City of Light

Chapter TWELVE



Paris



9:20 PM



After the crossing and the train ride from Calais to Paris, they were exhausted. The four of them sat around a small table tucked in the corner of a café only a block from their new home. Emma had ordered for them, and apparently quite competently, but beyond this brief exchange, their conversation was limited. Emma repeatedly rubbed her temples, and Trevor seemed to have lost his appetite somewhere over the channel. Even Tom and Geraldine’s customary enthusiasm was muted.

They had arrived to find the Paris apartment not at all as Trevor had pictured it in his mind. When Geraldine had described her third cousin on her mother’s side twice removed, or whatever the deuce the man was, she had called him a “confirmed bachelor.” It was a phrase she liked, one she’d used before to describe the aging George Blout, and for Trevor it painted images of the second sons of prominent families, men creating a comfortable sanctuary for themselves after years of military service or some foreign government post. Dark-paneled rooms with leather chairs that smelled faintly of tobacco and brandy, perhaps a suitable picture of a foxhunt on the walls. Instead they had been ushered into an almost obscenely colorful house, with rooms painted in gold, rose, citron, and aqua, each set of double doors swinging open to reveal yet another assault on the retina.

Thanks to a flurry of telegrams back and forth between Geraldine and her cousin, the cloths had been pulled from all the furniture and the bed linens had been prepared. Someone had thoughtfully sent a collection of fruit and biscuits for their refreshment. Geraldine had said that her cousin was horrified by the changes being made to his beloved city and thus had fled Paris for the duration of the spring and summer to stay at his second home on the coast in Nice. It was a sentiment with which Trevor could sympathize, since he would have hated to watch his own motherland tart herself up for the eyes of outsiders. Besides, the fellow’s desire to avoid the Exposition was the very reason his apartment was available to them on such short notice.

So Trevor’s intention was to be grateful, not critical, as the group stumbled wearily from room to room, led by a silent maid who apparently came with the place. But when he noted the seventh still life of blurry flowers, the eleventh lamp with tassels, and yet another wall painted robin’s egg blue, he’d been forced to come to a conclusion: The owner of this apartment was entirely too French for his own good.

They had dropped their trunks and valises and retreated to this café. The tower, nearly finished now except for its final accusatory point, was visible from this street – probably visible, Trevor would guess, from half the streets of Paris. But that was rather the whole idea, was it not? Without speaking of it, their little group had elected to sit at a table near the back wall, with the view obscured. Gazing at the tower while they ate, and thus being forced to speculate on the role it had played in Rayley’s disappearance, was perhaps more stimulation than they could currently bear.

Still, there were plans to be made for the morrow. The café had nearly emptied, so there was probably no danger in talking here. Trevor waited until their table was cleared, save for four small bowls of a very satisfying custard with a crunchy crust, and then he asked Geraldine “From the social standpoint, where would you suggest we begin?”

She was ready. “With time so much of the essence, we can’t have our clothing custom made, but will be forced to depend on prêt-a-porter. Clothing bought ready made from a shop, dear,” she added, when Trevor frowned in doubt. “Quite good quality here in Paris, or so they claim. We shall select a suit for you in the morning and then on to a ladies’ shop to purchase gowns for Emma. We mustn’t tarry in terms of finding at least one suitable outfit for us all, because we are already in possession of our first invitation.”

“Oh dear,” said Emma, rubbing her temples more vigorously.

“A note came with the fruit,” Geraldine continued. “One of our neighbors is having a little party tomorrow night and will most kindly take the occasion to introduce us to her circle. It’s a start.”

“And a good one,” Trevor said. “Once I have my costume – for I agree with Emma and refuse to see this clothing as anything other than such – I shall go to the Paris police and find Claude Rubois. Based on Rayley’s descriptions, he seems the most likely avenue of practical help. Who knows, Rayley may have confided in him more than we know, and Rubois may have theories that would prove useful.” He shifted to his right. “I would like it, Tom, if you come along and establish yourself firmly as part of the team. Who knows, they may even allow you to view Graham’s body.”

“Of course,” said Tom. “It’s impossible to know what to expect, isn’t it? They might welcome us with the proverbial open arms or they could just as easily bounce us out on our ear.”

“True,” said Trevor. “I don’t relish the thought of going to Rubois, hat in hand, with no way of predicting how he’ll react. It would seem we could find some means for the law enforcement entities to work together in cases where criminals are clearly trafficking from one country to the next. As it stands now, all a suspect has to do is make his way across a national border and he can begin his career anew.”

“Perhaps that day shall come,” Geraldine said, reaching over to pat Trevor’s arm. “For this Exposition is the start of a new era, is it not? People shall more readily entertain the idea of traveling from place to place. All sorts of people, not merely the rich, and they will eventually come to see the whole of Europe as their home. In due time, we will develop a common language and a common currency, as befitting our small continent.”

“All of Europe in collusion? The French and English claiming kinship? I bloody rather doubt it,” Trevor said. But he twisted in his seat to look toward the tower, nonetheless.

9:55 PM



Rayley had begun to awaken, if indeed awaken was the proper word, since he had the sensation he was breaking through layers of water, a drowning man rising instinctively toward the light. For a moment he lay motionless, his eyes still closed, waiting for the latest wave of nausea to engulf him. He managed to push this one down, but the sour odor of his shirt indicated that he had not been so successful on previous attempts.

Gradually he allowed his eyelids to open. Wherever he’d been thrown was dark, very dark. He would have to rely on his other senses, at least until his vision adapted.

He was lying on a cot and, from its unyielding nature, he believed he might be in some sort of prison or perhaps a military barrack. In the distance, he could hear the muffled suck of water which, compounded by the damp, musty smell of rocks and moss, led him to conclude that he was near a river.

Most likely the Seine.

Well, this was scarcely good news, was it?

Another smell. Urine. His own. He had soiled himself like a child, and, judging by the size of the stiffened circle on the front of his trousers, evidently more than once. He felt thirst, most definitely, and beneath the queasy twisting of his stomach, a dull ache of hunger. Rayley cautiously turned his head. He could see more now, enough to conclude that the room was austere, devoid of all furnishings except his cot and a bucket tossed in the corner on its side.

So what was a man to conclude from this evidence? That he had been drugged, most likely with the same chloroform that had been used to subdue Graham. That he had been taken to this small cell, which was, judging by the moistness of the walls and the amount of moss, at least partially underground and near a river. He had probably been here for some time already, at least long enough to repeatedly urinate and to grow hungry, with his unconsciousness most likely being sustained through repeated contact with more chloroform. Which meant that someone had been coming and going, ensuring that he did not fully awaken. If he had not eventually become nauseated and thus expunged some of the chemical from his system, he would doubtlessly still be asleep. It seemed likely that whoever’s job it was to render him pliant would shortly return.

What day was it? What time? Was it even day or night? His eyes were at last beginning to adjust, courtesy of a small high window above his head, which was focusing a rectangle of light on the opposite wall. The glow was of the yellowish-green type emitted by Parisian gas lamps, certainly not the sun, and so it must be night. Which meant he had been in this room at least twenty-four hours, most likely forty-eight. Perhaps even, for his hunger and thirst were sharpening as his head began to clear, seventy-two.

As if to mock his primitive calculations, a church bell began to toll. Ten chimes.

So it was ten o’clock on the evening of either April 24, 25, or 26. He was still in Paris. And he was still alive - something to ponder as well. Graham must have been killed shortly after he was taken but, for whatever reason, Rayley had not. He was being kept alive, drugged but alive, for some possible use in the future, although he had not the slightest notion of what it might be.

Rayley struggled to sit, but could not find the strength. Even this slight exertion had sent his head swimming and he sank back onto the small cot, an involuntary cry slipping from his lips. And then, as if the church bells had been the cue, the door to his cell began to slide open.

10:10 PM

“They need help?” the thin young man asked. His voice had gone high with hope. He had spent a miserable night on the river bank, for although the April days were pleasant, the evenings grew cold. There were some francs in his sack but he had been bringing them to light slowly, for the future was uncertain if a man was a foreigner here in this grand city, alone without a single friend. Even the cost of this pitiful glass of wine, which scraped its way down his throat like a rasp, was an extravagance for anyone in his precarious position.

But he had known he must go somewhere, must do something, must talk to someone. A person cannot exist forever on the banks of a river, skulking his way around the little slums which spring up around the sewer openings. Those shameful ghettos where the people gnawed bread crusts and the rats gnawed the people. So he had ventured into this disreputable bar and seated himself in the center of the action. And, just as he’d hoped, within minutes he had been pulled into the swirl of conversation.

The men around him were batting about a piece of news. The tower not yet finished and the clock was steadily ticking down to May 9, the official opening date for the Exposition. Nothing fresh to report there. But apparently Eiffel’s desperation had grown so severe that his company was prepared to hire the sewer rats. Unskilled labor, boys and men of all strengths and experience level - in general anyone who could stand on two legs. Hired to cart and carry and polish and scrape and thus free the better trained laborers for the final touches. A full franc a day. All one had to do was show up at sunrise and present himself as sober and able-bodied, or at least reasonably close.

Ian chewed his lip. A franc a day meant merely nine days until he could earn passage back to London.

The men were joking among themselves, something about the sewer rats becoming known as the sewer monkeys and they were laying bets on which among them would be the first to tumble from the tower. They seemed to be under the impression that their jobs would require them to scale the outside of the structure like an army of drunken apes, wherein Ian suspected the actual work would be far more mundane. All those restaurants and shops, he thought. They will have to be stocked. Boxes of glassware and hats going up and down the elevator. And staircases to the second level and the third. They would have to be finished and this was tedious, backbreaking labor. The tile, the high lights, the doors and windows and counters. Holding the railings in place for the welders…now, that might be a tricky business. Might require a fellow to show a bit of nerve.

But never matter. It was a stroke of luck that there was work to be had of any sort and the beginning of a plan was forming in his mind. In nine days he could set sail back to London. For the chance to go home, he would do anything, even if the job was a bit dicey. Ian Newlove had many fears, but a fear of heights was not among them.