City of Light (City of Mystery) (31 page)

“Are you all right?”

A strange question
coming from the man who held him captive, a man who had supplied him with
nothing but lukewarm water, cold potatoes, and steady doses of chloroform for
the last two days.

“I won’t deny that I
received that note,” Rayley said, after shaming himself with a slight belch. 
“It would be foolish to do so when that was the very morning your hired thug
beset me and brought me here. The note was a trap, so why are we pretending
otherwise?”

Delacroix gave a
subtle, almost apologetic, lift of his shoulders. “My dear man, if Isabel’s
note had truly been a trap, you’d already be dead.  And since you clearly are
not, I believe you must accept my statement. My associate Gerard was sent to
the tower that morning with the expectation that he would find both you and
Isabel.  How did she put it?  ‘Meet me at dawn,’ I believe was the phrase.  So
typical.  I doubt that the woman has ever actually learned to read a clock.”

“So you were spying
on her.  How did you do it?  Bribe her maid?”

“It was hardly
necessary to bribe the maid when I’m the one paying the maid,” Delacroix said
with a wry twist of his mouth.  “I pay everyone. It’s one of the disadvantages
of being the boss.  But learning the contents of Isabel’s note was merely, as
they say, icing on the cake.  It was inevitable that she would eventually try
to flee and that she would turn to you as her most likely avenue of help. 
That’s what she does, you know, she categorizes men the minute she meets them,
and decides in an instant how each one might be useful at some point in the
future.  Naturally if she wished to travel under protection from one country to
another, she would throw herself on the mercy of her dear new friend, Detective
Rayley Abrams of Scotland Yard.”

Rayley leaned back
against the chipped plaster of the cell wall.  At least this was an explanation
for why he was being kept alive.  Armand Delacroix believed that Rayley knew
where Isabel was hiding.  The good news was that it meant Isabel was presumably
still alive and still free of Delacroix’s clutches.  Delacroix would almost
certainly have not taken the risk of holding a Scotland Yard detective if he
had even the slightest clue to her whereabouts. The bad news is that Delacroix was
mostly likely now in this cell because his own efforts to find Isabel had
proven fruitless and he was prepared to employ means to make Rayley talk. 
Means that Rayley would not enjoy. 

At least I don’t
have to fear I might betray Isabel in a moment of agony, Rayley thought.  For I
honestly have not the slightest idea where she might have gone.

Armond looked at him
soberly. “I am not a violent man, Detective Abrams.”

It was said without
inflection, neither a promise nor a threat.

“And I am not a
foolish one, Monsieur Delacroix.”

“No, but you are a
curious sort.  A busybody, a snoop, one who piddles in the business of other
men. To be fair, I suppose your profession demands it.  As did the profession
of your friend, Mr. Graham.”

“Not my friend,”
Rayley said. “I scarcely knew him.”  In the distance, the church bells chimed. 
One.  Two. Three.

“Ah,” said
Delacroix. “You deny your friend and three bells ring.  Rather like the Biblical
crowing of the cock.”

Rayley looked away
from his insolent gaze.

“But perhaps you are
not familiar with the allusion,” Delacroix continued.  “It’s from the New
Testament and you are Jewish, are you not?”

“I scarcely see what
my religion has to do with the matter at hand.”

For some reason,
Delacroix found this remark amusing.  He leaned back and laughed, then rustled
in his pocket for a match.  Rayley flinched as he struck it against the sole of
his shoe, the flame blazing up like the sun in the darkened room.

“Oh, but it has
everything to do with it, Detective, for your Hebrew heritage is the very
reason you find yourself in France.  Jack the Ripper implicates the Jews in one
of his wild rants and a moment later our most esteemed Detective Abrams is
pulled off the case and all the potential glory falls to one Trevor Welles. 
What could be left for you except to take a post studying in France?”

Rayley struggled to
keep his face composed.  How the devil had the man learned all that?  And to
state it so smoothly?  His English, Rayley suddenly thought, the pit of dread growing
in his stomach.  He’s careful to maintain a flicker of a French accent, but his
English is far too good.  Even Carle was not so at ease with the phrasing, nor so
casual with the syntax.

“Your information is
impressive, Monsieur,” he said cautiously.

In the shadows, his
mouth barely visible beneath the glow of his cigar, Delacroix continued to
smile. “What a disappointment it must have been for you, stepping aside in
favor of that fat fool.”

And how the devil
did the man know Trevor was fat?  “I believe,” Rayley said calmly, “that the
better term is ‘portly’”

“You’re wondering how
I know what the man looks like,” Delacroix said, flicking ashes to the concrete
floor.  “The truth is that I didn’t, until tonight.”

Trevor was in Paris?

“I saw Detective
Welles this very evening at a soiree,” Delacroix continued, “trying to pass for
gentry and failing miserably.  He was in the company of an arrogant boy who
clearly fancies himself a citizen of the world, an elderly woman in the most
appalling shade of pea green, and a rather pretty girl.  She spoke passable
French as well, but then she had to go and ruin it all by attempting to flirt
with me, which was a very silly thing for her to do.”

So they had all
come, save possibly Davy.  Rayley was simultaneously gratified and alarmed. For
if Armand Delacroix had learned Trevor’s identity so easily, his network of
spies must be deep indeed.

“And was the party a
success?”

“But of course.  Madame
Seaver is one of the most celebrated hostesses in Paris, sparing no expense in
her efforts to dazzle her guests.  Annie Oakley was there in her cowboy hat and
I believe your friends were quite diverted.  But as for me, the experience was tedious. 
I had hoped to use this occasion to introduce my niece to society but all
anyone could do was ask about Isabel.”

When Rayley made no
response, Armand Delacroix abruptly rose to his feet and walked slowly toward
the door.  “Goodbye for now, Detective,” he said, pausing in the doorframe to
look back.  “I have no doubt that we shall shortly meet again.  But in the
meantime my associate Gerard – a thug, I think you called him? - has agreed to
remain here and see if he can help you recover a bit of your memory.”

3:15 AM

The view of the city
was astounding at this height, especially at night.  Despite the whipping wind,
Isabel leaned against the railing without fear and pulled the silken wrap more
tightly around her naked body.  Her hair was still chopped short around her
ears, her face unadorned, and her feet bare, but whenever silk met flesh,
wherever there was cut crystal and fine wines and plump pillows and candlelight
reflected in broad mirrors, then somehow she was still Isabel.

In fact here, in
this place which was simultaneously so strange and so familiar, she felt her
anxiety fading for the first time in days. 

Isabel had not been
surprised when Armand had demanded she befriend Rayley Abrams and Patrick
Graham.  A detective and a reporter were precisely the sort of men to activate
Armand’s paranoia, all those dark suspicions which lay just beneath his surface
charm.  Although at the time Isabel had argued with Armand about the necessity
of such a task, she had eventually bowed to the inevitable.  She had flirted with
the two men at the party, had climbed the tower with them a day or two later, and
then dutifully reported back everything she had learned to Armand, just as she
had so many times before.

He appeared to have
been placated.  He had kissed her sedately on the forehead, as a matter of
fact, as if she had been an obedient child.

The next day she had
risen early, dressed as a boy, and gone out to sketch.  Again, there was nothing
uncommon in this.  Isabel preferred to draw in the morning when the light was
gentle and the city still slept.  When she had happened to see a crowd gathered
at the river she had paused, not in anticipation of finding anything interesting
on the banks below, but rather because James always said that crowds offered
the best chance to study a preoccupied human face.  She had been sketching a
woman on the bridge who was staring down with gap-mouthed fascination when
Isabel’s own eyes had happened to drift toward the source of that fascination.

Patrick Graham.  Stretched
out on the riverbank, most very clearly dead, with Rayley Abrams bent over him.

Isabel had been so
startled at the sight that she had dropped her sketchbook, sending it spinning
over the side of the bridge and into the Seine where it hit the muddy water
with a splash and caused the people around her to snort and laugh.  But Isabel
had merely sat, one arm around a lamp post, leaning forward, watching the scene
with such intensity that at one point Rayley Abrams had actually paused in his
work and looked up in her direction, as if he could somehow feel the heat of
her stare.

Isabel held few
illusions about men or about the harsh world which they occupied - but sex and
secrets were one thing and it was an entirely different matter for people to
start turning up dead, especially a man with whom she had casually chatted only
days before.  As unthinkable as it was that Armand was responsible for this grisly
tableau stretched out beneath her, it would be even more irrational to pretend that
he was not.  Armand’s request that she spy on the men evidently had not been
one of his random obsessions, but part of some larger plan - and thus she must
have unwittingly played a role in Graham’s death.  Isabel had watched until
Rayley supervised the loading of the body on a stretcher and followed it up the
steep bank to the waiting cart.  When he was out of sight, she had run straight
back to her house and scribbled her breathless note.  Please help me.  I have
to go home.

She had no doubt
that Abrams would respond to her request to meet.  He had to know that they
both were in danger and besides, he was eager.  Eager to help her, eager to
kiss her, eager to save her and take her to bed.  The next morning, when she
approached the tower in the early light, she had seen him there waiting, pacing
and shivering.  He had come too early, that poor, foolish man, but he had come,
that was the important thing.  Her spirits had lifted, her feet had quickened. 
With any luck she would be back in London before nightfall.  But just as she
had been about to call out to him, Isabel had seen Gerard approaching as well,
from the opposite direction.  She had ducked into the shadows, watched from
behind a garden gate, but there had not been much to see. The story had been
resolved with a stunning swiftness - Gerard stepping into the garish glow of
the streetlight, Rayley startled, the flash of a white handkerchief, which had
rendered him pliant within seconds of being pressed to his face. 

So that was how they
did it.

Gerard had been
preoccupied with lifting and carrying Rayley’s limp body and did not see Isabel
turn and retreat.  She had run to the ghettos down by the river, to that part
of town where people ask so few questions.  She had traded her fine clothes for
a working man’s rags, had wandered mindlessly and fearfully through a long day,
and spent the night sleeping on the stony ground of the riverbank.

The luck, if there
was any, was that Isabel’s survival skills had not been completely dulled by
her years of fine living.  By the end of the second day she had found both a
humble job and a grandiose point of sanctuary.  The aerie suited her.  As a
child she had imagined herself to be a princess in a tower and indeed, this was
precisely what she had now become: A woman trapped in elevated seclusion,
looking down at the pretty snarl of the city beneath her, the river tossed like
an abandoned ribbon, shining silver in the moonlight.  Here she stood, waiting
for one man to come and save her from another, although who this rescuer might
be, or even the precise face of her oppressor, Isabel could no longer say.  In
her childhood games, it had all been much clearer.  Life is never so cruel as
when it gives us precisely what we have said that we want. 

Isabel turned slowly
on the narrow balcony – more of a parapet, actually – and reentered the apartment. 
It was a jewel set atop a high crown, each detail perfect in its execution. 
Miniature, true, but far more elegant than the house Armand had leased for her
in Paris or even the grand old home George Blout had provided in London.  The
mirrors and crystal glittered in the candlelight and the fabrics on the
furniture were as soft as a whisper.  She regretted that she would soon be
forced to leave. 

Getting a job
working on the tower had been a rare stroke of luck, but once she had been
hired, it had proven easy enough to hide behind the high stairwells as each
day’s labors came to a close.  The engineers who supervised the work were the
sort of men who thought of both everything and nothing.  They stationed guards
at the elevator on the bottom level to make sure no one crept into the tower at
night, but they had employed virtually no method of ensuring that all the
workmen left at the end of the day.  It would not have surprised Isabel to
learn there were several of her sewer rat comrades also sleeping at various
points on the tower, although she was undoubtedly the only one bold enough to
claim Eiffel’s aerie for her own.  In the morning she would go down the series
of spiral staircases and hide somewhere on the lower level.  She would give
herself time to recover from the descent, for while going down is always easier
than going up, the steps were still numerous and tricky.  When the elevator
spit out the first load of workmen, she would wait for them to disperse and
then insinuate her way among them.  No one notices the comings and goings of
just one more nameless man.