City of Light (City of Mystery) Page 3

  “What do the French have?” Davy asked.

  Trevor picked up the letter. “From the blood splatter they conclude that the victim was struck from behind, spun and fell. Just as you suggested, Tom, so bully there. They agree with our interpretation that the killer entered without a weapon and grabbed whatever was close at hand.”

  “He came to see the maid,” Emma ventured. “Entered at a time he knew she would be in the kitchen, but the cook was there too – which makes no sense. It’s dinner hour, of course the cook would be in the kitchen.”

  “No, I like where you’re going with that, Emma,” Trevor said, twisting in his seat to look at her. “I shall write and ask Rayley if anyone thought to inquire if there had been a change of plans. Perhaps this was the cook’s normal night of leisure and our killer believed he would encounter the maid alone. But he stumbles upon the cook instead.”

  “A tryst gone bad,” Tom said. “Possible.”

  “So he’s dismayed to find the cook instead of his lover,” Emma said. “That’s a disappointment to his romantic plans, but scarcely incentive to murder.”

  “Besides,” Davy said, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table too, in a mimic of Tom’s casual posture. He’s becoming more comfortable in Geraldine’s home, Trevor noted with silent satisfaction. Emma, who lived here, and Tom, who was a member of the family, walked through these large and elegant rooms with confidence, but the first time Davy visited he had been clearly intimidated by his surroundings, standing at attention like a schoolboy until Gerry had insisted he take a seat. They all came from such different walks of life, his three young charges, and yet the Murder Games were proving to be a great equalizer.

  “Besides,” Davy was saying. “If he was her lover, why would the maid tell the French police that she didn’t know him?”

  This brought an explosion of laughter from around the table, Tom doubling over so far in mirth that he nearly tumbled from his seat. “Davy, I hate to be the one to deliver the news,” Tom said, when he could finally talk. “But sometimes the fairer sex is also the more devious one. Women lie.”

  “Well, in this case it would be rather warranted, wouldn’t it?” Emma said sharply, although she was wiping tears away too. “I can’t imagine telling your employer, much less the police, that your lover had killed the family cook. Good cooks are too hard to find.”

  “Presumably they are more plentiful in Paris,” Tom said. “But Emma is quite right. Perhaps the maid and the killer were in cahoots of some kind and when the caper went awry, she dared not confess.”

  “Or perhaps they’re all just mad,” Davy said, showing great equanimity even after having been the butt of the latest joke. “The French, you know.”

  “The most likely theory yet, in my opinion,” Gerry said, with such a broad smile at Davy that the boy actually blushed. “They’re French and thus barking mad and that’s the whole of it.”

  “Did she scream?” Emma asked.

  “Letter doesn’t say,” Trevor says.

  “You certainly let out a bellow, old girl,” Tom said, with a little wink that Trevor was the only one to notice. “First the murderer yells out, then Gage, but your shriek was the one that startled Davy and me half out of our chairs.”

  “My point precisely,” Emma said. “Mine was the only one that was genuine. It’s a natural reaction to cry out when surprised, but if she knew the man in the kitchen she’d be less likely to scream.”

  “Perhaps a spurned lover,” Tom said. “Bent on revenge.”

  “Perhaps she threw him over for the cook,” Davy said. “So when he enters – “

  “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” Trevor said. “You two should be writing penny dreadfuls, not working for Scotland Yard. You raise an interesting point about the scream, Emma, but we must stick to what we can prove, or at least what we can deduce from the evidence.”

  “I know,” Tom said cheerfully, leaning back to prop his boots on the seat of an unoccupied chair. “Our concern is the how of murder, and not the why. You’ve schooled us so thoroughly that I believe I mutter those words in my sleep. But if all we have are the hows we’ve come to a bit of a dead end with this case, have we not? Such a pity. You won’t be able to write Rayley that the Tuesday Night Murder club has succeeded in solving a crime that stumped the Parisian police.”

  Trevor laughed and folded up the letter. “I do fantasize that someday I’ll provide Rayley with a tidy little solution, I’ll confess. Well, we’re all new at this forensics business. Perhaps we aren’t meant to understand everything yet.”

  “You miss him, Sir, don’t you?” Davy asked. “Detective Abrams, I mean.”

  “I do,” Trevor readily admitted. “We were never so good of friends until the man left town. But I have his weekly letters, which are the very best kind of conversation, and perhaps the new case outlined in his latest letter has fully as much intrigue as The Affair of the Bread Knife.”

  “I do hope the next victim is a woman,” Gerry said, drawing up her plump shoulders so that the feathers on her gown shook and trembled, giving her the appearance of a self-satisfied hen. “I have always fancied a career on the stage.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Paris

  April 18, 1889

  8:43 PM

  “Bizarre and dreadful, are they not?”

  Rayley wasn’t sure which startled him more, the boldness of the criticism or his surprise at hearing his own language. But whoever had spoken the words was undeniably correct. On the table before them were dozens of small replicas of what the Eiffel Tower was meant to look like upon completion, cast in any number of improbable forms. Tea towels, flags, charms, hat pins, and clocks. A particularly enterprising seamstress had even designed a dress with a layered collar emulating the extended triangular shape of Eiffel’s design. Three women in this crowded room were in fact wearing that very fashion at the moment, straining to hold their necks above the collar like dogs in the leash, and apparently without the dismay that ladies normally displayed when they found a social rival in similar dress. All of Paris was gripped in tower fever and it was indeed bizarre and rather dreadful.

  A fresh-faced young man was holding out a hand to Rayley. “Don’t tell me I guessed wrong,” he said. “You’re British, are you not?”

  “It shows?”

  “Absolutely,” the young man said, pumping with a vigorous handshake, and using his other hand to pat Rayley’s shoulder with the automatic intimacy people fall into whenever they meet a countryman abroad. “Patrick T. Graham, London Star.”

  “Rayley Abrams, Scotland Yard.”

  Graham’s brows shot up and he gave a long low whistle. “Here tonight on duty?”

  “A last minute invitation from my French hosts. I’m not entirely sure why. Your presence in this fine room is professional as well, I presume?”

  “Of course. Our readers can’t get their fill of information about the Exposition.”

  “Even though the Queen does not approve?”

  Graham laughed. His cheeks had that sort of perpetual flush that characterizes some men, as if they had just recently come in from a brisk walk along the river. “Especially because the Queen does not approve.”

  “She hardly stands alone.”

  “No crowned heads are expected to attend at all, and the French, pardon the pun, are royally pissed about it, even though they’re pretending not to care.” Graham spread his fingers and ticked the countries off. “Russia and Germany have also sent their regrets. Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden. It’s as if all of Europe has turned its back on France in its moment of triumph. Of course the savages of the world will be here in full force, with the Americans leading the charge as always. We can expect a contingent of those countries in South America that no civilized person can name, Japan, and various rocky little islands from Southeast Asia.”

  “The Americans have always been quick to claim spiritual kinship with the French,” Rayley said with authority, although in truth he had on
ly met one American in his life. A transplanted whore back in London, who’d exhibited the sort of stubborn refusal to listen to reason that Rayley considered the hallmark of her nationality. The girl seemed to believe she was somehow immune to the Ripper, since up to that point he had murdered only British prostitutes. She’d been unmoved by Rayley’s warnings and openly amused by the sight of him unbuttoning his trousers, all the while lecturing her to be more careful when meeting strange men. But, once this brief conversation was behind them, the girl had displayed such admirable enthusiasm for her chosen profession that Rayley had always thought the better of Americans for having met her. “Both countries have an unnatural degree of interest in democracy, liberty, and fraternity, that sort of thing.”

  “A kinship based on a mutual desire to show off is more like it,” Graham said with a snort and Rayley found himself laughing back. “But the Americans are certainly sending France their best – Thomas Edison and his phonograph, James Whistler and his paintings, and the word is that Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley and a whole troop of those Indian fellows are going to drive a herd of buffalo down the Champs-Elysees. Or perhaps it’s bison. Whatever they call them. Can you imagine?”

  “It should be quite the scene.”

  “What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison, anyway? Or are they the same beast?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Well, I won’t rest until I have the answer. I’m a newspaper man, and we can no more stop asking questions than we can stop breathing.” Graham regarded Rayley with a sideways glance. “Rather like detectives, in that regard, I’d imagine. So I’ll ask you the question that lures us all here tonight.” He motioned Rayley closer for a slow whisper. “Will… he…finish…on…time?”

  It was indeed the question of the hour. There had been notable progress on the tower during the last few weeks, but even Eiffel’s most ardent supporters had begun to openly doubt the structure would be ready for its scheduled debut on May 9. It now stood a strangely stark figure but, looking at the souvenirs spread around him, Rayley realized it was actually closer to completion than he would have guessed. The tower would always be more about engineering than art, showing its cables and gears with impunity, forcing its observers to admire how it worked more than how it looked. Even when finished, Rayley suspected the tower would never seem entirely so.

  But just as tower fever was running high in Paris, so was tower anxiety, which was why Eiffel and the Exposition organizers had found themselves obliged to host this very party in the lobby of the Normandy Hotel. It was a glittering event. The room swathed in the national colors, waiters with trays of lobster and prawns circulating among the crowd, the string orchestra in the corner playing an endless series of songs by French composers. All intended to assure investors, the press, and the most prominent citizens of Paris that on opening day the tower would be not only a beacon of progress but an elevated town square the likes of which the world had never seen, complete with promenades, shops, and restaurants. A pile of money was on the line. Money and Parisian pride. Although no one had directly said as much, Rayley suspected that he and the other high ranking members of the police force were invited here tonight in anticipation of possible problems.

  “They appear to be ready to begin. I should find my translator,” Rayley said, although he was a bit sorry to part from Graham and the first unfettered conversation he’d enjoyed for months.

  “No call, old chap,” Graham said. “My French is rather good, if you’ll trust me.”

  “You speak French?”

  “Have to, for the job. You don’t?”

  Rayley felt himself flushing but held it down. His failings with the language had put him at a severe disadvantage on more occasions than he cared to count. The official police translator only repeated the bare bones of conversations, leaving Rayley to grasp futilely at the deeper meanings. Many times a long and quite possibly significant speech in French had been followed by an insultingly short translation in English, something like “He says no” or “Would you care for more wine?” But Graham was an open and unguarded sort, clearly inclined to bombast and gossip, and Rayley had no doubt he would embellish his translations with precisely the sort of details he’d been starved for since November. Rayley nodded at Graham. The man’s arrogance was annoying, but at least he was British and thus annoying in a familiar way.

  The orchestra stopped playing and a hush fell over the crowd. It was just past nine, Rayley noted by the cluster of Eiffel tower clocks on the table beside him, and the speeches were getting underway with a surprising promptness.

  Gustave Eiffel had made his millions as an engineer in the railway industry. He’d risen to wealth and prominence by performing tasks others had deemed impossible, building bridges over seemingly uncrossable spans of water and weaving tracks around the most resistant of mountains. Tall and handsome, with a crest of white hair, he entirely looked the part of a captain of industry as he strode across the small makeshift stage the hotel had provided. A young couple trailed in his wake.

  “His daughter and son-in-law,” Graham whispered. “Wife’s dead, but he’s eager to present as a family man. Trots them out for all occasions.”

  Rayley nodded. Eiffel was a messenger perfectly suited to his task, the ideal man to assure the nervous French that the tower would rise on schedule and that the world would subsequently bow at its feet. Eiffel’s voice soon proved the proper sort too, confident without bravado and slowly-paced, betraying not the slightest hint of nervousness. Graham provided whispered bits of translation, indicating that Eiffel was giving the crowd exactly the phrases that one might expect. A centerpiece. A sign. A symbol. Industry. Democracy. Progress.

  The triumph of the modern world.

  Was he speaking only of his tower or of the Exposition as a whole? Rayley leaned in to ask Graham and froze before he could open his mouth.

  The woman from the café was in the crowd. Dressed in gold this time, with the same austerely high neckline as her first gown, the same exaggerated shoulders and narrow hips. Her hair more severely pulled back than before, with strands of pearls woven among the dark tresses. She was standing close enough to the stage to indicate her status in the room, or more likely the status of her husband, the man whose arm was intertwined with her own.

  Rayley forced himself to exhale. It wasn’t surprising that she would be present at such a party. Half of Paris was here, and – with the arguable exception of himself and Graham – most probably the better half.

  The woman’s arm was linked through the man’s, but it was a casual linkage. He was almost turned away from her, straining toward Eiffel, utterly unaware that he had a goddess for a wife. She is his trophy, Rayley thought, but a trophy garnered from a contest long ago, taken in a victory he barely remembers.

  Eiffel finished to applause and signaled toward another man, who began to move toward the podium with a heavy step and palpable dread.

  “Otis,” Graham whispered. “The elevator chap.”

  Even with his limited grasp of French and thus French gossip, Rayley knew at once what this meant. Whether or not Eiffel would finish the structure on time might be arguable, but it had been painfully evident for months that his team was unable to engineer any reasonable means of transporting people up and down the frame of the tower. It had been a scandal when they’d had to call on the Americans for help, more specifically this man Otis who was now standing behind the podium. Rayley felt for him with his thick, workmanlike coat and his stumbling French, which was probably scarcely better than Rayley’s own.

  “Why have they had so much trouble with the elevators?” he quietly asked Graham.

  “Can’t rise straight up,” Graham answered. “They have to run along those strange sloping legs and go…what’s the word?”

  “Diagonal?”

  “Precisely. Cables are engineered to go either up and down or back and forth, not both at once,” Graham said. “Even the Paris papers have admitted it’s a
slight complication.”

  Rayley frowned. It seemed more than a slight complication. “So what happens if the tower opens and there are no elevators?”

  “We climb, I suppose.”

  The voice behind him was as cool and clear as water. Since Eiffel had concluded and poor Otis had begun, the crowd was growing restless, seeking trays of food and drink, chatting right over his speech, turning the mood back into that or a party. But Rayley was still stunned to find her here, at his elbow, her lips curved into a somewhat mocking smile.

  “I suppose you two know each other?” Graham said. “Of course you’ve met. Oh, but you haven’t? May I present Rayley Abrams of Scotland Yard. And Rayley, this is Isabel…Delacroix.”