by Kim Wright
“In truth, I wouldn’t mind sitting for a while.”
They made their way down the familiar sloping bank, looking for a hospitable clump of grass. Trevor plopped to the ground at once and was both amused and relieved to see that Rayley still took care to withdraw a handkerchief from his pocket and spread it on the ground before sitting. Neither captivity nor humiliation had disrupted the man’s fastidiousness. Rayley was as clean, neat, and properly dressed as ever, giving the impression of an accountant or civil servant on his way home from work while Trevor feared it was his destiny to stumble through life in a permanent state of disarray. In fact, if you asked anyone on the street which of the two men had recently been the victim of a violent crime, Trevor was certain the vast majority of the citizens of Paris would suggest it was him.
“How do you think they will describe this?” Rayley asked. “The newspapers and the gossips and historians and all the other people who step in so obligingly to serve as the custodians of our public tragedy?”
“No need to guess,” Trevor said. “They’ve already begun. The papers are presenting it as the unexplained disappearance of a rich, well-connected woman. A lovely bird flown from the highest branches of society, her motives creating an enticing little puzzle for all the touristes who have come to the Exhibition, a mystery for them to speculate upon as they eat their morning pastries.”
“And so it will be as if Ian Newlove had never existed.”
Trevor heard the sadness in his voice. This wound would be a long time healing. “At least this time,” Trevor said, “the man responsible for so much suffering is firmly in custody. We can take refuge in that thought if nothing else.”
“Hard to imagine that your case and mine are both solved with one arrest,” said Rayley. “That Cleveland Street and the murder of Patrick Graham should have all sprung from the arrogance and greed of one man. Little chance he’ll face trial in London, I suppose?”
Trevor shook his head. “The French have first crack at him and a murder charge trumps mere solicitation, either way. Although Davy writes that as the Cleveland Street incident is unfolding in the papers, public outrage is growing as well. Someday, perhaps soon, I predict that prostitution involving children shall be deemed a more serious charge than prostitution involving adults.”
Rayley nodded, but his mind was clearly more fixed on the recent past than the unspecified future. “The papers make no mention of Henry either, I should guess.”
“No mention at all.”
Rayley took off his new glasses, a gift from his Parisian hosts back at the station, and blew thoughtfully on the lenses. “I suppose it is inevitable. Just one more unclaimed body in the morgue, another unmarked grave. It pains me to think that Isabel, or whatever shards are left of her, shall have the same fate. I must speak to Rubois. Perhaps the brothers can at least be interred together.”
The men sat in silence.
Finally Rayley gave a loud sigh. “Welles, when we said we would not speak of this in London, I didn’t mean the larger social issues of prostitution or homosexuality or blackmail and the like. We are detectives and of course we will speak of these things at many points in the future, for they are natural parts of our job. What I was really asking was something quite different. I was wondering if we would ever discuss my role in his matter. I suppose I was asking if you now view me differently.”
“Why should I view you differently?”
They were both facing the river, not each other.
“Because I fell in love with a man.”
Trevor swallowed, stared at a bird. A seagull who must have followed the river along its winding route to the heart of the city. “But you didn’t know it was a man.”
“Which only makes it worse, does it not? We can stroll the streets all day speculating on what acts a man might be prepared to commit while in the absence of women or why a man might prefer a man even in the presence of women. And we can do all this from a position of lofty superiority in our role of detectives, wondering why the other poor wretches of the earth aren’t as flawlessly reasonable as we. You always manage a theory or two, so pray tell me what you’d say to this. There are words for men who love women. There are even words for men who love men. But what word does the world give us for a man so deluded that he can’t manage to tell the difference between the two?”
“It wasn’t just you who was fooled, Abrams. Everyone said the boy-girls were quite persuasive in their-“
“Please don’t try to console me with what everyone said about the boy-girls. Isabel was thirty-one years old.” Rayley leaned back on his elbows, now taking no mind of the dirt on the bank, and looked up at the sky. “I didn’t meet her in passing at some dark supper club or an unlit alley. We stood at close congress. At one point she was all but in my arms. And yet I saw nothing.”
“A great many people saw nothing.”
“I am a detective.”
“And still human.”
“You would have noticed something was amiss at once, I’m sure you would have. If ever you had seen her...Before that final night, I mean. Back when she was in her glory.”
Trevor noticed that Rayley still could not bring himself to use the proper pronoun. Or perhaps the mistake was unconscious. The mind works very hard to protect itself, Trevor thought. The mind is its own best friend.
“You’re forgetting that I saw the Whistler,” Trevor said. “Back in London, before it shipped, and of course that night on the tower…”
The water of the Seine was still, all flecks of light and shimmer. This is why they say Paris is so beautiful, Trevor thought. It is a trick. A trick of the light.
“I shall never find a way to sufficiently thank you for saving my life,” Rayley said, his voice as low as a whisper. “You or any of the others. When I consider what you all went through, especially Miss Bainbridge…”
“There’s no need, Rayley. Really. You shouldn’t trouble yourself.”
“But I fear I never will be able to stop troubling myself, at least not on this particular subject.” Rayley set up, turned to Trevor and looked him full in the face. “You say you saw the Whistler back in London, when your mind was composed and settled, so I beg you to tell me. Did you note something in Isabel’s portrait that I did not? Were you cleverer than me? Because I keep thinking that there must have been a sign.”
There were more birds around them now. Swooping, diving, majestic in the air but brutal when they descended to the water in search of fish. They gave out loud angry caws, screeches of warning as they fought, one with the other, their talons slicing the golden air.
“I assure you, man, there was no sign,” Trevor said. “She was beautiful.”
Historical Note
The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a real event and did draw an unusual collection of luminaries to Paris, including James Whistler, Annie Oakley, Paul Gauguin, Thomas Edison, and others who make cameo appearances in City of Light. My depiction of their personalities is entirely fictional. For information about the building of the Eiffel Tower, which is so central to my story, I wish to extend my hearty thanks to Jill Jonnes, author of the nonfiction book “Eiffel’s Tower”. For those wishing to know more about Paris in this exciting era, I encourage you to read her beautifully-written and fascinating work.
Although I altered the dates slightly to suit the purposes of the novel, the raid on a male brothel in Cleveland Street in 1889 was a real event. The young boys who worked there were indeed procured from the telegraph office and Charles Hammond, Henry Newlove, and Charlie Swincow are the actual names of people involved with the scandal.
The other characters in the book – with the notable exception of Queen Victoria – are fictional.
Other Stories in the “City of Mystery” Series
City of Darkness, the first book in the City of Mystery series, is set in 1889 London, where Jack the Ripper roams the streets with impunity and Scotland Yard seems helpless to stop him. The science of forensics is in its infancy bu
t a few detectives, Trevor Welles and Rayley Abrams among them, realize that they are dealing with a new kind of “modern” criminal and thus Scotland Yard will need equally new and modern methods to catch him. City of Darkness is available on Amazon.
City of Silence, the third installment in the City of Mystery series, is set in St. Petersburg at Christmastime. The Queen’s beloved granddaughter Alexandra is determined to marry the young tsarevich Nicholas, but Victoria has doubts about how well her sheltered and naïve “Alecy” will fare in the venomous court of Imperial Russia. When a young dancing instructor with ties to the royal family is found murdered in a most bizarre fashion, Trevor and the Scotland Yard forensics unit travel to the Czar’s Winter Palace to investigate. City of Silence will be available on Amazon in December.
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