City of Light (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  “And let me ask you this,” he said. “If you ever find yourself in grave physical danger, would it be permissible for me to come to your aid? After all, I have proven I will do as much for Rayley.”

  “Of course. If you like, you might even come on a horse with a sword.”

  “And if I’m in danger, how shall you come?”

  She was looking out the window. “The truth? I shall probably send one of the men.”

  He laughed out loud then, and she began to giggle too. He was right, she thought. The best conversations are those that happen in a whirlwind.

  “So this is the modern woman,” Trevor said, sitting back in relief, for the awkwardness that had existed between them ever since that afternoon in Manchester had dissipated at last. “She demands complete equality until trouble rears its head and then she retreats behind the ramparts and dispatches the men into battle. If you don’t mind me saying so, my dear, it isn’t completely logical.”

  “I know,” said Emma. “But it is the price of admission, nonetheless.”

  12:32 AM

  Tom had picked up where the women had left off and had walked the final 400 steps of the riverbank. It had taken them over seven hours to complete Emma’s experiment, he thought sadly, and she wasn’t even there for the culmination of the task. Which is probably just as well, since walking 400 steps had brought him to a patch of a riverbank which looked like any other. No sewer entrance, no clump of lodgings.

  Just a bar. He stood for a moment gazing at the doorless doorway and the darkness beyond. How many afternoons had he spent in places such as this? It would be easy to enter now – no one was with him, no one watching. He was in a city that was not even his own. And perhaps, who knows, the elusive Isabel Blout might happen to be sitting in this very –

  But no. He stopped himself and turned his body away from the door in the mute hope his mind would follow. It was too easy to justify why one might enter a bar and he knew bloody well there would be no Isabel inside. This sad little hovel, which he supposed was literally open all the time, held nothing but the exact same things he had found in dozens like it over the last three years. Alcohol, lost hours, nameless women, and regret.

  He had told Emma there were a dozen variables beyond their control in her experiment. Very well then, perhaps he should consider the possibility they had miscounted the number of necessary steps and walk a little further.

  Within five minutes he had come to another sewer opening. Plenty of dwellings were slammed right up against the concrete walls, but no people seemed to be about. He didn’t see any shops or bars, but merely what looked like a line of uninhabited rooms sharing a single roof, hobbled together with mossy stones and mud. The whole thing was a bit medieval in appearance and certainly off-putting. He ventured closer and yelled “Rayley?” as loudly as he could.

  No answer, except the sound of his own cry bouncing back to him. The same concrete and stone which caused his voice to echo would doubtlessly prevent any sound from penetrating the walls. Tom scanned the building. He could find no visible address, so trying to match this gloomy place to the locations on Rayley’s list was pointless.

  There were perhaps twenty rooms in all. In lieu of doorknobs they had rather odd looking levers and Tom chose the first one in the row and pulled it. There was a bit of a rattle but very little movement. The doorless bar had given him hope that few people attempted either privacy or security in these humble river dwellings, but these rooms seemed a different sort of structure and were likely meant for a different sort of purpose. Perfect for hiding someone and admittedly not far from what Emma had imagined as a “base of operations” for Delacroix.

  Tom went from one door to the next, systematically pulling each level and screaming “Rayley.” It was unlikely he would be heard by anyone within this fortress, but it still seemed a chance worth taking. None of the levers gave way and Tom could only hope that Trevor was successful in persuading Rubois to return to the river with him, ideally with a cadre of officers. If there was no lock, and thus no key, he couldn’t imagine how one would gain entry to this strange building. But perhaps there was an extraordinarily clever locksmith somewhere on the force – it certainly seemed the French had everything else – who could manage to solve the puzzle. Short of that, they would have to use a battering ram.

  Having tried the final door without success, Tom slowly backed away from the line of rooms, his boots sticking in the muck so badly that they were nearly pulled from his feet. He should go back to where Geraldine waited, he thought. Insist that she stay in that relatively safe place downriver and then proceed on his own to the police station for help. Finding this fortress location was a promising lead, but a medical student going about screaming and rattling doors was not enough. The task required proper officers, with proper tools.

  As Tom turned to walk back down the river bank his eye caught on something lying in an open expanse of lawn. The vegetation around the sewer was almost ridiculously verdant, and the grass was high, but perched on top was a small gray bundle. Just when he stooped to pick it up, a nearby church bell struck one.

  1:00 PM

  The ringing of a single bell had always seemed to Rayley an ominous sound. His burst of activity from the morning had faded and as he lay on his cot staring up at his single rectangle of light, he felt his first taste of pure, unadulterated fear. That one gong, so ponderous and deep. As his teacher back in public school would have said, perhaps the bell tolled for him.

  He feared that a combination of drugs, hunger, and incessant darkness was causing him to hallucinate. For just a minute earlier he had been jerked from a shallow nap – it seemed that Rayley never fully slept or wakened anymore, but rather existed in some sort of nether world between the two – by the impression that someone was approaching his cell. But the door had not opened, no matter how hard he stared. And then he had been further convinced he heard the sound of his own name, very dim and far away, and he had shouted back over and over that he was here, here, here, until his voice had utterly failed him.

  Such was his state. He had bundled together everything he possessed in the world and thrown it out a window. He had even opted to half-blind himself in the process, and now he had likewise rendered himself mute. All he had left was his mind. What would become of him if he managed to lose that as well?

  He sat back on his cot, heart pounding. For the first time since he had been captured, Rayley let himself wonder what it would feel like to drown.

  London

  1:20 PM

  Davy had finished writing up his report for Eatwell on his visit to 229 Cleveland Street. The report was not dishonest, he told himself. Merely incomplete.

  Davy knew that his words were nothing like those of Trevor. Trevor wrote forcefully, persuasively, each missive to his superiors not merely a summation of the facts, but a thinly veined appeal for greater funding for forensics. In contrast, Davy’s lines were brief and toneless. A story without a hero.

  It would have mattered more if anyone ever read the reports. Really read them, that is, with the sort of concentration that would have allowed a man to quickly distinguish Davy’s timid prose from Trevor’s bombast. But Davy suspected Eatwell would do no more than skim the paper and toss it aside. The two pornographic books, included along with the liquor case and the second copy of Hammond’s thumbprint, might evoke slightly more interest.

  Davy pulled on his jacket, and headed up the stairs. He may as well eat his midday meal in a pub, he thought. It wasn’t as if there was a kidney pie waiting for him at home.

  He had done his job and done it well, so he could not have said why he was so dispirited as he walked through the gates of Scotland Yard and down the crowded street. The day held a promise of spring, a promise that was not likely to be kept, since cold rain would most certainly return to London by the end of this endless April. Davy knew he should enjoy the clear sky while he could, so he found himself walking, simply walking, even though he passed several reasonably-pr
iced pubs where coppers often ate.

  He had no idea what was happening in Paris and perhaps that was the source of his mood. It was hard to live on twenty-word telegrams without truly knowing if Trevor was any closer to finding Rayley. It appeared that events were moving quickly, but perhaps not quickly enough. Trevor told him that most kidnapping victims were dead within two hours of being taken and the detective had now been missing…Davy shook his head. Too many hours to count.

  Charles Hammond would surely fall. He would be arrested at least on a morals charge and most possibly for homicide as well, and with any luck the fingerprint would be a large part of the evidence used to convict him. But even the knowledge that Scotland Yard would get their man did not bring Davy peace. He knew that when Hammond fell he would take many others with him, including the boys on Cleveland Street. Right now they lived in limbo, but if Hammond was convicted and jailed, there was no telling what would become of the house. Where do boys go, Davy wondered, when they have seen and done so much by the age of fifteen? The sea, he supposed, or the army. Heaven help them there.

  A carriage rolled by, larger and grander than the others in the street. The royal insignia was on the side - the arms of the Prince of Wales - and behind the glass Davy caught a brief glimpse of its lone occupant. The noble Duke of Clarence, staring straight ahead with his large impassive eyes. He looks like the Queen, Davy thought with surprise, fully realizing the resemblance for the first time, and he wondered if the man would ever take the throne. Everyone knew that Victoria intended to live forever and the Duke’s father was better than fifty, a ridiculous age for a Prince, with the beginning of his own reign nowhere in sight. With any luck the Duke of Clarence would drink himself to death while the Queen and the Prince still lived and England would be spared a King Bertie.

  The Duke had not looked happy as he passed. None of the royal family could be accused of openly enjoying their life of luxury. The Hanovers were, in fact, a gloomy and stolid tribe and Davy found that he wasn’t standing at attention, as he normally did whenever he saw a carriage with the royal insignia, but that he had instead continued to walk, his hands crammed in his pockets, his hat pulled low across his bow. It felt odd to be still moving among all those people who stood respectfully still, all those who had halted in their progress and were craning their necks toward the carriage, straining for a look inside.

  They don’t deserve it, he thought. So many unknown souls suffer and die in their name, every day, and they can’t be bothered to look out the bloody window. He thought of Detective Abrams, alone and enduring God knows what, and the boys back in Cleveland Street, pushing and shoving for each bite of kidney pie.

  If his mother had known he had those thoughts, that he had continued to walk while a royal carriage passed… For that matter, even if Trevor had known…

  Better the Queen than what’s to follow, Davy conceded. At least Victoria had a sense of duty. But she seemed to know so little of the world beyond the gates of Buckingham Palace. Even her excessive mourning of Albert, which was now entering its third decade - with, like her reign, no end in sight - was a privilege few women were granted. Davy’s mother had surely loved his father just as much but, with a houseful of boys to feed, she had been back at her position as a seamstress the day after her husband was buried.

  They don’t deserve it, Davy thought again, this time with more conviction. They don’t understand the depth of sacrifice that is required to keep them on their high perch and, perhaps most galling of all, now that they’ve been set above us, they don’t even seem to enjoy it.

  Davy wondered if he was becoming a radical.

  Dear God, he certainly hoped not.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Paris

  1:24 PM

  “He looks like a child,” Emma said sadly.

  “I know,” Trevor said.

  They were in the morgue, where a photographer from the New York Times, under the forceful direction of Marjorie Malloy, was photographing Henry Newlove. In order to get the most appealing angle on the corpse’s pretty face it had been determined that the photographer should stand above him, turning his lens directly down, a decision which had required the man to climb onto the mortuary slab and set up a tripod straddling Newlove’s supine form. Rubois was standing against the opposite wall, a look of additional dismay on his face as he observed the process. Collaborating with Scotland Yard was one thing. Throwing in his lot with the New York Times appeared to be considerably more than the man had bargained for.

  Rubois had informed Trevor upon his arrival that the courier had arrived with the fingerprint from London and that it was presently in the forensics laboratory, being compared to the print Geraldine had provided from the party. Furthermore, the dockmaster records had shown that Armand Delacroix had been among the passengers disembarking in Calais on April 9, so if the two sets of fingerprints were declared a match, they could move in a definitive way. The minute the laboratory report confirmed what everyone in the room expected, a contingent of the Paris police force would be unleashed on the streets in search of Armand Delacroix.

  “Go with him,” Emma said to Trevor. “No matter what the prints show, take Rubois and Carle and go back to the river bank and join the hunt for Rayley. For even you must concede that I am capable of nailing posters to kiosks without supervision.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Marjorie said, pausing long enough in her berating of the photographer to look over her shoulder. “If we can somehow manage to get a good shot sometime within the few minutes” – and here she stopped to glare up at the man who buried beneath his black cloth and therefore presumably shielded from the heat of her derision – “we shall have our posters by two.”

  “So quickly?” Trevor asked. When it came to speed, Scotland Yard could certainly learn lessons from the press.

  “Sir,” Carle called across the crowded room. “The lab report has just come back. We have a match.”

  1:42 PM

  “Well it is certainly a glove of quality,” Geraldine confirmed. “Not at all the sort of thing anyone living here would own and so I would guess it to be a missing part of the clothing that Isabel traded. But why is it balled up in that queer shape?”

  “Because something is stuffed inside of it,” Tom said. He was struggling to undo the strip of cloth tied around the glove, which had been doubled back and knotted multiple times. “I found it in the yard near this very strange building located upstream. It was dropped, I suppose, by someone in the process of entering or leaving.”

  “Dropped on purpose, perhaps?” Geraldine ventured. “For this is not merely a glove, it is a package.”

  “Perhaps,” Tom agreed, finally unsnarling the last knot and pulling the string from the bundle. He shook the glove with his right hand and a bloody rat dropped out into his left.

  “Heavens,” Geraldine said, startling to her feet despite herself. Tom, who had managed to muffle his own cry of surprise, let the rat bounce to the ground and stared at what was left in his palm. A few shards of glass which, if pieced together, would form a thick round lens. The sort of lens that resided in the eyeglasses of only one person he knew.

  “Look ,” Geraldine said, unraveling the long strip of cloth. “It’s from a men’s store in London, is it not?”

  “Excellent,” Tom said, staring at the evidence before him. The fine glove, the dead rat, the shattered spectacle, and the label from Morgan and Taylor. “Most excellent. Rayley has sent us a letter.”

  2:21 PM

  The posters were shocking to behold, an unflinching portrait of a beautiful young girl, photographed at such close range that her features, from her doll-like eyes to her full lips, were each rendered slightly larger than life. Emma and Marjorie had nailed one to every side of the kiosk which was located closest to the tower.

  “There certainly are a lot of people coming and going,” Emma said, looking up at the base of the tower. “We couldn’t pick Isabel out of this crowd if we tried.”

 
; Marjorie shrugged. “With May 9 approaching, they’re got crews up from dawn to dusk, with little regard for what constitutes a humane workday. But everyone comes down at sunset so any worker who has managed to avoid seeing the poster up to that point will surely be assaulted by Henry’s image then. Come on. I think the next place we should visit is the Champs-Elysees.”

  “Of course,” Emma said, falling in step behind her. “It’s very kind of you to help in exchange for an interview with Trevor, especially considering it may not further your own cause. He told me that your editors expect you to produce a very different kind of story.”

  The two women were walking across the broad lawn leading from the tower. Construction was going on all around them, the international pavilions, Emma could only assume, and a miniature railroad was already in place, looking more like a child’s amusement than a serious means of transporting a crowd. Marjorie was tall, and evidently unaccustomed to adapting her gait as a man might do as a courtesy to a smaller woman, so Emma found herself almost trotting beside her.