City of Light (City of Mystery) (44 page)

Do You Know This Girl?

If you did, the
poster advised you to immediately contact the French police.  Some business
about a reward.

Armand felt as if he
had been struck with a blow to the head.  He reeled.  He may have staggered.
The world spun, bright and terrifying, before his eyes. 

Henry had
resurfaced. He had come, for all practical reasons, back from the dead,
pointing a milky white finger at the head of Armand Delacroix.  The police most
certainly knew they didn’t have a girl, that what they had was a boy, a boy
dressed as a girl, and thus a rather interesting sort of fish to catch.  As he
tried to regulate his breath, his hand clutching the very lamppost that held
the damning poster, Armand felt that it was all closing in on him somehow.  Isabel
was still missing and Cleveland Street had collapsed.  And now here was Henry,
loosened from the water and in the hands of the police.

He couldn’t go back
to the house at the Boulevard Saint Michel.  If the police were onto him, then that
would be the first place they would look.  He must get money, he thought, he
must go to his bank before it closed at five and he must withdraw all the funds
at his disposal and then he would go…where?   Somewhere.   Across some border,
into Italy or Austria, Germany or Spain.  Someplace where Charles Hammond and
Armand Delacroix did not exist.

He looked around,
tried to remember who he was, where he was.  Not to panic, he thought.   Nothing
was so deadly as panic.  The clock on the corner said just past three, which
gave him nearly two hours to get the money and he could easily be gone from Paris
by dusk.   Armand pushed off of the lamppost, his hand dragging across the
picture of Henry Newlove’s face – pulling it, tearing it – and began to walk
down the street.  But Henry was waiting for him on the next corner too, and also
watching from across the street, his eyes accusing, his lips in a pouty sneer. 
“Outrun me, will you?” he seemed to be saying. “There is no point.  I am on
every avenue and boulevard, just waiting for you to pass.”

Yes, get the money,
Armand thought, desperately trying to hold onto a sequence of logical thought.  Get
the money and get out of Paris.  But first you must do something about that
inconvenient Detective Abrams.

3:16 PM

Henry was dead. 

He had known it and
he had not known it, not fully, not until he had taken the elevator down to the
street.

Ian had not seen the
poster at once.  He had spent his afternoon breather precisely as he had spent
all his brief moments of leisure - taking the broken bits of pastel from his
pockets, finding a bit of shade,  and settling down to draw.  Today he had
found himself sketching the face of one of the men who worked beside him, a
broad ruddy fellow, porcine but friendly, a layer of tile.  A random human
face, one of any you might pass in a day, but James had taught him that there
was a particular challenge in drawing strangers, for you had to give them an
imagined history when you didn’t know what their true one might be.  Ian had
finished the outline of the man’s head and was beginning with the curve of his
brow when he happened to glance up at the kiosk before him.

He did not immediately
react.  Did not flinch or make a noise.  He rose as if in a dream and walked
towards the poster.  Stooped and read the fine print.  The body of a girl, it said,
but there was no doubt that the face before him was Henry’s.  Found on the
morning of April 12, it said, perhaps the only part of the brief description
which Ian did not on some level expect.  For this meant that his brother had
been dead for more than two weeks.  That Henry had been dead even before the
afternoon Ian sketched Rayley, before the party for the Exhibition, before they
climbed the tower, before Graham was drowned. 

It was a level of
betrayal that Ian would not have guessed was possible.  Armand had not only killed
Henry, the child he had promised to protect, but after killing him he had been
able to go convincingly about his everyday life.  He had taken Isabel to cafes
and to parties, he had swirled champagne and laughed and kissed her forehead,
all the while knowing that she would never see her brother again.

Ian dropped his
pastels, which bounced at his feet and scattered, small stubs of color against
the broad gray expanse of cement.  He pulled the poster from the kiosk and
slipped it inside his shirt, then went to the elevator.  For once he was unaware
of the noise of the ascent.   As he emerged on the first level he noted, as if
he were watching them from a great distance, the movements of the other workers
and the chatter of their voices.  There was even more activity on the second
level, welders and painters and men on ladders hanging globes that would
someday be filled with light.  So many people, each with their own faces, their
own scars and worries and each absorbed with their own tasks, this was the key
thing.  Ian looked around him slowly, and waited until he was sure that no one
was looking back.

And then he burst up
the final staircase, the highest and thinnest of them all.  The one that led to
his sanctuary.  The spiral was tight and the center post was slightly swaying,
requiring a man to twist his body, forcing him to climb unnaturally, almost in
a sidestep.  The afternoon sun shone wickedly bright on his face, blinding him,
making it hard to see the small steps, so that Ian stumbled, not once but
twice, with one hand holding the slender railing and the other clutching his
brother’s picture to his chest.  It was an ascent which might have frightened a
man who had anything left to lose.     

3:37 PM

This time was
different.  His prison door had opened on several occasions during his three
days of captivity, each time bringing a sudden searing light to the small
cell.  It was always frightening, always jolting Rayley from his reveries which
were becoming ever deeper and more disorienting, his dreams so persuasive that
at times he wondered if he were already dead.  Perhaps this was what death was
like – all solitude and memory, the sense that one was a hollow vessel,
floating atop a dark sea.

But this time was
different.  This time it was only Armand who entered, and there were none of
the man’s false pleasantries, none of his questions or innuendos.  He advanced
upon Rayley decisively, the cloth already in his hand and, most tellingly of
all, he left the cell door open.  One way or another, Rayley knew his
imprisonment was coming to an end.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Paris

3:41 PM

Maintaining one’s
position in a flowing river required a constant rowing against the current, a
reality of physics which Geraldine’s two oarsmen were not bearing with
particular good grace.  She had found the location Tom described easily enough,
its muddied walls and irregular lines reminding her of structures she had seen
during her time in India, buildings which seemed to have pushed their way up
from the dirt of their own volition, with no evidence of human design.  They
had been bobbing there in front of the fortress for what she guessed to be
about twenty minutes, periodically being pulled downstream a few feet and
having to row back.

Geraldine knew that
her crew was both tiring and utterly mystified as to the purpose of their mission,
but each time they slipped downstream she had lost sight of the building for a precious
few minutes.  She spoke sharply to the two men.  Her only function was to stand
guard and she refused to fail at even that.

But fail she did,
for after the latest of their drifts they had rowed back to find that one of
the  innumerable doors of the building had been shockingly altered during their
brief absence. 

It now stood open.

“Hush,” Geraldine
hissed and even her half-witted oarsmen seemed to notice the change and to mark
it as significant, for they hunkered low in the rowboat and dug into the water
with deeper, more decisive strokes.  Geraldine strained to see over the
vegetation, aware that she was holding her breath.  Within seconds, the sleek figure
of Armand Delacroix appeared in the doorway.  He glanced to the right and then
to the left, but he did not look down to the river.  Which was fortunate indeed,
for while the reeds and brambly bushes partially concealed the presence of the
rowboat, a proper look would have given their position away. 

Delacroix
disappeared and was almost immediately back, this time staggering under the
weight of the burden he was carrying, a thin pale man who was clearly
unconscious, with his arms and legs limp in Delacroix’s arms and his head
thrown back.   Geraldine had never seen Rayley Abrams, but this was most
certainly him.  She was gripping the sides of the rowboat so tightly that she
could feel her heart pounding in her fingertips.  Was he dead?  But no, most
likely not.   For the modus operandi of Delacroix was to drug and release, to
let the Seine serve as his accomplice in the act of murder.

Delacroix struggled
toward the riverbank, his feet slipping in his descent, for the shore was soft
and, while Rayley was not heavy, his limp form was ungainly enough to pull
Delacroix off balance.  He dropped Rayley with a heartless thud at the edge of
the water and then stood back, looking around for something.   Most likely a
stone to weight the body.

Perhaps this is what
broke Geraldine out of her paralysis, the fact that Delacroix’s attention was
shifting from Rayley to the riverbank, the fact that any second now his gaze
would lift and he would see them there, the old woman and the vagrants, hiding
in the reeds in a rowboat, watching.  For something propelled her into action. 
She abruptly stood, to the great consternation of her oarsmen, who went
scrambling to right the boat and keep them all from pitching into the Seine. 

Geraldine rose shakily,
her legs braced as far apart as they would go, the boat bucking and shifting
beneath her.  “Charles Hammond,” she called, “I come in the name of Scotland
Yard.”

3:41 PM

 “That’s all we
have,” Marjorie said, pulling her empty saddlebag open as if she believed Emma
might somehow doubt her.  “A hundred posters went up and that surely is enough
to accomplish your mission.  Although I must say that I’m still not entirely
sure what that mission is.  The police already have a warrant for Delacroix, do
they not?”

“He’s undoubtedly
within their custody as we speak,” said Emma.  “Trevor didn’t tell you why we
wanted the posters?”

Marjorie shook her
head, her short curls bobbing around her face.   She’s quite fashionable in a
very unfashionable way, Emma thought.  The very fact she doesn’t try gives her
an unusual sort of appeal.  The two women were making their slow progress back
to the rendezvous point at the riverbank.

“Our goal is to
flush out Isabel Blout, which is the British name of the woman you know as
Isabel Delacroix,” Emma said.  There was certainly more to add but she wasn’t
sure how Trevor would feel about her talking to a newspaperwoman, even one who
had been as helpful to their cause as Marjorie. “We believe she is still in Paris,
but low on funds and living as one of the sewer rats.”

Marjorie let out a
low whistle. “Hard to imagine her blending in down there.”

“True.  But a witness
told us she traded her clothes for those of a working man’s and she has
presumably assumed a male identity.  I know, I know,” she added hastily, as
Marjorie screwed her face into a disbelieving frown.  “It sounds quite
fantastical and that’s only a small part of the even more fantastical story. 
But the reason that I wanted to put the preponderance of posters near the tower
is that we also believe she may be working there.”

“Wow,” said
Marjorie. 

“Yes,” said Emma. 
“’Wow’ is precisely the word.”

“Even harder to
picture Isabel Delacroix working on the tower,” Marjorie said thoughtfully.
“Although at least she doesn’t have a fear of heights.”

“What makes you say
that?”

“Oh, it’s just that
the morning they took us all up,” Marjorie said, “they posed me against the
railing so that the pictures would have something in the forefront for
perspective…”  She trailed off with a chuckle. “I was terrified but I tried
hard not to let on.  The wind is so fierce when you’re right there against the
edge like that.  You almost feel as if it’s going to lift you up and carry you
away.”

“I can imagine,”
said Emma.

“Actually you
can’t,” said Marjorie. “That’s the thing about the tower.  You stand on the
ground and look up at it and you think you can imagine what it would feel like
to be at the top.  So you have these expectations but then, when you’re there,
the reality is so much more miraculous and intense and terrifying from anything
you had foreseen.” 

The two women paused
in their steps and looked back.  From the angle where they stood, only the
highest section of the tower was visible, the spire rising behind the rooftops
of the houses and shops.  “Anyway,” Marjorie continued, “being in the pictures
required me to stand against the railing while all the photographers were
shooting and all the reporters were trying to tell the photographers how to do
their jobs.  So everyone was focused on me, you see, and I was looking the
other direction, toward the center of the tower.  I imagine I’m the only one
who saw them.”