City of Light (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  The words “Detective Welles” evidently had exhausted the boy’s store of English because he immediately switched to French. “He says Rubois gave him a list of the places we might be,” said Tom. “This is the seventh place on the list he’s tried.”

  “It’s from Davy,” said Trevor, ripping open the envelope. “I don’t believe he ever sleeps either.”

  “See here,” Tom said to the flic in French. “You know these neighborhoods far better than we. Would any of the addresses on this list be located near the bad part of river? The criminal part, I mean.”

  The young man squinted at the paper thoughtfully, as Trevor looked up from the telegram.

  “Dear God,” he said quietly.

  But Tom merely glanced at him for the flic was speaking too, running his stubby finger down the list of addresses, coming to rest on the section near the bottom.

  “These are the sorts of places where the sewer rats live,” he said.

  “Sewer rats?” Tom asked distractedly. Trevor seemed to have lost interest in the entire conversation. He had gone over to lean against a tree.

  “Street people,” said the flic, with a sanctimonious frown. “They live outside when the weather allows, but in the winter there are little rooms down by the sewer they can rent by the night. Or the hour. Drunkards and whores and bastards and thieves and-“

  “I understand,” said Tom, cutting him off before he could unleash a full sermon. “That’s precisely the sort of place we’re looking for. See here on the map, where are those addresses in relation to the Pont des Arts? Might any of them be a half hour by foot upriver?”

  The flic frowned, suggesting that either the question required some consideration or, more likely, that Tom’s French was beginning to falter. He brought the map closer to his face to study it and Tom looked back toward Trevor.

  “So what fresh news does Davy bring?”

  Trevor broke from his reverie with a startle, as if he had forgotten that Tom and the flic were even there. Then he read aloud.

  Henry Newlove traveled Paris April 11. Has older brother Ian. Also boygirl for Hammond long ago. Then married a man.

  “Married a man?” Tom said, walking over to the tree where Trevor still was still leaning, deep in thought. “Actually married? He must have that part wrong. But the bit about Henry Newlove coming to Paris on the 11th is interesting in light of our timeline.” He took the telegram from Trevor’s hand to read it for himself.

  “Sir,” the flic called. “There are three addresses on this list which might be near the area you’ve requested.”

  “Just a minute,” Tom said, his voice rising. “He says Henry’s older brother Ian was also a boy-girl. Also, he says, which implies that Henry himself was a boy-girl. And he came to Paris…Dear God, this means the Lady of the River must be Henry Newlove. He was killed the day after he crossed the channel.”

  “Yes, naturally, but not only that,” said Trevor, gazing at the pretty white house where the monstrous Armand Delacroix lived in comfort. “I believe there are ways we can use this knowledge to find Isabel Blout.”

  10:40 AM

  “She says that the clothes were given to her by a friend,” Emma told Geraldine. “And that she can’t imagine what concern it is of ours.”

  “Offer her another coin,” Geraldine said. “And confirm that it was a male friend.”

  The three women were sitting on the stone wall, a companionable enough place to rest now that the day was warming, and Emma supposed she had even gotten used to the smell rising from the sewer beneath them. The French prostitute had not seemed surprised when the two women had intercepted her on her way out of the sewer opening. She had smiled when Emma told her that her dress was pretty and smiled even more broadly when Emma had offered her money. She was one of those rare women who look less attractive when they smile.

  So they had settled in on the stone wall, each of them gazing out toward the river, as if they were vacationers taking in a scenic view. Their position meant that Emma could not see the woman’s face as they talked, a disadvantage she supposed, since Trevor had pounded into her head many times that most liars reveal themselves through their facial expressions and body gestures, not through their choice of words. But she told herself it was probably all right. The woman, who announced her name to be Francine, had balked at Emma’s suggestion they climb up to street level and, upon consideration, Geraldine’s stamina probably would have suffered in the attempt.

  Besides, what reason would this woman have to lie?

  “Tell us about the friend who gave you the clothes,” Emma requested politely, but with what hoped was an echo of Trevor’s quiet authority.

  Francine launched into a long-winded and somewhat self-serving tale, but the salient points were these: The man was not a regular customer. She had not asked his name. He had seemed a bit down on his luck, as indicated by the fact he had been unable to provide the requested coins for her services. Instead, he had offered her this suit of fine clothing, which he claimed to have obtained just hours before from a woman he had met in one of the bars. A pretty woman whom he said had been weeping.

  “Certainly sounds like Isabel,” Geraldine said thoughtfully, after Emma had translated the story so far. “Ask her what sort of clothes the man gave her.”

  Work clothes, as it turned out, not too surprisingly. Francine reported that the man was small, not much taller than she herself. Probably that is why the woman approached him of all the men in the bar that night, because his clothes were the most likely to fit her. Oh, and the pretty weeping woman hadn’t been wearing the dress she had traded away. She’d been dressed in other clothes, just as fine, and she had pulled the plum-colored outfit from a traveling valise.

  “That’s almost definitely the woman we’re seeking,” said Emma. “What is the name of the bar where all of this happened?”

  Le Rire Femme, Francine said. The Laughing Woman. It was a favorite among the sewer rats, she explained, and it had been especially festive on the night in question. For the men had just learned that Eiffel was hiring unskilled laborers to help in the completion of the tower. Her client had told her he was going over the next morning to find work. He had promised that he would pay her in the proper currency the next time.

  The tower, Emma thought. How it casts its shadow over every part of this twisted story. How it haunts us all.

  “So there. After we walk our final steps we must find Trevor and tell him that Isabel was alive and well two days ago,” Emma said, as Francine bid them a slurred au-revoir and continued her trawl down the river bank. “That she was last seen weeping in a bar called The Laughing Woman and exchanging her beautiful dress for a sewer rat’s rags. I only hope for her sake she can wear men’s clothing more convincingly than I could. Why are you smiling like that?”

  “I have a bit of theory myself,” said Geraldine. “And I feel quite rejuvenated from our little hiatus here on the bank. After we have walked our 2500 more steps do you think we might visit the tower? I suddenly have an urge to see it up close, near the base, at the spot where Rayley was taken.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Paris

  11:30 AM

  A scream arising from his own throat awakened Armand and he sat up in bed, his heart pounding and his hands gripping his silken sheets. The dream had already come once before and he suspected it would come again, that it might indeed haunt him through the rest of his life.

  For it was unshakeable, this vision of Henry floating down the Seine, his face upturned and trusting, looking so much like a child in sleep. His skirts spread around him, his hair framing his face like a dark flower, the eerie serenity of the scene.

  But there was another reason that the image gripped Armand. He had seen Henry floating in a river before.

  Ian Newlove and Charles Hammond had known each other’s secret at a glance. In many ways Charles had been dealt the easier hand to play. Back when they were boys in Manchester, Ian’s large eyes and delicate frame, his
precise gestures and perennially hopeful smile had made him the more logical target for the neighborhood bullies. But Charles was more –

  Well, there was no way to say it except that Charles was more normal, that he had been better able to blend in. Charles had watched the other lads harass Ian, tossing pebbles and coal at him, following along behind with their silly songs and mocking nicknames, and he had initially considered himself the luckier of the two. But over the years that followed, there had been times when he had privately questioned this early assumption. For the ability to hide one’s true nature can be both a blessing and a curse.

  Charles had never joined into the cruel games, but he had often pretended not to know Ian when the two passed on the street. He would turn his head and feign a great fascination with something in the distance. Ian forgave him these slights and had never betrayed him, even though, with a single word, he could have turned the wrath of the neighborhood boys toward a new and far more interesting target. No matter how fast Charles looked away, it was always there, in his peripheral vision. Ian’s knowing but compassionate smile.

  Summers were a whole different world. They were brief, for when school was out for the term most of the local boys went straight to the mills and factories seeking work. Carting out slag, throwing buckets of water on the gears to keep them from overheating, rolling great bolts of cotton in and out of the warehouses. But between the school term and the summer work there were always a few precious days, three or four in June and a like number in September, when they found themselves at total leisure.

  The summer they almost lost Henry – how old were they then? Fourteen? Fifteen? Ian’s mother had said to watch out for him and when Charles became an adult, looking back, he saw the unfairness of that request. Why would she saddle them with a toddler to care for on their fleeting days of freedom? Yes, they were fourteen and Henry had been…two. He was still wearing dresses, his curls yet uncut. They had packed a lunch and gone down by the river. Fishing they called it, although they had no nets or reels.

  Despite appearances, Ian had been the true innocent of the two. Charles knew a bit more about matters, courtesy of the village parson, and thus he was able to show Ian places the boy had not known existed, take him to continents on his body that were hitherto unexplored. Even now, Charles could remember the shimmering light of that summer afternoon, Ian’s incredulous face, the way his hand gripped at the grass as they rolled, tuffs of it coming loose, freeing the hot wet smell of the earth.

  Henry was there, of course. He was too young to know what he was seeing, too young to tell anyone if he had. Ian had smeared honey from their picnic on the boy’s fingers and given him a feather, which was his standard means of keeping the child entertained. Henry had sat on his little blanket rapt with concentration, peeling the feather first from one hand, and then from the other.

  But alas, he had tired of his game before they had tired of theirs. At some point they had looked over and he had been gone, his little blanket empty, his cup overturned.

  Ian had screamed. They had both sprung to their feet, rushed instinctively toward the water. Even before they arrived at the riverbank, Charles had convinced himself that the child must have drowned. The parson had instructed him in a rather convoluted type of theology during their own afternoons together, but even without this private tutoring, the majority of the citizens of Manchester carried a most literal fear of God. In a place where pleasures were so few, it was easy to convince the populace that these pleasures could only be purchased at a great price.

  But there was a miracle. Henry’s dress saved him. His toddler’s dress, so full that it had formed a sort of bubble, just enough to keep him aloft as he bobbed there, near the shoreline, caught in the reeds.

  Ian had plunged into the water and seized the child. As he held his brother to his naked chest, he turned back toward Charles, his face full of fear and relief and another emotion which was not so easy to read, a type of wonderment. And there, from the high bank, Charles had heard himself calling out promises. That he would protect Henry and Ian. That he would get them out of Manchester and protect them both for the rest of their lives.

  The tragedy was that he had meant it. Charles saw himself as stronger and smarter and he honestly believed he could deliver them all. When the other boys hurled their slurs at Ian, Charles had silently vowed that someday he would take his revenge. Especially on the ones who liked it and said they didn’t. The ones who would pull Ian into an alley, have their pleasure against him, and then, just when it was finished, spit in his face.

  Charles Hammond and Ian Newlove had both known what hypocrisy was before they reached the age of fifteen, but perhaps Charles understood it better, for he had wrestled with the hypocrisy of his own heart. A lucky toss of the genetic dice had left him with broad shoulders and a firm chin; otherwise, he would be suffering the same indignities which were daily heaped on Ian. The indignities that Henry someday too would suffer.

  Through the years that followed, Charles’s hasty promise to protect them would inform every detail of their lives. Against all odds, he had gotten them out of the hellish streets of Manchester and into a life of money, security, power, and prestige. This transition had required multiple levels of deception, each painstakingly built one within another, like the ever-narrowing chambers of a fort. His marriage to Janet, for example. She was the one thing Mancunians hated and feared more than homosexuals – an intellectual woman - and thus she had been more than happy to take his name and the humble cottage his parents had left him. The title of man and wife, unearned as the words may have been, shielded them both from speculation and besides, he had grown fond of her. Janet was the one who had first taught him French. Charles had succeeded even in exacting an almost Biblical revenge against a certain type of man, the ones he would always privately think of as “the boys in the alley.” He had made those unholy bastards pay, and before this business was over, they would all pay even more.

  But Charles had failed in his promise as well, which is why he now sat in his nightshirt, pulse pounding, his mouth sour with an alcohol-induced sleep.

  He could close his eyes and be right back there, on that particular summer day. The birds, the trees, the dappled sunlight, the hallelujah of Ian’s single gasp. He suspected the memory had frozen in Ian’s mind as well. Only Henry was unaware of the birth of the bond they all shared, taking the older men’s careful care of him for granted, growing ever more spoiled and petulant with each passing year. He alone did not carry the memory of that moment when Ian first realized that his brother was gone, the moment when a moan of pleasure had turned into a shriek of despair. How they had seen the blue dress floating and slid down the bank in terror, only to find Henry perfectly fine, his hands still smeared with honey, bouncing and gurgling among the reeds.

  When Ian had turned towards him, the child in his arms, Charles had known exactly what he was thinking. That their moments of joy had very nearly caused the baby’s death, that their wretched and unnatural desires had prompted God’s swift retribution. But Ian had been wrong. They were merely children, after all. This was before ambition and rage had hardened in Charles’s chest, fusing a diamond in the place where his heart should be. Before Henry’s sticky fingers moved from feathers to everything in sight, long before Ian would become Isabel. It would take seventeen more years before the culmination of their sins would fully overtake them. Seventeen more years until Henry would once again go down to the water.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Paris

  12: 25 PM

  Geraldine and Emma were at 2158 in their step count when they saw Tom and Trevor walking toward them on the bank.

  Oh God, Emma thought. The game is up.

  But Trevor did not seem angry or indeed even surprised to find the women there. “We need to confer,” he said in greeting, just as nonchalantly if they were all sitting around Geraldine’s table at one of the Tuesday Night Murder Games.

  A single look had told Trevor that
Geraldine needed a proper sit, and so he pretended exhaustion himself. It didn’t take much pretending. With the men virtually pulling Geraldine, they climbed the bank to the sidewalk above and found a pair of benches on the street. When they had all settled in, Trevor began.

  “Chin up, everyone, because I think we’re much closer to finding Rayley than it seems,” Trevor said. “This latest telegram from Davy has changed everything.” He produced the rumpled paper from his pocket and read the brief message to Geraldine and Emma.

  “The timeline,” he said, looking up as he finished, “strongly suggests that The Lady of the River is Henry Newlove. He must have come here at Delacroix’s request, or should I say Hammond’s, just after the Cleveland Street raid.”

  “Obviously,” said Emma. “For he was dressed in his work garb when he was killed. But why was he killed and by whom? Delacroix, or should I say Hammond, had reasons to dispose of Patrick Graham, but why would he drown one of his own employees, his long time second-in-command?”