City of Light

Chapter TWELVE



The English Channel



April 25



10:50 AM



The human populace was divided into two groups, Trevor mused: those who were energized by travel and those who were depleted by it. Geraldine and Tom evidently fell into the first category, he and Emma into the latter. All four of them were miserably crammed into a small private berth that Geraldine had managed to secure at the last minute, for heaven knows what sort of expense. With the Exposition gearing up, travel between London and Paris was at a peak and the small ship was packed to the gills. He supposed they were lucky not to find themselves on the hard benches bolted to the drafty decks of steerage, but still, fitting four adults into a berth clearly designed for two was a bit of a squash.

Tom and Geraldine chatted happily about some far-flung relative and Emma seemed absorbed in a French newspaper, although Trevor noticed she had not turned the page in some time. Now that he was sure his stomach was not going to betray him in the voyage, he decided he may as well also look for some means of passing the time.

Slipping his hand down to the valise wedged between his feet, Trevor pulled out the file which contained all of Rayley’s letters. They had been neatly sequenced by Davy in chronological order, and Trevor flipped through them once again, looking for some small hint he might have somehow missed. It was a sunny day, warm for April, and despite the stiff wind, the passing had been smooth so far. Yet Rayley’s handwriting, which was tightly knotted and hard to decipher even in the best of circumstances, bobbed steadily before his eyes and within ten minutes Trevor could feel the beginning of a headache.

Abandoning the letters, Trevor settled back on the thin cushions and prepared to feign a nap. The headache could just as easily be from exhaustion as eye strain, for the last twelve hours had been a whirlwind of activity. He had returned to his quarters from Geraldine’s house, hastily tossed some clothes into a trunk, then spent the majority of the night scribbling notes to leave for Davy. He had no doubt that the boy would be able to generate a series of brief reports that would satisfy the admittedly-limited interest Scotland Yard had in the activities of the forensics team and, until Charles Hammond could be found and returned to London, the Cleveland Street case was at a halt. Still, there is nothing like the prospect of being gone for an indefinite amount of time to make a man aware of all the untied threads in his life, and once he had begun writing the notes for Davy, Trevor had found it hard to stop.

Their ship had sailed at the unconscionable hour of five, but the lad had insisted on accompanying them to the dock for a send off. He had stood, a small and solitary figure, waving a white-gloved hand in the darkness and Trevor had momentarily lost his ability to speak. It was not merely that this would be the first time he had left his mother country to venture to the mainland, although that in itself was enough of an event to give a man pause. It was more that in this early departure he couldn’t help but remember the similar morning last November when Rayley had sat sail. He and Davy had seen him to the same dock, had stood witness as the man crossed the gangplank and then turned, briefly, for a final salute. At the time they had all believed that Rayley faced no greater dangers than embarrassment over his inability to speak French and perhaps a bout of seasickness.

Trevor exhaled slowly, and deepened his breathing. Although he still felt a bit pirated into this mad scheme, he had to admit that if they were going at all, it was fortunate Geraldine had the right connections and yes, enough money, to make the pieces of the trip fit together so swiftly. The hotels of Paris had proven full, but she had contacted a distant cousin, a man who owned a small apartment on the Rue de Tremont. By the way Geraldine and Tom were discussing the apartment’s proximity to an evidently famous garden, Trevor could only conclude that it was located in a luxurious part of town, the Parisian equivalent of a Mayfair address.

Geraldine had warned the living quarters would be cramped, although what she considered cramped would probably feel like a palace to Trevor. Not only were they lucky to have quarters at all on the eve of the Exposition, but now that he had a moment to ponder the situation, Trevor realized an apartment would be a far better base of operations than a hotel. The group could confer at leisure about their findings, with no danger of being overhead in a lobby or café.

Besides, an address in an established neighborhood would lend respectability to their little group and Gerry would be indispensible there as well, he suspected. For all her avant garde interests and left-leaning political views, Geraldine had never hesitated to play her aristocratic trump card whenever she deemed it useful. She and Tom were consulting over a sheet of notepaper which contained a list of the obliging cousin’s social circle, people who would greet the Bainbridges as equals, and thus as friends.

“These soirees are so tiresome,” Geraldine was saying. “But necessary if we are to find dear Rayley.”

Behind his closed eyelids Trevor frowned, trying to recall if Geraldine had ever actually met “dear Rayley.”

From the rustle of paper, he concluded that Emma was putting aside her reading and turning her attention to Geraldine and Tom. “What do soirees have to do with Rayley?”

“Trevor was quite right when he said a group of English tourists can hardly knock on the door of the French police station and demand to know the particulars of an investigation,” Geraldine said. “So our route to the truth must follow the more winding path of social intercourse.”

“I gather you have a plan, Auntie,” Tom said.

“Indeed,” said Geraldine. “Let us summarize what we know at this point in time. Rayley has developed an infatuation with an English woman named Isabel Blout, who last year left her elderly husband and bolted to Paris. Due to her association with a man named Armand Delacroix, whose name she sometimes assumes as her own, she moves in a certain social strata. New money, those who have come to their wealth in recent memory and are eager to join the more established tiers of society. One of the ways to shine in Paris is to throw some of that lovely new money into projects associated with the Exhibition, thus illustrating both your wealth and your nationalism in one fell swoop. The gossips of London have suggested, behind the hand, that this Armand fellow earns his own living as some sort of liaison between the investors, who are seeking a boost in their social status, and the committee, which is seeking cash. Most likely he was first drawn to Isabel specifically because of her position in London society and may not have realized how tenuous that position truly was. He probably still deludes himself that a mistress stolen from the bed or a higher ranking man gives him status with his peers. And, Heaven knows, Isabel’s beauty alone could be a useful entry point into any number of social situations. My guess is that her primary function is to lend a patina to his own place in society.”

“Bravo, Aunt Gerry,” Tom said with enthusiasm. “Everyone claims you’re daft, but when you put your mind to it, your logic become most admirably linear.”

“And, as counterbalance, here is my contribution,” said Emma, “although I will freely concede that I’m relying more on conjecture. We must not forget that before Delacroix and before Blout, Isabel was nothing more than a lower class girl whose family worked the mills of Manchester. There is the distinct possibility that during her time there she knew a young man named Charles Hammond. He is also believed to now be in Paris and also believed to be soliciting funds for the Exposition. I feel Isabel and Charles must be somehow connected to each other, although Trevor is less convinced.”

It was an open challenge, but Trevor elected not to respond. He remained with his eyes closed, mimicking the slow, deep breath of sleep.

“Quite intriguing, is it not?” said Gerry. “The more rumors that collect around Isabel, the more she sounds like a character in one of my bedside novels and not a real woman at all. But I’m sure all will be made clear when we meet her in the flesh.”

“Do you truly intend to chase down Isabel Blout by attending a round of parties held in honor of the Exhibition?” Emma said, her voice slightly dubious. “She’s has fled London and turned her back on her life there. What reason would she have to talk to you at all, much less confide the sort of things that would lead us to Rayley?“

“Expatriates always talk to their fellow countrymen,” Geraldine said with confidence.

Emma’s mind flew back to the grim countenance of Janet Hammond. The woman had used precisely the same word. “Even if they left their former country under duress?”

Geraldine nodded. “It’s just…it’s just what we do, dear. You’ll see when we’re in Paris. Besides, I’m rather good at lulling people into confidence. People think I’m a silly old lady and they talk and talk and I just nod and listen.”

By God, that’s true, thought Trevor. Geraldine Bainbridge probably knows more about me than any other living soul.

“And another point,” Gerry continued. “I won’t be attending the parties alone. You’ll all be with me.”

“As your grand-nephew, Tom will certainly be an acceptable escort,” Emma said, “but as a lady’s maid, your invitations hardly extend to me.“

“I didn’t bring you to Paris to act as my lady’s maid,” Geraldine said calmly. “You and Trevor must attend these parties as well, so that we have four sets of eyes in the hunt. I doubt my reputation has preceded me across the channel but if anyone knows anything at all about me, it’s probably that I have inherited funds, inappropriate politics, and a gaggle of nephews. So no one will question the presence of Trevor and Tom. And if we introduce you as the intended bride of one of them, the doors shall swing open for us all. What’s the French term for a betrothed woman, darling?”

“Fiance,” Emma said shortly.

“A lovely sounding word,” Gerry said. “We should adapt it into English.”

“I’m still not convinced this is the proper plan,” Tom said. “Isabel Blout may be nothing more than a pretty, shallow woman and Rayley’s infatuation with her might be purely coincidental to his disappearance. It seems to me the more likely route to discovering who took him and why is to follow the investigation of the Graham murder. Whoever killed Graham is afraid Rayley is also on their trail, and that’s what put him in danger.”

“Plausible as far as it goes,” Emma said. “But can’t you see how the two strands might be connected? Let’s consider the timeline. According to his letters, Rayley first meets Isabel while in the company of the newspaper writer Patrick Graham. She sees them talking and approaches them both at the same time, extending a rather abrupt and unlikely offer of friendship. Graham is invited to climb the tower as part of a select group of the press chosen to witness first-hand what all this invested money has wrought for Paris. But was even this much accidental? If Isabel is as tightly tied to the network of investors as Gerry has theorized her to be, then she likely knew that part of the business of that evening was to invite the journalists to inspect the tower. She maneuvers a way to be standing beside the men when the invitation is issued and, quite by course, she becomes included in the plan.”

“Yes, but to what end?” Tom asked. “Isabel, Rayley, and Graham all tour the tower together. They agree it’s a marvel, they admire it, they grow dizzy from the altitude, and then they come down. As far as we know, that’s the end of the story. Even if the situation was contrived to lure Rayley and Graham along, I can’t fathom what the benefit would be for either Isabel or the man who might be using her as bait.”

“Neither can I,” Emma admitted. “At least not so far. But the truth remains that within days of this event Graham is murdered and Rayley disappears. I refuse to accept that as mere coincidence.”

“Now that much I’ll admit,” Tom said. “Making the acquaintance of Isabel Blout seems to be a very dangerous hobby for men and the reason is undoubtedly tied to her lover and his pool of secret investors. Graham was a reporter, Rayley a detective. Evidently they had each discovered something unsavory, or at least someone feared they might be on the verge of it. “

“The answers to all these questions lead back through Isabel,” Geraldine said decisively. “Trouble follows the girl and always has. Trevor, do stop pretending to sleep and tell us what you think of all this.”

Trevor opened his eyes and gave a rueful laugh. “If you and Emma can discover the role the Blout woman plays in the intrigue, it could prove useful indeed. But I do not intend to fully drop my identity as a Scotland Yard detective. Rayley wrote that he had earned the respect of at least one French officer so it might prove equally useful to contact the man and see if he can shed any light on the Graham case.”

“Then you shall be a detective by day and my honorary nephew by night,” Geraldine said. She attempted to uncross her ankles but the four of them were so packed in the berth that any movement by one necessitated a shift by all the others. “The three of us are merely amateurs so we’ll need someone at our teas and parties who truly knows his craft.”

Trevor slid a bit closer to the window and shook his head. “I could never pass as upper class.”

“Of course you can,” Geraldine said. “Society is nothing more than a very long and rather boring theatrical, darling, and to succeed you must simply speak the right lines and look the part. We shall shop for Emma’s costume when we disembark in France and for men it’s even easier. One reasonably well-cut suit will do the trick.”

“If Trevor and I are to pass as aristocrats, then ‘costume’ is quite the right word,” Emma said, with a light laugh. “I suppose Shakespeare said it best. ‘All the world’s a stage, the men and women merely players.’ But he wasn’t just speaking of class when he wrote those words. He was speaking of all the masks we wear - age, nationality, religion, race, gender.”

“Strange to ponder,” Tom said, extracting a cigarette from a case, “that gender is but a role when it seems to be the core of everything we do in life. But then male actors played the female roles in Shakespeare’s time, did they not? And then of course there are all those comedies where brothers pretended to be their sisters and girls were costumed as boys. A male actor dressed as a woman who is pretending to be a man. It quite boggles the mind.”

“He got the idea from watching his own children,” Emma said, her edginess softening a bit, as it so often seemed to when she was in conversation with Tom. “Shakespeare was the father of boy-girl twins and he used to watch how, in play, they would often switch roles and each pretend to be the other.”

“Truly? I didn’t know that, but it strikes me as quite fascinating,” said Tom, exhaling smoke in the general direction of the window. “Although now that I think of it, when we were back in the nursery Leanna sometimes tired of only having brothers and would dress me in her clothes and proclaim me to be her little sister. William and Cecil would howl with laughter whenever they found me sitting at her tea table in petticoats and hair bows, having been strictly instructed to answer to nothing but ‘Beulah Jane.’ Gad, but they all used to torment me. ‘Tis the curse of the youngest brother, I suppose.”

Geraldine and Emma chortled in amusement while Trevor observed the scene in silence. The rare mention of the names Cecil and Leanna may have briefly rang through the small compartment like church bells, but as usual, Tom had managed to divert any potential awkwardness with his easy charm. This is what I will shortly be called on to emulate, Trevor thought, and it has nothing to do with the cut of your clothes. It’s an unshakable belief in your own worth, complete confidence that, come what may, the world will always love you. Leanna and Geraldine have it too. The Bainbridge fortunes may have ebbed and surged throughout the years, but each member of the family had been born with an innate self-assurance that seemed to radiate from them on an almost cellular level. It was why Tom could so freely admit he didn’t know a certain fact about Shakespeare, why he cheerfully conjured an image of himself dressed in girls’ petticoats and perched at a tea table. He knew how to make himself the butt of the joke and then sit back to chuckle at his own folly. He doesn’t at all fear looking foolish, thought Trevor. Which is why he never will.

“But Beulah Jane here proves my point – that all the things which we think define us are simply the roles that society, or perhaps our older sisters, have demanded we assume,” Emma said, arching her back in a futile attempt to stretch. “And so, presumably, we could drop these identities as easily as we once put them on.”

“I don’t believe that,” Trevor said. “I am what I do. We all are.”

“Nonsense,” Gerry said briskly. “Trevor, you simply must buck yourself up because Emma and Shakespeare have it quite right. When the gangplank drops at Calais we will descend as whomever and whatever we choose to be. And for the course of this trip, we shall play the roles of an addle-headed wealthy family who have come to carelessly gobble up the pleasures of Paris as if they were canapés on a plate. In the process we will toss money around like bait because this offers our best chance of finding Isabel, and, ultimately, Rayley.”

“Very well,” said Trevor. One of the most annoying things about Gerry was how often she was right.

“And don’t worry, Trevor,” Gerry said. “I’m sure you think I’m overstepping my bounds, but this sort of society, with all its silly rules and layers, is the one arena in which I have more experience than you. When we get to Paris, we shall all defer to your judgment on matters of detection and investigation, as always. You shall, as they say, call the shots.”

“Certainly,” said Tom.

Trevor nodded, wishing he believed them.

“But before we dock, you have a choice to make, Emma,” Gerry said, with a wicked hint of a smile. “For the purposes of our little tableau will your fiancé be Trevor or Tom?”

There was a beat of silence, brief but excruciating, before Tom leapt in.

“Say you’ll be mine, darling,” he whispered loudly, bringing one of Emma’s small hands to his chest. “I’d drop to one knee, but there isn’t any room.”

Emma laughed and nodded, glancing at Trevor as she did so. But he had once again leaned back and closed his eyes.