City of Light (City of Mystery) (7 page)

This corpse was
special. It was bound tightly in muslin, wrapped with the care of a mummy.  In
a mere matter of days it had achieved a certain notoriety among the workers and
in a building where the dead were treated nonchalantly, the body in the marble
vault was handled with care. They called her The Lady of the River. 

6:05 AM

Across town from the
morgue a group of seventeen people, including two representatives from Eiffel’s
engineering firm, huddled at the base of the tower. Rayley, who arrived early
for all engagements as a matter of habit, had been waiting for a half an hour
when Graham blustered up amid a pack of his fellow journalists.   

No Isabel.

One of the American
engineers, a chap with the prosaic name of Thomas Brown, introduced himself and
began listing the glories of the Otis elevator system, using short sentences,
which were promptly translated into French.  He described the cable system as
being “doubly safe,” wincing a little on the phrase.  A decade may be a long
time in the world of engineering, but it is a mere blink of the eye in public
memory and Rayley wondered how many in their little party were considering the
fate of the Baroness de Schack on this particular morning.  No one was meeting anyone
else’s gaze.  In fact, they stood in a small circle, eyes downcast, rather in
the manner of a family gathered at a burial plot, preparing to drop roses on
the coffin of a departed loved one.  Brown mumbled steadily through his
prepared speech, striving to hit the middle ground between reassuring his
audience while stopping short of scolding them for being anxious in the first
place.  

Through his research,
Rayley knew that the Otis company prided itself on its stellar safety record, which
was largely the result of having created and patented hoisting cables a certain
design.  If a cable broke or was for any reason stretched too far, leaf springs
were released, bringing the falling car to what was promised to be a slow and
gentle stop.   Apparently the French had hired the American firm because of
this admirable technology and then proceeded to doubt the very mechanism for
which they had paid so handsomely, forcing the Otis company to not only install
their patented hoisting cables but also a sort of rack and pinion halting
device that Eiffel used on his railway ventures.  Thus, the tower could be
touted as “doubly safe,” and thus Brown’s barely concealed dismay as he claimed
it to be so.  Rayley felt sympathy for the man.  No one knew better than he how
the French could both invite and exclude in a singular gesture.

“And so we begin,”
said Brown. “Mind your step at the entrance, ladies.”  

Ladies?  As he had
been looking about for Isabel, Rayley had noticed only one female, an American,
clearly the sort who favored votes for women and smoked cigars she detested in
an effort to make some sort of philosophical point.  The young woman’s face was
pretty but her hair was cropped short, barely past her ears, and the cut of her
jacket struggled to conceal all evidence of her gender.  Graham, whose taste in
women appeared to be truly catholic, had of course taken to the creature at
once, attempting to draw her into a discussion about the difference between a
buffalo and a bison.  To her credit, the woman had given him an incredulous
look and moved to a different part of the circle.  She had proclaimed herself
to be a reporter from the New York Times and probably knew no more about
prairie animals than the rest of them.

But the Times
reporter had been the only female in their midst when Brown had begun his
speech and now he had used the word “ladies,” clearly plural.   Rayley stepped
back to crane his neck and indeed, there she was, standing apart from the
others.  She wore shades of purple.   An amethyst coat with a scarf of lavender
above it, a hat of deep rose pulled low across her face, plum colored gloves.
Or perhaps he merely imagined the colors.   Although the sky was slowly
beginning to lighten, they still stood swathed in shadows.  

At the translator’s
invitation, the group began to shuffle toward the square box of the elevator,
which Brown had explained could hold a maximum of sixty people for its
two-and-a-half minute ascent.  Sixty would make you feel rather packed, thought
Rayley, and the webbed metal design of the car was enough like being caged as
it was.  He was struggling not to indulge his tendency toward claustrophobia
and was relieved that no one in the group, save Isabel and Graham, knew he was
a Scotland Yard detective. Should his nerve fail, he hoped to only humiliate
himself, not the whole of his motherland and Queen. Isabel had walked straight
to the corner, although whether or not to enjoy the view or to get a better
grip on the handrails, he couldn’t say.  He found himself in the middle of the
car, wedged between Graham and the girl from the Times, who seemed happy for
his presence, if only as a buffer.

“I say,” Graham
ventured, leaning across Rayley in fresh attempt to start up with her. “When
Otis talked to your very own paper last year he said the Tower would never be
built, that there was too much risk.   And now here his company is, all tangled
up with Eiffel.  I suppose financial opportunity creates strange allies, does
it not?”

The girl sighed and
the elevator commenced with a jerk.  Rayley startled and his hands flew in the
air, a gesture no one but Graham appeared to notice.  

He grinned at Rayley
and wove his way over to Isabel, who had yet to greet either of them.  It was a
very odd business, Rayley thought.  She had been outrageously friendly in the hotel
ballroom but was so aloof today.  Well, good luck to Graham if he was trying to
engage her in conversation, because the minute the car began its ascent it
became quite apparent that American leaf springs and French rack and pinion
mechanics combined to produce a cacophony as loud as a runaway train.  The
female reporter clamped her hands over her ears and within seconds half the men
in the car had followed suit.  They were rising slowly and more steadily now,
but the feeling of a diagonal ascent was disorienting and Rayley planted his
feet a bit further apart and stared down at the boots of the man beside him,
thinking that if he fixed his eyes on something still inside the car the motion
might be less unnerving.  He was beginning to regret several of his decisions
at breakfast.

Brown had said they
would rise 275 meters. This information had meant very little to Rayley at the
time and probably to none of the others as well.  If a man had spent his life
no higher off the ground than a second story balcony or an oak tree climbed in
childhood, 275 meters was a pointless measurement. They had all stood at the
foot of the tower and gazed up at the base when Brown said this, but looking
up, Rayley was beginning to understand, was quite a different thing from
looking down.  For when he had tried to fixate on the boots of the man beside
him, he had been forced to notice the sight of the ground below, visible
between the slats in the elevator floorboards and steadily retreating, like
something from a nightmare.

Rayley gasped for air. 
Inhaled, tried to exhale. He had not wanted to perceive the slowly receding
benches and sidewalks of the park beneath them, but now that his vision had
locked on the sight, he seemed unable to look away, even though the rest of the
occupants of the car were growing ever more jubilant.  For when the elevator
cleared the tops of the trees, suddenly they could see all around them, farther
than they had ever seen before. There were cries of delight beneath the drone
of the engines.  Some people released one hand from the rail and ventured to
point at a landmark or another. The Seine, a blue-gray ribbon.  Notre Dame, the
Sorbonne, the Palais Royal.  Or perhaps their own apartment building or hotel,
suddenly looking very small and insignificant against the spreading panorama of
the city.

Rayley concentrated
on the arithmetic. Two-and-a-half minutes was how many seconds?  Two times
sixty and then thirty more…150 seconds, not so long.  He lifted his head and,
very cautiously, looked at Isabel. 

She was, in herself,
a dizzying sight.  She had turned, her eyes darting over the sinking city with
a slight smile on her face.  In profile, she looked like a cameo, her features
perfectly proportioned, her dark hair tucked under her hat so that there was
nothing to distract from the height of her brow or the almost architectural
symmetry of her lips.  Only her hands, clad in their plum leather gloves,
betrayed any anxiety, for she was clutching the handrail tightly as she rose on
tiptoe to peer through the webbing of the elevator cage, straining to see
more.  For a moment Rayley was distracted, lost count in his nervous march to
150 seconds, and he was surprised when the car gave a final delicate shudder
and came to a stop.  The engines ceased to wail and in the sudden silence he
sensed the pulse of his own ears.

“And here we are,”
Brown said, as the jaws of the cage cranked open.   He said it casually, as if
he made this harrowing ascent on a daily basis, which he probably did, and he
was the first to step out onto the platform.  He looked back expectantly. “Ladies?”

For once the notion
of “Ladies first” felt more like a gauntlet thrown to the ground than a social
courtesy, but, for what Rayley suspected were utterly different reasons, both
Isabel and the American journalist seemed up to the challenge. The reporter
dropped her hands from her ears and stepped out, pointedly ignoring Brown’s
offered hand.  Isabel followed, giving the man one of her casual, radiant
smiles. Then, one by one, the men clustered within the elevator filed out and
onto the platform of the Eiffel Tower. 

“Jesus, Joseph, and
Mary” Graham muttered, and Rayley was in total agreement. The base of the tower
stretched around them, laid out much like the promised city square, the comParison
Eiffel had used on the evening when they all first met.  Brown began to walk
the parameters, using a cane to point out where the restaurants would be, each
at a different corner.  A British-American bar, a Flemish brasserie, a Russian
restaurant, and, of course, a French one as well.  Each would have the capacity
of seating 600 diners, he added, a figure that might have stunned Rayley had he
not been concentrating so hard on controlling the impulse to scream.  Brown was
walking slowly, flanked by the ladies with the men struggling to stay close
enough to hear, for although it was a mercifully calm day, the wind at this
height blurred his voice.  Rayley’s feet stumbled across the rough floorboards,
which Brown had assured them were a temporary measure designed to protect the
marble tiles beneath from the boots of the workmen. Worst of all, the entire
structure was gently swaying, bringing back memories of his wretched channel
crossing.

“Six hundred people
in four establishments,” Graham said with amazement, as the group came to a
stop on the corner where Brown said the Russian restaurant would be. “That’s
over two thousand possible visitors in the restaurants alone.”

“Correct, Sir, but
just a start,” Brown said. “There will be shops flanking the sides and an open
area in the middle for musicales and entertainments. Just as a public park in
any neighborhood, inviting thousands out to converse and mingle.”

A neighborhood dangling
in mid-air, Rayley thought.  And with everything on a much larger, rather
intimidating scale. He thought of the pub where he used to gather with Trevor
and the rest of the boys back in London – well, in truth he rarely had joined
them, but Rayley’s memory had been busily rewriting history ever since his feet
had first struck the soil of France.  That pub could have housed no more than
sixty men, elbow to elbow on a Friday night.  Picturing a place ten times
larger strained his imagination, and he wondered what it would feel like to sit
drinking in a bar that size, where there was no hope of ever knowing the man
beside you, where the pub was not a reflection of its own small section of the
city, with the same faces coming in each night, but was rather a bar floating
above the earth entirely, enticing travelers from all corners of the world.  People
who had never seen each other before, would never see each other again.  Would
it change their means of interacting?  It seemed it must.  The Tower is not
just a step in engineering, he thought.  A structure of this size has the power
to recreate us socially, to change how we view our fellow man.

But his thoughts
appeared to be exclusive to him, for the rest of the group was murmuring in
satisfaction.  Most of them had little notebooks out and were scribbling down
Brown’s every word.  He had moved closer to the periphery now, and was pointing
at something in the distance with his cane.  Rayley hung back and, to his surprise,
Graham lingered with him.  It was cold this high in the air, and Graham had
pulled his scarf so that it covered the lower half of his face.

“What do you think?”
he asked.  “A marvel, to be sure.”

“To be sure.  With
the floor so incomplete, I’m surprised they have such a substantial railing.”
Tilting his head, Rayley directed Graham’s attention to the elegantly wrought
railing behind where Brown stood.  It stretched to the middle of the man’s
chest, an artful tangle of filigreed steel. “It seems much higher than it would
take to prevent someone from slipping.”

Graham shook his
head. “It’s not to protect against an accidental fall, it’s to prevent leapers.
Can you imagine how many people would be tempted?  Such a romantic way to say
au revoir, not to mention the chance to get one’s name in the history books.”