by Kim Wright
There he found more or less what he had expected. An open door, an empty room, the British detectives fruitlessly combing the river, one of them plunging over and over into the water and the other walking the bank stone-faced, already in possession of the truth.
“We will bring down the boats to sweep the river,” Rubois called to Trevor. “If Detective Abrams is in there, we will find him.” As he grew closer, he added more quietly, and with more sympathy. “Perhaps you wish to talk to Delacroix. Once we get a prisoner within the walls of the station, I am afraid he is ours. This is French soil, after all, and he must answer for our crimes before he answers for yours. But if you come now I can give you a few minutes in the wagon. You can ask him whatever you wish and we shall…I assure you, we shall look the other way.”
Carle translated and Rubois watched comprehension slowly growing in Trevor’s eyes as he made his way back to the bank and struggled out, his hands trembling so violently he could scarcely grasp the reeds and grass to help pull himself up the bank. If there was any truth left in Armand Delacroix, Rubois was offering Trevor the chance to beat it out of him.
“You know you can’t,” Tom said, suddenly at his side with his voice so low and calm that Trevor might have mistaken it for the sound of his own conscience. “You’re Scotland Yard and that has to mean something, even here. We can interrogate him, of course, but I doubt he’ll give us anything we don’t already know. And there’s no reason to wait for boats to come and sweep the river. If Rayley’s gone under, we both know well enough where he will surface.”
Trevor nodded, although his limbs were giving way and he couldn’t totally come to terms with what all these voices were telling him. It would seem that he had failed yet again. Not failed in capturing the criminal, for the man who had caused this nightmare was trussed and tied in the back of a police wagon. Whether justice took the form of a blade in Paris or a rope in London was all the same, for either way Delacroix would be gone from the earth. And perhaps this counted as success by some standards.
But not for Trevor. He was beginning to realize that for him law enforcement would always be more about protecting the innocent than punishing the guilty. What good would a thousand closed cases and citations do him if he couldn’t save the people he knew and cared for? First he had lost Emma’s sister to the Ripper and now Rayley too was gone. Or perhaps, most dreadful thought of all, he had even caused it. The posters, which had been his idea, had apparently not merely forced Delacroix’s hand but driven him into a frenzy of destruction.
“It’s not your fault,” Tom said firmly, his hand on Trevor’s arm, for the man’s stricken facial expression showed well enough what he was thinking. “You did what you thought was best. We all did. Once a criminal has taken a hostage, he holds all the cards. You’ve told us that many times.”
Trevor nodded, although the younger man’s words seemed to be coming from far away. He was going into a type of shock, he realized with relief, a sort of protective numbness that would allow him to function. For this day was not yet over and Trevor knew he still owed Rayley Abrams two things. He must retrieve his body from the Seine and he must find Isabel Blout.
4:11 PM
The flic Rubois had dispatched to summon help must have flown on the wings of angels – or at least shouted the news to every fellow officer he’d passed – for within minutes a handful of police had gathered, representing a variety of functions and ranks. Trevor and Tom accepted their offer of an official carriage and headed back down the street in the direction of the bridge where the whole matter had started, the bridge where it would likely end. The bridge where Emma and Geraldine would be waiting for them. Although they did not say it during their brief and silent ride, Tom and Trevor were thinking the same thing. It took thirty minutes for a body to float downstream from the sewer to the bridge. They needed to arrive at the bridge before that much time had passed or the women waiting there might be subjected to an experience from which they might well never recover.
But when they arrived, they found only Emma, sitting on the same stone wall where they had left Geraldine, slapping a glove against her palm and looking impatient.
“Where have the two of you been?” she said irritably as they approached. “Geraldine seems to have utterly disappeared and – why are you staring at me so strangely, Trevor? Did you find Rayley?”
“In a way,” said Tom, stepping forward to put his arm around her waist for Emma had risen slowly, staring back at Trevor.
“Emma,” Tom said. “Come with me away from the sewer wall and please, let’s take a little walk.”
“We were too late,” Trevor blurted. “We found Delacroix, but he was coming up from the river…”
“The river,” Emma said, shaking off Tom’s arm and walking toward the water. “If he went into the river…”
“Don’t go down there,” Tom called after her. “Trevor and I can –“
“Leave her be,” Trevor said. “She wants to stand with us, even in moments like this.”
Emma squinted upstream, but what she saw was not the horror she was expecting, but rather a beauty so profound that it almost seemed to mock her emotions. A blaze of afternoon sunlight, already beginning to slant against the water, turning it into a glittering golden path. The impressionists are realists, Emma thought. For everything they paint - the water, the gardens, this shimmering light - it is all just as it really appears. Trevor and Tom were walking down the bank, she dimly realized, coming to stand behind her.
And then she saw it, a movement within the mirror of the water. A stronger current, pushed by the oar of a rowboat, a dark shape breaking through the brightness, coming slowly toward them. In it, two men and behind them, in the back seat, sat Geraldine Bainbridge. She looked ridiculous. The brim of her hat sank around her face, one feather broken, the other trailing a green string of pond scum. She waved her parasol at them and cried “Darlings! I have him.”
None of them answered. None of them moved. In fact they stood shoulder to shoulder, utterly immobile, as if they had all been seized by some sort of collective hallucination.
“You have who?” Trevor finally said, as Geraldine drifted closer, proving herself to be not a phantom at all, but a very wet woman.
“Rayley, of course,” Geraldine said, peering down at the slowly stirring shape lying across her feet. “In fact, he seems to be walking up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Paris
4:48 PM
Apparently the amount of money Geraldine had waved at the oarsmen had proven enough to buy not merely their services, but also their boat. For they abandoned their craft – as well as their mad captain – the minute they struck the soil of the bank. Funds in hand, they disappeared into the small crowd which had assembled to watch the drama and evidently volunteered drinks for everyone within earshot. For a cheer went up and the crowd promptly turned into a parade, following the two up the hill and into the nearest bar.
Tom converted the rowboat into a makeshift clinic. A quick examination proved Rayley to be merely groggy, dehydrated, and battered, especially around the ribs where Delacroix had used the stone to weight him. Emma sprinted off and returned with bread and a glass of lager which seemed to somewhat revive him, although he remained listless, sinking back against the side of the rowboat while Tom turned his attentions to his aunt.
Geraldine was utterly soaked, a fate she shared with Trevor and Rayley, and as the sun began to sink and the temperature cooled, Tom insisted they all return to the apartment. He said this firmly, and they all understood the logic of his directive. But no one seemed to have the inclination to move. The day’s numerous reversals of fortune had drained their strength.
And so they merely sat, the five of them in a beached rowboat, each silent within their thoughts.
It was Rayley who spoke first. “How did you find me?”
The question was directed at Trevor. Rayley had been semi-conscious at best when they had dragged the rowboat from the water,
and thus had no idea who had truly rescued him or how. In fact, he had even roused himself at one point in the medical triage and held a hand out to Geraldine, saying quite formally, “I take it that you’re Miss Bainbridge. I’m Rayley Abrams, you know.”
“Yes, dear, I know,” Geraldine had replied. “I’m delighted to meet you.” And then Rayley had promptly slumped back down in the boat and resumed his stupor. The scene would be the source of much amusement to them all in the weeks and months to come, but as for now, it seemed too much to expect the detective to absorb the fact that his rescue had come in the form of an elderly heiress armed with a parasol. The eyes of the others went to Trevor at once, looking to him for direction as to how much information Rayley could accept in this pivotal moment.
“It took all of us to find you,” Trevor said. “Emma came up with a very clever forensics theory, and it led Tom to the rooms where you were being held…”
“And there I discovered your letter,” Tom said, indicating the glove Emma still held in her hand. “Most clever of you, old chap, for it confirmed we were at the right place.”
Rayley was gazing intently at the glove and blinking rapidly, the workings of his mind almost visible behind his large grey eyes. “Is Isabel…” he began, and then he stopped, as if even he was unsure if he could bear the answers to his own questions.
“Alive and in hiding, as far as we know,” Trevor quickly answered. “Delacroix has been arrested so she is safe, as are all the boys.”
“The boys?” Rayley said questioningly.
“The boys, the girls…It doesn’t matter,” Trevor said. “It’s a long and complicated story and one best saved for another time.”
“You think the drugs have confounded me,” Rayley said. “And they have, just a bit, but the main thing is that I seem to have lost my glasses. And my knickerbockers as well, if the ladies will forgive me for saying so.”
“Both were sacrificed in a good cause,” Tom said. “And anyone would be slightly disoriented if they had been through what you’d been through, which is why I must repeat my suggestion that we disembark from this silly boat and return to the apartment. Baths and dinner and celebratory champagne are in order, I believe, and then a good long rest for us all.”
“I think I know where she’s hiding,” Emma said. “Isabel, that is.”
The others looked at her sharply, Rayley included.
“It’s just a hunch,” Emma said cautiously, for the intense hopefulness of Rayley’s expression made her wary of promising too much. “But Marjorie Mallory was telling me that at the top of the Eiffel Tower there’s a room -”
“But of course,” said Rayley. “She knew all about it. She told me the day we climbed.” He sat up more fully now, once again rapidly blinking, with his excitement clearly helping him to overcome the lingering effects of the chloroform. “But how would she get up there without…but never mind, Isabel is damn clever and you’re right, Emma, it’s precisely the sort of solution she would think of, the sort of place where she would want to go.”
“A room at the top of the tower?” Tom said skeptically. “With all those workers coming and going, someone would see her.”
“Not at all,” Rayley said definitely, his personality now breaking through the haze of the drugs like sun after a rainstorm. “This is a private room, above the public levels. Much higher. Terrifyingly so. But she would go there without hesitation.” Rayley’s eyes, which looked so naked without the protective shell of his customary eyeglasses, darted around the circle. “Isabel is utterly fearless. As brave as any man I’ve ever known.”
“I’m sure,” Trevor said cautiously. “But there are other things you need to understand, Abrams, other facts which have come to light in the last few days.” He hesitated and fumbled. “We’ve identified the first body that was found in the Seine, the boy who was dressed as a girl. It’s Henry Newlove, Isabel’s brother.”
“Brother?” Rayley said, frowning. “I didn’t know she had a brother. And did you discover why on earth he’d be dressed as a girl?”
“As we said, long story,” Trevor said. “Very long story. But the salient point is that when we learned his identity we made posters, showing Henry’s face.”
“Newlove,” Rayley said slowly. “That name is somewhat familiar...”
“She must be distraught,” Emma said abruptly, also pushing away from the side of the rowboat and leaning toward the others. “What Trevor is trying to say, Rayley, is that in our efforts to force Isabel and Delacroix into action, we revealed to the general public that Henry Newlove is the corpse they were calling the Lady of the River. So yes, Isabel is safe from Delacroix but the odds are high that in the course of this day she has also learned that her brother is dead. Which I imagine would make her –“
“I must go to the tower,” Rayley said.
“You’ve had a shock,” Tom said, “and Aunt Gerry is soaking. If we all return to the apartment and-“
“I’m going to the tower,” Rayley said, unsteadily pushing to his feet. “Right this very moment. If Isabel is there I must tell her that she’s safe, convince her to come with me back to London.”
“Very well,” said Trevor. “I’m going with you.”
“I can handle this, Welles.”
“You’re blind.”
“Ah yes,” said Rayley, weaving on his feet. “Quite right. Perhaps you should come, after all.”
5:29 PM
They were both audibly gasping for air by the time they reached the tower. Security around it had gradually and incrementally increased during the last days, as Parisians had watched the details begin to fall into place. Even the most cynical of Eiffel’s detractors were beginning to concede that he would indeed have his moment of triumph.
Rayley had been practicing his speech as they ran, weaving through the crowds on the avenue, breaking into a full sprint as they approached the broad flat lawn leading up to the tower. Voices seemed to glance off him as he hurried through the half-built pavilions. Not just French and English voices, but German and Italian too, as well as tongues he could not readily identify. The Exposition was two weeks away but the world was slowly beginning to assemble in Paris, brown and white and yellow faces all looking expectantly upward toward the spire in the center of it all. The tower is our new church, Rayley thought. Progress has become our new world religion.
But despite how furiously his mind had churned, Rayley had been able to think of no way that he and Trevor would be allowed quick admittance to the elevator. Their Scotland Yard credentials, which made so many doors swing open in London, caused nothing but puzzlement here.
Trevor may have been portly but Rayley was weak, worn down by his days in captivity, blinking in the bilious glow of the dawning streetlights and still unsteady on his feet. So it was Trevor who reached the elevator first and who surprised Rayley by pulling something from his pocket. Rayley didn’t see what it was, but the flic standing guard at the elevator jerked to attention and a second man, dressed in a black jacket, wrenched open the doors and motioned them inside.
They tumbled in behind him. Rayley grabbed the handrails and struggled to get a deep breath. Trevor was bathed in sweat and was fumbling for a handkerchief. At Rayley’s questioning glance, he gasped out a single word: “Rubois.”
So the man was my friend in the end, Rayley thought, for he must have given Trevor the sort of credentials carried by Parisian detectives, had perhaps even given up his own. The doors closed, with a groan of protest, and the elevator began to rise. They had made some progress with the clanging, but it was still a loud affair and Trevor jerked with surprise. Rayley sank back against the railing and tried to compose himself. It was too much to take in – his sudden rescue, the dash across town, the fact he was back in this elevator where he had vowed to never again venture, the utter uncertainty of what they would find at the top.
Trevor had caught his breath as well and turned toward the handrail. Rayley followed his gaze through the glass and over what h
e could only assume to be the rooftops of the city. But even he could tell that it was different at night than it had been in the day. Paris seemed somehow larger, a thousand small dots of light, as if they were looking at a starlit sky below them, rather than above. Rayley cautiously inched a bit closer to Trevor.
“Quite a view,” he shouted.
Trevor’s lips were parted in awe. “You didn’t tell me,” he said.
“Tell you what?”
“That it is magical.” Trevor turned toward him, suddenly younger, his expression like that of a child. “It’s a miracle,” he said. “A bloody miracle lying here before us. The end of one world and the birth of the next. Didn’t you see it?”
