by Kim Wright
“For simplicity’s sake, let’s agree to call the man Delacroix,” said Trevor, “and I have no idea why he might have turned on Henry or if he is even the one to have done the deed. But the fact that Henry Newlove, a known boy-girl and about eighteen years of age, arrived in Paris the day before the Lady of the River was found cannot be coincidental.”
“That’s one piece,” Emma said. “And here’s another. While Gerry and I were walking the bank we encountered a prostitute wearing an obviously expensive outfit in various shades of plum, just as Rayley had described Isabel’s clothing on the day they climbed the tower. The woman told us she had gotten these clothes from a client in payment, who in turn had gotten them in a trade for his own. He had swapped his own workman’s clothes for those of a beautiful woman he met in a bar. Are you still following me?”
Tom and Trevor nodded.
“The woman in the bar had been weeping,” Emma continued. “She was carrying a suitcase, and was most certainly Isabel Blout. The bar was called The Laughing Woman, if you’d like a further piece of irony in our little story, and it’s located here, in the river district.”
“So we’ve drawn close to Isabel too,” Tom said. “She’s somewhere in this very ghetto, dressed as a man.”
“It all leads me to wonder,” said Emma, “is it possible that Isabel and Rayley are together? Based on the fact they disappeared the same morning, many people have assumed as much and we’ve been the only ones to discount the idea. Perhaps we discounted it too quickly.”
Tom frowned. “Are you suggesting that if she is free, then perhaps he is too? And merely in hiding?”
Trevor was already shaking his head. “Rayley wouldn’t hide. I know the man. No matter how acute the danger, he’d find some way to get a message to us, or at least to Rubois.”
“I agree,” said Tom. “In fact, that’s how I think of him, as the sender of messages. But if Isabel is indeed still in Paris, that gives us another person we must find as soon as possible. For it strikes me that she is in as much peril as Rayley.”
“May I speak?” Geraldine suddenly said.
Trevor was surprised by the meek request. “Of course.”
“Do you remember our conversation on the crossing? We were discussing Shakespeare, and Tom said that since the female parts were played by men and that since the plays often had a woman pretending to be her brother, that what you had in the end was a man playing a woman playing a man.” Geraldine looked around the group. “I believe that is precisely what we are dealing with here.”
Tom grimaced. “I’m afraid you lost me on one of those turns.”
“I’m still with you,” said Trevor. “In fact, I’ve been thinking along the precisely same lines ever since we got the telegram. Davy’s message had two parts, did it not? And the second may be just as pertinent as the first. Let’s consider this new and surprising fact that Henry had an older brother, apparently the most persuasive of all the boy-girls. A paragon in fact, for Ian Newlove somehow managed to avoid growing more masculine with the passage of time and even ultimately married, or at least pretended to marry, a man. So, we must ask ourselves, where is Ian now?”
“It’s hard to fathom but you must be right,” said Emma. “Ian is Isabel.”
“But that’s impossible,” Tom said, looking from one to the other. “Well, isn’t it? Isabel Blout has been accepted into the best homes in London for more than a decade and is known far and wide as a seducer of men. For God’s sake, she was even painted by Whistler…” He trailed off thoughtfully, then looked at Trevor. “You saw that something was off the morning we viewed the portrait, didn’t you? You called her out even then.”
“I assure you that I didn’t foresee all this,” Trevor said.
“But you said she wasn’t beautiful,” Tom said. “You kept looking at her foot.”
“Poor Rayley,” Emma murmured. “I don’t suppose he knows.”
“I think it’s rather safe to say he doesn’t,” said Trevor.
“But of course her husband must have,” Tom said questioningly, looking directly at Geraldine. “What was George Blout’s part in all this? Or was he merely history’s biggest fool?”
Geraldine shook her head. “From the very beginning, I’ve told you he was a confirmed bachelor.”
“Yes, you certainly did,” said Trevor, slumping back against the bench with a sigh. “But I’m afraid none of us really understood what you meant by the phrase. I was picturing a retired military man who liked to sit in stuffed armchairs and sputter on that women will never get the vote. I didn’t grasp that you were really saying George Blout was homosexual. Frankly, Gerry, that would have been a helpful thing to know.”
“Oh dear,” Geraldine said. “I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. It was just a rumor, you know, and then he married a beautiful young girl and the rumor stopped. I always suspected that he was using the marriage to hide behind, as untold numbers of homosexuals have undoubtedly done for centuries. Until just a few minutes ago it had never occurred to me that George had found a way to actually marry a boy. It was something you said, Emma dear, about wondering if Isabel would be able to wear men’s clothing more effectively than you had. And the thought just leapt there, fully formed in my head, that of course she would be able to pass as a man, because she was one.”
“She not only is one, but she is most likely Ian Newlove, Henry’s missing older brother,” Trevor said. He shook his head. “God, but the bloody pronouns are a muddle. Calling her Isabel, seeing her as the woman she has played for so many years, will probably take us closer to the truth. The question now becomes, does Isabel know that her brother is dead? He was never displayed at the morgue and the French police did not release the fascinating fact that the body pulled from the Seine was actually a male dressed as a female, so the newspapers made very little of the incident. Just another suicide in the Seine. Small print on a back page.”
They all sat for a moment in silence.
“She must have learned something,” Emma finally said, “for literally overnight she went from a carefree woman who was flirting with Rayley to one who was begging for help. Something scared her.”
“Remember the timeline,” Trevor said. “The thing that scared her was almost certainly the discovery of Patrick Graham’s body.” He abruptly stood, startling the others. “I think the chances are good that Isabel suspects Henry is also dead but has no confirmation of her fears. And I think we can use this information to flush her from her hiding place.”
“You must have a plan,” Tom said drily. “You always stand up when you have a plan.”
“Our first task is to return to the police station,” Trevor said, “and tell Rubois that we believe we may have indentified his unidentified body. With any luck, he will grant us permission to photograph Henry’s face. And then we shall pay a call on Marjorie Mallory.”
“You’re hoping that she’ll write about The Lady of the River for the evening edition?” said Tom. “I agree the idea has possibilities – if Marjorie writes, for example, that the body of a boy dressed as a girl is going on display at the morgue, we may well lure Isabel there and thus into our trap. But how can be sure that in her present straits, Isabel is even reading newspapers? And even if she does see the evening edition and react, that wouldn’t happen until tonight or tomorrow morning and it may be too late for Rayley.”
“I’ve thought of all that,” Trevor said. He turned to look out over the stunted rooflines of the tenements behind him. “Rayley is near, I’m sure of it,” he said. “When I go to the police station I’m going to ask Rubois for help, even if the help is merely Carle and himself. We shall go door to door over this entire area until we find him. But in the meantime, we must photograph Henry and run copies of that photograph. I wasn’t thinking of a newspaper article, although Tom’s right, if my first plan doesn’t work, it isn’t a bad fallback idea. I was thinking of making posters with Henry’s face. You know the kind, the ones that say Does Anyone Know This Girl? Newspap
er offices have presses for such things, do they not, and I suspect Marjorie will help us in exchange for the exclusive rights to our story.”
“Posters,” Emma said. “That’s perfect. We can hang them all over the city. Everyone in Paris looks at the kiosks as they pass, you almost can’t help yourself, so Isabel is much more apt to see a poster than read a newspaper.”
“Put an extra portion of them near the tower,” Gerry said.
Emma frowned. “You wanted to go to the tower, did you not?”
“Because I believe Isabel is there,” Gerry said. “Wearing her new workman’s clothes and back in the role of Ian. She evidently moves between the two identities as it suits her plan.” Gerry nodded toward Emma. “The prostitute we interviewed mentioned that the night Isabel traded her clothes to the workman everyone in the bar was celebrating. They’d just gotten the news that Eiffel had offered jobs to the street people – she said they call themselves the sewer rats – inviting them to work on the tower. My guess would be Isabel took one of those jobs.”
“The elegant Isabel Blout performing day labor on the Eiffel tower?” Tom said skeptically. “Why would she do that?”
“For money, I’m imagine,” Geraldine said archly. “That’s why people most often work, is it not? Consider this. Isabel swapped her fine purple dress for a street person’s clothes, something she was unlikely to do if she had funds to simply buy a man’s shirt and pants. We must assume that she escaped Delacroix with little more than the clothes on her back. Well, that and her valise with more clothes and perhaps jewelry or a silver frame or porcelain figurine, something she could easily grab. Women tend to have access to things more readily than they have access to actual money, so it’s safe to say she found herself immediately short of funds. And where would an impoverished sewer rat go but to the tower?”
“They would never hire a woman to work on the tower,” Tom said.
“She is a man now, remember?” Emma said.
“Ah, yes,” Tom said. “I must purchase one of those little notebooks everyone else carries just to keep this all straight.”
“Back to the plan,” Trevor said. “Geraldine makes a good point, so we shall blanket the area around the tower with the posters.” He was pacing back and forth in front of the others. “You all know I’m never comfortable with the thought of splitting the group…” He scarcely needed to say why, for they all remembered the night that they thought they had caught the Ripper. The fact they had managed to get separated from each other on that dreadful, fog-filled evening had nearly meant the end of Emma and Tom’s sister Leanna.
“It’s sunny and bright here, lots of people about,” Emma said quickly. “We’ll get so much more done if we each take a different task.”
“Let me help,” said Geraldine. “I know I’m slow…”
“You generally manage to stay a step ahead of us all,” Tom said, patting her shoulder.
“All right,” Trevor said decisively, turning to face them. “Emma and I shall go to Rubois and take care of the photography and the posters. Tom, finish following that list of addresses, focusing on the ones that the flic said were in the river ghettos. Geraldine, you shall take up a post on the riverbank and observe.” He raised a palm to silence her before she could protest. “This is not a sop, I promise you. If Rayley is being held in this area, someone is going back and forth to feed him, make sure he hasn’t escaped, that sort of thing. I want you to monitor who is coming and going from these buildings.”
“And what am I to do if I see someone suspicious?”
“You do nothing,” Trevor said sharply. “You take note of which door it was the person entered, which is tricky in itself, for as Tom and I have learned to our frustration, many of the dwellings on the river do not bear a marked address. When Emma and I get back with the police you can point them in the right direction.” Trevor looked around the group. “For none of us, and I include myself in this statement, should approach Armand Delacroix on our own. He’s a very dangerous man. And when these posters begin showing up all over Paris I fear he will become a very desperate one.”
12:32 PM
“We shall probably need to go to one of the avenues if we hope to hail a carriage,” said Emma.
“Is that what you and Tom did this morning after your little swim?” Trevor asked. “It’s all right,” he added, when Emma shot him a look that was half defiant and half guilty. “Tom told me of your theory. It’s not a bad one, you know, and I’m only sorry you felt the need to dissemble.”
They strode up the small street leading to the avenue for a few minutes in silence.
“You honestly don’t understand why I was evasive?” Emma eventually asked, when it became clear Trevor was waiting for some sort of response. “If I had come to you with the suggestion, things would have unfolded precisely as they did on that afternoon in Manchester. You would have pretended to consider my idea and then put me off until you could test the notion before the boys.” Emma sighed. “But perhaps we shouldn’t speak of this now.”
“Oh, but I think we should,” said Trevor. “It is always tempting to put off an unpleasant conversation until a time when circumstances have calmed. We tell ourselves we will raise the thorny issue later, when the crisis is past us and everyone is in a proper frame of mind. But then we are reluctant to shatter that fragile moment of peace, so the trouble remains buried until the next time of crisis. Everyone likes the idea of discussions before a roaring fire, with a glass of wine in the hand and sleeping dogs at the feet, but it occurs to me that I have had the most significant conversations of my life in the middle of whirlwinds. So if you have something to tell me, you may as well say it now, while we’re both exhausted, and worried, and trying to hurry. It’s as good a time as any.”
“I want respect.”
“So you have said. And so I have tried to give you.” They had reached the mouth of the street and Trevor surveyed the crossroads to ascertain the most likely point for hailing a driver. “But it seems that the word ‘respect’ is a vague one, especially when it comes to the relations between men and women. What one woman deems respect, another might find insulting.”
“So if there’s a misunderstanding, it’s automatically the woman’s fault.”
Trevor turned to her, his narrow eyes weary and his shoulders slumped. “Dear God, Emma,” he quietly said. “I’m trying, am I not? If I’m traveling such a distance to meet you, it seems you could at least walk a few steps in my direction.”
She knew he was right. The definition of “respect” was nebulous, as confounding as the gender pronouns in this confounding case. Rayley had worshipped Isabel Blout, but had he respected her? Hardly, at least not by Emma’s standards. Caught up in his romantic fantasies, Rayley had failed to see the most pertinent point about the woman he claimed to desire – that she wasn’t a woman at all. It seemed that sexual attraction always had this effect of blunting our powers of perception. Emma knew that Trevor cared for her and that he was struggling mightily to not let this affection blind him to her abilities.
“I suppose,” she said, “that we must first define what respect looks like for Emma and Trevor.”
“Quite right,” said Trevor, his confidence restored by her reasonable tone of voice. “Let us consider the evidence before us. We are trying to hail a cab on a busy street corner in Paris and my arm is in the air but yours is not. What can we conclude from this?”
Emma chuckled, genuinely amused.
“We might conclude,” she said, “that instinctively we both observe certain social constructs which are built around the notion of gender. Men automatically step forward to hail cabs while women wait on the curb.”
“And if I ever manage to flag one down, shall I extend a hand to steady you as you step up?”
“I suppose that would be nice. To be honest, I suppose I would expect it.”
“Even though I would not extend that same hand to help Davy or Tom.”
“All right, you’ve caught me. I
don’t want you to drop all the rituals that exist between men and women and I suspect we would both be quite lost if we tried to do so. But here is the true question. Will you entertain my ideas on an equal par of those of the men? Will you allow me to fully join into the activities of an investigation? Or will your first thought be that I might get hurt, that I should be protected from the dangers which are inherent in all police cases?”
“The truth? Protecting you will always be my first thought,” Trevor said, as at last a carriage began to slow in front of them, the driver firmly pulling the horse to a stop. “But I shall endeavor not to let it be my only thought. I already take your ideas seriously, whether you believe it or not, and in the future I promise I will assign you more field work, even though the idea of you in danger very nearly makes my heart stop.”
“The police station,” Emma called up to the driver in French. Trevor made an elaborate bow, doffing his hat with great ceremony and extending his palm to steady her. She grinned and climbed into the carriage, with him stepping up behind her. When they were seated, Trevor rapped the wall and the carriage rumbled into movement.
