City of Light

Chapter TWENTY-SIX



Paris



1:24 PM

“He looks like a child,” Emma said sadly.

“I know,” Trevor said.

They were in the morgue, where a photographer from the New York Times, under the forceful direction of Marjorie Malloy, was photographing Henry Newlove. In order to get the most appealing angle on the corpse’s pretty face it had been determined that the photographer should stand above him, turning his lens directly down, a decision which had required the man to climb onto the mortuary slab and set up a tripod straddling Newlove’s supine form. Rubois was standing against the opposite wall, a look of additional dismay on his face as he observed the process. Collaborating with Scotland Yard was one thing. Throwing in his lot with the New York Times appeared to be considerably more than the man had bargained for.

Rubois had informed Trevor upon his arrival that the courier had arrived with the fingerprint from London and that it was presently in the forensics laboratory, being compared to the print Geraldine had provided from the party. Furthermore, the dockmaster records had shown that Armand Delacroix had been among the passengers disembarking in Calais on April 9, so if the two sets of fingerprints were declared a match, they could move in a definitive way. The minute the laboratory report confirmed what everyone in the room expected, a contingent of the Paris police force would be unleashed on the streets in search of Armand Delacroix.

“Go with him,” Emma said to Trevor. “No matter what the prints show, take Rubois and Carle and go back to the river bank and join the hunt for Rayley. For even you must concede that I am capable of nailing posters to kiosks without supervision.”

“I’ll go with her,” Marjorie said, pausing long enough in her berating of the photographer to look over her shoulder. “If we can somehow manage to get a good shot sometime within the few minutes” – and here she stopped to glare up at the man who buried beneath his black cloth and therefore presumably shielded from the heat of her derision – “we shall have our posters by two.”

“So quickly?” Trevor asked. When it came to speed, Scotland Yard could certainly learn lessons from the press.

“Sir,” Carle called across the crowded room. “The lab report has just come back. We have a match.”

1:42 PM

“Well it is certainly a glove of quality,” Geraldine confirmed. “Not at all the sort of thing anyone living here would own and so I would guess it to be a missing part of the clothing that Isabel traded. But why is it balled up in that queer shape?”

“Because something is stuffed inside of it,” Tom said. He was struggling to undo the strip of cloth tied around the glove, which had been doubled back and knotted multiple times. “I found it in the yard near this very strange building located upstream. It was dropped, I suppose, by someone in the process of entering or leaving.”

“Dropped on purpose, perhaps?” Geraldine ventured. “For this is not merely a glove, it is a package.”

“Perhaps,” Tom agreed, finally unsnarling the last knot and pulling the string from the bundle. He shook the glove with his right hand and a bloody rat dropped out into his left.

“Heavens,” Geraldine said, startling to her feet despite herself. Tom, who had managed to muffle his own cry of surprise, let the rat bounce to the ground and stared at what was left in his palm. A few shards of glass which, if pieced together, would form a thick round lens. The sort of lens that resided in the eyeglasses of only one person he knew.

“Look ,” Geraldine said, unraveling the long strip of cloth. “It’s from a men’s store in London, is it not?”

“Excellent,” Tom said, staring at the evidence before him. The fine glove, the dead rat, the shattered spectacle, and the label from Morgan and Taylor. “Most excellent. Rayley has sent us a letter.”

2:21 PM



The posters were shocking to behold, an unflinching portrait of a beautiful young girl, photographed at such close range that her features, from her doll-like eyes to her full lips, were each rendered slightly larger than life. Emma and Marjorie had nailed one to every side of the kiosk which was located closest to the tower.

“There certainly are a lot of people coming and going,” Emma said, looking up at the base of the tower. “We couldn’t pick Isabel out of this crowd if we tried.”

Marjorie shrugged. “With May 9 approaching, they’re got crews up from dawn to dusk, with little regard for what constitutes a humane workday. But everyone comes down at sunset so any worker who has managed to avoid seeing the poster up to that point will surely be assaulted by Henry’s image then. Come on. I think the next place we should visit is the Champs-Elysees.”

“Of course,” Emma said, falling in step behind her. “It’s very kind of you to help in exchange for an interview with Trevor, especially considering it may not further your own cause. He told me that your editors expect you to produce a very different kind of story.”

The two women were walking across the broad lawn leading from the tower. Construction was going on all around them, the international pavilions, Emma could only assume, and a miniature railroad was already in place, looking more like a child’s amusement than a serious means of transporting a crowd. Marjorie was tall, and evidently unaccustomed to adapting her gait as a man might do as a courtesy to a smaller woman, so Emma found herself almost trotting beside her.

“This is one serious story he might actually find fit to print,” Marjorie said with a snort. “Seeing as how it has plenty of sex and scandal. But even if he doesn’t accept it, I won’t so much mind. I’m doing this for Patrick.”

Emma nodded, glad that at least one person in this mad little chase was motivated by the newsman’s memory, for he was certainly getting the least attention of Delacroix’s triad of victims. They had come to the end of the lawn and turned right and Emma found herself approaching one of the most beautiful streets in Paris, if not the world. She had always sworn that someday she would stroll the Champs-Elysees, although she had never imagined the scene quite like this one, with her all but running alongside a hammer-swinging American reporter. But her life and her frustrations are probably much like mine, Emma thought, as they arrived at their first kiosk and Marjorie pulled a poster from the saddlebag slung over her shoulder.

“Does it ever bother you,” Emma asked, while holding the poster straight for Marjorie, “being told what the news of the day is or is not to be?”

Marjorie smiled grimly around the nails she was holding in the corner of her mouth. “Does it ever bother you,” she answered, “being told what is and is not a crime?”

2:30 PM



Over the seven decades of her life, people had called Geraldine Bainbridge many things, but no one had ever called her a fool. She knew that she had been posted at this extraordinarily unremarkable spot on the river bank for one reason and one reason alone: to be kept out of the way.

When the contents of the glove had proven that they were indeed on the verge of finding the precise location where Rayley had been taken, Tom had headed towards the street, hoping to waylay a flic for assistance or, better yet, to intercept Trevor on his way back to the river. He had brushed aside Geraldine’s quite sensible suggestion that she would be of more use if she moved upstream to stand guard at the sewer fortress itself.

“It’s not safe, Auntie,” Tom had said, in what was a rather infuriatingly condescending tone for a twenty year old man to assume. “It’s one thing for you to sit here, in this area which may be dreary but is at least well-traveled. In fact, it’s the bloody Champs-Elysees compared to what awaits upstream. It’s impossible to blend in and observe when there are no people to blend in with. You understand, do you not?”

She understood perfectly. He was saying that she was old and fat and female, a bad combination in a detective and thus quite out of her element. He was right on all counts, of course, but that did not excuse the sentiment.

Geraldine watched Tom disappear up the bank and then stood to better survey her options. Tom was correct inasmuch as she could hardly sit herself down outside a fortress and wait for someone to approach, when that person would most certainly be either Delacroix or one of his dreadful minions. But there must be a way in which she could draw close enough to discreetly observe. Geraldine pinched her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger, a gesture which from girlhood had been a sign she was deep in thought, and slowly turned in a circle to peruse the area.

Ah yes. Of course.

Seventy-one years under Rule Britannia had left Geraldine Bainbridge with a profound appreciation of the tactical advantages of a naval assault. She had been quite silly not to think of it earlier, for within sight were any number of small watercraft which she might logically commandeer. Simple rowboats, most of them, piloted by men in rags who were dragging the riverbank with nets, presumably in search of fish. Geraldine quickly settled on one of the boats, which was a bit more sizeable than the others and held two men. If rowed upstream, it would offer the perfect vantage point for her surveillance mission and would provide safety besides. For no man on foot, no matter how angry he might be, could overtake a rowboat.

Geraldine walked resolutely down to the edge of the water where, in lieu of a proper dock, the fishermen were merely launching from the muddy bank. “Good day,” she called out, in what she considered her best French. “I am in need of assistance.”

None was forthcoming. In fact, all the men within earshot turned away in a most rude fashion, proving that when it came to badly spoken French, even the indigent fishermen of Paris were snoots. Geraldine tried again.

She didn’t quite know how to say “I wish to hire you,” so instead she called out “I wish to buy something,” which were indeed the first words she had ever learned in French.

A collective deafness continued to possess them all. Geraldine decided to switch to a more universal language. She unfastened the purse which dangled at her side, pulled out a wad of money, waved it in the air, and shrieked “Voila.”

The auditory senses of their captains thus miraculously restored, the entire small fleet paddled around in the water and began to approach her position on the bank. Geraldine signaled to the half-rotted tub she had come to think of as “the big boat,” which was indeed bearing down upon her with the most speed. The others stopped rowing and fell back, filling the air with curses, and within minutes Geraldine was seated on the back bench of the rowboat, her two oarsmen paddling upriver in an enthusiastic, if somewhat unsteady, cadence.

“To the sewer,” she called, and one of them looked back at her and nodded, although it was unlikely he understood what she meant. Going upriver, even against the gently meandering flow of the Seine, seemed to confound them and as a team they were badly yoked, with one of the men far larger than his partner. They hit the rocks on one side of the bank with a thud that caused Geraldine to release a little yelp of surprise, then grossly overcorrected and hit the bank on the other side. Snarling at each other, pushing off from the rocks with their splintery oars, the two finally managed to somewhat synchronize their strokes and begin to progress upstream, accompanied by the derisive hoots of their comrades and the vagrants on the shore.

Geraldine clutched both sides of the boat and prepared herself for a bumpy voyage – or perhaps even a swim. There was, she reflected, a reason why no one ever spoke well of the French navy.