City of Light (City of Mystery) (45 page)

“Saw who?” Emma said
warily.

“Detective Abrams
and Isabel Delacroix.  There’s a spiral staircase that runs right up the center
of the tower, sort of like….like a spine, I guess you’d say.   It commences on the
first level, where we all were, and continues to the second, which wasn’t
finished on the day we climbed. And the rumor is that it goes even higher, to a
third level, which isn’t open to the general public.  Do you see it?  The top
level, I mean?”

Emma squinted toward
the tower.  “You mean that third horizontal line, just at the very top?   What
could possibly be up there?”

“Eiffel’s aerie.”

“Aerie?”

“Perhaps it’s more
of an American term,” Marjorie conceded. “An aerie is an eagle’s nest,
generally built in the highest point of a tree.  It provides the most
spectacular and breathtaking views of all and the rumor is that Gustave Eiffel
has built himself a private apartment on this third level, accessible only by
this final link in the spiral staircase.  No bigger than a room, they say, but I
don’t know anyone who claims to have actually seen it, so, who knows, the whole
thing may be a hoax.  But still, there’s a staircase leading up from the second
level and a staircase has to go somewhere, wouldn’t you say?”

Emma simply stood
staring at the tower and Marjorie laughed.  “Just being on the first level was
alarming enough,” she said. “Even though everyone was trying to treat it as a
grand adventure.  No one wanted to be the first to show nerves, so we were all
chattering away, going on and on about how wonderful it all was.  I couldn’t
believe anyone in the group had the guts to go higher.”

Emma turned back to
her.  “Whatever do you mean?”

“When I was posing
near the railing,” Marjorie said, falling back into a walk with Emma once again
trotting beside her, “I was of course facing back toward the center where the
spiral staircase was and I saw Isabel and Detective Abrams begin to climb it.  I
thought it was a jest when they started – you know, a few steps up and then
right back down - but they kept going until they had climbed completely out of
sight.  All the way to the second level, I suppose.  Was he a daredevil?”

“You must be
joking.”

“That’s what I
thought,” Marjorie said with a rakish grin. “It was my impression that she was goading
him into it.  That she was determined to climb so he felt compelled to go with
her, you know, to offer protection.  We women do that sort of thing sometimes,
don’t we?  Lead men to places they don’t want to go?   Sometimes I wonder why
they bother with us at all.”

“Sex,” Emma said
shortly.  She was tired already and Marjorie’s loping gait had not slowed at
all in the midst of her storytelling.

“Yes, sex,” Marjorie
said.  “That’s the only thing that explains it.  But all I really know is that Isabel
took off climbing that tiny little sliver of a staircase and then poor
Detective Abrams took off behind her.”

None of Rayley’s
letters had described that part of the morning, Emma thought, as the women
continued to walk, the blocks growing shorter as they neared the river.  I
wonder if he even made mention of it in his private letters to Trevor. 
Probably not – it was a thoroughly silly thing for him to do, and only served
as further proof of how completely the Blout woman had brought him under her
spell.  But Marjorie’s story did raise one interesting point.  Rayley and
Isabel must have both known of the existence – or at least the rumored
existence – of Eiffel’s aerie.

“They say he’s
filled it with incredibly valuable things,” Marjorie suddenly added.  “Eiffel’s
aerie, I mean.  Crystal and fine furnishings and art from his personal
collection.  Of course, no one has a theory on how they got any of that stuff
up there.  Or how they would ever get it back down.”

3:42 PM

The unexpected and
accusatory sound of his true name pulled Delacroix up short.  He rose from his
search, a sizable stone in his hand, and stared downriver at a sight which must
have struck him as a scene from a comic opera.  Geraldine, struggling to stand
and using her parasol in much the manner of tightrope walker to stabilize herself,
shrieking “Charles Hammond, I come in the name of Scotland Yard.”

Delacroix momentarily
stood transfixed. Geraldine was perhaps thirty feet away, but advancing fast.  For
a moment he seemed to consider the option of throwing his stone at her but then
thought better of it.  (Geraldine had already decided she could probably
deflect any such attempt with her parasol, having proven quite proficient at
lawn tennis fifty-four years earlier at Miss Eloise’s Academy for Ladies.)  Instead
he turned on his heel and retreated to where Rayley lay sprawled.  There, to
Geraldine’s horror, Delacroix thrust the stone under the man’s shirt and rolled
him into the water.

Rayley sank at once,
truly sucked beneath the Seine, with a single bubble escaping to mark the spot. 
Delacroix then scrambled up the bank on all fours and Geraldine, her body
reacting faster than her mind, plunged into the water herself.  Her feet sank
immediately into the mud of the river bottom, so she opted to swim.  She knew
precisely where Rayley was, of course.  The question was whether or not she
could lift him.

The French were
screaming above her.  She paddled as close to the riverbank as possible and
then dove, where her reaching hands were almost immediately rewarded with the
discovery of one of Rayley’s limbs.   Roll him, she thought.  Roll him over and
the rock shall drop from his shirt.  Kicking furiously, unable to see through
the muddy water, she felt her way along his torso and turned him.  And then, to
her shock, he felt his hand grab hers.

He was conscious? 
No, it was the hand of one of the oarsman, stout fellow, who had leapt to her
aid.  Together they lugged Rayley to the top of the water and the man held his
face free while Geraldine located and removed the stone. His comrade tossed
them a net, a sad affair with more holes than rope to it.  They draped the net
around Rayley, and while they waited to be towed in, Geraldine pounded his
back.  The gesture forced up a gush of water and then he coughed.

 Geraldine knew this
was a very good sign.

3:44 PM

From the police
wagon, Trevor spied Tom, walking at a furious pace toward the avenue.  He
rapped for the driver to stop and leaned out the window to flag him down.

“Buildings near the
sewer,” Tom gasped. “Just as Emma said.  And we found –“

Trevor pulled him up
into the crowded coach where Tom caught his breath and then gave an abbreviated
version of the last hour’s events, focusing on the location of the building
with many doors and the contents of the glove.

“Rayley is in one of
those rooms,” Tom said.  “I’m sure of it, but there are so many doors.” 

With Carle in his
usual role, the driver was directed to the part of the street which
corresponded to the sewer down below.  The flics hopped out first and ran to
the back of the wagon where they began to pull out a variety of implements -
including, Tom was gratified to note, picks and shovels.  The officers followed,
Trevor stepping down last with his heart pounding.   We are here, he thought,
we have found him.   As the afternoon had stretched on toward evening, Trevor’s
sense of dread had been steadily growing.  The first two bodies had been
released in the deep of the night, and were found at dawn.  It would seem that
Delacroix, like so many criminals, preferred to transact his business during
those hours when the rest of the city slept. 

Tools collected, the
group began making their way toward one of the narrow alleyways which
presumably led down to the water.  They were nearly at the mouth of the alley
when a man burst out running.   Delacroix coming straight toward them, muddy
and wild-eyed, stumbling nearly into their arms.  The flics surrounded him and
Rubois pulled out his handcuffs and began shouting orders, but Trevor and Tom
did not linger to witness the arrest.  They were already running down the alley
toward the water, Tom in the lead and Trevor stumbling behind, each of their
minds gripped with the same thought.  For if Delacroix was fleeing the scene,
they had come too late.

3:45 PM

Bidding goodbye to
Marjorie at the corner, Emma walked the final block alone.  Strange that she
would remain focused on this one fact with so much unresolved in the case, but
she could not seem to get the idea of Eiffel’s aerie from her mind. 

“Think,” Trevor
would sometimes tell them, in the midst of the Tuesday Night Murder Games. 
“Think as if you are someone other than yourself.  Close your eyes and slip
your skin and imagine yourself in the body of a stranger.  A criminal, a
victim, a witness.  What does that person see?  What do they feel?   How do
they eat and sleep and dress and work?  What motivates them?”

I am Ian, Emma
thought, as she wove her way along the crowded sidewalk, dotted with the
working class citizens of Paris.  Selling apples, selling beer, selling fish -
selling their own flesh if need be, anything to hold onto this narrow spat of
ground.  For beneath them, literally just a few steps below this street, was a
broad slope of grass that led to the most profound destitution.  How easy it
must be to slip from this shaky limb of relative respectability, how easy to
begin to roll.  You develop a cough, lose your job, find yourself carrying a
baby you can’t feed, or run afoul of the flics…one mistake is all it takes
until you find yourself sleeping by the river, sunk as low as one can sink in
this particular city. 

I am Ian walking
this street, Emma thought.  No, better yet, I am Isabel.  Only a few precious
remnants of my former life have come with me – the valise with my clothes, a
bit of money, the things I grabbed up before I fled.  What do I do with the
valise while I work during the day?  It marks me as wealthy, it marks me as a
woman, yet I dare not leave it behind.  Things are stolen within minutes in
this part of town.  I could rent a room but the cost of one, even here, would
so dilute my earnings from the tower…

Ah, the tower.  I
could hide the bag there. 

Perhaps I could even
hide myself.  

Emma turned at the
bar whose name she had noted from the morning, the rather unimaginative La
Rose, and strode down to the point where they had all agreed to meet.  Trevor
and Tom were not there, which did not fully surprise her, but neither was
Geraldine, which did. 

Emma paused at the
stone wall where they had left Geraldine sitting.  A glove was lying on the
ground.  Small, dainty, expensive.  The sort Geraldine wore, but this was not
Geraldine’s glove, or at least not one of the pair she had been wearing when
they left the house that morning.  Had Francine dropped it during their
interview?

Emma bent to pick it
up, grimacing at the sight of a nearby rat snarled in a bit of cloth.  But then
her eye something else.  Glittering shards of glass, several of them, the
largest one magnifying the blade of grass beneath it.   Not just glass, she
realized, but a lens.   A thick one, the sort that resided in the eyeglasses of
Rayley Abrams.  Emma looked around helplessly.   What sort of puzzle was this
and where was Geraldine?

3:46 PM

Trevor and Tom found
the door open, the only open door among so many locked ones, and ran into the
cell.  There they discovered a bed, a cup, and a man’s handkerchief, but no
Rayley Abrams.

Tom turned, but for
once Trevor was faster. They rushed toward the river, where Trevor stumbled in
while Tom ran the length of the bank, hoping against hope he would find a man
floating.  Later, when he would consider this moment, what Tom would most
recall is that neither man spoke.  The whole world, in fact, had gone
soundless.  No birds, no people, even the splashing from Trevor’s hands and
feet seemed muted and vague. 

He reached time and
time again, staggering through the mud from one part of the river to another,
but each time, his hands came up with nothing but water.  Water and more
water.  Endless water.

3:56 PM

“Watch him,” Rubois
said to the flics.  Delacroix had crumpled, and was lying with both his hands
and feet bound in the back of the police truck.  It seemed as if all the fight
had gone out of him, but Rubois had certainly seen cases where it would have
appeared that a suspect was utterly subdued, only to have the man mount some final
spasm of resistance.  He sent one flic back to the central station to request
the river patrol and left two to guard the prisoner while he, Carle, and the
others followed the alley to the water.

There he found more
or less what he had expected.  An open door, an empty room, the British
detectives fruitlessly combing the river, one of them plunging over and over into
the water and the other walking the bank stone-faced, already in possession of
the truth.