by Kim Wright
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 preci
sely 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.”