City of Light (City of Mystery) (21 page)

She would have to
say something to Gerry eventually.  Otherwise it would look odd.  Gerry
understood more French than she spoke, so Emma turned to her, held out the soft
pink foam of the skirt and asked “Vous aimez?”

“Oui,” Gerry said,
quite sensibly holding herself to a single syllable.

“Vous belle,” said
Delacroix.

An outrageous
observation coming from a stranger and, had they been in London, an invitation
for the man to have his face slapped.  But they weren’t in London, were they?  They
were in Paris where a man telling a woman that she was beautiful was not
presumptuous but merely evidence that he knew his civic duty.  To acknowledge
ugliness was the ultimate crime in London but here in Paris it would seem it
was a greater sin to fail to acknowledge what was beautiful.  

Besides, what
Monsieur Delacroix said was true.  Emma, who had never worn pink in her life,
was forced to admit that it was her color.  It turned her hair, which sometimes
she privately though to be the shade of moldering leaves, to fire, and her
complexion, which she often compared to that of an invalid, to ivory.  Despite
it all, despite everything that was going on around them, despite the fact
Graham had been pulled from the Seine and Rayley may be destined for the same
fate… and despite the fact that the man who might be responsible for both
atrocities was sitting here before them, his legs crossed and his glance a
little insolent, a little suggestive…despite it all, Emma Kelly was in Paris
and she looked beautiful.  And she was tired of being the adjunct, a girl they
used as an accessory but did not consider a full member of their team.  She was
tired of being told that she had done enough, thank you, that the men would see
to it from here.  She would show Trevor.  She had a brain to match any of
theirs and other weapons at her disposal as well.

“Merci,” she said.
“Merci, Monsieur Delacroix.” For once in her life, Emma Kelly was prepared to
be surprised.

London

11:50 AM

“So where the deuce
is everybody?”

Davy looked up to
see Chief Inspector Marcus Eatwell striding into the laboratory, a startling
sight since the man rarely left his spacious suite of offices at all, much less
to venture down the series of steps that led to the dreary cells of the
basement.

“They’re out, Sir,”
he said promptly, rising to his feet.  If his tenure at Scotland Yard had
taught Davy anything, it was that a man could never be faulted for stating the
obvious.

“Well, when Welles
gets back, tell him this.  We still haven’t found the Hammond fellow who was
running the brothel on Cleveland Street, but since he hasn’t been seen for
fourteen days we’ve had him declared officially missing.  You know what that
means, don’t you boy?”

“That we can now
legally enter and search the premises?”

Eatwell looked
momentarily startled, as if the last thing he’d expected was for Davy to
actually know what that meant, but he quickly regained his footing. “Yes,” he
said, “quite right. We have all the necessary paperwork to break into the
damned place and snatch up whatever we find.  The idea is that forensics might
come first, gather any evidence which might be of a sensitive nature, that sort
of thing.”

Davy nodded and
waited.  Obviously a man of Eatwell’s rank had not ventured down the stairs to
deliver such a simple directive.  He would have sent one of his innumerable
assistants.

“And of course,”
Eatwell continued, right on cue, “the Yard will be expecting absolute
discretion from this unit, no matter what you turn up in the hunt.  Any reports
generated won’t go up the normal chain of command, to be gawked at by a hundred
coppers and no doubt sold to the press.  Do you think you can manage to make
this clear to Detective Welles?”

“I can, Sir.”

“I don’t want him
running to the Queen with whatever he finds.”

“I can assure you
that won’t happen, Sir,” Davy said, thinking that for once this was true.

“The reports come
straight to me.”

“Quite right, Sir,”
said Davy.  “In fact, I shall deliver them myself.”

Paris

11:55 AM

Rubois had been a
gem.  He had not only greeted Trevor and Tom with the respect due a pair of
comrades – making Trevor a bit sorry he had been so quick to scoff at
Geraldine’s idea of an international police force the night before – but had
escorted them immediately to Rayley’s desk.   

As glad as he was
for the opportunity, and for these early signs that the French police were more
relieved than resentful to find them in Paris, Trevor still sank into Rayley’s
chair with a sense of dismay.  Sitting at the desk his friend had so recently
occupied was disconcerting, but he nodded gratefully toward Rubois, while Tom
added a few clichés in his schoolboy French.  It would probably be a day full
of nods and clichés, but the minute Trevor opened the first file, Rubois most
tactfully left the room.

Last year, when they
had first met as detectives on the Ripper case, Rayley had bragged to Trevor
that he carried his notes in his head. Apparently little had changed since
then, because even a quick glance told Trevor that the files in his hands were
thin and incomplete.  He could almost visualize Rayley standing before him,
tapping his temple and saying “It’s here, Welles.  It’s all here.” 

“So what do we
have?” Tom asked, pulling his chair beside Trevor’s with a scrape.

“Not much.  When
this is all over, I shall tell Rayley he must write everything out and not just
a word here and there. We must have a policy for all reports, including those
we do not anticipate having to share.  We cannot allow pride in our own
cleverness to render our notes inscrutable to others in the unit.”

“Of course,” Tom
said gently.  “Quite right.”

“At least he dated
his comments,” Trevor continued, flipping the pages. “So we have a timeline of
events.  A mention of meeting Graham and Isabel at a party for the Tower.  Torn
newspaper accounts of elevator accidents ranging from Warsaw to Chicago.   A
lot of them.  He was even more nervous about ascending the tower than he let
on.  A list of French addresses.  Heaven only knows what that means.  And see
here, on the page dated two days later, the word ‘shallow’ writ large and
circled. What the devil could that mean?”

Tom grimaced.  “That
the river was shallow at the point where Graham washed up?   That Isabel
Blout’s character had proven to be lacking in suitable depth?”

“I would think both
of those things were obvious enough without taking pains to note it.”

“Most likely he meant
the water, for read down to the bottom of this page,” Tom said, leaning over to
squint at the writing.  “He notes several things about the part of the river
where Graham was found.  And look, it says ‘both here.’  Both what were here? 
Do you suppose there could have been two bodies in the water?  If so, why would
he not have mentioned it in his letters or telegrams to us?”

“Perhaps he didn’t
have time,” Trevor said.  “The ink color is slightly different, so it’s
possible that these entries weren’t made the same day.  If the second body was
found later, Rayley may have been abducted before he had the chance to write us
with this news.  A letter could be on the way to London now, crossing the
channel one way while we crossed from the other direction. I shall wire Davy to
look for it and to inform us immediately of its contents.”

“Or we could ask Rubois.”

“True,” Trevor
conceded. “But a willingness to turn over Rayley’s files may not translate into
a willingness to share everything the French police know.   My guess would be
that Rayley did not expose all his theories to the French and that they most
certainly didn’t expose all of theirs to him.”

“It’s still worth a
try,” Tom said. “For that’s all I can make of the fact he wrote the words ‘both,’
‘here,’ and ‘shallow’ all on the same page.  That two bodies must have been
pulled from the Seine at about the same point, a place in the river where it
seem the victims would have been able to have easily escaped.  We know Graham
wasn’t bound but more likely drugged, and I’d guess the second was too.  
Almost certainly chloroform.”

“The mother’s
friend,” Trevor said thoughtfully.

Tom smiled wryly. 
“In medical school we call it ‘the obstetrician’s friend.’”

“And the murderer’s
friend too, it would seem,” Trevor said, turning back to the notes. “I suppose
there’s no harm in asking Rubois to confirm the existence of a second body,
even if this one wasn’t English and thus under Rayley’s jurisdiction.  If they
let you go to the morgue to view Graham, you may get a peek at the other one as
well.  Ah, see here, now this next part is clear enough.  Apparently the police
brought in Delacroix for questioning but he had an alibi for the whole of the
night in which Graham disappeared.” 

“Hardly surprising,”
Tom said.  “The leader of a crime ring wouldn’t kill a man.  He would dispatch
his minions to do the deed at a time when he was scheduled to dine with any
number of respectable citizens, all prepared to provide him an unshakeable
alibi, should they be asked.  So the system works in Paris precisely as it does
in London, offering up minnows into the police net, but rarely the whales.”

“The evidence has
yet to cast Delacroix as some sort of criminal mastermind heading up an army of
dark soldiers,” Trevor cautioned.  “For all we know so far, he is a commonplace
brothel owner, who just has managed to be a bit cleverer, and more ambitious,
than the average.” Trevor squinted down at the small numbers in Rayley’s book. “Delacroix’s
alibi had to cover a broad time frame.  It says Graham was last seen dining
with friends at 9 pm and was pulled from the Seine the next morning at 9 am. 
It seems they should be able to set the time of death more closely than that,
does it not?  Or would the fact that the body was found in water compromise the
evidence?”

Tom nodded.  “Submersion
in water would affect both body temperature and rigor, two of the most
essential indicators.  It occurs to me now that as forensics improves our
ability to establish time of death, the coppers may be pulling a great many
more bodies from the water.  Not because the victims were drowned or even in an
effort to conceal the crime, but rather to obscure the time of death.”

“No one was trying
to hide Graham,” Trevor said. “Quite the contrary.  He was tossed into a
shallow junction of a city river, apparently to serve as a clear warning.  A
message to those who follow.”

Tom tilted his chin
toward Trevor, who was systematically flipping through the blank pages at the
end of Rayley’s notebook.  “So if a man needed an alibi for the hours between
nine at night and nine the next morning, who would he produce?”

“A wife or lover, I
should imagine.”

“Precisely. 
Armand’s alibi must have been Isabel Blout.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

London

1:10 PM

The doorway to the
house at 229 Cleveland Street had been boarded up, all the curtains drawn, and
a sign nailed to the porch railing instructed the populace to keep out by order
of the Queen and Scotland Yard.   Davy stood in the street gazing at the place,
which had the same dispirited air that seemed to hang about all uninhabited
buildings.  

Eatwell may have
left him with paperwork stating that Charles Hammond had been officially
declared missing and thus his home could be legally searched, but he had been
vague about exactly how the forensics team could access the building or what
they might be expected to find there.  Nothing in Davy’s black leather bag –
which in fact was one of Tom’s old medical school cases, pressed into service –
contained tools which would allow him to pry loose the boards and enter the
front door. 

Davy moved around
the back.  The door coming off the kitchen was also nailed shut, although not
quite as thoroughly as the front.  Davy opened the bag and peered inside.  He
could scarcely risk one of Tom’s expensive medical knives on such a mundane
task as prying out nails and Trevor’s silver measuring rods were equally
valued.  He had passed a tailor’s shop on the corner and perhaps there was
something there he could borrow, or, more likely, he would have to return to
the butcher three streets back to find a tool suited to the task.

Just then his eye
fell upon one of the first floor windows. Given the notoriety of the house, one
could only assume that all the windows had been bolted from the inside and
possibly also nailed shut, but this window was ever so slightly open.  Raised
perhaps an inch.  A strange oversight for the coppers to make, Davy thought,
but a bit of good luck for him.  He jumped and was easily able to grab the sill
with his fingertips and then managed to scramble up the wooden boards and get a
stronger grip on the window with his whole hand.  He’d been unfortunately
forced to abandon his bag in the back yard and he had no clear idea for how he
was going to retrieve it once he got into the house but, Davy supposed, he
could only take matters one step at a time.