City of Light

Chapter EIGHT



Paris



April 23



3:14 AM



Rayley awakened in darkness so complete that it seemed to have closed over him like water. He’d been having a bad dream, he surmised, since his hands were clutching the bedspread and his forehead was velvet with sweat. He tried to remember, but the dream was fading even as his eyes fluttered open, leaving behind only the vague sense that he had been lost in a series of hallways, looking for a way out.

He sat up on the edge of the bed, pausing a moment for the vertigo to pass. Yesterday’s autopsy must have shaken him more than he’d been willing to admit at the time. Graham’s body had lain on the marble slab of the mortuary table looking quite pristine at first, yielding no immediately obvious wound which would explain his death. It was only in Rayley’s second pass over the body that he had caught them, the four very slight bruises forming a crescent pattern around the side of the man’s mouth, nearly lost in the stubble of his beard. Rayley placed his own hand over Graham’s lips, shuddering only slightly at the coolness of the man’s flesh and his impulse was immediately rewarded. The bruises lined up perfectly with the tips of his fingers.

Of course the fact that someone had placed a hand over the man’s mouth, even roughly enough to cause bruising, hardly explained his death. Rayley had glanced toward the end of the table where the coroner, Rubois, and Carle all stood silently watching him, their faces alert but noncommittal.

“Chloroform?” Rayley had ventured.

The advantage of modern words is that they rarely need translation. Rubois had nodded and the coroner had left the room, returning almost at once with a file of blood that Rayley could only assume must have been drawn from Graham’s body prior to his arrival. But could the French really test for the presence of chloroform in blood? The coroner said something quietly to Carle, who also slipped away.

Rayley’s mind was churning. Chloroform had been used routinely in surgeries for probably the last thirty years in London and he could only assume Paris as well. That would put it most often in the possession of doctors and hospital attendants – dear God, were they really back on Ripper territory again? But then again, chloroform was often used to reduce the suffering of women in childbirth and had been popularized, in fact, when the Queen had requested its assistance in the delivery of her eighth child. The mother’s friend, it was sometimes coyly called, and this undoubtedly made it easier to obtain than most drugs. Available to midwifes, most likely, or even for sale at neighborhood pharmacies. All of Paris could be awash in chloroform for all he knew.

The coroner had extracted a small amount of blood from the vial and was carefully holding the dropper up to the level of his eyes. Rayley couldn’t imagine what he was looking for. As any police officer well knew, chloroform was colorless and odorless, making it the perfect means for rendering a victim unconscious within minutes as well as being nearly impossible to detect through routine examination. But in that moment Carle had returned with a torn clump of a baguette, and to Rayley’s utter mystification the coroner had dropped dots of Graham’s blood in a pattern across its surface. Motioning for the men to follow, he’d led them to a second room and to a cage with perhaps a dozen small white mice. He pulled back the mesh top of the cage, dropped in the bread, and then the men stood back and waited. It seemed they were all holding their breath.

The nasty little vermin, made all the more horrid to Rayley because of their strange pink eyes and nearly translucent skin, swarmed over the bread within seconds, fighting each other for a taste of Graham’s blood. Clever, Rayley thought, nodding toward the coroner. Disgusting but damn clever. Within seconds, the mice were stumbling. Within a few more, sleeping. And probably half of them dead within a minute of that, but Rayley had already turned toward the door, not needing to witness this final proof. He had his answer for why Graham, a hale and strapping young man, had slipped beneath the waters of the Seine without a struggle.

Rayley had spent the afternoon aimlessly wandering the streets of the city. Ostensibly he was on a mission to verify the easy purchase of chloroform by citizens other than doctors, but a stop at the first pharmacy he’d passed had proven not only that chloroform was in ample supply, but that the placard advertising this fact had borne the image of a plump, solemn woman no doubt meant to simulate the Queen. So he could not have said why even after his errand was complete, he had still kept walking, why he was so reluctant to return to the mortuary and record this essential new finding in his notes. When evening finally fell he had no appetite for his normal supper of sausage, bread, and cheese. He was not sure if he would ever again enjoy a baguette, and they had been his favorite.

And now, despite his sleeping draught, he found himself wide awake. Awake in that definitive way that suggested there was little reason in trying to return to slumber, so he may as well write Trevor with these new developments. He fumbled for the box of matches on his bedside table. He had sent a telegram earlier but he knew the Murder Club would be chomping at the bit for more details and he was eager to learn their thoughts in return. That bit about the blood on the bread. An impressive piece of lab work, but would it serve as proof for other cases of drugging or poisoning? What would Tom make of the technique?

His fingertips felt numb as he brought the flame to the wick. The autopsy had been even more distressing than they usually were, and Rayley was feeling that particularly gripping kind of guilt a detective feels when faced with the death of someone he personally knew. His thoughts ran along the predictable path: I somehow should have prevented it. I should have seen more. It should have occurred to me that, in the midst of all his gossip and self-importance, Patrick Graham may have actually stumbled into some sort of genuine danger.

Rayley moved to the chamber pot in the corner. As he made use of it, he leaned against the wall and looked out his window at the sleeping city. The moon was not entirely full, but it was large enough to wash the alleyway below his room in silver. Three in the morning, he estimated, possibly four. He would check his watch later to verify, for this was one of the many little games he had devised for himself, this guessing of the hour whenever he awakened in the middle of the night. Insomnia had followed him from London to Paris, as it would likely someday follow him back. Fitful sleep was a natural curse of the job.

This is the time of night in which nothing can shield you, he thought, watching a cat jump from a dustbin to a fence, and then right itself upon landing with a fluid sort of balance. This is the hour when no amount of money can protect you, no degree of cleverness or beauty, no number of friends. The time when we stand, each of us in the dark, and face the most basic truth of human existence.

We are all alone. We all will die.

London



9:40 AM

“He says Graham was in the Seine,” Trevor said, looking up from Rayley’s telegram.

“The man was insane?”

“No, Geraldine, he was in the Seine. You know, the river that runs through Paris.”

“It’s pronounced ‘sin’ not ‘sane’” Emma said quietly.

“Indeed?” Trevor snorted. “Impossible language.”

“So Graham drowned,” Davy said slowly.

“Yes, but most likely with some assistance,” Trevor said, and he proceeded to read the short message aloud. When he finished, a thoughtful silence descended upon the group.

“Maddeningly incomplete,” Tom finally said.

“Rayley was paying by the word,” Trevor said, “and thus he would be brief. Besides, I doubt that there would be much more to report at the time. He’ll undoubtedly provide a detailed account in his next letter.”

Davy nodded. “The autopsy should at least be able to tell us if Graham was still alive when he entered the water.”

“Let’s hope the man was knocked unconscious in some sort of fall and never knew he was in danger,” Emma said. “Graham came across as such an amusing character in Rayley’s letters that I felt as if I knew him. And it’s hard to think of someone you know, even if you know them in a fictional way, as suffering a prolonged and frightening death like I’ve always imagined drowning to be.”

Trevor folded the paper and returned it to the envelope. “Either way, it’s a dreadful business. And either way, as the novelists say, the plot has most assuredly thickened.”

“Could Graham’s death be connected to the fact they went up the Eiffel Tower?” Emma asked. “Or to Isabel Blout or does it have something to do with the Exhibition? Or could it all possibly be the result of sheer coincidence?”

“Rayley’s damn worried,” Trevor said. “He dictated precisely twenty words but I think we can safely infer at least that much. I don’t know the stance the French police are taking in the matter, but at least one man in Paris isn’t treating this death as coincidental.” Trevor looked around the circle at four somber faces. “In the meantime, Tom’s quite right. The report is maddeningly incomplete and until Rayley provides us with more facts, it’s pointless for us to speculate. Consider this telegram message a tease for meetings to come, because today the focus of our discussion needs to fall closer to home. We must debrief Emma on Cleveland Street.”

There were nods all around and a bit of scraping as Emma and Davy pulled their chairs closer together.

“If it’s a real case, perhaps I should excuse myself?” Gerry said. “It’s fine enough for me to sit in on your Tuesday Night Murder Games, but if this is true Scotland Yard business…” An oddly perceptive offer from her and Trevor nodded, hoping his relief at her voluntary departure wasn’t too evident. During the walk over, he had been debating about whether or not he should even share all the particulars of Cleveland Street with Emma, before finally deciding it would be an insult to withhold them. But Gerry was a different matter. Trevor waited for her to leave the room and close the parlor doors with a definitive slam before turning back to the others.

“We’ll start with Tom’s physical exam of Charlie Swinscow.”

Tom was ready. “It’s been two weeks since Cleveland Street was raided,” he said, “which means two weeks for any evidence on the boy’s body to fade. The problem with the anus is that there are many small blood vessels, so while it is quite easy to injure the area, healing is equally fast. Nonetheless, I did find some signs of sexual contact, based on some partially-healed tears. Slight tears, I must stress, consistent with penetration, although of neither a number nor a severity that would indicate force. Very little bruising.” Tom looked up at them, brushing his blond hair out of his eyes. “In short, it seems to bear out the boy’s own story. He’s had anal intercourse, but there’s no evidence of anal rape.”

Well, that was certainly plain enough. Whatever nerves Trevor had about discussing Cleveland Street in front of Emma, Tom evidently did not share them. Trevor glanced at the girl. She was merely looking at Tom with a quizzical frown while beside them Davy clutched the armrests of his chair and stared down at his feet, nearly rigid with mortification.

“Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the boy was his size,” Tom said. “Which I presume you both noticed upon meeting him yesterday as well. I’d have guessed him at eleven or twelve, not fifteen, and I gather this Hammond fellow makes it a policy not to feed his boys much.”

“Hunger rendering them more pliable, I presume?” Emma asked, her voice gone high and breathy. “Or is the man merely cheap?”

“Both factors undoubtedly come into play,” Tom said, almost cheerfully. “But malnourishment will also delay the onset of puberty and I suspect that’s his real game. His clients don’t merely desire congress with men, which is relatively easy to obtain, but with boys, which is riskier, and this is why they must seek out the service of Hammond. When you consider what he’s really selling, it’s easy to see why a fifteen year old who passes for twelve is a valuable asset.” He rapped his fingers softly on the tabletop as he consulted his notes, a gesture which Trevor suspected had more to do with excitement than nerves. “There have been similar cases where young girls have been semi-starved to prevent the establishment of a regular menarche – and in the process making sure they don’t develop breasts or pubic hair or anything else that would give them away as grown women. A well-fed girl of the middle or upper classes will mostly likely begin her monthly bleeding at the age of fourteen, but the average for the lower classes is sixteen. In cases of deliberate and sustained malnutrition it can be held back even longer.”

“The human body is clever,” Emma said hollowly. “It protects itself.”

“Indeed,” said Tom. “The expressions of sexuality require energy, reproduction even more so. If a body isn’t obtaining enough nourishment in the form of food, it will simply cease to perform any function that it can spare, menarche being chief among them.” Tom sat back in his chair and raised an eyebrow before continuing. “Don’t glare at me like that, Trevor, I know I’ve digressed from the topic at hand. But it’s all quite interesting, is it not? I mean, when one sets aside the human element and looks at it theoretically. ”

Trevor doubted he would ever become accustomed to what passed for normal conversation around the Bainbridge family dinner table; true, there were times when an unpleasant subject needed to be broached, but must they broach it with such enthusiasm? He looked at Tom squarely. “And your conclusion?”

“Simply this: If the specialty of a certain business requires the trafficking of children, it behooves the management to keep their employees – or perhaps I should say their victims – looking childlike for as long as possible.”

“We must find this man Hammond,” Emma said grimly.

“We shall,” Trevor assured her. “But we will not serve the department, nor these children, if we allow our emotions to trump our reasoning.”

“Charlie described certain sexual acts,” Tom said, “with enough clarity and detail that I have no doubt he is telling the truth about both what he’s witnessed in the brothel and his own participation.”

“I don’t think any of us ever doubted he was telling the truth,” Trevor said. “It’s hardly the sort of story a young boy invents, is it?”

This observation was met with a pensive silence and, after a moment, Trevor moved on.

“And Davy, what did you gather from your private interview?”

“It went just as you predicted, Sir. Due to our shared social station, or perhaps I should say our shared lack of a social station, Charlie talked to me like a fellow,” Davy answered. “He gave me the names and descriptions of seven clients, although he only knew full names for three of them.”

“Are you sure they’re legitimate?” Emma asked, her focus apparently restored. “Might men not use pseudonyms when visiting such a place?”

“I’ll finish checking the list tomorrow but the first one was quite legitimate,” Davy said. “Lord Arthur Somerset.”

“Oh Lord, a lord,” Trevor said, although in truth he was not surprised. Somerset had been in the arresting officer’s report, along with a note from the Queen expressly asking that Trevor and his team be attached to the case. “When the aristocracy is involved, things always seem to twist.”

“Something about that name sounds familiar,” Tom said.

“Somerset presides over the stables of the Prince of Wales,” Davy said quietly. “And thus, of course, this means he manages those of the Prince’s son as well. The Duke of Clarence, that is.”

A collective groan went up from Tom and Emma.

“Bertie strikes again,” Tom said. “I can only assume this Somerset chap accompanies the Duke on his rides about town? That they are boon companions and the best of buddies?”

Davy nodded.

“All roads eventually do lead back to Albert Victor, don’t they?” Emma said. “Especially the muddy ones. I suppose when this part gets out the newspapers will have their usual holiday.”

“Bet on it,” Trevor said shortly. “Scandal sells papers, royal scandal most of all, and in that sense Bertie can surely be declared the patron saint of Fleet Street.”

The Duke of Clarence, born Albert Victor and commonly known as Bertie, was the Queen’s eldest grandchild - in fact, he was the first born son of her first born son and thus in direct line of succession. Through the years this heir to the British throne had somehow managed to associate himself with every tawdry crime in London. Rumors of illegitimate children abounded, as did whispered stories of the darkest sorts of amusements, visits to brothels of every imaginable sort. At one time he had even been considered as a possible suspect in the Ripper case. He always managed to emerge from the gutter unscathed, but, nonetheless, Bertie was a perpetual headache to the monarchy. By the light of day, the Duke of Clarence was petulant, spoiled, obsessed with dandyish clothing, almost certainly riddled with syphilis, and partially deaf. By night things grew worse. It was widely claimed that Bertie was bisexual and possessed a special penchant for equestrian gear.

“I’m surprised the Queen hasn’t already contacted you,” Tom said.

“She has,” Trevor finally admitted.

“So this is why the forensics unit has been put on a case that doesn’t involve murder?” Tom asked irritably. “It all makes sense now. We’ve been enlisted to ensure that no evidence arises to connect the Queen’s grandson with a male brothel.”

“Remember yourself,” Trevor said sharply, thinking that Tom was always the first of them to suspect an ulterior design in any act of patronage. The Bainbridges weren’t titled, but their money was old, and aristocrats rarely seemed to hold any illusions about the aristocracy. In the brief time they had all worked together, Tom was proving himself prone to abrupt swings in mood, sometimes jovial and sometimes snappish, just as he was this morning. The rich could literally afford to be heedless with their words, Trevor knew. They could freely express the sort of opinions that the working class must swallow. But it was still a bit shocking to hear Tom so directly challenge the motives of the Queen.

“No one ever suggested we would work exclusively on murder cases,” Emma said. “Forensics has a role to play in the investigation of many types of crimes, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Tom said. “But our ranks are so thin and our resources so limited I would imagine we would only be called into the most heinous cases, not to investigate predictable depravities like those taking place on Cleveland Street.”

“Predictable depravities?” Emma said sharply. “You consider this a minor case, simply because we have yet to stumble upon a body? Think of those boys, what the future holds for them. Is not the ruination of a life as big a crime as the termination of one?”

“I don’t wish to argue the truth of your observations,” said Tom. “Only to point out that we’ve been given this assignment for one reason alone. Not to protect young boys from ruination but to protect the royal family from yet another scandal.”

“Her Majesty doubtless has many reasons for taking note of our efforts,” Trevor said, consciously striving to bring a bit of gravitas to his voice. Tom might be the best educated and most privileged among them, but Trevor could not allow a boy of twenty to assert himself as the leader of the group. “Naturally she wishes to contain the criminal element in England and, just as naturally, she wishes to encourage cooperation among the law agencies across the continent. Considering that Her Majesty’s own children and grandchildren reside in every capital in Europe, this can scarcely be viewed as surprising. Besides, we must not forget that she herself has been the intended target of crime in the past, and that her station in the world all but guarantees she is the focus of any number of lunatic obsessions rising from untold corners of the globe. The Queen has reasons to support our work that extend far beyond the antics of Bertie.”

Two heads quickly nodded and, a second later, Tom’s reluctantly joined them. Looking around the circle, it occurred to Trevor that none of the others had been alive on that terrible morning when the young Victoria, fresh to the throne, had been attacked while riding in her coach. The gunman, thank God, had proven spectacularly inept, but the Queen’s beloved husband Albert had been injured in the scuffle, guaranteeing that her memory of the incident would never fade, no matter how many years might subsequently pass. Nor would they remember the worldwide paranoia which had followed the assassination of the American president Abraham Lincoln, another event which Trevor knew preyed heavily on Victoria’s mind. The unique vulnerability of those in power distressed the Queen, and who could blame her? In a time of political unrest – which, Trevor supposed, could be any isolated year in history – the murder of a single individual could change the course of history. A chance to reshuffle the deck and bring new cards into play.

Yes, the heads of state were perpetual targets for the disgruntled, and no one headed a greater state than Victoria. Trevor was one of the few people who could claim to know the full depth of the Queen’s obsessions, and that not all of the darkness swirling around her was merely mourning for her long-departed husband. Victoria’s fears had not only defined her reign but her entire era. Her personal morbidity – well-founded or not - had infected her people and from there traveled to every civilized corner of Europe.

“We shall follow the trail of the Cleveland Street arrests wherever it may lead us,” Trevor said. “Even if it pulls us into the very stables of Buckingham Palace. Is that understood? Our first loyalty is to the truth, and this surpasses all other loyalties, even those to friends or family or our own government.”

“Shall we take an oath?” Tom asked sardonically. Judging by the curl of his upper lip, he was still evidently not wholly convinced. “Shall we bleed?”

“Before it’s over, perhaps we all shall,” Davy said, and his eyes met Tom’s for the briefest instant.

“I suppose you have photographs,” Trevor broke in hastily. “Which verify the story of this unfortunate boy?”

“Unfortunately, I do,” Tom said with a sigh, and, just as Trevor had hoped, their attention was promptly diverted.

Paris



9:20 AM



There were those who claimed that the morgue was the most beautiful building in Paris.

That was an exaggeration, of course, at least to Rayley’s way of thinking, but there was no denying that the structure had a certain bizarre type of charm, probably due to the fact that its opulence seemed to mock its very function. He had noted the building many times on his Sunday walks, and had originally mistaken it for an embassy, or perhaps a museum.

A note had been waiting on his desk when he’d arrived at the station this morning. Since Carle had been nowhere to be found, Rayley used his small phrasebook to translate. Rubois, it seemed, wished to confer with him on a matter of great importance. He wished for Rayley to meet him at the morgue.

Well, this was news. Thanks to the satisfactory conclusion of the Martin murder and the fact he now was heading up the Graham drowning case, Rayley’s status among the French officer must be genuinely changing for the better. He was moving from a bothersome adjunct, as out of place as a bed in a kitchen, to someone whose presence was actually desired. Despite his weariness from another restless night, Rayley had found himself hurrying down the avenue leading to the morgue, his feet almost on the verge of a run. And as he approached the grand entrance, with the heavy brass doors and deep crimson awnings, he found Rubois already waiting for him, having a smoke behind a potted tree while Carle hovered to the side.

Carle pulled open the door, his slight frame bowing as he used the totality of his weight to hold it ajar for Rubois and Rayley to enter. They walked through the broad lobby single-file, their feet ringing on the tiles. Five bodies were on display, Rayley noted with a sideways glance, each propped up in front of its own window, tilted at such a pronounced slant that it seemed the deceased was surely about to push away from their beds and stand. Their eyes were propped open, presumably because their color might aid in identification, and the corpses were dressed in whatever clothing they had worn into death, thus offering another hint as to who they might have been and what station they might have held while they had dwelt among the living.

Rayley would never accept this bizarre practice of displaying the unclaimed dead. When an unidentified dead body turned up at Scotland Yard, the British police would run a description of it in the papers and hope some relative or friend might step forth to claim the remains. But that was admittedly a flawed system as well, since the newspaper descriptions tended to be vague, the deceased all looking somewhat alike. Not to mention that the class of people most likely to misplace a dead relative was also the class least likely to read the daily papers, or indeed anything at all.

So Rayley reluctantly admitted to himself there was something both pragmatic and democratic about lining up the bodies for public viewing. The French rarely had to send an unclaimed body to an unmarked grave, a routine procedure at Scotland Yard. Rayley privately suspected that some of the bodies were claimed by people who had never met the person in life, and who now intended to repurpose their remains for heaven knows what sort of reason. Tom Bainbridge had often bemoaned the dearth of cadavers at Cambridge; presumably the French medical schools were better stocked.

At least that’s what Rayley told himself, since the alternative was even more unsavory to consider.

Rayley’s glance in the direction of the corpses was swift but, due to his finely honed observational skills, he could not help but notice certain things. One woman was on display along with four men. This quota was typical, men tending to stray farther from their homes and families and to take on more dangerous lines of work. The woman was dark in complexion, possibly Arabian of some sort, with her downturned mouth half-opened. Rayley had the brief but uneasy sense she was sneering at him.

The hour was early, but a handful of onlookers had already assembled, corpse-viewing being one of the most popular free pastimes in Paris. Two men stood snickering and knocking shoulders in front of the dark woman, their amusement of a sort Rayley would prefer not to contemplate. A plump matron was lifting a small boy to the window to get a better look at one of the men. Another female, her head and shoulders wrapped in a grand swath of indigo blue silk, was all but pressed against the glass in her eagerness to observe the slackened face of a young boy who was dressed in a manner that indicated he may have spent some time at sea. On a Sunday afternoon – or a day when a young woman was displayed, or, better yet, a child – the crowd would be three times as large. It was a productive practice, but also a profoundly undignified one, seeming to simultaneously lower the humanity of both the corpse and the onlookers.

Small wonder that they don’t sell balloons and cherry ices, Rayley thought irritably. An accordionist would add a festive touch. Pony rides for the children. Make a proper fair of it.

Rubois turned from the broad lobby down a side hall, with Rayley following and Carle falling behind. This part of the building was forbidden to the general public, but the bored guard at the mouth of the hall did not ask for any identification and none was offered. They made one turn, then another. Thanks to the French love of vast architectural expanses of marble, their morgue was even colder than the oaken British equivalent at Scotland Yard, although admittedly not so dark. The footfalls of the three men grew progressively louder as they walked, still single file, through the maze of hallways, coming at last to one of the small private viewing chambers. They entered and stood facing each other in the center of the empty room.

“The detective thinks there is something you need to know,” Carle blurted out, although Rubois had said nothing. Evidently a discussion had taken place earlier, before Rayley arrived. “There’s another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another body.”

Rayley frowned. They were in a morgue. Bodies were everywhere. “Another Englishman?”

Carle hesitated, just long enough to make Rayley wonder if he was struggling between his instructions to translate from Rubois precisely and his desire to add a few details of his own. “A body pulled from the Seine on April 12, very near the spot where they found Graham. No obvious cause of death so it was considered to be a suicide…” With a glance at Rubois, who was standing stonily beside the door, Carle let his voice trail off.

“I see,” said Rayley, although he was quite sure that he didn’t. Rubois had invited him here of his own volition so why the deuce were they being so mysterious? “You deemed this person a suicide, but now that Graham has shown up in the same manner at the same place you’re thinking maybe the first was drugged with chloroform too, is that it?”

Carle nodded slowly. So slowly that the gesture confirmed to Rayley he was only getting part of the story. And probably not the good part.

“Do you have blood samples?”

Carle translated the question for Rubois, who simply shook his head. He was a mournful looking man under the best of circumstances, with tightly pursed lips and dark circles under his eyes, probably more the result of genetics than exhaustion. But today, regretfully shaking his head to answer the question, he looked as if he was on the verge of either giving or receiving very bad news.

But Rayley wasn’t surprised at his answer. There was no reason to have drawn blood from a victim deemed to be a suicide, and, given the amount of time that had passed, he could only assume that the body had already been embalmed. All right then, so the police may have let potential evidence slip through their hands. Quite understandable under the circumstances, and it certainly didn’t explain all this secrecy.

“Do you have any idea who the man was?” Rayley said. “He was displayed at the morgue, I presume?”

This simple question brought such a pained expression to Carle’s face that Rayley found himself speaking with uncharacteristic sharpness. “Why are you both acting so strangely? Who was this fellow anyway? Or was it a woman?”

Rubois said something and Carle nodded. “He says you should examine the body yourself, Sir.”

Rayley nodded, his bewilderment now complete. An invitation to meet Rubois at the morgue had undoubtedly been an invitation to examine a body, but he had assumed it was a body freshly discovered, not one this long out of the Seine. If they believed it was a suicide and not the result of foul play, a transient who had evidently been put on display but gone unclaimed, then why would they bother to keep it so long in the morgue? Even the French, who had made both an art and a science out of body identification, had to admit defeat and bury unclaimed corpses occasionally.

Rubois was speaking again, his voice fast and low, little more than a whisper. Men tended to drop their voices in morgues, Rayley had noticed, just as they did in courtrooms and churches. But in this vast catacomb, where the marble made each sound echo like an accusation, the whispering made sense.

“He says he’s sorry to have been so obscure, Sir,” Carle finally said. “But yes, that’s why Lieutenant Rubois asked you to meet him today. He wishes for you to view the body.”

“Ask him why he kept it,” Rayley said, now whispering himself. “If no one knew who the person was and there was nothing unusual in the death, ask him why he kept the body.”

“But there was something unusual, Sir,” Carle said. “Please, wait here.”

With that, both Rubois and Carle fairly scurried from the room and Rayley looked around for a chair. He found one in the corner, dropped down, and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief to press to his mouth and nose if necessary. Even if they had attempted to embalm it, examining a body that had been taken from the Seine so long ago would not be a pleasant task.

Isabel pushed the blue scarf back from her head and moved away from the others, the muttering men and the fat woman with her sticky-nosed, demanding children. What were the odds that she and Rayley would appear here at the morgue exact same moment? Their fates were surely linked and she had known this somehow from the first time she had seen him. At the café on that beautiful Sunday. Armand, of course, had known the man’s every habit – for example, that he dined at this particular café almost every Sunday luncheon. She had been seated directly in the sight line of the detective and he had indeed noticed her, of course he had, just as Armand and Isabel had both known that he would. Sketching him had been her idea. Seduction on a more discreet level, a tickle instead of a grab. The sort of thing that never would have occurred to Armand.

It had worked. The next time she had seen her, at the party for the Tower, he had been clay beneath her palms. Yielding, malleable. Willing to ascend the tower, although it was quite clear he didn’t want to. Willing to climb even higher, on a half-constructed staircase, for the love of God, just for the chance of a few minutes alone with her.

But today Rayley had passed without recognizing her, had passed with merely a dismissive glance in the direction of the crowd. Even with the head scarf it was surprising, and Isabel was both gratified and dismayed that she had been able to blend so effectively.

She leaned forward and looked at the young man one more time. His head was lolled to one side and his face was bloated, the fluid beneath his skin stretching his features, blurring his individuality, erasing the small details that make one human face different from another. But even with the distortion, she was certain this boy was not Henry. It was foolish for her to come here every morning, but paranoia is a powerful force, washing over the rational mind like waves breaking over a rampart. Ever since Patrick Graham had been killed she had been unable to control her fear.

She looked at the boy again. No, not Henry. Certainly not. She had been foolish to think it for even a second, to linger here tormenting herself so long. Henry had been handsome.

She caught herself. Henry was handsome. That was the proper way to say it.

Because Henry was still alive.

There was no reason to think he wouldn’t be, or that any real harm would come to any of them. Armand liked to snarl and threaten, he liked watching people jump. But that didn’t make him a killer. At least not a killer of his own kind.

So they say Henry has run to Paris, Isabel thought, turning away from the window and the boy displayed inside. What of it? Paris was a big city. There were a thousand places for a person to hide. A thousand corners to round, a thousand alleys to run down, a thousand attics in which to take refuge. She was being quite ridiculous.

When Carle and Rubois returned, they had a mortuary assistant with them, a rather small man who was struggling to push a very large gurney. With a flutter of ceremony, he pulled back the white sheet and, somewhat to Rayley’s surprise, revealed the blue-gray face of a young woman. Decomposition was minimal. She had obviously been not only embalmed but kept in ice, as evidenced by the fact a few shards were still flecked around her throat and collarbones, glittering like a diamond necklace. A stack of clothing, some red shiny garment and a gray skirt, petticoats and the such, was neatly folded at her feet and someone, Rayley noted, had taken the time to not only brush but to arrange her hair. Most likely this was all done before she had been put on display in the morgue. Surprising she wouldn’t have been claimed. Pretty young girls usually went first. Dozens of self-proclaimed brothers always seemed to be emerging from every corner of the city, each of them wailing that yes, this was the body of their poor dead little sister. Blanche her name was. Or perhaps Marie.

Rubois barked out a few phrases and the assistant hastily disappeared. A few more and Carle too slipped out the door. Rayley and the French policeman remained in the room alone. Apparently whatever was about to transpire between them would not require words.

Rubois slowly pulled the rest of the sheet from the body. The girl was draped, decorously so, in the same sort of muslin strips the British sometimes used to wrap a body. Rayley steeled himself. He did not like to view women. He did not like to view the young. She looks like a statue, he thought, in that distant part of his mind which always seemed to step forward in distressing occasions. That queer gray color of her skin heightens the effect, whether it’s from the river or the ice or the fact her blood had been drained for the embalming. A damn shame they hadn’t saved a vial, but then again…

Rubois was unfurling the strips, revealing the girl to Rayley’s gaze in sections. She was thin, with a hollowed collarbone and virtually no breasts. Rayley’s heart lurched a little at the frailty of her frame, the pronounced outline of her ribs beneath the waxy skin. She’d been on the streets for a while, he thought sadly. No telling when she’d had her last full meal, her last night’s sleep in a proper bed. As Rubois continued down her torso, systematically unrolling the cloth, Rayley stepped forward and bent low to more closely example the skin around the girl’s mouth and neck. But he saw no scrapes or bruises in the manner Graham had sustained, nothing to suggest a struggle or that she had been forcibly drugged at all.

Rayley wondered if the French had it wrong, for he could find no immediate connection between the two bodies. Perhaps it was just by chance than this poor child had washed up in the same bend of the river as Graham. Graham had surely been killed because he knew something, had seen something, because he had been investigating a matter that a powerful person did not want brought to light. And it was very hard to believe that this wisp of a girl could have been involved in any similar sort of international intrigue.

The last shards of ice were melting, leaving small puddles of water around her throat and chest, and a few drops of water on her face. A more sentimental man might have said that it looked as if she was weeping. Rayley let his eyes flicker down the length of the table. She was pretty, pretty indeed, and most emphatically dead, but beyond that he could detect nothing unusual about the girl.

Nothing, that is, except for the fact she had a penis.