City of Light (City of Mystery) (29 page)

Once he had hired a
porter and loaded the ledgers onto the train, Davy had spent the first half of
the journey back to London flipping through the pages which corresponded to the
dates of Tom’s inquiry.  A quick scan had shown neither the name “Charles
Hammond” nor “Armand Delacroix” among them, but he would go through them more
thoroughly on the morrow.  The whole thing struck Davy as a bit of a fool’s
errand.  All that the dock records would prove, after all, was that the man had
gone back and forth between London and Paris, which was hardly a crime.  Even
if the dates lined up well enough to allow for an arrest, it was not enough for
a conviction.  

This business with the
fingerprint seemed a better shot, so Davy spent the last half of the journey
going through the Scotland Yard files on the subject.  It felt strange to be
making such decisions on his own and prioritizing his own research. Davy was
acutely aware that he had less than six months in plainclothes under his belt,
and that half the men at the Yard, Eatwell included, still saw him as little
more than an inexperienced bobby who had managed to get lucky.  Normally Trevor
or Rayley would be doing the big thinking with Davy merely dashing around town
dusting up the details.  Running mindless errands like traveling to Dover to
pick up the dock records, come to think of it.  Davy looked grimly at the pile
of ledger books stacked beside him on the swaying velvet seat of the train.  It
would likely take him the whole of the next morning to properly go through
them.  His decision to try the fingerprinting first would only delay the task
which Trevor had specifically assigned to him.

Still….Rayley was
missing and Trevor was in Paris and Davy was all there was to the forensics
unit.  As presumptuous as it seemed, he would have to think for himself, so,
after another brief moment of glancing back and forth between the dock ledgers
and the fingerprint files, Davy resolutely picked up the latter.

The files were a bit
of a mess, since the science of fingerprinting seemed to have arisen in several
different cultures at once.  There were reports of the successful use of the
technique in China, India, Argentina, Scotland, and, of course, France.  Britain
had its own share of champions of the procedure, ranging from a cousin of
Darwin’s, Francis Galton, who was apparently taken quite seriously in the
scientific community, to a fellow named Henry Faulds, who apparently was not.

Faulds, in fact, had
written to the Yard personally the year before, in the midst of the Ripper hysteria,
urging that the detectives there use this new tool in their pursuit of Jack. 
His long and rambling letter surprised Davy, since he’d never seen it during
the Ripper investigation, and he suspected that neither had Trevor.  Of course,
to be fair, most of the mail regarding the Ripper case had been sent by crackpots
of the most bizarre order and very little of this so-called advice had made its
way to the desks of the actual detectives.  Despite the fact he was a physician
and a missionary who had first seen the technique used in China, It would seem
that Faulds had been regarded as just another eccentric, and that his letter had
been buried deep within the bulging file.  The man’s hyperbole and tendency to
repeat himself had likely not helped his cause.

In contrast, Galton’s
reports were written in the sort of measured prose that implied a more
conventionally educated mind.  Faulds may been summarily dismissed, but Galton’s
work in fingerprinting was apparently well-funded and ongoing.  It would be a
fine thing, Davy thought, to be able to rely on British science rather than
French – a fine thing if Galton’s claims were not quite so disturbing.  Apparently,
fingerprinting was only one element of Galton’s broader theories on body typing
and his overall plan, it seemed, was to use his research to prove that the
Anglo-Saxton race was innately superior to all others.  Scotland Yard could
scarcely align themselves with a man like that, no matter how much they might
want to use his research. 

Besides, the claims themselves
seemed suspect.  Galton allegedly had 8000 sets of fingerprints in his personal
collection, and wrote that he had collected the vast majority of them within
the past year.  An impressive number of specimens, certainly, but would 8000 be
enough to allow a true scientist to draw such wide-reaching conclusions?  Galton
claimed that no two humans have the same set of fingerprints and that, unlike
most of our bodily features, our fingerprints do not change with the passage of
time.  Davy had sunk back in his seat, mystified.   If, by his own admission, Galton
had only had these fingerprints in his possession for a year, how could he
conclude so definitively that fingerprints remain the same as a person ages? 

If only there had
been someone else here to talk to, someone to help him sort if all out. 

Davy had spent the
last twenty minutes of his journey in a fitful, unsatisfying nap.  When the
train had at last heaved into Paddington Station, he had jumped off and had
hired a lad with a cart to help him haul the ledgers back to Scotland Yard. 
Scotland Yard, where he now sat with lighted candles all around him, like a
priest about to embark upon some sort of unholy sacrament.   

Trevor and the
others did not know that Davy had this flask and these glasses in his
possession. With so much to report about his inspection of the Cleveland Street
property, this liquor chest had seemed at the time too trivial to mention.  In
fact, if Davy had been asked, he could not have explained the impulse which had
prompted him to seize only this one item from among the piles of evidence and
bring it back to the forensics lab.  But he suspected – at least if he could
manage not to muck it all up in the process – that he had before him an important
part of the puzzle whose solution would lead them to Rayley Abrams.  

Davy began to grind small
flakes of carbon with a mortar and pestle. When they were as fine as dust, he
sprinkled the mixture over the part of the glass where Hammond’s thumbprint had
so definitively come to rest.  Mickey had claimed with great confidence that
Hammond was the only one to use this liquor case and Davy was banking on the
boy’s statement.  A whiff of the brandy in the flask did seem to suggest, even
to a man with Davy’s limited experience of luxury, that this was a rarified
quaff, indeed likely to have been held back for Hammond’s private enjoyment,
while his clients and the boys were nudged along the path to perdition with
cheaper gin and lager.  

The dark dust
settled over the fingerprint, rendering it gratifyingly visible, showing
precisely the sort of whorls and arches that the fingerprint files had
promised. Davy took up the piece of clear tape he had cut from the roll in the
coroner’s office and pressed it evenly into the dust.   The French documents
had not provided much counsel on how long it took to “lift” a fingerprint but
Davy didn’t want to rush the process.  He hummed a few bars of “God Save the
Queen” to calm his nerves while he waited.     

Paris

10:05 PM

The string quartet wedged
in the corner of the parlor offered vigorous assurance that Madame Seaver’s
soiree would be, if nothing else, very loud.  Trevor found the crush of the
crowd and the volume of the party a relief, since it allowed him to merely nod
at people as he passed them without feeling any compulsion to try to speak. 
His plan was to weave his way through the series of rooms, going first one way
and then the other, moving briskly and with a quizzical frown on his face, as
if he was in search of a particular person, some refreshment, or even the loo. 
As he brushed past the guests, it would give him the opportunity to observe
them without necessarily being observed in return.

The party offered,
to put it mildly, a fascinating variety of human specimens.  A mixture of
French and English bubbled through the room, the voices animated with
excitement.  As promised, Annie Oakley held court in a far corner, with party
guests literally waiting in line for the chance to meet her.  Oakley was far
more feminine than Trevor would have guessed from the description of the woman
as a female cowboy, but, evidently conscious of what it took to please her public,
she was dressed in buckskin and boots, her long hair tumbling around her shoulders
and a brown suede Stetson dangling down her back. 

Her presence here
seemed to determine the theme of the party, for half the men were also wearing
western hats.  Everyone was awash in enthusiasm over the idea that Oakley and
Buffalo Bill would shortly be leading a procession of cowboys, Indians, and cattle
of various ilk down the Champs-Elysses for the official opening for the
Exhibition.  Trevor remembered Rayley’s letter about the party for Gustave
Eiffel and how so many of the people in attendance had been outfitted in
clothing that paid tribute to the tower’s design.  Now it was the American
west, a place Trevor would venture to guess few people in this room had ever
seen.  The Exhibition did indeed seem to be making good on its promise to bring
the whole world to Paris.  In his walks to and fro through the party, Trevor had
found himself at one point briefly waylaid by a very drunk man named Paul Gauguin
who had insisted upon telling him of the wonders of some place called Tahiti.  

“Such seclusion
offers a man the chance to reinvent himself,” Gauguin had declared, while Trevor
had struggled to think where on earth this Tahiti might be.  He was fairly sure
it wasn’t Europe and the word didn’t sound American either, despite the fact
that Gauguin was among the men wearing Stetsons, a ludicrously large one that
kept slipping over his impassioned blue eyes.  Trevor was eventually able to
deduce that Tahiti was somewhere in the South Pacific and that the island was
establishing a pavilion in Paris for the Exhibition.  Apparently many small
unknown nations were joining the Americans in their pavilion-building quest,
hoping to use this fine Parisian stage to introduce themselves to the wider
world.  The international pavilions were like the Eiffel Tower – not yet
complete - but apparently there had been enough in the Tahitian one to enchant
the imminently enchantable Gauguin.  He had also announced himself to be a
painter, hardly a remarkable status in this circle of self-proclaimed artists. 
In his very limited interactions with the other guests, Trevor had already met
three musicians, an actress, two painters, a sculptor in the medium of glass, a
ballerina, and a magician.  

It was scarcely ten
and he was exhausted. The manic energy of the party had been originally
diverting, but now made him feel as if the very life force was being sucked
from his body.  First the tower, now the cowboys, and undoubtedly the next
great Parisian event would be a tribute to the pavilions of the South Pacific,
with the guests clacking together coconuts and braiding large vulgar flowers into
their hair.  The French were so childlike in their quest for novelty, Trevor
thought with a roll of his lip, so quick to abandon tradition in favor of the
ever-changing nouveau.  Their worship of the modern was indiscriminate and
fawning, at least in contrast to his own cautious British reserve, and Trevor
wondered once again how Rayley had felt here, if he had somehow managed over
time to come to terms with the French mentality. Trevor rather doubted it.  The
whole damn country was in poor taste.

He pulled away from
the growing circle of guests listening to Gauguin rhapsodizing about the
natural nobility of partially-clad Tahitian women, and his eyes momentarily
locked with Annie Oakley’s.  She too had stepped back from the crowd for a
moment of solitude among the deep red curtains, and as their gazes met, Trevor
and Annie exchanged a small, ironic smile.  It was the code of two people who
knew themselves to be outsiders, even if one of them was the center of
attention and the other was most emphatically not.  She’s an imposter here too,
Trevor thought, and she has the wit to recognize the fact.  Earlier that
afternoon, Emma had told him that it was rumored that until she had begun to
tour with Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley had never been west of Ohio.  

Speaking of Emma,
where was she?  When they had all four entered the front foyer where a squadron
of maids had stood ready to take their wraps, Emma had rather defiantly let her
borrowed blue velvet cloak slide off her shoulders and onto the floor in a
heavy puddle.  The abrupt gesture gave the effect that she was a Venus emerging
naked from the foam and it signaled that her plan for dealing with the
potential discomfort of this evening was the exact opposite of Trevor’s.  While
he hoped to blend in, Emma clearly intended to stand out.  As a maid stooped to
retrieve the blue cloak, Trevor and Tom had exchanged a look of wordless
amazement. Was this truly the maid from Mayfair, the schoolmaster’s daughter
they had often teased for being too serious?  And then Emma had sailed off into
the crowd unescorted, without so much as a backward glance at either man.  Geraldine’s
extreme self-satisfaction had been perhaps the most difficult part of the scene
to bear.

One of the
circulating waiters paused before him, elevating a large tray of cocktails for
Trevor’s perusal.  A wide mouthed glass with some manner of red liquid, a pale
green concoction in a tall slender goblet.  The one beside it emerald, and the
next, even more horrifyingly, was bright blue.  One appeared to be made of milk
and cinnamon, while another bore layers of gold, ranging from a pale yellow at
the top of the glass to dark amber at the bottom.  Trevor saw nothing he could
easily indentify as gin, brandy, or beer.  He would have dismissed them as cocktails
designed for the amusement of ladies, but the men around him appeared to be
gulping them too.  Trevor supposed he should carry a drink of some sort in his
hand, since nothing marked a lawman faster than abstinence in a social setting.
 He didn’t think anyone at the party thought of him as anything other than
Geraldine’s nephew, if indeed anyone had stopped to think of him at all, but
still…