers and bolters.  When you begin to speak of society, I hardly know what you’re about.”

“James Whistler, darling, he’s a portrait artist from America.  A very good one and quite popular among the Mayfair matrons.  He’s probably painted half the women I know, and I’ve heard it said that his portrait of Isabel Blout was especially striking.  It would almost have to be, I suppose, considering his level of talent and her natural beauty.  There was a bit of a hubbub about it at the time, since it seems Whistler was so proud of the finished work he initially refused to release it to Blout.  They say he wanted to keep it for his private collection or sell it to a museum.” Gerry screwed up her face, struggling to remember.  “I think perhaps George took him to court over the matter, or at least there was some business with their solicitors.  George prevailed, of course.  After all, the portrait had been a commission, paid for in full before the artist ever picked up his brush.  And my understanding is that it hung over the fireplace in the family home until the day Isabel disappeared.”

“You never saw it?”

Gerry regretfully shook her head.  “I’m hardly likely to be invited to a party in the home of George Blout or any man who knows my politics.  But I would have liked to have seen it.  Tess described it as quite unlike the usual portrait of a society wife and rather…remarkable.  As if the artist had somehow managed to get straight to the essence of the woman.”

“And did the artist manage to get straight to the essence of the woman?”

Gerry snorted in amusement. “That was certainly the gossip.”

“Justified?”

“Whistler was the consummate professional, a man who’d done a dozen commissions in Mayfair alone.  Why would he suddenly insist on keeping one?”

“Perhaps this picture was somehow better,” Trevor guessed.  “Representative of his best work.”

“Then why not simply reproduce it?” Gerry shook her head.  “You know I rarely come down on the side of idle gossip, but in this case the speculation seems warranted.  Whistler’s refusal to release the painting to Blout was a nip at the very hands that had been steadily feeding him, tantamount to ruining a lucrative career as the portraitist of London’s upper class.  It implies not just pride in the work but a more intimate connection to the subject matter, wouldn’t you say?”

“I really can’t say.  The whole story is quite bizarre and makes me wonder all the more how Abrams might have gotten himself tangled with such a woman.  Married at sixteen to a man four times her age.  A rumored affair with an American painter.  Then she leaves both to decamp with a nouveau riche man in Paris….”

“Noureau riche?  Very good, Trevor.”

He flushed slightly.  Geraldine’s education and world experience so exceeded his own that she sometimes unconsciously made Trevor feel like a schoolboy.  “Emma has not totally abandoned the hope I will someday learn French.  She persists with our lessons, although I fear I give her little cause for optimism.”

“Nonsense.  She’s very fond of you, Trevor.”

He could think of nothing to say to this, and in the silence that ensued, Trevor squirmed a little under the steady gaze of Geraldine’s heavy-lidded eyes.  Struggling for a way to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand, he fished Rayley’s letter from the pocket of his jacket and quickly scanned it to see if he had missed any details.  “Abrams says she goes by the name Isabel Delacroix in Paris.”

“Indeed?” Geraldine said, as swiftly diverted as he hoped she would be.   “If so, then that is quite the fabrication.  He may not speak of Isabel or even be willing to concede she exists, but George Blout would never consent to a divorce.  Too public, too final.  A final blow to the male ego, I suppose.” Gerry paused.  “But you know, something else is coming to me.  There’s a chance her infamous portrait may find its way to Paris along with its subject.  I read in the papers some time back that Whistler is showing as part of the art exhibition, and that some of his more exalted London portraits were on loan to the American pavilion.”

“Her husband would allow her image to be displayed before half the world?  It seems strange for a man with such pride.”

“I believe he’d released the portrait to a dealer.  Probably Madison and Perry, the gallery across from Windsor Square. They deal with the cast-off art of people from a certain class.”  Gerry’s frown evaporated and she nodded with vigor, suddenly sure of herself.  “If a group of Whistlers is on its way to Paris I can’t imagine the Blout portrait wouldn’t be among them.  It was quite the sensation.”

“I say, Geraldine, you claim to scarcely know Isabel Blout and yet you deliver up the full story like bread on a plate.  You should gossip more.  You have the gift.”  Trevor refolded Rayley’s letter and returned it to his pocket.  “I’ll follow up with the portrait. There should be a record somewhere of any Whistlers acquired for exhibition.”

“But how does all this relate to your friend?  Is Isabel causing trouble in Paris now?”

“Apparently Rayley and the lady have become acquaintances. How they might have met, I can’t say.”

“What are you going to tell him?” Geraldine asked. “He is doubtless awaiting your reply.”

Trevor clasped his hands in front of his face, exhaled into the hollow of his palms.  Perhaps it truly was no more than idle London gossip on the hoof, bearing its way toward Paris and making it impossible for a desperate woman to reinvent herself in a new city.  It wasn’t hard to picture.  A pretty young wife fleeing her aging husband, the French displaying portraits of British women drawn by an American, a new world order clashing against old values, the endless dance of sex and art and nationalism and money.

But something in the situation niggled at him.  Trevor selected a biscuit from the tray on Geraldine’s tea table, nestled himself more comfortably among the cushions on her divan.  He would report what Geraldine had said, but he still didn’t understand why Abrams had asked him for a history of Isabel Blout in the first place.  So he had met her socially, so he had found her – as apparently had so many other men before him – attractive.  What of it?  Evidently something was niggling at Abrams as well.

“It’s just speculation, darling, silly Mayfair chatter,” Gerry said, wiping a crumb from her plump cheek.  “Probably more motivated by envy of the woman’s beauty than a fair analysis of her character. You don’t have to share every detail with Rayley.”

“No, Rayley isn’t frivolous.  If he asked me to learn her history, he must have had a reason.”  Trevor looked up, his gaze locking with that of Geraldine.  “I’m going to tell him to stay away from her.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Paris

April 23

3:14 AM

Rayley awakened in darkness so complete that it seemed to have closed over him like water.  He’d been having a bad dream, he surmised, since his hands were clutching the bedspread and his forehead was velvet with sweat.  He tried to remember, but the dream was fading even as his eyes fluttered open, leaving behind only the vague sense that he had been lost in a series of hallways, looking for a way out.

He sat up on the edge of the bed, pausing a moment for the vertigo to pass.  Yesterday’s autopsy must have shaken him more than he’d been willing to admit at the time.  Graham’s body had lain on the marble slab of the mortuary table looking quite pristine at first, yielding no immediately obvious wound which would explain his death.  It was only in Rayley’s second pass over the body that he had caught them, the four very slight bruises forming a crescent pattern around the side of the man’s mouth, nearly lost in the stubble of his beard.  Rayley placed his own hand over Graham’s lips, shuddering only slightly at the coolness of the man’s flesh and his impulse was immediately rewarded.   The bruises lined up perfectly with the tips of his fingers.

Of course the fact that someone had placed a hand over the man’s mouth, even roughly enough to cause bruising, hardly explained his death.  Rayley had glanced toward the end of the table where the coroner, Rubois, and Carle all stood silently watching him, their faces alert but noncommittal.

“Chloroform?” Rayley had ventured.

The advantage of modern words is that they rarely need translation. Rubois had nodded and the coroner had left the room, returning almost at once with a file of blood that Rayley could only assume must have been drawn from Graham’s body prior to his arrival.  But could the French really test for the presence of chloroform in blood?  The coroner said something quietly to Carle, who also slipped away.

Rayley’s mind was churning.  Chloroform had been used routinely in surgeries for probably the last thirty years in London and he could only assume Paris as well.  That would put it most often in the possession of doctors and hospital attendants – dear God, were they really back on Ripper territory again?  But then again, chloroform was often used to reduce the suffering of women in childbirth and had been popularized, in fact, when the Queen had requested its assistance in the delivery of her eighth child.  The mother’s friend, it was sometimes coyly called, and this undoubtedly made it easier to obtain than most drugs.  Available to midwifes, most likely, or even for sale at neighborhood pharmacies.  All of Paris could be awash in chloroform for all he knew.

The coroner had extracted a small amount of blood from the vial and was carefully holding the dropper up to the level of his eyes.  Rayley couldn’t imagine what he was looking for.  As any police officer well knew, chloroform was colorless and odorless, making it the perfect means for rendering a victim unconscious within minutes as well as being nearly impossible to detect through routine examination.  But in that moment Carle had returned with a torn clump of a baguette, and to Rayley’s utter mystification the coroner had dropped dots of Graham’s blood in a pattern across its surface.  Motioning for the men to follow, he’d led them to a second room and to a cage with perhaps a dozen small white mice.  He pulled back the mesh top of the cage, dropped in the bread, and then the men stood back and waited.  It seemed they were all holding their breath.

The nasty little vermin, made all the more horrid to Rayley because of their strange pink eyes and nearly translucent skin, swarmed over the bread within seconds, fighting each other for a taste of Graham’s blood.  Clever, Rayley thought, nodding toward the coroner.  Disgusting but damn clever.  Within seconds, the mice were stumbling.  Within a few more, sleeping.  And probably half of them dead within a minute of that, but Rayley had already turned toward the door, not needing to witness this final proof.  He had his answer for why Graham, a hale and strapping young man, had slipped beneath the waters of the Seine without a struggle.

Rayley had spent the afternoon aimlessly wandering the streets of the city.  Ostensibly he was on a mission to verify the easy purchase of chloroform by citizens other than doctors, but a stop at the first pharmacy he’d passed had proven not only that chloroform was in ample supply, but that the placard advertising this fact had borne the image of a plump, solemn woman no doubt meant to simulate the Queen.  So he could not have said why even after his errand was complete, he had still kept walking, why he was so reluctant to return to the mortuary and record this essential new finding in his notes.     When evening finally fell he had no appetite for his normal supper of sausage, bread, and cheese.  He was not sure if he would ever again enjoy a baguette, and they had been his favorite.

And now, despite his sleeping draught, he found himself wide awake.   Awake in that definitive way that suggested there was little reason in trying to return to slumber, so he may as well write Trevor with these new developments.  He fumbled for the box of matches on his bedside table.  He had sent a telegram earlier but he knew the Murder Club would be chomping at the bit for more details and he was eager to learn their thoughts in return.  That bit about the blood on the bread. An impressive piece of lab work, but would it serve as proof for other cases of drugging or poisoning?  What would Tom make of the technique?

His fingertips felt numb as he brought the flame to the wick.  The autopsy had been even more distressing than they usually were, and Rayley was feeling that particularly gripping kind of guilt a detective feels when faced with the death of someone he personally knew.  His thoughts ran along the predictable path:  I somehow should have prevented it.  I should have seen more.  It should have occurred to me that, in the midst of all his gossip and self-importance, Patrick Graham may have actually stumbled into some sort of genuine danger.

Rayley moved to the chamber pot in the corner.  As he made use of it, he leaned against the wall and looked out his window at the sleeping city.  The moon was not entirely full, but it was large enough to wash the alleyway below his room in silver.  Three in the morning, he estimated, possibly four.  He would check his watch later to verify, for this was one of the many little games he had devised for himself, this guessing of the hour whenever he awakened in the middle of the night.   Insomnia had followed him from London to Paris, as it would likely someday follow him back.  Fitful sleep was a natural curse of the job.

This is the time of night in which nothing can shield you, he thought, watching a cat jump from a dustbin to a fence, and then right itself upon landing with a fluid sort of balance.  This is the hour when no amount of money can protect you, no degree of cleverness or beauty, no number of friends.  The time when we stand, each of us in the dark, and face the most basic truth of human existence.

We are all alone.  We all will die.

London

9:40 AM

“He says Graham was in the Seine,” Trevor said, looking up from Rayley’s telegram.

“The man was insane?”

“No, Geraldine, he was in the Seine.  You know, the river that runs through Paris.”

“It’s pronounced ‘sin’ not ‘sane’” Emma said quietly.

“Indeed?” Trevor snorted.  “Impossible language.”

“So Graham drowned,” Davy said slowly.

“Yes, but most likely with some assistance,” Trevor said, and he proceeded to read the short message aloud.  When he finished, a thoughtful silence descended upon the group.

“Maddeningly incomplete,” Tom finally said.

“Rayley was paying by the word,” Trevor said, “and thus he would be brief.  Besides, I doubt that there would be much more to report at the time.  He’ll undoubtedly provide a detailed account in his next letter.”

Davy nodded. “The autopsy should at least be able to tell us if Graham was still alive when he entered the water.”

“Let’s hope the man was knocked unconscious in some sort of fall and never knew he was in danger,” Emma said.  “Graham came across as such an amusing character in Rayley’s letters that I felt as if I knew him.  And it’s hard to think of someone you know, even if you know them in a fictional way, as suffering a prolonged and frightening death like I’ve always imagined drowning to be.”

Trevor folded the paper and returned it to the envelope. “Either way, it’s a dreadful business.  And either way, as the novelists say, the plot has most assuredly thickened.”

“Could Graham’s death be connected to the fact they went up the Eiffel Tower?”  Emma asked. “Or to Isabel Blout or does it have something to do with the Exhibition?  Or could it all possibly be the result of sheer coincidence?”

“Rayley’s damn worried,” Trevor said.  “He dictated precisely twenty words but I think we can safely infer at least that much.  I don’t know the stance the French police are taking in the matter, but at least one man in Paris isn’t treating this death as coincidental.” Trevor looked around the circle at four somber faces. “In the meantime, Tom’s quite right.  The report is maddeningly incomplete and until Rayley provides us with more facts, it’s pointless for us to speculate. Consider this telegram message a tease for meetings to come, because today the focus of our discussion needs to fall closer to home.  We must debrief Emma on Cleveland Street.”

There were nods all around and a bit of scraping as Emma and Davy pulled their chairs closer together.

“If it’s a real case, perhaps I should excuse myself?” Gerry said.  “It’s fine enough for me to sit in on your Tuesday Night Murder Games, but if this is true Scotland Yard business…” An oddly perceptive offer from her and Trevor nodded, hoping his relief at her voluntary departure wasn’t too evident.  During the walk over, he had been debating about whether or not he should even share all the particulars of Cleveland Street with Emma, before finally deciding it would be an insult to withhold them.  But Gerry was a different matter.  Trevor waited for her to leave the room and close the parlor doors with a definitive slam before turning back to the others.

“We’ll start with Tom’s physical exam of Charlie Swinscow.”

Tom was ready.  “It’s been two weeks since Cleveland Street was raided,” he said, “which means two weeks for any evidence on the boy’s body to fade. The problem with the anus is that there are many small blood vessels, so while it is quite easy to injure the area, healing is equally fast.  Nonetheless, I did find some signs of sexual contact, based on some partially-healed tears.  Slight tears, I must stress, consistent with penetration, although of neither a number nor a severity that would indicate force.  Very little bruising.”  Tom looked up at them, brushing his blond hair out of his eyes. “In short, it seems to bear out the boy’s own story.  He’s had anal intercourse, but there’s no evidence of anal rape.”

Well, that was certainly plain enough.  Whatever nerves Trevor had about discussing Cleveland Street in front of Emma, Tom evidently did not share them.  Trevor glanced at the girl.  She was merely looking at Tom with a quizzical frown while beside them Davy clutched the armrests of his chair and stared down at his feet, nearly rigid with mortification.

“Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the boy was his size,” Tom said.  “Which I presume you both noticed upon meeting him yesterday as well.  I’d have guessed him at eleven or twelve, not fifteen, and I gather this Hammond fellow makes it a policy not to feed his boys much.”

“Hunger rendering them more pliable, I presume?” Emma asked, her voice gone high and breathy.  “Or is the man merely cheap?”

“Both factors undoubtedly come into play,” Tom said, almost cheerfully. “But malnourishment will also delay the onset of puberty and I suspect that’s his real game.  His clients don’t merely desire congress with men, which is relatively easy to obtain, but with boys, which is riskier, and this is why they must seek out the service of Hammond.  When you consider what he’s really selling, it’s easy to see why a fifteen year old who passes for twelve is a valuable asset.”  He rapped his fingers softly on the tabletop as he consulted his notes, a gesture which Trevor suspected had more to do with excitement than nerves. “There have been similar cases where young girls have been semi-starved to prevent the establishment of a regular menarche – and in the process making sure they don’t develop breasts or pubic hair or anything else that would give them away as grown women.  A well-fed girl of the middle or upper classes will mostly likely begin her monthly bleeding at the age of fourteen, but the average for the lower classes is sixteen.  In cases of deliberate and sustained malnutrition it can be held back even longer.”

“The human body is clever,” Emma said hollowly. “It protects itself.”

“Indeed,” said Tom. “The expressions of sexuality require energy, reproduction even more so.  If a body isn’t obtaining enough nourishment in the form of food, it will simply cease to perform any function that it can spare, menarche being chief among them.”  Tom sat back in his chair and raised an eyebrow before continuing. “Don’t glare at me like that, Trevor, I know I’ve digressed from the topic at hand.  But it’s all quite interesting, is it not? I mean, when one sets aside the human element and looks at it theoretically. ”

Trevor doubted he would ever become accustomed to what passed for normal conversation around the Bainbridge family dinner table; true, there were times when an unpleasant subject needed to be broached, but must they broach it with such enthusiasm?  He looked at Tom squarely. “And your conclusion?”

“Simply this:   If the specialty of a certain business requires the trafficking of children, it behooves the management to keep their employees – or perhaps I should say their victims – looking childlike for as long as possible.”

“We must find this man Hammond,” Emma said grimly.

“We shall,” Trevor assured her. “But we will not serve the department, nor these children, if we allow our emotions to trump our reasoning.”

“Charlie described certain sexual acts,” Tom said, “with enough clarity and detail that I have no doubt he is telling the truth about both what he’s witnessed in the brothel and his own participation.”

“I don’t think any of us ever doubted he was telling the truth,” Trevor said.  “It’s hardly the sort of story a young boy invents, is it?”

This observation was met with a pensive silence and, after a moment, Trevor moved on.

“And Davy, what did you gather from your private interview?”

“It went just as you predicted, Sir.  Due to our shared social station, or perhaps I should say our shared lack of a social station, Charlie talked to me like a fellow,” Davy answered. “He gave me the names and descriptions of seven clients, although he only knew full names for three of them.”

“Are you sure they’re legitimate?” Emma asked, her focus apparently restored.  “Might men not use pseudonyms when visiting such a place?”

“I’ll finish checking the list tomorrow but the first one was quite legitimate,” Davy said. “Lord Arthur Somerset.”

“Oh Lord, a lord,” Trevor said, although in truth he was not surprised.   Somerset had been in the arresting officer’s report, along with a note from the Queen expressly asking that Trevor and his team be attached to the case. “When the aristocracy is involved, things always seem to twist.”

“Something about that name sounds familiar,” Tom said.

“Somerset presides over the stables of the Prince of Wales,” Davy said quietly.  “And thus, of course, this means he manages those of the Prince’s son as well.  The Duke of Clarence, that is.”

A collective groan went up from Tom and Emma.

“Bertie strikes again,” Tom said.  “I can only assume this Somerset chap accompanies the Duke on his rides about town?   That they are boon companions and the best of buddies?”

Davy nodded.

“All roads eventually do lead back to Albert Victor, don’t they?”  Emma said. “Especially the muddy ones.  I suppose when this part gets out the newspapers will have their usual holiday.”

“Bet on it,” Trevor said shortly. “Scandal sells papers, royal scandal most of all, and in that sense Bertie can surely be declared the patron saint of Fleet Street.”

The Duke of Clarence, born Albert Victor and commonly known as Bertie, was the Queen’s eldest grandchild - in fact, he was the first born son of her first born son and thus in direct line of succession. Through the years this heir to the British throne had somehow managed to associate himself with every tawdry crime in London.  Rumors of illegitimate children abounded, as did whispered stories of the darkest sorts of amusements, visits to brothels of every imaginable sort.  At one time he had even been considered as a possible suspect in the Ripper case.  He always managed to emerge from the gutter unscathed, but, nonetheless, Bertie was a perpetual headache to the monarchy.  By the light of day, the Duke of Clarence was petulant, spoiled, obsessed with dandyish clothing, almost certainly riddled with syphilis, and partially deaf.  By night things grew worse.  It was widely claimed that Bertie was bisexual and possessed a special penchant for equestrian gear.

“I’m surprised the Queen hasn’t already contacted you,” Tom said.

“She has,” Trevor finally admitted.

“So this is why the forensics unit has been put on a case that doesn’t involve murder?” Tom asked irritably. “It all makes sense now.  We’ve been enlisted to ensure that no evidence arises to connect the Queen’s grandson with a male brothel.”

“Remember yourself,” Trevor said sharply, thinking that Tom was always the first of them to suspect an ulterior design in any act of patronage.  The Bainbridges weren’t titled, but their money was old, and aristocrats rarely seemed to hold any illusions about the aristocracy.  In the brief time they had all worked together, Tom was proving himself prone to abrupt swings in mood, sometimes jovial and sometimes snappish, just as he was this morning.  The rich could literally afford to be heedless with their words, Trevor knew.  They could freely express the sort of opinions that the working class must swallow.  But it was still a bit shocking to hear Tom so directly challenge the motives of the Queen.

“No one ever suggested we would work exclusively on murder cases,” Emma said.  “Forensics has a role to play in the investigation of many types of crimes, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Tom said.  “But our ranks are so thin and our resources so limited I would imagine we would only be called into the most heinous cases, not to investigate predictable depravities like those taking place on Cleveland Street.”

“Predictable depravities?” Emma said sharply.  “You consider this a minor case, simply because we have yet to stumble upon a body?  Think of those boys, what the future holds for them.  Is not the ruination of a life as big a crime as the termination of one?”

“I don’t wish to argue the truth of your observations,” said Tom. “Only to point out that we’ve been given this assignment for one reason alone.  Not to protect young boys from ruination but to protect the royal family from yet another scandal.”

“Her Majesty doubtless has many reasons for taking note of our efforts,” Trevor said, consciously striving to bring a bit of gravitas to his voice.  Tom might be the best educated and most privileged among them, but Trevor could not allow a boy of twenty to assert himself as the leader of the group.  “Naturally she wishes to contain the criminal element in England and, just as naturally, she wishes to encourage cooperation among the law agencies across the continent.  Considering that Her Majesty’s own children and grandchildren reside in every capital in Europe, this can scarcely be viewed as surprising.  Besides, we must not forget that she herself has been the intended target of crime in the past, and that her station in the world all but guarantees she is the focus of any number of lunatic obsessions rising from untold corners of the globe.  The Queen has reasons to support our work that extend far beyond the antics of Bertie.”

Two heads quickly nodded and, a second later, Tom’s reluctantly joined them.  Looking around the circle, it occurred to Trevor that none of the others had been alive on that terrible morning when the young Victoria, fresh to the throne, had been attacked while riding in her coach.  The gunman, thank God, had proven spectacularly inept, but the Queen’s beloved husband Albert had been injured in the scuffle, guaranteeing that her memory of the incident would never fade, no matter how many years might subsequently pass.  Nor would they remember the worldwide paranoia which had followed the assassination of the American president Abraham Lincoln, another event which Trevor knew preyed heavily on Victoria’s mind. The unique vulnerability of those in power distressed the Queen, and who could blame her?  In a time of political unrest – which, Trevor supposed, could be any isolated year in history – the murder of a single individual could change the course of history.  A chance to reshuffle the deck and bring new cards into play.

Yes, the heads of state were perpetual targets for the disgruntled, and no one headed a greater state than Victoria.  Trevor was one of the few people who could claim to know the full depth of the Queen’s obsessions, and that not all of the darkness swirling around her was merely mourning for her long-departed husband.  Victoria’s fears had not only defined her reign but her entire era.  Her personal morbidity – well-founded or not - had infected her people and from there traveled to every civilized corner of Europe.

“We shall follow the trail of the Cleveland Street arrests wherever it may lead us,” Trevor said. “Even if it pulls us into the very stables of Buckingham Palace.  Is that understood?  Our first loyalty is to the truth, and this surpasses all other loyalties, even those to friends or family or our own government.”

“Shall we take an oath?” Tom asked sardonically.  Judging by the curl of his upper lip, he was still evidently not wholly convinced.  “Shall we bleed?”

“Before it’s over, perhaps we all shall,” Davy said, and his eyes met Tom’s for the briefest instant.

“I suppose you have photographs,” Trevor broke in hastily. “Which verify the story of this unfortunate boy?”

“Unfortunately, I do,” Tom said with a sigh, and, just as Trevor had hoped, their attention was promptly diverted.

Paris

9:20 AM

There were those who claimed that the morgue was the most beautiful building in Paris.

That was an exaggeration, of course, at least to Rayley’s way of thinking, but there was no denying that the structure had a certain bizarre type of charm, probably due to the fact that its opulence seemed to mock its very function.  He had noted the building many times on his Sunday walks, and had originally mistaken it for an embassy, or perhaps a museum.

A note had been waiting on his desk when he’d arrived at the station this morning. Since Carle had been nowhere to be found, Rayley used his small phrasebook to translate. Rubois, it seemed, wished to confer with him on a matter of great importance. He wished for Rayley to meet him at the morgue.

Well, this was news.  Thanks to the satisfactory conclusion of the Martin murder and the fact he now was heading up the Graham drowning case, Rayley’s status among the French officer must be genuinely changing for the better.  He was moving from a bothersome adjunct, as out of place as a bed in a kitchen, to someone whose presence was actually desired.  Despite his weariness from another restless night, Rayley had found himself hurrying down the avenue leading to the morgue, his feet almost on the verge of a run.  And as he approached the grand entrance, with the heavy brass doors and deep crimson awnings, he found Rubois already waiting for him, having a smoke behind a potted tree while Carle hovered to the side.

Carle pulled open the door, his slight frame bowing as he used the totality of his weight to hold it ajar for Rubois and Rayley to enter.   They walked through the broad lobby single-file, their feet ringing on the tiles.  Five bodies were on display, Rayley noted with a sideways glance, each propped up in front of its own window, tilted at such a pronounced slant that it seemed the deceased was surely about to push away from their beds and stand.  Their eyes were propped open, presumably because their color might aid in identification, and the corpses were dressed in whatever clothing they had worn into death, thus  offering another hint as to who they might have been and what station they might have held while they had dwelt among the living.

Rayley would never accept this bizarre practice of displaying the unclaimed dead.  When an unidentified dead body turned up at Scotland Yard, the British police would run a description of it in the papers and hope some relative or friend might step forth to claim the remains.  But that was admittedly a flawed system as well, since the newspaper descriptions tended to be vague, the deceased all looking somewhat alike.  Not to mention that the class of people most likely to misplace a dead relative was also the class least likely to read the daily papers, or indeed anything at all.

So Rayley reluctantly admitted to himself there was something both pragmatic and democratic about lining up the bodies for public viewing.  The French rarely had to send an unclaimed body to an unmarked grave, a routine procedure at Scotland Yard.  Rayley privately suspected that some of the bodies were claimed by people who had never met the person in life, and who now intended to repurpose their remains for heaven knows what sort of reason. Tom Bainbridge had often bemoaned the dearth of cadavers at Cambridge; presumably the French medical schools were better stocked.

At least that’s what Rayley told himself, since the alternative was even more unsavory to consider.

Rayley’s glance in the direction of the corpses was swift but, due to his finely honed observational skills, he could not help but notice certain things.  One woman was on display along with four men.  This quota was typical, men tending to stray farther from their homes and families and to take on more dangerous lines of work.  The woman was dark in complexion, possibly Arabian of some sort, with her downturned mouth half-opened. Rayley had the brief but uneasy sense she was sneering at him.

The hour was early, but a handful of onlookers had already assembled, corpse-viewing being one of the most popular free pastimes in Paris.  Two men stood snickering and knocking shoulders in front of the dark woman, their amusement of a sort Rayley would prefer not to contemplate.  A plump matron was lifting a small boy to the window to get a better look at one of the men.  Another female, her head and shoulders wrapped in a grand swath of indigo blue silk, was all but pressed against the glass in her eagerness to observe the slackened face of a young boy who was dressed in a manner that indicated he may have spent some time at sea.  On a Sunday afternoon – or a day when a young woman was displayed, or, better yet, a child – the crowd would be three times as large.  It was a productive practice, but also a profoundly undignified one, seeming to simultaneously lower the humanity of both the corpse and the onlookers.

Small wonder that they don’t sell balloons and cherry ices, Rayley thought irritably.  An accordionist would add a festive touch.  Pony rides for the children.  Make a proper fair of it.

Rubois turned from the broad lobby down a side hall, with Rayley following and Carle falling behind.  This part of the building was forbidden to the general public, but the bored guard at the mouth of the hall did not ask for any identification and none was offered.  They made one turn, then another.  Thanks to the French love of vast architectural expanses of marble, their morgue was even colder than the oaken British equivalent at Scotland Yard, although admittedly not so dark.  The footfalls of the three men grew progressively louder as they walked, still single file, through the maze of hallways, coming at last to one of the small private viewing chambers.  They entered and stood facing each other in the center of the empty room.

“The detective thinks there is something you need to know,” Carle blurted out, although Rubois had said nothing.  Evidently a discussion had taken place earlier, before Rayley arrived.  “There’s another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another body.”

Rayley frowned.  They were in a morgue.  Bodies were everywhere.  “Another Englishman?”

Carle hesitated, just long enough to make Rayley wonder if he was struggling between his instructions to translate from Rubois precisely and his desire to add a few details of his own.  “A body pulled from the Seine on April 12, very near the spot where they found Graham.  No obvious cause of death so it was considered to be a suicide…”  With a glance at Rubois, who was standing stonily beside the door, Carle let his voice trail off.

“I see,” said Rayley, although he was quite sure that he didn’t.  Rubois had invited him here of his own volition so why the deuce were they being so mysterious?  “You deemed this person a suicide, but now that Graham has shown up in the same manner at the same place you’re thinking maybe the first was drugged with chloroform too, is that it?”

Carle nodded slowly.  So slowly that the gesture confirmed to Rayley he was only getting part of the story.  And probably not the good part.

“Do you have blood samples?”

Carle translated the question for Rubois, who simply shook his head.  He was a mournful looking man under the best of circumstances, with tightly pursed lips and dark circles under his eyes, probably more the result of genetics than exhaustion.  But today, regretfully shaking his head to answer the question, he looked as if he was on the verge of either giving or receiving very bad news.

But Rayley wasn’t surprised at his answer. There was no reason to have drawn blood from a victim deemed to be a suicide, and, given the amount of time that had passed, he could only assume that the body had already been embalmed.  All right then, so the police may have let potential evidence slip through their hands.  Quite understandable under the circumstances, and it certainly didn’t explain all this secrecy.

“Do you have any idea who the man was?” Rayley said.  “He was displayed at the morgue, I presume?”

This simple question brought such a pained expression to Carle’s face that Rayley found himself speaking with uncharacteristic sharpness.  “Why are you both acting so strangely? Who was this fellow anyway?  Or was it a woman?”

Rubois said something and Carle nodded. “He says you should examine the body yourself, Sir.”

Rayley nodded, his bewilderment now complete.  An invitation to meet Rubois at the morgue had undoubtedly been an invitation to examine a body, but he had assumed it was a body freshly discovered, not one this long out of the Seine.  If they believed it was a suicide and not the result of foul play, a transient who had evidently been put on display but gone unclaimed, then why would they bother to keep it so long in the morgue?  Even the French, who had made both an art and a science out of body identification, had to admit defeat and bury unclaimed corpses occasionally.

Rubois was speaking again, his voice fast and low, little more than a whisper.  Men tended to drop their voices in morgues, Rayley had noticed, just as they did in courtrooms and churches.  But in this vast catacomb, where the marble made each sound echo like an accusation, the whispering made sense.

“He says he’s sorry to have been so obscure, Sir,” Carle finally said.  “But yes, that’s why Lieutenant Rubois asked you to meet him today.   He wishes for you to view the body.”

“Ask him why he kept it,” Rayley said, now whispering himself.  “If no one knew who the person was and there was nothing unusual in the death, ask him why he kept the body.”

“But there was something unusual, Sir,” Carle said.  “Please, wait here.”

With that, both Rubois and Carle fairly scurried from the room and Rayley looked around for a chair.  He found one in the corner, dropped down, and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief to press to his mouth and nose if necessary.  Even if they had attempted to embalm it, examining a body that had been taken from the Seine so long ago would not be a pleasant task.

Isabel pushed the blue scarf back from her head and moved away from the others, the muttering men and the fat woman with her sticky-nosed, demanding children.  What were the odds that she and Rayley would appear here at the morgue exact same moment?  Their fates were surely linked and she had known this somehow from the first time she had seen him.  At the café on that beautiful Sunday.  Armand, of course, had known the man’s every habit – for example, that he dined at this particular café almost every Sunday luncheon.  She had been seated directly in the sight line of the detective and he had indeed noticed her, of course he had, just as Armand and Isabel had both known that he would.  Sketching him had been her idea.  Seduction on a more discreet level, a tickle instead of a grab.  The sort of thing that never would have occurred to Armand.

It had worked.  The next time she had seen her, at the party for the Tower, he had been clay beneath her palms.  Yielding, malleable.  Willing to ascend the tower, although it was quite clear he didn’t want to.  Willing to climb even higher, on a half-constructed staircase, for the love of God, just for the chance of a few minutes alone with her.

But today Rayley had passed without recognizing her, had passed with merely a dismissive glance in the direction of the crowd.  Even with the head scarf it was surprising, and Isabel was both gratified and dismayed that she had been able to blend so effectively.

She leaned forward and looked at the young man one more time.  His head was lolled to one side and his face was bloated, the fluid beneath his skin stretching his features, blurring his individuality, erasing the small details that make one human face different from another.  But even with the distortion, she was certain this boy was not Henry.   It was foolish for her to come here every morning, but paranoia is a powerful force, washing over the rational mind like waves breaking over a rampart.  Ever since Patrick Graham had been killed she had been unable to control her fear.

She looked at the boy again.  No, not Henry.  Certainly not.   She had been foolish to think it for even a second, to linger here tormenting herself so long.  Henry had been handsome.

She caught herself.  Henry was handsome.  That was the proper way to say it.

Because Henry was still alive.

There was no reason to think he wouldn’t be, or that any real harm would come to any of them.  Armand liked to snarl and threaten, he liked watching people jump.  But that didn’t make him a killer.  At least not a killer of his own kind.

So they say Henry has run to Paris, Isabel thought, turning away from the window and the boy displayed inside.  What of it?  Paris was a big city.  There were a thousand places for a person to hide.  A thousand corners to round, a thousand alleys to run down, a thousand attics in which to take refuge. She was being quite ridiculous.

When Carle and Rubois returned, they had a mortuary assistant with them, a rather small man who was struggling to push a very large gurney.  With a flutter of ceremony, he pulled back the white sheet and, somewhat to Rayley’s surprise, revealed the blue-gray face of a young woman.  Decomposition was minimal.  She had obviously been not only embalmed but kept in ice, as evidenced by the fact a few shards were still flecked around her throat and collarbones, glittering like a diamond necklace.  A stack of clothing, some red shiny garment and a gray skirt, petticoats and the such, was neatly folded at her feet and someone, Rayley noted, had taken the time to not only brush but to arrange her hair.  Most likely this was all done before she had been put on display in the morgue.  Surprising she wouldn’t have been claimed.   Pretty young girls usually went first.  Dozens of self-proclaimed brothers always seemed to be emerging from every corner of the city, each of them wailing that yes, this was the body of their poor dead little sister.  Blanche her name was.  Or perhaps Marie.

Rubois barked out a few phrases and the assistant hastily disappeared.  A few more and Carle too slipped out the door.  Rayley and the French policeman remained in the room alone.  Apparently whatever was about to transpire between them would not require words.

Rubois slowly pulled the rest of the sheet from the body.  The girl was draped, decorously so, in the same sort of muslin strips the British sometimes used to wrap a body.  Rayley steeled himself.  He did not like to view women.  He did not like to view the young.  She looks like a statue, he thought, in that distant part of his mind which always seemed to step forward in distressing occasions.  That queer gray color of her skin heightens the effect, whether it’s from the river or the ice or the fact her blood had been drained for the embalming.  A damn shame they hadn’t saved a vial, but then again…

Rubois was unfurling the strips, revealing the girl to Rayley’s gaze in sections.  She was thin, with a hollowed collarbone and virtually no breasts.  Rayley’s heart lurched a little at the frailty of her frame, the pronounced outline of her ribs beneath the waxy skin.  She’d been on the streets for a while, he thought sadly.  No telling when she’d had her last full meal, her last night’s sleep in a proper bed.  As Rubois continued down her torso, systematically unrolling the cloth, Rayley stepped forward and bent low to more closely example the skin around the girl’s mouth and neck.   But he saw no scrapes or bruises in the manner Graham had sustained, nothing to suggest a struggle or that she had been forcibly drugged at all.

Rayley wondered if the French had it wrong, for he could find no immediate connection between the two bodies.  Perhaps it was just by chance than this poor child had washed up in the same bend of the river as Graham.  Graham had surely been killed because he knew something, had seen something, because he had been investigating a matter that a powerful person did not want brought to light.  And it was very hard to believe that this wisp of a girl could have been involved in any similar sort of international intrigue.

The last shards of ice were melting, leaving small puddles of water around her throat and chest, and a few drops of water on her face.  A more sentimental man might have said that it looked as if she was weeping.  Rayley let his eyes flicker down the length of the table.  She was pretty, pretty indeed, and most emphatically dead, but beyond that he could detect nothing unusual about the girl.

Nothing, that is, except for the fact she had a penis.

CHAPTER NINE

London

11:50   AM

“Hammond has a wife?”   Trevor could not say exactly why he was so surprised.  The most depraved of criminals were often quite successful at maintaining their ordinary lives.  They held jobs, married woman, fathered children, took their tea in parlors and their beer in pubs.   Walked the streets looking precisely like any other man.

“According to reports, she lives in Manchester, Sir,” Davy said.  “And the Superintendent’s report suggests that makes it the most likely place for Hammond to flee.”

“So likely that he’s probably gone anywhere else,” Trevor said, waving aside the folder Davy was attempting to hand him.  “Nonetheless, we have to follow it up, so I’ll need a train schedule and -“

“Here, Sir,” Davy said, handing him an envelope.  “Next one leaves at noon.  And I’ve booked two seats, Sir.”

“Your mother won’t expect you home for dinner?”

Davy ignored the tease. “For you and Miss Emma, Sir.  Didn’t you always say that women talked to women?”

“Yes, yes, I certainly have said those very words.  So send a message to Mayfair, Davy and tell them that - ”

“Already have, Sir.  Miss Emma’s on her way.”

1:20 PM

“That must be his mother,” Trevor said skeptically.  They had arrived in Manchester on the one o’clock train and followed the stationmaster’s directions to the address of a home registered in the name of Charles Hammond.  There they had found a grim-faced woman – Trevor’s guess would be at least fifty years of age - out in the side yard, struggling to pin a bed sheet to a clothesline.  Hammond had been described as around thirty and a bit of a dandy.

“Possibly,” Emma said. “But she may not be as old as you think.  The women of Manchester lead rather hard lives, I would imagine.  Or perhaps Hammond married a woman older than himself.  It’s been known to happen.”  She lifted an arm into the air in a gesture of greeting and called out “Excuse me, ma’am, but might we enter your gate?  We’ve come from London to talk to you.”

The woman walked toward them, a frown on her face, but when Trevor moved to pull his badge from his pocket, she motioned them in without taking a closer look.  She’s not surprised that we’re here, thought Trevor. The coppers have come to this door before.

She walked into the side entrance of her house, leaving the door ajar behind her and, after a minute of awkwardness, Emma and Trevor followed her inside.  She did not introduce herself or offer tea, merely sank into a rocking chair and stared at them.

“I suppose you know we’re here about Charles Hammond,” Emma began, sitting down opposite her while Trevor leaned against a wall.  “What is the nature of your relationship to him?”

The question seemed to amuse her.  “I can only assume that the answer you’re seeking is that Charles and I are married.”

Trevor was surprised, not just by this confirmation that the supposedly dapper Hammond was matrimonially yoked to the woman before him, but also by her careful diction and phrasing.  No matter what type of marriage existed between them – and Trevor strongly suspected it was based more on a business arrangement than burning passion – Hammond must have contacted his wife and warned her of the trouble.  When the local authorities had come, they had undoubtedly underscored the fact that Scotland Yard had taken an interest in the case, hoping to intimidate the woman into telling them everything she knew, but more likely just preparing her for the eventuality of this present interview.  The woman’s eyes strayed toward the mantle, and Trevor’s followed.  The man in the picture propped there must be Hammond himself.

“When was the last time you saw your husband?”  Emma asked calmly.   She had never led a witness interview before, but Trevor was gratified to hear that her voice hit precisely the proper tone, somewhere between a conversation and an interrogation.

“February 10,” the woman said.

“You remember the precise date?”

The woman looked down into her lap. “It was my birthday.”

Perhaps I judged too quickly, Trevor thought.  As bizarrely ill-suited as this man and woman seemed to be, there could still be genuine affection between them.  At least he had visited her on her birthday.  He considered the woman in the rocking chair more closely.  He supposed it was possible she could have been pretty once, long before the deep lines at the corners of her lips began to make their way toward her chin.  The crevices not only aged her, but gave her the odd look of a ventriloquist dummy, as if her mouth was a creaky hinge just waiting for someone to slip his hand inside it and make his words her own.

Emma opened her notebook and continued to question the woman on the particulars.  Her name was Janet.  She and Charles Hammond had been married for eleven years.  He resided primarily in London while she remained here. This arrangement had been in place for the majority of their marriage and she promptly added, without Emma asking, that she preferred it that way.

Trevor’s gaze moved back to the photograph on the mantle.  The man pictured there was actually more than a bit of a dandy, his curly blond hair much longer than the current fashion, his mustache elaborately waxed and curled.  He reminded Trevor of that fellow the Indians had finished off in America…what was his name?  Custer?  They said Custer had been arrogant, that this very arrogance had led to his doom, and it seemed quite possible that Charles Hammond shared the same trait.  For the face in the picture was haughty, turned to the side in half-profile, giving the illusion that the man was looking out the window, past the small yard and the dirty street beyond.  Already planning his escape from Manchester.

Janet Hammond saw him studying the photograph and shot him a defiant look.  She must have known how unlikely it would have seemed that a woman like her could be married to the man on the mantle.  She must have known that it would be hard to imagine circumstances that would put the two of them in the same room, much less the same bed.

“Where is your husband now?” Emma asked.

The woman turned back toward her. “I’m not entirely sure.”

Emma took a different tack.  “If you had to guess, what would you say?”

“Paris.”

Trevor was so startled by this blunt and quite possibly honest answer that he twisted his whole body toward the woman and Emma likewise shifted on the divan.  Without prompting, Janet Hammond went on to explain that her husband’s business required the importing and exporting of cloth.  Fabrics from the mills of Manchester making their way to London and then on across the continent via the merchants Paris.  “He goes there on a regular basis,” she said.  “Three or four times in a normal year, more frequently of late.”

“Why more frequently of late?” Emma asked.

“The Exhibition,” the woman said.

“He’s providing cloth for the Exhibition?”

The woman nodded and Emma sank back in her seat, momentarily unsure of herself for the first time since the questioning had begun.  She and Trevor exchanged a quick glance.  It was highly unlikely this woman had ever known the exact nature of her husband’s business – highly unlikely that she knew what he truly sold was the flesh of young boys.   Besides, now that he considered it, Trevor supposed it was possible Charles Hammond was a fabric exporter as well, that having a respectable-sounding second business could serve to conceal the more sinister activities of the first.

“He doesn’t just sell cloth of course,” the woman calmly added, again surprising both Emma and Trevor.

“What else does he sell?” Trevor asked.

She shook her head.  “He procures British investors,” she said, a glimmer of pride in her voice, “for the French Exhibition.”

This volunteered tidbit of information, accurate or not, flummoxed Trevor so completely that the room fell into a moment of silence.  It was Emma who finally broke it.

“And where does he find these British investors?”

“A few in London, most of them expatriated to Paris,” Janet Hammond said

“Expatriated?” Emma repeated blankly.

“It means people who have moved from one country to another,”  Janet said smugly.  “In this case, from England to France.”

“Yes, yes, I know what it means,” Emma murmured, looking uncertainly to Trevor again.  This woman was not at all what she had first seemed and she was clearly relishing the effect that her revelations were having on Emma and Trevor.  Her desire to impress people with her intelligence will ultimately be her undoing, Emma thought.  Someday someone will trap her into telling more than she should.

“And how did Charles become acquainted with the expatriates in Paris?”  Emma asked.

“Oh, but Charles moves in high social circles,” Janet answered.  “The very highest.”

“Ah,” said Emma, the plump face of the Duke of Clarence flitting across her mind.

“They frequent,” Janet continued, “the finest clubs and restaurants in Paris.  Perhaps on the continent.”

“Ah,” Emma said again, her eyes involuntarily moving around the room. If her husband was cavorting in the finest restaurants in Paris while she lived in a moldy cottage in the shadow of cotton mill, she doubted she would manage to report the fact with such pride.

“How does he convince these men to provide funds for the Paris exhibition?”  Trevor asked.  “They’re English, after all, even if they are living in France.  What incentive would they have to underwrite the cost of French glory?”

The question hung in the air but for a second.

“It’s an investment, of course,” the woman said.

“A rather risky one. The papers say the costs of the Exhibition have run far over budget.  Eiffel’s Tower might not be finished in time, and then where will they be?  The laughingstock of Europe.” Trevor looked at the woman closely.  “It doesn’t sound like a proposition which would tempt a prudent investor.”

“Charles is very persuasive.”

“It seems he would have to be.”

“You don’t know him,” Janet Hammond said, sitting back into her rocker.  “He could convince a man to bet his last shilling, a woman to sell her own child. He could wade out into the harbor and convince the very tide to turn.”

Trevor looked once again towards the photograph on the mantle.  He didn’t doubt for a minute that she was right.

2:35 PM

An hour later, Trevor and Emma were seated in a tea house across from the train station, looking out the window at the gathering mist.

“What I don’t understand,” Emma was saying, as she dreamily stirred cream into her cup, “is how a man from such humble origins might come to socially interact with the upper clas.  I mean, assuming that the woman is telling the truth about Charles and the investors –“

“I believed her,” Trevor said, squeezing a bit of lemon into her own tea. “Yes, she was bragging, trying to convince us that her husband was a legitimately successful businessman, but even so.  There was something quite direct and unfeigned in her answers.”

“I agree that she was natural in manner,” Emma nodded, “but that only indicates that she believed she was telling us the truth, not that she actually was.  A husband would hardly announce to his wife he was running a brothel, would he?  Instead he would concoct some story about important business abroad.”

“That bit about the business abroad…”

“But I still don’t understand,” Emma repeated. “Even with his pretty ways, could a man like Hammond truly mix as an equal with that class of people?  The sort who would have enough money to underwrite the French Exhibition?  It doesn’t seem likely.”

“Well, there’s that, but also something else,” Trevor said.  “The words that the Hammond woman used were eerily similar to what Rayley wrote me in one of his recent letters.  That the Exhibition was rumored to be in financial trouble, that they were seeking underwriters, and that a sizable percentage of these investors were British.   How would Janet Hammond know that, unless her husband had told her?”

Emma frowned.  “The fact that the Exhibition is running short of funds is hardly a secret.  The Times is full of it.”

“But nothing about a private pool of British investors.  I nearly startled when she said that.”

“You did startle. I saw you.  But I don’t recall Rayley saying that in any of his letters.”

“Not in one of the letters he sent to the Tuesday Night Murder Games Club,” Trevor conceded.  “This was in a private letter he wrote me expressing his concerns about Isabel Delacroix.  Well, perhaps I should say the woman he calls Isabel Delacroix and Geraldine calls Isabel Blout.”

“Why are you being so vague, Trevor?  I didn’t know you and Rayley exchanged private letters at all.  What has he told you that the rest of us aren’t privy to know?”  When Trevor hesitated, Emma leaned forward.  “Is he having a love affair with this Delacroix woman?”

Trevor shook his head.  “Perhaps in his dreams, but that’s all.  He’s enchanted with her and is curious about her background.  The man she is living with in Paris is named Armand Delacroix and Rayley writes that he makes his money by procuring private investments for the Exhibition.”

Emma’s pale eyebrows shot up.  “Well that’s quite the coincidence.”

“Quite.  And here’s another one for you to stir into your tea.  Isabel was born and raised in Manchester.”

Emma’s turned toward the window and the muddy street outside it.  “She lived here?”

Trevor nodded and they both took a sip of tea.

“What are the statistical odds,” Emma finally asked, “that the Cleveland Street case would somehow be connected to Isabel Blout, and the Parisian Exhibition, and the death of Patrick Graham?”

“Damn small, which is why I’m not at all sure the two cases are connected.”

Emma’s eyes jerked to his face.  “You truly doubt it?  I’ll concede that on the surface it seems unlikely that a murder in Paris and a brothel in London are somehow linked, but given the facts before us, it appears they must be.  Consider the pieces of the puzzle and then tell me you don’t believe they all belong in the same box.  We have a British man, Charles Hammond, who goes back and forth from England to France on business which his wife claims is connected to under-the-table fundraising for the Exhibition.  We have a Frenchman across the channel, who Rayley claims is doing the same thing.  The Englishman is from Manchester and the Frenchman is living with a woman from Manchester.  It seems there would have to be some link and the link would have to be the woman.”

Trevor gave a slow nod, although he was clearly not as convinced as Emma hoped he would be.  “I shall wire Rayley.”

“Well obviously you must wire Rayley, but in the meantime, we’re already here.  We should try to find someone who knew Isabel when she was growing up.  What was her maiden name?”

“I have no idea.”

“Would Gerry know?”

“Perhaps.”

Emma pushed her cup away.  “How old is Isabel?”

Trevor thought for a moment.  “Married very young, but been married more than ten years, closer to fifteen….so I’d say about thirty.”

“And how old is Hammond?”

“Gad, I don’t know.  All the boys at Cleveland Street said was that he was an adult, which could mean anything.  Assuming that the photograph in his wife’s house was recent…”

“He’d be about thirty as well.”

“I suppose.  But Emma, we’re making any number of assumptions.”

“I realize that, Trevor, but it seems to me odd to think that two people from the same small dreary industrial town, about the same age, should have somehow clawed their way out of that town and into the expatriate social circles of Paris and yet would not know each other.  Think of it.  Charles and Isabel could be childhood sweethearts.  Brother and sister.  Yes, looking at it from the outside, it’s improbable that your case and Rayley’s should be connected, but given the facts before us it seems more improbable that they’re not.  The eyes of the world are looking toward Paris.  So is it really so surprising that the focus of the all the criminals of Europe might fix there as well?”

Emma sat back in her chair, proud of her speech, especially the last line, but Trevor was still not entirely persuaded. “Manchester isn’t such a small town.  Yes, far smaller than London, but it’s not at all like the village where I grew up or the one you came from either.  In the rural burgs you’re quite right, everyone knows everyone.  The children all go to the same school, the citizens all gather at the same church….”

“And in Manchester they all gather at the same factories and mills,” Emma said.  “The cotton mill is their church, it is their school.  Look around you.  Close your eyes and sniff the air, if you can manage do so without bringing on a fit of coughing.  Any young person with any wit or ambition at all would try to get out of this hellish place the first chance they got.  Reinvent themselves in London.  But then perhaps London proves too close for a true reinvention, with the blasted trains running back and forth every hour on the hour.  Someone remembers them.   Someone gossips. Their past manages to follow them into their new life.  So they seek to go even farther from the city of their birth, to a new country.  They cross the channel, hoping that the water will wash away all sins and all memories and they shall emerge on the soil of France reborn.”

“I say, you’re quite poetic this afternoon.”

“Don’t mock me.”

“I wasn’t.”

She turned her small, pointed chin toward him, her pale skin flushed.  “You’re contented with your life, Trevor, and by the look of you I’d venture that you always have been.  You could never understand how strong the desire might be to reinvent oneself. What it might drive someone to.  A man like you wouldn’t know how to imagine it.”

Trevor certainly could imagine it.  Even the small rural towns, nestled in the velvet green hills of the lake districts, could give rise to their share of humiliations and disappointments.  But he held his tongue, mindful that Emma’s own journey had been far more painful than his, and that her sister Mary’s attempts to outrun their past had led to her death.  They never spoke of Mary, he thought, but in another way it seemed that all he and Emma ever did was speak of Mary, as if every conversation between them was really about her, no matter how the words might change.  Trevor’s failure to catch the Ripper.  His failure to save Emma’s sister – and thus in a way, his failure to save Emma’s heart.  It sat between them every time they met, as sure as a cream pitcher and cups on a table.

“Everyone says that Isabel is striking, with Rayley venturing farther to suggest her beauty is nearly ethereal,” Emma continued, remounting her attack.  “You saw the picture of Charles on the mantle.  He hardly seemed to fit Manchester either, did he? I think it’s entirely possible that these two beautiful misfits managed to find each other here in this dreadful little place.  The mere presence of the other gives each of them courage.  They vow to do anything to escape, and who can blame them?  Even if it meant marriage to a man Isabel didn’t love and that Charles would embark upon the most despicable sorts of business.  No, I believe that Isabel and Charles knew each other and still do.” Emma looked around the shabby little tea room with more conviction.  “We should stay.”

“Stay?”

“You must contact Rayley, yes.  But wire Gerry first.  Tell her to find out Isabel’s maiden name, if she doesn’t already know it.  And first thing tomorrow you and I shall go to the mill where Charles Hammond got his start.  Something tells me we’ll find that Isabel once worked there too, or at least some member of her family.”

“You’re suggesting that we stay in Manchester tonight? You and I?” Trevor’s eyes darted around the tea room with anxiety.  “We shall miss our train.”

“There will be another tomorrow. Several more.”

“But we haven’t any –“

Emma looked at him with a mixture of irritation and amusement in her face.  “We’ll stay in an inn, Trevor.  In separate rooms.  Travelers do such things, do they not?  Good heavens, you’re actually blushing.”

“We haven’t brought anything with us.”

“I’m sure we can manage the night.”

“No, I just mean that the files and reports are all –“

“The essentials are in your little notebook in your pocket. They always are.”

“It’s Tuesday, you know.  Geraldine is expecting us for dinner.”

“Oh, of course,” Emma said dryly.  “And there’s no way that can be postponed.”

“I don’t think we should –“

“Oh, why don’t you just say what you’re really thinking?” Emma said, no longer bothering to hide her frustration. “If you were traveling with Davy or Tom and a promising lead opened up, you’d follow through without a moment’s thought.  You’re not returning to London to get your notes.  You’re returning to London to get your true assistants, the two men on the team. Even though you’ve said yourself, a dozen times, that women are more apt to confide in other women and there’s a good chance many of our interviewees will be female.”

“It isn’t that,” Trevor said.  “Truly it isn’t.” It struck him that he was sitting here taking tea with Emma in much the same manner as he had shared tea with Geraldine the day before.  But while he had felt completely relaxed with Gerry, being alone with Emma was a different manner. As much as he liked her, as much as he had fantasized and planned for such moments, the reality was not keeping pace with the fantasy.   He sat unnaturally in his chair, his stomach pulled in and his smile forced.  They were in uncharted territory here.  They had sailed off the edge of his personal map.

For Emma was quite right.  It could be done.  There were probably any number of boarding houses on this street alone, due to its proximity to the railway station. They could secure two rooms, wire Gerry, wire Rayley, and then tonight they could dine together in the finest restaurant Manchester could boast.  Heaven only knows what the finest restaurant in Manchester might actually look like, but, no matter, it would be intoxicating to be alone with her for such an extended span of time, far away from the prying eyes of London and the knowing nudges of their well-meaning friends. This was his chance, so why the deuce wasn’t he taking it?

“All right,” Emma said with a sigh.  “I wave the white flag.  We shall board our train and return to London. I suppose it’s an easy enough thing to journey back and you can bring Davy as your second next time, or Tom, or someone else you deem to be a true colleague.”

“It isn’t that,” he said again, trying to keep his voice authoritative even as his heart was sinking in his chest.  “You did very well with Janet Hammond and I have no doubt you will do equally well in interviews with future witnesses, be they male or female. But I don’t go into investigations on an impulse, and as long as you are a member of this particular team, neither shall you.” Her expression shifted slightly and he seized the brief advantage.  “Shall we affect a compromise? Tonight we return to London and attend our normal Tuesday night meeting.  Tom and Davy will want to hear the details of your Hammond interview and I’ve worked up a rather delightful demonstration on strangulation which I’m sure you’ll all enjoy.  Tomorrow I shall devote my morning to learning more about Isabel Blout’s years in London.  Her portrait by Whistler seems a logical place to start.  And yes, if we can unearth even a glimmer of evidence connecting Isabel Blout to Charles Hammond we shall be back in Manchester by afternoon. Is that fair?”

“I suppose.”  Emma tossed her napkin to the table. “And shall I now say ‘Thank you, Sir’ and curtsy in gratitude?

He had offended her again.  Undoubtedly, her overarching complaint was that he did not treat her as an equal.  She believed that if it had been Davy or Tom who had put forth such a theory, he would have more readily accepted it.  At least been willing to spend the night, to make a circuit of the factories in the morning.  And she was right.  These modern women, Trevor thought uneasily, gazing at the thin closed line of Emma’s mouth.  Who can understand them or hope to know what they truly want?   Emma claimed she desired nothing more than to be considered like any other member of the team, yet Trevor somehow suspected that if he managed to overcome his emotions sufficiently to treat her like Davy and Tom, then that would be quite wrong too.  That his attempts at egalitarianism and democracy would only offend her on some other level, would but start a new and equally unwinnable battle on a fresh field.

It is impossible, he thought.  She is my employee and my friend and my intellectual equal and the object of my desire and I know I must simultaneously protect her and respect her and it is all quite impossible.  I shall be blamed for some sin or another whichever way I go.

He looked at his pocketwatch.

“Thirty minutes until the last train,” he said.  “Would you like a bit more tea?”

“Why not?” Emma said, staring down at her cup.  “It would seem that we have nothing else to do.”

CHAPTER TEN

Paris

April 24

4:20 AM

Help me, the note said.   I must go home.

Rayley held it in his trembling hand.

Even before he had received the last telegram from London - the one which contained a terse sermon from Trevor on the dangers associated with beautiful women -  Rayley had already told himself he would not become further involved in the serpentine destiny of Isabel Blout.  She was, after all, the mistress of a powerful man and the wife of a rich one.  However sullied her reputation might be, these stations would fuse together to collectively protect her.  She need hardly throw herself on the mercy of a Scotland Yard detective, a man who lived in a rented room, a man with no friends, little money, or even the verbal acuity to order a boiled egg.

She didn’t need his help. To pretend that she did was sheer manipulation on her part.  To respond to this dramatic note – had she actually sprinkled water on the notepaper to simulate tears? - would be sheer folly on his.

Meet me at sunrise, the letter said.   At the base of the tower.

Sunrise.  A poetic and imprecise term, so typical of Isabel.

No, she didn’t really need his help but undoubtedly she was frightened, this much he would concede.  And in light of recent events he could hardly blame her.

Once again, Rayley had spent a night battling insomnia, although at least this time he knew the reason.  It is always hard to sleep when one knows one must rise early.  He took a restive powder, which did nothing, counted the traditional sheep, fretted, masturbated, mentally composed a stinging reply to Trevor’s pompous message, and finally rose from his bed and dressed.  Walked swiftly through the cold and silent streets.  It was dark, very dark, and a church bell struck four, telling him what he already knew.

He had come far too early.

4:15 AM

London

Three hundred and fifty kilometers away, Trevor rolled over in his own bed and reached for the water carafe on his nightstand.  His throat was like sandpaper, his head already aching.  They had all drank too much at Geraldine’s house, as was quite often the case.

Emma had seen him to the door, as always.

Davy had left with him. Tom, of course, had stayed behind.

Trevor had spent the last five months distressed that he was never alone with Emma.  Even when he came to Mayfair on Friday nights for his standing French lesson, Geraldine was there, and Gage.  And, half the time, Tom.  Troublesome Tom, who was younger, richer, cleverer, and infinitely more handsome.

And now he had gotten his chance to be alone with her and had utterly muffed it.

Tom would’ve had the good sense to stay with Emma in Manchester. Tom would’ve known how to turn it all into a grand adventure.  He would have made those grimy mill town streets shine like the Champs-Elysees.

This was the second time within a year that Trevor had developed a romantic attachment to a woman who clearly preferred another man.   The irony of this fact was not lost on him and at times it caused Trevor to question, usually after hours spent in the velvety grip of Geraldine’s fine wines, if he was deliberately choosing women whom he knew in advance would either ignore or reject his advances.  After all, he’d been a bachelor for some time.  He’d grown comfortable with his arrangements and he knew they benefited his work.  Perhaps it was easier to admire from a distance than to subject himself to the inevitable compromises and irritations which would accompany a real marriage to a real woman.

There was no one to discuss the matter with, if indeed he were so inclined.  Rayley was in Paris, battling lavender-scented demons of his own, and Trevor certainly couldn’t speak of this particular matter to Davy or even Geraldine.  In setting himself up as the leader of the Tuesday Night Murder Games Club, he had also set himself up for social solitude.

Oh, they cared about him, certainly.  All the people he had dined with tonight knew the pain he had inflicted upon himself when he’d fallen in love with Tom’s sister Leanna the autumn before.  With tact so extreme that it bordered on absurdity, they even avoided saying her name, referring only obliquely to her upcoming wedding to John Harrowman, which would take place at the Bainbridge country estate in June.  Tom sometimes made mention of “when I go home in the summer” and Geraldine, even more bizarrely, had removed Leanna’s portrait from the family collection in the hallway, replacing it with a bad watercolor of a horse.

But Leanna was a pain that had faded and when Trevor thought of her now, his primary emotion was chagrin at his foolishness. How could he have ever thought he would draw a woman like Leanna Bainbridge from the side of a man like John Harrowman?

The affection he held for Emma Kelly was more sensibly placed and he could only hope that it would have the chance of a different outcome.  As the orphan of a country schoolmaster and his middle-class wife, Emma was a far more socially plausible target for Trevor’s attention than Leanna had ever been.  Geraldine made constant broad hints that Trevor should court Emma, and had all but said she believed any overtures would be welcomed.  But anyone with an ounce of objectivity could see that Emma was in love with Tom Bainbridge, that she held for him precisely the same sort of doomed devotion Trevor had once held for his sister.

What a muddle.

He could casually invite Emma to dine, he supposed, or take her to the theater. The problem today, all those awkward misunderstandings, may well have resulted from the fact that their journey was for the purpose of work.  That was likely why she was so prickly and quick to take offense. Why he had felt compelled to assume the tone of her superior.

But in London it was possible.  He could contrive some situation which would give her the opportunity to more clearly show her feelings.   Emma was a practical girl, and perhaps she was prepared to put her infatuation for Tom in some sort of box and place it on some a high shelf in the back of some very deep closet.  Perhaps she was more prepared than he knew to accept invitations from Trevor and she didn’t really think of him as – dreadful phrase! – “like a brother.”  She did treat him with affection, but it was the sort of democratic affection that was difficult to interpret.  Last night as she showed him the door, she had leaned in and brushed his cheek with hers, sending a sharp and no-doubt inappropriate thrill throughout his frame.  But of course then, in a killing instant, she had taken Davy’s hand and likewise brought her cheek to his.

So Davy and Trevor had turned away.  Descended the steps, then parted to walk in their separate directions.  Davy had gone home to his family, Trevor to his bachelor’s room.  And Emma had gone back into the warm, well-lit house.  The house she shared with Geraldine and Gage.

And, of course, Tom.

Paris

4:52 AM

They could call the tower a marvel of engineering all they wanted, Rayley thought, but to him it would always be a monstrous thing.  Especially when viewed from below.  Rayley tilted his head to study the structure, which rose into the night like a curved black blade, then pulled his coat around him and shivered.  There was only one reasonable explanation for why Isabel had asked him to meet her here at such an hour.  Apparently she planned not merely to flee Paris but to also flee the man who had brought her here.  And she wished to return to London without the assistance, or even the knowledge, of the husband waiting there.

Now that he had risen from his bed and dressed, Rayley’s head had cleared and he was less inclined to self-pity.  He might not be rich or socially connected, but he did have power of a certain kind.   It came in the form of the Queen’s seal, which was embossed upon all his paperwork.  The French may have snickered at it when he arrived, but Rayley had no doubt that this smear of gold would be quite enough to silence a border clerk in the channel office.  His status in Paris was gossamer, insubstantial, far less than the glamour that lay casually tossed all around her, left behind by – he was fully prepared to admit this – any number of men.  But it was still of a type that might afford Isabel a quick journey home with no questions asked, enough to get her back to the rocky shores of England and whatever redemption she hoped she might find there.

Rayley had now waited for nearly an hour.  His notebook was in his pocket, because he had plans of his own.  He’d come here to make a deal, the only deal he knew how to make.  He would help her escape in exchange for her telling him everything she knew about Patrick Graham - what he had been investigating, and how he had died.  Frightened and beautiful the woman might be, but Rayley was still a detective, and he knew on an instinctual level that it had been no accident that he had met Isabel.  She had known who he was, or at least what he was, on the day that she seated herself so ostentatiously before him at the café and begun to sketch.  And that night at the tower party, she had been sent across the crowded room by someone, most likely her brutal lover, specifically to befriend Rayley and Graham. To distract them, to mislead them, to learn precisely how much the reporter and the detective might have discovered about some scheme her lover had undertaken.  Rayley still didn’t know what it was they were all so afraid that he knew, and it was painful to admit, in this cold dark place, that even the giddy Graham must have managed to learn things that he had not.

Not to mind.  Rayley may been slow to see how it was all connected, but he had his wits about him now. The wheel was turning, the play was drawing to a close.  Isabel’s lover and his friends were not merely upstart businessmen trying to buy respectability by investing in the Eiffel Tower and the Exposition. Something far more sinister had brought her to France.  But Isabel’s usefulness to her lover was waning and her knowledge of the true nature of his business - the very knowledge which had once made her valuable - now made her vulnerable.  Graham’s death must have shaken her to the core.  She undoubtedly feared a similar fate awaited her.

Yes, Isabel Blout was frightened and desperate and beautiful but Rayley could not let any of this move him.  He would pull out his notebook and he would stand firm in his demands.  She would earn her passage back to England only with the truth.

And then there was a rustle. A sound, subtle but persistent.

A woman’s skirts, perhaps.

“Isabel?” he called.

No answer.  Something moved above him.  The sensation of swooping, a flapping of wings in the wind.   It had been a bird, no doubt.  They were nesting amid the legs of the tower.  A thousand birds, a thousand nests, perhaps four thousand babies when the full warmth of spring was unleashed.

“Isabel?” he repeated. He was still looking up.  He cursed himself for coming so early, but here he was, shivering and coughing in the morning cold, waiting for Isabel.  Waiting for the chance that had been seized by so many men before him, the chance to be useful to Isabel Blout.

And then he saw it.  Another movement, quicker and more definitive.   This one coming from the direction of a streetlight. Advancing steadily until at once and at last, it was upon him.  A sharp-edged shadow slicing though the bright circle cast by the streetlight.  A sheet of darkness falling like a –

Darkness falling like...what?

For once he had it.  This one he knew.   For once the French had the better word, the proper word.

The darkness fell across him like a guillotine.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

London

April 24

9:10 AM

First thing Wednesday morning, Tom and Trevor made their way to the art dealer in Windsor Square whom Geraldine had theorized might be in possession of the infamous Whistler portrait of Isabel Blout.  The dealer himself had not yet arrived, the sale of art evidently being the sort of business that was rarely transacted before luncheon.  But a clerk answered Trevor’s persistent rap at the door and confirmed that the Blout portrait was among the ones being sent to the American pavilion in Paris.  He explained that they were already crated, due to be shipped tomorrow, as it were, and he responded to Trevor’s request to view the painting with a palpable lack of enthusiasm.

Trevor did not like to show his Scotland Yard badge, preferring to pass in small matters as an ordinary detective, but this particular occasion seemed to demand it.  The man’s derisive snort quickly changed to an obedient sniffle.  He consulted the record books to find the proper crate number and escorted Trevor and Tom to the dreary packing room in the rear of the shop.  It took him considerable effort to dismantle the crate with a crowbar, nearly as much to unwrap the protective tarpaper and finally undrape the muslin, but eventually the enormous portrait was broken free from its protective layers.  With a final exhalation of effort, the clerk turned it around and Isabel Blout stood before them.

She was not beautiful.

That was Trevor’s first thought and it surprised him so much that any number of seconds passed before he was capable of another. The portrait was large, nearly six feet from the bottom border to the top, and thus the woman was rendered, Trevor imagined, very nearly to scale.  She was taller than he would have guessed from Rayley’s description, with a milkmaid’s sway to her back and substantial hands and feet. Her face was lovely, this he would not bother to deny, but there was a certain coarseness in her person, lingering traces of her working class roots that the teal velvet gown and elegantly styled hair could not completely conceal.

No, she was not beautiful and yet…for some reason Trevor could not quite bring himself to look away.  Isabel had been posed with her back to the viewer and thus her frame was twisted, looking over one shoulder.  There was a sense of movement, almost flight, as if the artist had captured her in the act of a forbidden flirtatious glance.  The sort of look a woman might give her lover at a party, just as dinner is about to be served and she must return to the side of her husband.  Whistler’s skill as a portraitist was evident even to someone who knew as little about art as Trevor.  The pose was so natural that it seemed somehow unnatural, or at least very different from the formal seated portraits Trevor was used to viewing.  The longer he gazed, the deeper grew his sense of unease and then he realized why.  The painting was so startlingly accurate that it reminded him of a photograph. It had the same sense of time interrupted, of someone caught utterly unaware in a single moment, as if the woman had turned without artifice, never knowing that she would be observed by centuries of strangers. The eyes were narrowed in invitation, the lips lifted in the smallest hint of an erupting smile.

Tom was likewise studying the portrait carefully, his head titled to one side.  “So what do we know of the lady?”

“Only that she is no lady,” Trevor said, with a quick look over his own shoulder to confirm that the clerk had indeed left them in privacy.

“Perhaps not, but it only serves to make her more glorious.  Small wonder Rayley couldn’t resist her.”

“Truly?   I don’t fancy her type at all.”

“You’re joking.”

“It’s quite obvious she was born common.”

Tom exploded into a low guffaw. “Common?  Really, Detective, you can be the most appalling snob.  I implore you to look more closely.  For there’s something quite intimate about the portrait, is there not?   Something rather enticing.  I mean, on one level she is gowned and styled just as one would expect in a portrait of a society wife. On another level…it makes no sense, but she seems almost naked.”

“And you find that this heightens her appeal?”

Tom looked at him incredulously.

“At the risk of seeming not merely a snob but also a prude,” Trevor continued. “I must repeat that she strikes me as unrefined. Like a stage actress playing at being a lady.  The little things give her away.  Look at the foot, for example, the one peeking out beneath the skirt.  It’s quite large.”

“The whole painting is large.”

“But that particular foot seems somewhat…disproportionate. All the silk and satin in London can’t disguise the fact she has the bones of a farmgirl.  It’s entirely lost on me why the lady has been so successful at dazzling a lengthy succession of men.”

“There’s a word for it, Welles. It’s called sex.”

Trevor gave an uneasy chuckle.  “All right, all right, I’ll concede the point.  Despite the fact I don’t fully understand Mrs. Blout’s appeal, I can certainly see why the portrait created the sensation Geraldine described.  I can even understand why Whistler might have been reluctant to release it, for he somehow managed to create a magnificent portrait of a rather average woman.  If my reaction is muted, it’s only because the lady is so different from what I’d been led to expect.  Rayley said she was beautiful, and so did Geraldine. But when you really look at the image before us, piece by piece, I don’t see that beauty.”

“Beauty isn’t meant to be analyzed piece by piece,” Tom said.  “Not in art and not in women.  Few paintings, and few women, would survive that sort of cold scrutiny.”

“Indeed?  I would say that true beauty grows more so with analysis.”

“The Mona Lisa isn’t beautiful either, not in the technical way you’re describing.  But when you actually see the painting, somehow it glows.”

Trevor, whose rather spotty rural education hadn’t included much in the way of art appreciation, felt as he often did in these conversations with Tom.  Outmatched and vaguely uneasy. “I wouldn’t know,” he said stiffly.

“Well, that fine lady is in Paris,” Tom said lightly, as if he were suddenly aware he might have pushed Trevor too far.  “And the fine lady before us will shortly be joining her there as well.  Even taking into account that it isn’t what you’d expected, does seeing the portrait answer any of your questions?”

Before Trevor could answer, the door from the shop swung open and, to Trevor’s surprise, it was not the clerk who dashed through it but rather Davy.  The boy looked flushed and disheveled, as if he had run from the Yard to Windsor Square, and when his eyes fell on Trevor he tried to speak.  But his voice came out broken and ragged.

“Knew I’d find you here, Sir.  A telegram –“

“Here boy, take a breath.  There’s no news that can’t wait.  What sort of telegram?”

“From France, Sir, came to you from the chief of the Paris police.” Davy struggled to control his breathing, staring up into the suggestive, languid smile of Isabel Blout.

“It’s Detective Abrams, Sir,” he finally managed to get out.  “They say he’s gone missing.”

3:40 PM

“It’s quite out of the question, Detective.”

“Your Majesty, if I might –“

The Queen held up a plump hand and Trevor fell silent in an instant.

“We can predict what you are about to say.  That Detective Abrams was a member of our own Scotland Yard, and that the only reason he was even in that dissolute city was because he was following our own direct order.  Both statements are correct, but the fact remains that we cannot spare you at present.”

Trevor could not help but note her use of the past tense in her evaluation of Rayley’s status.  Evidently Victoria, long accustomed to trouble, had already assumed the worse.

“If Your Majesty is speaking about the business in Cleveland-“

Again the raised hand.  Again Trevor’s silence.

“This is not our concern. A city the size of London will always have its share of distasteful matters. But do we know for certain that the Ripper has truly desisted?”

“It’s been five months since an incident, Your Majesty.”

“And you are convinced this is enough time to close the case?”

Trevor tried not to audibly sigh.  He had gradually begun to come to peace with the idea that Jack the Ripper would never be caught and thus that the case would never be definitely closed.  If Victoria intended to use the possibility of the resurgence of the Ripper as an excuse to keep Trevor and his forensics team tied to her throne, he would never leave London again.

“I do not think the citizens of London are in any such present danger, Ma’am,” he said.  “And meanwhile the present danger to Detective Abrams is undeniable.”

“Is it?  According to your telegram, he has been missing for no more than twelve hours and there are any number of innocent explanations for why a man might take a day from his professional duties to attend to private business.   Do we know for certain he has fallen victim to a crime?”

“Rayley’s not the sort of man to simply disappear, Your Majesty, and yet his housekeeper reports he was not in his room when she knocked for breakfast.  Then he fails to report to work with no explanation for his absence, although we are speaking of a man who is most regular in his habits, ma’am, most responsible in his duties.   And furthermore, Your Majesty, he had written me that he was working on a case that was proving –“

The Queen looked at him in surprise. “Working on a case?  Our impression was that we had sent Detective Abrams to Paris to study forensics, not to assist the French in their own daily duties.”

“That’s true, Ma’am, but the victim of this particular crime was English.  Someone Rayley had met socially, that he felt he knew. When the fellow turned up dead, he naturally took a personal interest. I can’t help but believe Rayley’s disappearance is connected to the murder of a newspaper man named Patrick Graham.”

“And you also believe that, based on a few facts gleaned from his letters, you can arrive in Paris and swiftly solve a crime that the French police cannot.”

He dropped his gaze to the floor and Victoria smiled.  She sought a high level of self-assurance in all her advisors and had always rather enjoyed Trevor’s confidence.  His certainty in his own skills, as well as in the newborn science of forensics, was one of the reasons she had such faith in him.  When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “I take it Rayley Abrams is a friend?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. A friend to me personally and a most loyal servant to the throne.”

“Which is precisely why we suspect he would understand our reasoning, even if you do not.  How do you imagine Detective Abrams might advise you if he were standing here?”

This time Trevor did not even try to mask his sigh.  “He would tell me to stand firm on Your Majesty’s business and to leave French crimes to the French police.”

Victoria nodded.  “And he would be correct.”

4:50 PM

Stone silent with disappointment, Trevor and Davy sat nursing their pints at the Tinwhistle Pub.  There was little point in conversation.  They both knew that the future of the forensics unit was utterly dependent upon the continuing good will of the Queen.  Besides, Victoria’s last words still rang in Trevor’s ears, for he knew they were accurate.  If Abrams were here at the bar and heard of Trevor’s plans to rush to Paris and take up inquiries in the Graham case, he would tell him not to be such a damned fool.

“We don’t even understand French,” Trevor said.

He did not realize he’d spoken aloud until Davy sat down his mug and shifted in his seat. “Miss Emma does,” he said.

“Speaking of which, I suppose we should still begin making our way to Geraldine’s.  My heart’s hardly in it, but if she was kind enough to ask us for dinner on such short notice...”  Trevor glanced around the half-filled pub.  “I’m surprised Tom didn’t meet us here.  He rarely passes up the chance for a pint.”

Davy nodded, but for once he did not protest when Trevor dug out a handful of coins to pay for both their drinks.  Trevor noted the difference, but wasn’t sure what, if anything, to make of it.  They pulled on their coats and made their silent way through the wet streets to Geraldine’s house.  Up the familiar stone steps, to ring the familiar doorbell.

After a minute or so, Trevor rang again.

“Not like them to forget, Sir,” Davy ventured.

“No, it isn’t,” Trevor said reluctantly.  “Perhaps we should go ‘round and knock up the kitchen.  If Gage is preparing –“

Just then the door was opened by Emma, who shot them a quick and somewhat automatic smile before turning back toward the broad staircase.  “Careful,” she called up to Tom, who was partnering with Gage to maneuver down a spectacularly large traveling case.

“Hard to be careful when I can’t see my feet,” Tom called back irritably, and then he added. “Come in, Trevor, Davy.   As you can see, we’re in the throes of a project, but Gage did pause to make a pot of his famous Yorkshire stew.”

“What’s this about?” Trevor said, stepping into the foyer.  “I take it someone is going on a trip?”

“You truly are a great detective,” Emma said drily, closing the door behind them.

“Thank you, Gage,” Tom said, as they lowered the case to the floor of the foyer.  “If you need to get back to the kitchen, I believe I can manage the others on my own.  Or perhaps Davy can lend me a hand.”

“Others?” said Trevor. “Who the deuce is traveling, and where?”

“A sudden impulse, darling,” Geraldine called down.  She had appeared on the landing in time to hear Trevor’s last question and her arms were full as well, with a stack of hat boxes which threatened to topple down the steps at any moment. “An overpowering urge has come upon me to visit Paris, and I’ve asked Emma and Tom to accompany me.”

“And the reason for this trip?” Trevor asked warily, as Emma bounded up the steps to take the hatboxes from Geraldine.

“Perhaps you’ve heard, but there’s some sort of marvelous world exhibition in the plans,” Geraldine said, with that brand of overly-innocent sarcasm that was hers alone.

“And perhaps you’ve heard,” Emma muttered from behind the hatboxes, “that a colleague is in grave danger.”

“Look here,” said Trevor, “I’m sure when Tom came home with his news of the Queen’s decision you were all distressed, as were Davy and I.  But we can’t disband the entire forensics unit to sail across –“

“The entire forensics unit?” Tom said.  “That’s you and Davy, is it not?  Rayley’s gone missing and Emma and I are volunteers, which leaves, if my math serves me, precisely two people in the employ of the crown.”

“She all but forbad –“

“Now, dear,” Gerry said, giving Trevor’s cheek a pat with her somewhat dusty hand.  “I am of course devoted to the Queen, as are we all.  That goes without saying.  But not even Victoria can prevent a group of private citizens from taking a pleasure trip to Paris.”

“True enough, but something tells me you don’t intend this as a pleasure trip.”

“Don’t be cross,” Geraldine said, still utterly unperturbed by his scowl.   “Shall we move into the parlor to discuss the particulars?”

“Come with us, Trevor,” Emma said quietly, reaching forward to grab his wrist as the rest of the group obediently shuffled toward the parlor door. “We need you.”

Trevor leaned down to her face, his voice as low as her own. “I suppose it was inevitable, but living with the Bainbridges has finally driven you mad.  Rayley said that the French police barely deigned to work with him.  Do you really think they’re prepared to collaborate with, as Geraldine so aptly puts it, ‘a group of private citizens’?  The forensics unit-“

“Was created to handle the most heinous of crimes,” Tom broke in.   He, Davy, and Geraldine were still clustered at the parlor door, openly eavesdropping. “And yet all they’ve given us this month is Cleveland Street.  How can you even imply that case is on an equal par with Rayley’s disappearance?”

“But if we all –“

“I’ll stay, Sir,” Davy said.  “No one pays any real attention to what we’re doing down in the dungeon, you’ve said as much yourself.  As long as a report comes out every week or so, the supervisors upstairs may not realize I’m the only one in the laboratory.”

“You’d give up the chance to see Paris, Davy?” Geraldine asked gently.  “Have you ever been out of London?”

Davy nodded. “My grandpap took me to Brighton once, Ma’am, on a fishing holiday.  By the end of the first day, that little boat had cured any desire I’d ever have to cross the channel.  Besides, if someone is to remain behind, I’m the sensible choice.”

“You are indeed, my friend,” Tom said, clasping his shoulder. “No matter what the question, ‘Davy Mabrey’ is the only sensible answer.  So what say you, Trevor?  If Davy is prepared to single-handedly wrangle the criminal element of London, can you manage to put your archaic scruples aside long enough to accompany the rest of us to Paris?”

Trevor was still shaking his head. “If I were to disobey the Queen –“

“You’re not disobeying the Queen,” Emma said.  “You’re going on holiday.  Really, Trevor.  How long has it been since you’ve taken even a day of leisure?”

Trevor looked from one face to another, knowing he was defeated.   “Eleven years.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The English Channel

April 25

10:50 AM

The human populace was divided into two groups, Trevor mused:  those who were energized by travel and those who were depleted by it.  Geraldine and Tom evidently fell into the first category, he and Emma into the latter.  All four of them were miserably crammed into a small private berth that Geraldine had managed to secure at the last minute, for heaven knows what sort of expense.  With the Exposition gearing up, travel between London and Paris was at a peak and the small ship was packed to the gills.  He supposed they were lucky not to find themselves on the hard benches bolted to the drafty decks of steerage, but still, fitting four adults into a berth clearly designed for two was a bit of a squash.

Tom and Geraldine chatted happily about some far-flung relative and Emma seemed absorbed in a French newspaper, although Trevor noticed she had not turned the page in some time.  Now that he was sure his stomach was not going to betray him in the voyage, he decided he may as well also look for some means of passing the time.

Slipping his hand down to the valise wedged between his feet, Trevor pulled out the file which contained all of Rayley’s letters. They had been neatly sequenced by Davy in chronological order, and Trevor flipped through them once again, looking for some small hint he might have somehow missed.  It was a sunny day, warm for April, and despite the stiff wind, the passing had been smooth so far. Yet Rayley’s handwriting, which was tightly knotted and hard to decipher even in the best of circumstances, bobbed steadily before his eyes and within ten minutes Trevor could feel the beginning of a headache.

Abandoning the letters, Trevor settled back on the thin cushions and prepared to feign a nap.  The headache could just as easily be from exhaustion as eye strain, for the last twelve hours had been a whirlwind of activity.  He had returned to his quarters from Geraldine’s house, hastily tossed some clothes into a trunk, then spent the majority of the night scribbling notes to leave for Davy.  He had no doubt that the boy would be able to generate a series of brief reports that would satisfy the admittedly-limited interest Scotland Yard had in the activities of the forensics team and, until Charles Hammond could be found and returned to London, the Cleveland Street case was at a halt.  Still, there is nothing like the prospect of being gone for an indefinite amount of time to make a man aware of all the untied threads in his life, and once he had begun writing the notes for Davy, Trevor had found it hard to stop.

Their ship had sailed at the unconscionable hour of five, but the lad had insisted on accompanying them to the dock for a send off.  He had stood, a small and solitary figure, waving a white-gloved hand in the darkness and Trevor had momentarily lost his ability to speak.  It was not merely that this would be the first time he had left his mother country to venture to the mainland, although that in itself was enough of an event to give a man pause.  It was more that in this early departure he couldn’t help but remember the similar morning last November when Rayley had sat sail.  He and Davy had seen him to the same dock, had stood witness as the man crossed the gangplank and then turned, briefly, for a final salute.  At the time they had all believed that Rayley faced no greater dangers than embarrassment over his inability to speak French and perhaps a bout of seasickness.

Trevor exhaled slowly, and deepened his breathing.  Although he still felt a bit pirated into this mad scheme, he had to admit that if they were going at all, it was fortunate Geraldine had the right connections and yes, enough money, to make the pieces of the trip fit together so swiftly.  The hotels of Paris had proven full, but she had contacted a distant cousin, a man who owned a small apartment on the Rue de Tremont.  By the way Geraldine and Tom were discussing the apartment’s proximity to an evidently famous garden, Trevor could only conclude that it was located in a luxurious part of town, the Parisian equivalent of a Mayfair address.

Geraldine had warned the living quarters would be cramped, although what she considered cramped would probably feel like a palace to Trevor.  Not only were they lucky to have quarters at all on the eve of the Exposition, but now that he had a moment to ponder the situation, Trevor realized an apartment would be a far better base of operations than a hotel.  The group could confer at leisure about their findings, with no danger of being overhead in a lobby or café.

Besides, an address in an established neighborhood would lend respectability to their little group and Gerry would be indispensible there as well, he suspected. For all her avant garde interests and left-leaning political views, Geraldine had never hesitated to play her aristocratic trump card whenever she deemed it useful.  She and Tom were consulting over a sheet of notepaper which contained a list of the obliging cousin’s social circle, people who would greet the Bainbridges as equals, and thus as friends.

“These soirees are so tiresome,” Geraldine was saying.  “But necessary if we are to find dear Rayley.”

Behind his closed eyelids Trevor frowned, trying to recall if Geraldine had ever actually met “dear Rayley.”

From the rustle of paper, he concluded that Emma was putting aside her reading and turning her attention to Geraldine and Tom.  “What do soirees have to do with Rayley?”

“Trevor was quite right when he said a group of English tourists can hardly knock on the door of the French police station and demand to know the particulars of an investigation,” Geraldine said.  “So our route to the truth must follow the more winding path of social intercourse.”

“I gather you have a plan, Auntie,” Tom said.

“Indeed,” said Geraldine.  “Let us summarize what we know at this point in time.  Rayley has developed an infatuation with an English woman named Isabel Blout, who last year left her elderly husband and bolted to Paris.  Due to her association with a man named Armand Delacroix, whose name she sometimes assumes as her own, she moves in a certain social strata.  New money, those who have come to their wealth in recent memory and are eager to join the more established tiers of society.  One of the ways to shine in Paris is to throw some of that lovely new money into projects associated with the Exhibition, thus illustrating both your wealth and your nationalism in one fell swoop.  The gossips of London have suggested, behind the hand, that this Armand fellow earns his own living as some sort of liaison between the investors, who are seeking a boost in their social status, and the committee, which is seeking cash.  Most likely he was first drawn to Isabel specifically because of her position in London society and may not have realized how tenuous that position truly was.  He probably still deludes himself that a mistress stolen from the bed or a higher ranking man gives him status with his peers.  And, Heaven knows, Isabel’s beauty alone could be a useful entry point into any number of social situations.  My guess is that her primary function is to lend a patina to his own place in society.”

“Bravo, Aunt Gerry,” Tom said with enthusiasm.  “Everyone claims you’re daft, but when you put your mind to it, your logic become most admirably linear.”

“And, as counterbalance, here is my contribution,” said Emma, “although I will freely concede that I’m relying more on conjecture.  We must not forget that before Delacroix and before Blout, Isabel was nothing more than a lower class girl whose family worked the mills of Manchester. There is the distinct possibility that during her time there she knew a young man named Charles Hammond.  He is also believed to now be in Paris and also believed to be soliciting funds for the Exposition.  I feel Isabel and Charles must be somehow connected to each other, although Trevor is less convinced.”

It was an open challenge, but Trevor elected not to respond.  He remained with his eyes closed, mimicking the slow, deep breath of sleep.

“Quite intriguing, is it not?” said Gerry. “The more rumors that collect around Isabel, the more she sounds like a character in one of my bedside novels and not a real woman at all.  But I’m sure all will be made clear when we meet her in the flesh.”

“Do you truly intend to chase down Isabel Blout by attending a round of parties held in honor of the Exhibition?” Emma said, her voice slightly dubious.  “She’s has fled London and turned her back on her life there.  What reason would she have to talk to you at all, much less confide the sort of things that would lead us to Rayley?“

“Expatriates always talk to their fellow countrymen,” Geraldine said with confidence.

Emma’s mind flew back to the grim countenance of Janet Hammond. The woman had used precisely the same word. “Even if they left their former country under duress?”

Geraldine nodded.  “It’s just…it’s just what we do, dear.  You’ll see when we’re in Paris.  Besides, I’m rather good at lulling people into confidence. People think I’m a silly old lady and they talk and talk and I just nod and listen.”

By God, that’s true, thought Trevor.  Geraldine Bainbridge probably knows more about me than any other living soul.

“And another point,” Gerry continued.  “I won’t be attending the parties alone.  You’ll all be with me.”

“As your grand-nephew, Tom will certainly be an acceptable escort,” Emma said, “but as a lady’s maid, your invitations hardly extend to me.“

“I didn’t bring you to Paris to act as my lady’s maid,” Geraldine said calmly.  “You and Trevor must attend these parties as well, so that we have four sets of eyes in the hunt.  I doubt my reputation has preceded me across the channel but if anyone knows anything at all about me, it’s probably that I have inherited funds, inappropriate politics, and a gaggle of nephews.  So no one will question the presence of Trevor and Tom.  And if we introduce you as the intended bride of one of them, the doors shall swing open for us all.  What’s the French term for a betrothed woman, darling?”

“Fiance,” Emma said shortly.

“A lovely sounding word,” Gerry said.  “We should adapt it into English.”

“I’m still not convinced this is the proper plan,” Tom said. “Isabel Blout may be nothing more than a pretty, shallow woman and Rayley’s infatuation with her might be purely coincidental to his disappearance.  It seems to me the more likely route to discovering who took him and why is to follow the investigation of the Graham murder.  Whoever killed Graham is afraid Rayley is also on their trail, and that’s what put him in danger.”

“Plausible as far as it goes,” Emma said.  “But can’t you see how the two strands might be connected?  Let’s consider the timeline. According to his letters, Rayley first meets Isabel while in the company of the newspaper writer Patrick Graham.  She sees them talking and approaches them both at the same time, extending a rather abrupt and unlikely offer of friendship.  Graham is invited to climb the tower as part of a select group of the press chosen to witness first-hand what all this invested money has wrought for Paris.  But was even this much accidental?  If Isabel is as tightly tied to the network of investors as Gerry has theorized her to be, then she likely knew that part of the business of that evening was to invite the journalists to inspect the tower.  She maneuvers a way to be standing beside the men when the invitation is issued and, quite by course, she becomes included in the plan.”

“Yes, but to what end?” Tom asked.  “Isabel, Rayley, and Graham all tour the tower together. They agree it’s a marvel, they admire it, they grow dizzy from the altitude, and then they come down.  As far as we know, that’s the end of the story.  Even if the situation was contrived to lure Rayley and Graham along, I can’t fathom what the benefit would be for either Isabel or the man who might be using her as bait.”

“Neither can I,” Emma admitted.  “At least not so far.  But the truth remains that within days of this event Graham is murdered and Rayley disappears.  I refuse to accept that as mere coincidence.”

“Now that much I’ll admit,” Tom said. “Making the acquaintance of Isabel Blout seems to be a very dangerous hobby for men and the reason is undoubtedly tied to her lover and his pool of secret investors.   Graham was a reporter, Rayley a detective.  Evidently they had each discovered something unsavory, or at least someone feared they might be on the verge of it. “

“The answers to all these questions lead back through Isabel,” Geraldine said decisively.  “Trouble follows the girl and always has. Trevor, do stop pretending to sleep and tell us what you think of all this.”

Trevor opened his eyes and gave a rueful laugh.  “If you and Emma can discover the role the Blout woman plays in the intrigue, it could prove useful indeed.  But I do not intend to fully drop my identity as a Scotland Yard detective.  Rayley wrote that he had earned the respect of at least one French officer so it might prove equally useful to contact the man and see if he can shed any light on the Graham case.”

“Then you shall be a detective by day and my honorary nephew by night,” Geraldine said.  She attempted to uncross her ankles but the four of them were so packed in the berth that any movement by one necessitated a shift by all the others. “The three of us are merely amateurs so we’ll need someone at our teas and parties who truly knows his craft.”

Trevor slid a bit closer to the window and shook his head.  “I could never pass as upper class.”

“Of course you can,” Geraldine said.  “Society is nothing more than a very long and rather boring theatrical, darling, and to succeed you must simply speak the right lines and look the part.  We shall shop for Emma’s costume when we disembark in France and for men it’s even easier.  One reasonably well-cut suit will do the trick.”

“If Trevor and I are to pass as aristocrats, then ‘costume’ is quite the right word,” Emma said, with a light laugh.  “I suppose Shakespeare said it best.  ‘All the world’s a stage, the men and women merely players.’  But he wasn’t just speaking of class when he wrote those words.  He was speaking of all the masks we wear - age, nationality, religion, race, gender.”

“Strange to ponder,” Tom said, extracting a cigarette from a case, “that gender is but a role when it seems to be the core of everything we do in life.  But then male actors played the female roles in Shakespeare’s time, did they not?  And then of course there are all those comedies where brothers pretended to be their sisters and girls were costumed as boys.  A male actor dressed as a woman who is pretending to be a man.  It quite boggles the mind.”

“He got the idea from watching his own children,” Emma said, her edginess softening a bit, as it so often seemed to when she was in conversation with Tom.  “Shakespeare was the father of boy-girl twins and he used to watch how, in play, they would often switch roles and each pretend to be the other.”

“Truly?  I didn’t know that, but it strikes me as quite fascinating,” said Tom, exhaling smoke in the general direction of the window. “Although now that I think of it, when we were back in the nursery Leanna sometimes tired of only having brothers and would dress me in her clothes and proclaim me to be her little sister.  William and Cecil would howl with laughter whenever they found me sitting at her tea table in petticoats and hair bows, having been strictly instructed to answer to nothing but ‘Beulah Jane.’  Gad, but they all used to torment me.  ‘Tis the curse of the youngest brother, I suppose.”

Geraldine and Emma chortled in amusement while Trevor observed the scene in silence.  The rare mention of the names Cecil and Leanna may have briefly rang through the small compartment like church bells, but as usual, Tom had managed to divert any potential awkwardness with his easy charm.  This is what I will shortly be called on to emulate, Trevor thought, and it has nothing to do with the cut of your clothes.   It’s an unshakable belief in your own worth, complete confidence that, come what may, the world will always love you.   Leanna and Geraldine have it too.  The Bainbridge fortunes may have ebbed and surged throughout the years, but each member of the family had been born with an innate self-assurance that seemed to radiate from them on an almost cellular level.  It was why Tom could so freely admit he didn’t know a certain fact about Shakespeare, why he cheerfully conjured an image of himself dressed in girls’ petticoats and perched at a tea table.  He knew how to make himself the butt of the joke and then sit back to chuckle at his own folly.  He doesn’t at all fear looking foolish, thought Trevor.  Which is why he never will.

“But Beulah Jane here proves my point – that all the things which we think define us are simply the roles that society, or perhaps our older sisters, have demanded we assume,” Emma said, arching her back in a futile attempt to stretch. “And so, presumably, we could drop these identities as easily as we once put them on.”

“I don’t believe that,” Trevor said.  “I am what I do.  We all are.”

“Nonsense,” Gerry said briskly. “Trevor, you simply must buck yourself up because Emma and Shakespeare have it quite right.  When the gangplank drops at Calais we will descend as whomever and whatever we choose to be.  And for the course of this trip, we shall play the roles of an addle-headed wealthy family who have come to carelessly gobble up the pleasures of Paris as if they were canapés on a plate.  In the process we will toss money around like bait because this offers our best chance of finding Isabel, and, ultimately, Rayley.”

“Very well,” said Trevor.  One of the most annoying things about Gerry was how often she was right.

“And don’t worry, Trevor,” Gerry said. “I’m sure you think I’m overstepping my bounds, but this sort of society, with all its silly rules and layers, is the one arena in which I have more experience than you.   When we get to Paris, we shall all defer to your judgment on matters of detection and investigation, as always.  You shall, as they say, call the shots.”

“Certainly,” said Tom.

Trevor nodded, wishing he believed them.

“But before we dock, you have a choice to make, Emma,” Gerry said, with a wicked hint of a smile.  “For the purposes of our little tableau will your fiancé be Trevor or Tom?”

There was a beat of silence, brief but excruciating, before Tom leapt in.

“Say you’ll be mine, darling,” he whispered loudly, bringing one of Emma’s small hands to his chest.  “I’d drop to one knee, but there isn’t any room.”

Emma laughed and nodded, glancing at Trevor as she did so.   But he had once again leaned back and closed his eyes.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Paris

9:20  PM

After the crossing and the train ride from Calais to Paris, they were exhausted.  The four of them sat around a small table tucked in the corner of a café only a block from their new home.  Emma had ordered for them, and apparently quite competently, but beyond this brief exchange, their conversation was limited.  Emma repeatedly rubbed her temples, and Trevor seemed to have lost his appetite somewhere over the channel.  Even Tom and Geraldine’s customary enthusiasm was muted.

They had arrived to find the Paris apartment not at all as Trevor had pictured it in his mind.  When Geraldine had described her third cousin on her mother’s side twice removed, or whatever the deuce the man was, she had called him a “confirmed bachelor.”  It was a phrase she liked, one she’d used before to describe the aging George Blout, and for Trevor it painted images of the second sons of prominent families, men creating a comfortable sanctuary for themselves after years of military service or some foreign government post.  Dark-paneled rooms with leather chairs that smelled faintly of tobacco and brandy, perhaps a suitable picture of a foxhunt on the walls.  Instead they had been ushered into an almost obscenely colorful house, with rooms painted in gold, rose, citron, and aqua, each set of double doors swinging open to reveal yet another assault on the retina.

Thanks to a flurry of telegrams back and forth between Geraldine and her cousin, the cloths had been pulled from all the furniture and the bed linens had been prepared.  Someone had thoughtfully sent a collection of fruit and biscuits for their refreshment. Geraldine had said that her cousin was horrified by the changes being made to his beloved city and thus had fled Paris for the duration of the spring and summer to stay at his second home on the coast in Nice.  It was a sentiment with which Trevor could sympathize, since he would have hated to watch his own motherland tart herself up for the eyes of outsiders.  Besides, the fellow’s desire to avoid the Exposition was the very reason his apartment was available to them on such short notice.

So Trevor’s intention was to be grateful, not critical, as the group stumbled wearily from room to room, led by a silent maid who apparently came with the place.  But when he noted the seventh still life of blurry flowers, the eleventh lamp with tassels, and yet another wall painted robin’s egg blue, he’d been forced to come to a conclusion:  The owner of this apartment was entirely too French for his own good.

They had dropped their trunks and valises and retreated to this café.  The tower, nearly finished now except for its final accusatory point, was visible from this street – probably visible, Trevor would guess, from half the streets of Paris.  But that was rather the whole idea, was it not?  Without speaking of it, their little group had elected to sit at a table near the back wall, with the view obscured.  Gazing at the tower while they ate, and thus being forced to speculate on the role it had played in Rayley’s disappearance, was perhaps more stimulation than they could currently bear.

Still, there were plans to be made for the morrow. The café had nearly emptied, so there was probably no danger in talking here. Trevor waited until their table was cleared, save for four small bowls of a very satisfying custard with a crunchy crust, and then he asked Geraldine “From the social standpoint, where would you suggest we begin?”

She was ready.  “With time so much of the essence, we can’t have our clothing custom made, but will be forced to depend on prêt-a-porter.  Clothing bought ready made from a shop, dear,” she added, when Trevor frowned in doubt.  “Quite good quality here in Paris, or so they claim.  We shall select a suit for you in the morning and then on to a ladies’ shop to purchase gowns for Emma.  We mustn’t tarry in terms of finding at least one suitable outfit for us all, because we are already in possession of our first invitation.”

“Oh dear,” said Emma, rubbing her temples more vigorously.

“A note came with the fruit,” Geraldine continued.  “One of our neighbors is having a little party tomorrow night and will most kindly take the occasion to introduce us to her circle.  It’s a start.”

“And a good one,” Trevor said.  “Once I have my costume – for I agree with Emma and refuse to see this clothing as anything other than such – I shall go to the Paris police and find Claude Rubois.  Based on Rayley’s descriptions, he seems the most likely avenue of practical help.  Who knows, Rayley may have confided in him more than we know, and Rubois may have theories that would prove useful.”  He shifted to his right.  “I would like it, Tom, if you come along and establish yourself firmly as part of the team.  Who knows, they may even allow you to view Graham’s body.”

“Of course,” said Tom. “It’s impossible to know what to expect, isn’t it?  They might welcome us with the proverbial open arms or they could just as easily bounce us out on our ear.”

“True,” said Trevor. “I don’t relish the thought of going to Rubois, hat in hand, with no way of predicting how he’ll react.  It would seem we could find some means for the law enforcement entities to work together in cases where criminals are clearly trafficking from one country to the next.  As it stands now, all a suspect has to do is make his way across a national border and he can begin his career anew.”

“Perhaps that day shall come,” Geraldine said, reaching over to pat Trevor’s arm. “For this Exposition is the start of a new era, is it not?  People shall more readily entertain the idea of traveling from place to place.  All sorts of people, not merely the rich, and they will eventually come to see the whole of Europe as their home.  In due time, we will develop a common language and a common currency, as befitting our small continent.”

“All of Europe in collusion?  The French and English claiming kinship?  I bloody rather doubt it,” Trevor said.  But he twisted in his seat to look toward the tower, nonetheless.

9:55 PM

Rayley had begun to awaken, if indeed awaken was the proper word, since he had the sensation he was breaking through layers of water, a drowning man rising instinctively toward the light.  For a moment he lay motionless, his eyes still closed, waiting for the latest wave of nausea to engulf him.  He managed to push this one down, but the sour odor of his shirt indicated that he had not been so successful on previous attempts.

Gradually he allowed his eyelids to open.  Wherever he’d been thrown was dark, very dark.  He would have to rely on his other senses, at least until his vision adapted.

He was lying on a cot and, from its unyielding nature, he believed he might be in some sort of prison or perhaps a military barrack. In the distance, he could hear the muffled suck of water which, compounded by the damp, musty smell of rocks and moss, led him to conclude that he was near a river.

Most likely the Seine.

Well, this was scarcely good news, was it?

Another smell.  Urine.  His own.  He had soiled himself like a child, and, judging by the size of the stiffened circle on the front of his trousers, evidently more than once.  He felt thirst, most definitely, and beneath the queasy twisting of his stomach, a dull ache of hunger.  Rayley cautiously turned his head.  He could see more now, enough to conclude that the room was austere, devoid of all furnishings except his cot and a bucket tossed in the corner on its side.

So what was a man to conclude from this evidence?  That he had been drugged, most likely with the same chloroform that had been used to subdue Graham.  That he had been taken to this small cell, which was, judging by the moistness of the walls and the amount of moss, at least partially underground and near a river.  He had probably been here for some time already, at least long enough to repeatedly urinate and to grow hungry, with his unconsciousness most likely being sustained through repeated contact with more chloroform.  Which meant that someone had been coming and going, ensuring that he did not fully awaken.  If he had not eventually become nauseated and thus expunged some of the chemical from his system, he would doubtlessly still be asleep.  It seemed likely that whoever’s job it was to render him pliant would shortly return.

What day was it?  What time?  Was it even day or night?   His eyes were at last beginning to adjust, courtesy of a small high window above his head, which was focusing a rectangle of light on the opposite wall.  The glow was of the yellowish-green type emitted by Parisian gas lamps, certainly not the sun, and so it must be night.  Which meant he had been in this room at least twenty-four hours, most likely forty-eight.  Perhaps even, for his hunger and thirst were sharpening as his head began to clear, seventy-two.

As if to mock his primitive calculations, a church bell began to toll.  Ten chimes.

So it was ten o’clock on the evening of either April 24, 25, or 26.   He was still in Paris.  And he was still alive - something to ponder as well.  Graham must have been killed shortly after he was taken but, for whatever reason, Rayley had not.  He was being kept alive, drugged but alive, for some possible use in the future, although he had not the slightest notion of what it might be.

Rayley struggled to sit, but could not find the strength.  Even this slight exertion had sent his head swimming and he sank back onto the small cot, an involuntary cry slipping from his lips.  And then, as if the church bells had been the cue, the door to his cell began to slide open.

10:10  PM

“They need help?”  the thin young man asked.  His voice had gone high with hope.  He had spent a miserable night on the river bank, for although the April days were pleasant, the evenings grew cold.  There were some francs in his sack but he had been bringing them to light slowly, for the future was uncertain if a man was a foreigner here in this grand city, alone without a single friend.  Even the cost of this pitiful glass of wine, which scraped its way down his throat like a rasp, was an extravagance for anyone in his precarious position.

But he had known he must go somewhere, must do something, must talk to someone.  A person cannot exist forever on the banks of a river, skulking his way around the little slums which spring up around the sewer openings.  Those shameful ghettos where the people gnawed bread crusts and the rats gnawed the people.  So he had ventured into this disreputable bar and seated himself in the center of the action.  And, just as he’d hoped, within minutes he had been pulled into the swirl of conversation.

The men around him were batting about a piece of news. The tower not yet finished and the clock was steadily ticking down to May 9, the official opening date for the Exposition. Nothing fresh to report there.  But apparently Eiffel’s desperation had grown so severe that his company was prepared to hire the sewer rats.  Unskilled labor, boys and men of all strengths and experience level - in general anyone who could stand on two legs.  Hired to cart and carry and polish and scrape and thus free the better trained laborers for the final touches.  A full franc a day.   All one had to do was show up at sunrise and present himself as sober and able-bodied, or at least reasonably close.

Ian chewed his lip.  A franc a day meant merely nine days until he could earn passage back to London.

The men were joking among themselves, something about the sewer rats becoming known as the sewer monkeys and they were laying bets on which among them would be the first to tumble from the tower.  They seemed to be under the impression that their jobs would require them to scale the outside of the structure like an army of drunken apes, wherein Ian suspected the actual work would be far more mundane.  All those restaurants and shops, he thought.  They will have to be stocked.  Boxes of glassware and hats going up and down the elevator.  And staircases to the second level and the third.  They would have to be finished and this was tedious, backbreaking labor.  The tile, the high lights, the doors and windows and counters. Holding the railings in place for the welders…now, that might be a tricky business.  Might require a fellow to show a bit of nerve.

But never matter.  It was a stroke of luck that there was work to be had of any sort and the beginning of a plan was forming in his mind.   In nine days he could set sail back to London.  For the chance to go home, he would do anything, even if the job was a bit dicey.  Ian Newlove had many fears, but a fear of heights was not among them.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Paris

April 26

11:20 AM

The word was celadon.  She’d never heard it before, but she loved this silver-green silk which swirled around her legs.  Emma could not help but smile at her reflection as she stood in front of the mirror in the dress shop on the Rue de Monge.

“I adore it,” she whispered to Gerry who was sitting behind her with a huge smile on her face.

“You look marvelous,” Gerry said.  “Try another.”

“But I don’t think I could ever love another half as much as I love this one,” Emma said, glancing at the shopgirl, who stood in attendance like a severe little soldier.

“Not another in place of, dear.  Another in addition to.”

“Geraldine, no.  Really.  It’s too much.”

Gerry’s eyes also flickered to the salesgirl, but there was no sign that she understood even a word of English or had the slightest desire to.  She was staring fixedly down at the twirled design of the rug beneath her, as if her boredom was so profound that it had driven her into a trance.

“You’ll need more than one dress,” Geraldine said pointedly, raising her pale eyebrows. “So ask this girl to show you another. Perhaps two.”

Emma supposed she was right.  There was no way to know how long they would be in Paris and she could scarcely appear at more than one social event clothed in the same celadon dress.  She was, after all, masquerading as the fiancé of a young man with family money.

“Puis-je voir une autre robe?” she ventured and the salesgirl shook herself to attention and disappeared into a back room, leaving Emma to contemplate herself once again in the mirror.  She felt disloyal even thinking the thought, but this had been the best morning of her life.   She could scarcely forget that Rayley was in danger and thus the seriousness of their mission, but still…walking the streets of Paris on a brilliantly sunny April morning, coming to this fashionable shop, perching on a padded chair beside Geraldine while the shopgirl solemnly brought out one dress after another for her inspection.  For a young woman who had spent most of her life sewing her clothes, quite often revising the cast-offs of others, it was almost too much to absorb.

The shopgirl was soon back, bearing a pale pink gown with a draped bodice.  Grecian style, as the magazines called it, and it looked so soft that Emma’s hand involuntarily shot forward to brush the cloth.  But the color, with her hair, would simply not do.  Pink was not a shade her mother would have ever allowed Emma to select growing up.  Girls with ginger hair, her mother had always said, look best in blue and green.  Now Mary, who was blonde, would have been lovely in pale pink…But she mustn’t stop to think of that.  Mary was a door Emma’s mind rarely opened, and when she did allow herself to consider the fate of her older sister, she would lose hours or even a day in tears. She could not afford the luxury of collapsing now.

“No,” Emma said, regretfully. “Merci.”

“Are you sure, dear?”  Gerry said.  “I think it’s quite pretty.”

“It is,” Emma admitted, “but not for a girl with ginger hair.”  She shook her head toward the shopgirl and said “Mes cheveaux est…rouge.”

She girl nodded briskly, as if she could see well enough for herself what color Emma’s hair was and continued to stand at attention holding the gown.

“May as well try it, dear,” Geraldine said.  “She seems quite insistent and her judgment in these matters is undoubtedly sound. We’re in Paris, after all, so let’s allow ourselves to be surprised.”

“No doubt we’ll all be very surprised before this affair is over,” Emma murmured, but she nodded to the girl and let herself be escorted back to the small changing room.

It was a strange thing indeed to stand so still and wait for another person to work their way down the sequence of buttons at the back of one’s dress.  Strange to raise your arms and have another person pull a rustle of celadon cloth from your body.  Strange to stand undressed before a complete stranger and to wait so passively, like a toy doll, for another rustle of pink cloth to descend.  Emma had often played the opposite role in this little drama, easing Geraldine in and out of her grandiose ensembles, but she had not had anyone dress and undress her since she was a child.  It’s tedious, she thought with surprise. A lot of waiting around for someone else to do something I could better manage myself.

“The white is nice.  I want you to see you in it.”

The sound, coming from outside the dressing room, startled her.  A man’s voice.  Speaking English.

“But I like the blue.”

The second voice was that of a child or a very young girl.  High and a little breathless, but still demanding.  Just the suggestion of a whine.

The man laughed.  A deep sound, a little gruff. “Then perhaps we should try them both.”

The nimble fingers of the salesgirl were working their way up the back of Emma’s spine, fastening the innumerable hooks of the pale pink dress.  Emma stood stiffly, holding her breath, waiting to hear the sound of Gerry’s voice chiming into the conversation.  For these were precisely the sort of expatriates she had predicted they would meet, were they not?  An English father escorting his spoiled young daughter around Paris for a day of shopping.  They would doubtless leave the store with both the blue and the white dress, perhaps a buttercup one as well.  But there was no further conversation.  Gerry was keeping her own council for once, and Emma wasn’t sure why.

The shopgirl stepped back, indicating she was finally finished, and Emma pushed aside the curtain and emerged again into the sunny showroom.

Things were much as she had left them and yet somehow strange.  Gerry was still sitting on her padded velvet chair, but more stiffly now and her eyes met Emma’s with a sharp snap that seemed to say it all.  Something about the man and his daughter must have struck Gerry as noteworthy and Geraldine Bainbridge, as so many thoroughly unorthodox people seem to be, had always been an astute judge of the behavior of others.  In opting not to speak herself, Geraldine was signaling Emma to follow suit, and thus not to give them away as being English.  Emma gave a small nod to indicate the message had been received, and made a great fuss of picking up the draped skirt and advancing toward the mirror.

The man was tall and handsome, with closely cropped hair and obviously expensive clothes, including a blue silk cravat that billowed around his throat.  The girl with him appeared to be about thirteen.  Too young for the clothing in this fine shop and much better suited for a schoolgirl’s plaids, at least in Emma’s option.  But a blue dress and a white dress, held by separate shopgirls, were being displayed before them and the boutique owner herself, a woman who had not been at all effusive when Emma and Gerry had entered an hour before, was chattering nervously in the background.  They were important, these two people, or at the very least they had spent significant sums in this shop before.

Standing in front of the mirror and pretending to study her dress allowed Emma to truly study the man and girl.  He seemed vaguely familiar to her, especially when he tilted his chin to address his daughter, whose name was revealed to be Marianne.  She was holding the blue dress in front of her now, and swaying back and forth coyly in front of him, saying that she must have it, she simply must.  Something in the scene made Emma suddenly uneasy.

One of the shopgirls gathered up the blue and the white dresses and, just as Emma had predicted, the other sprang forward with two more.  In a flurry of words, spoken so quickly that Emma did not catch the full of the conversation, the shopgirls, the boutique owner, and the girl all marched off in the direction of the dressing room.  Emma looked at Gerry’s reflection in the mirror and their eyes locked.  Not all the words uttered in the rush of conversation had been clear, but two of them had stood out well enough. The boutique owner had addressed the handsome man as Monsieur Delacroix.

Apparently, they were in the presence of none other than Armand Delacroix, lover to Isabel Blout and benefactor to the Exposition Universelle.  The girl now in the dressing room was most certainly not his daughter, but rather an employee, a child on the cusp of womanhood, whose need for expensive dresses, be they white or blue, was a function of her job.

With the girl gone, Delacroix lowered his long limbs gracefully into one of the chairs, and, with a polite nod toward Emma and Gerry, proceeded to wait.  Gerry was so excited by this unexpected turn of events that it seemed, at least to Emma who knew her so well, she could barely contain herself.  She obviously couldn’t wait to tell Trevor that she and Emma had been the ones to find Armand Delacroix and that they had managed to accomplish the feat before noon on their first day in Paris.

Emma turned back to the mirror.  The dress she was wearing looked different than it had in the shopgirl’s arms.  It was not so much pink or peach or blush or any of the other colors one might use to describe a woman’s gown.  No, when stretched taut across her body it proved to be the color of human flesh and it had clearly been designed to give the subtle but distinct impression that the woman wearing it – in this case, Emma Kelly – was naked.  It was audacious and quite glorious.  Emma stared at her reflection and the reflection of the man lounging behind her.

In a world where so few things turned out as one expected, Armand Delacroix was precisely as Emma had imagined him to be.  Elegant, yes, but ostentatious as well.  Not at all afraid to draw attention to himself or his money.  Obviously a regular customer of this shop and obviously this young woman was not the first of her kind he had brought here.  The dresses she was trying on now were more sophisticated than a girl her age would wear in London but yet, like the pink dress Emma herself was now wearing, they were not vulgar.  Suggestive and yet not inappropriate in any glaring way, and Emma suspected this veneer of respectability was part of what the boutique was selling.  Perhaps part of what all of Paris was selling.  Sex, most certainly, but the sort of sex that seems accidental, the sort that scolds the observer more than the observed.  For who is more to blame that one who gazes upon an innocent white dress and sees nothing but the movements of the body that lies beneath it?  Who is guiltier than he who cannot behold a simple beauty without also seeing the vulgar possibilities it brings?

She would have to say something to Gerry eventually.  Otherwise it would look odd.  Gerry understood more French than she spoke, so Emma turned to her, held out the soft pink foam of the skirt and asked “Vous aimez?”

“Oui,” Gerry said, quite sensibly holding herself to a single syllable.

“Vous belle,” said Delacroix.

An outrageous observation coming from a stranger and, had they been in London, an invitation for the man to have his face slapped.  But they weren’t in London, were they?  They were in Paris where a man telling a woman that she was beautiful was not presumptuous but merely evidence that he knew his civic duty.  To acknowledge ugliness was the ultimate crime in London but here in Paris it would seem it was a greater sin to fail to acknowledge what was beautiful.

Besides, what Monsieur Delacroix said was true.  Emma, who had never worn pink in her life, was forced to admit that it was her color.  It turned her hair, which sometimes she privately though to be the shade of moldering leaves, to fire, and her complexion, which she often compared to that of an invalid, to ivory.  Despite it all, despite everything that was going on around them, despite the fact Graham had been pulled from the Seine and Rayley may be destined for the same fate… and despite the fact that the man who might be responsible for both atrocities was sitting here before them, his legs crossed and his glance a little insolent, a little suggestive…despite it all, Emma Kelly was in Paris and she looked beautiful.  And she was tired of being the adjunct, a girl they used as an accessory but did not consider a full member of their team.  She was tired of being told that she had done enough, thank you, that the men would see to it from here.  She would show Trevor.  She had a brain to match any of theirs and other weapons at her disposal as well.

“Merci,” she said. “Merci, Monsieur Delacroix.” For once in her life, Emma Kelly was prepared to be surprised.

London

11:50 AM

“So where the deuce is everybody?”

Davy looked up to see Chief Inspector Marcus Eatwell striding into the laboratory, a startling sight since the man rarely left his spacious suite of offices at all, much less to venture down the series of steps that led to the dreary cells of the basement.

“They’re out, Sir,” he said promptly, rising to his feet.  If his tenure at Scotland Yard had taught Davy anything, it was that a man could never be faulted for stating the obvious.

“Well, when Welles gets back, tell him this.  We still haven’t found the Hammond fellow who was running the brothel on Cleveland Street, but since he hasn’t been seen for fourteen days we’ve had him declared officially missing.  You know what that means, don’t you boy?”

“That we can now legally enter and search the premises?”

Eatwell looked momentarily startled, as if the last thing he’d expected was for Davy to actually know what that meant, but he quickly regained his footing. “Yes,” he said, “quite right. We have all the necessary paperwork to break into the damned place and snatch up whatever we find.  The idea is that forensics might come first, gather any evidence which might be of a sensitive nature, that sort of thing.”

Davy nodded and waited.  Obviously a man of Eatwell’s rank had not ventured down the stairs to deliver such a simple directive.  He would have sent one of his innumerable assistants.

“And of course,” Eatwell continued, right on cue, “the Yard will be expecting absolute discretion from this unit, no matter what you turn up in the hunt.  Any reports generated won’t go up the normal chain of command, to be gawked at by a hundred coppers and no doubt sold to the press.  Do you think you can manage to make this clear to Detective Welles?”

“I can, Sir.”

“I don’t want him running to the Queen with whatever he finds.”

“I can assure you that won’t happen, Sir,” Davy said, thinking that for once this was true.

“The reports come straight to me.”

“Quite right, Sir,” said Davy.  “In fact, I shall deliver them myself.”

11:55 AM

Paris

Rubois had been a gem.  He had not only greeted Trevor and Tom with the respect due a pair of comrades – making Trevor a bit sorry he had been so quick to scoff of Geraldine’s idea of an international police force the night before – but had escorted them immediately to Rayley’s desk.

As glad as he was for the opportunity, and for these early signs that the French police were more relieved than resentful to find them in Paris, Trevor still sank into Rayley’s chair with a sense of dismay.  Sitting at the desk his friend had so recently occupied was disconcerting, but he nodded gratefully toward Rubois, while Tom added a few clichés in his schoolboy French.  It would probably be a day full of nods and clichés, but the minute Trevor opened the first file, Rubois most tactfully left the room.

Last year, when they had first met as detectives on the Ripper case, Rayley had bragged to Trevor that he carried his notes in his head. Apparently little had changed since then, because even a quick glance told Trevor that the files in his hands were thin and incomplete.  He could almost visualize Rayley standing before him, tapping his temple and saying “It’s here, Welles.  It’s all here.”

“So what do we have?” Tom asked, pulling his chair beside Trevor’s with a scrape.

“Not much.  When this is all over, I shall tell Rayley he must write everything out and not just a word here and there. We must have a policy for all reports, including those we do not anticipate having to share.  We cannot allow pride in our own cleverness to render our notes inscrutable to others in the unit.”

“Of course,” Tom said gently.  “Quite right.”

“At least he dated his comments,” Trevor continued, flipping the pages. “So we have a timeline of events.  A mention of meeting Graham and Isabel at a party for the Tower.  Torn newspaper accounts of elevator accidents ranging from Warsaw to Chicago.   A lot of them.  He was even more nervous about ascending the tower than he let on.  A list of French addresses.  Heaven only knows what that means.  And see here, on the page dated two days later, the word ‘shallow’ writ large and circled. What the devil could that mean?”

Tom grimaced.  “That the river was shallow at the point where Graham washed up?   That Isabel Blout’s character had proven to be lacking in suitable depth?”

“I would think both of those things were obvious enough without taking pains to note it.”

“Most likely he meant the water, for read down to the bottom of this page,” Tom said, leaning over to squint at the writing.  “He notes several things about the part of the river where Graham was found.  And look, it says ‘both here.’  Both what were here?  Do you suppose there could have been two bodies in the water?  If so, why would he not have mentioned it in his letters or telegrams to us?”

“Perhaps he didn’t have time,” Trevor said.  “The ink color is slightly different, so it’s possible that these entries weren’t made the same day.  If the second body was found later, Rayley may have been abducted before he had the chance to write us with this news.  A letter could be on the way to London now, crossing the channel one way while we crossed from the other direction. I shall wire Davy to look for it and to inform us immediately of its contents.”

“Or we could ask Rubois.”

“True,” Trevor conceded. “But a willingness to turn over Rayley’s files may not translate into a willingness to share everything the French police know.   My guess would be that Rayley did not expose all his theories to the French and that they most certainly didn’t expose all of theirs to him.”

“It’s still worth a try,” Tom said. “For that’s all I can make of the fact he wrote the words ‘both,’ ‘here,’ and ‘shallow’ all on the same page.  That two bodies must have been pulled from the Seine at about the same point, a place in the river where it seem the victims would have been able to have easily escaped.  We know Graham wasn’t bound but more likely drugged, and I’d guess the second was too.   Almost certainly chloroform.”

“The mother’s friend,” Trevor said thoughtfully.

Tom smiled wryly.  “In medical school we call it ‘the obstetrician’s friend.’”

“And the murderer’s friend too, it would seem,” Trevor said, turning back to the notes. “I suppose there’s no harm in asking Rubois to confirm the existence of a second body, even if this one wasn’t English and thus under Rayley’s jurisdiction.  If they let you go to the morgue to view Graham, you may get a peek at the other one as well.  Ah, see here, now this next part is clear enough.  Apparently the police brought in Delacroix for questioning but he had an alibi for the whole of the night in which Graham disappeared.”

“Hardly surprising,” Tom said.  “The leader of a crime ring wouldn’t kill a man.  He would dispatch his minions to do the deed at a time when he was scheduled to dine with any number of respectable citizens, all prepared to provide him an unshakeable alibi, should they be asked.  So the system works in Paris precisely as it does in London, offering up minnows into the police net, but rarely the whales.”

“The evidence has yet to cast Delacroix as some sort of criminal mastermind heading up an army of dark soldiers,” Trevor cautioned.  “For all we know so far, he is a commonplace brothel owner, who just has managed to be a bit cleverer, and more ambitious, than the average.” Trevor squinted down at the small numbers in Rayley’s book. “Delacroix’s alibi had to cover a broad time frame.  It says Graham was last seen dining with friends at 9 pm and was pulled from the Seine the next morning at 9 am.  It seems they should be able to set the time of death more closely than that, does it not?  Or would the fact that the body was found in water compromise the evidence?”

Tom nodded.  “Submersion in water would affect both body temperature and rigor, two of the most essential indicators.  It occurs to me now that as forensics improves our ability to establish time of death, the coppers may be pulling a great many more bodies from the water.  Not because the victims were drowned or even in an effort to conceal the crime, but rather to obscure the time of death.”

“No one was trying to hide Graham,” Trevor said. “Quite the contrary.  He was tossed into a shallow junction of a city river, apparently to serve as a clear warning.  A message to those who follow.”

Tom tilted his chin toward Trevor, who was systematically flipping through the blank pages at the end of Rayley’s notebook.  “So if a man needed an alibi for the hours between nine at night and nine the next morning, who would he produce?”

“A wife or lover, I should imagine.”

“Precisely.  Armand’s alibi must have been Isabel Blout.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

London

1:10 PM

The doorway to the house at 229 Cleveland Street had been boarded up, all the curtains drawn, and a sign nailed to the porch railing instructed the populace to keep out by order of the Queen and Scotland Yard.   Davy stood in the street gazing at the place, which had the same dispirited air that seemed to hang about all uninhabited buildings.

Eatwell may have left him with paperwork stating that Charles Hammond had been officially declared missing and thus his home could be legally searched, but he had been vague about exactly how the forensics team could access the building or what they might be expected to find there.  Nothing in Davy’s black leather bag – which in fact was one of Tom’s old medical school cases, pressed into service – contained tools which would allow him to pry loose the boards and enter the front door.

Davy moved around the back.  The door coming off the kitchen was also nailed shut, although not quite as thoroughly as the front.  Davy opened the bag and peered inside.  He could scarcely risk one of Tom’s expensive medical knives on such a mundane task as prying out nails and Trevor’s silver measuring rods were equally valued.  He had passed a tailor’s shop on the corner and perhaps there was something there he could borrow, or, more likely, he would have to return to the butcher three streets back to find a tool suited to the task.

Just then his eye fell upon one of the first floor windows. Given the notoriety of the house, one could only assume that all the windows had been bolted from the inside and possibly also nailed shut, but this window was ever so slightly open.  Raised perhaps an inch.  A strange oversight for the coppers to make, Davy thought, but a bit of good luck for him.  He jumped and was easily able to grab the sill with his fingertips and then managed to scramble up the wooden boards and get a stronger grip on the window with his whole hand.  He’d been unfortunately forced to abandon his bag in the back yard and he had no clear idea for how he was going to retrieve it once he got into the house but, Davy supposed, he could only take matters one step at a time.

The window opened easily and Davy was able to heave himself inside.   Upon standing, he found himself in a small sitting room which was outfitted in a style typical for a working class neighborhood.  Hardly the equivalent of Geraldine’s parlor, but certainly comfortable enough.   A large divan, a stuffed chair with a footstool, a rocking chair and even a small bookcase.  Davy wandered over to take a look – he found an investigation of their reading matter to be a surprisingly effective shortcut into the minds of both victims and suspects – but did not recognize any of the titles.  Rather odd in and of itself, for while Davy would hardly claim to be a scholar of literature, his mother loved books and had read to her children throughout their childhoods, largely from the classics.

Davy pulled one of the volumes from its shelf at random and opened it to find, not words, but pictures of a sort that caused him to slam it back closed immediately, his cheeks flaming.  Then, ashamed of himself or having been so ashamed, he grabbed another book and then another.   With a few quick glances he concluded he was standing before an extensive collection of pornography, in fact the sort of pornography directed toward those with a particular interest in male congress, designed to serve not only as a means of arousal, but also a means of instruction.  Judging by the plethora of pictures and the paucity of words, he could furthermore conclude that this instruction book was either intended for an international audience or for people who did not read.

Evidence for Eatwell, I suppose, Davy thought, and he carried a couple of the books over to the window and dropped them out into the yard.   They landed on the grass beside his kit – he still had to think of some way to get that cumbersome thing through the window – and just as Davy was turning back from the window he heard a noise from the room above him.

The sound was light, scurrying, but clearly the motion of human feet across floorboards.

Davy called out “Scotland Yard,” two words which could strike either comfort or terror in listeners, depending upon the nature of their most recent activities.  The reaction in the owner of these particular feet was evidently terror, for, after a pause, the scurrying commenced again, now faster and louder than before.

“Scotland Yard,” Davy repeated, bounding up the stairs. “There’s no point in running.”  But when he reached the top of the stairwell and strode into the bedroom above the parlor he found it empty.  The room did not offer many options for a person wishing to hide.  A narrow bed, a small bureau….and an open window.

Davy walked to the window, craned his neck out and found a boy of about thirteen crouched on the rooftop.

“Come in, lad,” he said quietly.  “You can’t escape Scotland Yard by climbing on a rooftop.  And besides, I won’t hurt you.”

With a sniff, the boy scuttled back toward the window.  His progress across the shingles was suspiciously swift and, upon closer inspection, Davy saw that a series of ropes had been extended across not only the roof but all the windows of the upper story, criss-crossed and knotted at intervals. The doors and lower windows might be nailed shut, but evidently any number of people had been using this webbing as a means of coming and going at 229 Cleveland Street since the morning of the arrest.

The boy swung through the window with a practiced ease and stood before Davy, wiping his nose and trembling.

“How many of you are living here, lad?” Davy asked.

“Five.”

“All boys who worked for Charles Hammond, fellows you know from the post and telegraph office?”

A nod.

“And none of you with families to go home to?”

A shake of the head.

“Do you know where Mr. Hammond has gone?”

A more emphatic shake of the head.

Alright, so he wasn’t naturally inclined to conversation. Hardly surprising, for who knew what sort of threats Hammond had employed to keep these luckless boys in line.  Trevor had taught Davy that the easiest way to get information from children was to offer to feed them, and it seemed that in this case the stratagem might work especially well.

“I’ll tell you what,” Davy said.  “I don’t care that you’re living here with your friends. But I want to look around and I want you to come with me and fully answer my questions.  If you do, I’ll take you over to the Tinwhistle Pub and we shall have a bowl of stew. Does this sound fair?”

The stew was almost certainly a tempting lure.  One glance at the boy’s scrawny frame would tell you that.  But still he hesitated, letting his eyes roam over Davy’s face in an attitude of appraisal, as if life had taught him many cruel lessons, not the least of which was that men sometimes promised boys things that the men did not subsequently deliver.

“How old are you?”  the boy finally asked.

“Twenty-three,” Davy said. “I look younger, I know, and it’s often been a disadvantage in the pursuit of my profession.”

“I’m fifteen,” the boy said.  “Some say I look younger too.”  He scarcely need add that this could be advantageous in the pursuit of his own particular profession. “Name’s Mickey Cooper.”

“I’m Davy Mabrey,’ Davy said, holding out a hand. “So shall you take me through the house?”

The brief tour was depressing - thin cots without linens, an ill-supplied cupboard, a fireplace with brambles and broken shingles rather than a proper lay of wood.  But Davy supposed that, given what the boys had likely come from, the house served as perfect haven to them, and as much a home as many of them had ever had.  His mind sprang back to the childhood fort he’d made with his brothers and a few other lads from the neighborhood, a flimsy treehouse constructed with whatever supplies they could charm from their mothers.  They had imagined a world somewhat like this one, a group of boys living in utter freedom, musketeers in a way, striding through the streets and going on grand adventures with no parents or teachers to curtail their activities.  Of course, they hadn’t planned on the being whored out to aging members of the aristocracy as part of the plan, and the chief advantage of their fraternity was that it could be abandoned the instant their mothers called them home to warm meals and warm beds.

“You seem to have managed rather well without Charles and the income he provides,” Davy ventured at one point, a bit appalled to find the kitchen held little more than bread and moldy cheese.

“Aye, Sir, we have our wages from the telegraph company,” Mickey said. “And with the master gone, we don’t have to pay no rental, do we?”

“He charged you rent?”  For some reason, Davy found this the most despicable fact of all.

“Didn’t exactly call it that,” Mickey admitted, after a moment of consideration. “He said we was to make an ‘investment in our careers,’ was the phrase, Sir.   For we had to be certain posh, didn’t we? Have certain clothes and a certain education?”

“Education, yes,” Davy murmured, thinking of the books in the staircase.

“He taught us to dance.”

“Dance?”

“Aye, the waltz.  I have a velvet jacket all my own,” Mickey said.  “Color of blood, it is, like a proper gent.”

“Indeed,” said Davy.  The boy’s pride was heartbreaking.

Next they wandered past a small alcove beneath the stairs, which Mickey proclaimed to be “the master’s study.”  Davy paused to consider a leather carrying case which, when opened, reveled a flask of what looked to be brandy nestled within folds of blue velvet.

“Does anyone use this but Hammond?” he asked.

Mickey shook his head.

“You’re quite certain?  He doesn’t offer a drink to the men who come calling?”

“Not from there, Sir.  ‘Tis his private stash, he says.”

“I see,” Davy said, closing the case and tucking it under his arm.  The boy was likely right on this - with its cut crystal, lush velvet, and fine burnished leather, the case was probably the most valuable item in the whole house. “Now, could you show me your clothes? The ones Master Hammond bought for you?”

“All right,” Mickey said with a sigh. “And then the stew?”

“Lamb stew,” Davy promised. “And a pint to wash it down with.  Maybe two.”

Thus inspired, Mickey galloped up the stairs with Davy behind him. He went from one bedroom to another wrenching open the bureaus and pulling out any number of garishly-colored, ill-tailored garments that only boys from the lowest classes could take pride in possessing.   Nonetheless, Davy nodded somberly at each offering Mickey produced as if he were being shown the finest merchandise on Saville Row.

There seemed to be nothing to report here, except the sad news that the boys were being not merely buggered but bilked, that Charles Hammond had persuaded them to turn over a hefty portion of their hard-earned funds for rent, costuming, and instruction in the unlikely art of ballroom dance.  Davy was beginning to regret that he had held Mickey back from his stew for so long when they came to the final room, the final bureau, and the final drawer.

Mickey yanked it open.

Frilly things.  Lacy stockings, a high necked blouse, kid gloves.  Some sort of undergarment that Davy dimly recalled having a French name.   Clothing of a much higher quality than the other items Mickey had shown him.  The sort of things a lady might possess.

Davy frowned. “A woman lives here?  Hammond employed girls as well as boys?”

Mickey shook his head. “Was Tommy’s drawer, and he’s gone too, Sir, left the same day the master took off.  Just as you’d expect, wouldn’t you?”  When he looked up and took note of Davy’s bewildered stare, Mickey tried again. “Thought he was better than us, didn’t he? Tommy wouldn’t stay behind to scratch out a living with the rest of the chickens.  And the master would take him wherever he went, wouldn’t he?  Seeing as how Tommy was his pet.”

“Take him where?  You do know where Hammond is, don’t you?”

Mickey hesitated.

“Stew,” Davy reminded him, none too gently.

“They say he took Tommy to France,” Mickey blurted. “Up and run they did, when the news came back the coppers had grabbed up poor Charlie and pulled him to the bloody jail.  The rest of us didn’t know what we was to do, but Tommy was the only one he cared about, the only one he took with him.  Always the golden boy, Tommy was, the one that made him the posh money, only one the master cared for.”

Davy picked up one of the gloves.  It was small, spun from silk.  He lifted it to his cheek.  It smelled of lemon verbena.

We’ve been very stupid, he thought.  We’ve been very slow to see.

“And why was Tommy the favorite?” he asked, even thought he was quite sure he knew the answer.

“Because he was one of the boy-girls, wasn’t he, Sir?”

“The boy-girls?”

“Yes, Sir.  They knew they was better than the rest of us and wasn’t going to let us forget the fact.  See what I mean?”

Paris

1:20 PM

Bodies talk.

This was something Tom Bainbridge believed with all his soul and it was the primary reason he was prepared to assume the role of coroner of the forensics unit the minute his schooling was complete.  The silence of the morgue subdued and perhaps even frightened some of his school mates and he knew that they saw cadavers as proof of the limitations of their calling.  The sort of limitations doctors were loathe to admit.  For if medicine was an imperfect science, then they must be, by implication, imperfect scientists, priests in service to a minor god.  The nearly oceanic arrogance of doctors, professors, and even the students of medicine would make them bristle and mutter at such accusations - and nothing was as accusatory as a corpse.

His friends called them mute.  One of the more poetic chaps back at Cambridge had referred to their precious collection of cadavers as “the mute choir.”  But Tom never saw them as such.  To him, the dead were bursting with stories and quite willing to share them, at least to a man who was patient and respectful, who understood that death could be as complex as life.

With a mention that they had wished to view Graham’s body, Rubois had vigorously nodded and sent for a young translator named Carle who could escort them to the morgue and answer any questions.  But when Trevor had asked if there was another body which had also been taken from the Seine, this simple question had caused an abrupt change of plans and Rubois had suddenly opted to come with them as well.   Their silent party had stomped across town, stopping to buy ham and cheese rolls from a vendor as they walked, and entered the palatial doors of the Paris morgue.  Tom had always assumed that Rayley’s letters exaggerated the opulence of the building, but they had not.  He and Trevor had exchanged a look of sheer disbelief as they had crossed the marble lobby.  The bodies brought here greeted death in far grander accommodations than they had likely ever known in life.

But this was an irony to be contemplated later, in leisure, with a glass of fine port.  For now, as the four men made their way down hall after hall, turning so frequently that Tom would have been unable to find his way out on a bet, he focused on settling his mind.  Releasing the innumerable impressions and changes of the last seventy-two hours and bringing his thoughts fully into the present. Tom’s faltering French had allowed him to understand more of Rubois and Carle’s conversation than they probably intended, and he knew that Rubois was not entirely convinced that Tom and Trevor deserved to view both bodies.  The British still had something to prove.  If he could manage to deduce something that their own coroner did not, perhaps Rubois would open even more to them, be willing to share his own research and theories.

Tom wished his French was more fluid but he knew the true test of his powers of translation would come when he stood before the corpses.  In death, he considered, we all pass over into some countryless land.  We begin to speak a new language that only a handful of the living can decipher.  Tom noted that Trevor was clinching his jaw as he walked.  His discomfort with the dead, so odd in light of his chosen profession, was well known but rarely commented upon by his underlings.

Rubois was unsure they should be here. Trevor didn’t wish to be.  It would fall to Tom and Tom alone to ask and answer the question:  What are these particular bodies trying to tell us?

1:35  PM

Davy sat and watched Mickey Cooper shovel in two bowls of stew, several slices of bread, and gulp the beer like water.  During this luncheon – which, in the boy’s hungry haste, had lasted no more than ten minutes – Davy had been able to gather a few more particulars.  It seemed that Charles Hammond had regularly gone back and forth between England and France, during the six months Mickey had been in his employ.  Mickey claimed not to know the reason for the travel beyond the vague explanation of “business” and Davy believed him.

It seemed that Hammond normally kept somewhere between five and eight boys in his employ at any given time, all recruited by the aforementioned Henry Newlove from the post and telegraph offices.  Henry not only served as Hammond’s procurer of new talent, but had also been an instructor in the sort of skills Hammond had declared the boys must know if they were to succeed in their new profession.  He had tutored them in diction – Davy suspected Mickey had been somewhat of a disappointment to Newlove in this particular arena – as well as dancing, proper table manners, and undoubtedly other, darker arts as well, the specifics of which Davy did not inquire and Mickey did not offer. Newlove obviously served as Hammond’s second in command and normally ran the brothel during the man’s frequent absences.  But no one had seen Henry in weeks.

Thus, with Newlove missing and Hammond on the run, the boys had been left on their own.  No clients had appeared since the dark day of Charlie Swinscow’s arrest, a boarded up door and warnings from Scotland Yard hardly serving as invitation to an evening of forbidden frolic.  So the boys had constructed their climbing web of ropes and continued to come and go via the back of the house, living off the message delivery wages and, Davy suspected, a fair bit of theft.

But here was the surprising part.  If you discounted this last bit of trouble which began with Charlie’s arrest, Mickey claimed the boys had been quite content with their lot at 229 Cleveland Street.  Most of them had come to London from mill towns and farms, where grueling physical labor was the norm and the requirements of the postal service, which demanded long hours in exchange for paltry pay, had not been a great improvement.  A profession which required only an hour a two of effort each day was a welcome novelty and even their living conditions were a decided improvement from what they’d left.

In fact, Mickey’s main complaint seemed to be not what Hammond -  whom he continued to refer to as “the master,” with it grating more on Davy’s nerves each time he said the word -  had expected them to do with the gentlemen who came calling, but rather the preferential treatment afforded the boy-girls.  Apparently they received not only better clothes and more exacting training, but they progressed on to more glamorous settings where they made the acquaintance of even wealthier men.

When Davy tried, as best he could, to ascertain if there was anything unusual about the physiology of the boy-girls, his questions were greeted with a frown and more shakes of the head.  Through Mickey’s rambling attempts at explanation, made all the more difficult to follow because of the mouthfuls of lamb stew, Davy could only gather that the boy-girls tended to be younger than the others, twelve or thirteen, still with smooth faces and slender frames.

“Pretty, I guess you’d say,” Mickey concluded thoughtfully, and took another deep drag of his beer. “Though Tommy’d sure try to punch me if he heard it put out there like that.”

Davy sat back to mull this over.  So most of the boy-girls were young enough to retain a genderless quality, not yet in puberty and semi-starved besides.  Mickey casually but pointedly, tilted his empty mug in all directions and Davy signaled the barmaid for a fresh ale.  The gesture earned him a grateful, gap-toothed smile from the lad, and Davy decided to try a new tack.

“The clothes in that drawer were expensive.  How could Tommy afford them?”

“But the master bought them for him, didn’t he, Sir?”

Having Mickey constantly refer to him as “Sir” was also disconcerting for Davy, almost as distressing as hearing Hammond deemed “the master.” “Sir” was the proper form of address for a detective, or even a copper, especially from a boy the age of Mickey, but the word still made a dull clink each time it hit his ear.  Davy was almost always in the presence of Trevor, almost always the one saying “Sir” rather than responding to it.  Now each time Mickey addressed him as such, it only served as a reminder that Trevor was far away.

“Why did Hammond use his own money to supply clothes for the boy-girls and not the rest of you?”

Mickey looked at him archly, a grown man’s expression settling across a boy’s freckled face. “The rest of us just wore our clothes at home, of course, for socials in the parlor.   But the boy-girls would go out, wouldn’t they, to places where people would know.”

“Know that they were boy-girls?”

A full stomach had restored Mickey’s confidence and he gave Davy a look of open exasperation. “Course not, Sir, that’s the point.  The posh people thought they was girls, of course, so when Tommy was at the playhouse or the proper pubs he had to look like a girl and he had to have the right things, didn’t he, else the posh people would know him for a poser. The master used to say our costumes had to be good enough for the dark but Tommy’s had to be good enough for the light.”

Speaking of light, it was finally beginning to dawn for Davy.  “My God,” he said.  “You mean these men would take twelve year old boys out to the theater or to restaurants and pass them off as women?  Is that why Hammond taught you to dance?”

Mickey nodded.

“And this happened more than once? With more than one boy?”

Another nod.

“For the love of God, why would they do such a thing?”

Mickey wiped his bowl with a crust of bread and considered the question.  “Spose it’s cause they could, Sir.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Paris

1:35 PM

Since boyhood, Ian had taken nibs of charcoal, scraps of paper, and hidden from his schoolfellows to sketch.  Faces were his favorite, and he seemed to have been born with a certain ability to capture them.  He had been gifted even before James had taken him under his wing and shown him a bit of technique.  Before James had given him his half-dried pots of paint and those tired brushes whose bristles had gone unruly with too much use.

Ian had been accustomed to psychological torment in his youth, mostly come in the form of insults and slurs from the other children in town. They had sometimes thrown lumps of coal at him and, in return,   charcoal had been his own weapon of revenge.  His portraits were almost always the product of anger, firm strong lines of black across the white page, the ugliness of the person’s spirit evident in their face.  James had looked at these sketches and seen both the raw talent and the emotion behind it, which was even rawer. “The world isn’t merely savage,” James had told him, his hand on his shoulder, his face full of understanding. “It’s savage, yes son, yes indeed.  But not merely.”

James taught Ian to see the subtlety in human faces. They would walk, the worldly man and the younger man, through the parks of London and they would find a bench on a well-traveled sidewalk. They would observe the people strolling past and then James would nudge him and say “That one,” and they would both begin to sketch.  London streamed by them, one face at a time, and James had taught Ian to draw fast, without revision or judgment, saying that sometimes our truest read on a human face is our first.

After so many years of being observed himself, and not often kindly, Ian had reveled in the role of being the observer.  James held a high standard, so a compliment from him was much to be cherished, and one day he had picked up one of Ian’s castoff sketches, which he had allowed to fall to the pavement beneath his feet.  It was a portrait of a baby in a pram, no more than a dozen hasty lines seized before the child had been rolled from view, but James had smiled at it and said “You have an eye.”

An eye.  James Whistler had said he had an eye.  He may as well have anointed his head with oil.

The tubes of paints were now dried beyond rescue, the brushes all tossed into a rubbish bin.  If James strolled past Ian in this moment, crouched like this by the edge of the street, he likely wouldn’t know him.  It had been painful to Ian to realize that any interest he had ever held for James was fleeting.  Artists look deeply but they do not look for long.  Once they have captured something, they let it go.  Their eye flitters to a new subject, a different face, and there is a cold detachment at the core of any creative impulse.  Ian came to understand this in time.  The sting of James’s betrayal had gradually faded and Ian was now able to see his brief friendship with the man for what it was: the greatest gift of his lifetime.

As he had predicted last night in the bar, the work required on the tower was not especially taxing.  Ian had been assigned to one of the tile-layers, told to go along behind the man on hand and knee, scraping any splattered dots of mortar from the tiles. The pattern was a black and white herringbone, hypnotic when viewed from close range, and the morning had sped by quickly.  When the church bell struck one, they had all been released for an hour, herded into the wailing elevator which carried them back down to the street. The other sewer rats had scattered, no doubt half of them off to spend their morning wages on lunchtime beer and thus unlikely to return for the afternoon’s labors.   The managers were trying to be kind when they decided to grant a partial day’s pay to each man as he left the tower.  The coins pressed into the grimy palms had undoubtedly been intended to insure that each worker could buy himself a proper lunch.  That he would at least face the afternoon with enough food in his belly to keep him from getting light-headed and prone to a fall.  They were engineers, logical men.  They did not understand that when one gives a coin to a sewer rat, what one has most likely purchased is his absence.

Ian had used his own money on bread and cheese from the street vendor on the corner and then, walking slowly back toward the tower with at least thirty minutes of leisure still his own, he had paused to observe each sidewalk artist that he passed.  They were all focused on the tower and Ian wondered how many bad paintings of the damn thing there would be before the Exposition was over.  He imagined one hanging over every bar in Europe and in half the middle class homes as well.  The Parisian artists favored pastels over oils and he picked up abandoned slivers of chalk as he wandering among them, arriving back at the base of the tower with a dozen colors collected in his pocket.  He stooped, heedless of his already aching back, and set to work on a blank piece of sidewalk.

He did not draw the tower. Certainly not.  He turned his hand instead to the face of Henry.  Not the regrettable Henry of late, but rather his brother at the age of two or three, back when the boy had the face of a cherub.  His mother had worked in the mills and she had given him Henry to watch. “Take care of your brother,” she had said, a directive tossed out casually from a woman who was tragically ill-suited to her parental role, but an order that Ian had taken to heart.  He and his best friend Charles – his only friend, if the truth be told – had dragged the child with them as they climbed the riverbanks, throwing stones into the canal, chasing squirrels with branches.  Henry had no choice but to grow up quickly, to become a small echo of his older brother and their resemblance was impossible to ignore.

Ian had managed to keep Henry alive on their forays about the town and countryside, had shielded him from the taunts of the other children far better than he had managed to shield himself.  Ian supposed you could take the fact Henry had survived to the age of eighteen as evidence he had completed the task that his mother had so carelessly assigned him.  But on another level he knew he had not taken care of Henry at all.

The rumor was that Henry had come to Paris.  And if he had, there was only one explanation for why.  He had followed Ian here, just as he had followed Ian his entire life.  And then what had become of him?  Ian had been to the morgue every day for the last three weeks but he had not found his younger brother on display.  He had entered the heavy doors each morning with his heart in his throat, fear overriding his logical mind.  Because Armand wouldn’t do that, would he?  He might hurt other people, but only if he had to, and Armand would never hurt Henry.  Not Henry, who might talk a grand game and bluster and brag but who, at heart, was still no more than a child.  The same child he had always been, struggling and scrambling to keep up with his elders, calling after the bigger boys “Wait for me, wait for me.”

Henry was an innocent. Harmless.  His talk was just talk and no one knew that better than Armand.

Ian believed this and yet he could not stop himself from going to the morgue, day after day.  And day after day he had seen them there, the scattered boys come from small towns all over Europe, propped up, open eyed, staring out at a world that had treated them badly, a world which had brought them to this premature and ignoble end.  All those boys who might have been Henry... but who weren’t.

Henry was alive.  Ian had to believe that.  Alive, and most probably in London, with the rumor he’d come to Paris just that, a rumor.  This was the primary reason Ian was so determined to get back to London.  To see his brother and to assure himself that he was not, as it so often seemed, completely alone in this cold world.

“Pretty child,” a man’s voice said, and Ian looked up to see one of the movers, leaning against a tall wooden crate as he waited for the elevator to descend.  “Yours?”

Ian shook his head.  “My brother. Years ago.”

“Ah,” said the man.  “Well, sorry to say, but your brother is about to be trod upon, pretty as he is.  Midday break is over and a load of furniture is going up.”

Ian stood and gazed at an enormous rectangular crate which had been wheeled by dolly to the base of the elevator. “Is that a mirror for one of the restaurants?”

The man shook his head and spat, the tobacco-brown glob landing just above Henry’s rosy forehead. “Painting.  Going straight to the top, to Monsieur Eiffel’s aerie.”

“So the aerie is real?”  Everyone in the Paris had been talking about Eiffel’s private apartment, perched at the very apex of the tower, but Ian had not been entirely convinced.  It seemed too much like the way people speak of Heaven, another place whose existence cannot be verified but which the downtrodden comfort themselves with promises they will someday see.

“Oh, it’s real, all right,” the man said, turning as the elevator arrived with a rattle and the doors were slowly cranked open. “Nothing but the finest going up there.  It took the three of us to get the velvet settee in this morning, but this thing….”  He broke off and whistled to two men standing to the side and they ambled up to help him move the awkwardly-large crate into the elevator.

“What is it?” Ian asked.

“Told you,” the man said, as they struggled to get the corner through the elevator doors.  “A painting.”

“But what kind?”

“Don’t know,” the man said, stepping back to let his assistants ease the crate toward the back of the elevator.  He held the door as they went back for other, small boxes. “A rich man’s painting, that’s what kind it is.  Here, there’s a tag.  It’s a Whistler Blout, according to the writing.  Does that name mean anything to a young artist like yourself?  You know a man named Whistler Blout?”

He said the word “artist” with palpable sarcasm, stretching out the final syllable until it was almost a hiss, but Ian didn’t mind.  God knows he had been called worst.  “That’s not what the tag means,” he said, as the webbed door of the elevator closed in front of the man’s smug face.  “It means the artist is James Whistler and the subject is Isabel Blout.”

London

1:45 PM

It took Davy a significant block of time to compose his telegram to Trevor.  Knowing you must pay by the word generally has the marvelous effect of sharpening the mind, but this story was so outlandish that he had trouble keeping the message to his customary twenty words.  Once he finally had an acceptable version of the morning’s events, he walked halfway across the city to make sure the telegraph office he used would have no connection to the one where the trouble had all started.

He ended up at a location suitably removed from Cleveland Street, and patiently waited in line.  When his turn came, the man in the window refused to accept his piece of paper and rather made Davy dictate the message to him while he typed it through.

Cleveland boys dressing like girls, trained to pass as female in public.  Highly valued.  Hammond took boy-girl Tommy to Paris.

If the story confused the old duffer behind the desk, it was no more than what he deserved, Davy thought, as he enunciated one word at a time, all the while looking over his shoulder to make sure no one else overheard.  But it seemed that telegraph operators were as immune to depravity as policemen, for when Davy had finally finished, the man merely looked up and said “And the name?”

“Do you have to pay to sign your name too?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I won’t sign it,” Davy said, sliding the coins across the counter with a sigh. “He’ll know well enough who it’s from.”

Paris

2:35 PM

“Did Detective Abrams have an opportunity to examine this second body?”

Carle nodded yes.

“And did he have reason, beyond the similar location in which the two bodies were found, to think the cases might be connected?” Trevor considered the corpses before him. “He obviously suspected as much, so I suppose what I’m actually asking is if he had managed to collect any proof.”

Here, an exchange between Rubois and Carle which resulted in a nearly simultaneous shrug, a synchronized gesture Trevor might have found amusing under other circumstances.  The four men were standing in one of the private viewing rooms in the heart of the morgue, with the body of Patrick Graham on one marble slab and the body of the nameless young man on the other.  It looked a bit like an amateur staging of the last act of Romeo and Juliet.

“We had the time line backwards,” Trevor muttered to Tom, who was standing impatiently behind him. “They found the boy dressed as the girl first, and then Graham. This casts a different light on the entire matter, does it not?”

Turning to Carle, Tom asked, “Was any blood drawn from the unidentified body for testing?”

“No,” Carle said, with a guilty little grimace that implied this was not the first time he had answered this particular question.

“All right, let’s reconsider what we have,” Trevor said.  “The first body is found on April 12 and originally assumed to be the result of suicide.   A jumper.  Quite common.  We have them in London too,” he added, and Carle obligingly explained this to Rubois, who nodded with calm resignation.  Lunatics were undoubtedly flinging themselves off bridges and buildings all over the world at any given moment, and all the police could really do was mop up the mess.  In the vast majority of these cases there was no crime behind the suicide, at least not of the sort that could be prosecuted.  And the owner of this particular body, a boy dressed as a girl, undoubtedly had more reasons for wishing to end his life than your average jumper.

Trevor continued. “And Graham also first looked to be an accidental drowning victim, at least until you found the sort of bruising that implies a forced drugging.  So it’s entirely possible that chloroform was used in the first case too, that both victims had been rendered unconscious before they met the water. But since the first body was embalmed as a matter of course, we have no way of testing this theory.”

There was a pause while Carle translated Trevor’s words.  Rubois nodded and then, for the first time in nearly an hour, spoke himself, a blast of French that constituted the longest speech Trevor had ever heard the man make.

“He says that if we could prove chloroform was used in both deaths, it would link the cases closely enough to have them officially declared a double murder,” Carle said.  “Which means they would be moved to a priority status.  A greater number of flics assigned, that sort of thing.”

It was Trevor’s turn to nod.  It was beyond dispute that some cases got more attention than others, both from the media and the police.  Anyone who had worked on the Ripper investigation could attest to that.  If they had a prayer of finding Rayley, they must emerge from this room with at least enough evidence to prioritize the case in the eyes of the Rubois’s superiors and thus demand more flics in the hunt.  Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to rattle the cage of the newspaper men as well.  After all, Graham had been one of their own, and if they caught wind that his death had been more than a drunken fall into a shallow river, the papers could certainly be expected to respond with their usual mindless hysteria and volleys of exclamation points.  And for once, a media frenzy might prove useful to Trevor’s larger plan.  On the eve of the Exhibition, the French could hardly afford a public panic over a pair of unsolved murders, even if the victims were the most disposable of creatures - a foreign journalist and a homosexual whore.

“Might I examine the bodies?” Tom asked.

Permission was swiftly granted and Tom approached the first table and began to unwrap the cloths draping the young man’s body.  He had been not merely embalmed but packed in ice as well, a procedure that undoubtedly had required repeated reapplications and thus indicated to Tom that the police, or at least Rubois, had gone to considerable effort to keep the body in pristine condition.  Unfortunately in the process, some patches of flesh had actually frozen, so the ice may have altered as much as it preserved.

“What are you looking for?” Trevor asked, as Tom peered through a magnification glass at the corpse’s right hand.

“Some sign of a struggle,” Tom said.  “This boy wasn’t as burly or strong as Graham but it’s still possible he put up some resistance.”

“His mouth is very full,” Trevor said.

“I noticed that too,” Tom replied, glancing up at the face.  “But there doesn’t seem to be any bruising, so I think we can assume his plump lips are merely a gift of nature.”  In the background was the low and steady murmur of Carle translating their conversation for Rubois.

“Note his hair,” Trevor said. “Quite long for a man, evidently grown to a length that can be brushed back in a manner to simulate a woman’s –“

“He was wearing these when he was found,” Carle interrupted, turning Trevor’s attention to a pile of women’s clothing on a chair in the corner, with what appeared to be the hide of a large squirrel resting on top.   Coming closer, Trevor realized it was a shank of curly brown hair.  “The illusion,” Carle said “was very effective. The flic who found the body was completely convinced that the victim was a young woman until he moved to cover her exposed legs and in the process realized…He described it as a great shock.”

“I can imagine that it was,” Trevor said, going through the garments one at a time.  The boy’s face was rounded and feminine, the artificial hair was soft and abundant, and the clothing quite dainty.  Only the boots would have given him away.  They were cut and laced in the manner of a lady’s footwear, with a narrow heel and pointed toe, but they were rather too large to be entirely convincing, at least not when Trevor held one in his hand and examined it at close range.  But then again, the men who had dealings with the boy were most likely not looking at his feet.

“The morgue workers have named this body The Lady of the River,” Carle said quietly.

“See here, Trevor,” Tom called from the table.  He had been glad when the other three had moved to study the clothing, for it had given him the chance to pry open the mouth unobserved. Rigor was advanced and it had been a graceless procedure, leaving the deceased no longer serene and composed on the table, but now in the position of a beached cod, chin thrust rudely forward, mouth agape.

“Throat very swollen, lacerations on the inside of the lips,” Tom said, remembering to offer the magnification glass to Rebois, so that as ranking officer, he could have the first look.  “Caused by something going in or out with significant force,” Tom added, as Rubois stooped to peer into the silent scream of the boy’s mouth.  “Most likely either a powerful penetration of the throat or an exceptionally violent form of nausea.”

“What sort of weapon would be used in such an attack?”

“Really, Welles, don’t be thick.”

When the absurdity of his question struck him, Trevor flushed.  He glanced toward the French, but for once Carle had tactfully neglected to translate and Rubois, who had handed the magnification glass back to Tom, merely stood in his customary military stance with his hands clasped behind his waist.  Tom noted Trevor’s discomfort and quickly added, “For the record, my vote would be nausea, which often follows the administration of chloroform. When it’s used for women in childbed, we’ve been told to keep a nurse by the patient’s head, so that if she becomes nauseated the nurse can turn her face to the side and avoid any chance of asphyxiation.”

“It’s possible for a person to choke to death on their own regurgitation?”

“Certainly, if they’re unconscious.”

“See if there are similar lesions on Graham.”

Just as Tom nodded and turned toward the second body, there was a rap at the door.  A flic in uniform entered and went straight to Rubois with what appeared to be a telegram. Not the same color paper as a British telegram, Trevor noted, but folded and sealed in the same way.  With a glance, Rubois handed it to Carle who handed it to Trevor who held it for a minute, let out an explosive sigh, and then handed it to Tom.

“Read how young Davy spent his morning.  Dear God, on the way back to the apartment remind me to stop and buy the biggest bouquet of roses in Paris for Emma, for she was surely right.”

Tom quickly scanned the telegram and then looked up at Trevor, his brow wrinkled in uncertainty.

“Don’t you see what it means?” Trevor asked.  “We have two men, Charles Hammond in England and Armand Delacroix in Paris, both of whom are allegedly procuring funds for the Exposition Universelle.  There is no satisfactory explanation for how these men, both of common birth and lower-class background, might have to come to move in the elevated social circles required for such work, or why they might be so successful at obtaining investments from wealthy patrons.  And now we learn that Charles Hammond’s infamous Cleveland Street brothel supplied not merely young boys, but young boys whom he had trained to dress and act as girls.  Bizarre as this fact may be, we must add to it the even more incredible fact that a boy dressed like a girl has been recently pulled from the Seine in Paris.  Obviously, the boy in front of us didn’t float here all the way from London.  So what can we conclude?”

There was a rapid fire barrage of French from Carle to Rubois and even Tom was scrambling to keep up with Trevor’s line of reasoning.

“That there is a similar brothel in Paris, also offering boy-girls to their clients?”  Tom stammered.

“Yes, yes of course,” Trevor said impatiently. “But the facts also seem to imply that -“

“Chantage,“ said Rubois.

“Blackmail,” Carle repeated.

“Blackmail,” Tom said, looking from one corpse to another, as if he expected them also to concur.  “Yes, of course, how could we be so slow to see?  The monies procured for the Exhibition weren’t freely-given contributions, but actually a guarantee of silence.”

“Perhaps some of the funds made their way into the hands of the Exhibition organizers,” Trevor said, with a quick glance at Rubois.  It would do him no good to risk offending his hosts by implying that French authorities connected to the Exhibition were accepting bribes. “At least enough to ensure a level of protection.  But a hefty part of it undoubtedly went straight into the pockets of Hammond or Delacroix, as payment to ensure that certain facts would never become public knowledge.  Facts linking a group of prominent men, both British and French, to a brothel that supplied children for their sexual use.”

“Their unspeakably deviant sexual use,” Tom said.

“Quite,” said Trevor.  “Carle, please ask the Detective if he can spare us the afternoon for a lengthy consultation.  Tell him I have reason to believe a case we were working on in London plays a hand in this matter here before us.  If we unravel one, I have no doubt the truth of the other will come tumbling out along with it.”

“Do you think Rayley suspected any of this?” Tom asked.

Trevor slowly and thoughtfully shook his head. “I doubt it.  He would have put something about it in his notes, have taken the time to write or send a telegram, no matter how busy he was.  I think it’s far more likely that it was Patrick Graham who was on to them, poor bastard, and that’s why he is the one lying on this slab.”

“The Detective says he is grateful for your assistance in this matter,” Carle spoke up.

“Tell him that that the gratitude is entirely mine,” Trevor responded.  “For if we can trap his Armand Delacroix I have no doubt we shall find our own Charles Hammond as well.”

Tom nodded.  “You believe the two are working together?”

“Tom,” Trevor sighed.  “Don’t be thick.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Paris

4:10 PM

“We have much to tell you,” Trevor said, bursting through the doors of the apartment where Emma and Geraldine were sitting in the peacock-blue drawing room.

“We have much to tell you as well,” said Gerry, tossing aside her book.  “Emma and I have found Armand Delacroix and we shall all be dining with him tonight.”

It was perhaps the only sentence in the world that could have halted Trevor in mid-stride. Tom, who was a few steps behind him, nearly crashed into his back.

“We met him in a dress shop outfitting the girl who is his latest recruit,” Emma said, closing her own book and patting the empty spot on the settee beside her to indicate Trevor should sit.  “She looked no more than thirteen.”

“And Emma most heroically engaged him in conversation,” Gerry added. “Only to learn that he and this child, whom he calls Marianne and claims to be his niece, have been invited to the same party we’ll be attending at nine.  Madame Seaver evidently throws her social net admirably wide, for Delacroix suggested there would be any number of celebrities present as well, people come for the opening of the exhibition. That intriguing American cowgirl…what’s her name, Emma dear?”

“Annie Oakley,” Emma said.

“Bloody marvelous,” Tom said. “They say she can shoot a cigar from a man’s mouth at a hundred paces.”

“Mercy,” said Geraldine.  “Do you think she’ll demonstrate at the soiree?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Tom. “But we too have had an eventful day.  Do you wish to tell them, Trevor?”

“It was so eventful that I feel as if facts have fallen on me like an avalanche,” said Trevor. “I haven’t yet had the leisure to sort them all out, and here you have greeted me with even more startling news.  No, you must be the one to bring the ladies up to date with our own adventures, Tom.  I’m too overwhelmed to know how to begin.”

Tom nodded and very neatly summarized the events of the last eight hours, beginning with their gratifying welcome at the hands of Rubois, Rayley’s incomplete notes, their findings at the morgue, and ending with the arrival of Davy’s telegram. To Trevor’s relief, he glossed over the particulars of their examination of The Lady of the River, although at the suggestion that the unidentified boy had possibly died from asphyxiation, Geraldine had frowned, as if something about that singular piece of information distressed her.

“I don’t completely understand,” Emma said when he finished. “Will you tolerate a question which may strike the two of you men as ridiculous?”

“It won’t be the first ridiculous question of the day, I assure you,” Tom said.  “And you’re looking rather stylish, by the way, if I can be forgiven for briefly changing the subject.”

“Her new day dress,” Gerry said smugly, as Emma’s gaze fell guiltily downward.  Geraldine had insisted on purchasing not only the celadon green and pale pink gowns but a third as well, the slim-hipped dark navy dress Emma was now wearing, a more practical outfit for everyday use.  “And if you think she looks smart in the navy, wait until you see her tonight.  The shop girl suggested she try a pink gown that when she put it on proved to be quite-”

“My question?” Emma interrupted.  She was grateful beyond words for Gerry’s generosity, but Tom’s close scrutiny was making her uncomfortable.  Under pretense of examining her new dress he was actually examining her body and, judging from the faint smile playing around his mouth, was evidently enjoying the process. Trevor, she was both relieved and exasperated to note, appeared to be thinking of entirely different matters.

“Yes, your question,” Trevor said. “Feel free to ask anything, although I’m not at all sure I’ll be able to answer.”

“The men who procure these boy-girls are homosexual, are they not?”

The word did not come easily from her mouth.  Although she had sometimes read it, this was the first time she had spoken it aloud.

Trevor was relieved when Tom answered first.  “Certainly,” he said. “And eager to conceal the fact, which is why they are so vulnerable to blackmail.”

“All right then, if they wish congress with boys, if this is what pleases them, why would they request that the boys should dress as girls?”

“You’re speaking to the issue of motivation, which I always find quite murky,” Tom said with a shrug.  “Perhaps they are ashamed of their impulses and if the boys take on the surface appearance of girls, this somehow masks that shame.  Or perhaps, at the other end of the spectrum, a creature that has elements of both the male and female adds to their excitement.”

“A girl with a penis,” Geraldine said thoughtfully.  “I suppose that if one is a sexual deviant, it truly is the best of both worlds.”

The Bainbridges will be the death of me someday, Trevor thought, trying hard to avoid looking Emma in the eye and instead brushing an imaginary fleck of dust from his pants. One day I shall simply keel over from mortification in the middle of a dinner party and that shall be the end of Trevor Welles.

But Geraldine wasn’t finished. “Was the person you examined a herma- what do you call them, dear?”

“A hermorphodite?” Tom shook his head.  “The genitalia was normal. Eleven centimeters flaccid, which is quite within the range.  The circumference of the testicles was nothing to brag about, but then again the poor lad had spent significant time in the water.  No, I doubt that these boy-girls, as Davy calls them, are born as genetic freaks of nature.  If so, they would be too rare to sustain the business of a thriving brothel.  Evidently Hammond is taking quite normal boys and masquerading them as girls.”

“But again, I must ask why?” Emma said.  “At least some of these men are well-placed in society.  They have homes and professions and wives and families, all the accoutrements we associate with a normal life.  Assuming that we go with the theory that a boy dressed as a girl served some deeply buried psychological need, why on earth would they risk parading the child about in public?  Even accepting your assurance that the illusion was remarkable, it still seems there are a hundred ways their game could have been found out.  It’s almost as if they want to be caught.”

“The risk of exposure was undoubtedly part of the thrill,” Gerry said.  Her heavy-lidded eyes moved slowly around the circle of far younger people, who looked at her with expectation. If anyone would be able to explain this sort of muddle, it would be her.  “The desire to thumb your nose at the upper class can be very strong,” Geraldine continued.  “Especially if one is a member of the upper class.  If the men who patronize these brothels are homosexuals, then they are extraordinarily aware of the social and legal penalties they would pay for exposure and have most likely struggled to conceal their true natures all their lives. They’re angry.  Resentful of the limitations their very privilege has enforced upon them, and perhaps guilty about the innumerable small lies they themselves have told to keep that privilege intact.  In light of this, they may have taken a certain rebellious pleasure in dancing or going to the theater with a young girl who wasn’t actually a young girl.  I understand this impulse and have indulged it myself on occasion, albeit in a different arena.  Pretending to conform while secretly mocking conformity.  Propriety on the surface, and scandal underneath.”

“The dress he bought for her was white,” Emma said thoughtfully.

“Who?” Trevor asked.  It was the first time he had spoken in several minutes and Emma looked at him with surprise.

“Marianne,” Emma said.  “In the shop on the Rue de Monge, Armand purchased a virginal white dress for her, exactly what an upper class young lady would wear for her first foray into society.  But Marianne is almost certainly a boy-girl, wouldn’t you say?”

“Good heavens,” Geraldine said.  “You’re right, of course, but back in the dress shop when Delacroix told her-”

“Stay away from him,” Trevor said sharply.  “Both of you.  He may play the part of a respectable businessman, but he’s dangerous. If he and Marianne will be at the party, then so will Isabel Blout, and your assignment is to talk to her.  Befriend her as a fellow countrywoman, whatever it takes.  Because you were quite astute in your observations back in Manchester, Emma, and I was wrong to brush your instincts aside so quickly.  Isabel is no doubt the key to both Armand Delacroix and Charles Hammond.”

“Because they’re the same person,” Emma said.

“Obviously,” said Geraldine.

“Why the devil was I the only one who couldn’t figure that out?” Tom asked irritably.

The sound of the doorbell suddenly ripped through the apartment, a shrill, high cry of a sound that made everyone jump.

“And who could that be?” Tom asked, still frowning.  “I don’t think any of us are in the mood for callers. This has already been the longest day in the history of mankind and we still must change into our evening clothes and go to a soiree with Annie Oakley.”

“I’m sorry,” said Geraldine, pausing for a moment until the sounds from the foyer confirmed that the maid had indeed answered the door. “But I believe this particular interruption is my fault.  While Emma was napping after our shopping trip, I took it upon myself to pursue an impulse of my own.  It occurred to me that we were all quite preoccupied with finding out in whom, if anyone, dear Rayley might have confided.  But we had not considered that Patrick Graham must have known something incriminating too, something significant enough that someone declared him too dangerous to live.”  She flicked her eyes toward Trevor. “So I went to the foreign press office.”

“The foreign press office? Geraldine, on the boat over I thought I made it quite clear that you were not to –“

“You did make it clear, Trevor, and I promise you I won’t do anything dangerous. We’re talking about a stroll across town in the middle of the day to visit a public place,” Geraldine said.  “Do you recall how in Rayley’s letter about climbing the tower he very specifically mentioned that Graham had been distracted the whole time by an American reporter?”

“Aunt Gerry, I don’t think I’ve ever been so impressed with you as I have been in the past twenty-four hours,” Tom said. “Yes, of course, the girl from the New York Times.  Graham was trying desperately to charm the young lady, so if he told anyone about his big story, it was most likely her.”

“Indeed, Gerry, good job,” Emma said with equal enthusiasm. “I’m upstairs taking a silly nap and all the while you’re across town being very clever indeed.  I can’t recall - Did Rayley name the girl in the letter or are female reporters enough of an anomaly that she was easy to find?”

“She stood by the railing, if you’ll recall,” Geraldine said, “and thus her picture was in all the papers, including the London Star, and she was mentioned in the caption below.  She actually has the most marvelous name – Marjorie Mallory - and when I asked the young man at the desk if she was there, he most promptly fetched her.”

“And what did she tell you?”  Tom demanded. “You have us all on tetherhooks.”

Trevor nodded too, although he was both surprised and a little distressed that Geraldine, when left to her own devices, had not only managed to locate Armand Delacroix but had also thought of an avenue of pursuit that he had not.

“She didn’t tell me anything, because I didn’t ask,” Geraldine said.  “When I had explained who I was and ascertained that yes, Marjorie was in confidence with Patrick Graham, I invited her here to tea.  I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds, Trevor, especially on a day when you’re already overwhelmed with information.”

“No need to apologize, for your instincts were spot on the money,” said Trevor.  “The maid has undoubtedly shown Miss Mallory to the sitting room, so shall we proceed?”

“She’s only expecting to talk to you, Trevor,” Geraldine said. “You’re the one from Scotland Yard, after all, while the rest of us are mere amateurs.”

“Geraldine,” Trevor said with mock sternness.  “It’s bad enough that both you and Emma have outsmarted me.  Don’t compound my humiliation with such uncharacteristic false flattery.  All right, so I shall interview the young lady on my own.  In the meantime, Tom, I need you to find a wire office and send Davy a telegram.  We were so absorbed in conversation walking home that we forget to stop and do so.”

Tom nodded. “Precisely what do you want me to ask him?”

“Tell him that the French police have the body of a dead boy-girl in the Paris morgue,” said Trevor. “And that we need him to help gather evidence that Charles Hammond and Armand Delacroix are the same person.”

“What sort of evidence?” Emma asked.

“Each investigation starts with the construction of a timeline,” Trevor said, “telling us where and when, with the hope this will lead us to whom.  All of which matter a great deal more at this point than why.  More specifically, we need to determine when Hammond was seen in London and Delacroix was seen in Paris.  Then we can deduce the specific dates on which he must have traveled and check the channel dockmaster records for either name.  Make sure Davy is quite clear on all this, Tom, no matter how many words it takes you to explain.  We’ve made such a religion out of holding ourselves to the telegraph standard of twenty words per message that I suspect we’ve risked confusing each other in the interest of economy.  Tell him to travel straight to Dover and pick up the dockmaster records himself.”

“But how can we learn the dates Armand was in Paris?”  Geraldine asked.

“Your soon-to-be best friend Isabel might be some help with that,” Tom said.

“And there are really only three dates which are absolutely pivotal,” Emma added.  “April 11, the date the boy-girl must have been murdered, and April 21, when Graham was murdered, and… What date was the raid on Cleveland Street?  Hammond was definitely in London then, if the boy you interviewed from the jailhouse was telling the truth.”

“April 7,” Trevor said.  “And I believe Charlie Swincow’s statements were fully accurate.  We might also add to the timeline that we know for certain Delacroix was in Paris on April 23, because the Paris police brought him in for questioning in the death of Graham.  But he provided an alibi in the form of Isabel.”

“Now she could most certainly have been lying,” Emma said, although she had begun to obligingly scribble the dates on the blank flysheet of the book she was reading.  “Unlike Charlie Swincow, Isabel Blout has every motivation to dissemble.”

“Perhaps we should check the dockmaster records in Calais as well,” Tom said.  “It seems the key is determining if a passenger named either Charles Hammond or Armand Delacroix traveled from London to Paris sometime between April 7 and April 11.”

“Will the French port authorities give us that information?” Emma asked.  “Even if Trevor says he’s from Scotland Yard?”

“Probably not, but they’ll certainly turn the ledgers over to Rubois,” Trevor said.  “With Davy checking documentation from Dover and us from Calais, we should be able to procure proof that the man crossed the channel between those two pivotal dates by tomorrow night.  It’s not enough evidence to convict, but that’s a French problem.  All we have to do is come up with enough evidence to bring him in.  If we can arrest him and interrogate him, I have no doubt this will lead us to Rayley.” Trevor looked reassuringly around the circle and then pushed to his feet. “And as for now, wish me luck,” he said.  “I’m off to interview the marvelous Marjorie Mallory.”

4: 40 PM

Miss Mallory had been shown, as predicted, to the smaller parlor where she sat slumped dispiritedly on a blue silk divan.  When Trevor entered and introduced himself, she gave a small nod, but did not speak.

The girl was attractive, but in a most specific way, a style and manner Trevor had come to associate with young women who held extreme political views.  Her hair was cropped short, but it was also wavy and blonde.  Freed from the natural burden of its weight, it twined around her ears in ringlets, a veritable halo of curls.  She was wearing what appeared to be a feminine version of a man’s business suit:  A crisp white shirt, trim gray vest, and a narrow skirt made out of tweed.  The overall effect was not displeasing.

But the most notable thing about her was that she was very pale.

Trevor extended a hand and they touched palms as he thanked her for coming.  He considered sitting down in the chair opposite hers.  He didn’t wish for their meeting to seem like an interrogation, but he wanted to be situated where he could observe everything about the girl.  Their brief handshake had confirmed that Miss Mallory was not only pale but trembling, so perhaps it would be best to provide her with some sort of refreshment before they began.  He had the impression that she was on the verge of a faint, but that if she gave into such frailty, she would never forgive herself.

“May I offer you tea?” he asked.

The girl winced.  “Do you have something more…A glass of wine, perhaps?”

Trevor was shocked.  A woman taking wine with no meal and so early in the day?  But of course she was American, her odd flat accent reminding him of that within a mere nine words, and there was no telling how they did such things over there.  He nodded and walked back to wrench open the door into the foyer where he found, not entirely to his surprise, Geraldine waiting with wide expectant eyes.

“I sent Claire to the market,” Geraldine whispered. “She behaves as if she doesn’t understand what we say, but you never know.  It seems that the British always claim to speak French when they really don’t, and that the French always claim they don’t speak English when they really do.  For all we know that sinister little slip of a maid is a spy, and I promised Miss Mallory absolute discretion.  Does she want tea?”

“She wants wine.”

Geraldine arched an eyebrow.  “She struck me as having a rather anxious disposition.”

“She does indeed.”

“Wine for you as well?”

Trevor shook his head.  “No, but you might consider a small sip for yourself.”

Geraldine bustled off on her mission and Trevor returned to the sitting room.  Perhaps in light of the girl’s obvious distress, positioning himself directly opposite her would be too confrontational.  He smiled as he walked towards her - the smile was not returned – and then opted to sit beside her on the small divan, as if this were merely a friendly visit.  Unfortunately he had never before lowered his considerable bulk to this particular piece of furniture and was unaware that the divan was constructed in such a manner that he would immediately roll toward the girl.  He grasped the armrest just in time to avoid touching her, a mishap which likely would have sent her shrieking from the room.

“Rayley wrote of meeting you on the fateful morning that you all climbed the tower,” Trevor began, looking over his shoulder as he gamely continuing to clutch the armrest with both hands. “He was of the impression that Patrick Graham was determined to befriend you.”

Marjorie nodded. “Graham came to see me that afternoon. Which would have also been, I suppose, two days before he died.”

“A social call?”

A dismissive toss of the head, sending her wispy curls bouncing. “All the foreign reporters keep a desk at the press office. Graham dropped by mine, sat himself down on the edge of it without invitation, and proceeded to tell me a rather fantastical story.  At the time I thought he was only boasting, trying to impress me.  He was the type who…you know...whenever he was with women…”

“I believe I understand,” said Trevor, still struggling to contain himself and avoid pressing her thigh against his. “Rayley’s description of the man was most through.  So what did Graham tell you?”

“That the Englishmen who are giving such great sums of money to the French Exposition are not doing so willingly. They are being blackmailed by a man named Armand Delacroix.”

Trevor rolled back in his seat, no longer caring if this meant his body touched that of the girl’s.  He was both surprised and not surprised at this rapid confirmation of his theory, but before he could ask Marjorie anything else, Geraldine entered with a glass of white wine on a tray.  She lowered the tray to Marjorie, who took the glass, drained it in a single gulp, and returned it to the tray with a delicate shudder.

“Another?” Geraldine innocently asked. Marjorie wiped her mouth with her fingertips while Trevor nodded on her behalf.

“And did he tell you why they were being blackmailed?” Trevor asked, when Geraldine had again left the room.

“Graham claimed he didn’t know.  At least not yet.  But he said he was determined to find out and then, on Monday, when I heard his body had been pulled from the river…” Marjorie leaned back too, blinking her eyes rapidly.  “I’m not a coward, Detective.”

“Of course not,” Trevor said soothingly, although he had no idea why she should feel compelled to make this particular declaration.   American women were certainly a flock of odd ducks.

“I’m not a coward,” Marjorie repeated, but her voice was lower this time, as if she were speaking to herself and not to him. “I asked a few questions around the press room and the first thing I learned was that Armand Delacroix is married to Isabel Delacroix, the other woman who had come along on the tower ascent.  So what was I left to conclude but that Graham and Isabel must have shared some sort of conversation on that, just as you say, fateful morning.  Perhaps he had slipped somehow and told her more than he’d intended.  Or, who knows, for the man was impulsive, especially when women were around, perhaps he had directly confronted her with his knowledge that her husband was a blackmailer.  But he must have said something to her that she repeated to Armand, for now Graham was dead, tossed in the Seine like a load of trash.”

“Trash?”

She paused to think. “Rubbish.”

“Ah. Yes.”

She was blinking tears again.  “I wired my editor but he told me to leave it alone.  Said this sort of business isn’t my affair, and it’s not what our audience in New York wants to read.  Said I’ve been sent to Paris to write about fashion and art and architecture and wonderful new inventions.  It’s my job, he wires back, to extol the wonders of the Exhibition, to praise the city of light.”

“City of light?”

“That’s what they call Paris,” Marjorie said. “That’s what they want all of us call it.  God knows they’ve made that plain enough.”  She gave a bitter little laugh.  “We’ve been indoctrinated at every turn that our function is to write about parties and pastries and the new republic, not some squalid tale of bodies floating down the Seine.” She looked Trevor directly in the eyes, for the first time since they had met. “Because it must be something very dark, don’t you think?  Delacroix is apparently blackmailing quite a few men and for significant sums of money.  So whatever he knows about them has to be absolutely dreadful.  I remember Graham sitting there on the corner of my desk saying, ‘It must be damning information, Marjorie. Damning indeed.’”

“You didn’t by any chance tell this story to Rayley Abrams, did you?”

Geraldine was back with the wine. She handed the glass directly to Marjorie this time and then retreated, pausing at the door to raise her eyebrows at Trevor.  But when he pointedly ignored her mute question, she gave an audible sigh and slipped back into the hall.

Marjorie took a sizable sip and gazed thoughtfully into the distance.  “I didn’t get the opportunity. After I heard that they’d found Graham’s body, I started thinking.  Of all the people who went up the tower that morning, everyone was a reporter, a photographer, or an employee of the Otis Elevator company.  Everyone except two, that is – your friend Detective Abrams and Isabel Delacroix.”

“Rayley introduced himself to the group as a detective?” Trevor asked with surprise.

Marjorie gave him a small smile, genuine this time. “Of course not.  He was trying to avoid drawing attention, so in an elevator crammed full of braggarts and busybodies his very modesty singled him out.  We pride ourselves on getting the story, Detective Welles, so I venture that by the time the elevator had risen to the base of the tower, every reporter in it had silently vowed to discover the true identity of Rayley Abrams.”  Now she openly chuckled. “The poor man would have been far less intriguing if he had donned a red dance dress and put feathers in his hair.  I knew he was Scotland Yard by noon and I daresay all the others did as well.”

Marjorie took another sip of wine, and then another. “And Detective Abrams knew all about Isabel Delacroix, didn’t he?  That was why he was with us in the first place, because he was following her.  He was aware of her connections, and that her husband Armand was practicing extortion against a circle of important British men.  But tell me this.  Had he discovered more than Patrick Graham?  Did Abrams know exactly what sort of dirt Armand had dug up on the British?”

Trevor hesitated.  It was trivial in light of all that had happened, but for some reason he was unwilling to publically confess that the reporter had learned more than the detective. “My dear Miss Mallory,” he said.  “I have no idea the extent of what Detective Abrams knew or suspected.  My team and I were in London when the things you have described transpired and our communications with Rayley were sporadic and incomplete.”

The wine must have finally begun to work its effects on Marjorie Mallory’s system, for this time she made no effort to hold back the tears which sprang to her eyes. “I went to the police and asked for him,” she said, her voice a hiccuping whisper. “Knew I should tell him what Graham had told me just in case…Just in case he somehow didn’t know.  But they said he wasn’t in that day.  They told me that they had no idea where he’d gone or when he’d be back.”

“And that news must have frightened you badly,” Trevor said with sympathy.  She was trembling again and he considered taking her hand.

“Detective Abrams was so kind to me that day we went up, all of us crammed in that horrid loud elevator,” Marjorie said, letting her head loll back a bit.  “He even tried to shield me from Patrick Graham.  But then, when the doors finally opened, it was like a scene from a fairy tale, Detective Welles, nothing but air and excitement, as if we all really had found the city of light.  Everyone was taking my picture.  We were laughing.  I would never have believed that, within days, three of us would be gone.”

“Three of you?  I know Graham is dead and Abrams is missing –“

Her head snapped up with surprise. “So you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Isabel Delacroix has disappeared from Paris.  No one claims to have seen her since the same night that Detective Abrams vanished.  One of the rumors in the press corps office is that Abrams gave her a police escort back to London, personally ensuring her passage across the channel.”

“I can assure you that rumor isn’t true,” said Trevor.

“And another is that she found her way back to London on her own.”

“Possible,” conceded Trevor, mentally making a note that they should look for Isabel’s name as well as Armand’s in the dockmaster rosters. “But it seems to me more plausible that she is simply hiding here in Paris.  She’s wealthy, is she not?  That always helps.”

Marjorie shrugged. “She’s married to a wealthy man, which is a bit different.  Her bills may be promptly paid, but that doesn’t mean she has cash in pocket.  Women live…we live differently than you do, Detective Welles.  For even when we seem to be firmly ensconced in the lap of luxury, there is always the knowledge that this lap can drop out from under us the very instant a man decides to stand up and leave.”

Trevor was slightly startled by the cynicism of this statement, even more shocked than by the rapid disappearance of the wine in the girl’s glass.  “But Isabel has connections with wealthy people, at least, friends to whom she could turn. There are any number of places where she might take refuge.”

“I suppose,” Marjorie conceded. “No one has laid odds on that notion yet.  I hope it won’t shock you to learn that newspaper reporters bet on the outcome of stories. We truly are the pack of hyenas that everyone proclaims us to be.”

“I’m not shocked,” Trevor said. “Detectives do the same thing.”

“Really?  That must be how you won your handsome suit.”

They sat for a minute in awkward silence while Trevor tried to decide if she was flirting with him or if, more likely, she was merely tipsy.

“And the third theory of what has become of Rayley and Isabel?” Trevor finally asked. “It seems such rumors always come in counts of three.”

Marjorie blinked rapidly and drained her glass of wine.

“Indeed,” said Trevor.

5:05 PM

Emma paced on the sidewalk outside the apartment, waiting for Tom.  It was taking him a long time to simply send a telegram and when she finally saw him making his way down the street it was clear he had stopped off for a drink, or more likely two.  It was scarcely her job to keep count of how much alcohol Tom consumed in the course of a day, but it most certainly was a great deal, and even more disturbing than the volume was his tendency to try and hide it.  He would often do precisely this – slip out on some errand, be gone longer than anticipated, and return slightly blurred and a half-beat behind his normally brisk conversational pace.  For a man as bright as Tom, a half-beat behind was still faster than most, so he was generally able to conceal his afternoon trips to the pub.  Emma doubted if anyone other than her had ever noticed.

Now he was smiling, raising one finger to his lips as he approached her, in a gesture of childish secrecy.

“And why is my fair Emma out waiting for me here in the street?” he asked.  “Do you have some sort of confidence to share?  Or are you simply wishing for a few private moments with your fiancé before we make our first public appearance as a betrothed couple?”

“Oh yes, yes that,” Emma said distractedly.  It had been such a bizarre day that she had entirely forgotten that this evening she would be expected to don her flesh-colored gown and convince a room full of strangers that she was the fiancé of a well-to-do doctor.

“I do want to ask you something,” she went on. “Something I’m not prepared to say in front of Trevor.  He’s too…protective, I suppose.  I doubt he will ever consider me a full member of the team.”

Tom nodded slowly and leaned against the filigreed gate. “He means well, but I understand what you’re saying.  Isn’t it funny how the great champion of modern forensics has turned out to be such an old-fashioned man at heart?  I take it that you have some theory you wish to put forward, but that you think might be better if it comes from me.”

“Actually I have a theory that I want you to help me test.”

At this point they saw Claire resentfully trudging toward them with a sack from the market.

“Ah, Claire,” Tom said as she neared, and he proceeded to tell her that if a telegram should come for him that evening that she should send it on immediately to the home of Madame Seaver.

“Your French is perfectly fine,” Emma said, when Claire had nodded and gone up the steps to the front door. “The Tuesday Night Murder Games Club doesn’t really need me here at all.”

“This sort of self pity isn’t like you,” Tom said, taking her arm and leading her away from the gate. “You’re an entirely vital member of the team, as you know full well.”  He looked at her closely.  “What’s really on your mind?  Will your smart new navy dress survive a sit on the steps, do you think?  Or should we stroll while we talk?”

Emma trembled for a second, partly from her agitation, and partly from the fact that Tom was standing so close.  Even when mildly intoxicated, he still saw her more clearly than anyone else.  He did not remember the night they had collapsed into each other’s arms last fall and would most likely never remember it, at least not consciously.  But on some deeper level there was a connection between the two of them that had been forged during their singular evening as lovers, a sort of instinctive understanding that defied rational analysis.

“There’s one fact that everyone knows, everyone agrees upon,” said Emma, making a concerted effort to pull her attention back to the subject at hand.  “That both the unidentified body of the boy-girl and the body of Graham were found at approximately the same point along the Seine and that neither had been in the water long.  So it would make sense that they were both released from the same place as well, would it not?”

“Here,” said Tom.  “Sit.”  He took off his jacket and spread it across the third marble step.  Emma, noting that the fashionably thin Parisian skirt severely inhibited her movement, slowly lowered herself down with a swiveling moment while Tom carelessly plopped beside her. “There’s a bridge very close to where the bodies were found,” Tom said. “The assumption has always been that this was where they must have entered the water.”

“Yes, I know, but remember what Trevor says about assumptions,” Emma said.  “Besides, those theories originated when the first body was discovered.  At that point the authorities believed they were dealing with a suicide, ergo someone who had jumped, so of course the police would focus their attention on the most likely place that a suicide would choose, which is a bridge.  But now that the boy-girl and Graham as well, have been deemed the victims of murder, it seems it is time to revisit the original assumption.”

“Quite so,” Tom said, beginning to see her point. “If you had murdered someone, or had rendered them unconscious by chloroform, you would hardly need to throw them from a bridge.  In fact, given the amount of foot traffic the average city bridge sustains, that would be the least sensible way to dispose of their body.  More likely you would simply carry them to the riverbank and put them in the water.”

“The more I’ve thought about it,” Emma said with a nod, “the more convinced I’ve become that the important part of the puzzle isn’t where the bodies came out of the river, but rather where they went in.  What do the riverbanks of the Seine look like?”

“I don’t know,” Tom admitted.  “I’ve crossed the river by bridge before, but never really bothered to look down at the banks. The Seine isn’t as wide as the Thames, especially not in the pass where the bodies were found, so I assume the banks are not as steep.” He nodded at Emma.  “We shall go first thing tomorrow morning and take a look.”

“I think we should go tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“I told you, I have a theory.”

“I don’t like the sound of that at all, Emma.  I know you don’t think Trevor treats you like a fellow, but we simply cannot go off on our own testing theories by the light of the moon.  Please don’t jerk your chin at me like that.”

“How much time do you think we have?  It’s a good sign that Rayley is still merely missing, I’ll concede.  Whoever killed the boy-girl and Graham clearly wanted them to be found as quickly as possible to send some sort of message.  A message to the men being blackmailed or perhaps even to the French police.  So the very fact that we haven’t found Rayley’s body suggests he is still alive and being held captive somewhere.”

“Trevor believes it is Delacroix.”

“I didn’t say he was being held by someone, I said he was being held somewhere,” Emma said sharply. “Obviously it’s Delacroix or someone connected to him, but it seems to me that arresting Delacroix may be our longest route to the truth.”

“Right now he’s all we have.”

“Right now you’re correct, which is why I’m suggesting we consider the case from a different angle.  Trevor will be Trevor and he will follow the slow and steady steps of justice, knowing that if he collects enough evidence against Delacroix he will ultimately find Rayley.  But if he hesitates too long what he may find instead is Rayley’s body.”

“Trevor is hardly some plodding bureaucrat, Emma,” Tom said.  “We’ve been in Paris less than twenty-four hours and the investigation is moving at a furiously rapid pace.”

“I doubt it seems that way to Rayley Abrams.”

She was probably right about that.  “If you don’t think our best course is collecting enough evidence to arrest Armand Delacroix,” said Tom, “what would you suggest?”

“That we try and determine where the two bodies were put into the river.”  She leaned back against the step and slowly exhaled. “Do you remember when Trevor was investigating the Ripper case and he would say that it didn’t matter why Jack killed, that it only mattered how?”

Tom nodded cautiously.  Emma rarely mentioned the Ripper case.

“And remember how just a minute ago he said that the who, what, and where is more important than the why?”

Tom nodded again.

“All I’m suggesting is that we further prioritize the questions and focus our attention on where Rayley is being held, rather than on who is holding him,” she said. “Releasing him from any present danger is the most important thing and only then should we worry about building a case against Delacroix.”

“But of course finding Rayley is our top priority, Emma,” Tom said, also rolling back against the step and staring out into the street. “No one has forgotten that.  Certainly not Trevor.” Tom was usually the passionate one in any discussion and it rarely fell to him to play the voice of reason.  He wasn’t sure he liked it.  Emma was flushed and breathless, and it seemed that everything he had said so far had only had the effect of making her more upset.  For a moment Tom pondered the possibility that Emma’s desire to prove her worth to Trevor was as much a part of her motivation as finding Rayley, but then he dismissed it.  More likely the fact that her sister had been violently slain was the true source of her anxiety.  She couldn’t help but see everything from the point of view of the victim.

When he turned back, Emma was looking at him, squarely in the eye.  “Isn’t there a good chance Delacroix has some sort of base of operations near the river and that Rayley is being held there?”

“Of course there’s a chance, although I suspect ‘base of operations’ is far too grand of a term. There’s no evidence that Delacroix has dozens of minions at his dispatch,” Tom said.  He was well aware that he was quoting precisely the same lecture Trevor had given him earlier. “He’s more likely just your standard reprehensible brothel owner who is preying on both his clients and his employees.  Besides, the Seine is a long river that runs through the heart of a large city.  I would imagine it’s much as it is along the Thames. Small hovels of homes, people crammed together in rooms, ale houses and brothels catering to the men who work the docks.  Do you suggest we go door to door through the endless squalor, knocking people up and asking if any of them might have seen a detective from Scotland Yard?”

“No.  I suggest we time how long it takes a body to float down the Seine.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“You examined the bodies. The boy-girl may have been embalmed and frozen and thus not a good test case, but Graham was pristine, was he not?  And you saw the original coroner’s notes?”

“You know I did.  I told you so upstairs.”

“How long was the official estimation of the amount of time Graham was in the water?”

“It’s impossible to be certain in these matters.  It would be no more than an educated guess.”

“Very well.  You’re educated.  What’s your guess?”

“Thirty minutes, more or less,” Tom said uneasily.  He couldn’t follow where she was going with all this at all, but it was most certainly nowhere good.  When it came to the forensics unit, he and Emma were mere volunteers.  Emma did not go daily into Scotland Yard as Tom did and had thus never stood witness to how hard Trevor had to fight for his unit’s mere survival or how careful he was to treat his volunteers with as much respect as his employees.  Did Trevor view Emma precisely as he did the men?  Certainly not, but he had been eminently fair to both her and to Tom, who was, after all, still merely in school. When Trevor learned they had gone outside his authority to run forensics experiments on their own, he would rightfully demand both their heads on a platter.

“All right then,” Emma said, unfazed by his hesitation. “So we put forth an experiment to determine how far a body the size of Graham’s and one the size of the boy-girl’s would drift in the Seine in thirty minutes.  Once we’ve determined this, we go upriver that distance and look for the most likely place where they might have been put in.  It seems supremely logical to me.  The Seine isn’t a tidal river so there should be few variables in water velocity and it hasn’t rained all week, which is fortunate, is it not?”

Tom was shaking his head.  Tidal rivers?  Water velocity?  Where the devil had she learned such terms?  “Tomorrow I promise you I shall ask Rubois if the police have considered–“

She sat up abruptly from where she had been leaning against the marble step. “No!  Rubois can’t know.  Neither can Trevor.  At least not until we’ve done our preliminary experiments and I see if my theory has a sliver of a chance of working.  Otherwise Trevor shall conclude I’m even more useless in an investigation than he presently thinks, and I shall spend the rest of my life locked in an airless room transcribing documents.”

The words “preliminary experiments” were enough to strike terror in Tom’s heart.  He knew that Emma could be intense to the point of obsession, but she surely wasn’t suggesting that they break into the morgue, was she?  In her present state of mind it seemed possible.

What sort of experiments?”he asked cautiously. “We don’t have access to a body.”

“It seems to me that we have access to two perfectly fine bodies, right here.”

It took him a moment to realize what she meant.

“Emma,” Tom finally said sternly. “You must clear your mind of this plan at once.  Tonight you and I are going to focus on collecting information about Armand Delacroix and Isabel Blout, just as Trevor has instructed us to do.  Tomorrow I promise that you and I shall walk the banks of the Seine looking for this – what did you call it? – this base of operations.  And I shall ask Rubois if the French have given any thought to the possibility the bodies were not thrown off the nearest bridge but rather put into the river somewhere upstream.  For that part of your theory does indeed make sense.  As for the rest of it…absolutely not.  We shall in this instant rise to our feet and go upstairs and dress in our fine new clothes and attend our first French dinner party.  And once we are there you shall endeavor to behave as the deliriously happy fiancé of the most wonderful man in Europe, not as a madwoman about to throw herself into the Seine.  I don’t wish to be querulous, but that, my dear, is that.”

“You said the boy-girl was very thin.  How big was Graham?”

“Whyever would you ask?”

“About your size, would you say?”

Tom turned his eyes and palms heavenward in an appeal for divine help.  “He was a little heavier than me, I should guess.  And yes, I’ll spare you the trouble of further interrogation. The boy-girl might have had a similar weight to yours.  But it matters not at all because tonight we are going to the Madame Seaver’s soiree, Emma, precisely as planned.”

“Of course, of course,” she said.  “I never suggested otherwise. Experiments of this nature are best done very late to avoid attracting the attention of the unsavory sorts who always seem to collect by rivers.  Who knows how long it takes them to tumble into slumber.  We should wait until two or three, I’d imagine.”

“This isn’t going to happen, Emma.  Trevor would forbid it and for once I believe Aunt Geraldine would second him.”

“Then it’s fortunate they’re both such sound sleepers. Did you hear them last night?  Their snores all but harmonized. Tom, really, it’s nothing more than one of our Tuesday Night Murder Games.  An experiment on how swiftly masses of different weights are carried down a slow-moving river.  Think of it that way and you’ll see my point at once.”

“I’m not going to think of it at all.  I’m not coming with you.  We would be, as Aunt Gerry says, both insane and in the Seine.”

“Oh, bother, of course you’re coming,” Emma said.  “As long as we stay together, what could go wrong?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Paris

9:20 PM

At Geraldine’s insistence, they walked.

In London it would have been social anathema to arrive at a society party on foot, but Geraldine had explained that in Paris a stroll to the home of your hostess was considered part of the evening’s entertainment.  Besides, Madame Seaver’s house was no more than four blocks from their own apartment, albeit long blocks punctuated by a series of perfectly manicured parks.  The route was well-lit, with the gaslights closely spaced in this prosperous neighborhood, reminding Trevor of Marjorie’s begrudging description of Paris as “the city of light.”

In fact, if a man chose, he could read a book beneath these gaslights, Trevor thought, ambling behind as Tom escorted both of the ladies, one on each arm.  They were much brighter than the ones in London, but the cost of this superior illumination was a strange yellowish green cast to the light, as if it were being provided not by fire but rather by some mysterious supernatural force.  Even the resultant shadows were of a different sort, not diffuse and cloudlike like the shadows of London, but rather falling sharp-edged at his feet.

Rayley had been lonely.  The thought hit Trevor with the force of a sudden wave.  That’s why he had sent such long letters back to London, the sort of detailed descriptions which a man could use to fill a formless day of leisure. This land was foreign, not only in the manner one might expect and enjoy on a bit of holiday, but in a hundred other small ways as well.  When you looked at them in a different light, even the most natural things could take on an unnatural cast, and Trevor gazed at the backs of the three familiar figures walking ahead of him.  Tom in his tall hat, the ladies wrapped in velvet cloaks against the chill of the spring air.

The pace of their party was moderated to accommodate Geraldine’s age, and Tom’s gait was a little unsteady, Trevor noted, most likely because Geraldine was leaning on his arm more heavily than Emma.  She’s an old woman, Trevor thought, another observation which was self-evident, but the acknowledgement of which made him strangely sad.  I never think of it in London, but I see it here.  And Emma…she’s not only moving slowly to match her pace to Geraldine’s, she’s also walking with a sense of dread.

Tom and Geraldine, born to privilege and bold by nature, could never understand the dozens of small pitfalls which lurked for Trevor and Emma in Madame Seaver’s front parlor.  As they turned the final corner, the house in question came into view, ablaze with light and swarmed with footmen in the street, the first volley of guests making their way up the front steps.  Emma clutched Tom’s arm a little more tightly, and the pace of the group slowed even more, from sedate to ceremonious.

The condemned don’t rush to the gallows.

9:28  PM

London

Davy had placed a dozen candles around him on the work table, as well as the forensic lab’s only proper lamp.  The Yard kept a skeleton staff at night, and the enormous building was eerily quiet.  It was unpleasant to be here, on the lowest level, in the darkest corner of a dark building, but it was the perfect setting for his work.  He read the paper before him once again, very slowly.  It was the most recent report on French fingerprinting methodology, neatly transcribed by Emma.

He had already unpacked the liquor case he had obtained from the brothel on Cleveland Street, wearing gloves as he did so and taking great care not to touch the flask or the glasses in a place which might obscure existing prints. It seemed that the most promising option was what appeared to be an almost complete thumbprint on the side of one of the glasses, just in the position where a man’s hand might logically grasp the thick tumbler.  Davy’s own hands were shaking as he set up the necessary tools of his task.  A single mistake could ruin their best print of the man who went by the name Charles Hammond.

Tom’s telegram was also on the table, besides Emma’s transcribed notes.  Davy had already done what it had requested of him, procuring the documentation of all travelers leaving Dover by boat on the dates in question, but this had not been a simple chore. The minute Davy had gotten the telegram from Paris, he had hopped on the next train to Dover.  But the dockmaster there had not responded to his request for the passenger rosters with any particular enthusiasm.  He had grudgingly offered to let Davy read them in his office, but with boat traffic between Dover and Calais at high levels due to the Exhibition, Davy had known that doing so would take him hours.  He had politely asked to speak to the man’s superior, aware that the channel authorities were a different group entirely from Scotland Yard and that tact might take him farther than a direct order.  Fortunately, the senior magistrate was evidently the ambitious sort and had been immediately impressed with the insignia of the Yard.  With a wink that seemed to suggest their paths would someday cross again, he had ordered the entire transcript to be released to Davy at once.  The ledgers were so numerous and heavy that Davy had literally staggered while trying to carry them out of the office, a scene the original dockmaster had observed with open amusement.

Once he had hired a porter and loaded the ledgers onto the train, Davy had spent the first half of the journey back to London flipping through the pages which corresponded to the dates of Tom’s inquiry.  A quick scan had shown neither the name “Charles Hammond” nor “Armand Delacroix” among them, but he would go through them more thoroughly on the morrow.  The whole thing struck Davy as a bit of a fool’s errand. All that the dock records would prove, after all, was that the man had gone back and forth between London and Paris, which was hardly a crime.  Even if the dates lined up well enough to allow for an arrest, it was not enough for a conviction.

This business with the fingerprint seemed a better shot, so Davy spent the last half of the journey going through the Scotland Yard files on the subject.  It felt strange to be making such decisions on his own and prioritizing his own research. Davy was acutely aware that he had less than six months in plainclothes under his belt, and that half the men at the Yard, Eatwell included, still saw him as little more than an inexperienced bobby who had managed to get lucky.  Normally Trevor or Rayley would be doing the big thinking with Davy merely dashing around town dusting up the details.  Running mindless errands like traveling to Dover to pick up the dock records, come to think of it.  Davy looked grimly at the pile of ledger books stacked beside him on the swaying velvet seat of the train.  It would likely take him the whole of the next morning to properly go through them.  His decision to try the fingerprinting first would only delay the task which Trevor had specifically assigned to him.

Still….Rayley was missing and Trevor was in Paris and Davy was all there was to the forensics unit.  As presumptuous as it seemed, he would have to think for himself, so, after another brief moment of glancing back and forth between the dock ledgers and the fingerprint files, Davy resolutely picked up the latter.

The files were a bit of a mess, since the science of fingerprinting seemed to have arisen in several different cultures at once.  There were reports of the successful use of the technique in China, India, Argentina, Scotland, and, of course, France.  Britain had its own share of champions of the procedure, ranging from a cousin of Darwin’s, Francis Dalton, who was apparently taken quite seriously in the scientific community, to a fellow named Henry Faulds, who apparently was not.

Faulds, in fact, had written to the Yard personally the year before, in the midst of the Ripper hysteria, urging that the detectives there use this new tool in their pursuit of Jack.  His long and rambling letter surprised Davy, since he’d never seen it during the Ripper investigation, and he suspected that neither had Trevor.  Of course, to be fair, most of the mail regarding the Ripper case had been sent by crackpots of the most bizarre order and very little of this so-called advice had made its way to the desks of the actual detectives.  Despite the fact he was a physician and a missionary who had first seen the technique used in China, It would seem that Faulds had been regarded as just another eccentric, and that his letter had been buried deep within the bulging file.  The man’s hyperbole and tendency to repeat himself had likely not helped his cause.

In contrast, Dalton’s reports were written in the sort of measured prose that implied a more conventionally educated mind.  Faulds may been summarily dismissed, but Dalton’s work in fingerprinting was apparently well-funded and ongoing.  It would be a fine thing, Davy thought, to be able to rely on British science rather than French – a fine thing if Dalton’s claims were not quite so disturbing.  Apparently, fingerprinting was only one element of Dalton’s broader theories on body typing and his overall plan, it seemed, was to use his research to prove that the Anglo-Saxton race was innately superior to all others.  Scotland Yard could scarcely align themselves with a man like that, no matter how much they might want to use his research.

Besides, the claims themselves seemed suspect.  Dalton allegedly had 8000 sets of fingerprints in his personal collection, and wrote that he had collected the vast majority of them within the past year.  An impressive number of specimens, certainly, but would 8000 be enough to allow a true scientist to draw such wide-reaching conclusions?  Dalton claimed that no two humans have the same set of fingerprints and that, unlike most of our bodily features, our fingerprints do not change with the passage of time.  Davy had sunk back in his seat, mystified.   If, by his own admission, Dalton had only had these fingerprints in his possession for a year, how could he conclude so definitively that fingerprints remain the same as a person ages?

If only there had been someone else here to talk to, someone to help him sort if all out.

Davy had spent the last twenty minutes of his journey in a fitful, unsatisfying nap.  When the train had at last heaved into Paddington Station, he had jumped off and had hired a lad with a cart to help him haul the ledgers back to Scotland Yard.  Scotland Yard, where he now sat with lighted candles all around him, like a priest about to embark upon some sort of unholy sacrament.

Trevor and the others did not know that Davy had this flask and these glasses in his possession. With so much to report about his inspection of the Cleveland Street property, this liquor chest had seemed at the time too trivial to mention.  In fact, if Davy had been asked, he could not have explained the impulse which had prompted him to seize only this one item from among the piles of evidence and bring it back to the forensics lab.  But he suspected – at least if he could manage not to muck it all up in the process – that he had before him an important part of the puzzle whose solution would lead them to Rayley Abrams.

Davy began to grind small flakes of carbon with a mortar and pestle. When they were as fine as dust, he sprinkled the mixture over the part of the glass where Hammond’s thumbprint had so definitively come to rest.  Mickey had claimed with great confidence that Hammond was the only one to use this liquor case and Davy was banking on the boy’s statement.  A whiff of the brandy in the flask did seem to suggest, even to a man with Davy’s limited experience of luxury, that this was a rarified quaff, indeed likely to have been held back for Hammond’s private enjoyment, while his clients and the boys were nudged along the path to perdition with cheaper gin and lager.

The dark dust settled over the fingerprint, rendering it gratifyingly visible, showing precisely the sort of whorls and arches that the fingerprint files had promised. Davy took up the piece of clear tape he had cut from the roll in the coroner’s office and pressed it evenly into the dust.   The French documents had not provided much counsel on how long it took to “lift” a fingerprint but Davy didn’t want to rush the process.  He hummed a few bars of “God Save the Queen” to calm his nerves while he waited.

Paris

10:05 PM

The string quartet wedged in the corner of the parlor offered vigorous assurance that Madame Seaver’s soiree would be, if nothing else, very loud.  Trevor found the crush of the crowd and the volume of the party a relief, since it allowed him to merely nod at people as he passed them without feeling any compulsion to try to speak.  His plan was to weave his way through the series of rooms, going first one way and then the other, moving briskly and with a quizzical frown on his face, as if he was in search of a particular person, some refreshment, or even the loo.  As he brushed past the guests, it would give him the opportunity to observe them without necessarily being observed in return.

The party offered, to put it mildly, a fascinating variety of human specimens.  A mixture of French and English bubbled through the room, the voices animated with excitement.  As promised, Annie Oakley held court in a far corner, with party guests literally waiting in line for the chance to meet her.  Oakley was far more feminine than Trevor would have guessed from the description of the woman as a female cowboy, but, evidently conscious of what it took to please her public, she was dressed in buckskin and boots, her long hair tumbling around her shoulders and a brown suede Stetson dangling down her back.

Her presence here seemed to determine the theme of the party, for half the men were also wearing western hats.  Everyone was awash in enthusiasm over the idea that Oakley and Buffalo Bill would shortly be leading a procession of cowboys, Indians, and cattle of various ilk down the Champs-Elysses for the official opening for the Exhibition.  Trevor remembered Rayley’s letter about the party for Gustave Eiffel and how so many of the people in attendance had been outfitted in clothing that paid tribute to the tower’s design.  Now it was the American west, a place Trevor would venture to guess few people in this room had ever seen.  The Exhibition did indeed seem to be making good on its promise to bring the whole world to Paris.  In his walks to and fro through the party, Trevor had found himself at one point briefly waylaid by a very drunk man named Paul Gauguin who had insisted upon telling him of the wonders of some place called Tahiti.

“Such seclusion offers a man the chance to reinvent himself,” Gauguin had declared, while Trevor had struggled to think where on earth this Tahiti might be.  He was fairly sure it wasn’t Europe and the word didn’t sound American either, despite the fact that Gauguin was among the men wearing Stetsons, a ludicrously large one that kept slipping over his impassioned blue eyes.  Trevor was eventually able to deduce that Tahiti was somewhere in the South Pacific and that the island was establishing a pavilion in Paris for the Exhibition.  Apparently many small unknown nations were joining the Americans in their pavilion-building quest, hoping to use this fine Parisian stage to introduce themselves to the wider world.  The international pavilions were like the Eiffel Tower – not yet complete - but apparently there had been enough in the Tahitian one to enchant the imminently enchantable Gauguin.  He had also announced himself to be a painter, hardly a remarkable status in this circle of self-proclaimed artists.  In his very limited interactions with the other guests, Trevor had already met three musicians, an actress, two painters, a sculptor in the medium of glass, a ballerina, and a magician.

It was scarcely ten and he was exhausted. The manic energy of the party had been originally diverting, but now made him feel as if the very life force was being sucked from his body.  First the tower, now the cowboys, and undoubtedly the next great Parisian event would be a tribute to the pavilions of the South Pacific, with the guests clacking together coconuts and braiding large vulgar flowers into their hair.  The French were so childlike in their quest for novelty, Trevor thought with a roll of his lip, so quick to abandon tradition in favor of the ever-changing nouveau.  Their worship of the modern was indiscriminate and fawning, at least in contrast to his own cautious British reserve, and Trevor wondered once again how Rayley had felt here, if he had somehow managed over time to come to terms with the French mentality. Trevor rather doubted it.  The whole damn country was in poor taste.

He pulled away from the growing circle of guests listening to Gauguin rhapsodizing about the natural nobility of partially-clad Tahitian women, and his eyes momentarily locked with Annie Oakley’s.  She too had stepped back from the crowd for a moment of solitude among the deep red curtains, and as their gazes met, Trevor and Annie exchanged a small, ironic smile.  It was the code of two people who knew themselves to be outsiders, even if one of them was the center of attention and the other was most emphatically not.  She’s an imposter here too, Trevor thought, and she has the wit to recognize the fact.  Earlier that afternoon, Emma had told him that it was rumored that until she had begun to tour with Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley had never been west of Ohio.

Speaking of Emma, where was she?  When they had all four entered the front foyer where a squadron of maids had stood ready to take their wraps, Emma had rather defiantly let her borrowed blue velvet cloak slide off her shoulders and onto the floor in a heavy puddle.  The abrupt gesture gave the effect that she was a Venus emerging naked from the foam and it signaled that her plan for dealing with the potential discomfort of this evening was the exact opposite of Trevor’s.  While he hoped to blend in, Emma clearly intended to stand out.  As a maid stooped to retrieve the blue cloak, Trevor and Tom had exchanged a look of wordless amazement. Was this truly the maid from Mayfair, the schoolmaster’s daughter they had often teased for being too serious?  And then Emma had sailed off into the crowd unescorted, without so much as a backward glance at either man.  Geraldine’s extreme self-satisfaction had been perhaps the most difficult part of the scene to bear.

One of the circulating waiters paused before him, elevating a large tray of cocktails for Trevor’s perusal.  A wide mouthed glass with some manner of red liquid, a pale green concoction in a tall slender goblet.  The one beside it emerald, and the next, even more horrifyingly, was bright blue.  One appeared to be made of milk and cinnamon, while another bore layers of gold, ranging from a pale yellow at the top of the glass to dark amber at the bottom.  Trevor saw nothing he could easily indentify as gin, brandy, or beer.  He would have dismissed them as cocktails designed for the amusement of ladies, but the men around him appeared to be gulping them too.  Trevor supposed he should carry a drink of some sort in his hand, since nothing marked a lawman faster than abstinence in a social setting.  He didn’t think anyone at the party thought of him as anything other than Geraldine’s nephew, if indeed anyone had stopped to think of him at all, but still…

He scooped up the palest drink on the tray, since he could not quite shake the impression that the jewel-toned ones were some variation of the poisonous brews that had done in the Borgias.  He sampled it carefully, but was unable to hazard a guess of what plants might have yielded their juice to create the violet-tinged flavors inside the glass.  Sloe berries?  Pomegranates?  Some fortified cherry liquour?

And just then he saw Emma gliding past him on the arm of Armand Delacroix.

Geraldine had also noted the movement of Emma and Delacroix across the room and like Trevor, she reacted with alarm.  As Marjorie Mallory had predicted, Isabel was not present, and Delacroix had spent the first part of the evening escorting his alleged niece around the party, introducing her to nearly everyone in sight.  But now the child was devouring pastries over by one of the food tables and Delacroix appeared to have been snared by Emma.  Or had it happened the other way around?

Geraldine looked to the right.  Trevor was standing guard, some ridiculous pink drink halfway to his lips.  She looked to the left.  Tom too was sidling toward them.  So good, at least they were all aware of Emma’s position in the room.  They had originally planned to draw Isabel into a discussion of other socials which had been held in honor of the Exhibition, hoping that in the process of talking about parties they’d attended together, she would also be divulging the dates in which Armand had been in Paris.  If Emma was careful to be subtle with her questioning, presumably the same strategy would work just as well with Armand himself.

Since Emma was well-monitored by the men, Geraldine drifted over to the dessert table where the Marianne was steadily popping petit fours into her mouth.

“Good, aren’t they?” Geraldine ventured.

The girl, or perhaps actually the boy, merely glanced at Geraldine, apparently unsurprised at being addressed in English and irritated at having been interrupted, however briefly, in her assault on the buffet.   Geraldine had seen the same sort of intense, compulsive eating in the pregnant teenage girls from the foundling home, whom she often employed to help Emma with the housework.  When a young person had gone hungry at some point in their life and thus carried the fear that hunger might return at any time, it seemed they would always approach a bountiful display of food in precisely this businesslike fashion, determined to consume a much as possible in the least amount of time and resentful of any social construct, such as conversation, which might impede them in this mission.

So Armand was evidently keeping Marianne, be she male or female, in the same state of malnutrition he had inflicted on his other young employees.  Tom had explained it all to Geraldine during the channel crossing, but it was still a bit shocking to stand beside the child and to note her relentless attack on the sugary treats of the dessert table.  Emma had distracted Armand and pulled him away from Marianne’s side, but there was no telling when he would be back and the iron bars of his control would once again descend around her.  In the meantime, the child clearly intended to eat as much as possible.

Geraldine popped a sweet into her own mouth and considered Marianne out of the corner of one eye.  She was wearing gloves – bad form while dining and Geraldine was surprised that Armand would not have better schooled the girl in manners.  After all, she was on display in hopes of attracting the attention of a certain class of men, although Armand was discreet and it was hard to determine which men in the room, if any, had fallen prey to the charms of this young and innocent-seeming creature.

“I love sweets, myself,” Geraldine ventured, as soon as a browsing couple disappeared and she and Marianne stood once again alone at the table. “Sometimes I eat them until I simply can’t eat any more.”

This earned her a small nod from the child, who also looked over her shoulder to make sure that Armand was still safely out of sight.

“And sometimes I wish I could find a way to take them home with me,” Geraldine continued. “There are so many beautiful things here it seems a shame that I don’t have the room to sample them all at once.” She lowered her voice and edged a bit more toward Marianne in a conspiratorial manner.  “Do you know what I sometimes do when I’m very naughty?”

The girl looked up at her, a little blank-faced, as if she was having trouble imagining a situation in which a woman Geraldine’s age might manage to be naughty.

“I slide a couple of them in my glove,” Geraldine continued.  She herself had been sampling the bon-bons in the correct way, with her right glove removed and held in her left hand.  She smiled.  “Which do you think are the best?”

“These,” Marianne said in a whisper, speaking for the first time.  She pointed a calfskin-covered finger at some ornate chocolates topped with great doffs of cream.

Geraldine reached with her ungloved right hand and plucked one from the tray and, with a sly wink at the child, who was staring at her in fascination, she slid it into her empty right glove.  It was a messy affair and only the most naïve of people would believe that a society woman might steal food in such a fashion, but Marianne was not only naïve, but accustomed to hunger.  She watched the chocolate disappear into the mouth of Geraldine’s glove and then, with another quick glance in the direction of Armand, tried it herself.  She pulled off her right glove and reached.

Tricking the girl into exposing her hands had been Geraldine’s game all along.  She had grown up surrounded by doctors and scientists and was well aware that the parts of the body which indicate gender are not only those which one might expect.  Men have a sinew in their throats that women do not, a protrusion foolishly called an Adam’s Apple, which could easily be concealed with a high-necked gown of the sort Marianne was presently wearing.  The feet of men are almost universally larger than those of women, but this too is easily hidden beneath skirts and within cleverly-cut boots.

But the hands. There is no way to disguise the fact that a man’s hands are shaped differently from a woman’s and that his wrists are thicker.  Marianne snatched the chocolate quickly, but not quickly enough.

“Mademoiselle Bainbridge?”

Geraldine, who had never relished the fact that her unmarried status doomed her to an entire lifetime of being addressed as “Miss,” ”Senorita” and “Mademoiselle,” turned toward the butler who stood before her, a telegram on a tray.  He explained, in tactfully slow and simplified French, that this message had been delivered to her apartment and that the maid had then brought it here.

“Excuse me, dear,” Geraldine said, seizing the envelope and stepping back from the table.  Marianne, who had now managed to cram four treats into her glove, paid her departure no mind, and Geraldine scanned the room for Trevor or Tom.  But both men had taken posts in the vicinity of Emma and Armand, Tom attaching himself to a large circle of people in animated conversation and Trevor pretending to smoke in the open portico beyond.

Geraldine retreated to a curtained corner of the room, threw her chocolate-filled glove into a potted plant, and ripped open the telegram.  The message was brief:

.

Have Hammond clear thumbprint from Cleveland Street glass.  Also Dover ledger books.  No names match yet.  Please advise.  Davy.

She frowned, trying to remember precisely what Trevor had told Tom to request of the boy.  Trevor had wanted Davy to secure the British dockmaster ledgers, so the bit about Dover was to be expected.  But the addition of a fingerprint - this was real news. Even with her limited knowledge of the subject, Geraldine had heard enough to know that if the fingerprint for Hammond matched that of Delacroix, this would be worth more in court than a thousand dockmaster ledgers.

The crowd parted and Geraldine caught a glimpse of Emma and Armand.  They were standing close, evidently deep in conversation.   Emma was holding a champagne glass and he –

Bother it all.  The crowd had surged back into the void and for a moment she could no longer see them.  Geraldine moved deeper into the cave of the curtains, taking care to shove the crumpled telegram into her remaining glove as she did so.  She waited for the crowds to part again and then she saw them.  Yes.

Yes, it was precisely as she had hoped.

Armand Delacroix was holding a tumbler of scotch.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Paris

April 27

12:20 AM

The four of them gaped at the simple glass tumbler as if Geraldine had somehow managed to unearth the Holy Grail.

“You’re certain it’s the right one?” Trevor asked, for the third time in as many minutes.

“Of course,” Geraldine said.  “I noted the exact moment when Delacroix drained his glass and put it on the serving tray.”

“And you didn’t smudge it with any prints of your own?”

“Really, Trevor, you must have a little more faith in me.  I balled up my fist and thrust it in the glass and then expanded my fingers and voila - the tumbler came right up with it.  And then I went straight to the maid and retrieved my cloak for concealment and then sent her to collect the three of you and from that point you all know precisely what happened.” Geraldine exhaled with vigor.  “I may have brushed it slightly at one point with my cloak but I don’t think I did.  I took great care.”

“Well done, Auntie,” Tom murmured.  He had brought the flame of a candle to the glass and was studying it from every angle. “It’s mixed with something, perhaps powdered sugar from those figs Delacroix was eating all night, so with any luck we have a workable print.  We’ll take it to the police lab first thing in the morning.  And we must wire Davy to send the Hammond print.  By courier, I’d suppose?”

Trevor nodded slowly, his hand to his mouth.

“Then in the meantime, I suggest we try to get a good night’s rest,” said Geraldine. “I don’t think a single one of us has slept more than four hours within the last forty-eight, and if we grow any more exhausted, we shall all lose the gift of deduction entirely.  Honestly Trevor, you must remove that worried look from your face and welcome this glass as a gift from the Fates.  I don’t know what the word is for it, but you seem to be one of those people who are more disturbed by good news than bad.”

“No, not at all,” said Trevor although her observation was actually apt.  A stroke of fortune always made him feel as if he were being set up for a fall.  “I’m delighted to have this glass in my possession.  If the prints match and we can prove that Delacroix is the same man who was running the brothel on Cleveland Street, then we can arrest him in the name of Scotland Yard.”

“And once you get him alone, he will talk,” Emma said, glancing at Trevor, who didn’t glance back.

“Oh yes,” he said quietly.  “Once I get him alone, he most certainly will talk.”

2:49 AM

“Where is she?”

“You tell me.”

Rayley had been tracking the movements of the small panel of light across the far wall of his room and this, along with the steady and helpful chime of church bells, had led him to believe that another full day had passed.

Armand Delacroix had entered the room a few minutes earlier and positioned himself precariously on the overturned bucket in the corner of the cell.  Rayley had sat up in bed to face him, taking care to seem a bit more unsteady than he actually was.  Ever since his accidental nausea had taught him that this was an effective means of lessening the impact of the chloroform on his system, he had employed a more calculated means of expunging the drug, taking care to hide the evidence beneath his mattress.  He certainly didn’t intend to announce his relative sobriety to Delacroix, so Rayley slumped against the wall and allowed his lips to part in the suggestion of a stupor.

“I have no desire to be unreasonable, Detective,” Delacroix said, smooth and elegant as ever, despite his rather vulgar position crouched on the pail.  “I simply need to know what you’ve done with her.”

What he had done with her?  It seemed to Rayley that the question should be going in the other direction. “You’ve seen Isabel since I have,” he said.  “You escorted her to the police station on the evening of April 23 to provide your alibi, did you not?  A trip she most certainly made under duress.”  Rayley was trying to walk a fine line between engaging Delacroix in fruitful conversation while still sounding suitably drugged.

“Don’t play me for a fool, Detective.  It’s clear enough that you’ve somehow helped her get back to London.  I know for a fact that she wrote you, asking you to meet her at dawn at the tower on the day she disappeared.”

A sudden tickle of nausea rose in Rayley’s throat and his hand rose automatically to his mouth.  Delacroix watched him with alarm, an expression that Rayley noted even as he struggled to contain the sensation.

“Are you all right?”

A strange question coming from the man who held him captive, a man who had supplied him with nothing but lukewarm water, cold potatoes, and steady doses of chloroform for the last two days.

“I won’t deny that I received that note,” Rayley said, after shaming himself with a slight belch.  “It would be foolish to do so when that was the very morning your hired thug beset me and brought me here. The note was a trap, so why are we pretending otherwise?”

Delacroix gave a subtle, almost apologetic, lift of his shoulders. “My dear man, if Isabel’s note had truly been a trap, you’d already be dead.  And since you clearly are not, I believe you must accept my statement. My associate Gerard was sent to the tower that morning with the expectation that he would find both you and Isabel.  How did she put it?  ‘Meet me at dawn,’ I believe was the phrase.  So typical.  I doubt that the woman has ever actually learned to read a clock.”

“So you were spying on her.  How did you do it?  Bribe her maid?”

“It was hardly necessary to bribe the maid when I’m the one paying the maid,” Delacroix said with a wry twist of his mouth.  “I pay everyone. It’s one of the disadvantages of being the boss.  But learning the contents of Isabel’s note was merely, as they say, icing on the cake.  It was inevitable that she would eventually try to flee and that she would turn to you as her most likely avenue of help.  That’s what she does, you know, she categorizes men the minute she meets them, and decides in an instant how each one might be useful at some point in the future.  Naturally if she wished to travel under protection from one country to another, she would throw herself on the mercy of her dear new friend, Detective Rayley Abrams of Scotland Yard.”

Rayley leaned back against the chipped plaster of the cell wall.  At least this was an explanation for why he was being kept alive.  Armand Delacroix believed that Rayley knew where Isabel was hiding.  The good news was that it meant Isabel was presumably still alive and still free of Delacroix’s clutches.  Delacroix would almost certainly have not taken the risk of holding a Scotland Yard detective if he had even the slightest clue to her whereabouts. The bad news is that Delacroix was mostly likely now in this cell because his own efforts to find Isabel had proven fruitless and he was prepared to employ means to make Rayley talk.  Means that Rayley would not enjoy.

At least I don’t have to fear I might betray Isabel in a moment of agony, Rayley thought.  For I have not the slightest idea where she might have gone.

Armond looked at him soberly. “I am not a violent man, Detective Abrams.”

It was said without inflection, neither a promise nor a threat.

“And I am not a foolish one, Monsieur Delacroix.”

“No, but you are a curious sort.  A busybody, a snoop, one who piddles in the business of other men. To be fair, I suppose your profession demands it.  As did the profession of your friend, Mr. Graham.”

“Not my friend,” Rayley said. “I scarcely knew him.”  In the distance, the church bells chimed.  One.  Two. Three.

“Ah,” said Delacroix. “You deny your friend and three bells ring.  Rather like the Biblical crowing of the cock.”

Rayley looked away from his insolent gaze.

“But perhaps you are not familiar with the allusion,” Delacroix continued.  “It’s from the New Testament and you are Jewish, are you not?”

“I scarcely see what my religion has to do with the matter at hand.”

For some reason, Delacroix found this remark amusing.  He leaned back and laughed, then rustled in his pocket for a match.  Rayley flinched as he struck it against the sole of his shoe, the flame blazing up like the sun in the darkened room.

“Oh, but it has everything to do with it, Detective, for your Hebrew heritage is the very reason you find yourself in France.  Jack the Ripper implicates the Jews in one of his wild rants and a moment later our most esteemed Detective Abrams is pulled off the case and all the potential glory falls to one Trevor Welles.  What could be left for you except to take a post studying in France?”

Rayley struggled to keep his face composed. How the devil had the man learned all that?  And to state it so smoothly?  His English, Rayley suddenly thought, the pit of dread growing in his stomach.  He’s careful to maintain a flicker of a French accent, but his English is far too good.  Even Carle was not so at ease with the phrasing, nor so casual with the syntax.

“Your information is impressive, Monsieur,” he said cautiously.

In the shadows, his mouth barely visible beneath the glow of his cigar, Delacroix continued to smile. “What a disappointment it must have been for you, stepping aside in favor of that fat fool.”

And how the devil did the man know Trevor was fat?  “I believe,” Rayley said calmly, “that the better term is ‘portly’”

“You’re wondering how I know what the man looks like,” Delacroix said, flicking ashes to the concrete floor.  “The truth is that I didn’t, until tonight.”

Trevor was in Paris?

“I saw Detective Welles this very evening at a soiree,” Delacroix continued, “trying to pass for gentry and failing miserably.  He was in the company of an arrogant boy who clearly fancies himself a citizen of the world, an elderly woman in the most appalling shade of pea green, and a rather pretty girl.  She spoke passable French as well, but then she had to go and ruin it all by attempting to flirt with me, which was a very silly thing for her to do.”

So they had all come, save possibly Davy.  Rayley was simultaneously gratified and alarmed. For if Armand Delacroix had learned Trevor’s identity so easily, his network of spies must be deep indeed.

“And was the party a success?”

“But of course.  Madame Seaver is one of the most celebrated hostesses in Paris, sparing no expense in her efforts to dazzle her guests.  Annie Oakley was there in her cowboy hat and I believe your friends were quite diverted.  But as for me, the experience was tedious.  I had hoped to use this occasion to introduce my niece to society but all anyone could do was ask about Isabel.”

When Rayley made no response, Armand Delacroix abruptly rose to his feet and walked slowly toward the door.  “Goodbye for now, Detective,” he said, pausing in the doorframe to look back.  “I have no doubt that we shall shortly meet again.  But in the meantime my associate Gerard – a thug, I think you called him? - has agreed to remain here and see if he can help you recover a bit of your memory.”

3:15 AM

The view of the city was astounding at this height, especially at night.  Despite the whipping wind, Isabel leaned against the railing without fear and pulled the silken wrap more tightly around her naked body.  Her hair was still chopped short around her ears, her face unadorned, and her feet bare, but whenever silk met flesh, wherever there was cut crystal and fine wines and plump pillows and candlelight reflected in broad mirrors, then somehow she was still Isabel.

In fact here, in this place which was simultaneously so strange and so familiar, she felt her anxiety fading for the first time in days.

Isabel had not been surprised when Armand had demanded she befriend Rayley Abrams and Patrick Graham.  A detective and a reporter were precisely the sort of men to activate Armand’s paranoia, all those dark suspicions which lay just beneath his surface charm.  Although at the time Isabel had argued with Armand about the necessity of such a task, she had eventually bowed to the inevitable.  She had flirted with the two men at the party, had climbed the tower with them a day or two later, and then dutifully reported back everything she had learned to Armand, just as she had so many times before.

He appeared to have been placated.  He had kissed her sedately on the forehead, as a matter of fact, as if she had been an obedient child.

The next day she had risen early, dressed as a boy, and gone out to sketch.  Again, there was nothing uncommon in this.  Isabel preferred to draw in the morning when the light was gentle and the city still slept.  When she had happened to see a crowd gathered at the river she had paused, not in anticipation of finding anything interesting on the banks below, but rather because James always said that crowds offered the best chance to study a preoccupied human face.  She had been sketching a woman on the bridge who was staring down with gap-mouthed fascination when Isabel’s own eyes had happened to drift toward the source of that fascination.

Patrick Graham.  Stretched out on the riverbank, most very clearly dead, with Rayley Abrams bent over him.

Isabel had been so startled at the sight that she had dropped her sketchbook, sending it spinning over the side of the bridge and into the Seine where it hit the muddy water with a splash and caused the people around her to snort and laugh.  But Isabel had merely sat, one arm around a lamp post, leaning forward, watching the scene with such intensity that at one point Rayley Abrams had actually paused in his work and looked up in her direction, as if he could somehow feel the heat of her stare.

Isabel held few illusions about men or about the harsh world which they occupied - but sex and secrets were one thing and it was an entirely different matter for people to start turning up dead, especially a man with whom she had casually chatted only days before.  As unthinkable as it was that Armand was responsible for this grisly tableau stretched out beneath her, it would be even more irrational to pretend that he was not.  Armand’s request that she spy on the men evidently had not been one of his random obsessions, but part of some larger plan - and thus she must have unwittingly played a role in Graham’s death.  Isabel had watched until Rayley supervised the loading of the body on a stretcher and followed it up the steep bank to the waiting cart.  When he was out of sight, she had run straight back to her house and scribbled her breathless note.  Please help me.  I have to go home.

She had no doubt that Abrams would respond to her request to meet.  He had to know that they both were in danger and besides, he was eager.  Eager to help her, eager to kiss her, eager to save her and take her to bed.  The next morning, when she approached the tower in the early light, she had seen him there waiting, pacing and shivering.  He had come too early, that poor, foolish man, but he had come, that was the important thing.  Her spirits had lifted, her feet had quickened.  With any luck she would be back in London before nightfall.  But just as she had been about to call out to him, Isabel had seen Gerard approaching as well, from the opposite direction.  She had ducked into the shadows, watched from behind a garden gate, but there had not been much to see. The story had been resolved with a stunning swiftness - Gerard stepping into the garish glow of the streetlight, Rayley startled, the flash of a white handkerchief, which had rendered him pliant within seconds of being pressed to his face.

So that was how they did it.

Gerard had been preoccupied with lifting and carrying Rayley’s limp body and did not see Isabel turn and retreat.  She had run to the ghettos down by the river, to that part of town where people ask so few questions.  She had traded her fine clothes for a working man’s rags, had wandered mindlessly and fearfully through a long day, and spent the night sleeping on the stony ground of the riverbank.

The luck, if there was any, was that Isabel’s survival skills had not been completely dulled by her years of fine living.  By the end of the second day she had found both a humble job and a grandiose point of sanctuary.  The aerie suited her.  As a child she had imagined herself to be a princess in a tower and indeed, this was precisely what she had now become: A woman trapped in elevated seclusion, looking down at the pretty snarl of the city beneath her, the river tossed like an abandoned ribbon, shining silver in the moonlight.  Here she stood, waiting for one man to come and save her from another, although who this rescuer might be, or even the precise face of her oppressor, Isabel could no longer say.  In her childhood games, it had all been much clearer.  Life is never so cruel as when it gives us precisely what we have said that we want.

Isabel turned slowly on the narrow balcony – more of a parapet, actually – and reentered the apartment.  It was a jewel set atop a high crown, each detail perfect in its execution.  Miniature, true, but far more elegant than the house Armand had leased for her in Paris or even the grand old home George Blout had provided in London.  The mirrors and crystal glittered in the candlelight and the fabrics on the furniture were as soft as a whisper.  She regretted that she would soon be forced to leave.

Getting a job working on the tower had been a rare stroke of luck, but once she had been hired, it had proven easy enough to hide behind the high stairwells as each day’s labors came to a close.  The engineers who supervised the work were the sort of men who thought of both everything and nothing.  They stationed guards at the elevator on the bottom level to make sure no one crept into the tower at night, but they had employed virtually no method of ensuring that all the workmen left at the end of the day.  It would not have surprised Isabel to learn there were several of her sewer rat comrades also sleeping at various points on the tower, although she was undoubtedly the only one bold enough to claim Eiffel’s aerie for her own.  In the morning she would go down the series of spiral staircases and hide somewhere on the lower level.  She would give herself time to recover from the descent, for while going down is always easier than going up, the steps were still numerous and tricky.  When the elevator spit out the first load of workmen, she would wait for them to disperse and then insinuate her way among them.  No one notices the comings and goings of just one more nameless man.

Isabel sat down on a red velvet armchair and gazed up at her portrait.  It was hung over the settee, the largest and most dominant piece of art in this artful room.  Each picture has its personal code, James had often told her, with the clues plain enough to anyone with the eyes to perceive them.  But so few people really look.  They see what they expect to see, nothing more, and Isabel’s entire life has been built on this principle.  It is not hard to fool people when they do not want to know the truth.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Paris

3:15 AM

If Tom Bainbridge had not been so exhausted and worried, he would have laughed.  He and Emma had slipped out of the apartment in full darkness so as not to waken Trevor or Geraldine – an unlikely complication since, just as Emma had predicted, both of them had begun loudly snoring within minutes of closing their bedroom doors.  It was not until Tom and Emma were standing outside beneath a streetlight that he got his first proper look at her ensemble.  She had borrowed a man’s shirt and trousers from a bureau, but Geraldine’s cousin evidently had the shape of a bear.  Although it had been wrapped three times, the belt barely managed to keep the trousers attached to Emma’s slender waist and, despite the fact she had carefully rolled both the pants legs and shirt cuffs, the slightest physical effort would undoubtedly unfurl them.

“Those clothes are so ridiculously large that you’re swimming already,” Tom said. “When the cloth gets wet, you’ll be pulled straight under.”

Emma lifted her small pointed chin. “I’m a good swimmer.”

“No one is that good a swimmer.”

“Then when we get to the river, you can give me your clothes and take these.”

It was not a bad suggestion.  If they exchanged garments, they would both be in clothes that were, while definitely too large, at least not floppy enough to drown them.

“Perhaps,” Tom said cautiously, a bit ashamed that his first thought had not been the viability of the idea but that it meant he’d get a chance to glimpse Emma naked. “But first we have to get to the river.”

They scuffled to the nearest avenue where they were both surprised to see that there was a good amount of activity.  This hour would find the streets of Mayfair completely empty, but Paris were still bustling and Tom did not have the slightest trouble in hailing a cab.  It took them to the bridge where Graham’s body had been found, which they had deemed as good a starting point as any.  Once there, they left the lighted world of the street to pick their way down the increasing darkness leading to the riverbank.

On a rainy night there would have been any number of indigents sleeping beneath the bridge for shelter, but this night was clear and calm.  Therefore, the unfortunates of Paris were scattered about the bank, looking a bit like bodies on a battlefield, as if each had simply fallen wherever he was struck.  In this case, it was undoubtedly alcohol rather than bullets which had felled them, but it was still a bit startling to see so many people - men, women, and children alike - dotting the ground.  Tom had almost tripped over one black-swathed form, which had growled in protest before returning to slumber.  But their eyes eventually adjusted and, holding hands, Emma and Tom found their way to the bottom of the slope.

Since they could scarcely float along with Tom’s pocket watch in their possession, they had earlier determined that they would enter the river precisely as the church bells struck four, then leave the water when the same obliging chapel released a single peal to indicate the half hour. But the fact that they had found a cab more easily than expected now left them with more than twenty minutes to idle until the hour rang.  It was very dark on the bank, as if they had been sunk into a great teacup with the lighted rim of the street above, and, with a perfunctory look around her in all directions, Emma turned her back and resolutely began unhitching the belt which held her trousers. Tom turned in the opposite direction and did the same until, having tossed their castoff clothing one item at a time over their shoulders, each had assumed the outfit of the other.

Then there was nothing to do but sit on the ground and wait.  It was hard to see the actual river from this angle, but the bank did not look particularly steep and the gentle murmur of the water suggested that the current would not be especially strong.  Emma closed her eyes, already dreading the icy sting that would come with their first immersion.

“When you float,” she said to Tom, “keep your legs straight out in front of you and headed downstream. Then, if there are any boulders in the water, you will strike them with your feet and not your head.”

“Indeed,” Tom said.  “But there shouldn’t be many large rocks, should there?  The river is used for commerce, so they’ve doubtless cleared the worst of them out.”

“Boulders on the shore, I meant.”

“Ah, yes.  Quite right.”

A moment of silence, and then Tom added, “And keep your head up out of the water as best you can.  City rivers are fed by sewers, not springs, and the less we expose our facial apertures to contagion, the better.”

“Facial apertures?”

“Mouth, nose, eyes, ears. That sort of thing.”

“Oh.  Oh yes, I see what you mean.”

Another expanse of silence.  Each waited for the bells, but none came.

“How did you know the bit about keeping the feet out first?” Tom finally ventured.

In the darkness, Emma smiled. “I was raised in the country, remember?  This will not be the first river I’ve swum.”

Tom smiled as well.  “Lest you forget, I was raised in the country too.   When we were children at Rosemoral, Leanna and I once pirated our grandfather’s little skiff from the dock house and attempted to-“

Just then, the first bell.

4:00 AM

At the sound of the bells, Rayley stirred, causing his entire body to throb in protest.  His muscles, his skin, the joint of his left elbow.  All pulsing with pain and he could taste the salty warmth of blood in his mouth.   He probed with his tongue.  Two teeth loose, possibly three.  But all still embedded into the gum, it would appear, and this was most fortunate.

The beating had been bad… but not nearly as bad as it could have been.  This he knew even as he ventured to stretch and felt his shoulders spasming in response, even as he began to sense the contusions and cuts along his arms and hands.  This had been a surface beating, with no serious blows to the ribs or abdomen – no more than a warning, a metaphorical shot across the bow.  Gerard was certainly capable of more brutality and in fact had probably had trouble muting the force of his punches.  His restraint was undoubtedly due to very specific orders from Armand Delacroix.  The man had wanted Rayley frightened, but not immobilized.  He wanted him to sense rather than experience Gerard’s potential force, to be stunned into submission, unnerved enough to betray Isabel’s hiding place.

Rayley put a throbbing finger to the corner of his split lip.  He’d had nothing to confess to Delacroix, even if he had been willing to do so, and in terms of his own fate, he suspected it didn’t matter either way.  Delacroix could hardly kidnap a Scotland Yard detective, reveal his identity to that same detective, and then let him go free.  No matter what secrets were told or withheld, Armand’s willingness to personally appear in the cell had made one thing clear: this captivity would ultimately end in Rayley’s death.

That is, unless…

Trevor was in Paris.  While Armand Delacroix had learned nothing from Rayley Abrams in this opening skirmish, the opposite had not been true.  In fact, the conversation had been a bounty of information.  Trevor had come to Paris, evidently bringing Tom, Emma, and – for reasons Rayley could not begin to fathom – Geraldine Bainbridge along with him.  Rayley knew his only hope for survival was to either stay alive long enough to give Trevor and the others time to find him or to devise some means of escape.

But how?  He was trapped in a room with nothing but a high window, a bed, and a bucket.  And his wits, he supposed, although they had been compromised by steady doses of drugs and the almost complete disorientation that extended stretches of captivity can impose on the mind.  Still, there had to be some way.

Gerard was coming to the cell twice a day to bring food, water, and chloroform.  There was no evidence the man spoke English, and Rayley’s French was hopeless.  So it was unlikely he would be able to trick Gerard into betraying some vital piece of information, and even less likely he would find some way to bribe him or appeal to any residual sense of mercy.

Rayley pulled back his finger, stared at the slight smear of blood, barely visible in the dull reflected glow of the streetlight.  Across the room, something scuttled.  A wharf rat, no doubt. They had been coming and going through the last forty-eight hours, taking more interest in the mushy potatoes Gerard delivered than Rayley had been able to muster.  As he watched, the rat ran up the wall and out through the narrow window, his tail flicking against the rusty iron bars as it slipped out of sight.  Rayley sank back on his bed, deep in thought.

4:10 AM

Tom couldn’t decide if he had merely adjusted to the cold of the water or was in the first stages of hypothermia.  He and Emma had bobbed along for several minutes now, and it was becoming abundantly clear that their primary problem was not crashing into boulders or drowning beneath the weight of their oversized clothing, but rather moving at all.  The Seine had turned out to be a stagnant river, faintly malodorous and slow.  As they had expected, Tom’s heavier body had floated slightly faster than Emma’s, but only marginally so, and they had stayed with sight of each other for the whole of their limited journey.

“It’s certainly shallow,” she called up to him.  “My feet keep scraping the bottom.”

“Try and keep them up,” he called back.  “We need to measure how fast bodies float, not how fast we can walk.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “But the current is so weak that I keep sinking.   Are you sure we can’t lie back in the water and travel like a proper pair of corpses?”

Tom tried to weigh the risks.  She was right, their absurd efforts to remain upright in the water were forcing them to paddle and thus they were scarcely reproducing the movements nor the pace of the original two bodies. “All right then, lie back,” he finally yelled over his shoulder. “But keep your face out of the water.  And thrust your fingers in your ears.”

“With pleasure,” Emma muttered. She released herself into the water, looking up into the night sky, and almost immediately began to float faster.  The same was probably true for Tom, she thought, perhaps to the degree that their paths would diverge or that his increased weight would stretch the distance between them in the river.  As annoying as it was to have Tom give advice about her own experiment, she didn’t really want to lose him in this darkness or in this cold river.  Didn’t really want to lose him at all.

She drifted on, straining to arch her neck and keep her mouth and nose free from any splashing.  The cold was gripping into her.  The fingers she had thrust into her ears had gone completely numb, as had her feet.  Her scalp was pricking with icy needles and Emma felt as if she were caught between two worlds of darkness. The moving one beneath her, which gently lifted and then lowered her body, as if the Seine was somehow keeping time with the pattern of her own breathing.  And then the other great darkness above, the night sky stretched like a blue-black cloth punctured with stars.

There are times, she thought, when we are lifted quite out of ourselves, when we could be any person, in any place and time in history.  The last six months had changed her beyond comprehension. In fact you might say that Jack the Ripper had turned Emma Kelly from one person into another, snatching away any hope of reconciliation with her sister but also giving her this unlikely new job and a life that was suddenly full of passion and purpose.  Fate drives cruel bargains.  We must always release one thing before we can grasp something else, Emma reflected, and with a strange internal jolt she wondered if Isabel Blout had ever felt this way.  If so, she had come to the right city.  Paris, so bright and full of hope.  That wildly manic painter she had met at the party tonight, the one who had told her that he wanted to go to Tahiti.  Gauguin had been his name and he had looked at Emma with such emotion that she had turned away, almost embarrassed, as if the man were exposing his very soul to her in the middle of the crowded party.

“This urge to reinvent yourself is very strong,” Gauguin had said.  “I believe you may feel it as well, do you not?”  He had leaned towards her to whisper, bringing his lips very close to her ear.  Impossible rudeness, unthinkable presumption, an act of such raw intimacy that she had flushed with the feel of his breath on her cheek.  And he had murmured, “Yes, Miss Kelly, I somehow sense that you do.”

A shudder gripped Emma.  Her legs were cramping with the cold, and her breathing was becoming shallow and ragged.  How much longer could this river go on?  And in the very moment that she thought this, she drifted into something.  Not a boulder, but Tom’s arms.  He righted her in the water, but her legs were weak and they stumbled together toward the shore.

“Didn’t you hear it?” he said. “The bell for the half hour?”

She shook her head, teeth chattering. With their limbs gone numb, it took some effort for them to climb up the bank, short as it was, and then they each sprawled for a moment on the muddy shore to catch their breath.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Emma finally said.  “Fingers too far in my ears, I suppose.”

“We’ve got to keep moving,” Tom said. “Otherwise we’ll take a chill.  If you had heard the church bell and stopped, you would have come to shore just there, at that point in the river where the woman in white is sleeping.  Close enough to where I pulled up, so I don’t think there’s any need to make separate counts.”

Emma nodded and struggled to her feet. They began walking back up the riverbank, trying to keep a steady trod and each silently counting every step.  After a few minutes, Tom stopped at a section of the bank that had a greater congregation of people, some of them awake and moving in the darkness.

“Where are you?”

“1,138.”

“I’m at 1,123.  Not too much of a discrepancy.  Let’s split the difference at 1,130.  Wait here a minute, I have an idea.  Hold the count.”

Emma nodded and he climbed up the bank and out of sight.  She repeated 1,130 over and over in her head and struggled to fight the impulse to lie down and rest.  For Tom was right.  The simple act of walking, even slowly, was returning life to her body.  She could move her fingers and toes now and her lungs were expanding into deeper and more productive breaths.

Tom was shortly back, wearing dry clothes and carrying a shapeless armful of cloth.

“Here,” he said. “I’m sure Cousin Claude would be gratified to learn that his fine woolen boating jacket was worth a pile of rags in an honest trade.  Get out of those wet things at once.”  He went on to explain that he had managed to barter his clothes, which were soaking wet but clearly expensive, to a man at the top of the bank in exchange for his own.  And for good measure the man had thrown in his blanket, which Tom now thrust toward Emma.  She recoiled at the smell.

“I can’t walk through the heart of Paris like some sort of naked savage, with a blanket wrapped about me,” she protested, even though it was tempting to shed her own clammy and inconvenient outfit, with its long pants legs tripping her up at every step.

“Agreed, but you can certainly walk the bank wrapped in one, and your clothes will be partially dry by the time the sun is up.  Come on, Emma, buck up.  This is no time to start thinking like a girl.”

She turned to him with a snap, her expression freezing him more thoroughly than the water of the Seine.

“Very well,” she said. “At least turn away.”

He faced up the bank toward the street while she wiggled out of her wet clothes, draped the blanket around her with as much dignity as she could muster, and gathered the sodden shirt and pants from the bank.

“All right, let us continue,” she said when she had finished.  “We were at 1,130 were we not?”

4:48 AM

Approximately 15,000 human steps from where Emma and Tom were methodically pacing the river bank, Rayley Abrams was pulling the mattress off his cot and considering the dried puddles of vomit below.

The rat on the wall had given him an idea.  Perhaps it was not true that he was entirely weaponless, for he had become quite adept at expunging chloroform from his body in the last two days and the evidence of this newly-acquired skill was now crusted to the underside of this mattress.  With a heave of his aching shoulders, Rayley dragged the thin pad to the most well-lit part of the badly-lit room and considered his options.  If there had been enough chloroform lingering in Graham’s blood to kill a cage full of mice, would there be enough in his vomit to momentarily disorient a man?

Granted, it didn’t seem likely.  Perhaps the drug lost its properties over time, perhaps especially rapidly when exposed to air.  And Gerard was certainly far larger and stronger than a cage full of white mice.  If Rayley could find a way to make himself bleed…He could chew his own wrists, he supposed, or entice one the damned rats into doing the task.  Bleed onto a piece of cloth – he still had most of his clothing, after all – and hope that it held enough chloroform to subdue Gerard.

The darkness of the room also worked to his advantage.  Rayley’s eyes had long since adjusted to the gloom – in fact he suspected he would be struck blind with the brightness if he were ever to return to the sunlit world.  But he had noted that both Gerard and Armand had paused upon entering the cell and stood for several seconds, clearly disoriented, waiting for their own eyes to adapt.

It was an opportunity, was it not?  A brief moment in which Rayley would be able to see far better than Gerard.  Perhaps he could crouch by door with the chloroform-soaked cloth in his hands and when the man entered he could spring -

No, no.  That was no good.  After all, by his own efforts, Rayley had managed reduce the amount of chloroform in his system so, even if he did find some way to bleed onto his knickerbockers, any effect the drug still held would be diffuse.  Not enough to kill a cage full of lab mice and certainly not enough to make a twenty-stone man weak at the knees.  If Rayley were to spring on Gerald in the darkness and throw a pair of bloodied knickerbockers over his head in all likelihood such an act would merely piss the man off.

There had to be another way.  For the first time since being taken into captivity, Rayley felt strong enough to explore the cell.  He tried to walk but within seconds of his hand leaving the security of the wall, his legs buckled.  Very well then, he would explore on his hands and knees.  Gerard had most considerately left a tin cup of water near the cot.  Rayley fingers almost immediately came upon it and he gulped half of it down, saving the rest for troubles to come.

He began to crawl about the floor.  It was a comfortless concrete affair, and the first corner he came to was slimy with seepage from the river.  Rayley lowered his head and sniffed.  Yes, most definitely sewage and stagnant water.  Would Trevor and the others ever find this godforsaken place on their own?  Just the thought that there was someone out there looking for him had given him a flicker hope…but this cell was so obscure, so dank and hidden. Rayley crawled on, using one hand to trace the edge of the wall.  In the second corner, nothing but more river muck.  In the third…

Damn.  A dead rat.  Despite their days of forced cohabitation, Rayley still recoiled from the vermin.  No, upon consideration, perhaps not a rat.  The size and shape was right, and, from the best he could gather, even the color.  But the fur had been too soft.  Cautiously, he brought his hand back to the item on the floor and lifted it.

It was a woman’s glove.

Rayley scuttled, rat-like himself, back to the mattress, which still lay on the floor, in the room’s only puddle of diffused light.  He rolled back upon it, exhausted from the effort of his journey around the cell, and squinted at the glove.  He was still wearing his glasses, he realized with some surprise.  They had not come off in the beating, further evidence that Gerard’s restraint had been noteworthy.  And the glove - it appeared grey in the shadowy room, or perhaps plum colored, a thought that made Rayley go cold with fear.  He could visualize Isabel’s hands clutching the brass rail of the Eiffel Tower elevator, her face splitting into an expression of pure joy as they had climbed higher and higher above the city.  Was this her glove?  Had Armand at some point brought her to this wretched room?

But no.  That made no sense.  As Armand himself had so clearly pointed out, if he had Isobel in his possession, there would be no need to keep Rayley alive.  Rayley had always known somehow, that his fate was blended with that of Isobel, from the first moment he had spied her in that café.  Rayley shut his eyes, indulging in the memories of Isabel as if each one was a gulp of cold water from a tin cup.  At the time he had concocted the fantasy that their fates were woven in the manner of lovers.  Now he knew that they shared a different, darker sort of destiny, for the moment that Isabel Blout was captured would be the exact moment that Rayley Abrams would be condemned to die.

But they didn’t have her yet.  He had to believe that, and besides, upon more careful examination, this was likely not even her glove.  It had probably been on the hand of the boy-girl and pulled off in some sort of struggle.

Rayley looked up at the faint light above him and searched for inspiration.  He did not have much.  A cot.  A bucket.  A tin cup.  His glasses.  A woman’s glove.  A high barred window. The remnants of chloroform and the predictable visits from Gerard.  Could it all add up to an escape plan or – same thing – some means of signaling his location to Trevor?

He could almost hear Tom Bainbridge’s cultured voice drawling “You have nothing to lose, after all.”  It was one of Tom’s favorite phrases and, now that Rayley stopped to consider it, Davy and Emma had been known to utter it too.  It must be the motto of youth, Rayley supposed, a motto born from the innocent belief that one’s life was continually on the upswing, that circumstances have no choice but to get better and then yet better again.   But he and Trevor knew what it meant to have something to lose – in fact, they had both lost things they’d loved, had watched their cherished dreams fall to dust in their hands.

And Rayley supposed that even in his present desolate situation he still had something to lose. The three loose teeth clinging to his gums, for example, and the relative hospitality of his captors.  He remembered how Armand had reacted earlier, when Rayley had momentarily choked.  A look of sheer panic had flitted across the man’s face and Rayley had known, in that instant, that Armand Delacroix did not want a dead Scotland Yard detective on his hands.

“You have nothing to lose,” Tom would say, but as Rayley looked around the cell, he amended the sentiment to “You have little to lose.”  A botched escape attempt would likely earn him another beating, but they didn’t intend to kill him.  Not quite yet.  This knowledge was his trump card - indeed the only card he held.

5:10 AM

“7250 paces,” Tom said, as he and Emma at last reached the bridge where their journey had begun. “That’s how far we’ve come in a half hour so if we walk 7250 paces farther upstream we should be at the approximate place where the bodies were released.”  He looked at Emma, who was clutching the blanket around her and weaving slightly on her feet. “But the key word in that sentence is ‘approximate.’ Don’t get your hopes up too high with this little experiment, Emma. There are a thousand variables which were beyond our control.”

“I suppose we’ll know in 7250 more steps.”

“Wait,” Tom said.  “Let’s rest here a minute under the bridge.  It’s still too dark to see much and you’re so – well, we’re both so very tired.  Aunt Gerry was right.  If we don’t sleep just a little, we’ll be in too much of a stupor to think.”

Emma looked around her. “Sleep? Here?”

“Just a few minutes. The church bells will wake us.”

Emma hesitated.  She knew the truth of what he was saying, for in that parenthetical part of her mind that watched from a distance, she could tell that not only were her feet slow and clumsy but that her thoughts were likewise becoming less under her control.

“Not even an hour,” Tom said, kneeling to the ground and gesturing that she should sit beside him. “The six o’clock bells will rouse us and the sky will be lighter then.  We can better see our way.”

Emma looked down at him, suddenly remembering things she didn’t want to remember and feeling the urge to weep.  Perhaps it was just exhaustion, or finding herself in this strange and unreal place.  On a riverbank in Paris, naked beneath a tattered blanket.  Standing before a man she might love but one that she would never truly have.

“For a minute,” she whispered.

“Put your head on my shoulder,” Tom said. “We can keep each other warm.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Paris

4:15 AM

What he had told Rayley Abrams had been absolutely true.  All of his clients were asking for Isabel.

This was something Armand Delacroix had not foreseen, that so many people would have been so dismayed at her abrupt disappearance. In a business that valued youth above all else, Isabel was aging.  In a city that demanded novelty, she was a known quantity.  Any mystery she might have brought to the proverbial party had long since faded.

And yet they asked for her.  At the parties and in the streets and cafes.  But where is Isabel, they would inquire.  They would hope that she was well.  Would he tell her that they had sent their regards?

It was a surprising complication, Armand thought as he wandered through the dark and silent house.  The servants were still an hour or more from waking, and Marianne would likely doze until noon.  He called her by her new name exclusively now, for this was an essential part of the game.  When a person assumed a fresh identity, they must dive in wholeheartedly, like a sinner seeking rebirth beneath baptismal waters.  None of this business of calling them one name in private and another in public.  That made it too easy to make a mistake.

In fact, learning to automatically respond to a new name was an adjustment of the mind not unlike learning to speak a foreign language.  Each time Armand went back and forth between England and France there was a point – invisible to the naked eye perhaps, but as real as this brandy glass in front of him now – when he would cease being English and become French.  One person would recede and the other would step forward.  Marianne had cried the first time he told her this, and he knew that for one so young, the adjustment must feel like a death.  She would understand it in time.  For the parts of our identity that we leave behind are never gone, but merely sleeping. They can rouse and reassert themselves whenever needed.  What was it that the philosopher said?  “We cannot change, but we can expand.”  Anyone with an interesting life knows the truth of this.

Yes, he liked this deepest time of night, when Marianne was tucked into her bed, the servants had all retreated behind their closed doors, and the house was still.  He did not light a lamp to guide his steps, for he had been blessed since boyhood with a gift for seeing in the dark.  Besides, he did not wish to wake anyone who would feel compelled to assist him in such minor tasks as refilling his glass or clipping his cigar.  Armand appreciated solitude and, to his mind, did not get enough of it.  He pushed open the glass doors and stepped out onto the small balcony located just off his bedroom, then looked up with approval at the wispy moon.  He liked Paris as well, especially this time of year.  It would never completely be his home, but when a man is more than one person, then he must have, by definition, more than one home.

Armand settled into a woven chair and put his feet on the unsteady ottoman before him.  He had much on his mind tonight and may well push through to the first light of dawn.

Isabel had disappeared the same night that she’d also, under protest, provided him with an alibi.  The night they took the detective. So that had been….Armand paused, blew out an explosion of smoke with a gentle cough.  They were coming into the third day that she’d been missing.  An unexplained absence of this length was noteworthy, even for a woman as mercurial as Isabel.  They did not share living quarters, for she had made it plain that her willingness to accompany him to Paris was contingent upon her having a home of her own.  In a way, she had always been as private as he.  But he still had means of monitoring her.  Earlier today he had slipped her maid a handful of coins and told the old crow to alert him at once should her mistress return.  Yes, she was to send a messenger even if it was the middle of the night.

For he simply must find a way to get Isabel back.  At least for a few months, through the busy summer of the Exposition, when she would be expected to play hostess at his salons.  Her role in his success, he was now prepared to admit, was larger than he would have guessed.  It was Isabel who lent beauty and grandeur to this business and he supposed, as he paused to consider the situation from a different angle, that her age could be as much an advantage as not.  The men seemed reassured by the continuity of her presence. That was why they all asked about her, even when they were standing on the sidewalks in front of their places of business, churches, opera houses, the homes they shared with their wives.  She was the one who stood proof that it was possible to sustain the game for years. Proof that it could be sustained at even the highest levels of society.  A woman come from Mayfair, the sort who had been painted by Whistler.

Ah, Whistler.  Armand tilted back his head, stared again at the moon.  His nice, tidy little world had begun to unravel on the very day that James Whistler had first been commissioned to paint a portrait of Isabel Blout.

And the bitch of it all was that it had been his idea.

The Whistler portrait had been intended as the apex of their triumph.  The chance to see Isabel standing there in clothing worth as much as the house she’d grown up in, the most beautiful and desired woman in London, the paragon of society wives. She had understood the joke at once.  Her lips had twisted in that ironic smile he knew so well.   Even George Blout had favored the notion.  So nervous and skittish in the beginning, so afraid someone would guess the unlikely truth about him and his remarkable young wife. But having gone years without detection had given him confidence and brought an old man’s deeply buried resentments to the surface, until even George had been willing to enter into their sport. What a chance to thumb their noses to the society which had so long rejected them, or, much worse, the hypocrites who came calling at some times and snubbed them at others.

Isabel in a Whistler.  The perfect jest indeed.

What Armand Delacroix and George Blout had both failed to anticipate was that Isabel would befriend the painter.  It had occurred to Armand, and most likely to George as well, that she might seduce him, for Isabel seduced instinctively, with no more effort than it took her to breathe.   A liaison between Isabel and James Whistler might even have proven useful at some point in the future, for the painter’s social connections were impeccable, far surpassing those of Armand.  But a friendship between the two – who could have foreseen that, and the consequences it would wreck upon them all?

She had evidently shown Whistler some sketches, rough drawings she had stubbornly dragged with her from the early days of her youth. Those smudged pictures were the only thing that could still connect her to Manchester and she held them as a lawyer holds evidence, for some ongoing trial that she was conducting exclusively in her mind.

But when Isabel had shown them to Whistler, he had proclaimed her to be talented. Even the revelation of her great secret had not dissuaded him from wanting to help her. Who knows, it may have even charmed him more, artists being a uniquely tolerant lot.  Whistler had accepted Isabel, in all her forms, as an acolyte, and he had stood beside her at the easel, guiding her hand through the motions, teaching her the differences between light and shadow.  Shadow was the hard part, he told her. Once you mastered that, everything else in the picture became clear. They worked together two mornings a week, at a set time of ten in the morning.  He took the appointment seriously.  He was never late.

In short, James Whistler had given Isabel Blout the one thing no other man had ever attempted to give her: respect.

And it turned out, unlikely of unlikelies, that this is what she had truly wanted all her life.

For after only a few weeks under the artist’s tutelage she had announced to both her husband and Armand that, in her words, “This charade is over.  I am simply no longer prepared to sustain it.”

Blout had panicked.  There was no telling how far she would push this, how many subsequent revelations would come from the first.  For Isabel was no longer herself.  She had taken to roaming the parks of London dressed as a man.  Drawing people, sometimes with Whistler at her side and sometimes alone.  Her fingertips were perpetually stained, colors driven beneath the nails and crusted around her cuticles.  She envisioned herself to be a budding artist, whose talent would dazzle the masses and allow her entrance into the sort of bohemian circle that would accept and celebrate her unorthodox past.

All she wanted, as she repeatedly said to any man who asked her and to quite a few who did not, was to be herself.

But that, of course, was the one thing she could not be.

Whistler panicked too.  It was a fine thing to play at being professor and pupil two mornings a week, and he had come to care for the girl.  But his livelihood came not from a bohemian circle of artists but rather from the British upper class.  He did not wish to abdicate his profitable role as a society portraitist for the dubious distinction of being the man who had discovered the hidden talents of Isabel Blout.

It fell to Armand to reason with her, as indeed it always had.  She would not always have to play the game, he told her, but she simply must play it a bit longer. The official story would be that Isabel ran off to Paris with Armand, a tale most people would readily believe.  He was, after all, a handsome man close to her own age and London had been expecting Isabel to abandon George Blout for years.  Wifely desertion may be scandalous, but it is scandal of a tolerable sort.  George’s social circle would tsk about it over the soup course at their next dinner party, and then, with the arrival of the fish, they would move on to tsk about something else.

Granted, the portrait itself was a bit of a hot potato. The truth was built right into it, visible to anyone who had the eyes to look.  The artist did not wish to see it destroyed – and nor would any sensitive person who had ever gazed upon its rather remarkable brand of beauty.  But Whistler understood, as did George Blout, that a portrait like this was best shepherded into a private collection where it would never be widely viewed.  It was not to be a pearl before swine but rather a pearl displayed in a very precise sort of setting.

And so it was mutually decided that Isabel would go to Paris with Armand.  She would pose as his lover and use her beauty and charm to help him establish a Parisian branch of his business.  Even before the disaster at Cleveland Street, the opportunities in London had been paling, and Armand had vowed not to make the same mistakes in Paris.  He would not throw the net so wide.  Not a brothel this time with dozens of men coming and going, but rather just a few very specialized procurements for the wealthy.  All Isabel would have to do is help him through the Exposition, when there was so much money to be made and then, then…

Then she could go where she pleased and do whatever she wished. Vienna. San Francisco. Calcutta. Pretoria. Milan.  It was all the same to Armand.  He would give her money and he would give her freedom. She could take Henry with her if she wished.

Armand had most sincerely meant this promise.  He and Isabel had been together in this quest from the beginning and he could have done none of it without her.  It was not his intent to keep her in eternal thralldom and he would release her from any obligation once the Exhibition had passed.  From there she could call herself whatever name she chose, paint whatever she wished, speak whatever truth moved her, travel to any city that beckoned.

As long as it wasn’t London or Paris.

Armand sipped his brandy.  It had been a good plan, but now it had all somehow fallen apart. The table had been tipped and any bets which had been placed on it had slid to the floor, cancelled forever.

For Paris was a changed place from just a year ago.  Too many reporters and far too many lawmen.  He could not fault himself for failing to predict Isabel’s transformation at the hands of Whistler, for that had been a true stroke of fate, but Armand knew he should have seen this part coming.  He should have anticipated that as the Exposition neared it would bring not only money, but scrutiny.  Newspapers from all over the world had sent writers hungry for stories, determined to find some angle on the fair that had not yet been explored.  Nations sent not only their jewels, their art, their scientific advancements, but also men to guard these assets – defenders of every sort, from police captains in uniform to Mafia thugs.  No movement in Paris went unmonitored, no aberration escaped analysis.

All the fuss made it rather difficult for a man to conduct his business.

Armand Delacroix had spies of his own, so he had known of Rayley’s arrival within days of the man setting foot in France.  On a rational basis, he knew it was unlikely that Scotland Yard had sent a detective to net a small fish such as himself, a man whose only crime was transporting young whores across the channel to meet the burgeoning needs of Paris.  Isabel had told him he was being foolish. There was no reason to believe that Scotland Yard either knew or cared that Armand Delacroix and Charles Hammond were the same person or that the pretty boy from Manchester had grown into a man of international business.

Which was all most likely true, at least last autumn, when Rayley Abrams had blown into Paris on a cool wind.  Armand’s informants had reported that Rayley was merely working in the forenics lab, studying methodology with the French police.  Autumn had turned to winter, and winter to spring, with the tower ever rising and Armand’s coffers growing fatter.  For if procuring sexual entertainment for gentlemen was a profitable business, it could not compare to the profit potential of blackmail.

No one knew of this. No one. There was a time when he would have told Isabel, for there was a time in which they had shared everything.  But that had changed.  She saw him more as a jailer than a friend now, as evidenced by the fact she refused to live under the same roof.  As evidenced by the fact that they frequently argued, the one thing that in their long and storied history together, they had never done.

So all Isabel really knew were the things that everyone knew:  The Exhibition was running low on funds.  Private investors were being sought and Armand, a man with moneyed friends on both sides of the channel, was in a uniquely favorable position to forge the right sort of deals.  Had she not been so distracted with what she described as her “slavery,” Isabel was certainly clever enough to have determined the rest.  That the patrons Armand had assembled did not expect to profit from their investments, nor to be paid back for their loans.  All they expected was that their activities at the white brick house tucked away in a small side street off the Boulevard Saint-Michel would never be discovered. They wanted their secrets to remain secret.

They paid significant sums for this assurance, half of which Armand obligingly turned over to the Exhibition committee and half of which he pocketed.  There was talk of a small plaque somewhere at the base of the tower, in tribute to these selfless and visionary men who, be they of French or British birth, were willing to put aside nationalist squabbles and pledge their personal monies to assure that the Exposition Universelle would be a rousing success.  It amused Armand no end to consider this, that the world’s largest phallus should be embellished with a list of the wealthiest pedophiles in Europe.

So it had all worked well for a while.  Funding for the Exhibition, steady employment for the poor, sexual novelty for the rich, and unlimited profit for Armand Delacroix.  He had recovered from his first blow and despite the troubles with Isabel, despite the damned reporters and the damned coppers everywhere babbling each in their own foreign tongues, it might have continued to work.

But April had brought both the crisis in London and the subsequent arrival of Henry Newlove.  And for the second time in a year, Armand’s whole world had fallen straight to hell.

He had been in London when the word came that the bobbies had raided Cleveland Street.  He had not bothered going by the premises – there was certainly nothing there to salvage – and fortunately Tommy had been with him when he heard the news.  The two of them had instead walked straight to the docks, strolling their way up the gangplank into steerage on the next transit boat scheduled to leave. The paperwork was not a problem.  Even if the channel officers had been looking for a man named Charles Hammond – and they probably weren’t, at least not yet - he had his French passport in the name of Armand Delacroix, bestowed upon him by a grateful civil servant, a man who also happened to be a member of the Exposition committee.  A minor in his company, a child declared to be his niece, would need no papers at all.

Armand could only assume that the other boys had scattered after the raid.  Gone back to wherever they’d come from, which would have meant Henry had returned home to Manchester. The boy had no papers, after all, so his chances of following Armand to Paris seemed remote – so remote that Armand had ceased to worry about it by the time the boat struck the dock in Calais.  It was a pang to lose his London brothel, but Paris was proving far more profitable and Armand was already considering making it his primary home.

So it had been a shock indeed to see Henry standing in the street outside his home a few days later, a shock to see him stepping from the shadow of an obliging tree to confront Armand with a single word: “Why?”

“Why?” was the question Henry Newlove had been asking all his life.  He was a sullen lad, prone to fits of self-pity and rage.  It was as much his temper that had driven him from the ranks of the boy-girls as the faint velvety fuzz of hair on his chin.  There were ways around the physical changes.  Certainly ways around the facial hair and deepening voices, even methods to conceal the protrusion at the base of a boy’s throat, the width of his wrists and the gracelessness of his hands.  Physical femininity was far easier to feign than psychological, and Henry had never developed the sweet pliability of the other boy-girls.  He had been constitutionally incapable of flirtation or charm.

In fact, save for the fact he was Isabel’s younger brother, Armand would have sent Henry Newlove packing years ago.  He was certainly handsome enough to draw a steady stream of business, blessed by the same genetic gods which had smiled so radiantly down on Isabel.  He had wide blue-grey eyes and full lips, the kind favored by many clients.  But none of this would have been enough to counteract his outrageous demands had Isabel not been there to constantly intervene on his behalf.  Armand had let him remain in the ranks of the boy-girls longer than any prudent man should and, when the velvet fuzz on Henry’s face finally turned to wool, even had created a position for the boy as the procurer and trainer of new talent.

Isabel had been the one to suggest they put him at the postal and telegraph office. The delivery of messages around the city required the services of innumerable adolescent boys, so the pickings were lush, and Henry, who had a good mind when it wasn’t mired in petulance, had proven a reasonably effective tutor.  He should have been gratified, but it had never been enough.  Henry was always asking Armand why he couldn’t have this room or that new suit of clothes.  Why he couldn’t go to a certain dance or operetta, why he shouldn’t come to Paris to live with Isabel.

Armand had pretended to mull this last idea, as much to content Isabel as Henry, but he had never seriously considered inviting Henry to Paris.  The boy’s frequent explosions of anger were problematic enough in the controlled atmosphere of Cleveland Street and would be the undoing of them all in the more politically precarious world of the Exposition Universelle.  So it had been with the most abject horror that Armand Delacroix had perceived Henry Newlove stepping out from under a tree on a lovely April morning and saying “Why?”

Armand’s only salvation, ironically, was the fact Isabel had refused to live with him.  Henry had managed to find his way to Armand’s house easily enough; in light of the soirees which were regularly held there, the place was well known among men of a certain persuasion.  Isabel’s home was smaller and more discreetly located. The longer Henry went without being able to find his sister, the more likely he was to give up and return to London.

Armand had taken him to luncheon.  It seemed safer than allowing him inside the house, where Marianne would shortly be awakening and coming down to breakfast. Henry’s resentment of her, and the place she clearly held in Armand’s future plans, was so intense that Armand feared he might actually attack the child.  If Isabel had been mercurial, Henry was plutonian.  Just as impulsive and unpredictable, but darker, wilder, meaner. Heaven help them all if he found his sister, and thus the means to stay in Paris.

But over luncheon Armand was to get his second nasty shock of the morning.  For Henry had come to Paris not in hopes of securing employment, but set on blackmail.  Not just the blackmail of clients.  Oh no, not at all.  Henry had sat behind the crisp white tablecloth, swirling his wine with great affectation and little skill, sloshing a bit over the rim.  And he had cheerfully announced to Armand that if the two of them couldn’t come to some sort of agreement, he was prepared to tell the authorities that the civic-minded Armand Delacroix and the whore-mongering Charles Hammond were one and the same.

“Turnabout’s fair play, yes?” he had said, while Armand had sat frozen in horror, a bite of trout almandine growing enormous in his mouth.

So there it was. The wily Henry had managed to ascertain what the distracted Isabel had not:  that Armand’s true money was coming not from prostitution, but from blackmail.  And he had traveled to Paris with one intent, to blackmail the blackmailer.  A thousand pounds, he said.  A thousand pounds or Scotland Yard shall know it bloody all.

“Scotland Yard?” Armand had repeated stupidly.  The figure of a thousand pounds had been too ludicrous for comment, but he was surprised the boy would attempt to threaten him with a weapon so far from hand.

“There’s a Yard detective right here in France,” Henry had said with a smug little smile. “Name of Rayley Abrams.  Maybe he’d like to know where the master of Cleveland Street has flown.”

Rayley Abrams. That name again.  For someone whom Armand had never met, the man was turning out to be the most enormous pain in the ass.

“How do you know of Rayley Abrams?” he asked, dreading the answer even as he posed the question.

“I work at the telegraph office, don’t I?  At your insistence, don’t I, Sir?”

It was in that final syllable that Armand knew he was caught.  That final sarcastic “Sir,” the word twisting in the boy’s mouth like a rag.  A lad with the morals of Henry Newgate wouldn’t hesitate to read a telegram before he delivered it, especially a telegram that was sent to or from Scotland Yard.  In fact, now that one paused to consider it, running telegrams was the perfect side-job for a fledgling blackmailer.  Henry undoubtedly knew as much about where the Cleveland Street case stood as any man on either side of the channel.  And, just as he said, it was Armand himself who had gotten him the job, the one who had placed the very weapon in his hand.

Armand sipped his brandy, looked up at the transient moon.  Even now, the memory of that luncheon made his stomach churn.  He was an ethical man, was he not?  He had tried for years to keep matters well in check, to ensure that no one was seriously hurt, that no one lost anything he could not afford to lose. But that day at luncheon with Henry had been the point of no return. For once the threat of blackmail has been loosened, it spills over everything.  It is a splash of Bordeaux on a white table cloth – irretractable, the stain everlasting. The boy had sat before him, his fingertips pressing together in the church steeple of children’s rhymes, smiling, quite proud of himself.

But still, even then, Armand had not intended to kill him.

Henry had to be gotten rid of, but he was Isabel’s brother and Armand had known the boy almost since birth.  He felt responsible for him too.  Henry had to be gotten rid of only in the sense that he needed to be taught a lesson, spanked like the child he still was, and transported back to England. Within an hour of leaving their luncheon Armand had devised a plan of his own.  He had several muscular and persuasive men already in his circle of contacts - such was the nature of the industry in which he toiled.  It would be a simple matter to send instructions to one of them while Henry bathed upstairs.

For Armand had pretended to capitulate.  He invited Henry to stay with him and apologized for not sending for him earlier. He persuaded the boy that to blackmail Armand was to fish in a very small pond when there was an ocean of possibility all around them.  He said he knew the perfect client – old, and that’s always best, is it not? They demand so little and pay so handsomely in return. Had he brought his uniform with him?  Henry had nodded eagerly.  His first Parisian conquest would be a simple one.

When Henry had descended down the stairway in his boy-girl garb Armand had felt something he rarely experienced, a rush of conscience.   For the boy had taken pains with the painting of his face, covering all evidence of stubble, and he wore his ill-fitting outfit with pride.  It was a sad jumble of red satin, garish and ugly to Armand’s increasingly-demanding sartorial eye, but Henry had been in Paris fewer than twelve hours and had no basis for comparison.  He expected some sort of reaction, so Armand had smiled broadly and given an appreciative nod.

“Your hands,” he said, and Henry had glanced guiltily down. They were always a problem, even with the most feminine of boys, and Armand impulsively grabbed a pair of gray kid gloves from a table in the foyer, gloves he’d purchased for Marianne, or perhaps even Isabel.  Henry pulled them on and, with no further comment, the two of them departed from the house.

Gerard was waiting for them down near the Seine, in a musty little room Armand rented for just this sort of unfortunate occasion.  It was a simple matter to lure Henry there – he had been humming as they walked, the silly little bird – and to usher him inside where, in the darkness of the room, Armand doubted the boy had even registered the presence of danger.  A hand with a white handkerchief came over his face and the boy slumped forward. They bound his wrists, Armand taking care to remove the expensive gloves before doing so, and tied the handkerchief across his mouth.  His mouth.  Henry’s beautiful and problematic mouth.  When he awakened he would undoubtedly be displeased by this turn of events and would mount some sort of protest, put up some sort of struggle.  Armand pulled off his own cravat and stuffed it beneath the handkerchief. Then he and Gerard had tumbled the boy’s yielding form into a corner and stepped out of the room to conclude their business in the daylight.

Armand had paid the man, both for his services and enough to secure two passages across the channel.  For when Henry awakened, which wouldn’t take long since the amount of chloroform on the handkerchief was very slight, Gerard would toss him about a bit, at least enough to knock out of the boy any more half-baked notions about blackmailing Armand Delacroix.  Whenever Gerard was satisfied that a sufficient degree of reason was dawning in Henry’s bloodied head, he would then clean him up and escort him back to London himself.

And then Armand had remembered the gloves.

He went back for them, only to find Henry convulsing in his dark corner, his shoulders heaving and shuddering beneath the red satin jacket.  It took Armand a minute to realize what was happening.  That Henry, without ever regaining consciousness, had become nauseated from the chloroform.  That he was now, thanks to the stuffing of Armand’s own scarf into his mouth, choking on it.  Armand cried out for Gerard’s help and fumbled to loosen the gag.  But he had done entirely too fine a job of knotting it and besides, the boy was thrashing, further sealing his doom with each spasm that gripped his body.

By the time they freed him, it was too late.  Gerard’s thick fingers against the boy’s neck only confirmed what Armand already knew.

They could scarcely abandon the body in a room rented under his own name.  Nor could they transport it through the city.  The Seine, conveniently close with a sewer opening just at hand, was the only solution.  With Armand standing guard at the mouth of the alley, Gerard carried Henry down the short slope to the water.  As Gerard stooped to release the body, Armand’s chest had grown tight with emotion.  The scene was too familiar and it awakened a past he was loathe to contemplate.  For the envelope of memory is tightly sealed for a reason, is it not?  When we rip it open, we do not always know what we will find.

Armand had leaned against the wall of the alley, gagging himself, overcome with the stench of the sewer and his own nerves. This is not what he had wished, not at all what he had planned.  He had awakened that morning a simple businessman and would return to his pillow a murderer.  And his victim was Isabel’s only brother.

Isabel.  That was another thing.  She must never know.  Her faith in him was already fading and if she knew he had sent her precious Henry floating down the Seine, there was no way of predicting what form her rage would take.  She needed a diversion, something to sufficiently occupy her mind so that she wouldn’t wonder why Henry’s whining letters from London had abruptly stopped.

Armand had peeked around the corner of the alley and watched the current slowly claim the form of Henry Newlove.  Watched it carry him toward the center of the river and finally, mercifully, from his view.  “We should have weighed him,” Gerard had said.   “We should have found a rock.”

The next Sunday Armand took Isabel to a café.  His selection of a place to dine was not by chance.  Even before Henry’s lips had spewed the name, Armand had never entirely lost his fear of Rayley Abrams.  He had the man followed as a matter of course, just as he made it his business to know the habitats and habits of all the men he was blackmailing.  Rayley’s almost ridiculously ritualized life had made him the easiest of the lot to monitor, and now all Armand had to do was put Isabel in his sight lines and hope that he would notice her. This part should be easy.  The man was ugly, lonely, a foreigner. A single smile from a woman like Isabel would be enough.

She protested, of course.  She had heard rumors among the housemaids of a mysterious figure who had entered Armand’s bathroom as a boy and departed as a girl, and she asked him many questions.  She did not mention Henry by name, but it was clear enough where her suspicions lay.  She looked at him differently – he could not have just imagined this.  She looked at him now not merely with resentment, but with a little fear.

Their argument had been brief.  But we’ve been through all this, she said.  We know this one and what he’s about.  Armand had persisted.  He asked so little of her now, he said, and they were so very near the end.  Soon she would be a free woman, coins in her purse.  She had sighed, nodded, then turned her chair and her attention toward Rayley in her careful, practiced way.  A tilt of the chin.  It could have been an invitation or merely the gaze of a woman looking into the street. Abrams had fallen to it like a starving dog to a bone and Armand, pretending to be absorbed in his paper, had almost smiled.  The bit about sketching him had been Isabel’s idea.  A nice touch, he must admit.

Life is a strange labyrinth.  At some point we move from child to man, from the acted upon to the actor.  We are no longer bent to the will of others but begin to bend others to our will.  The fears of youth subside, and with them, a bit of our soul.  But sometimes we realize that those we are chasing may also be chasing us, that we are the observed as well as the observing.  For in that very moment, with Rayley eating his tart and Isabel sketching him, Armand’s eyes had fallen on a certain article in the London Times.  He read it every day, even though only one newsstand in Paris carried the morning edition, and now here, just below the fold on last page was a headline whose enlarged print all but shouted the words BRITISH STERLING, FRENCH GLORY?  It hinted of money changing hands, prominent British men underwriting the mounting costs of the French Exposition, and while it stopped short of naming the men, or even speculating why they might be inspired to invest these monies, the writer had gotten enough of the particulars correct that a thin film of sweat began to emerge on Armand’s skin as he read.  His own name was mentioned, describing him as a liaison between the French and British.  Liaison.  The word implied too much.

The byline on the article had read “Patrick Graham.”

And so he had made sure that both Abrams and Graham were invited to the party at the Hotel Normandy and he had not been surprised that they had found each other in that sea of people.  He had sent Isabel to chat them up. Through his investors he knew that the press would be invited to climb the tower and he wanted Isabel standing beside Graham when this invitation was extended.

Isabel had returned from the jaunt reiterating her claim that Abrams knew nothing.  “Not as smart as he looks,” she had first said, with a light little laugh.  And then she had paused and added “But that’s actually quite unfair. What I should have said is that you have nothing to fear from him.  The detective is sensitive, bookish.  Much like you were when we first met.”

“And Graham?”  Armand had asked.

She had shrugged. “Now that one is smarter than he looks.  But then, he’d almost have to be, wouldn’t he?”

She claimed that Graham had asked her nothing about the pool of investors, that he had all but ignored her while instead dancing attendance on some American reporter. But then the next morning another article had appeared in the London Times, and this one was above the fold.  It was a first-hand account of the grandeur of the Eiffel Tower, mentioning the gold trim and marble tile, the hand-blown light fixtures and miraculous elevator. The article ran beside a photograph of the American girl clutching the railing with Paris barely visible behind her.

All well enough, except for the final paragraph: “But from where is the money for all this French finery coming?  Some say it is our own Bank of London.  And we shall offer you names of these British investors on the morrow.”

Awkwardly stated, but the intent had been clear.  Even a braggart like Graham would not have made such a boast to the readership of the Times if he was not prepared to deliver on his promise.  He was merely stretching out the suspense to build anticipation in his readership, to ensure that even more of them would buy papers, as he said, on the morrow.  Evidently he had somehow gotten a list of the names of the investors which was, of course, merely a prettier way of saying he had gotten a list of the names of Armand’s clientele.

A second murder is different than a first.  Not easier, just different.  As he crushed out his cigar and set aside his empty glass of brandy, all Armand could think to compare it to was a loss of virginity.  He was not eager to add a third death to his resume, especially not one which would draw the wrath of Scotland Yard, but Detective Abrams was choosing to be stubborn and this game, like all others, must eventually draw to its close.  Armand’s long practice in splitting in his mind, usually accomplished at some invisible marker halfway across the channel, would undoubtedly make the task easier. Charles Hammond would never have killed a man, but for all practical purposes, Charles Hammond was himself dead.  He had ceased to exist on the day the London police raided a brothel at 229 Cleveland Street. And it would appear that Armand Delacroix was prepared to do whatever was necessary.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Paris

7:15 AM

“Let them sleep,” Geraldine said, as Trevor’s eyes drifted toward the hall for the third time since they had set down together to breakfast.  “There’s little you can do before the police station opens at nine so Tom and Emma may as well indulge in a bit more rest. They need it.”

“True enough,” said Trevor. “We all do.  I didn’t sleep especially well myself.”

“Neither did I,” said Geraldine.  “A strange bed in a strange city and then the diversion at the party.  It took me hours to drift off despite my exhaustion.”

Trevor nodded distractedly, and shoved another bite of croissant into his mouth.  People could say what they wanted about the French, and heaven knows he had said plenty himself, but they did manage to produce some rather fine bread.

“I need to send that telegram to Davy as early as possible,” Trevor said.  “Even if a courier catches the next boat, it will be late afternoon before we have the print in hand.”

“Go down to the telegraph office if you must, and then return,” Gerry said. “But in the meantime, Trevor, there’s no harm in letting those poor children sleep.”

Paris

7:20 AM

A gull landed at her shoulder and gave the blanket a curious peck, startling Emma awake.  When her eyes opened to behold the bird’s shiny black eyes and beak, which was resting no more than two inches from her nose, Emma had startled with a shriek, causing Tom, who was curved around her, to sit up in one abrupt motion.

“What is it?”

“Oh my God,” said Emma, rolling onto her back. The bird had flapped away at the sound of her cry and it had taken her a moment to remember where she was. “We’ve slept far past six, I should think.  The sun is too high.”

“We’re like Romeo and Juliet,” Tom said, stretching. “More light and light it grows.”

“Don’t you dare make jokes,” Emma said, awkwardly trying to adjust the blanket to cover her calves and ankles.  “We must find a place for me to dress.  See here, your pants are nearly dry.”

“If you can manage it, dressing under the blanket offers your best chance for modesty,” Tom said, swiveling to look around them.  “Not many of our neighbors seem to be stirring.  I’ll see if I can learn what time it is.”

He strode up the embankment toward the street while Emma threw the blanket over her head and pulled on Tom’s shirt and pants.  By the time she finished, he was back.

“Change of plans, I’m afraid.  It’s past seven and Auntie and Trevor will doubtless be stirring before long.  If you truly want to keep our nocturnal activities a secret I suggest we return to the apartment before they awaken.  We can walk out the seven thousand odd paces after breakfast.”

“Bosh,” Emma said, crouching to roll up her pant legs.  “Trevor will whisk you off to the police station the minute he’s put down his fork and will have you doing a thousand tasks, just as he did yesterday. How do you plan to get away from him for long enough to join me?”

“Trust me,” said Tom.

They walked up to the street and Tom waved for a cab.  There were a fair number of people about, not as many as the evening before, and Emma felt momentarily self-conscious in her odd outfit with her half-wet hair streaming down.  But the river district was much like London’s East End, in that it was a part of town where a person would have to strive every hard indeed to be the oddest on the block.  A few people looked at her but their gaze slipped off as smoothly as if she had been oiled, their curiosity only fleeting.

And the river district was like the East End in another way too.  Few cabs ventured there, so after a few minutes of ineffectual waving, they opted to walk to the next avenue.  The church bell peeled the half hour as they passed and Tom winced.

“We can only hope they’re both so knackered they’ve slept in,” he said.   “And truly, Emma, you needn’t worry about me escaping Trevor’s clutches.  I’m rather good at slipping away on my own and I promise I’ll be back from the station as soon as possible.  He’ll send me to wire the telegram to Davy, will he not?”

“Very well,” said Emma.  “I shall leave it to you to explain why such a simple task will pull you away for the whole morning.”

“But in return,” said Tom, squinting into the distance.  “You must promise me that you won’t come back here on your own.  It’s too risky.”

7:40 AM

A woman’s glove could be many things.  An indication of her status in society, since the material is it made from offers a visible measure of her husband’s wealth.  Women in cotton gloves curtsey to those in calfskin.  It can be an accessory of flirtation, a suggestive symbol hinting of more hidden but similarly shaped pleasures.  It could be a signal, far more effective than a bare hand for attracting the attention of others.  And a glove could be a container as well, Rayley thought, a vessel, an envelope, a hiding place.

Perhaps, if he were lucky, even a missile.

Although he had been unconscious when he had been carried into this cell, Rayley had managed to conclude a fair amount about the world beyond its borders. The two walls whose corners were damp evidently were the ones that abutted the river and, judging by the smell, the sewer that emptied it.   The other two walls must face up the bank to the street, as indicated by the dryness of their own corners and the fact that the window above them captured the distant glow of a street light.

Which also meant that anything that went out that window would land on the ground, and not in the river.

It still was a long shot.  Paris was enormous and there were innumerable places where the forensics team might be searching for him.  Rayley had spent the last few minutes mentally going over the letters and telegrams he had sent Trevor, trying to recall the exact wording and thus how much of his theory about Graham’s death he had managed to relate.  He was sure that the fact he was besotted with Isabel Blout had come through perfectly clearly and could only hope that Trevor would not have thus discounted his suspicions of Armand Delacroix as the result of pure jealousy.  He doubted it.  Their brief time together on the Ripper case had taught each man that the other was capable of setting aside his personal feelings when the time came for cold logic.  Rayley was reasonably sure that anything he told Trevor would have been taken seriously.

The trouble was, he couldn’t remember exactly what he had told him.   Rayley knew that he had put a few theories about Armand in his personal notes but he doubted that he had labeled anything in a manner that would be clear to anyone other than himself.  Still, the list of addresses… At the time Rayley had been astounded by the sheer volume of properties Armand Delacroix had owned or rented but he had intended to visit every place on the list, certain that one of them would be the place where Graham had been killed.  He himself had been kidnapped before he had the chance to see the plan through, but he hoped that Trevor would recognize that a list of addresses must mean something, even if he didn’t know what.

That, of course, was assuming that Trevor was given access to his file.  When Delacroix had first said Trevor was in Paris, Rayley’s optimism had soared and he had briefly indulged in the notion that Trevor had come bearing the insignia of Scotland Yard, on order of the Queen, and thus would muster the full if somewhat grudging support of the Paris police.  But upon deeper reflection, he had abandoned that idea.  If Trevor was traveling not with Davy but rather with the civilians - Tom, Emma, and Geraldine Bainbridge - it must be because he was traveling not under the auspices of Scotland Yard, but rather as a private citizen.  Geraldine had evidently come along as the money.

So the odds were that Trevor had not gained access to Rayley’s file as all.

It was disheartening, true, but Rayley tried to stay focused on the fact that at least Trevor was in Paris.  That was cause for hope, however slim, and got him to considering how he might manage to send some sort of message.

Rayley gazed up at the window, which had traded the artificial illumination of the streetlight for the more natural glow of the sun.  Despite the fact the window was so high that no man could reach it, further precautions had been installed in the form of bars which were spaced rather closely.  A shoe would not go through them.  Nor would a tin cup.  A glove would, of course, but the glove would have to we weighted with something.  None of the items in Rayley’s paltry inventory met the needs of being heavy enough to be successfully thrown such a significant distance without being too large to clank against the bars.  He looked around the cell.  He needed something else.

7:55 AM

To their horror, Tom and Emma found Geraldine not only up and dressed but in the breakfast room, scanning the morning paper and finishing a cup of tea.  If she was surprised to see them straggle through the front door in workman’s clothing, she hid it well.  She merely sat back in her chair, folded her paper, and regarded them with a steady stare.

“You’re both very lucky,” she said mildly, “that I am such an avowed liberal.”

“Oh Gerry, it’s not what it seems,” Emma began, and then her voice immediately faded because she honestly couldn’t imagine what it seemed.

“Emma had a theory she wanted to test,” Tom said hastily.  “About bodies in the river-“

Geraldine silenced him with a shake of her head.  “Trevor is out sending a telegram to Davy,” she said.  “And he will return at any minute, so I suggest you save your explanations for another time and go straight to your rooms.  Emerge as soon as you can, and dressed in a manner that would suggest you’ve had a pleasant night’s sleep.  Anything else will only distress him and he is under too much strain as it is.”

Emma and Tom both nodded and started down the hall.

“And darlings,” Geraldine called out, just as they were at their respective doors. “One more thing.  I love you both, exactly as if you were the son and daughter that I never had.   But don’t ever expect me to lie on your behalf to Trevor Welles again.”

8:29 AM

A half hour later only Emma and Geraldine were left in the apartment.  Trevor had returned from his errand to the telegraph office in time to see Tom seated at the breakfast table, yawning and stretching in such an exaggerated manner that Geraldine had been forced to kick his shins in order to rein in his performance. Emma emerged from her bedroom door a few minutes later, back in her navy day dress and claiming that she had never slept so well in her life.  And then, after Tom had made short work of a plateful of eggs served by the disapproving Claire, the men had been off to the station, leaving the women to finish their tea in peace.

“Now do you want to tell me, my dear?”  Geraldine said.

Emma confessed her full story, which Geraldine calmly absorbed, smiling a bit when they got to the point about Tom swapping Cousin Claude’s clothes for tattered pants and a stained blanket.

“Poor Claude,” Geraldine said.  “I must replace his rowing jacket before we leave.  How do you propose to finish your experiment?”

“By returning to the bridge and walking 7250 steps in the opposite direction.” Emma said.  “Somewhere in that vicinity I think we shall find the place where the bodies were put into the water.  Tom says he’ll be back by midmorning.”

“Midmorning?” Geraldine shook her head.  “Trevor will keep him far too busy for that.”

“I know.  But it’s a dreadful part of town and Tom has made me swear that I won’t go alone.”

Geraldine pushed her cup back.  “I quite agree with Tom,” she said.  “You mustn’t go alone.”

London

8:45 AM

Davy went through the dockmaster ledger books three times after breakfast and did not find any of the names he sought:  Armand Delacroix, Isabel Blout, or Charles Hammond.

But he did find one he didn’t expect.  The queer name had jumped right out at him, practically shouting itself from the list of passengers.

On the morning of April 11, the day before the first body had been found on the banks of the Seine, Henry Newlove had traveled from Dover to Calais.

Davy was sitting back in his chair, pondering what this might mean, when a messenger boy showed up at the door bearing a telegram from Paris.  He was a husky lad who seemed straight from the rugby fields, Davy was relieved to note, and could not have convincingly passed as female on a bet.  Cleveland Street would forever change the way Davy perceived messenger boys.

He tossed the boy a coin, then quickly scanned Trevor’s brief directions.  For a moment he toyed with the idea of carrying the print to Paris himself, for it offered the perfect chance to join the others, to rise above these mundane clerical tasks and participate in the more glamorous world of international intrigue.  But he knew this was not to be.  Scotland Yard had professional couriers among its ranks and Davy, after all, had volunteered to man the fort here in London. With a sigh, he pushed to his feet.  After he found the courier, he would wire Trevor with the news about Henry Newlove.  The timing of that particular channel crossing had to mean something, did it not?

Paris

9:26 AM

“It’s a workable print,” Carle confirmed, and although this was what Trevor strongly suspected, he was still flooded with relief.  He and Tom had solemnly delivered the glass to the forensics lab at precisely 9:01 and one of the scientists there had promptly set to work.  One of the many scientists, Trevor couldn’t help but note, but his envy of the enormous and well-staffed Parisian facility would have wait for a more opportune time.  As for now, it was gratifying they could return with an answer so quickly.

“With any luck, we shall have the other by late afternoon,” he said to Rubois, as Carle translated. “My best man in London is sending it.”  There was no need to add that his best man in London was his only man in London.

“Speaking of such, is there anything further that we need to tell Davy?” Tom asked.  “I could dash out and send a telegram.”

Trevor shook his head.  “Nothing in the moment, and besides I have other plans for our morning,” he said.  He turned back to Rubois and Carle and explained the need for the Calais dockmaster records, a statement that brought the signature sadness to the face of Rubois.  Even if the man saw the need of such a request, which he probably did, he was doubtlessly wondering if he could spare the manpower to carry out the task.

“A Scotland Yard courier will be coming through the port of Calais this afternoon with the fingerprint,” Trevor said.  “Perhaps if we alert the dockmaster to divert him, he can bring the record books as well.”

Rubois nodded with relief and Trevor wondered once again why a double murder and the kidnapping of a detective should remain such a low priority case.  Apparently Rubois and Carle were the only ones specifically assigned, which was appalling.  Of course, to be fair, he wasn’t sure how much attention Scotland Yard would directed toward a crime with exclusively foreign-born victims.  Rubois left to wire the dockmaster and Trevor turned back to Tom.

“Remember that list of addresses we found in Rayley’s notes?” Trevor asked.  “It occurred to me last night, when I couldn’t sleep, that they were most likely tied to Delacroix.  And Rubois confirmed that Rayley had come to him, in the day before his disappearance, and asked if there was any city property office where he might obtain the addresses of properties owned or rented in the name of Armand Delacroix.”

“Good God,” said Tom.  “He must have suspected the man from the start.”

“Indeed,” said Trevor. “In the future we simply must become more uniform in our note taking, and begin sending telegrams with more than twenty words.  Detection is no longer a puzzle to be turned and twisted and ultimately solved all within the brain of a singular man.  Sherlock Holmes is fictional, after all.  Modern detection starts as a blank map, with many people adding a point of interest here or a turn in the road there, until, there is an eventual moment when the whole route becomes clear.”

“Quite,” said Tom.  “Well put.  But if the French police had the means to obtain a list of all the properties Delacroix owned, why the deuce haven’t they searched them?  The odds are that Rayley is being held in one of them.  Isabel too, perhaps.”

Trevor grimaced, glancing in the direction of Rubois as he did so.  “Rayley must have asked the question in passing and evidently Rubois had forgotten it until I reminded him this morning.  A source of embarrassment based on the expression that crossed his face, although it shouldn’t be.  There are so many small details in a murder case and it can be difficult to determine what avenues one should pursue and which are pointless.  I still torture myself eternally wondering what manner of things we might have missed with the Ripper. But the point is that Rayley has done much of the work for us.  Armand Delacroix was a man with fingers in many pies, and the list is long, but I suggest we visit each of them, one by one.  We can’t expect much help from the French, you know.  I’m afraid it’s the two of us. ”

“We’ll need a map,” Tom said.  “Are any of the properties by chance by the river?”

9:38 AM

Rayley sat utterly immobile, watching the rat from the corner of his eye.  It sidled up to the bit of black potato he had left by the foot of his cot and ventured a nibble.  When the first bite went down unchallenged, the beast seemed to gain a bit of confidence. It began to eat more steadily, gradually losing any regard for his surroundings.

A few minutes earlier Rayley had overturned his mattress and used a fingernail to scrape a few flecks of the dried regurgitation off the bottom.  These he had stirred into the inch of water remaining in his tin cup.  Chloroform was both colorless and odorless so there was no way of ascertaining if the flecks had managed to transfer any lingering traces of the drug into the water.  Nonetheless, Rayley gamely dipped a corner of his torn knickerbockers in the mixture and set back on the bed to wait for the bit of potato to tempt one of his cellmates.  It had not taken long.

Rayley had timed his attack to be swift and definitive – much like the movement which had so effectively captured him.  With the rat absorbed in his meal, Rayley dropped the chloroform soaked piece of his knickerbockers over him.   He thrashed wildly for a moment, possibly because he was caught in the cloth.  But within seconds, all movement stopped.

Aware that he was holding his breath, Rayley reached down and pulled at the cloth.  The rat rolled out, falling to the floor with a gentle thud where it remained, glassy-eyed, paws toward the sky.

As an extra precaution, he stomped it.  Then he scooped up the body, using his underwear as a protective mitt.  As he did so he saw the label in the band of his knickerbockers.  Morgan and Taylor, it read, the name of a men’s shop in London, one located not far from the gates of the Yard.  Excellent.  A sign that the sender of this particular message was English, not French.  Another clue.

Rayley ripped the label from the knickerbockers, bringing a bit of the waistband along with it.   He removed his eyeglasses and paused for a moment, debating within himself if this part was entirely necessary.  We was nearly blind without his spectacles and had attempted no task without their assistance for years, not even a chore as mild as a nighttime trip to the chamber pot in his rented room.  But a rat stuffed in a glove then wrapped in London-bought knickers was in truth a rather obscure message.  The addition of a piece of Rayley’s thick eyeglasses, no doubt the aspect of his persona most people who knew him would mention first, would seal the deal.

He took off the eyeglasses and carefully pressed the lens on the left side.  It slipped from the frame with a little pop and Rayley placed it in the glove first, where it came to rest in the part where the fingers met the palm.  The rat was inserted next and then the glove was tied closed with the strip of cloth bearing the name Morgan and Taylor.

He did not know how many times he threw the bundle.  He had never been a good cricket player as a lad and he was further hampered by the fact that, with one lens missing from his spectacles, the whole world seemed to have slanted on its axis, leaving him as strangely off balance as if he were standing on the deck of a ship.  His first tosses fell embarrassingly short of the window and he was sure the lens in the base of the glove must have shattered in one of these opening volleys.  But he kept throwing, strangely energized by the fact he had a task, even one as unlikely to meet with success as this one.  In time his aim improved.  The ridiculous glove, bearing the perhaps even more ridiculous message, sailed between the bars of the window, presumably to land somewhere on the river bank.

Rayley replaced his mattress on the bed and lay down.  The sustained effort had exhausted him.  He closed his eyes.  He may have dozed.  He would not have hazarded a guess to how much time might have passed before the cell door opened and Gerard entered, carrying the same things that Gerard’s presence always brought:  Water, food, pain, and the assurance that somewhere in Paris, Isabel Blout was still alive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

London

9:16 AM

Since Trevor and the others were in Paris, Davy was no longer expected to take his midday meals in a pub with the rest of the team.  Which also meant that he didn’t have to worry about being called a mummy’s boy if he did not.  So for the last three days he had been able to do what he would have preferred to do every working day - return to his own house at noon to eat lunch with his mother.  She worried about the late nights he’d been keeping lately and at breakfast this morning she had promised to bake a kidney pie for lunch.  It was Davy’s favorite of her customary dishes and one that she believed had an almost supernatural ability to “boost the blood,” thereby returning the ill to robust health, or,  in this case, at least compensating for  several missed nights of sleep.

She was a bit taken aback to see him coming into the kitchen so early but, just as he’d expected, the pie was already made and was warming in the oven.  Sitting down at the scarred kitchen table where he had been spent so many happy hours, Davy found himself doing what he had never done before, the very thing he had sworn to never do.  He found himself telling his mother about his work.  He spared the woman the details of the boy- girls, a world she likely would not have grasped and which only could have the effect of upsetting her if she had, but when he told her of the circumstances he’d found at 229 Cleveland Street, her wide brown eyes had grown even wider.  Evelyn Mabrey was a kind-hearted woman, who had raised four sons of her own, and the very thought of boys going without a proper luncheon was enough to wound her to the core.

“You must bring those lads some food,” she said.  “The pie is almost finished and there will be apples in the bin.”

This was exactly the response Davy had hoped for.  Ever since he had dispatched the courier with the fingerprint, he had been thinking of ways to get more information about Henry Newlove from Mickey and his fellow musketeers. Mickey had predicted that Charles Hammond  had run to Paris with Tommy, but the news that Henry had crossed the channel as well was an unexplored piece of the puzzle.

“Yes, please mum, pack up a basket with whatever you can spare,” Davy said. “I need these boys to talk and boys talk best on a full stomach, but don’t they?”

The woman nodded decisively and within minutes Davy was on his way across town lugging a woven basket crammed full of not only a kidney pie, but also jam, bread, apples, and a rather illogical jar of pickles.

When he arrived, the place looked much the same, indicating that the bobbies had not yet arrived for their own bit of tramping about.  The door was still nailed shut, with the same warnings about the Queen and Scotland Yard posted proudly in the center, albeit a bit faded with rain and time.  Despite the fact that boys were being employed instead of girls, the Cleveland Street case was apparently being treated like any other prostitution raid – a workaday and essentially victimless crime.  Davy was relieved.  Over the last two days, his thoughts had returned several times to Mickey and the other boys.  It was good to know that they had not been tossed out of the only home they had.

He walked to the back yard and looked up at the roof. Still the cracked window, the webbing of ropes across the roofline. “It’s Davy Mabrey,” he called out.  “Mickey, lad, are you there?”

No response.  Davy didn’t relish the idea of scaling the roof with a kidney pie in his hand.

Davy scrounged around the scruffy yard until he found a pebble and sent it flying toward the window.  He missed, but came close enough to ding the frame and then he yelled again.   After a moment, a face cautiously came to the glass.   Not Mickey, but Charlie Swinscow.

Their last meeting had not been a pleasant one and when he spied Davy in the yard below him, Charlie pulled back in alarm.

“I’m not here as Scotland Yard,” Davy called up, a remark that wasn’t entirely true, but which was true enough in the sense he meant no harm to the boys.  “I know you’re living here and I don’t care,” he called again.  “Ask Mickey if you don’t believe me.  I promise that no one is going to arrest any of you.”

A deafening silence.

“I have a kidney pie,” Davy yelled.

Charlie’s face was back with a comic swiftness, with the additional shapes of two more boys visible behind him.

“Put it on the stoop,” Charlie called back.

“Come on, boy,” Davy said, his voice gone softer. “You know the world.  No one gets a kidney pie for free.”

A consultation among the shapes.

“What do you want?” Charlie called down.

“Just information,” Davy said.  “I want you to tell me everything you know about Henry Newlove.”

Within a few minutes the window raised further and Charlie ventured out, followed in turn by two more boys who crawled down the rope webbing, dropped to the roof of the back stoop with practiced ease, and then one at a time swung down to the ground, where Davy stood with the basket at his feet.

“Where’s Mickey?” he asked.

Charlie shrugged. “Working.”

“All right,” said Davy.  “We’ll eat a bit and talk a bit.”  He uncovered the basket and gestured for the boys to assume a circle, then plunked the pie in the middle and stood back.

Within a minute, it was gone.

“I have other things too,” Davy said, when the three of them had downed the last piece of crust.

“Mickey said you gave him ale,” ventured one boy, looking out from an explosion of frizzled dark hair.

“Well, I don’t have ale with me now.  This basket comes from my mum, not from some tavern on the corner.”

“I like ale,” the boy said and the others nodded.

“Do you like bread and jam?”

“What kind?”

Davy almost laughed. They were an evasive and ill-mannered lot, but he rather admired the boy’s efforts to negotiate, even in a situation where he clearly did not have the advantage.

“Strawberry.  But I need information about Newlove first.”

“I done told you,” Charlie said, not with arrogance, but with a matter-of-fact quality.  “’e was our teacher after the master wouldn’t let him work no more.”

“Why couldn’t he work no more?  I mean anymore?” Davy asked.

“Got too old,” Charlie said. “The other boy-girls stopped when they-“

“Wait a minute,” Davy broke in.  “Henry Newlove started out as one of the boy-girls?”  Nods all around. “When did Henry stop serving as a boy-girl and become your procurer and your teacher?”

“Two years, Sir?  Maybe three?”

“Did Henry like being in management or did he feel he was being passed over?”

The question seemed to confuse Charlie, which wasn’t surprising.  Newlove had been his superior both in the postal service and at Cleveland Street and likely wasn’t in the habit of confiding any hurts or disappointments he may have felt to the younger boys.

But ale boy caught his meaning at once.  “No, Sir,” he said firmly.   “Master told him his boy-girl days were up and he was chaffed about it.  Master said he was sixteen and that’s too old and ‘Enry said to wait a minute, that Ian had been older than sixteen. Older than….real old.”  He mutely appealed to his fellows for support, raising his palms with a shrug.

“Ian stayed a boy-girl,” said the third lad, whose freckles and coppery hair betrayed his Irish roots.  “Ne’er switched over.  Ne’er started to show like Henry did.”

“Show?” Davy asked.

The boy raised a fingertip to his top lip, as if to indicate a hint of a mustache and then looked down at his hands.

“So you’re saying that Henry became too masculine but this boy named Ian never did,” Davy confirmed.

Nods all around the circle.

“So,” Davy said, “Henry was mad at Ian because Ian was able to stay a boy-girl longer than he was?”

Charlie and the ale boy exchanged a look and Charlie tried to explain.

“Wasn’t mad, exactly, Sir, ‘e just kept complaining to the master that it wasn’t fair.”

“Did Henry hate Ian?”

Now Charlie looked genuinely shocked and Davy noted that his working class accent, like those of the others, was getting stronger with each sentence.  Whatever middle class patina the brothel had managed to cast over the boys had begun to wear off during their weeks without supervision.  If they were left on their own in Cleveland Street much longer, they would soon be down on all fours baying at the moon.  “They were brothers, weren’t they?” Charlie said.  “Old ‘Enry might have been mad and said that Ian got the better part but ‘e wouldn’t of hated ‘im.”

“Where is Ian now?”

“Gone,” Irish said firmly.

“Gone where?” Davy asked, flipping open the top of the basket as he asked the question.  The boys looked on eagerly as he pulled out the loaf of bread and jar of jam.

“’e got married,” Charlie said. “Years ago.  Proper posh.  That’s what ‘Enry wanted too, didn’t he?”

Davy hesitated, bread in hand.  It was the last thing he had expected to hear. “Married? To a woman?”

The boys looked at him in pure puzzlement.

“No money in that, Sir, is there?” ale boy finally asked, his hand reaching toward the bread, which Davy relinquished.  “No money for the master in that.”

“I see,” said Davy. “And let me guess.  Before they came to London, Ian and Henry lived in Manchester.”

The boys had begun ripping apart the bread, their small grimy hands darting, curved fingers scooping into the jam jar, nudging each other in their haste.  Davy upended the basket and let the apples roll out onto the lawn, the lone jar of pickles toppling out last.  Charlie paused and looked up, his face smeared with red jam, and gave a quick nod.

Paris

10:02 AM

It is more taxing to count to 7250 than one might guess.  In the four years she had known her, this was also the longest Emma had ever known Geraldine to go without speaking.  The older woman’s face was twisted in determination and the two of them walked stoically down the riverbank arm in arm.  Emma knew that for a dedicated social volunteer like Geraldine the sight of so much poverty – dwelling literally in the shadows of a middle class neighborhood – would in itself be distracting, but Geraldine stuck to her task.  They had agreed to count separately and to stop when they got to 5000.  It had taken them nearly thirty minutes to reach this milestone.  After looking about a bit, they found a small stone wall where Geraldine might rest.

“How are you holding up?” Emma asked, hoping she sounded casual, although she was actually quite concerned.  Walking the sloping bank, with its mud and ruts, was an entirely different matter than strolling down a sidewalk and Geraldine was flushed and breathless from the effort.  Emma was beginning to think she truly should have waited for Tom.  “Perhaps we might go back up to the street.  Look for a tea room or some place you can properly rest before we resume.”

Geraldine shook her head. “I’ll be fine, dear, just give me a minute.  It certainly reeks, doesn’t it?”

She was right.  The entire area around the river was musty and brackish but the air in this particular point was overwhelmingly sour.

“It smells like a sewer,” Geraldine said.

“Probably because it is one,” Emma said, peering over the stone wall where Geraldine was sitting.  “Look, there’s a grate down there just behind you, releasing into the river.  Careful,” she said, when Geraldine twisted to look over her shoulder.  “Heaven knows, you don’t want to topple back.”

Emma and Tom had not seen it while floating in darkness the night before, but they must have passed this point in the river, where a series of stone walls such as the one where Geraldine rested outlined the entrance into the sewer.  The concrete mouth gaped, large enough for a man to enter without stooping, and a steady trickle of refuse washed from the tunnel into the river. Tom had said that city rivers were fed by sewers rather than springs, but Emma hadn’t really understood what he meant at the time.

“Horrid to consider that they’ve built their little… houses, I suppose you’d say, that press right up against it,” Geraldine murmured.  “I can’t imagine what it must smell like in the summer.”

“The sewer is a wall,” Emma said. “A strong one, made of concrete.  So thus they have a fair start on their houses before they pick up the first hammer.”

“Yes, of course, but the sanitation…and there are children.”

Emma nodded, but for once she wasn’t thinking about the downtrodden, about children living in filth or women turning to prostitution in an effort to feed those children, or even the drunken, violent men who preyed on both.  “It’s dreadful, yes, but also the perfect place to hide someone. This particular drain is too close to where the bodies were found, but my guess is that there are several more places where sewers empty into the Seine, and that one of them is about 2500 paces further up the river.  Have you rested enough?  Shall we count down the final bit?”

But Geraldine was staring at a woman passing before them, a woman who was evidently returning from a hard night’s work and who managed to have a bit of both a stagger and a swagger in her step.

“Emma,” Geraldine said, her voice so low that Emma had to bend to hear her. “Do you find anything odd in that girl?  Look at how she’s dressed.”

Emma considered the woman.  She was well past forty and would only be called a girl by someone the age of Geraldine.  Notably dirty, her hair arranged in an attempt at a chignon, perhaps a style she had seen on a passing lady in the street and tried to copy, with limited success.  But her clothes, just as Geraldine had suggested, did not fit the picture at all.  They were dirty, true, but not nearly so much as the rest of her, and her dress was lovely, or at least might have been in a different context.  It was topped with a smartly-cut jacket, very much like one Emma had seen in the dress shop the day before.

“Where did a street woman get such clothing?”  Emma said aloud.

“Note the colors of her outfit,” Geraldine said gently.

“Plum, purple, pink.  Odd all together, but they do combine unlikely hues in Paris couture.  We saw as much on the Rue de Monge yesterday, did we not?”

Geraldine’s eyes never left the woman, who had now stopped to talk to a man who appeared as shaky on his feet as she was on hers.  “You’re missing the point, dear.  Aren’t those the colors Rayley said Isabel was wearing on the morning they climbed the tower?”

“Yes.  Yes, you’re right.  He described her outfit most specifically.  But that can’t be Isabel Blout.”  Emma could think of no circumstances, including the most through of scrubs, under which the woman standing before them might have ever been declared the greatest beauty in London.

“Of course not,” said Geraldine. “We haven’t found Isabel, but we may have found her clothes.”

“All that we’ve found are clothes in the same colors that Rayley described,” Emma said quickly, for if Trevor had been here, he would never have allowed them to get away with such vaulting leaps of logic.  “There must be hundreds of such outfits walking the streets of Paris.”

“Hundreds?”

“All right, not hundreds. But more than one.  We must not jump to conclusions.”

“I’m not jumping to conclusions,” Geraldine said patiently, as the woman in plum took the man’s arm and began to walk with him toward the opening to the sewer. “I’m not coming to any conclusion at all.  I’m merely pointing out that Isabel Blout is missing, and now clothing that matches the description of one of her outfits has turned up on a street woman.  What would Trevor say about that if he was here?  What are the most logical of all possible explanations?”

“That Isabel has been killed and someone has taken -“ Emma stopped herself.  “Oh, no, that’s not it.  I quite see what you mean.  It’s just as it happened with me and Tom last night.  Isabel escaped wearing beautiful and expensive clothing, which she knew would make her stand out in this setting like a diamond in the mud.  So she has traded them for another woman’s clothes.”  Emma was growing quite agitated with optimism. “Oh Gerry, do you think she’ll talk to us?”

“Certainly. If she’s paid to do so.”

“Of course, of course.  I’m being nonsensical.” Emma leaned over the stone wall and peered into the entrance to the sewer. “Dear God, they’ve totally disappeared.  How long do you think they’ll be gone?”

“Not long, I should think.”

“But it seems they’ve actually walked into the mouth of the…good heavens, it’s ankle deep in muck down there, how can they manage to…”

“I doubt they’re lying down, dear.”

Emma slumped to the stone wall beside Geraldine. “I’m such a dunce about these things.  No wonder Trevor and Tom treat me like a child.”

“We must be logical, not despairing,” Geraldine said, raising a crooked index finger in mimicry of a stern schoolmarm.  “Let us concoct a plan.  First we shall wait for the girl to conclude her business and then pay her for information.  Let me do this, dear, and I shall start with offering just a franc or two.  It will do us no good to flash about great wads of money in this distressing part of town.  We shall ask her to tell us everything she can remember about the woman who gave her these clothes and we shall ask her to describe, in infinite detail, what she herself was wearing before the swap.  Thus we will be able to give Trevor not only the news that Isabel is most likely hiding somewhere in the river district, but what she might be wearing.”  Geraldine paused for breath.  “And, while the men are rounding up Isabel, you and I shall walk the final 2500 steps and free dear Rayley.  And then we shall all have tea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Paris

10:36 AM

Armand Delacroix was a man with broad financial interests, not all of them relevant to the matter at hand.  This Trevor and Tom concluded after visiting the first two houses on Rayley’s list, both of which were located reasonably close to the river but which upon inspection turned out to be nothing more than middle class houses for rental, additional sources of income for the ever-resourceful Delacroix.  Now they stood on the sidewalk of the Boulevard Saint-Michal and gazed at Delacroix’s own home, an impressive brick affair which had been painted white and was largely covered with a bank of ivy.

“He’s come a long way from 229 Cleveland Street, hasn’t he?”  Tom said drily.

“He isn’t using this house as a brothel,” Trevor said, his eyes taking in the perfectly tended gardens and the charming window boxes dotted with flowers. “He lives here himself, probably with the child he calls Marianne and Isabel too, at least until she escaped.  Rubois says he hosts parties much like the one we attended last night.”

“So where is the actual business conducted?”

“Most likely in some of the rooms on this list.  But not so many boys are involved and not so many clients either, I should think.  Delacroix appears to have learned from his mistakes in London and has decided to streamline his Paris operation.  The parties are to procure and groom clients, as well as to sustain his public façade as a civic crusader. The actual liaisons take place elsewhere.”

“We need to be looking closer to the water,” Tom said impatiently. “Not these polite little neighborhoods, but the rougher streets.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Trevor.  “Whether in London or Paris, Delacroix seems to make a habit of conducting his business in, as you say, polite little neighborhoods. For all we know, he could be holding Rayley in the most pleasant looking house in Paris.”

“I don’t think so,” said Tom.  “Emma will hang me for telling you this, but last night –“

Just then a bicycle approached them, bouncing on the cobblestoned street.

“Detective Welles?” asked the young man, whom Trevor now noted was dressed as a flic, his uniform obscured by his jacket.  When Trevor nodded, he pulled a telegram from his front pocket and handed it over with a smart, almost military gesture.

The words “Detective Welles” evidently had exhausted the boy’s store of English because he immediately switched to French.  “He says Rubois gave him a list of the places we might be,” said Tom.  “This is the seventh place on the list he’s tried.”

“It’s from Davy,” said Trevor, ripping open the envelope.  “I don’t believe he ever sleeps either.”

“See here,” Tom said to the flic in French. “You know these neighborhoods far better than we.  Would any of the addresses on this list be located near the bad part of river?   The criminal part, I mean.”

The young man squinted at the paper thoughtfully, as Trevor looked up from the telegram.

“Dear God,” he said quietly.

But Tom merely glanced at him for the flic was speaking too, running his stubby finger down the list of addresses, coming to rest on the section near the bottom.

“These are the sorts of places where the sewer rats live,” he said.

“Sewer rats?” Tom asked distractedly.  Trevor seemed to have lost interest in the entire conversation.  He had gone over to lean against a tree.

“Street people,” said the flic, with a sanctimonious frown. “They live outside when the weather allows, but in the winter there are little rooms down by the sewer they can rent by the night.  Or the hour. Drunkards and whores and bastards and thieves and-“

“I understand,” said Tom, cutting him off before he could unleash a full sermon.  “That’s precisely the sort of place we’re looking for.  See here on the map, where are those addresses in relation to the Pont des Arts?  Might any of them be a half hour by foot upriver?”

The flic frowned, suggesting that either the question required some consideration or, more likely, that Tom’s French was beginning to falter.  He brought the map closer to his face to study it and Tom looked back toward Trevor.

“So what fresh news does Davy bring?”

Trevor broke from his reverie with a startle, as if he had forgotten that Tom and the flic were even there. Then he read aloud.

Henry Newlove traveled Paris April 11.  Has older brother Ian.  Also boygirl for Hammond long ago.  Then married a man.

“Married a man?” Tom said, walking over to the tree where Trevor still was still leaning, deep in thought. “Actually married?  He must have that part wrong.  But the bit about Henry Newlove coming to Paris on the 11th is interesting in light of our timeline.” He took the telegram from Trevor’s hand to read it for himself.

“Sir,” the flic called.  “There are three addresses on this list which might be near the area you’ve requested.”

“Just a minute,” Tom said, his voice rising. “He says Henry’s older brother Ian was also a boy-girl.  Also, he says, which implies that Henry himself was a boy-girl.  And he came to Paris…Dear God, this means the Lady of the River must be Henry Newlove.  He was killed the day after he crossed the channel.”

“Yes, naturally, but not only that,” said Trevor, gazing at the pretty white house where the monstrous Armand Delacroix lived in comfort. “I believe there are ways we can use this knowledge to find Isabel Blout.”

10:40 AM

“She says that the clothes were given to her by a friend,” Emma told Geraldine. “And that she can’t imagine what concern it is of ours.”

“Offer her another coin,” Geraldine said. “And confirm that it was a male friend.”

The three women were sitting on the stone wall, a companionable enough place to rest now that the day was warming, and Emma supposed she had even gotten used to the smell rising from the sewer beneath them.  The French prostitute had not seemed surprised when the two women had intercepted her on her way out of the sewer opening.  She had smiled when Emma told her that her dress was pretty and smiled even more broadly when Emma had offered her money.  She was one of those rare women who look less attractive when they smile.

So they had settled in on the stone wall, each of them gazing out toward the river, as if they were vacationers taking in a scenic view.  Their position meant that Emma could not see the woman’s face as they talked, a disadvantage she supposed, since Trevor had pounded into her head many times that most liars reveal themselves through their facial expressions and body gestures, not through their choice of words.  But she told herself it was probably all right.  The woman, who announced her name to be Francine, had balked at Emma’s suggestion they climb up to street level and, upon consideration, Geraldine’s stamina probably would have suffered in the attempt.

Besides, what reason would this woman have to lie?

“Tell us about the friend who gave you the clothes,” Emma requested politely, but with what hoped was an echo of Trevor’s quiet authority.

Francine launched into a long-winded and somewhat self-serving tale, but the salient points were these:  The man was not a regular customer.  She had not asked his name.  He had seemed a bit down on his luck, as indicated by the fact he had been unable to provide the requested coins for her services.  Instead, he had offered her this suit of fine clothing, which he claimed to have obtained just hours before from a woman he had met in one of the bars.  A pretty woman whom he said had been weeping.

“Certainly sounds like Isabel,” Geraldine said thoughtfully, after Emma had translated the story so far.  “Ask her what sort of clothes the man gave her.”

Work clothes, as it turned out, not too surprisingly.  Francine reported that the man was small, not much taller than she herself.  Probably that is why the woman approached him of all the men in the bar that night, because his clothes were the most likely to fit her.  Oh, and the pretty weeping woman hadn’t been wearing the dress she had traded away.  She’d been dressed in other clothes, just as fine, and she had pulled the plum-colored outfit from a traveling valise.

“That’s almost definitely the woman we’re seeking,” said Emma.  “What is the name of the bar where all of this happened?”

Le Rire Femme, Francine said.  The Laughing Woman.  It was a favorite among the sewer rats, she explained, and it had been especially festive on the night in question.  For the men had just learned that Eiffel was hiring unskilled laborers to help in the completion of the tower.  Her client had told her he was going over the next morning to find work.  He had promised that he would pay her in the proper currency the next time.

The tower, Emma thought.  How it casts its shadow over every part of this twisted story.  How it haunts us all.

“So there.  After we walk our final steps we must find Trevor and tell him that Isabel was alive and well two days ago,” Emma said, as Francine bid them a slurred au-revoir and continued her trawl down the river bank.  “That she was last seen weeping in a bar called The Laughing Woman and exchanging her beautiful dress for a sewer rat’s rags.  I only hope for her sake she can wear men’s clothing more convincingly than I could.  Why are you smiling like that?”

“I have a bit of theory myself,” said Geraldine. “And I feel quite rejuvenated from our little hiatus here on the bank.  After we have walked our 2500 more steps do you think we might visit the tower?  I suddenly have an urge to see it up close, near the base, at the spot where Rayley was taken.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Paris

11:30 AM

A scream arising from his own throat awakened Armand and he sat up in bed, his heart pounding and his hands gripping his silken sheets. The dream had already come once before and he suspected it would come again, that it might indeed haunt him through the rest of his life.

For it was unshakeable, this vision of Henry floating down the Seine, his face upturned and trusting, looking so much like a child in sleep.  His skirts spread around him, his hair framing his face like a dark flower, the eerie serenity of the scene.

But there was another reason that the image gripped Armand.  He had seen Henry floating in a river before.

Ian Newlove and Charles Hammond had known each other’s secret at a glance.  In many ways Charles had been dealt the easier hand to play.   Back when they were boys in Manchester, Ian’s large eyes and delicate frame, his precise gestures and perennially hopeful smile had made him the more logical target for the neighborhood bullies.  But Charles was more –

Well, there was no way to say it except that Charles was more normal, that he had been better able to blend in.  Charles had watched the other lads harass Ian, tossing pebbles and coal at him, following along behind with their silly songs and mocking nicknames, and he had initially considered himself the luckier of the two.  But over the years that followed, there had been times when he had privately questioned this early assumption.  For the ability to hide one’s true nature can be both a blessing and a curse.

Charles had never joined into the cruel games, but he had often pretended not to know Ian when the two passed on the street.  He would turn his head and feign a great fascination with something in the distance.  Ian forgave him these slights and had never betrayed him, even though, with a single word, he could have turned the wrath of the neighborhood boys toward a new and far more interesting target.  No matter how fast Charles looked away, it was always there, in his peripheral vision.  Ian’s knowing but compassionate smile.

Summers were a whole different world.  They were brief, for when school was out for the term most of the local boys went straight to the mills and factories seeking work.  Carting out slag, throwing buckets of water on the gears to keep them from overheating, rolling great bolts of cotton in and out of the warehouses.  But between the school term and the summer work there were always a few precious days, three or four in June and a like number in September, when they found themselves at total leisure.

The summer they almost lost Henry – how old were they then?  Fourteen?  Fifteen?  Ian’s mother had said to watch out for him and when Charles became an adult, looking back, he saw the unfairness of that request.  Why would she saddle them with a toddler to care for on their fleeting days of freedom?  Yes, they were fourteen and Henry had been…two.  He was still wearing dresses, his curls yet uncut.  They had packed a lunch and gone down by the river.  Fishing they called it, although they had no nets or reels.

Despite appearances, Ian had been the true innocent of the two.  Charles knew a bit more about matters, courtesy of the village parson, and thus he was able to show Ian places the boy had not known existed, take him to continents on his body that were hitherto unexplored.  Even now, Charles could remember the shimmering light of that summer afternoon, Ian’s incredulous face, the way his hand gripped at the grass as they rolled, tuffs of it coming loose, freeing the hot wet smell of the earth.

Henry was there, of course.  He was too young to know what he was seeing, too young to tell anyone if he had.  Ian had smeared honey from their picnic on the boy’s fingers and given him a feather, which was his standard means of keeping the child entertained.  Henry had sat on his little blanket rapt with concentration, peeling the feather first from one hand, and then from the other.

But alas, he had tired of his game before they had tired of theirs.  At some point they had looked over and he had been gone, his little blanket empty, his cup overturned.

Ian had screamed. They had both sprung to their feet, rushed instinctively toward the water.  Even before they arrived at the riverbank, Charles had convinced himself that the child must have drowned.  The parson had instructed him in a rather convoluted type of theology during their own afternoons together, but even without this private tutoring, the majority of the citizens of Manchester carried a most literal fear of God.  In a place where pleasures were so few, it was easy to convince the populace that these pleasures could only be purchased at a great price.

But there was a miracle.  Henry’s dress saved him.  His toddler’s dress, so full that it had formed a sort of bubble, just enough to keep him aloft as he bobbed there, near the shoreline, caught in the reeds.

Ian had plunged into the water and seized the child.  As he held his brother to his naked chest, he turned back toward Charles, his face full of fear and relief and another emotion which was not so easy to read, a type of wonderment.  And there, from the high bank, Charles had heard himself calling out promises.  That he would protect Henry and Ian.  That he would get them out of Manchester and protect them both for the rest of their lives.

The tragedy was that he had meant it.  Charles saw himself as stronger and smarter and he honestly believed he could deliver them all.  When the other boys hurled their slurs at Ian, Charles had silently vowed that someday he would take his revenge.  Especially on the ones who liked it and said they didn’t.  The ones who would pull Ian into an alley, have their pleasure against him, and then, just when it was finished, spit in his face.

Charles Hammond and Ian Newlove had both known what hypocrisy was before they reached the age of fifteen, but perhaps Charles understood it better, for he had wrestled with the hypocrisy of his own heart.  A lucky toss of the genetic dice had left him with broad shoulders and a firm chin; otherwise, he would be suffering the same indignities which were daily heaped on Ian.  The indignities that Henry someday too would suffer.

Through the years that followed, Charles’s hasty promise to protect them would inform every detail of their lives.  Against all odds, he had gotten them out of the hellish streets of Manchester and into a life of money, security, power, and prestige.  This transition had required multiple levels of deception, each painstakingly built one within another, like the ever-narrowing chambers of a fort.  His marriage to Janet, for example.  She was the one thing Mancunians hated and feared more than homosexuals – an intellectual woman - and thus she had been more than happy to take his name and the humble cottage his parents had left him.  The title of man and wife, unearned as the words may have been, shielded them both from speculation and besides, he had grown fond of her.  Janet was the one who had first taught him French.  Charles had succeeded even in exacting an almost Biblical revenge against a certain type of man, the ones he would always privately think of as “the boys in the alley.”  He had made those unholy bastards pay, and before this business was over, they would all pay even more.

But Charles had failed in his promise as well, which is why he now sat in his nightshirt, pulse pounding, his mouth sour with an alcohol-induced sleep.

He could close his eyes and be right back there, on that particular summer day.  The birds, the trees, the dappled sunlight, the hallelujah of Ian’s single gasp.  He suspected the memory had frozen in Ian’s mind as well.  Only Henry was unaware of the birth of the bond they all shared, taking the older men’s careful care of him for granted, growing ever more spoiled and petulant with each passing year.  He alone did not carry the memory of that moment when Ian first realized that his brother was gone, the moment when a moan of pleasure had turned into a shriek of despair.  How they had seen the blue dress floating and slid down the bank in terror, only to find Henry perfectly fine, his hands still smeared with honey, bouncing and gurgling among the reeds.

When Ian had turned towards him, the child in his arms, Charles had known exactly what he was thinking.  That their moments of joy had very nearly caused the baby’s death, that their wretched and unnatural desires had prompted God’s swift retribution.  But Ian had been wrong. They were merely children, after all.  This was before ambition and rage had hardened in Charles’s chest, fusing a diamond in the place where his heart should be.  Before Henry’s sticky fingers moved from feathers to everything in sight, long before Ian would become Isabel.  It would take seventeen more years before the culmination of their sins would fully overtake them.  Seventeen more years until Henry would once again go down to the water.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Paris

12: 25 PM

Geraldine and Emma were at 2158 in their step count when they saw Tom and Trevor walking toward them on the bank.

Oh God, Emma thought.  The game is up.

But Trevor did not seem angry or indeed even surprised to find the women there. “We need to confer,” he said in greeting, just as nonchalantly if they were all sitting around Geraldine’s table at one of the Tuesday Night Murder Games.

A single look had told Trevor that Geraldine needed a proper sit, and so he pretended exhaustion himself.  It didn’t take much pretending. With the men virtually pulling Geraldine, they climbed the bank to the sidewalk above and found a pair of benches on the street.  When they had all settled in, Trevor began.

“Chin up, everyone, because I think we’re much closer to finding Rayley than it seems,” Trevor said.  “This latest telegram from Davy has changed everything.”  He produced the rumpled paper from his pocket and read the brief message to Geraldine and Emma.

“The timeline,” he said, looking up as he finished, “strongly suggests that The Lady of the River is Henry Newlove.  He must have come here at Delacroix’s request, or should I say Hammond’s, just after the Cleveland Street raid.”

“Obviously,” said Emma. “For he was dressed in his work garb when he was killed.  But why was he killed and by whom?  Delacroix, or should I say Hammond, had reasons to dispose of Patrick Graham, but why would he drown one of his own employees, his long time second-in-command?”

“For simplicity’s sake, let’s agree to call the man Delacroix,” said Trevor, “and I have no idea why he might have turned on Henry or if he is even the one to have done the deed.  But the fact that Henry Newlove, a known boy-girl and about eighteen years of age, arrived in Paris the day before the Lady of the River was found cannot be coincidental.”

“That’s one piece,” Emma said.  “And here’s another.  While Gerry and I were walking the bank we encountered a prostitute wearing an obviously expensive outfit in various shades of plum, just as Rayley had described Isabel’s clothing on the day they climbed the tower.  The woman told us she had gotten these clothes from a client in payment, who in turn had gotten them in a trade for his own.  He had swapped his own workman’s clothes for those of a beautiful woman he met in a bar.  Are you still following me?”

Tom and Trevor nodded.

“The woman in the bar had been weeping,” Emma continued. “She was carrying a suitcase, and was most certainly Isabel Blout.  The bar was called The Laughing Woman, if you’d like a further piece of irony in our little story, and it’s located here, in the river district.”

“So we’ve drawn close to Isabel too,” Tom said. “She’s somewhere in this very ghetto, dressed as a man.”

“It all leads me to wonder,” said Emma, “is it possible that Isabel and Rayley are together?  Based on the fact they disappeared the same morning, many people have assumed as much and we’ve been the only ones to discount the idea.  Perhaps we discounted it too quickly.”

Tom frowned. “Are you suggesting that if she is free, then perhaps he is too?  And merely in hiding?”

Trevor was already shaking his head.  “Rayley wouldn’t hide.  I know the man.  No matter how acute the danger, he’d find some way to get a message to us, or at least to Rubois.”

“I agree,” said Tom. “In fact, that’s how I think of him, as the sender of messages.  But if Isabel is indeed still in Paris, that gives us another person we must find as soon as possible.  For it strikes me that she is in as much peril as Rayley.”

“May I speak?” Geraldine suddenly said.

Trevor was surprised by the meek request. “Of course.”

“Do you remember our conversation on the crossing?  We were discussing Shakespeare, and Tom said that since the female parts were played by men and that since the plays often had a woman pretending to be her brother, that what you had in the end was a man playing a woman playing a man.”  Geraldine looked around the group.  “I believe that is precisely what we are dealing with here.”

Tom grimaced. “I’m afraid you lost me on one of those turns.”

“I’m still with you,” said Trevor. “In fact, I’ve been thinking along the precisely same lines ever since we got the telegram.  Davy’s message had two parts, did it not?   And the second may be just as pertinent as the first.  Let’s consider this new and surprising fact that Henry had an older brother, apparently the most persuasive of all the boy-girls.  A paragon in fact, for Ian Newlove somehow managed to avoid growing more masculine with the passage of time and even ultimately married, or at least pretended to marry, a man.  So, we must ask ourselves, where is Ian now?”

“It’s hard to fathom but you must be right,” said Emma.  “Ian is Isabel.”

“But that’s impossible,” Tom said, looking from one to the other. “Well, isn’t it?  Isabel Blout has been accepted into the best homes in London for more than a decade and is known far and wide as a seducer of men.  For God’s sake, she was even painted by Whistler…”  He trailed off thoughtfully, then looked at Trevor.  “You saw that something was off the morning we viewed the portrait, didn’t you?  You called her out even then.”

“I assure you that I didn’t foresee all this,” Trevor said.

“But you said she wasn’t beautiful,” Tom said.  “You kept looking at her foot.”

“Poor Rayley,” Emma murmured. “I don’t suppose he knows.”

“I think it’s rather safe to say he doesn’t,” said Trevor.

“But of course her husband must have,” Tom said questioningly, looking directly at Geraldine. “What was George Blout’s part in all this?  Or was he merely history’s biggest fool?”

Geraldine shook her head. “From the very beginning, I’ve told you he was a confirmed bachelor.”

“Yes, you certainly did,” said Trevor, slumping back against the bench with a sigh.  “But I’m afraid none of us really understood what you meant by the phrase.  I was picturing a retired military man who liked to sit in stuffed armchairs and sputter on that women will never get the vote.  I didn’t grasp that you were really saying George Blout was homosexual.  Frankly, Gerry, that would have been a helpful thing to know.”

“Oh dear,” Geraldine said.  “I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear.  It was just a rumor, you know, and then he married a beautiful young girl and the rumor stopped.  I always suspected that he was using the marriage to hide behind, as untold numbers of homosexuals have undoubtedly done for centuries. Until just a few minutes ago it had never occurred to me that George had found a way to actually marry a boy.   It was something you said, Emma dear, about wondering if Isabel would be able to wear men’s clothing more effectively than you had.  And the thought just leapt there, fully formed in my head, that of course she would be able to pass as a man, because she was one.”

“She not only is one, but she is most likely Ian Newlove, Henry’s missing older brother,” Trevor said.  He shook his head.  “God, but the bloody pronouns are a muddle.   Calling her Isabel, seeing her as the woman she has played for so many years, will probably take us closer to the truth.  The question now becomes, does Isabel know that her brother is dead?  He was never displayed at the morgue and the French police did not release the fascinating fact that the body pulled from the Seine was actually a male dressed as a female, so the newspapers made very little of the incident.  Just another suicide in the Seine.  Small print on a back page.”

They all sat for a moment in silence.

“She must have learned something,” Emma finally said, “for literally overnight she went from a carefree woman who was flirting with Rayley to one who was begging for help.  Something scared her.”

“Remember the timeline,” Trevor said.  “The thing that scared her was almost certainly the discovery of Patrick Graham’s body.”  He abruptly stood, startling the others.  “I think the chances are good that Isabel suspects Henry is also dead but has no confirmation of her fears.  And I think we can use this information to flush her from her hiding place.”

“You must have a plan,” Tom said drily.  “You always stand up when you have a plan.”

“Our first task is to return to the police station,” Trevor said, “and tell Rubois that we believe we may have indentified his unidentified body.  With any luck, he will grant us permission to photograph Henry’s face.  And then we shall pay a call on Marjorie Mallory.”

“You’re hoping that she’ll write about The Lady of the River for the evening edition?” said Tom. “I agree the idea has possibilities – if Marjorie writes, for example, that the body of a boy dressed as a girl is going on display at the morgue, we may well lure Isabel there and thus into our trap.  But how can be sure that in her present straits, Isabel is even reading newspapers?  And even if she does see the evening edition and react, that wouldn’t happen until tonight or tomorrow morning and it may be too late for Rayley.”

“I’ve thought of all that,” Trevor said.  He turned to look out over the stunted rooflines of the tenements behind him.  “Rayley is near, I’m sure of it,” he said.  “When I go to the police station I’m going to ask Rubois for help, even if the help is merely Carle and himself.  We shall go door to door over this entire area until we find him.  But in the meantime, we must photograph Henry and run copies of that photograph.  I wasn’t thinking of a newspaper article, although Tom’s right, if my first plan doesn’t work, it isn’t a bad fallback idea.  I was thinking of making posters with Henry’s face.  You know the kind, the ones that say Does Anyone Know This Girl?  Newspaper offices have presses for such things, do they not, and I suspect Marjorie will help us in exchange for the exclusive rights to our story.”

“Posters,” Emma said.  “That’s perfect.  We can hang them all over the city.  Everyone in Paris looks at the kiosks as they pass, you almost can’t help yourself, so Isabel is much more apt to see a poster than read a newspaper.”

“Put an extra portion of them near the tower,” Gerry said.

Emma frowned. “You wanted to go to the tower, did you not?”

“Because I believe Isabel is there,” Gerry said.  “Wearing her new workman’s clothes and back in the role of Ian.  She evidently moves between the two identities as it suits her plan.”  Gerry nodded toward Emma. “The prostitute we interviewed mentioned that the night Isabel traded her clothes to the workman everyone in the bar was celebrating.  They’d just gotten the news that Eiffel had offered jobs to the street people – she said they call themselves the sewer rats – inviting them to work on the tower.  My guess would be Isabel took one of those jobs.”

“The elegant Isabel Blout performing day labor on the Eiffel tower?” Tom said skeptically.  “Why would she do that?”

“For money, I’m imagine,” Geraldine said archly.  “That’s why people most often work, is it not?  Consider this.  Isabel swapped her fine purple dress for a street person’s clothes, something she was unlikely to do if she had funds to simply buy a man’s shirt and pants.  We must assume that she escaped Delacroix with little more than the clothes on her back.  Well, that and her valise with more clothes and perhaps jewelry or a silver frame or porcelain figurine, something she could easily grab.  Women tend to have access to things more readily than they have access to actual money, so it’s safe to say she found herself immediately short of funds.  And where would an impoverished sewer rat go but to the tower?”

“They would never hire a woman to work on the tower,” Tom said.

“She is a man now, remember?” Emma said.

“Ah, yes,” Tom said.  “I must purchase one of those little notebooks everyone else carries just to keep this all straight.”

“Back to the plan,” Trevor said.  “Geraldine makes a good point, so we shall blanket the area around the tower with the posters.”  He was pacing back and forth in front of the others. “You all know I’m never comfortable with the thought of splitting the group…”  He scarcely needed to say why, for they all remembered the night that they thought they had caught the Ripper. The fact they had managed to get separated from each other on that dreadful, fog-filled evening had nearly meant the end of Emma and Tom’s sister Leanna.

“It’s sunny and bright here, lots of people about,” Emma said quickly.  “We’ll get so much more done if we each take a different task.”

“Let me help,” said Geraldine. “I know I’m slow…”

“You generally manage to stay a step ahead of us all,” Tom said, patting her shoulder.

“All right,” Trevor said decisively, turning to face them. “Emma and I shall go to Rubois and take care of the photography and the posters.  Tom, finish following that list of addresses, focusing on the ones that the flic said were in the river ghettos.  Geraldine, you shall take up a post on the riverbank and observe.”  He raised a palm to silence her before she could protest. “This is not a sop, I promise you.  If Rayley is being held in this area, someone is going back and forth to feed him, make sure he hasn’t escaped, that sort of thing.  I want you to monitor who is coming and going from these buildings.”

“And what am I to do if I see someone suspicious?”

“You do nothing,” Trevor said sharply.  “You take note of which door it was the person entered, which is tricky in itself, for as Tom and I have learned to our frustration, many of the dwellings on the river do not bear a marked address.  When Emma and I get back with the police you can point them in the right direction.”  Trevor looked around the group.  “For none of us, and I include myself in this statement, should approach Armand Delacroix on our own.  He’s a very dangerous man.  And when these posters begin showing up all over Paris I fear he will become a very desperate one.”

12:32  PM

“We shall probably need to go to one of the avenues if we hope to hail a carriage,” said Emma.

“Is that what you and Tom did this morning after your little swim?” Trevor asked.  “It’s all right,” he added, when Emma shot him a look that was half defiant and half guilty.  “Tom told me of your theory.  It’s not a bad one, you know, and I’m only sorry you felt the need to dissemble.”

They strode up the small street leading to the avenue for a few minutes in silence.

“You honestly don’t understand why I was evasive?” Emma eventually asked, when it became clear Trevor was waiting for some sort of response. “If I had come to you with the suggestion, things would have unfolded precisely as they did on that afternoon in Manchester.  You would have pretended to consider my idea and then put me off until you could test the notion before the boys.”  Emma sighed.  “But perhaps we shouldn’t speak of this now.”

“Oh, but I think we should,” said Trevor.  “It is always tempting to put off an unpleasant conversation until a time when circumstances have calmed.  We tell ourselves we will raise the thorny issue later, when the crisis is past us and everyone is in a proper frame of mind.  But then we are reluctant to shatter that fragile moment of peace, so the trouble remains buried until the next time of crisis.  Everyone likes the idea of discussions before a roaring fire, with a glass of wine in the hand and sleeping dogs at the feet, but it occurs to me that I have had the most significant conversations of my life in the middle of whirlwinds.  So if you have something to tell me, you may as well say it now, while we’re both exhausted, and worried, and trying to hurry.  It’s as good a time as any.”

“I want respect.”

“So you have said.  And so I have tried to give you.”  They had reached the mouth of the street and Trevor surveyed the crossroads to ascertain the most likely point for hailing a driver.  “But it seems that the word ‘respect’ is a vague one, especially when it comes to the relations between men and women.  What one woman deems respect, another might find insulting.”

“So if there’s a misunderstanding, it’s automatically the woman’s fault.”

Trevor turned to her, his narrow eyes weary and his shoulders slumped. “Dear God, Emma,” he quietly said. “I’m trying, am I not?  If I’m traveling such a distance to meet you, it seems you could at least walk a few steps in my direction.”

She knew he was right.  The definition of “respect” was nebulous, as confounding as the gender pronouns in this confounding case.  Rayley had worshipped Isabel Blout, but had he respected her?  Hardly, at least not by Emma’s standards.  Caught up in his romantic fantasies, Rayley had failed to see the most pertinent point about the woman he claimed to desire – that she wasn’t a woman at all.   It seemed that sexual attraction always had this effect of blunting our powers of perception.  Emma knew that Trevor cared for her and that he was struggling mightily to not let this affection blind him to her abilities.

“I suppose,” she said, “that we must first define what respect looks like for Emma and Trevor.”

“Quite right,” said Trevor, his confidence restored by her reasonable tone of voice. “Let us consider the evidence before us.  We are trying to hail a cab on a busy street corner in Paris and my arm is in the air but yours is not.  What can we conclude from this?”

Emma chuckled, genuinely amused.

“We might conclude,” she said, “that instinctively we both observe certain social constructs which are built around the notion of gender.  Men automatically step forward to hail cabs while women wait on the curb.”

“And if I ever manage to flag one down, shall I extend a hand to steady you as you step up?”

“I suppose that would be nice.  To be honest, I suppose I would expect it.”

“Even though I would not extend that same hand to help Davy or Tom.”

“All right, you’ve caught me.  I don’t want you to drop all the rituals that exist between men and women and I suspect we would both be quite lost if we tried to do so.  But here is the true question.  Will you entertain my ideas on an equal par of those of the men?  Will you allow me to fully join into the activities of an investigation?  Or will your first thought be that I might get hurt, that I should be protected from the dangers which are inherent in all police cases?”

“The truth?  Protecting you will always be my first thought,” Trevor said, as at last a carriage began to slow in front of them, the driver firmly pulling the horse to a stop.  “But I shall endeavor not to let it be my only thought.  I already take your ideas seriously, whether you believe it or not, and in the future I promise I will assign you more field work, even though the idea of you in danger very nearly makes my heart stop.”

“The police station,” Emma called up to the driver in French.  Trevor made an elaborate bow, doffing his hat with great ceremony and extending his palm to steady her.  She grinned and climbed into the carriage, with him stepping up behind her.  When they were seated, Trevor rapped the wall and the carriage rumbled into movement.

“And let me ask you this,” he said.  “If you ever find yourself in grave physical danger, would it be permissible for me to come to your aid?  After all, I have proven I will do as much for Rayley.”

“Of course. If you like, you might even come on a horse with a sword.”

“And if I’m in danger, how shall you come?”

She was looking out the window. “The truth?  I shall probably send one of the men.”

He laughed out loud then, and she began to giggle too.  He was right, she thought.  The best conversations are those that happen in a whirlwind.

“So this is the modern woman,” Trevor said, sitting back in relief, for the awkwardness that had existed between them ever since that afternoon in Manchester had dissipated at last.  “She demands complete equality until trouble rears its head and then she retreats behind the ramparts and dispatches the men into battle.  If you don’t mind me saying so, my dear, it isn’t completely logical.”

“I know,” said Emma. “But it is the price of admission, nonetheless.”

12:32  AM

Tom had picked up where the women had left off and had walked the final 400 steps of the riverbank.  It had taken them over seven hours to complete Emma’s experiment, he thought sadly, and she wasn’t even there for the culmination of the task.  Which is probably just as well, since walking 400 steps had brought him to a patch of a riverbank which looked like any other.  No sewer entrance, no clump of lodgings.

Just a bar.  He stood for a moment gazing at the doorless doorway and the darkness beyond.  How many afternoons had he spent in places such as this?  It would be easy to enter now – no one was with him, no one watching.  He was in a city that was not even his own.  And perhaps, who knows, the elusive Isabel Blout might happen to be sitting in this very –

But no.  He stopped himself and turned his body away from the door in the mute hope his mind would follow.  It was too easy to justify why one might enter a bar and he knew bloody well there would be no Isabel inside.  This sad little hovel, which he supposed was literally open all the time, held nothing but the exact same things he had found in dozens like it over the last three years.  Alcohol, lost hours, nameless women, and regret.

He had told Emma there were a dozen variables beyond their control in her experiment. Very well then, perhaps he should consider the possibility they had miscounted the number of necessary steps and walk a little further.

Within five minutes he had come to another sewer opening.  Plenty of dwellings were slammed right up against the concrete walls, but no people seemed to be about.  He didn’t see any shops or bars, but merely what looked like a line of uninhabited rooms sharing a single roof, hobbled together with mossy stones and mud.  The whole thing was a bit medieval in appearance and certainly off-putting.  He ventured closer and yelled “Rayley?” as loudly as he could.

No answer, except the sound of his own cry bouncing back to him. The same concrete and stone which caused his voice to echo would doubtlessly prevent any sound from penetrating the walls.  Tom scanned the building.  He could find no visible address, so trying to match this gloomy place to the locations on Rayley’s list was pointless.

There were perhaps twenty rooms in all.  In lieu of doorknobs they had rather odd looking levers and Tom chose the first one in the row and pulled it.  There was a bit of a rattle but very little movement.  The doorless bar had given him hope that few people attempted either privacy or security in these humble river dwellings, but these rooms seemed a different sort of structure and were likely meant for a different sort of purpose.  Perfect for hiding someone and admittedly not far from what Emma had imagined as a “base of operations” for Delacroix.

Tom went from one door to the next, systematically pulling each level and screaming “Rayley.”  It was unlikely he would be heard by anyone within this fortress, but it still seemed a chance worth taking.  None of the levers gave way and Tom could only hope that Trevor was successful in persuading Rubois to return to the river with him, ideally with a cadre of officers.  If there was no lock, and thus no key, he couldn’t imagine how one would gain entry to this strange building.  But perhaps there was an extraordinarily clever locksmith somewhere on the force – it certainly seemed the French had everything else – who could manage to solve the puzzle.  Short of that, they would have to use a battering ram.

Having tried the final door without success, Tom slowly backed away from the line of rooms, his boots sticking in the muck so badly that they were nearly pulled from his feet.  He should go back to where Geraldine waited, he thought.  Insist that she stay in that relatively safe place downriver and then proceed on his own to the police station for help.  Finding this fortress location was a promising lead, but a medical student going about screaming and rattling doors was not enough.  The task required proper officers, with proper tools.

As Tom turned to walk back down the river bank his eye caught on something lying in an open expanse of lawn.  The vegetation around the sewer was almost ridiculously verdant, and the grass was high, but perched on top was a small gray bundle.  Just when he stooped to pick it up, a nearby church bell struck one.

1:00 PM

The ringing of a single bell had always seemed to Rayley an ominous sound.   His burst of activity from the morning had faded and as he lay on his cot staring up at his single rectangle of light, he felt his first taste of pure, unadulterated fear.  That one gong, so ponderous and deep.  As his teacher back in public school would have said, perhaps the bell tolled for him.

He feared that a combination of drugs, hunger, and incessant darkness was causing him to hallucinate.  For just a minute earlier he had been jerked from a shallow nap – it seemed that Rayley never fully slept or wakened anymore, but rather existed in some sort of nether world between the two – by the impression that someone was approaching his cell.  But the door had not opened, no matter how hard he stared.  And then he had been further convinced he heard the sound of his own name, very dim and far away, and he had shouted back over and over that he was here, here, here, until his voice had utterly failed him.

Such was his state.  He had bundled together everything he possessed in the world and thrown it out a window.  He had even opted to half-blind himself in the process, and now he had likewise rendered himself mute.  All he had left was his mind.  What would become of him if he managed to lose that as well?

He sat back on his cot, heart pounding.  For the first time since he had been captured, Rayley let himself wonder what it would feel like to drown.

London

1:20 PM

Davy had finished writing up his report for Eatwell on his visit to 229 Cleveland Street.  The report was not dishonest, he told himself.  Merely incomplete.

Davy knew that his words were nothing like those of Trevor.  Trevor wrote forcefully, persuasively, each missive to his superiors not merely a summation of the facts, but a thinly veined appeal for greater funding for forensics.  In contrast, Davy’s lines were brief and toneless.  A story without a hero.

It would have mattered more if anyone ever read the reports.  Really read them, that is, with the sort of concentration that would have allowed a man to quickly distinguish Davy’s timid prose from Trevor’s bombast.  But Davy suspected Eatwell would do no more than skim the paper and toss it aside. The two pornographic books, included along with the liquor case and the second copy of Hammond’s thumbprint, might evoke slightly more interest.

Davy pulled on his jacket, and headed up the stairs.  He may as well eat his midday meal in a pub, he thought.  It wasn’t as if there was a kidney pie waiting for him at home.

He had done his job and done it well, so he could not have said why he was so dispirited as he walked through the gates of Scotland Yard and down the crowded street.  The day held a promise of spring, a promise that was not likely to be kept, since cold rain would most certainly return to London by the end of this endless April.  Davy knew he should enjoy the clear sky while he could, so he found himself walking, simply walking, even though he passed several reasonably-priced pubs where coppers often ate.

He had no idea what was happening in Paris and perhaps that was the source of his mood.  It was hard to live on twenty-word telegrams without truly knowing if Trevor was any closer to finding Rayley.  It appeared that events were moving quickly, but perhaps not quickly enough.  Trevor told him that most kidnapping victims were dead within two hours of being taken and the detective had now been missing…Davy shook his head.  Too many hours to count.

Charles Hammond would surely fall.  He would be arrested at least on a morals charge and most possibly for homicide as well, and with any luck the fingerprint would be a large part of the evidence used to convict him.   But even the knowledge that Scotland Yard would get their man did not bring Davy peace.  He knew that when Hammond fell he would take many others with him, including the boys on Cleveland Street.  Right now they lived in limbo, but if Hammond was convicted and jailed, there was no telling what would become of the house.  Where do boys go, Davy wondered, when they have seen and done so much by the age of fifteen?  The sea, he supposed, or the army.   Heaven help them there.

A carriage rolled by, larger and grander than the others in the street. The royal insignia was on the side - the arms of the Prince of Wales -  and behind the glass Davy caught a brief glimpse of its lone occupant.  The noble Duke of Clarence, staring straight ahead with his large impassive eyes.  He looks like the Queen, Davy thought with surprise, fully realizing the resemblance for the first time, and he wondered if the man would ever take the throne.  Everyone knew that Victoria intended to live forever and the Duke’s father was better than fifty, a ridiculous age for a Prince, with the beginning of his own reign nowhere in sight.  With any luck the Duke of Clarence would drink himself to death while the Queen and the Prince still lived and England would be spared a King Bertie.

The Duke had not looked happy as he passed.  None of the royal family could be accused of openly enjoying their life of luxury.  The Hanovers were, in fact, a gloomy and stolid tribe and Davy found that he wasn’t standing at attention, as he normally did whenever he saw a carriage with the royal insignia, but that he had instead continued to walk, his hands crammed in his pockets, his hat pulled low across his bow.  It felt odd to be still moving among all those people who stood respectfully still, all those who had halted in their progress and were craning their necks toward the carriage, straining for a look inside.

They don’t deserve it, he thought.  So many unknown souls suffer and die in their name, every day, and they can’t be bothered to look out the bloody window.  He thought of Detective Abrams, alone and enduring God knows what, and the boys back in Cleveland Street, pushing and shoving for each bite of kidney pie.

If his mother had known he had those thoughts, that he had continued to walk while a royal carriage passed… For that matter, even if Trevor had known…

Better the Queen than what’s to follow, Davy conceded.   At least Victoria had a sense of duty.  But she seemed to know so little of the world beyond the gates of Buckingham Palace.  Even her excessive mourning of Albert, which was now entering its third decade  - with, like her reign, no end in sight - was a privilege few women were granted.  Davy’s mother had surely loved his father just as much but, with a houseful of boys to feed, she had been back at her position as a seamstress the day after her husband was buried.

They don’t deserve it, Davy thought again, this time with more conviction.  They don’t understand the depth of sacrifice that is required to keep them on their high perch and, perhaps most galling of all, now that they’ve been set above us, they don’t even seem to enjoy it.

Davy wondered if he was becoming a radical.

Dear God, he certainly hoped not.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Paris

1:24 PM

“He looks like a child,” Emma said sadly.

“I know,” Trevor said.

They were in the morgue, where a photographer from the New York Times, under the forceful direction of Marjorie Malloy, was photographing Henry Newlove.  In order to get the most appealing angle on the corpse’s pretty face it had been determined that the photographer should stand above him, turning his lens directly down, a decision which had required the man to climb onto the mortuary slab and set up a tripod straddling Newlove’s supine form.  Rubois was standing against the opposite wall, a look of additional dismay on his face as he observed the process.  Collaborating with Scotland Yard was one thing.  Throwing in his lot with the New York Times appeared to be considerably more than the man had bargained for.

Rubois had informed Trevor upon his arrival that the courier had arrived with the fingerprint from London and that it was presently in the forensics laboratory, being compared to the print Geraldine had provided from the party.  Furthermore, the dockmaster records had shown that Armand Delacroix had been among the passengers disembarking in Calais on April 9, so if the two sets of fingerprints were declared a match, they could move in a definitive way.  The minute the laboratory report confirmed what everyone in the room expected, a contingent of the Paris police force would be unleashed on the streets in search of Armand Delacroix.

“Go with him,” Emma said to Trevor.  “No matter what the prints show, take Rubois and Carle and go back to the river bank and join the hunt for Rayley.  For even you must concede that I am capable of nailing posters to kiosks without supervision.”

“I’ll go with her,” Marjorie said, pausing long enough in her berating of the photographer to look over her shoulder.  “If we can somehow manage to get a good shot sometime within the few minutes” – and here she stopped to glare up at the man who buried beneath his black cloth and therefore presumably shielded from the heat of her derision – “we shall have our posters by two.”

“So quickly?” Trevor asked.  When it came to speed, Scotland Yard could certainly learn lessons from the press.

“Sir,” Carle called across the crowded room.  “The lab report has just come back.  We have a match.”

1:42 PM

“Well it is certainly a glove of quality,” Geraldine confirmed. “Not at all the sort of thing anyone living here would own and so I would guess it to be a missing part of the clothing that Isabel traded.  But why is it balled up in that queer shape?”

“Because something is stuffed inside of it,” Tom said.  He was struggling to undo the strip of cloth tied around the glove, which had been doubled back and knotted multiple times.  “I found it in the yard near this very strange building located upstream.  It was dropped, I suppose, by someone in the process of entering or leaving.”

“Dropped on purpose, perhaps?” Geraldine ventured.  “For this is not merely a glove, it is a package.”

“Perhaps,” Tom agreed, finally unsnarling the last knot and pulling the string from the bundle.  He shook the glove with his right hand and a bloody rat dropped out into his left.

“Heavens,” Geraldine said, startling to her feet despite herself.  Tom, who had managed to muffle his own cry of surprise, let the rat bounce to the ground and stared at what was left in his palm.  A few shards of glass which, if pieced together, would form a thick round lens.  The sort of lens that resided in the eyeglasses of only one person he knew.

“Look ,” Geraldine said, unraveling the long strip of cloth.  “It’s from a men’s store in London, is it not?”

“Excellent,” Tom said, staring at the evidence before him.  The fine glove, the dead rat, the shattered spectacle, and the label from Morgan and Taylor.  “Most excellent.  Rayley has sent us a letter.”

2:21 PM

The posters were shocking to behold, an unflinching portrait of a beautiful young girl, photographed at such close range that her features, from her doll-like eyes to her full lips, were each rendered slightly larger than life.  Emma and Marjorie had nailed one to every side of the kiosk which was located closest to the tower.

“There certainly are a lot of people coming and going,” Emma said, looking up at the base of the tower.  “We couldn’t pick Isabel out of this crowd if we tried.”

Marjorie shrugged. “With May 9 approaching, they’re got crews up from dawn to dusk, with little regard for what constitutes a humane workday.  But everyone comes down at sunset so any worker who has managed to avoid seeing the poster up to that point will surely be assaulted by Henry’s image then.  Come on.  I think the next place we should visit is the Champs-Elysees.”

“Of course,” Emma said, falling in step behind her.  “It’s very kind of you to help in exchange for an interview with Trevor, especially considering it may not further your own cause.  He told me that your editors expect you to produce a very different kind of story.”

The two women were walking across the broad lawn leading from the tower.  Construction was going on all around them, the international pavilions, Emma could only assume, and a miniature railroad was already in place, looking more like a child’s amusement than a serious means of transporting a crowd.  Marjorie was tall, and evidently unaccustomed to adapting her gait as a man might do as a courtesy to a smaller woman, so Emma found herself almost trotting beside her.

“This is one serious story he might actually find fit to print,” Marjorie said with a snort. “Seeing as how it has plenty of sex and scandal.  But even if he doesn’t accept it, I won’t so much mind.  I’m doing this for Patrick.”

Emma nodded, glad that at least one person in this mad little chase was motivated by the newsman’s memory, for he was certainly getting the least attention of Delacroix’s triad of victims.  They had come to the end of the lawn and turned right and Emma found herself approaching one of the most beautiful streets in Paris, if not the world.  She had always sworn that someday she would stroll the Champs-Elysees, although she had never imagined the scene quite like this one, with her all but running alongside a hammer-swinging American reporter.  But her life and her frustrations are probably much like mine, Emma thought, as they arrived at their first kiosk and Marjorie pulled a poster from the saddlebag slung over her shoulder.

“Does it ever bother you,” Emma asked, while holding the poster straight for Marjorie, “being told what the news of the day is or is not to be?”

Marjorie smiled grimly around the nails she was holding in the corner of her mouth.  “Does it ever bother you,” she answered, “being told what is and is not a crime?”

2:30 PM

Over the seven decades of her life, people had called Geraldine Bainbridge many things, but no one had ever called her a fool.  She knew that she had been posted at this extraordinarily unremarkable spot on the river bank for one reason and one reason alone:  to be kept out of the way.

When the contents of the glove had proven that they were indeed on the verge of finding the precise location where Rayley had been taken, Tom had headed towards the street, hoping to waylay a flic for assistance or, better yet, to intercept Trevor on his way back to the river.  He had brushed aside Geraldine’s quite sensible suggestion that she would be of more use if she moved upstream to stand guard at the sewer fortress itself.

“It’s not safe, Auntie,” Tom had said, in what was a rather infuriatingly condescending tone for a twenty year old man to assume.  “It’s one thing for you to sit here, in this area which may be dreary but is at least well-traveled.  In fact, it’s the bloody Champs-Elysees compared to what awaits upstream.  It’s impossible to blend in and observe when there are no people to blend in with.  You understand, do you not?”

She understood perfectly.  He was saying that she was old and fat and female, a bad combination in a detective and thus quite out of her element.  He was right on all counts, of course, but that did not excuse the sentiment.

Geraldine watched Tom disappear up the bank and then stood to better survey her options.  Tom was correct inasmuch as she could hardly sit herself down outside a fortress and wait for someone to approach, when that person would most certainly be either Delacroix or one of his dreadful minions.  But there must be a way in which she could draw close enough to discreetly observe.  Geraldine pinched her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger, a gesture which from girlhood had been a sign she was deep in thought, and slowly turned in a circle to peruse the area.

Ah yes.  Of course.

Seventy-one years under Rule Britannia had left Geraldine Bainbridge with a profound appreciation of the tactical advantages of a naval assault.   She had been quite silly not to think of it earlier, for within sight were any number of small watercraft which she might logically commandeer.  Simple rowboats, most of them, piloted by men in rags who were dragging the riverbank with nets, presumably in search of fish.  Geraldine quickly settled on one of the boats, which was a bit more sizeable than the others and held two men.  If rowed upstream, it would offer the perfect vantage point for her surveillance mission and would provide safety besides.  For no man on foot, no matter how angry he might be, could overtake a rowboat.

Geraldine walked resolutely down to the edge of the water where, in lieu of a proper dock, the fishermen were merely launching from the muddy bank.  “Good day,” she called out, in what she considered her best French. “I am in need of assistance.”

None was forthcoming.  In fact, all the men within earshot turned away in a most rude fashion, proving that when it came to badly spoken French, even the indigent fishermen of Paris were snoots.  Geraldine tried again.

She didn’t quite know how to say “I wish to hire you,” so instead she called out “I wish to buy something,” which were indeed the first words she had ever learned in French.

A collective deafness continued to possess them all.  Geraldine decided to switch to a more universal language.  She unfastened the purse which dangled at her side, pulled out a wad of money, waved it in the air, and shrieked “Voila.”

The auditory senses of their captains thus miraculously restored, the entire small fleet paddled around in the water and began to approach her position on the bank.   Geraldine signaled to the half-rotted tub she had come to think of as “the big boat,” which was indeed bearing down upon her with the most speed.  The others stopped rowing and fell back, filling the air with curses, and within minutes Geraldine was seated on the back bench of the rowboat, her two oarsmen paddling upriver in an enthusiastic, if somewhat unsteady, cadence.

“To the sewer,” she called, and one of them looked back at her and nodded, although it was unlikely he understood what she meant.  Going upriver, even against the gently meandering flow of the Seine, seemed to confound them and as a team they were badly yoked, with one of the men far larger than his partner.  They hit the rocks on one side of the bank with a thud that caused Geraldine to release a little yelp of surprise, then grossly overcorrected and hit the bank on the other side.  Snarling at each other, pushing off from the rocks with their splintery oars, the two finally managed to somewhat synchronize their strokes and begin to progress upstream, accompanied by the derisive hoots of their comrades and the vagrants on the shore.

Geraldine clutched both sides of the boat and prepared herself for a bumpy voyage – or perhaps even a swim.  There was, she reflected, a reason why no one ever spoke well of the French navy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Paris

2:49 PM

Arrest warrant in hand, Trevor, Rubois, Carle, and a half dozen flics climbed into a police wagon and headed out in search of Armand Delacroix. To his gratification and surprise, Trevor had been handed a set of paperwork by Rubois before they left the station.  It was embossed with a seal, some sort of document that Trevor could only assume temporarily afforded him the privileges of the French police.

But at the white brick house on the Boulevard Saint Michal, they found nothing but a handful of servants and a twelve year old boy in knee breeches, who was in the back yard lazily swirling on a swing.  Marianne, evidently, caught in his more natural form, and the police swept up the child along with the others, herding them toward a second wagon for transfer back to the station.  Repeated shouted assurances that they were being carted in as witnesses, not suspects, did nothing to calm the excitable flock, who were weeping and wailing as if they were standing witness to the Biblical end of days.  The cook, forced to abandon a half-baked chicken, had proven especially vocal.

“You will be all right,” Trevor said at one point to the boy, who was standing solemnly to one side.  The child blinked slowly, as if he did not understand what Trevor was saying.   But he couldn’t have forgotten his English so quickly, so it was more likely a matter that he understood Trevor well enough, but simply did not believe him.  Waiting amid the loudly lamenting servants the child remained silent, and when it was time to board the wagon, he climbed in passively, prepared to be transported to this unexpected new fate without protest or even a question.  Trevor gazed after him sadly as the wagon lumbered up the street.  It was hard to predict what life held in store for the boy known as Marianne.

After that, the remaining officers reassembled and reentered their own wagon.  Through Carle, Trevor managed to convey to Rubois that it might be a wise move to return to the river.  That was their agreed-upon meeting place, after all, once Emma finished with the posters and Tom with the addresses.  And Gerry would be waiting there too, of course, her mind undoubtedly churning with possibilities.  Considering her nature, Trevor feared he may have already left her too long on her own.

3:01 PM

Henry was dead.  This was the private shame Armand Delacroix had lived with for the past two weeks, but did the entire city of Paris have to know it as well?

His nightmare had rendered him unwilling to return to sleep, so Armand, who had never held to traditional hours of work and rest, had risen from his bed and taken to the streets.  Under the circumstances, it was probably not a bad idea to make a few social calls.  All those men who claimed to miss Isabel so badly…they needed to be reassured that business would proceed as usual, that Armand had options still available for their perusal.  If not Marianne, then someone else.  Perhaps even a boy who looked like a boy if that was how their inclinations lay, for he was hardly one to judge.  In a time of crisis, as this most surely was, it was essential that Armand cement the trust of his most important clients, and that he bring any lost sheep resolutely back to the fold.

He had gone first to see a trader of bonds, an unpleasant blowhard with strong ties to the financial community of Paris and thus to the Exhibition.  After a brief chat with the fellow – and an invitation to Armand’s next soiree on April 29 – Armand was back on his rounds and making his way toward the office of a minor politician, a man whose own pockets were not particularly deep but who had proven connected to a wide spectrum of potential investors.  And as he had paused at the corner of a residential street, Armand had seen it.

Do You Know This Girl?

If you did, the poster advised you to immediately contact the French police.  Some business about a reward.

Armand felt as if he had been struck with a blow to the head.  He reeled.  He may have staggered. The world spun, bright and terrifying, before his eyes.

Henry had resurfaced. He had come, for all practical reasons, back from the dead, pointing a milky white finger at the head of Armand Delacroix.  The police most certainly knew they didn’t have a girl, that what they had was a boy, a boy dressed as a girl, and thus a rather interesting sort of fish to catch.  As he tried to regulate his breath, his hand clutching the very lamppost that held the damning poster, Armand felt that it was all closing in on him somehow.  Isabel was still missing and Cleveland Street had collapsed.  And now here was Henry, loosened from the water and in the hands of the police.

He couldn’t go back to the house at the Boulevard Saint Michal.  If the police were onto him, then that would be the first place they would look.  He must get money, he thought, he must go to his bank before it closed at five and he must withdraw all the funds at his disposal and then he would go…where?   Somewhere.   Across some border, into Italy or Austria, Germany or Spain.  Someplace where Charles Hammond and Armand Delacroix did not exist.

He looked around, tried to remember who he was, where he was.  Not to panic, he thought.   Nothing was so deadly as panic.  The clock on the corner said just past three, which gave him nearly two hours to get the money and he could easily be gone from Paris by dusk.   Armand pushed off of the lamppost, his hand dragging across the picture of Henry Newlove’s face – pulling it, tearing it – and began to walk down the street.  But Henry was waiting for him on the next corner too, and also watching from across the street, his eyes accusing, his lips in a pouty sneer.  “Outrun me, will you?” he seemed to be saying. “There is no point.  I am on every avenue and boulevard, just waiting for you to pass.”

Yes, get the money, Armand thought, desperately trying to hold onto a sequence of logical thought.  Get the money and get out of Paris.  But first you must do something about that inconvenient Detective Abrams.

3:16 PM

Henry was dead.

He had known it and he had not known it, not fully, not until he had taken the elevator down to the street.

Ian had not seen the poster at once.  He had spent his afternoon breather precisely as he had spent all his brief moments of leisure - taking the broken bits of pastel from his pockets, finding a bit of shade,  and settling down to draw.  Today he had found himself sketching the face of one of the men who worked beside him, a broad ruddy fellow, porcine but friendly, a layer of tile.  A random human face, one of any you might pass in a day, but James had taught him that there was a particular challenge in drawing strangers, for you had to give them an imagined history when you didn’t know what their true one might be.  Ian had finished the outline of the man’s head and was beginning with the curve of his brow when he happened to glance up at the kiosk before him.

He did not immediately react.  Did not flinch or make a noise.  He rose as if in a dream and walked towards the poster.  Stooped and read the fine print.  The body of a girl, it said, but there was no doubt that the face before him was Henry’s.  Found on the morning of April 12, it said, perhaps the only part of the brief description which Ian did not on some level expect.  For this meant that his brother had been dead for more than two weeks.  That Henry had been dead even before the afternoon Ian sketched Rayley, before the party for the Exhibition, before they climbed the tower, before Graham was drowned.

It was a level of betrayal that Ian would not have guessed was possible.  Armand had not only killed Henry, the child he had promised to protect, but after killing him he had been able to go convincingly about his everyday life.  He had taken Isabel to cafes and to parties, he had swirled champagne and laughed and kissed her forehead, all the while knowing that she would never see her brother again.

Ian dropped his pastels, which bounced at his feet and scattered, small stubs of color against the broad gray expanse of cement.  He pulled the poster from the kiosk and slipped it inside his shirt, then went to the elevator.  For once he was unaware of the noise of the ascent.   As he emerged on the first level he noted, as if he were watching them from a great distance, the movements of the other workers and the chatter of their voices.  There was even more activity on the second level, welders and painters and men on ladders hanging globes that would someday be filled with light.  So many people, each with their own faces, their own scars and worries and each absorbed with their own tasks, this was the key thing.  Ian looked around him slowly, and waited until he was sure that no one was looking back.

And then he burst up the final staircase, the highest and thinnest of them all.  The one that led to his sanctuary.  The spiral was tight and the center post was slightly swaying, requiring a man to twist his body, forcing him to climb unnaturally, almost in a sidestep.  The afternoon sun shone wickedly bright on his face, blinding him, making it hard to see the small steps, so that Ian stumbled, not once but twice, with one hand holding the slender railing and the other clutching his brother’s picture to his chest.  It was an ascent which might have frightened a man who had anything left to lose.

3:37 PM

This time was different.  His prison door had opened on several occasions during his three days of captivity, each time bringing a sudden searing light to the small cell.  It was always frightening, always jolting Rayley from his reveries which were becoming ever deeper and more disorienting, his dreams so persuasive that at times he wondered if he were already dead.  Perhaps this was what death was like – all solitude and memory, the sense that one was a hollow vessel, floating atop a dark sea.

But this time was different.  This time it was only Armand who entered, and there were none of the man’s false pleasantries, none of his questions or innuendos.  He advanced upon Rayley decisively, the cloth already in his hand and, most tellingly of all, he left the cell door open.  One way or another, Rayley knew his imprisonment was coming to an end.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Paris

3:41 PM

Maintaining one’s position in a flowing river required a constant rowing against the current, a reality of physics which Geraldine’s two oarsmen were not bearing with particular good grace.  She had found the location Tom described easily enough, its muddied walls and irregular lines reminding her of structures she had seen during her time in India, buildings which seemed to have pushed their way up from the dirt of their own volition, with no evidence of human design.  They had been bobbing there in front of the fortress for what she guessed to be about twenty minutes, periodically being pulled downstream a few feet and having to row back.

Geraldine knew that her crew was both tiring and utterly mystified as to the purpose of their mission, but each time they slipped downstream she had lost sight of the building for a precious few minutes.  She spoke sharply to the two men.  Her only function was to stand guard and she refused to fail at even that.

But fail she did, for after the latest of their drifts they had rowed back to find that one of the  innumerable doors of the building had been shockingly altered during their brief absence.

It now stood open.

“Hush,” Geraldine hissed and even her half-witted oarsmen seemed to notice the change and to mark it as significant, for they hunkered low in the rowboat and dug into the water with deeper, more decisive strokes.  Geraldine strained to see over the vegetation, aware that she was holding her breath.  Within seconds, the sleek figure of Armand Delacroix appeared in the doorway.  He glanced to the right and then to the left, but he did not look down to the river.  Which was fortunate indeed, for while the reeds and brambly bushes partially concealed the presence of the rowboat, a proper look would have given their position away.

Delacroix disappeared and was almost immediately back, this time staggering under the weight of the burden he was carrying, a thin pale man who was clearly unconscious, with his arms and legs limp in Delacroix’s arms and his head thrown back.   Geraldine had never seen Rayley Abrams, but this was most certainly him.  She was gripping the sides of the rowboat so tightly that she could feel her heart pounding in her fingertips.  Was he dead?  But no, most likely not.   For the modus operandi of Delacroix was to drug and release, to let the Seine serve as his accomplice in the act of murder.

Delacroix struggled toward the riverbank, his feet slipping in his descent, for the shore was soft and, while Rayley was not heavy, his limp form was ungainly enough to pull Delacroix off balance.  He dropped Rayley with a heartless thud at the edge of the water and then stood back, looking around for something.   Most likely a stone to weight the body.

Perhaps this is what broke Geraldine out of her paralysis, the fact that Delacroix’s attention was shifting from Rayley to the riverbank, the fact that any second now his gaze would lift and he would see them there, the old woman and the vagrants, hiding in the reeds in a rowboat, watching.  For something propelled her into action.  She abruptly stood, to the great consternation of her oarsmen, who went scrambling to right the boat and keep them all from pitching into the Seine.

Geraldine rose shakily, her legs braced as far apart as they would go, the boat bucking and shifting beneath her.  “Charles Hammond,” she called, “I come in the name of Scotland Yard.”

3:41 PM

“That’s all we have,” Marjorie said, pulling her empty saddlebag open as if she believed Emma might somehow doubt her.  “A hundred posters went up and that surely is enough to accomplish your mission.  Although I must say that I’m still not entirely sure what that mission is.  The police already have a warrant for Delacroix, do they not?”

“He’s undoubtedly within their custody as we speak,” said Emma.  “Trevor didn’t tell you why we wanted the posters?”

Marjorie shook her head, her short curls bobbing around her face.   She’s quite fashionable in a very unfashionable way, Emma thought.  The very fact she doesn’t try gives her an unusual sort of appeal.  The two women were making their slow progress back to the rendezvous point at the riverbank.

“Our goal is to flush out Isabel Blout, which is the British name of the woman you know as Isabel Delacroix,” Emma said.  There was certainly more to add but she wasn’t sure how Trevor would feel about her talking to a newspaperwoman, even one who had been as helpful to their cause as Marjorie. “We believe she is still in Paris, but low on funds and living as one of the sewer rats.”

Marjorie let out a low whistle. “Hard to imagine her blending in down there.”

“True.  But a witness told us she traded her clothes for those of a working man’s and she has presumably assumed a male identity.  I know, I know,” she added hastily, as Marjorie screwed her face into a disbelieving frown.  “It sounds quite fantastical and that’s only a small part of the even more fantastical story.  But the reason that I wanted to put the preponderance of posters near the tower is that we also believe she may be working there.”

“Wow,” said Marjorie.

“Yes,” said Emma.  “’Wow’ is precisely the word.”

“Even harder to picture Isabel Delacroix working on the tower,” Marjorie said thoughtfully. “Although at least she doesn’t have a fear of heights.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, it’s just that the morning they took us all up,” Marjorie said, “they posed me against the railing so that the pictures would have something in the forefront for perspective…”  She trailed off with a chuckle. “I was terrified but I tried hard not to let on.  The wind is so fierce when you’re right there against the edge like that.  You almost feel as if it’s going to lift you up and carry you away.”

“I can imagine,” said Emma.

“Actually you can’t,” said Marjorie. “That’s the thing about the tower.  You stand on the ground and look up at it and you think you can imagine what it would feel like to be at the top.  So you have these expectations but then, when you’re there, the reality is so much more miraculous and intense and terrifying from anything you had foreseen.”

The two women paused in their steps and looked back.  From the angle where they stood, only the highest section of the tower was visible, the spire rising behind the rooftops of the houses and shops.  “Anyway,” Marjorie continued, “being in the pictures required me to stand against the railing while all the photographers were shooting and all the reporters were trying to tell the photographers how to do their jobs.  So everyone was focused on me, you see, and I was looking the other direction, toward the center of the tower.  I imagine I’m the only one who saw them.”

“Saw who?” Emma said warily.

“Detective Abrams and Isabel Delacroix.  There’s a spiral staircase that runs right up the center of the tower, sort of like….like a spine, I guess you’d say.   It commences on the first level, where we all were, and continues to the second, which wasn’t finished on the day we climbed. And the rumor is that it goes even higher, to a third level, which isn’t open to the general public.  Do you see it?  The top level, I mean?”

Emma squinted toward the tower.  “You mean that third horizontal line, just at the very top?   What could possibly be up there?”

“Eiffel’s aerie.”

“Aerie?”

“Perhaps it’s more of an American term,” Marjorie conceded. “An aerie is an eagle’s nest, generally built in the highest point of a tree.  It provides the most spectacular and breathtaking views of all and the rumor is that Gustave Eiffel has built himself a private apartment on this third level, accessible only by this final link in the spiral staircase.  No bigger than a room, they say, but  I don’t know anyone who claims to have actually seen it, so, who knows, the whole thing may be a hoax.  But still, there’s a staircase leading up from the second level and a staircase has to go somewhere, wouldn’t you say?”

Emma simply stood staring at the tower and Marjorie laughed.  “Just being on the first level was alarming enough,” she said. “Even though everyone was trying to treat it as a grand adventure.  No one wanted to be the first to show nerves, so we were all chattering away, going on and on about how wonderful it all was.  I couldn’t believe anyone in the group had the guts to go higher.”

Emma turned back to her.  “Whatever do you mean?”

“When I was posing near the railing,” Marjorie said, falling back into a walk with Emma once again trotting beside her, “I was of course facing back toward the center where the spiral staircase was and I saw Isabel and Detective Abrams begin to climb it.  I thought it was a jest when they started – you know, a few steps up and then right back down - but they kept going until they had climbed completely out of sight.  All the way to the second level, I suppose.  Was he a daredevil?”

“You must be joking.”

“That’s what I thought,” Marjorie said with a rakish grin. “It was my impression that she was goading him into it.  That she was determined to climb so he felt compelled to go with her, you know, to offer protection.  We women do that sort of thing sometimes, don’t we?  Lead men to places they don’t want to go?   Sometimes I wonder why they bother with us at all.”

“Sex,” Emma said shortly.  She was tired already and Marjorie’s loping gait had not slowed at all in the midst of her storytelling.

“Yes, sex,” Marjorie said.  “That’s the only thing that explains it.  But all I really know is that Isabel took off climbing that tiny little sliver of a staircase and then poor kind Detective Abrams took off behind her.”

None of Rayley’s letters had described that part of the morning, Emma thought, as the women continued to walk, the blocks growing shorter as they neared the river.  I wonder if he even made mention of it in his private letters to Trevor.  Probably not – it was a thoroughly silly thing for him to do, and only served as further proof of how completely the Blout woman had brought him under her spell.  But Marjorie’s story did raise one interesting point.  Rayley and Isabel must have both known of the existence – or at least the rumored existence – of Eiffel’s aerie.

“They say he’s filled it with incredibly valuable things,” Marjorie suddenly added.  “Eiffel’s aerie, I mean.  Crystal and fine furnishings and art from his personal collection.  Of course, no one has a theory on how they got any of that stuff up there.  Or how they would ever get it back down.”

3:42 PM

The unexpected and accusatory sound of his true name pulled Delacroix up short.  He rose from his search, a sizable stone in his hand, and stared downriver at a sight which must have struck him as a scene from a comic opera.  Geraldine, struggling to stand and using her parasol in much the manner of tightrope walker to stabilize herself, shrieking “Charles Hammond, I come in the name of Scotland Yard.”

Delacroix momentarily stood transfixed. Geraldine was perhaps thirty feet away, but advancing fast.  For a moment he seemed to consider the option of throwing his stone at her but then thought better of it.  (Geraldine had already decided she could probably deflect any such attempt with her parasol, having proven quite proficient at lawn tennis fifty-four years earlier at Miss Eloise’s Academy for Ladies.)  Instead he turned on his heel and retreated to where Rayley lay sprawled.  There, to Geraldine’s horror, Delacroix thrust the stone under the man’s shirt and rolled him into the water.

Rayley sank at once, truly sucked beneath the Seine, with a single bubble escaping to mark the spot.  Delacroix then scrambled up the bank on all fours and Geraldine, her body reacting faster than her mind, plunged into the water herself.  Her feet sank immediately into the mud of the river bottom, so she opted to swim.  She knew precisely where Rayley was, of course.  The question was whether or not she could lift him.

The French were screaming above her.  She paddled as close to the riverbank as possible and then dove, where her reaching hands were almost immediately rewarded with the discovery of one of Rayley’s limbs.   Roll him, she thought.  Roll him over and the rock shall drop from his shirt.  Kicking furiously, unable to see through the muddy water, she felt her way along his torso and turned him.  And then, to her shock, he felt his hand grab hers.

He was conscious?  No, it was the hand of one of the oarsman, stout fellow, who had leapt to her aid.  Together they lugged Rayley to the top of the water and the man held his face free while Geraldine located and removed the stone. His comrade tossed them a net, a sad affair with more holes than rope to it.  They draped the net around Rayley, and while they waited to be towed in, Geraldine pounded his back.  The gesture forced up a gush of water and then he coughed, something Geraldine knew was a very good sign.

3:44 PM

From the police wagon, Trevor spied Tom, walking at a furious pace toward the avenue.  He rapped for the driver to stop and leaned out the window to flag him down.

“Buildings near the sewer,” Tom gasped. “Just as Emma said.  And we found –“

Trevor pulled him up into the crowded coach where Tom caught his breath and then gave an abbreviated version of the last hour’s events, focusing on the location of the building with many doors and the contents of the glove.

“Rayley is in one of those rooms,” Tom said.  “I’m sure of it, but there are so many doors.”

With Carle in his usual role, the driver was directed to the part of the street which corresponded to the sewer down below.  The flics hopped out first and ran to the back of the wagon where they began to pull out a variety of implements - including, Tom was gratified to note, picks and shovels.  The officers followed, Trevor stepping down last with his heart pounding.   We are here, he thought, we have found him.   As the afternoon had stretched on toward evening, Trevor’s sense of dread had been steadily growing.  The first two bodies had been released in the deep of the night, and were found at dawn.  It would seem that Delacroix, like so many criminals, preferred to transact his business during those hours when the rest of the city slept.

Tools collected, the group began making their way toward one of the narrow alleyways which presumably led down to the water.  They were nearly at the mouth of the alley when a man burst out running.   Delacroix coming straight toward them, muddy and wild-eyed, stumbling nearly into their arms.  The flics surrounded him and Rubois pulled out his handcuffs and began shouting orders, but Trevor and Tom did not linger to witness the arrest.  They were already running down the alley toward the water, Tom in the lead and Trevor stumbling behind, each of their minds gripped with the same thought.  For if Delacroix was fleeing the scene, they had come too late.

3:45 PM

Bidding goodbye to Marjorie at the corner, Emma walked the final block alone.  Strange that she would remain focused on this one fact with so much unresolved in the case, but she could not seem to get the idea of Eiffel’s aerie from her mind.

“Think,” Trevor would sometimes tell them, in the midst of the Tuesday Night Murder Games.  “Think as if you are someone other than yourself.  Close your eyes and slip your skin and imagine yourself in the body of a stranger.  A criminal, a victim, a witness.  What does that person see?  What do they feel?   How do they eat and sleep and dress and work?  What motivates them?”

I am Ian, Emma thought, as she wove her way along the crowded sidewalk, dotted with the working class citizens of Paris.  Selling apples, selling beer, selling fish - selling their own flesh if need be, anything to hold onto this narrow spat of ground.  For beneath them, literally just a few steps below this street, was a broad slope of grass that led to the most profound destitution.  How easy it must be to slip from this shaky limb of relative respectability, how easy to begin to roll.  You develop a cough, lose your job, find yourself carrying a baby you can’t feed, or run afoul of the flics…one mistake is all it takes until you find yourself sleeping by the river, sunk as low as one can sink in this particular city.

I am Ian walking this street, Emma thought.  No, better yet, I am Isabel.  Only a few precious remnants of my former life have come with me – the valise with my clothes, a bit of money, the things I grabbed up before I fled.  What do I do with the valise while I work during the day?  It marks me as wealthy, it marks me as a woman, yet I dare not leave it behind.  Things are stolen within minutes in this part of town.  I could rent a room but the cost of one, even here, would so dilute my earnings from the tower…

Ah, the tower.  I could hide the bag there.

Perhaps I could even hide myself.

Emma turned at the bar whose name she had noted from the morning, the rather unimaginative La Rose, and strode down to the point where they had all agreed to meet.  Trevor and Tom were not there, which did not fully surprise her, but neither was Geraldine, which did.

Emma paused at the place on the stone wall where they had left Geraldine sitting.  A glove was lying on the ground.  Small, dainty, expensive.  The sort Geraldine wore, but this was not Geraldine’s glove, or at least not one of the pair she had been wearing when they left the house that morning.  Had Francine dropped it during their interview?

Emma bent to pick it up, grimacing at the sight of a nearby rat snarled in a bit of cloth.  But then her eye something else.  Glittering shards of glass, several of them, the largest one magnifying the blade of grass beneath it.   Not just glass, she realized, but a lens.   A thick one, the sort that resided in the eyeglasses of Rayley Abrams.  Emma looked around helplessly.   What sort of puzzle was this and where was Geraldine?

3:46 PM

Trevor and Tom found the door open, the only open door among so many locked ones, and ran into the cell.  There they discovered a bed, a cup, and a man’s handkerchief, but no Rayley Abrams.

Tom turned, but for once Trevor was faster. They rushed toward the river, where Trevor stumbled in while Tom ran the length of the bank, hoping against hope he would find a man floating.  Later, when he would consider this moment, what Tom would most recall is that neither man spoke.  The whole world, in fact, had gone soundless.  No birds, no people, even the splashing from Trevor’s hands and feet seemed muted and vague.

He reached time and time again, staggering through the mud from one part of the river to another, but each time, his hands came up with nothing but water.  Water and more water.  Endless water.

3:56 PM

“Watch him,” Rubois said to the flics.  Delacroix had crumpled, and was lying with both his hands and feet bound in the back of the police truck.  It seemed as if all the fight had gone out of him, but Rubois had certainly seen cases where it would have appeared that a suspect was utterly subdued, only to have the man mount some final spasm of resistance.  He sent one flic back to the central station to request the river patrol and left two to guard the prisoner while he, Carle, and the others followed the alley to the water.

There he found more or less what he had expected.  An open door, an empty room, the British detectives fruitlessly combing the river, one of them plunging over and over into the water and the other walking the bank stone-faced, already in possession of the truth.

“We will bring down the boats to sweep the river,” Rubois called to Trevor.  “If Detective Abrams is in there, we will find him.”  As he grew closer, he added more quietly, and with more sympathy.  “Perhaps you wish to talk to Delacroix.  Once we get a prisoner within the walls of the station, I am afraid he is ours.  This is French soil, after all, and he must answer for our crimes before he answers for yours.  But if you come now I can give you a few minutes in the wagon.  You can ask him whatever you wish and we shall…I assure you, we shall look the other way.”

Carle translated and Rubois watched comprehension slowly growing in Trevor’s eyes as he made his way back to the bank and struggled out, his hands trembling so violently he could scarcely grasp the reeds and grass to help pull himself up the bank.  If there was any truth left in Armand Delacroix, Rubois was offering Trevor the chance to beat it out of him.

“You know you can’t,” Tom said, suddenly at his side with his voice so low and calm that Trevor might have mistaken it for the sound of his own conscience.  “You’re Scotland Yard and that has to mean something, even here.  We can interrogate him, of course, but I doubt he’ll give us anything we don’t already know.  And there’s no reason to wait for boats to come and sweep the river.  If Rayley’s gone under, we both know well enough where he will surface.”

Trevor nodded, although his limbs were giving way and he couldn’t totally come to terms with what all these voices were telling him.  It would seem that he had failed yet again.  Not failed in capturing the criminal, for the man who had caused this nightmare was trussed and tied in the back of a police wagon.  Whether justice took the form of a blade in Paris or a rope in London was all the same, for either way Delacroix would be gone from the earth.  And perhaps this counted as success by some standards.

But not for Trevor.  He was beginning to realize that for him law enforcement would always be more about protecting the innocent than punishing the guilty.  What good would a thousand closed cases and citations do him if he couldn’t save the people he knew and cared for?  First he had lost Emma’s sister to the Ripper and now Rayley too was gone.  Or perhaps, most dreadful thought of all, he had even caused it.  The posters, which had been his idea, had apparently not merely forced Delacroix’s hand but driven him into a frenzy of destruction.

“It’s not your fault,” Tom said firmly, his hand on Trevor’s arm, for the man’s stricken facial expression showed well enough what he was thinking.   “You did what you thought was best. We all did.  Once a criminal has taken a hostage, he holds all the cards.  You’ve told us that many times.”

Trevor nodded, although the younger man’s words seemed to be coming from far away.  He was going into a type of shock, he realized with relief, a sort of protective numbness that would allow him to function.  For this day was not yet over and Trevor knew he still owed Rayley Abrams two things.  He must retrieve his body from the Seine and he must find Isabel Blout.

4:11 PM

The flic Rubois had dispatched to summon help must have flown on the wings of angels – or at least shouted the news to every fellow officer he’d passed – for within minutes a handful of police had gathered, representing a variety of functions and ranks.  Trevor and Tom accepted their offer of an official carriage and headed back down the street in the direction of the bridge where the whole matter had started, the bridge where it would likely end.  The bridge where Emma and Geraldine would be waiting for them.  Although they did not say it during their brief and silent ride, Tom and Trevor were thinking the same thing.  It took thirty minutes for a body to float downstream from the sewer to the bridge.  They needed to arrive at the bridge before that much time had passed or the women waiting there might be subjected to an experience from which they might well never recover.

But when they arrived, they found only Emma, sitting on the same stone wall where they had left Geraldine, slapping a glove against her palm and looking impatient.

“Where have the two of you been?” she said irritably as they approached. “Geraldine seems to have utterly disappeared and – why are you staring at me so strangely, Trevor?  Did you find Rayley?”

“In a way,” said Tom, stepping forward to put his arm around her waist for Emma had risen slowly, staring back at Trevor.

“Emma,” Tom said.  “Come with me away from the sewer wall and please, let’s take a little walk.”

“We were too late,” Trevor blurted.  “We found Delacroix, but he was coming up from the river…”

“The river,” Emma said, shaking off Tom’s arm and walking toward the water.  “If he went into the river…”

“Don’t go down there,” Tom called after her.  “Trevor and I can –“

“Leave her be,” Trevor said.  “She wants to stand with us, even in moments like this.”

Emma squinted upstream, but what she saw was not the horror she was expecting, but rather a beauty so profound that it almost seemed to mock her emotions.  A blaze of afternoon sunlight, already beginning to slant against the water, turning it into a glittering golden path.  The impressionists are realists, Emma thought.  For everything they paint - the water, the gardens, this shimmering light - it is all just as it really appears.   Trevor and Tom were walking down the bank, she dimly realized, coming to stand behind her.

And then she saw it, a movement within the mirror of the water.  A stronger current, pushed by the oar of a rowboat, a dark shape breaking through the brightness, coming slowly toward them.  In it, two men and behind them, in the back seat, sat Geraldine Bainbridge.  She looked ridiculous.  The brim of her hat sank around her face, one feather broken, the other trailing a green string of pond scum.   She waved her parasol at them and cried “Darlings!  I have him.”

None of them answered.  None of them moved.  In fact they stood shoulder to shoulder, utterly immobile, as if they had all been seized by some sort of collective hallucination.

“You have who?”  Trevor finally said, as Geraldine drifted closer, proving herself to be not a phantom at all, but a very wet woman.

“Rayley, of course,” Geraldine said, peering down at the slowly stirring shape lying across her feet.  “In fact, he seems to be walking up.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Paris

4:48 PM

Apparently the amount of money Geraldine had waved at the oarsmen had proven enough to buy not merely their services, but also their boat.   For they abandoned their craft – as well as their mad captain – the minute they struck the soil of the bank.   Funds in hand, they disappeared into the small crowd which had assembled to watch the drama and evidently volunteered drinks for everyone within earshot. For a cheer went up and the crowd promptly turned into a parade, following the two up the hill and into the nearest bar.

Tom converted the rowboat into a makeshift clinic.  A quick examination proved Rayley to be merely groggy, dehydrated, and battered, especially around the ribs where Delacroix had used the stone to weight him.  Emma sprinted off and returned with bread and a glass of lager which seemed to somewhat revive him, although he remained listless, sinking back against the side of the rowboat while Tom turned his attentions to his aunt.

Geraldine was utterly soaked, a fate she shared with Trevor and Rayley, and as the sun began to sink and the temperature cooled, Tom insisted they all return to the apartment.  He said this firmly, and they all understood the logic of his directive.  But no one seemed to have the inclination to move.  The day’s numerous reversals of fortune had drained their strength.

And so they merely sat, the five of them in a beached rowboat, each silent within their thoughts.

It was Rayley who spoke first.  “How did you find me?”

The question was directed at Trevor.  Rayley had been semi-conscious at best when they had dragged the rowboat from the water, and thus had no idea who had truly rescued him or how.  In fact, he had even roused himself at one point in the medical triage and held a hand out to Geraldine, saying quite formally, “I take it that you’re Miss Bainbridge.  I’m Rayley Abrams, you know.”

“Yes, dear, I know,” Geraldine had replied. “I’m delighted to meet you.”  And then Rayley had promptly slumped back down in the boat and resumed his stupor.  The scene would be the source of much amusement to them all in the weeks and months to come, but as for now, it seemed too much to expect the detective to absorb the fact that his rescue had come in the form of an elderly heiress armed with a parasol.  The eyes of the others went to Trevor at once, looking to him for direction as to how much information Rayley could accept in this pivotal moment.

“It took all of us to find you,” Trevor said.  “Emma came up with a very clever forensics theory, and it led Tom to the rooms where you were being held…”

“And there I discovered your letter,” Tom said, indicating the glove Emma still held in her hand.  “Most clever of you, old chap, for it confirmed we were at the right place.”

Rayley was gazing intently at the glove and blinking rapidly, the workings of his mind almost visible behind his large grey eyes. “Is Isabel…” he began, and then he stopped, as if even he was unsure if he could bear the answers to his own questions.

“Alive and in hiding, as far as we know,” Trevor quickly answered. “Delacroix has been arrested so she is safe, as are all the boys.”

“The boys?” Rayley said questioningly.

“The boys, the girls…It doesn’t matter,” Trevor said.  “It’s a long and complicated story and one best saved for another time.”

“You think the drugs have confounded me,” Rayley said.  “And they have, just a bit, but the main thing is that I seem to have lost my glasses.  And my knickerbockers as well, if the ladies will forgive me for saying so.”

“Both were sacrificed in a good cause,” Tom said.  “And anyone would be slightly disoriented if they had been through what you’d been through, which is why I must repeat my suggestion that we disembark from this silly boat and return to the apartment.  Baths and dinner and celebratory champagne are in order, I believe, and then a good long rest for us all.”

“I think I know where she’s hiding,” Emma said.  “Isabel, that is.”

The others looked at her sharply, Rayley included.

“It’s just a hunch,” Emma said cautiously, for the intense hopefulness of Rayley’s expression made her wary of promising too much.  “But Marjorie Mallory was telling me that at the top of the Eiffel Tower there’s a room -”

“But of course,” said Rayley.  “She knew all about it.  She told me the day we climbed.”  He sat up more fully now, once again rapidly blinking, with his excitement clearly helping him to overcome the lingering effects of the chloroform. “But how would she get up there without…but never mind, Isabel is damn clever and you’re right, Emma, it’s precisely the sort of solution she would think of, the sort of place where she would want to go.”

“A room at the top of the tower?” Tom said skeptically.  “With all those workers coming and going, someone would see her.”

“Not at all,” Rayley said definitely, his personality now breaking through the haze of the drugs like sun after a rainstorm.  “This is a private room, above the public levels.  Much higher. Terrifyingly so.  But she would go there without hesitation.”  Rayley’s eyes, which looked so naked without the protective shell of his customary eyeglasses, darted around the circle. “Isabel is utterly fearless.  As brave as any man I’ve ever known.”

“I’m sure,” Trevor said cautiously.  “But there are other things you need to understand, Abrams, other facts which have come to light in the last few days.”  He hesitated and fumbled.  “We’ve identified the first body that was found in the Seine, the boy who was dressed as a girl.  It’s Henry Newlove, Isabel’s brother.”

“Brother?” Rayley said, frowning.  “I didn’t know she had a brother.  And did you discover why on earth he’d be dressed as a girl?”

“As we said, long story,” Trevor said. “Very long story.  But the salient point is that when we learned his identity we made posters, showing Henry’s face.”

“Newlove,” Rayley said slowly.  “That name is somewhat familiar...”

“She must be distraught,” Emma said abruptly, also pushing away from the side of the rowboat and leaning toward the others. “What Trevor is trying to say, Rayley, is that in our efforts to force Isabel and Delacroix into action, we revealed to the general public that Henry Newlove is the corpse they were calling the Lady of the River.  So yes, Isabel is safe from Delacroix but the odds are high that in the course of this day she has also learned that her brother is dead.  Which I imagine would make her –“

“I must go to the tower,” Rayley said.

“You’ve had a shock,” Tom said, “and Aunt Gerry is soaking.  If we all return to the apartment and-“

“I’m going to the tower,” Rayley said, unsteadily pushing to his feet. “Right this very moment.  If Isabel is there I must tell her that she’s safe, convince her to come with me back to London.”

“Very well,” said Trevor. “I’m going with you.”

“I can handle this, Welles.”

“You’re blind.”

“Ah yes,” said Rayley, weaving on his feet. “Quite right.  Perhaps you should come, after all.”

5:29 PM

They were both audibly gasping for air by the time they reached the tower. Security around it had gradually and incrementally increased during the last days, as Parisians had watched the details begin to fall into place.  Even the most cynical of Eiffel’s detractors were beginning to concede that he would indeed have his moment of triumph.

Rayley had been practicing his speech as they ran, weaving through the crowds on the avenue, breaking into a full sprint as they approached the broad flat lawn leading up to the tower.  Voices seemed to glance off him as he hurried through the half-built pavilions.  Not just French and English voices, but German and Italian too, as well as tongues he could not readily identify.  The Exposition was two weeks away but the world was slowly beginning to assemble in Paris, brown and white and yellow faces all looking expectantly upward toward the spire in the center of it all.  The tower is our new church, Rayley thought.  Progress has become our new world religion.

But despite how furiously his mind had churned, Rayley had been able to think of no way that he and Trevor would be allowed quick admittance to the elevator.  Their Scotland Yard credentials, which made so many doors swing open in London, caused nothing but puzzlement here.

Trevor may have been portly but Rayley was weak, worn down by his days in captivity, blinking in the bilious glow of the dawning streetlights and still unsteady on his feet.  So it was Trevor who reached the elevator first and who surprised Rayley by pulling something from his pocket.  Rayley didn’t see what it was, but the flic standing guard at the elevator jerked to attention and a second man, dressed in a black jacket, wrenched open the doors and motioned them inside.

They tumbled in behind him.  Rayley grabbed the handrails and struggled to get a deep breath. Trevor was bathed in sweat and was fumbling for a handkerchief.  At Rayley’s questioning glance, he gasped out a single word: “Rubois.”

So the man was my friend in the end, Rayley thought, for he must have given Trevor the sort of credentials carried by Parisian detectives, had perhaps even given up his own.  The doors closed, with a groan of protest, and the elevator began to rise.  They had made some progress with the clanging, but it was still a loud affair and Trevor jerked with surprise.  Rayley sank back against the railing and tried to compose himself.  It was too much to take in – his sudden rescue, the dash across town, the fact he was back in this elevator where he had vowed to never again venture, the utter uncertainty of what they would find at the top.

Trevor had caught his breath as well and turned toward the handrail.  Rayley followed his gaze through the glass and over what he could only assume to be the rooftops of the city.  But even he could tell that it was different at night than it had been in the day.  Paris seemed somehow larger, a thousand small dots of light, as if they were looking at a starlit sky below them, rather than above.  Rayley cautiously inched a bit closer to Trevor.

“Quite a view,” he shouted.

Trevor’s lips were parted in awe.  “You didn’t tell me,” he said.

“Tell you what?”

“That it is magical.”  Trevor turned toward him, suddenly younger, his expression like that of a child.  “It’s a miracle,” he said.  “A bloody miracle lying here before us.  The end of one world and the birth of the next.  Didn’t you see it?”

“Welles,” Rayley said.  “We both know that I saw nothing at all.”

5:34 PM

The first staircase they managed well enough.  The second was so alarming to behold that Trevor insisted Rayley take hold of his jacket and let him guide the way.  But the steps were too tightly wound to allow them to ascend as a unit, so they were forced to retreat, losing both time and a bit of nerve in the process.  It was ultimately decided that Rayley must climb on his hands and knees, with Trevor following close behind.  Their process thus was painfully slow and methodical and Trevor paused once, halfway up, and dared to look around him, before quickly concluding that Rayley was fortunate to be unable to grasp the full reality of their present situation.

But then they were there.  A small landing with a parapet, which stretched around three sides of a room.  A room, yes, but one designed to resemble a chateau in miniature, with arched windows and a blue door.  Trevor edged toward it while Rayley, wishing it was permissible to still crawl, cautiously followed.  What does one do in such circumstances?  Knock?  Instead, Trevor turned the knob and let the door open of its own accord, which, thanks to the wind, it most definitively did.  The two men peered inside.

The first thing Trevor saw was the Whistler. The painting was so large that it commanded an entire wall of the room, stretching nearly from the elaborate molding of the ceiling to the plush Persian carpet on the floor.

The first thing Rayley saw was Isabel.  She was wearing the same teal-colored gown she had worn for the portrait, her hair styled in the same way.  She had not assumed the same pose however, but was rather sitting on a small divan.  She looked up at him without surprise, as if he was arriving for an assignation they had planned long ago.

“Detective,” she said. “Please come in.  And close the door.  It’s so windy at night.”

“Isabel,” Rayley said, his voice quivering. “I have come to take you back to London.”

“London?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “What waits for me there?  Look around you.  What woman in her right mind would abandon all this for dreary London?”

She had taken one of the posters of Henry’s face, Trevor noticed, and had fastened it in some manner to the bottom of her own portrait.  Isabel followed the trajectory of his gaze, and smiled.

“Behold our family portrait,” she said. “Courtesy of Armand Delacroix.  I take it that you are a detective too?  Scotland Yard, no doubt.  You all have somewhat the same look.”

“Delacroix has been arrested,” Rayley stubbornly continued.  “You don’t have to fear him anymore.”  He too had glanced toward the spot where the poster was fixed but, based on his utter lack of reaction, Trevor suspected he did not recognize it as Henry’s face.  It was hard to ascertain exactly how much Rayley was managing to take in of this strange room and what, if anything, he was beginning to understand.  Signs pointing toward the truth lay all around them, for even three days on the street had forced cracks in Ian’s façade.  Without cosmetics, his skin was coarse and stubbled. The finely arranged dome of dark hair was ever-so-slightly off-center and the teal dress was ill-fitting, as if whatever undergarments were needed to sustain the illusions of femininity had been lost somehow in the transition.  Ian looked at Trevor in defiance, clearly attuned to his thoughts, and picked up a pair of velvet gloves from a mother-of-pearl table at his side, pulling them on over his work-worn hands.

“Isabel,” Rayley said. “Did you hear what I said?  Armand Delacroix is in custody.”

“That’s not his real name, you know,” Isabel said, with a light and tinkling laugh.  “I remember the night we devised his French identity.  We were back in that dreadful little cottage in Manchester with his wife Janet.  I like her very much, you know.  Charles said he must have a new name and Janet suggested ‘Armand,’ which means ‘soldier.’ Did you know that?  But of course you don’t speak French.”

“You said you wanted to go home,” Rayley said.  “You still can.”

“And Delacroix means ‘of the cross,’” Isabel continued.  “He loved the name at once.  I believe that is precisely as he saw himself, as some sort of solider of the cross.”  She paused, awkwardly brushing back a strand of hair with a gloved hand.  “Charles was quite religious, you know, in the beginning.  It seems the worst people always are.”

“It’s over,” Rayley said.

“Yes,” she said, surprising them both by suddenly rising to her feet and moving toward the door.  “No doubt you are right.”  She walked out onto the parapet, Rayley feeling his way behind her and Trevor remaining in the doorway, one hand braced on each side of the frame.  They would have to persuade her to come with them of her own volition, he thought.   They could scarcely drag her down that damned staircase against her will.

“Look,” Isabel said, pointing in the distance.  Rayley obediently turned his head, and Trevor also peered cautiously from the doorway.  “It’s the last time we will ever see Paris like this,” she said. “For in two weeks the crowds shall come in earnest and it will all be changed.  The world as I know it will come to an end.”  She paused thoughtfully and then added.  “My brother is dead, you know.”

“Yes,” said Rayley. “It’s a horrible shock, a dreadful shock, but life does go on, just as they say it does, that awful cliché.  There’s a woman on our team, you know, just last year she lost her sister…”

“I will learn to love again, is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Rayley said. “Just let me bring you back to England and I promise you it shall all be settled there.”

“Very well,” she said. “But we must take the portrait.”

The portrait?  From the doorway, Trevor winced.  It behooved them to keep her calm, but this was a fine request. They could scarcely steal a Whistler from the Eiffel Tower and they couldn’t transport the monstrous thing down that snake of a staircase if they tried.  The last five minutes had been confusing indeed, but there was one thing of which Trevor was sure.  The Whistler portrait of Isabel Blout would remain at the top of the Eiffel Tower until the end of time.

“Henry’s portrait,” Isabel elaborated.

“Ah yes,” Rayley said with obvious relief. “Trevor, will you fetch Henry’s portrait from the wall?”

All right, so she’s gone mad and we’re probably right behind her, Trevor thought.  But whatever it takes to get the three of us back down to the ground…

He had turned to go back inside, to pull the damn poster from where she had affixed it to the Whistler when it occurred to him, almost immediately, that he had been played.  Isabel was no fool.   She knew that Rayley was half-blind but that Trevor saw everything, and she had found a way to distract him.   Rayley’s shout confirmed the rest.  Trevor spun around and dashed back out to find Rayley hanging over the parapet, his toes barely touching the ground.

She had jumped, of course she had, but against all odds he had caught her.  He had her hand in his and he was holding on with the strength of a man possessed.  Trevor leaned over the railing too but could not reach far enough and so, praying that Rayley’s grip would not fail, he wrapped his arms around the man’s waist and tried to pull him back, in the hopes Isabel would rise with him.  But moving the weight of two men, even two small ones, up and over the railing was beyond him, so Trevor dropped to his knees on the parapet and reached through the railing toward the dangling Isabel.

“It’s all right, Ian,” he said. “Give me your other hand.”

The man looked directly at him, the artifice of femininity all gone now, a slight smile on his face.

“Give him your hand,” Rayley gasped, his voice shaking, although whether from the sustained effort of holding on or the shock of a growing realization, Trevor could not say.

And then a movement, slight.  Was it the wind or was it an act of human will?   Rayley’s feet were both off the parapet now, putting him in danger of toppling over as well and Trevor was flattened to the floor, straining his own arm through the bottom of the railing and Ian, still smiling, shifted the slightest amount.  No more than a centimeter.

Just enough to loosen a hand within a velvet glove.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Paris

April 30

2:12 PM

On the afternoon before they were due to depart for London, Trevor and Rayley went walking along the Seine. The Exhibition had not yet officially opened, but the crowds were growing daily with any number of enterprising entrepreneurs already on hand to serve them.  Sidewalks were crowded with families, musicians playing the violin or cello, hoping for spare coins, stands selling foaming glasses of soda bicarbonate and clouds of candy floss.  It was all creating a bit of a mess, Trevor noticed, items dropped here and there, the acrid smell of human bodies, crushed each to the other, the hint of decay wafting up from the swollen river.  But he supposed this was the price of progress.

They covered the first few minutes of their stroll in silence and finally Rayley said, tentatively “When we are back at the Yard, shall we discuss this?”

“Not often, I should think.”

“So whatever must be said, it would be better if it were all said here?”

Trevor gave him a sidelong glance. The ordeal of the last few days had left Rayley thinner and more solemn than ever. But there was something new in him too, a sort of nervous energy, or perhaps just a story waiting to be told.  He seemed to be having trouble knowing where to begin.

“I have a question,” Trevor finally ventured.

“And I will answer if I can.”

“Why do you think they did it?  Not the children, or even Delacroix.  Their motives are clear enough.  But the clients who visited these places, who risked so much to procure the girl-boys, why should they do such a thing?  None of the rest of us have been able to come up with a plausible explanation.”

“You’re asking me why someone would choose to be homosexual?”

“Of course not.  No sane man would willingly choose such a fate.  But the whole point of Cleveland Street was that the men who went there were not homosexual, at least not exclusively so.  Most of them had wives and children, the ability if not the inclination to function within the normal bounds of society.  So why would they take on this kind of venture?”

“For some men, the risk is the reward.”

“Precisely as Geraldine explained it.  But this bit of dressing the boys up as women, that’s a very strange business, Rayley, the one detail that has confounded us all.  If a man was aroused by the accoutrements of femininity, the hair and the perfumes and the little white gloves and the lot, why would he not simply select a real woman? Heaven knows there is a never ending supply for sale in both London and Paris.”

“These aren’t the proper questions, Welles.  You remember what they used to pound into our heads at the Yard.  That success isn’t the matter of getting the right answer, it’s a matter of asking the right question.”

Trevor shook his head emphatically.  “I’m not sure I can stretch my mind enough to even ask the proper question.  For two men to engage in sexual acts because women aren’t available is one thing….You could argue it’s a rational response to the limitations of their environment,  the sort of act a Darwinist might even applaud.  Heaven knows there’s a history of these types of liaisons on ships, in prisons, and in the better boys’ schools.”

“Practically an English tradition,” Rayley said dryly, stepping aside to avoid a pastry which had landed squarely in the middle of a sidewalk, much to the dismay of a shrieking child.

“Whatever do the French call these people?” Trevor abruptly asked, indicating with a sweeping hand the crowd along the promenade.  “All these babbling strangers come from God knows where to stare and point and laugh too loud and smoke in the street?”

“They call them touristes.”

“Well, they’re dreadful.  One can only hope they spill enough money from their pockets to make the Exposition worth it for the French.”

“They already have,” Rayley said.  “The French want them to come and keep coming.   In fact, the Eiffel Tower was built,” he added, realizing his words were true in the very instant that he said them, “for the touristes and not for the Parisians.”

“Indeed.  Well the French may have these chattering magpies and their money.  We English certainly don’t need them.   What were we talking about?”

“Men sodomizing other men, I believe.”

“Ah yes. You’re sure the topic isn’t too distressing?”

Rayley smiled. “Not at all.  This is the first truly unfettered conversation I’ve had since I left London.”

“Shall I tell you a secret?  It’s the first true conversation I’ve had since you left London as well.”

Rayley was pleased although, being Rayley, he didn’t show it.  “You were saying?”

“Well, that I find it quite within the realm of logic that in a situation where women are not available, men might be tempted to improvise and that, as you say, there’s a proud English tradition of just such improvisation.  To sexually desire a man more than a woman is quite another level of thought, but I can only presume the poor bastards can’t help themselves.   But to dress a boy in pantaloons and demand he pose as a girl seems the ultimate sort of perversity.”

“So what’s your question?”

“Actually, I have a theory,” Trevor said.

“You usually do.”  They paused to let a battalion of women pushing prams pass and then Rayley said “Please go on.”

“The upper class, the royals and the rich.  They have become so demanding in their pursuit of amusements that they must constantly seek new diversions, each more extreme than the last.  I seized on the notion that night at Madame Seaver’s party when I was offered the most bewildering variety of cocktails.  Mad little things, each a different color, with a different sort of adornment perched on the glass, as if humble whiskey and beer were no longer enough to intoxicate this demanding new world.”

“So your theory is that our desire for new sexual experiences may be likewise evolving.”

“In a way.  It is possible I believe, for a man to become so powerful and rich that the ability to purchase women is no longer enough of a diversion.  So he begins to purchase girls.   And when they get tiresome, when he yet again seeks a new novelty, then it’s on to boys.  I stand before you quite convinced that this is the curse of the modern world.  We shall all become so jaded with sensation that nothing in itself will ever be enough to sate us.  It will always be on to the next novelty and then the next, until the human race is destroyed.”

“And you concluded all this from a tray of cocktails?”

“Scoff if you wish, but there is something morally dangerous in this endless variety of amusements that our era claims to provide. Soon there will be no word for ‘contentment’ in the English language, for we shall no longer feel content and thus have no need to describe it.”

“I wasn’t scoffing.  It reminds me of something Graham said, actually, the day we all climbed the tower. He said as we grow more modern we shall also be less human.  He was the last person I would have expected to voice such a sentiment.  I dismissed him unfairly, I see that now.”

Trevor nodded. “The mechanical hand of progress.  I fear it for myself.”

“You, Welles?” Rayley said, his head turned so that Trevor did not see his smile. “You’re a gifted detective, perhaps the best in the Yard.  But I’ve always thought that the one thing that prevented you from being ideally suited for your chosen profession is that you have no personal tendency toward excess, and thus you are slow to recognize those impulses in others.  In fact I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who has less natural capacity for depravity.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Trevor said.  “Even though I suspect you’ve just found a very tactful way of suggesting that I’m stupid.”

Rayley stopped in his tracks and weaved a bit on his feet.

“Gad.  Sorry, man, we should find a bench,” Trevor said, clasping his shoulder.  “Or a café, even better, and we’ll take some tea.  You’ve been through a horrible ordeal and here I’ve marched you up and down every street in Paris.”

“It isn’t that.” Rayley looked down toward the river. “I wanted to walk the city one more time before we left.  It’s just that this is where they found Graham’s body.”

Rayley was a man of ceremony and Trevor remembered that back in London he had often felt a need to bid farewell to the deceased, that his final visit to the body was a way of closing the case in his mind.  Under the circumstances, he supposed the next best thing was to revisit the site of the crime.  We detectives are a funny lot, Trevor thought.  Claiming to be creatures of ultimate logic, but in reality superstitious and full of rituals.  He smiled at Rayley and asked “Shall we pay tribute?”

“In truth, I wouldn’t mind sitting for a while.”

They made their way down the familiar sloping bank, looking for a hospitable clump of grass.  Trevor plopped to the ground at once and was both amused and relieved to see that Rayley still took care to withdraw a handkerchief from his pocket and spread it on the ground before sitting.   Neither captivity nor humiliation had disrupted the man’s fastidiousness.  Rayley was as clean, neat, and properly dressed as ever, giving the impression of an accountant or civil servant on his way home from work while Trevor feared it was his destiny to stumble through life in a permanent state of disarray.  In fact, if you asked anyone on the street which of the two men had recently been the victim of a violent crime, Trevor was certain the vast majority of the citizens of Paris would suggest it was him.

“How do you think they will describe this?” Rayley asked.  “The newspapers and the gossips and historians and all the other people who step in so obligingly to serve as the custodians of our public tragedy?”

“No need to guess,” Trevor said.  “They’ve already begun.  The papers are presenting it as the unexplained disappearance of a rich, well-connected woman.  A lovely bird flown from the highest branches of society, her motives creating an enticing little puzzle for all the touristes who have come to the Exhibition, a mystery for them to speculate upon as they eat their morning pastries.”

“And so it will be as if Ian Newlove had never existed.”

Trevor heard the sadness in his voice.  This wound would be a long time healing.  “At least this time,” Trevor said, “the man responsible for so much suffering is firmly in custody.  We can take refuge in that thought if nothing else.”

“Hard to imagine that your case and mine are both solved with one arrest,” said Rayley.  “That Cleveland Street and the murder of Patrick Graham should have all sprung from the arrogance and greed of one man.  Little chance he’ll face trial in London, I suppose?”

Trevor shook his head. “The French have first crack at him and a murder charge trumps mere solicitation, either way.  Although Davy writes that as the Cleveland Street incident is unfolding in the papers, public outrage is growing as well.  Someday, perhaps soon, I predict that prostitution involving children shall be deemed a more serious charge than prostitution involving adults.”

Rayley nodded, but his mind was clearly more fixed on the recent past than the unspecified future. “The papers make no mention of Henry either, I should guess.”

“No mention at all.”

Rayley took off his new glasses, a gift from his Parisian hosts back at the station, and blew thoughtfully on the lenses.  “I suppose it is inevitable.  Just one more unclaimed body in the morgue, another unmarked grave.  It pains me to think that Isabel, or whatever shards are left of her, shall have the same fate.  I must speak to Rubois.  Perhaps the brothers can at least be interred together.”

The men sat in silence.

Finally Rayley gave a loud sigh.  “Welles, when we said we would not speak of this in London, I didn’t mean the larger social issues of prostitution or homosexuality or blackmail and the like.   We are detectives and of course we will speak of these things at many points in the future, for they are natural parts of our job.  What I was really asking was something quite different. I was wondering if we would ever discuss my role in his matter.  I suppose I was asking if you now view me differently.”

“Why should I view you differently?”

They were both facing the river, not each other.

“Because I fell in love with a man.”

Trevor swallowed, stared at a bird.  A seagull who must have followed the river along its winding route to the heart of the city.  “But you didn’t know it was a man.”

“Which only makes it worse, does it not?   We can stroll the streets all day speculating on what acts a man might be prepared to commit while in the absence of women or why a man might prefer a man even in the presence of women.  And we can do all this from a position of lofty superiority in our role of detectives, wondering why the other poor wretches of the earth aren’t as flawlessly reasonable as we.  You always manage a theory or two, so pray tell me what you’d say to this.  There are words for men who love women.  There are even words for men who love men.  But what word does the world give us for a man so deluded that he can’t manage to tell the difference between the two?”

“It wasn’t just you who was fooled, Abrams.  Everyone said the boy-girls were quite persuasive in their-“

“Please don’t try to console me with what everyone said about the boy-girls.  Isabel was thirty-one years old.”  Rayley leaned back on his elbows, now taking no mind of the dirt on the bank, and looked up at the sky.  “I didn’t meet her in passing at some dark supper club or an unlit alley.   We stood at close congress.  At one point she was all but in my arms.  And yet I saw nothing.”

“A great many people saw nothing.”

“I am a detective.”

“And still human.”

“You would have noticed something was amiss at once, I’m sure you would have.  If ever you had seen her...Before that final night, I mean.  Back when she was in her glory.”

Trevor noticed that Rayley still could not bring himself to use the proper pronoun.  Or perhaps the mistake was unconscious.  The mind works very hard to protect itself, Trevor thought.  The mind is its own best friend.

“You’re forgetting that I saw the Whistler,” Trevor said.  “Back in London, before it shipped, and of course that night on the tower…”

The water of the Seine was still, all flecks of light and shimmer.  This is why they say Paris is so beautiful, Trevor thought.   It is a trick.   A trick of the light.

“I shall never find a way to sufficiently thank you for saving my life,” Rayley said, his voice as low as a whisper.  “You or any of the others.   When I consider what you all went through, especially Miss Bainbridge…”

“There’s no need, Rayley.  Really.  You shouldn’t trouble yourself.”

“But I fear I never will be able to stop troubling myself, at least not on this particular subject.” Rayley set up, turned to Trevor and looked him full in the face.  “You say you saw the Whistler back in London, when your mind was composed and settled, so I beg you to tell me.  Did you note something in Isabel’s portrait that I did not?   Were you cleverer than me?  Because I keep thinking that there must have been a sign.”

There were more birds around them now.   Swooping, diving, majestic in the air but brutal when they descended to the water in search of fish.   They gave out loud angry caws, screeches of warning as they fought, one with the other, their talons slicing the golden air.

“I assure you, man, there was no sign,” Trevor said.  “She was beautiful.”

Historical Note

The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a real event and did draw an unusual collection of luminaries to Paris, including James Whistler, Annie Oakley, Paul Gauguin, Thomas Edison, and others who make cameo appearances in City of Light. My depiction of their personalities is entirely fictional. For information about the building of the Eiffel Tower, which is so central to my story, I wish to extend my hearty thanks to Jill Jonnes, author of the nonfiction book “Eiffel’s Tower”. For those wishing to know more about Paris in this exciting era, I encourage you to read her beautifully-written and fascinating work.

Although I altered the dates slightly to suit the purposes of the novel, the raid on a male brothel in Cleveland Street in 1889 was a real event. The young boys who worked there were indeed procured from the telegraph office and Charles Hammond, Henry Newlove, and Charlie Swincow are the actual names of people involved with the scandal.

The other characters in the book – with the notable exception of Queen Victoria – are fictional.

Other Stories in the “City of Mystery” Series

City of Darkness, the first book in the City of Mystery series, is set in 1889 London, where Jack the Ripper roams the streets with impunity and Scotland Yard seems helpless to stop him. The science of forensics is in its infancy but a few detectives, Trevor Welles and Rayley Abrams among them, realize that they are dealing with a new kind of “modern” criminal and thus Scotland Yard will need equally new and modern methods to catch him. City of Darkness is available on Amazon.

City of Silence, the third installment in the City of Mystery series, is set in St. Petersburg at Christmastime. The Queen’s beloved granddaughter Alexandra is determined to marry the young tsarevich Nicholas, but Victoria has doubts about how well her sheltered and naïve “Alecy” will fare in the venomous court of Imperial Russia. When a young dancing instructor with ties to the royal family is found murdered in a most bizarre fashion, Trevor and the Scotland Yard forensics unit travel to the Czar’s Winter Palace to investigate. City of Silence will be available on Amazon in December.

If you’d like to receive notification of further publications of the series, join the City of Mystery Facebook page or send your email address to cityofmystery@gmail.com.