City of Light (City of Mystery) (28 page)

“Trevor is hardly some
plodding bureaucrat, Emma,” Tom said.  “We’ve been in Paris less than
twenty-four hours and the investigation is moving at a furiously rapid pace.”

“I doubt it seems
that way to Rayley Abrams.”

She was probably
right about that.  “If you don’t think our best course is collecting enough
evidence to arrest Armand Delacroix,” said Tom, “what would you suggest?”

“That we try and
determine where the two bodies were put into the river.”  She leaned back
against the step and slowly exhaled. “Do you remember when Trevor was investigating
the Ripper case and he would say that it didn’t matter why Jack killed, that it
only mattered how?”

Tom nodded
cautiously.  Emma rarely mentioned the Ripper case.

“And remember how
just a minute ago he said that the who, what, and where is more important than
the why?”

Tom nodded again.

“All I’m suggesting
is that we further prioritize the questions and focus our attention on where
Rayley is being held, rather than on who is holding him,” she said. “Releasing
him from any present danger is the most important thing and only then should we
worry about building a case against Delacroix.”

“But of course
finding Rayley is our top priority, Emma,” Tom said, also rolling back against
the step and staring out into the street. “No one has forgotten that.  Certainly
not Trevor.” Tom was usually the passionate one in any discussion and it rarely
fell to him to play the voice of reason.  He wasn’t sure he liked it.  Emma was
flushed and breathless, and it seemed that everything he had said so far had only
had the effect of making her more upset.  For a moment Tom pondered the
possibility that Emma’s desire to prove her worth to Trevor was as much a part
of her motivation as finding Rayley, but then he dismissed it.  More likely the
fact that her sister had been violently slain was the true source of her
anxiety.  She couldn’t help but see everything from the point of view of the
victim.  

When he turned back,
Emma was looking at him, squarely in the eye.  “Isn’t there a good chance
Delacroix has some sort of base of operations near the river and that Rayley is
being held there?”

“Of course there’s a
chance, although I suspect ‘base of operations’ is far too grand of a term. There’s
no evidence that Delacroix has dozens of minions at his dispatch,” Tom said. 
He was well aware that he was quoting precisely the same lecture Trevor had
given him earlier. “He’s more likely just your standard reprehensible brothel
owner who is preying on both his clients and his employees.  Besides, the Seine
is a long river that runs through the heart of a large city.  I would imagine
it’s much as it is along the Thames. Small hovels of homes, people crammed
together in rooms, ale houses and brothels catering to the men who work the
docks.  Do you suggest we go door to door through the endless squalor, knocking
people up and asking if any of them might have seen a detective from Scotland
Yard?”

“No.  I suggest we
time how long it takes a body to float down the Seine.”

“For God’s sake,
why?”

“You examined the
bodies. The boy-girl may have been embalmed and frozen and thus not a good test
case, but Graham was pristine, was he not?  And you saw the original coroner’s
notes?”

“You know I did.  I
told you so upstairs.”

“How long was the
official estimation of the amount of time Graham was in the water?”

“It’s impossible to
be certain in these matters.  It would be no more than an educated guess.”

“Very well.  You’re
educated.  What’s your guess?”

“Thirty minutes,
more or less,” Tom said uneasily.  He couldn’t follow where she was going with
all this at all, but it was most certainly nowhere good.  When it came to the
forensics unit, he and Emma were mere volunteers.  Emma did not go daily into
Scotland Yard as Tom did and had thus never stood witness to how hard Trevor
had to fight for his unit’s mere survival or how careful he was to treat his
volunteers with as much respect as his employees.  Did Trevor view Emma precisely
as he did the men?  Certainly not, but he had been eminently fair to both her
and to Tom, who was, after all, still merely in school. When Trevor learned
they had gone outside his authority to run forensics experiments on their own,
he would rightfully demand both their heads on a platter.  

“All right then,”
Emma said, unfazed by his hesitation. “So we put forth an experiment to
determine how far a body the size of Graham’s and one the size of the
boy-girl’s would drift in the Seine in thirty minutes.  Once we’ve determined
this, we go upriver that distance and look for the most likely place where they
might have been put in.  It seems supremely logical to me.  The Seine isn’t a
tidal river so there should be few variables in water velocity and it hasn’t
rained all week, which is fortunate, is it not?”

Tom was shaking his
head.  Tidal rivers?  Water velocity?  Where the devil had she learned such
terms?  “Tomorrow I promise you I shall ask Rubois if the police have
considered–“

She sat up abruptly from
where she had been leaning against the marble step. “No!  Rubois can’t know. 
Neither can Trevor.  At least not until we’ve done our preliminary experiments
and I see if my theory has a sliver of a chance of working.  Otherwise Trevor
shall conclude I’m even more useless in an investigation than he presently
thinks, and I shall spend the rest of my life locked in an airless room transcribing
documents.”

The words “preliminary
experiments” were enough to strike terror in Tom’s heart.  He knew that Emma
could be intense to the point of obsession, but she surely wasn’t suggesting
that they break into the morgue, was she?  In her present state of mind it
seemed possible. 

What sort of
experiments?”he asked cautiously. “We don’t have access to a body.”

“It seems to me that
we have access to two perfectly fine bodies, right here.”

It took him a moment
to realize what she meant.

“Emma,” Tom finally
said sternly. “You must clear your mind of this plan at once.  Tonight you and
I are going to focus on collecting information about Armand Delacroix and
Isabel Blout, just as Trevor has instructed us to do.  Tomorrow I promise that you
and I shall walk the banks of the Seine looking for this – what did you call
it? – this base of operations.  And I shall ask Rubois if the French have given
any thought to the possibility the bodies were not thrown off the nearest
bridge but rather put into the river somewhere upstream.  For that part of your
theory does indeed make sense.  As for the rest of it…absolutely not.  We shall
in this instant rise to our feet and go upstairs and dress in our fine new
clothes and attend our first French dinner party.  And once we are there you
shall endeavor to behave as the deliriously happy fiancé of the most wonderful
man in Europe, not as a madwoman about to throw herself into the Seine.  I don’t
wish to be querulous, but that, my dear, is that.” 

“You said the
boy-girl was very thin.  How big was Graham?”

“Whyever would you
ask?”

“About your size,
would you say?”

Tom turned his eyes
and palms heavenward in an appeal for divine help.  “He was a little heavier
than me, I should guess.  And yes, I’ll spare you the trouble of further
interrogation. The boy-girl might have had a similar weight to yours.  But it
matters not at all because tonight we are going to the Madame Seaver’s soiree,
Emma, precisely as planned.”

“Of course, of
course,” she said.  “I never suggested otherwise. Experiments of this nature are
best done very late to avoid attracting the attention of the unsavory sorts who
always seem to collect by rivers.  Who knows how long it takes them to tumble
into slumber.  We should wait until two or three, I’d imagine.”

“This isn’t going to
happen, Emma.  Trevor would forbid it and for once I believe Aunt Geraldine
would second him.”

“Then it’s fortunate
they’re both such sound sleepers. Did you hear them last night?  Their snores
all but harmonized. Tom, really, it’s nothing more than one of our Tuesday
Night Murder Games.  An experiment on how swiftly masses of different weights
are carried down a slow-moving river.  Think of it that way and you’ll see my
point at once.”

“I’m not going to
think of it at all.  I’m not coming with you.  We would be, as Aunt Gerry says,
both insane and in the Seine.”

“Oh, bother, of
course you’re coming,” Emma said.  “As long as we stay together, what could go
wrong?”

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

Paris

9:20
PM

At Geraldine’s
insistence, they walked. 

In London it would
have been social anathema to arrive at a society party on foot, but Geraldine
had explained that in Paris a stroll to the home of your hostess was considered
part of the evening’s entertainment.  Besides, Madame Seaver’s house was no
more than four blocks from their own apartment, albeit long blocks punctuated
by a series of perfectly manicured parks.  The route was well-lit, with the
gaslights closely spaced in this prosperous neighborhood, reminding Trevor of
Marjorie’s begrudging description of Paris as “the city of light.”

In fact, if a man
chose, he could read a book beneath these gaslights, Trevor thought, ambling
behind as Tom escorted both of the ladies, one on each arm.  They were much
brighter than the ones in London, but the cost of this superior illumination
was a strange yellowish green cast to the light, as if it were being provided
not by fire but rather by some mysterious supernatural force.  Even the resultant
shadows were of a different sort, not diffuse and cloudlike like the shadows of
London, but rather falling sharp-edged at his feet.

Rayley had been
lonely.  The thought hit Trevor with the force of a sudden wave.  That’s why he
had sent such long letters back to London, the sort of detailed descriptions
which a man could use to fill a formless day of leisure. This land was foreign,
not only in the manner one might expect and enjoy on a bit of holiday, but in a
hundred other small ways as well.  When you looked at them in a different
light, even the most natural things could take on an unnatural cast, and Trevor
gazed at the backs of the three familiar figures walking ahead of him.  Tom in
his tall hat, the ladies wrapped in velvet cloaks against the chill of the
spring air. 

The pace of their
party was moderated to accommodate Geraldine’s age, and Tom’s gait was a little
unsteady, Trevor noted, most likely because Geraldine was leaning on his arm
more heavily than Emma.  She’s an old woman, Trevor thought, another
observation which was self-evident, but the acknowledgement of which made him
strangely sad.  I never think of it in London, but I see it here.  And
Emma…she’s not only moving slowly to match her pace to Geraldine’s, she’s also
walking with a sense of dread. 

Tom and Geraldine,
born to privilege and bold by nature, could never understand the dozens of
small pitfalls which lurked for Trevor and Emma in Madame Seaver’s front
parlor.  As they turned the final corner, the house in question came into view,
ablaze with light and swarmed with footmen in the street, the first volley of guests
making their way up the front steps.  Emma clutched Tom’s arm a little more
tightly, and the pace of the group slowed even more, from sedate to
ceremonious. 

The condemned don’t
rush to the gallows.

London

9:28  PM

Davy had placed a
dozen candles around him on the work table, as well as the forensic lab’s only
proper lamp.  The Yard kept a skeleton staff at night, and the enormous
building was eerily quiet.  It was unpleasant to be here, on the lowest level,
in the darkest corner of a dark building, but it was the perfect setting for
his work.  He read the paper before him once again, very slowly.  It was the
most recent report on French fingerprinting methodology, neatly transcribed by
Emma.

He had already
unpacked the liquor case he had obtained from the brothel on Cleveland Street,
wearing gloves as he did so and taking great care not to touch the flask or the
glasses in a place which might obscure existing prints. It seemed that the most
promising option was what appeared to be an almost complete thumbprint on the
side of one of the glasses, just in the position where a man’s hand might
logically grasp the thick tumbler.  Davy’s own hands were shaking as he set up
the necessary tools of his task.  A single mistake could ruin their best print
of the man who went by the name Charles Hammond.

Tom’s telegram was
also on the table, besides Emma’s transcribed notes.  Davy had already done
what it had requested of him, procuring the documentation of all travelers
leaving Dover by boat on the dates in question, but this had not been a simple
chore. The minute Davy had gotten the telegram from Paris, he had hopped on the
next train to Dover.  But the dockmaster there had not responded to his request
for the passenger rosters with any particular enthusiasm.  He had grudgingly offered
to let Davy read them in his office, but with boat traffic between Dover and
Calais at high levels due to the Exhibition, Davy had known that doing so would
take him hours.  He had politely asked to speak to the man’s superior, aware
that the channel authorities were a different group entirely from Scotland Yard
and that tact might take him farther than a direct order.  Fortunately, the
senior magistrate was evidently the ambitious sort and had been immediately
impressed with the insignia of the Yard.  With a wink that seemed to suggest
their paths would someday cross again, he had ordered the entire transcript to
be released to Davy at once.  The ledgers were so numerous and heavy that Davy
had literally staggered while trying to carry them out of the office, a scene
the original dockmaster had observed with open amusement.