City of Light

Chapter SEVEN



London



April 22



3:40 PM

“Do you know a woman named Isabel Blout?”

Geraldine looked up from her tea, surprised at Trevor’s question. “What business could you possibly have with Isabel Blout?”

“Rayley Abrams met her in Paris and has written asking if I could learn anything of her history. I take it she’s a bit of a socialite.”

Geraldine paused to consider before she spoke - a rare event for her, and duly noted by Trevor. “I scarcely know the girl, but calling her a socialite stretches the truth,” she finally said. “Isabel married one of the richest men in London and was thus afforded the invitations and privileges one would expect…”

Trevor tamped at his pipe thoughtfully, knowing full well where Gerry’s unfinished sentence had been headed. “So she was invited to all the right parties but was never fully accepted into the inner circles of society.”

Gerry nodded. “Her story didn’t sit quite right among his friends. Too many unanswered questions, you know, and society tends to like its questions duly answered. They prefer for people to marry their own kind.”

“What sort of questions did people ask?”

“The first question was why, after all this time, George Blout had married at all. Confirmed bachelor, you know, rarely seen outside the confines of his men’s club, and far past the age where anyone would expect him to walk the aisle, much less to take on a girl with such an obscure background. She came from Manchester, I think. Perhaps Liverpool. One of those towns where they…you know, darling. One of those places where they make useful things.”

Trevor sat back, the picture unfolding swiftly before him. A factory town, sprung up around a port. A city of industry, billowing smokestacks and dirty streets. Brutal repetitive work that began in childhood and ended, more often than not, in premature death.

“She had a notably beautiful face. Enough so that George must have convinced himself that her origins didn’t matter,” Geraldine continued. “Heaven only knows how she found her way to his table but they married when she was no more than sixteen and he was…well, George is older than me, I believe, which would have made him well past sixty when he took his bride. If memory serves, it was a bit of a scandal.”

Trevor smiled. “If memory serves, indeed. I’ve never known you to be scandalized by scandal, Geraldine. I’m surprised you didn’t invite the old duffer and his sooty child bride to tea.”

Gerry chuckled. “Perhaps I would have, but George Blout and I hardly frequent the same social circles. Our politics differ, especially when it comes to the care and sustenance of the working class.”

“Well he certainly cared for and sustained one of them. How did he make his money?”

“Mills, I believe. Textiles.”

“Located in Manchester?”

Gerry looked at him archly. “So you’re implying he marries a girl straight out of one of his own factories, a girl whose family he has exploited for years? Perhaps you’re right, although it would be a strange selection for either of them, wouldn’t you say?”

Trevor shrugged. “Not everyone is as politically motivated as you, Geraldine. Nor as dynastically blessed. Imagine a girl coming up poor with no prospects. She’s pretty, but she knows that beauty will soon be swept away by the same hard work that ruined her mother and indeed every woman she knows. She might be willing to put aside her resentment for a way out of her situation. And I take it this Blout man left her well-situated.”

Gerry looked surprised. “He didn’t leave her at all. George is every bit as alive as I am.”

“But Rayley implied that – “

“Isabel Blout is a bolter.”

Trevor frowned, unfamiliar with the term.

“A woman who bolts, darling,” Gerry explained. “Leaves. Runs away. Is just suddenly, simply gone.”

“She went to Paris on her own?”

Gerry shook her head with exasperation, and leaned forward to refill her tea cup. “Ran off with some sort of French merchant, a man whose origins are every bit as murky as her own. The sort who tosses about his money but has no family and thus no comfortable explanation for how this money came to be. Her departure left George supposedly quite humiliated…as you’re thinking he no doubt deserves to be, and I quite agree. A man who marries a child must prepare himself for the day that child grows up.”

“Quite,” said Trevor, although he felt a dash of sympathy for Blout.

“George’s interpretation of the events undoubtedly differs from my own,” Gerry said. “Rumor claims that no one is allowed to say her name in his presence and that he has struck every memento of her existence from his home. He’s even selling the Whistler.”

“Whistler? I say, Geraldine, whistlers and bolters. When you begin to speak of society, I hardly know what you’re about.”

“James Whistler, darling, he’s a portrait artist from America. A very good one and quite popular among the Mayfair matrons. He’s probably painted half the women I know, and I’ve heard it said that his portrait of Isabel Blout was especially striking. It would almost have to be, I suppose, considering his level of talent and her natural beauty. There was a bit of a hubbub about it at the time, since it seems Whistler was so proud of the finished work he initially refused to release it to Blout. They say he wanted to keep it for his private collection or sell it to a museum.” Gerry screwed up her face, struggling to remember. “I think perhaps George took him to court over the matter, or at least there was some business with their solicitors. George prevailed, of course. After all, the portrait had been a commission, paid for in full before the artist ever picked up his brush. And my understanding is that it hung over the fireplace in the family home until the day Isabel disappeared.”

“You never saw it?”

Gerry regretfully shook her head. “I’m hardly likely to be invited to a party in the home of George Blout or any man who knows my politics. But I would have liked to have seen it. Tess described it as quite unlike the usual portrait of a society wife and rather…remarkable. As if the artist had somehow managed to get straight to the essence of the woman.”

“And did the artist manage to get straight to the essence of the woman?”

Gerry snorted in amusement. “That was certainly the gossip.”

“Justified?”

“Whistler was the consummate professional, a man who’d done a dozen commissions in Mayfair alone. Why would he suddenly insist on keeping one?”

“Perhaps this picture was somehow better,” Trevor guessed. “Representative of his best work.”

“Then why not simply reproduce it?” Gerry shook her head. “You know I rarely come down on the side of idle gossip, but in this case the speculation seems warranted. Whistler’s refusal to release the painting to Blout was a nip at the very hands that had been steadily feeding him, tantamount to ruining a lucrative career as the portraitist of London’s upper class. It implies not just pride in the work but a more intimate connection to the subject matter, wouldn’t you say?”

“I really can’t say. The whole story is quite bizarre and makes me wonder all the more how Abrams might have gotten himself tangled with such a woman. Married at sixteen to a man four times her age. A rumored affair with an American painter. Then she leaves both to decamp with a nouveau riche man in Paris….”

“Noureau riche? Very good, Trevor.”

He flushed slightly. Geraldine’s education and world experience so exceeded his own that she sometimes unconsciously made Trevor feel like a schoolboy. “Emma has not totally abandoned the hope I will someday learn French. She persists with our lessons, although I fear I give her little cause for optimism.”

“Nonsense. She’s very fond of you, Trevor.”

He could think of nothing to say to this, and in the silence that ensued, Trevor squirmed a little under the steady gaze of Geraldine’s heavy-lidded eyes. Struggling for a way to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand, he fished Rayley’s letter from the pocket of his jacket and quickly scanned it to see if he had missed any details. “Abrams says she goes by the name Isabel Delacroix in Paris.”

“Indeed?” Geraldine said, as swiftly diverted as he hoped she would be. “If so, then that is quite the fabrication. He may not speak of Isabel or even be willing to concede she exists, but George Blout would never consent to a divorce. Too public, too final. A final blow to the male ego, I suppose.” Gerry paused. “But you know, something else is coming to me. There’s a chance her infamous portrait may find its way to Paris along with its subject. I read in the papers some time back that Whistler is showing as part of the art exhibition, and that some of his more exalted London portraits were on loan to the American pavilion.”

“Her husband would allow her image to be displayed before half the world? It seems strange for a man with such pride.”

“I believe he’d released the portrait to a dealer. Probably Madison and Perry, the gallery across from Windsor Square. They deal with the cast-off art of people from a certain class.” Gerry’s frown evaporated and she nodded with vigor, suddenly sure of herself. “If a group of Whistlers is on its way to Paris I can’t imagine the Blout portrait wouldn’t be among them. It was quite the sensation.”

“I say, Geraldine, you claim to scarcely know Isabel Blout and yet you deliver up the full story like bread on a plate. You should gossip more. You have the gift.” Trevor refolded Rayley’s letter and returned it to his pocket. “I’ll follow up with the portrait. There should be a record somewhere of any Whistlers acquired for exhibition.”

“But how does all this relate to your friend? Is Isabel causing trouble in Paris now?”

“Apparently Rayley and the lady have become acquaintances. How they might have met, I can’t say.”

“What are you going to tell him?” Geraldine asked. “He is doubtless awaiting your reply.”

Trevor clasped his hands in front of his face, exhaled into the hollow of his palms. Perhaps it truly was no more than idle London gossip on the hoof, bearing its way toward Paris and making it impossible for a desperate woman to reinvent herself in a new city. It wasn’t hard to picture. A pretty young wife fleeing her aging husband, the French displaying portraits of British women drawn by an American, a new world order clashing against old values, the endless dance of sex and art and nationalism and money.

But something in the situation niggled at him. Trevor selected a biscuit from the tray on Geraldine’s tea table, nestled himself more comfortably among the cushions on her divan. He would report what Geraldine had said, but he still didn’t understand why Abrams had asked him for a history of Isabel Blout in the first place. So he had met her socially, so he had found her – as apparently had so many other men before him – attractive. What of it? Evidently something was niggling at Abrams as well.

“It’s just speculation, darling, silly Mayfair chatter,” Gerry said, wiping a crumb from her plump cheek. “Probably more motivated by envy of the woman’s beauty than a fair analysis of her character. You don’t have to share every detail with Rayley.”

“No, Rayley isn’t frivolous. If he asked me to learn her history, he must have had a reason.” Trevor looked up, his gaze locking with that of Geraldine. “I’m going to tell him to stay away from her.”