City of Light (City of Mystery) (42 page)

But no.  He stopped
himself and turned his body away from the door in the mute hope his mind would
follow.  It was too easy to justify why one might enter a bar and he knew
bloody well there would be no Isabel inside.  This sad little hovel, which he
supposed was literally open all the time, held nothing but the exact same
things he had found in dozens like it over the last three years.  Alcohol, lost
hours, nameless women, and regret.

He had told Emma
there were a dozen variables beyond their control in her experiment. Very well
then, perhaps he should consider the possibility they had miscounted the number
of necessary steps and walk a little further.  

Within five minutes
he had come to another sewer opening.  Plenty of dwellings were slammed right
up against the concrete walls, but no people seemed to be about.  He didn’t see
any shops or bars, but merely what looked like a line of uninhabited rooms sharing
a single roof, hobbled together with mossy stones and mud.  The whole thing was
a bit medieval in appearance and certainly off-putting.  He ventured closer and
yelled “Rayley?” as loudly as he could.

No answer, except
the sound of his own cry bouncing back to him. The same concrete and stone
which caused his voice to echo would doubtlessly prevent any sound from penetrating
the walls.  Tom scanned the building.  He could find no visible address, so
trying to match this gloomy place to the locations on Rayley’s list was
pointless.

There were perhaps
twenty rooms in all.  In lieu of doorknobs they had rather odd looking levers
and Tom chose the first one in the row and pulled it.  There was a bit of a
rattle but very little movement.  The doorless bar had given him hope that few
people attempted either privacy or security in these humble river dwellings,
but these rooms seemed a different sort of structure and were likely meant for
a different sort of purpose.  Perfect for hiding someone and admittedly not far
from what Emma had imagined as a “base of operations” for Delacroix.

Tom went from one
door to the next, systematically pulling each level and screaming “Rayley.”  It
was unlikely he would be heard by anyone within this fortress, but it still
seemed a chance worth taking.  None of the levers gave way and Tom could only
hope that Trevor was successful in persuading Rubois to return to the river
with him, ideally with a cadre of officers.  If there was no lock, and thus no
key, he couldn’t imagine how one would gain entry to this strange building. 
But perhaps there was an extraordinarily clever locksmith somewhere on the
force – it certainly seemed the French had everything else – who could manage
to solve the puzzle.  Short of that, they would have to use a battering ram.

Having tried the
final door without success, Tom slowly backed away from the line of rooms, his
boots sticking in the muck so badly that they were nearly pulled from his
feet.  He should go back to where Geraldine waited, he thought.  Insist that
she stay in that relatively safe place downriver and then proceed on his own to
the police station for help.  Finding this fortress location was a promising lead,
but a medical student going about screaming and rattling doors was not enough.  The
task required proper officers, with proper tools. 

As Tom turned to
walk back down the river bank his eye caught on something lying in an open
expanse of lawn.  The vegetation around the sewer was almost ridiculously
verdant, and the grass was high, but perched on top was a small gray bundle. 
Just when he stooped to pick it up, a nearby church bell struck one.

1:00 PM

The ringing of a
single bell had always seemed to Rayley an ominous sound.   His burst of
activity from the morning had faded and as he lay on his cot staring up at his
single rectangle of light, he felt his first taste of pure, unadulterated
fear.  That one gong, so ponderous and deep.  As his teacher back in public
school would have said, perhaps the bell tolled for him.

He feared that a
combination of drugs, hunger, and incessant darkness was causing him to
hallucinate.  For just a minute earlier he had been jerked from a shallow nap –
it seemed that Rayley never fully slept or wakened anymore, but rather existed
in some sort of nether world between the two – by the impression that someone was
approaching his cell.  But the door had not opened, no matter how hard he
stared.  And then he had been further convinced he heard the sound of his own
name, very dim and far away, and he had shouted back over and over that he was
here, here, here, until his voice had utterly failed him. 

Such was his state. 
He had bundled together everything he possessed in the world and thrown it out
a window.  He had even opted to half-blind himself in the process, and now he
had likewise rendered himself mute.  All he had left was his mind.  What would
become of him if he managed to lose that as well? 

He sat back on his
cot, heart pounding.  For the first time since he had been captured, Rayley let
himself wonder what it would feel like to drown.

London

1:20 PM

Davy had finished
writing up his report for Eatwell on his visit to 229 Cleveland Street.  The
report was not dishonest, he told himself.  Merely incomplete. 

Davy knew that his
words were nothing like those of Trevor.  Trevor wrote forcefully, persuasively,
each missive to his superiors not merely a summation of the facts, but a thinly
veined appeal for greater funding for forensics.  In contrast, Davy’s lines
were brief and toneless.  A story without a hero. 

It would have
mattered more if anyone ever read the reports.  Really read them, that is, with
the sort of concentration that would have allowed a man to quickly distinguish
Davy’s timid prose from Trevor’s bombast.  But Davy suspected Eatwell would do
no more than skim the paper and toss it aside. The two pornographic books,
included along with the liquor case and the second copy of Hammond’s
thumbprint, might evoke slightly more interest.

Davy pulled on his
jacket, and headed up the stairs.  He may as well eat his midday meal in a pub,
he thought.  It wasn’t as if there was a kidney pie waiting for him at home.

He had done his job
and done it well, so he could not have said why he was so dispirited as he
walked through the gates of Scotland Yard and down the crowded street.  The day
held a promise of spring, a promise that was not likely to be kept, since cold
rain would most certainly return to London by the end of this endless April.  Davy
knew he should enjoy the clear sky while he could, so he found himself walking,
simply walking, even though he passed several reasonably-priced pubs where coppers
often ate.

He had no idea what
was happening in Paris and perhaps that was the source of his mood.  It was hard
to live on twenty-word telegrams without truly knowing if Trevor was any closer
to finding Rayley.  It appeared that events were moving quickly, but perhaps
not quickly enough.  Trevor told him that most kidnapping victims were dead
within two hours of being taken and the detective had now been missing…Davy
shook his head.  Too many hours to count. 

Charles Hammond
would surely fall.  He would be arrested at least on a morals charge and most
possibly for homicide as well, and with any luck the fingerprint would be a
large part of the evidence used to convict him.   But even the knowledge that Scotland
Yard would get their man did not bring Davy peace.  He knew that when Hammond
fell he would take many others with him, including the boys on Cleveland
Street.  Right now they lived in limbo, but if Hammond was convicted and
jailed, there was no telling what would become of the house.  Where do boys go,
Davy wondered, when they have seen and done so much by the age of fifteen?  The
sea, he supposed, or the army.   Heaven help them there.

A carriage rolled
by, larger and grander than the others in the street. The royal insignia was on
the side - the arms of the Prince of Wales -  and behind the glass Davy caught
a brief glimpse of its lone occupant.  The noble Duke of Clarence, staring
straight ahead with his large impassive eyes.  He looks like the Queen, Davy
thought with surprise, fully realizing the resemblance for the first time, and he
wondered if the man would ever take the throne.  Everyone knew that Victoria
intended to live forever and the Duke’s father was better than fifty, a
ridiculous age for a Prince, with the beginning of his own reign nowhere in
sight.  With any luck the Duke of Clarence would drink himself to death while
the Queen and the Prince still lived and England would be spared a King Eddy.

The Duke had not
looked happy as he passed.  None of the royal family could be accused of openly
enjoying their life of luxury.  The Hanovers were, in fact, a gloomy and stolid
tribe and Davy found that he wasn’t standing at attention, as he normally did
whenever he saw a carriage with the royal insignia, but that he had instead
continued to walk, his hands crammed in his pockets, his hat pulled low across
his bow.  It felt odd to be still moving among all those people who stood respectfully
still, all those who had halted in their progress and were craning their necks
toward the carriage, straining for a look inside. 

They don’t deserve
it, he thought.  So many unknown souls suffer and die in their name, every day,
and they can’t be bothered to look out the bloody window.  He thought of Detective
Abrams, alone and enduring God knows what, and the boys back in Cleveland Street,
pushing and shoving for each bite of kidney pie. 

If his mother had
known he had those thoughts, that he had continued to walk while a royal
carriage passed… For that matter, even if Trevor had known…

Better the Queen than
what’s to follow, Davy conceded.   At least Victoria had a sense of duty.  But
she seemed to know so little of the world beyond the gates of Buckingham Palace. 
Even her excessive mourning of Albert, which was now entering its third decade  -
with, like her reign, no end in sight - was a privilege few women were granted.
 Davy’s mother had surely loved his father just as much but, with a houseful of
boys to feed, she had been back at her position as a seamstress the day after
her husband was buried. 

They don’t deserve
it, Davy thought again, this time with more conviction.  They don’t understand
the depth of sacrifice that is required to keep them on their high perch and,
perhaps most galling of all, now that they’ve been set above us, they don’t
even seem to enjoy it. 

Davy wondered if he
was becoming a radical.

Dear God, he
certainly hoped not.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Paris

1:24 PM

“He looks like a
child,” Emma said sadly.

“I know,” Trevor said.

They were in the
morgue, where a photographer from the New York Times, under the forceful
direction of Marjorie Malloy, was photographing Henry Newlove.  In order to get
the most appealing angle on the corpse’s pretty face it had been determined that
the photographer should stand above him, turning his lens directly down, a
decision which had required the man to climb onto the mortuary slab and set up
a tripod straddling Newlove’s supine form.  Rubois was standing against the
opposite wall, a look of additional dismay on his face as he observed the
process.  Collaborating with Scotland Yard was one thing.  Throwing in his lot
with the New York Times appeared to be considerably more than the man had
bargained for.   

Rubois had informed
Trevor upon his arrival that the courier had arrived with the fingerprint from London
and that it was presently in the forensics laboratory, being compared to the
print Geraldine had provided from the party.  Furthermore, the dockmaster
records had shown that Armand Delacroix had been among the passengers
disembarking in Calais on April 9, so if the two sets of fingerprints were
declared a match, they could move in a definitive way.  The minute the laboratory
report confirmed what everyone in the room expected, a contingent of the Paris
police force would be unleashed on the streets in search of Armand Delacroix.  

“Go with him,” Emma
said to Trevor.  “No matter what the prints show, take Rubois and Carle and go
back to the river bank and join the hunt for Rayley.  For even you must concede
that I am capable of nailing posters to kiosks without supervision.”

“I’ll go with her,”
Marjorie said, pausing long enough in her berating of the photographer to look
over her shoulder.  “If we can somehow manage to get a good shot sometime
within the few minutes” – and here she stopped to glare up at the man who
buried beneath his black cloth and therefore presumably shielded from the heat
of her derision – “we shall have our posters by two.”

“So quickly?” Trevor
asked.  When it came to speed, Scotland Yard could certainly learn lessons from
the press.

“Sir,” Carle called
across the crowded room.  “The lab report has just come back.  We have a
match.”

1:42 PM

“Well it is
certainly a glove of quality,” Geraldine confirmed. “Not at all the sort of
thing anyone living here would own and so I would guess it to be a missing part
of the clothing that Isabel traded.  But why is it balled up in that queer
shape?”