City of Light (City of Mystery) (35 page)

No one knew of this.
No one. There was a time when he would have told Isabel, for there was a time
in which they had shared everything.  But that had changed.  She saw him more
as a jailer than a friend now, as evidenced by the fact she refused to live
under the same roof.  As evidenced by the fact that they frequently argued, the
one thing that in their long and storied history together, they had never done.

So all Isabel really
knew were the things that everyone knew:  The Exhibition was running low on
funds.  Private investors were being sought and Armand, a man with moneyed
friends on both sides of the channel, was in a uniquely favorable position to forge
the right sort of deals.  Had she not been so distracted with what she
described as her “slavery,” Isabel was certainly clever enough to have
determined the rest.  That the patrons Armand had assembled did not expect to
profit from their investments, nor to be paid back for their loans.  All they
expected was that their activities at the white brick house tucked away in a
small side street off the Boulevard Saint-Michel would never be discovered. They
wanted their secrets to remain secret.

They paid
significant sums for this assurance, half of which Armand obligingly turned
over to the Exhibition committee and half of which he pocketed.  There was talk
of a small plaque somewhere at the base of the tower, in tribute to these selfless
and visionary men who, be they of French or British birth, were willing to put
aside nationalist squabbles and pledge their personal monies to assure that the
Exposition Universelle would be a rousing success.  It amused Armand no end to
consider this, that the world’s largest phallus should be embellished with a
list of the wealthiest pedophiles in Europe.

So it had all worked
well for a while.  Funding for the Exhibition, steady employment for the poor,
sexual novelty for the rich, and unlimited profit for Armand Delacroix.  He had
recovered from his first blow and despite the troubles with Isabel, despite the
damned reporters and the damned coppers everywhere babbling each in their own
foreign tongues, it might have continued to work.

But April had brought
both the crisis in London and the subsequent arrival of Henry Newlove.  And for
the second time in a year, Armand’s whole world had fallen straight to hell.      

He had been in London
when the word came that the bobbies had raided Cleveland Street.  He had not
bothered going by the premises – there was certainly nothing there to salvage –
and fortunately Tommy had been with him when he heard the news.  The two of
them had instead walked straight to the docks, strolling their way up the
gangplank into steerage on the next transit boat scheduled to leave. The
paperwork was not a problem.  Even if the channel officers had been looking for
a man named Charles Hammond – and they probably weren’t, at least not yet - he
had his French passport in the name of Armand Delacroix, bestowed upon him by a
grateful civil servant, a man who also happened to be a member of the
Exposition committee.  A minor in his company, a child declared to be his niece,
would need no papers at all. 

Armand could only
assume that the other boys had scattered after the raid.  Gone back to wherever
they’d come from, which would have meant Henry had returned home to Manchester.
The boy had no papers, after all, so his chances of following Armand to Paris
seemed remote – so remote that Armand had ceased to worry about it by the time
the boat struck the dock in Calais.  It was a pang to lose his London brothel,
but Paris was proving far more profitable and Armand was already considering
making it his primary home. 

So it had been a
shock indeed to see Henry standing in the street outside his home a few days
later, a shock to see him stepping from the shadow of an obliging tree to
confront Armand with a single word: “Why?”

“Why?” was the
question Henry Newlove had been asking all his life.  He was a sullen lad,
prone to fits of self-pity and rage.  It was as much his temper that had driven
him from the ranks of the boy-girls as the faint velvety fuzz of hair on his
chin.  There were ways around the physical changes.  Certainly ways around the
facial hair and deepening voices, even methods to conceal the protrusion at the
base of a boy’s throat, the width of his wrists and the gracelessness of his
hands.  Physical femininity was far easier to feign than psychological, and
Henry had never developed the sweet pliability of the other boy-girls.  He had been
constitutionally incapable of flirtation or charm.

In fact, save for
the fact he was Isabel’s younger brother, Armand would have sent Henry Newlove
packing years ago.  He was certainly handsome enough to draw a steady stream of
business, blessed by the same genetic gods which had smiled so radiantly down
on Isabel.  He had wide blue-grey eyes and full lips, the kind favored by many
clients.  But none of this would have been enough to counteract his outrageous
demands had Isabel not been there to constantly intervene on his behalf.  Armand
had let him remain in the ranks of the boy-girls longer than any prudent man
should and, when the velvet fuzz on Henry’s face finally turned to wool, even had
created a position for the boy as the procurer and trainer of new talent.

Isabel had been the
one to suggest they put him at the postal and telegraph office. The delivery of
messages around the city required the services of innumerable adolescent boys,
so the pickings were lush, and Henry, who had a good mind when it wasn’t mired
in petulance, had proven a reasonably effective tutor.  He should have been
gratified, but it had never been enough.  Henry was always asking Armand why he
couldn’t have this room or that new suit of clothes.  Why he couldn’t go to a
certain dance or operetta, why he shouldn’t come to Paris to live with Isabel.

Armand had pretended
to mull this last idea, as much to content Isabel as Henry, but he had never
seriously considered inviting Henry to Paris.  The boy’s frequent explosions of
anger were problematic enough in the controlled atmosphere of Cleveland Street
and would be the undoing of them all in the more politically precarious world
of the Exposition Universelle.  So it had been with the most abject horror that
Armand Delacroix had perceived Henry Newlove stepping out from under a tree on
a lovely April morning and saying “Why?”

Armand’s only
salvation, ironically, was the fact Isabel had refused to live with him.  Henry
had managed to find his way to Armand’s house easily enough; in light of the soirees
which were regularly held there, the place was well known among men of a
certain persuasion.  Isabel’s home was smaller and more discreetly located. The
longer Henry went without being able to find his sister, the more likely he was
to give up and return to London.

Armand had taken him
to luncheon.  It seemed safer than allowing him inside the house, where
Marianne would shortly be awakening and coming down to breakfast. Henry’s
resentment of her, and the place she clearly held in Armand’s future plans, was
so intense that Armand feared he might actually attack the child.  If Isabel
had been mercurial, Henry was plutonian.  Just as impulsive and unpredictable,
but darker, wilder, meaner. Heaven help them all if he found his sister, and
thus the means to stay in Paris.

But over luncheon
Armand was to get his second nasty shock of the morning.  For Henry had come to
Paris not in hopes of securing employment, but set on blackmail.  Not just the
blackmail of clients.  Oh no, not at all.  Henry had sat behind the crisp white
tablecloth, swirling his wine with great affectation and little skill, sloshing
a bit over the rim.  And he had cheerfully announced to Armand that if the two
of them couldn’t come to some sort of agreement, he was prepared to tell the
authorities that the civic-minded Armand Delacroix and the whore-mongering Charles
Hammond were one and the same.

“Turnabout’s fair
play, yes?” he had said, while Armand had sat frozen in horror, a bite of trout
almandine growing enormous in his mouth. 

So there it was. The
wily Henry had managed to ascertain what the distracted Isabel had not:  that
Armand’s true money was coming not from prostitution, but from blackmail.  And
he had traveled to Paris with one intent, to blackmail the blackmailer.  A
thousand pounds, he said.  A thousand pounds or Scotland Yard shall know it
bloody all.       

“Scotland Yard?”
Armand had repeated stupidly.  The figure of a thousand pounds had been too
ludicrous for comment, but he was surprised the boy would attempt to threaten
him with a weapon so far from hand.

“There’s a Yard
detective right here in France,” Henry had said with a smug little smile. “Name
of Rayley Abrams.  Maybe he’d like to know where the master of Cleveland Street
has flown.”

Rayley Abrams. That
name again.  For someone whom Armand had never met, the man was turning out to
be the most enormous pain in the ass.

“How do you know of
Rayley Abrams?” he asked, dreading the answer even as he posed the question.

“I work at the
telegraph office, don’t I?  At your insistence, don’t I, Sir?”

It was in that final
syllable that Armand knew he was caught.  That final sarcastic “Sir,” the word
twisting in the boy’s mouth like a rag.  A lad with the morals of Henry Newlove
wouldn’t hesitate to read a telegram before he delivered it, especially a telegram
that was sent to or from Scotland Yard.  In fact, now that one paused to
consider it, running telegrams was the perfect side-job for a fledgling blackmailer.
 Henry undoubtedly knew as much about where the Cleveland Street case stood as
any man on either side of the channel.  And, just as he said, it was Armand
himself who had gotten him the job, the one who had placed the very weapon in
his hand.    

Armand sipped his
brandy, looked up at the transient moon.  Even now, the memory of that luncheon
made his stomach churn.  He was an ethical man, was he not?  He had tried for
years to keep matters well in check, to ensure that no one was seriously hurt,
that no one lost anything he could not afford to lose. But that day at luncheon
with Henry had been the point of no return. For once the threat of blackmail
has been loosened, it spills over everything.  It is a splash of Bordeaux on a
white table cloth – irretractable, the stain everlasting. The boy had sat
before him, his fingertips pressing together in the church steeple of
children’s rhymes, smiling, quite proud of himself.  

But still, even
then, Armand had not intended to kill him.

Henry had to be
gotten rid of, but he was Isabel’s brother and Armand had known the boy almost
since birth.  He felt responsible for him too.  Henry had to be gotten rid of only
in the sense that he needed to be taught a lesson, spanked like the child he
still was, and transported back to England. Within an hour of leaving their
luncheon Armand had devised a plan of his own.  He had several muscular and
persuasive men already in his circle of contacts - such was the nature of the
industry in which he toiled.  It would be a simple matter to send instructions
to one of them while Henry bathed upstairs.  

For Armand had
pretended to capitulate.  He invited Henry to stay with him and apologized for
not sending for him earlier. He persuaded the boy that to blackmail Armand was
to fish in a very small pond when there was an ocean of possibility all around
them.  He said he knew the perfect client – old, and that’s always best, is it
not? They demand so little and pay so handsomely in return. Had he brought his
uniform with him?  Henry had nodded eagerly.  His first Parisian conquest would
be a simple one.

When Henry had
descended down the stairway in his boy-girl garb Armand had felt something he
rarely experienced, a rush of conscience.   For the boy had taken pains with
the painting of his face, covering all evidence of stubble, and he wore his
ill-fitting outfit with pride.  It was a sad jumble of red satin, garish and
ugly to Armand’s increasingly-demanding sartorial eye, but Henry had been in Paris
fewer than twelve hours and had no basis for comparison.  He expected some sort
of reaction, so Armand had smiled broadly and given an appreciative nod. 

“Your hands,” he
said, and Henry had glanced guiltily down. They were always a problem, even
with the most feminine of boys, and Armand impulsively grabbed a pair of gray
kid gloves from a table in the foyer, gloves he’d purchased for Marianne, or
perhaps even Isabel.  Henry pulled them on and, with no further comment, the
two of them departed from the house.

Gerard was waiting for
them down near the Seine, in a musty little room Armand rented for just this
sort of unfortunate occasion.  It was a simple matter to lure Henry there – he
had been humming as they walked, the silly little bird – and to usher him
inside where, in the darkness of the room, Armand doubted the boy had even
registered the presence of danger.  A hand with a white handkerchief came over
his face and the boy slumped forward. They bound his wrists, Armand taking care
to remove the expensive gloves before doing so, and tied the handkerchief
across his mouth.  His mouth.  Henry’s beautiful and problematic mouth.  When
he awakened he would undoubtedly be displeased by this turn of events and would
mount some sort of protest, put up some sort of struggle.  Armand pulled off his
own cravat and stuffed it beneath the handkerchief. Then he and Gerard had tumbled
the boy’s yielding form into a corner and stepped out of the room to conclude
their business in the daylight.