by Kim Wright
“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 li
ttle 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.