City of Light (City of Mystery) (48 page)

They covered the
first few minutes of their stroll in silence and finally Rayley said, tentatively
“When we are back at the Yard, shall we discuss this?”

“Not often, I should
think.”

“So whatever must be
said, it would be better if it were all said here?”

Trevor gave him a
sidelong glance. The ordeal of the last few days had left Rayley thinner and
more solemn than ever. But there was something new in him too, a sort of
nervous energy, or perhaps just a story waiting to be told.  He seemed to be
having trouble knowing where to begin.

“I have a question,”
Trevor finally ventured.

“And I will answer
if I can.”

“Why do you think
they did it?  Not the children, or even Delacroix.  Their motives are clear
enough.  But the clients who visited these places, who risked so much to
procure the girl-boys, why should they do such a thing?  None of the rest of us
have been able to come up with a plausible explanation.”

“You’re asking me
why someone would choose to be homosexual?”

“Of course not.  No
sane man would willingly choose such a fate.  But the whole point of Cleveland
Street was that the men who went there were not homosexual, at least not
exclusively so.  Most of them had wives and children, the ability if not the
inclination to function within the normal bounds of society.  So why would they
take on this kind of venture?”

“For some men, the
risk is the reward.” 

“Precisely as Geraldine
explained it.  But this bit of dressing the boys up as women, that’s a very
strange business, Rayley, the one detail that has confounded us all.  If a man
was aroused by the accoutrements of femininity, the hair and the perfumes and
the little white gloves and the lot, why would he not simply select a real
woman?  Heaven knows there is a never ending supply for sale in both London and
Paris.”

“These aren’t the
proper questions, Welles.  You remember what they used to pound into our heads
at the Yard.  That success isn’t the matter of getting the right answer, it’s a
matter of asking the right question.”

Trevor shook his
head emphatically.  “I’m not sure I can stretch my mind enough to even ask the
proper question.  For two men to engage in sexual acts because women aren’t
available is one thing….You could argue it’s a rational response to the limitations
of their environment, the sort of act a Darwinist might even applaud.  Heaven
knows there’s a history of these types of liaisons on ships, in prisons, and in
the better boys’ schools.”

“Practically an
English tradition,” Rayley said dryly, stepping aside to avoid a pastry which
had landed squarely in the middle of a sidewalk, much to the dismay of a
shrieking child.

“Whatever do the
French call these people?” Trevor abruptly asked, indicating with a sweeping
hand the crowd along the promenade.  “All these babbling strangers come from
God knows where to stare and point and laugh too loud and smoke in the street?”

“They call them
touristes.”

“Well, they’re
dreadful.  One can only hope they spill enough money from their pockets to make
the Exposition worth it for the French.”

“They already have,”
Rayley said.  “The French want them to come and keep coming.   In fact, the Eiffel
Tower was built,” he added, realizing his words were true in the very instant
that he said them, “for the touristes and not for the Parisians.”

“Indeed.  Well the
French may have these chattering magpies and their money.  We English certainly
don’t need them.   What were we talking about?”

“Men sodomizing
other men, I believe.”

“Ah yes.  You’re
sure the topic isn’t too distressing?”

Rayley smiled. “Not
at all.  This is the first truly unfettered conversation I’ve had since I left London.”

“Shall I tell you a
secret?  It’s the first true conversation I’ve had since you left London as
well.”

Rayley was pleased
although, being Rayley, he didn’t show it.  “You were saying?”

“Well, that I find
it quite within the realm of logic that in a situation where women are not
available, men might be tempted to improvise and that, as you say, there’s a
proud English tradition of just such improvisation.  To sexually desire a man
more than a woman is quite another level of thought, but I can only presume the
poor bastards can’t help themselves.   But to dress a boy in pantaloons and
demand he pose as a girl seems the ultimate sort of perversity.”

“So what’s your
question?”

“Actually, I have a
theory,” Trevor said.

“You usually do.” 
They paused to let a battalion of women pushing prams pass and then Rayley said
“Please go on.”

“The upper class,
the royals and the rich.  They have become so demanding in their pursuit of
amusements that they must constantly seek new diversions, each more extreme
than the last.  I seized on the notion that night at Madame Seaver’s party when
I was offered the most bewildering variety of cocktails.  Mad little things,
each a different color, with a different sort of adornment perched on the rim,
as if humble whiskey and beer were no longer enough to intoxicate this
demanding new world.”

“So your theory is
that our desire for new sexual experiences may be likewise evolving.”

“In a way.  It is
possible I believe, for a man to become so powerful and rich that the ability
to purchase women is no longer enough of a diversion.  So he begins to purchase
girls.   And when they get tiresome, when he yet again seeks a new novelty,
then it’s on to boys.  I stand before you quite convinced that this is the curse
of the modern world.  We shall all become so jaded with sensation that nothing
in itself will ever be enough to sate us.  It will always be on to the next
novelty and then the next, until the human race is destroyed.”

“And you concluded
all this from a tray of cocktails?”

“Scoff if you wish,
but there is something morally dangerous in this endless variety of amusements that
our era claims to provide. Soon there will be no word for ‘contentment’ in the
English language, for we shall no longer feel content and thus have no need to
describe it.”

“I wasn’t scoffing. 
It reminds me of something Graham said, actually, the day we all climbed the
tower. He said as we grow more modern we shall also be less human.  He was the
last person I would have expected to voice such a sentiment.  I dismissed him
unfairly, I see that now.”  

Trevor nodded. “The
mechanical hand of progress.  I fear it for myself.”

“You, Welles?”
Rayley said, his head turned so that Trevor did not see his smile. “You’re a
gifted detective, perhaps the best in the Yard.  But I’ve always thought that
the one thing that prevented you from being ideally suited for your chosen
profession is that you have no personal tendency toward excess, and thus you
are slow to recognize those impulses in others.  In fact I don’t think I’ve
ever met a man who has less natural capacity for depravity.”

“I’ll take that as a
compliment,” Trevor said.  “Even though I suspect you’ve just found a very
tactful way of suggesting that I’m stupid.”

Rayley stopped in
his tracks and weaved a bit on his feet.

“Gad.  Sorry, man,
we should find a bench,” Trevor said, clasping his shoulder.  “Or a café, even
better, and we’ll take some tea.  You’ve been through a horrible ordeal and
here I’ve marched you up and down every street in Paris.”

“It isn’t that.” Rayley
looked down toward the river. “I wanted to walk the city one more time before
we left.  It’s just that this is where they found Graham’s body.”

Rayley was a man of
ceremony and Trevor remembered that back in London he had often felt a need to
bid farewell to the deceased, that his final visit to the body was a way of
closing the case in his mind.  Under the circumstances, he supposed the next
best thing was to revisit the site of the crime.  We detectives are a funny
lot, Trevor thought.  Claiming to be creatures of ultimate logic, but in
reality superstitious and full of rituals.  He smiled at Rayley and asked “Shall
we pay tribute?”

“In truth, I
wouldn’t mind sitting for a while.”

They made their way
down the familiar sloping bank, looking for a hospitable clump of grass.  Trevor
plopped to the ground at once and was both amused and relieved to see that
Rayley still took care to withdraw a handkerchief from his pocket and spread it
on the ground before sitting.   Neither captivity nor humiliation had disrupted
the man’s fastidiousness.  Rayley was as clean, neat, and properly dressed as ever,
giving the impression of an accountant or civil servant on his way home from
work while Trevor feared it was his destiny to stumble through life in a
permanent state of disarray.  In fact, if you asked anyone on the street which
of the two men had recently been the victim of a violent crime, Trevor was
certain the vast majority of the citizens of Paris would suggest it was him. 

“How do you think
they will describe this?” Rayley asked.  “The newspapers and the gossips and
historians and all the other people who step in so obligingly to serve as the custodians
of our public tragedy?”

“No need to guess,”
Trevor said.  “They’ve already begun.  The papers are presenting it as the
unexplained disappearance of a rich, well-connected woman.  A lovely bird flown
from the highest branches of society, her motives creating an enticing little
puzzle for all the touristes who have come to the Exhibition, a mystery for
them to speculate upon as they eat their morning pastries.”

“And so it will be
as if Ian Newlove had never existed.”

Trevor heard the
sadness in his voice.  This wound would be a long time healing.  “At least this
time,” Trevor said, “the man responsible for so much suffering is firmly in
custody.  We can take refuge in that thought if nothing else.”

“Hard to imagine
that your case and mine are both solved with one arrest,” said Rayley.  “That
Cleveland Street and the murder of Patrick Graham should have all sprung from
the arrogance and greed of one man.  Little chance he’ll face trial in London,
I suppose?”

Trevor shook his
head. “The French have first crack at him and a murder charge trumps mere
solicitation, either way.  Although Davy writes that as the Cleveland Street
incident is unfolding in the papers, public outrage is growing as well. 
Someday, perhaps soon, I predict that prostitution involving children shall be
deemed a more serious charge than prostitution involving adults.”

Rayley nodded, but
his mind was clearly more fixed on the recent past than the unspecified future.
“The papers make no mention of Henry either, I should guess.”

“No mention at all.”

Rayley took off his
new glasses, a gift from his Parisian hosts back at the station, and blew
thoughtfully on the lenses.  “I suppose it is inevitable.  Just one more
unclaimed body in the morgue, another unmarked grave.  It pains me to think
that Isabel, or whatever shards are left of her, shall have the same fate.  I
must speak to Rubois.  Perhaps the brothers can at least be interred together.”

The men sat in
silence.  

Finally Rayley gave
a loud sigh.  “Welles, when we said we would not speak of this in London, I
didn’t mean the larger social issues of prostitution or homosexuality or
blackmail and the like.   We are detectives and of course we will speak of
these things at many points in the future, for they are natural parts of our
job.  What I was really asking was something quite different. I was wondering if
we would ever discuss my role in his matter.  I suppose I was asking if you now
view me differently.”

“Why should I view
you differently?”

They were both
facing the river, not each other.

“Because I fell in
love with a man.”

Trevor swallowed,
stared at a bird.  A seagull who must have followed the river along its winding
route to the heart of the city.  “But you didn’t know it was a man.”

“Which only makes it
worse, does it not?   We can stroll the streets all day speculating on what
acts a man might be prepared to commit while in the absence of women or why a
man might prefer a man even in the presence of women.  And we can do all this
from a position of lofty superiority in our role of detectives, wondering why
the other poor wretches of the earth aren’t as flawlessly reasonable as we.  You
always manage a theory or two, so pray tell me what you’d say to this.  There
are words for men who love women.  There are even words for men who love men. 
But what word does the world give us for a man so deluded that he can’t manage
to tell the difference between the two?”

“It wasn’t just you
who was fooled, Abrams.  Everyone said the boy-girls were quite persuasive in
their-“

“Please don’t try to
console me with what everyone said about the boy-girls.  Isabel was thirty-one
years old.”  Rayley leaned back on his elbows, now taking no mind of the dirt
on the bank, and looked up at the sky.  “I didn’t meet her in passing at some dark
supper club or an unlit alley.   We stood at close congress.  At one point she
was all but in my arms.  And yet I saw nothing.”