City of Light

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 he 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?”

“Welles,” Rayley said. “We both know that I saw nothing at all.”

5:34 PM



The first staircase they managed well enough. The second was so alarming to behold that Trevor insisted Rayley take hold of his jacket and let him guide the way. But the steps were too tightly wound to allow them to ascend as a unit, so they were forced to retreat, losing both time and a bit of nerve in the process. It was ultimately decided that Rayley must climb on his hands and knees, with Trevor following close behind. Their process thus was painfully slow and methodical and Trevor paused once, halfway up, and dared to look around him, before quickly concluding that Rayley was fortunate to be unable to grasp the full reality of their present situation.

But then they were there. A small landing with a parapet, which stretched around three sides of a room. A room, yes, but one designed to resemble a chateau in miniature, with arched windows and a blue door. Trevor edged toward it while Rayley, wishing it was permissible to still crawl, cautiously followed. What does one do in such circumstances? Knock? Instead, Trevor turned the knob and let the door open of its own accord, which, thanks to the wind, it most definitively did. The two men peered inside.

The first thing Trevor saw was the Whistler. The painting was so large that it commanded an entire wall of the room, stretching nearly from the elaborate molding of the ceiling to the plush Persian carpet on the floor.

The first thing Rayley saw was Isabel. She was wearing the same teal-colored gown she had worn for the portrait, her hair styled in the same way. She had not assumed the same pose however, but was rather sitting on a small divan. She looked up at him without surprise, as if he was arriving for an assignation they had planned long ago.

“Detective,” she said. “Please come in. And close the door. It’s so windy at night.”

“Isabel,” Rayley said, his voice quivering. “I have come to take you back to London.”

“London?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “What waits for me there? Look around you. What woman in her right mind would abandon all this for dreary London?”

She had taken one of the posters of Henry’s face, Trevor noticed, and had fastened it in some manner to the bottom of her own portrait. Isabel followed the trajectory of his gaze, and smiled.

“Behold our family portrait,” she said. “Courtesy of Armand Delacroix. I take it that you are a detective too? Scotland Yard, no doubt. You all have somewhat the same look.”

“Delacroix has been arrested,” Rayley stubbornly continued. “You don’t have to fear him anymore.” He too had glanced toward the spot where the poster was fixed but, based on his utter lack of reaction, Trevor suspected he did not recognize it as Henry’s face. It was hard to ascertain exactly how much Rayley was managing to take in of this strange room and what, if anything, he was beginning to understand. Signs pointing toward the truth lay all around them, for even three days on the street had forced cracks in Ian’s façade. Without cosmetics, his skin was coarse and stubbled. The finely arranged dome of dark hair was ever-so-slightly off-center and the teal dress was ill-fitting, as if whatever undergarments were needed to sustain the illusions of femininity had been lost somehow in the transition. Ian looked at Trevor in defiance, clearly attuned to his thoughts, and picked up a pair of velvet gloves from a mother-of-pearl table at his side, pulling them on over his work-worn hands.

“Isabel,” Rayley said. “Did you hear what I said? Armand Delacroix is in custody.”

“That’s not his real name, you know,” Isabel said, with a light and tinkling laugh. “I remember the night we devised his French identity. We were back in that dreadful little cottage in Manchester with his wife Janet. I like her very much, you know. Charles said he must have a new name and Janet suggested ‘Armand,’ which means ‘soldier.’ Did you know that? But of course you don’t speak French.”

“You said you wanted to go home,” Rayley said. “You still can.”

“And Delacroix means ‘of the cross,’” Isabel continued. “He loved the name at once. I believe that is precisely as he saw himself, as some sort of solider of the cross.” She paused, awkwardly brushing back a strand of hair with a gloved hand. “Charles was quite religious, you know, in the beginning. It seems the worst people always are.”

“It’s over,” Rayley said.

“Yes,” she said, surprising them both by suddenly rising to her feet and moving toward the door. “No doubt you are right.” She walked out onto the parapet, Rayley feeling his way behind her and Trevor remaining in the doorway, one hand braced on each side of the frame. They would have to persuade her to come with them of her own volition, he thought. They could scarcely drag her down that damned staircase against her will.

“Look,” Isabel said, pointing in the distance. Rayley obediently turned his head, and Trevor also peered cautiously from the doorway. “It’s the last time we will ever see Paris like this,” she said. “For in two weeks the crowds shall come in earnest and it will all be changed. The world as I know it will come to an end.” She paused thoughtfully and then added. “My brother is dead, you know.”

“Yes,” said Rayley. “It’s a horrible shock, a dreadful shock, but life does go on, just as they say it does, that awful cliché. There’s a woman on our team, you know, just last year she lost her sister…”

“I will learn to love again, is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Rayley said. “Just let me bring you back to England and I promise you it shall all be settled there.”

“Very well,” she said. “But we must take the portrait.”

The portrait? From the doorway, Trevor winced. It behooved them to keep her calm, but this was a fine request. They could scarcely steal a Whistler from the Eiffel Tower and they couldn’t transport the monstrous thing down that snake of a staircase if they tried. The last five minutes had been confusing indeed, but there was one thing of which Trevor was sure. The Whistler portrait of Isabel Blout would remain at the top of the Eiffel Tower until the end of time.

“Henry’s portrait,” Isabel elaborated.

“Ah yes,” Rayley said with obvious relief. “Trevor, will you fetch Henry’s portrait from the wall?”

All right, so she’s gone mad and we’re probably right behind her, Trevor thought. But whatever it takes to get the three of us back down to the ground…

He had turned to go back inside, to pull the damn poster from where she had affixed it to the Whistler when it occurred to him, almost immediately, that he had been played. Isabel was no fool. She knew that Rayley was half-blind but that Trevor saw everything, and she had found a way to distract him. Rayley’s shout confirmed the rest. Trevor spun around and dashed back out to find Rayley hanging over the parapet, his toes barely touching the ground.

She had jumped, of course she had, but against all odds he had caught her. He had her hand in his and he was holding on with the strength of a man possessed. Trevor leaned over the railing too but could not reach far enough and so, praying that Rayley’s grip would not fail, he wrapped his arms around the man’s waist and tried to pull him back, in the hopes Isabel would rise with him. But moving the weight of two men, even two small ones, up and over the railing was beyond him, so Trevor dropped to his knees on the parapet and reached through the railing toward the dangling Isabel.

“It’s all right, Ian,” he said. “Give me your other hand.”

The man looked directly at him, the artifice of femininity all gone now, a slight smile on his face.

“Give him your hand,” Rayley gasped, his voice shaking, although whether from the sustained effort of holding on or the shock of a growing realization, Trevor could not say.

And then a movement, slight. Was it the wind or was it an act of human will? Rayley’s feet were both off the parapet now, putting him in danger of toppling over as well and Trevor was flattened to the floor, straining his own arm through the bottom of the railing and Ian, still smiling, shifted the slightest amount. No more than a centimeter.

Just enough to loosen a hand within a velvet glove.