by Kim Wright
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.