City of Light (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  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 mu
ch 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.