City of Light (City of Mystery) (41 page)

“Remember the
timeline,” Trevor said.  “The thing that scared her was almost certainly the
discovery of Patrick Graham’s body.”  He abruptly stood, startling the others. 
“I think the chances are good that Isabel suspects Henry is also dead but has
no confirmation of her fears.  And I think we can use this information to flush
her from her hiding place.”

“You must have a
plan,” Tom said drily.  “You always stand up when you have a plan.”

“Our first task is
to return to the police station,” Trevor said, “and tell Rubois that we believe
we may have indentified his unidentified body.  With any luck, he will grant us
permission to photograph Henry’s face.  And then we shall pay a call on Marjorie
Mallory.”

“You’re hoping that
she’ll write about The Lady of the River for the evening edition?” said Tom. “I
agree the idea has possibilities – if Marjorie writes, for example, that the
body of a boy dressed as a girl is going on display at the morgue, we may well
lure Isabel there and thus into our trap.  But how can be sure that in her
present straits, Isabel is even reading newspapers?  And even if she does see
the evening edition and react, that wouldn’t happen until tonight or tomorrow
morning and it may be too late for Rayley.”

“I’ve thought of all
that,” Trevor said.  He turned to look out over the stunted rooflines of the
tenements behind him.  “Rayley is near, I’m sure of it,” he said.  “When I go
to the police station I’m going to ask Rubois for help, even if the help is
merely Carle and himself.  We shall go door to door over this entire area until
we find him.  But in the meantime, we must photograph Henry and run copies of
that photograph.  I wasn’t thinking of a newspaper article, although Tom’s
right, if my first plan doesn’t work, it isn’t a bad fallback idea.  I was
thinking of making posters with Henry’s face.  You know the kind, the ones that
say Does Anyone Know This Girl?  Newspaper offices have presses for such
things, do they not, and I suspect Marjorie will help us in exchange for the
exclusive rights to our story.”

“Posters,” Emma
said.  “That’s perfect.  We can hang them all over the city.  Everyone in Paris
looks at the kiosks as they pass, you almost can’t help yourself, so Isabel is
much more apt to see a poster than read a newspaper.”

“Put an extra
portion of them near the tower,” Gerry said.

Emma frowned. “You wanted
to go to the tower, did you not?”

“Because I believe
Isabel is there,” Gerry said.  “Wearing her new workman’s clothes and back in
the role of Ian.  She evidently moves between the two identities as it suits
her plan.”  Gerry nodded toward Emma. “The prostitute we interviewed mentioned
that the night Isabel traded her clothes to the workman everyone in the bar was
celebrating.  They’d just gotten the news that Eiffel had offered jobs to the
street people – she said they call themselves the sewer rats – inviting them to
work on the tower.  My guess would be Isabel took one of those jobs.”

“The elegant Isabel
Blout performing day labor on the Eiffel tower?” Tom said skeptically.  “Why
would she do that?”

“For money, I’m
imagine,” Geraldine said archly.  “That’s why people most often work, is it
not?  Consider this.  Isabel swapped her fine purple dress for a street person’s
clothes, something she was unlikely to do if she had funds to simply buy a
man’s shirt and pants.  We must assume that she escaped Delacroix with little
more than the clothes on her back.  Well, that and her valise with more clothes
and perhaps jewelry or a silver frame or porcelain figurine, something she
could easily grab.  Women tend to have access to things more readily than they have
access to actual money, so it’s safe to say she found herself immediately short
of funds.  And where would an impoverished sewer rat go but to the tower?”

“They would never
hire a woman to work on the tower,” Tom said.

“She is a man now,
remember?” Emma said.

“Ah, yes,” Tom said. 
“I must purchase one of those little notebooks everyone else carries just to
keep this all straight.”

“Back to the plan,”
Trevor said.  “Geraldine makes a good point, so we shall blanket the area
around the tower with the posters.”  He was pacing back and forth in front of
the others. “You all know I’m never comfortable with the thought of splitting
the group…”  He scarcely needed to say why, for they all remembered the night
that they thought they had caught the Ripper. The fact they had managed to get
separated from each other on that dreadful, fog-filled evening had nearly meant
the end of Emma and Tom’s sister Leanna. 

“It’s sunny and
bright here, lots of people about,” Emma said quickly.  “We’ll get so much more
done if we each take a different task.”

“Let me help,” said
Geraldine. “I know I’m slow…”

“You generally
manage to stay a step ahead of us all,” Tom said, patting her shoulder.

“All right,” Trevor
said decisively, turning to face them. “Emma and I shall go to Rubois and take
care of the photography and the posters.  Tom, finish following that list of
addresses, focusing on the ones that the flic said were in the river ghettos.  Geraldine,
you shall take up a post on the riverbank and observe.”  He raised a palm to
silence her before she could protest. “This is not a sop, I promise you.  If
Rayley is being held in this area, someone is going back and forth to feed him,
make sure he hasn’t escaped, that sort of thing.  I want you to monitor who is
coming and going from these buildings.”

“And what am I to do
if I see someone suspicious?”

“You do nothing,”
Trevor said sharply.  “You take note of which door it was the person entered,
which is tricky in itself, for as Tom and I have learned to our frustration,
many of the dwellings on the river do not bear a marked address.  When Emma and
I get back with the police you can point them in the right direction.”  Trevor
looked around the group.  “For none of us, and I include myself in this
statement, should approach Armand Delacroix on our own.  He’s a very dangerous
man.  And when these posters begin showing up all over Paris I fear he will become
a very desperate one.”

12:32  PM

“We shall probably
need to go to one of the avenues if we hope to hail a carriage,” said Emma.

“Is that what you
and Tom did this morning after your little swim?” Trevor asked.  “It’s all
right,” he added, when Emma shot him a look that was half defiant and half
guilty.  “Tom told me of your theory.  It’s not a bad one, you know, and I’m
only sorry you felt the need to dissemble.”

They strode up the
small street leading to the avenue for a few minutes in silence.

“You honestly don’t
understand why I was evasive?” Emma eventually asked, when it became clear
Trevor was waiting for some sort of response. “If I had come to you with the
suggestion, things would have unfolded precisely as they did on that afternoon
in Manchester.  You would have pretended to consider my idea and then put me
off until you could test the notion before the boys.”  Emma sighed.  “But
perhaps we shouldn’t speak of this now.”

“Oh, but I think we
should,” said Trevor.  “It is always tempting to put off an unpleasant
conversation until a time when circumstances have calmed.  We tell ourselves we
will raise the thorny issue later, when the crisis is past us and everyone is
in a proper frame of mind.  But then we are reluctant to shatter that fragile moment
of peace, so the trouble remains buried until the next time of crisis. 
Everyone likes the idea of discussions before a roaring fire, with a glass of
wine in the hand and sleeping dogs at the feet, but it occurs to me that I have
had the most significant conversations of my life in the middle of whirlwinds. 
So if you have something to tell me, you may as well say it now, while we’re
both exhausted, and worried, and trying to hurry.  It’s as good a time as any.”

“I want respect.”

“So you have said.  And
so I have tried to give you.”  They had reached the mouth of the street and
Trevor surveyed the crossroads to ascertain the most likely point for hailing a
driver.  “But it seems that the word ‘respect’ is a vague one, especially when
it comes to the relations between men and women.  What one woman deems respect,
another might find insulting.”

“So if there’s a
misunderstanding, it’s automatically the woman’s fault.”

Trevor turned to
her, his narrow eyes weary and his shoulders slumped. “Dear God, Emma,” he
quietly said. “I’m trying, am I not?  If I’m traveling such a distance to meet
you, it seems you could at least walk a few steps in my direction.”

She knew he was
right.  The definition of “respect” was nebulous, as confounding as the gender
pronouns in this confounding case.  Rayley had worshipped Isabel Blout, but had
he respected her?  Hardly, at least not by Emma’s standards.  Caught up in his
romantic fantasies, Rayley had failed to see the most pertinent point about the
woman he claimed to desire – that she wasn’t a woman at all.   It seemed that
sexual attraction always had this effect of blunting our powers of perception. 
Emma knew that Trevor cared for her and that he was struggling mightily to not
let this affection blind him to her abilities.

“I suppose,” she
said, “that we must first define what respect looks like for Emma and
Trevor.”  

“Quite right,” said
Trevor, his confidence restored by her reasonable tone of voice. “Let us
consider the evidence before us.  We are trying to hail a cab on a busy street
corner in Paris and my arm is in the air but yours is not.  What can we
conclude from this?”

Emma chuckled, genuinely
amused. 

“We might conclude,”
she said, “that instinctively we both observe certain social constructs which
are built around the notion of gender.  Men automatically step forward to hail
cabs while women wait on the curb.”

“And if I ever
manage to flag one down, shall I extend a hand to steady you as you step up?”

“I suppose that
would be nice.  To be honest, I suppose I would expect it.”

“Even though I would
not extend that same hand to help Davy or Tom.”

“All right, you’ve
caught me.  I don’t want you to drop all the rituals that exist between men and
women and I suspect we would both be quite lost if we tried to do so.  But here
is the true question.  Will you entertain my ideas on an equal par of those of
the men?  Will you allow me to fully join into the activities of an investigation? 
Or will your first thought be that I might get hurt, that I should be protected
from the dangers which are inherent in all police cases?”

“The truth? 
Protecting you will always be my first thought,” Trevor said, as at last a
carriage began to slow in front of them, the driver firmly pulling the horse to
a stop.  “But I shall endeavor not to let it be my only thought.  I already
take your ideas seriously, whether you believe it or not, and in the future I
promise I will assign you more field work, even though the idea of you in
danger very nearly makes my heart stop.”

“The police
station,” Emma called up to the driver in French.  Trevor made an elaborate
bow, doffing his hat with great ceremony and extending his palm to steady her. 
She grinned and climbed into the carriage, with him stepping up behind her. 
When they were seated, Trevor rapped the wall and the carriage rumbled into
movement. 

“And let me ask you
this,” he said.  “If you ever find yourself in grave physical danger, would it
be permissible for me to come to your aid?  After all, I have proven I will do
as much for Rayley.”

“Of course. If you
like, you might even come on a horse with a sword.”

“And if I’m in
danger, how shall you come?”

She was looking out
the window. “The truth?  I shall probably send one of the men.”

He laughed out loud
then, and she began to giggle too.  He was right, she thought.  The best
conversations are those that happen in a whirlwind.

“So this is the
modern woman,” Trevor said, sitting back in relief, for the awkwardness that
had existed between them ever since that afternoon in Manchester had dissipated
at last.  “She demands complete equality until trouble rears its head and then
she retreats behind the ramparts and dispatches the men into battle.  If you
don’t mind me saying so, my dear, it isn’t completely logical.”

“I know,” said Emma.
“But it is the price of admission, nonetheless.”

Tom had picked up
where the women had left off and had walked the final 400 steps of the
riverbank.  It had taken them over seven hours to complete Emma’s experiment,
he thought sadly, and she wasn’t even there for the culmination of the task. 
Which is probably just as well, since walking 400 steps had brought him to a
patch of a riverbank which looked like any other.  No sewer entrance, no clump
of lodgings. 

Just a bar.  He
stood for a moment gazing at the doorless doorway and the darkness beyond.  How
many afternoons had he spent in places such as this?  It would be easy to enter
now – no one was with him, no one watching.  He was in a city that was not even
his own.  And perhaps, who knows, the elusive Isabel Blout might happen to be
sitting in this very –