by Kim Wright
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, an
d 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.