City of Light (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  It now stood open.

  “Hush,” Geraldine hissed and even her half-witted oarsmen seemed to notice the change and to mark it as significant, for they hunkered low in the rowboat and dug into the water with deeper, more decisive strokes. Geraldine strained to see over the vegetation, aware that she was holding her breath. Within seconds, the sleek figure of Armand Delacroix appeared in the doorway. He glanced to the right and then to the left, but he did not look down to the river. Which was fortunate indeed, for while the reeds and brambly bushes partially concealed the presence of the rowboat, a proper look would have given their position away.

  Delacroix disappeared and was almost immediately back, this time staggering under the weight of the burden he was carrying, a thin pale man who was clearly unconscious, with his arms and legs limp in Delacroix’s arms and his head thrown back. Geraldine had never seen Rayley Abrams, but this was most certainly him. She was gripping the sides of the rowboat so tightly that she could feel her heart pounding in her fingertips. Was he dead? But no, most likely not. For the modus operandi of Delacroix was to drug and release, to let the Seine serve as his accomplice in the act of murder.

  Delacroix struggled toward the riverbank, his feet slipping in his descent, for the shore was soft and, while Rayley was not heavy, his limp form was ungainly enough to pull Delacroix off balance. He dropped Rayley with a heartless thud at the edge of the water and then stood back, looking around for something. Most likely a stone to weight the body.

  Perhaps this is what broke Geraldine out of her paralysis, the fact that Delacroix’s attention was shifting from Rayley to the riverbank, the fact that any second now his gaze would lift and he would see them there, the old woman and the vagrants, hiding in the reeds in a rowboat, watching. For something propelled her into action. She abruptly stood, to the great consternation of her oarsmen, who went scrambling to right the boat and keep them all from pitching into the Seine.

  Geraldine rose shakily, her legs braced as far apart as they would go, the boat bucking and shifting beneath her. “Charles Hammond,” she called, “I come in the name of Scotland Yard.”

  3:41 PM

  “That’s all we have,” Marjorie said, pulling her empty saddlebag open as if she believed Emma might somehow doubt her. “A hundred posters went up and that surely is enough to accomplish your mission. Although I must say that I’m still not entirely sure what that mission is. The police already have a warrant for Delacroix, do they not?”

  “He’s undoubtedly within their custody as we speak,” said Emma. “Trevor didn’t tell you why we wanted the posters?”

  Marjorie shook her head, her short curls bobbing around her face. She’s quite fashionable in a very unfashionable way, Emma thought. The very fact she doesn’t try gives her an unusual sort of appeal. The two women were making their slow progress back to the rendezvous point at the riverbank.

  “Our goal is to flush out Isabel Blout, which is the British name of the woman you know as Isabel Delacroix,” Emma said. There was certainly more to add but she wasn’t sure how Trevor would feel about her talking to a newspaperwoman, even one who had been as helpful to their cause as Marjorie. “We believe she is still in Paris, but low on funds and living as one of the sewer rats.”

  Marjorie let out a low whistle. “Hard to imagine her blending in down there.”

  “True. But a witness told us she traded her clothes for those of a working man’s and she has presumably assumed a male identity. I know, I know,” she added hastily, as Marjorie screwed her face into a disbelieving frown. “It sounds quite fantastical and that’s only a small part of the even more fantastical story. But the reason that I wanted to put the preponderance of posters near the tower is that we also believe she may be working there.”

  “Wow,” said Marjorie.

  “Yes,” said Emma. “’Wow’ is precisely the word.”

  “Even harder to picture Isabel Delacroix working on the tower,” Marjorie said thoughtfully. “Although at least she doesn’t have a fear of heights.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, it’s just that the morning they took us all up,” Marjorie said, “they posed me against the railing so that the pictures would have something in the forefront for perspective…” She trailed off with a chuckle. “I was terrified but I tried hard not to let on. The wind is so fierce when you’re right there against the edge like that. You almost feel as if it’s going to lift you up and carry you away.”

  “I can imagine,” said Emma.

  “Actually you can’t,” said Marjorie. “That’s the thing about the tower. You stand on the ground and look up at it and you think you can imagine what it would feel like to be at the top. So you have these expectations but then, when you’re there, the reality is so much more miraculous and intense and terrifying from anything you had foreseen.”

  The two women paused in their steps and looked back. From the angle where they stood, only the highest section of the tower was visible, the spire rising behind the rooftops of the houses and shops. “Anyway,” Marjorie continued, “being in the pictures required me to stand against the railing while all the photographers were shooting and all the reporters were trying to tell the photographers how to do their jobs. So everyone was focused on me, you see, and I was looking the other direction, toward the center of the tower. I imagine I’m the only one who saw them.”

  “Saw who?” Emma said warily.

  “Detective Abrams and Isabel Delacroix. There’s a spiral staircase that runs right up the center of the tower, sort of like….like a spine, I guess you’d say. It commences on the first level, where we all were, and continues to the second, which wasn’t finished on the day we climbed. And the rumor is that it goes even higher, to a third level, which isn’t open to the general public. Do you see it? The top level, I mean?”

  Emma squinted toward the tower. “You mean that third horizontal line, just at the very top? What could possibly be up there?”

  “Eiffel’s aerie.”

  “Aerie?”

  “Perhaps it’s more of an American term,” Marjorie conceded. “An aerie is an eagle’s nest, generally built in the highest point of a tree. It provides the most spectacular and breathtaking views of all and the rumor is that Gustave Eiffel has built himself a private apartment on this third level, accessible only by this final link in the spiral staircase. No bigger than a room, they say, but I don’t know anyone who claims to have actually seen it, so, who knows, the whole thing may be a hoax. But still, there’s a staircase leading up from the second level and a staircase has to go somewhere, wouldn’t you say?”

  Emma simply stood staring at the tower and Marjorie laughed. “Just being on the first level was alarming enough,” she said. “Even though everyone was trying to treat it as a grand adventure. No one wanted to be the first to show nerves, so we were all chattering away, going on and on about how wonderful it all was. I couldn’t believe anyone in the group had the guts to go higher.”

  Emma turned back to her. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “When I was posing near the railing,” Marjorie said, falling back into a walk with Emma once again trotting beside her, “I was of course facing back toward the center where the spiral staircase was and I saw Isabel and Detective Abrams begin to climb it. I thought it was a jest when they started – you know, a few steps up and then right back down - but they kept going until they had climbed completely out of sight. All the way to the second level, I suppose. Was he a daredevil?”

  “You must be joking.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Marjorie said with a rakish grin. “It was my impression that she was goading him into it. That she was determined to climb so he felt compelled to go with her, you know, to offer protection. We women do that sort of thing sometimes, don’t we? Lead men to places they don’t want to go? Sometimes I wonder why they bother with us at all.”

  “Sex,” Emma said shortly. She was tired already and Marjorie’s loping gait had not slow
ed at all in the midst of her storytelling.

  “Yes, sex,” Marjorie said. “That’s the only thing that explains it. But all I really know is that Isabel took off climbing that tiny little sliver of a staircase and then poor kind Detective Abrams took off behind her.”

  None of Rayley’s letters had described that part of the morning, Emma thought, as the women continued to walk, the blocks growing shorter as they neared the river. I wonder if he even made mention of it in his private letters to Trevor. Probably not – it was a thoroughly silly thing for him to do, and only served as further proof of how completely the Blout woman had brought him under her spell. But Marjorie’s story did raise one interesting point. Rayley and Isabel must have both known of the existence – or at least the rumored existence – of Eiffel’s aerie.

  “They say he’s filled it with incredibly valuable things,” Marjorie suddenly added. “Eiffel’s aerie, I mean. Crystal and fine furnishings and art from his personal collection. Of course, no one has a theory on how they got any of that stuff up there. Or how they would ever get it back down.”

  3:42 PM

  The unexpected and accusatory sound of his true name pulled Delacroix up short. He rose from his search, a sizable stone in his hand, and stared downriver at a sight which must have struck him as a scene from a comic opera. Geraldine, struggling to stand and using her parasol in much the manner of tightrope walker to stabilize herself, shrieking “Charles Hammond, I come in the name of Scotland Yard.”

  Delacroix momentarily stood transfixed. Geraldine was perhaps thirty feet away, but advancing fast. For a moment he seemed to consider the option of throwing his stone at her but then thought better of it. (Geraldine had already decided she could probably deflect any such attempt with her parasol, having proven quite proficient at lawn tennis fifty-four years earlier at Miss Eloise’s Academy for Ladies.) Instead he turned on his heel and retreated to where Rayley lay sprawled. There, to Geraldine’s horror, Delacroix thrust the stone under the man’s shirt and rolled him into the water.

  Rayley sank at once, truly sucked beneath the Seine, with a single bubble escaping to mark the spot. Delacroix then scrambled up the bank on all fours and Geraldine, her body reacting faster than her mind, plunged into the water herself. Her feet sank immediately into the mud of the river bottom, so she opted to swim. She knew precisely where Rayley was, of course. The question was whether or not she could lift him.

  The French were screaming above her. She paddled as close to the riverbank as possible and then dove, where her reaching hands were almost immediately rewarded with the discovery of one of Rayley’s limbs. Roll him, she thought. Roll him over and the rock shall drop from his shirt. Kicking furiously, unable to see through the muddy water, she felt her way along his torso and turned him. And then, to her shock, he felt his hand grab hers.

  He was conscious? No, it was the hand of one of the oarsman, stout fellow, who had leapt to her aid. Together they lugged Rayley to the top of the water and the man held his face free while Geraldine located and removed the stone. His comrade tossed them a net, a sad affair with more holes than rope to it. They draped the net around Rayley, and while they waited to be towed in, Geraldine pounded his back. The gesture forced up a gush of water and then he coughed, something Geraldine knew was a very good sign.

  3:44 PM

  From the police wagon, Trevor spied Tom, walking at a furious pace toward the avenue. He rapped for the driver to stop and leaned out the window to flag him down.

  “Buildings near the sewer,” Tom gasped. “Just as Emma said. And we found –“

  Trevor pulled him up into the crowded coach where Tom caught his breath and then gave an abbreviated version of the last hour’s events, focusing on the location of the building with many doors and the contents of the glove.

  “Rayley is in one of those rooms,” Tom said. “I’m sure of it, but there are so many doors.”

  With Carle in his usual role, the driver was directed to the part of the street which corresponded to the sewer down below. The flics hopped out first and ran to the back of the wagon where they began to pull out a variety of implements - including, Tom was gratified to note, picks and shovels. The officers followed, Trevor stepping down last with his heart pounding. We are here, he thought, we have found him. As the afternoon had stretched on toward evening, Trevor’s sense of dread had been steadily growing. The first two bodies had been released in the deep of the night, and were found at dawn. It would seem that Delacroix, like so many criminals, preferred to transact his business during those hours when the rest of the city slept.

  Tools collected, the group began making their way toward one of the narrow alleyways which presumably led down to the water. They were nearly at the mouth of the alley when a man burst out running. Delacroix coming straight toward them, muddy and wild-eyed, stumbling nearly into their arms. The flics surrounded him and Rubois pulled out his handcuffs and began shouting orders, but Trevor and Tom did not linger to witness the arrest. They were already running down the alley toward the water, Tom in the lead and Trevor stumbling behind, each of their minds gripped with the same thought. For if Delacroix was fleeing the scene, they had come too late.

  3:45 PM

  Bidding goodbye to Marjorie at the corner, Emma walked the final block alone. Strange that she would remain focused on this one fact with so much unresolved in the case, but she could not seem to get the idea of Eiffel’s aerie from her mind.

  “Think,” Trevor would sometimes tell them, in the midst of the Tuesday Night Murder Games. “Think as if you are someone other than yourself. Close your eyes and slip your skin and imagine yourself in the body of a stranger. A criminal, a victim, a witness. What does that person see? What do they feel? How do they eat and sleep and dress and work? What motivates them?”

  I am Ian, Emma thought, as she wove her way along the crowded sidewalk, dotted with the working class citizens of Paris. Selling apples, selling beer, selling fish - selling their own flesh if need be, anything to hold onto this narrow spat of ground. For beneath them, literally just a few steps below this street, was a broad slope of grass that led to the most profound destitution. How easy it must be to slip from this shaky limb of relative respectability, how easy to begin to roll. You develop a cough, lose your job, find yourself carrying a baby you can’t feed, or run afoul of the flics…one mistake is all it takes until you find yourself sleeping by the river, sunk as low as one can sink in this particular city.

  I am Ian walking this street, Emma thought. No, better yet, I am Isabel. Only a few precious remnants of my former life have come with me – the valise with my clothes, a bit of money, the things I grabbed up before I fled. What do I do with the valise while I work during the day? It marks me as wealthy, it marks me as a woman, yet I dare not leave it behind. Things are stolen within minutes in this part of town. I could rent a room but the cost of one, even here, would so dilute my earnings from the tower…

  Ah, the tower. I could hide the bag there.

  Perhaps I could even hide myself.

  Emma turned at the bar whose name she had noted from the morning, the rather unimaginative La Rose, and strode down to the point where they had all agreed to meet. Trevor and Tom were not there, which did not fully surprise her, but neither was Geraldine, which did.

  Emma paused at the place on the stone wall where they had left Geraldine sitting. A glove was lying on the ground. Small, dainty, expensive. The sort Geraldine wore, but this was not Geraldine’s glove, or at least not one of the pair she had been wearing when they left the house that morning. Had Francine dropped it during their interview?

  Emma bent to pick it up, grimacing at the sight of a nearby rat snarled in a bit of cloth. But then her eye something else. Glittering shards of glass, several of them, the largest one magnifying the blade of grass beneath it. Not just glass, she realized, but a lens. A thick one, the sort that resided in the eyeglasses of Rayley Abrams. Emma looked around helplessly. What sort of puzzle was this and
where was Geraldine?

  3:46 PM

  Trevor and Tom found the door open, the only open door among so many locked ones, and ran into the cell. There they discovered a bed, a cup, and a man’s handkerchief, but no Rayley Abrams.

  Tom turned, but for once Trevor was faster. They rushed toward the river, where Trevor stumbled in while Tom ran the length of the bank, hoping against hope he would find a man floating. Later, when he would consider this moment, what Tom would most recall is that neither man spoke. The whole world, in fact, had gone soundless. No birds, no people, even the splashing from Trevor’s hands and feet seemed muted and vague.

  He reached time and time again, staggering through the mud from one part of the river to another, but each time, his hands came up with nothing but water. Water and more water. Endless water.

  3:56 PM

  “Watch him,” Rubois said to the flics. Delacroix had crumpled, and was lying with both his hands and feet bound in the back of the police truck. It seemed as if all the fight had gone out of him, but Rubois had certainly seen cases where it would have appeared that a suspect was utterly subdued, only to have the man mount some final spasm of resistance. He sent one flic back to the central station to request the river patrol and left two to guard the prisoner while he, Carle, and the others followed the alley to the water.