City of Light

Chapter THIRTY



Paris



April 30



2:12 PM



On the afternoon before they were due to depart for London, Trevor and Rayley went walking along the Seine. The Exhibition had not yet officially opened, but the crowds were growing daily with any number of enterprising entrepreneurs already on hand to serve them. Sidewalks were crowded with families, musicians playing the violin or cello, hoping for spare coins, stands selling foaming glasses of soda bicarbonate and clouds of candy floss. It was all creating a bit of a mess, Trevor noticed, items dropped here and there, the acrid smell of human bodies, crushed each to the other, the hint of decay wafting up from the swollen river. But he supposed this was the price of progress.

They covered the first few minutes of their stroll in silence and finally Rayley said, tentatively “When we are back at the Yard, shall we discuss this?”

“Not often, I should think.”

“So whatever must be said, it would be better if it were all said here?”

Trevor gave him a sidelong glance. The ordeal of the last few days had left Rayley thinner and more solemn than ever. But there was something new in him too, a sort of nervous energy, or perhaps just a story waiting to be told. He seemed to be having trouble knowing where to begin.

“I have a question,” Trevor finally ventured.

“And I will answer if I can.”

“Why do you think they did it? Not the children, or even Delacroix. Their motives are clear enough. But the clients who visited these places, who risked so much to procure the girl-boys, why should they do such a thing? None of the rest of us have been able to come up with a plausible explanation.”

“You’re asking me why someone would choose to be homosexual?”

“Of course not. No sane man would willingly choose such a fate. But the whole point of Cleveland Street was that the men who went there were not homosexual, at least not exclusively so. Most of them had wives and children, the ability if not the inclination to function within the normal bounds of society. So why would they take on this kind of venture?”

“For some men, the risk is the reward.”

“Precisely as Geraldine explained it. But this bit of dressing the boys up as women, that’s a very strange business, Rayley, the one detail that has confounded us all. If a man was aroused by the accoutrements of femininity, the hair and the perfumes and the little white gloves and the lot, why would he not simply select a real woman? Heaven knows there is a never ending supply for sale in both London and Paris.”

“These aren’t the proper questions, Welles. You remember what they used to pound into our heads at the Yard. That success isn’t the matter of getting the right answer, it’s a matter of asking the right question.”

Trevor shook his head emphatically. “I’m not sure I can stretch my mind enough to even ask the proper question. For two men to engage in sexual acts because women aren’t available is one thing….You could argue it’s a rational response to the limitations of their environment, the sort of act a Darwinist might even applaud. Heaven knows there’s a history of these types of liaisons on ships, in prisons, and in the better boys’ schools.”

“Practically an English tradition,” Rayley said dryly, stepping aside to avoid a pastry which had landed squarely in the middle of a sidewalk, much to the dismay of a shrieking child.

“Whatever do the French call these people?” Trevor abruptly asked, indicating with a sweeping hand the crowd along the promenade. “All these babbling strangers come from God knows where to stare and point and laugh too loud and smoke in the street?”

“They call them touristes.”

“Well, they’re dreadful. One can only hope they spill enough money from their pockets to make the Exposition worth it for the French.”

“They already have,” Rayley said. “The French want them to come and keep coming. In fact, the Eiffel Tower was built,” he added, realizing his words were true in the very instant that he said them, “for the touristes and not for the Parisians.”

“Indeed. Well the French may have these chattering magpies and their money. We English certainly don’t need them. What were we talking about?”

“Men sodomizing other men, I believe.”

“Ah yes. You’re sure the topic isn’t too distressing?”

Rayley smiled. “Not at all. This is the first truly unfettered conversation I’ve had since I left London.”

“Shall I tell you a secret? It’s the first true conversation I’ve had since you left London as well.”

Rayley was pleased although, being Rayley, he didn’t show it. “You were saying?”

“Well, that I find it quite within the realm of logic that in a situation where women are not available, men might be tempted to improvise and that, as you say, there’s a proud English tradition of just such improvisation. To sexually desire a man more than a woman is quite another level of thought, but I can only presume the poor bastards can’t help themselves. But to dress a boy in pantaloons and demand he pose as a girl seems the ultimate sort of perversity.”

“So what’s your question?”

“Actually, I have a theory,” Trevor said.

“You usually do.” They paused to let a battalion of women pushing prams pass and then Rayley said “Please go on.”

“The upper class, the royals and the rich. They have become so demanding in their pursuit of amusements that they must constantly seek new diversions, each more extreme than the last. I seized on the notion that night at Madame Seaver’s party when I was offered the most bewildering variety of cocktails. Mad little things, each a different color, with a different sort of adornment perched on the glass, as if humble whiskey and beer were no longer enough to intoxicate this demanding new world.”

“So your theory is that our desire for new sexual experiences may be likewise evolving.”

“In a way. It is possible I believe, for a man to become so powerful and rich that the ability to purchase women is no longer enough of a diversion. So he begins to purchase girls. And when they get tiresome, when he yet again seeks a new novelty, then it’s on to boys. I stand before you quite convinced that this is the curse of the modern world. We shall all become so jaded with sensation that nothing in itself will ever be enough to sate us. It will always be on to the next novelty and then the next, until the human race is destroyed.”

“And you concluded all this from a tray of cocktails?”

“Scoff if you wish, but there is something morally dangerous in this endless variety of amusements that our era claims to provide. Soon there will be no word for ‘contentment’ in the English language, for we shall no longer feel content and thus have no need to describe it.”

“I wasn’t scoffing. It reminds me of something Graham said, actually, the day we all climbed the tower. He said as we grow more modern we shall also be less human. He was the last person I would have expected to voice such a sentiment. I dismissed him unfairly, I see that now.”

Trevor nodded. “The mechanical hand of progress. I fear it for myself.”

“You, Welles?” Rayley said, his head turned so that Trevor did not see his smile. “You’re a gifted detective, perhaps the best in the Yard. But I’ve always thought that the one thing that prevented you from being ideally suited for your chosen profession is that you have no personal tendency toward excess, and thus you are slow to recognize those impulses in others. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who has less natural capacity for depravity.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Trevor said. “Even though I suspect you’ve just found a very tactful way of suggesting that I’m stupid.”

Rayley stopped in his tracks and weaved a bit on his feet.

“Gad. Sorry, man, we should find a bench,” Trevor said, clasping his shoulder. “Or a café, even better, and we’ll take some tea. You’ve been through a horrible ordeal and here I’ve marched you up and down every street in Paris.”

“It isn’t that.” Rayley looked down toward the river. “I wanted to walk the city one more time before we left. It’s just that this is where they found Graham’s body.”

Rayley was a man of ceremony and Trevor remembered that back in London he had often felt a need to bid farewell to the deceased, that his final visit to the body was a way of closing the case in his mind. Under the circumstances, he supposed the next best thing was to revisit the site of the crime. We detectives are a funny lot, Trevor thought. Claiming to be creatures of ultimate logic, but in reality superstitious and full of rituals. He smiled at Rayley and asked “Shall we pay tribute?”

“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 but 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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