City of Light (City of Mystery) Read online

  She was, in herself, a dizzying sight. She had turned, her eyes darting over the sinking city with a slight smile on her face. In profile, she looked like a cameo, her features perfectly proportioned, her dark hair tucked under her hat so that there was nothing to distract from the height of her brow or the almost architectural symmetry of her lips. Only her hands, clad in their plum leather gloves, betrayed any anxiety, for she was clutching the handrail tightly as she rose on tiptoe to peer through the webbing of the elevator cage, straining to see more. For a moment Rayley was distracted, lost count in his nervous march to 150 seconds, and he was surprised when the car gave a final delicate shudder and came to a stop. The engines ceased to wail and in the sudden silence he sensed the pulse of his own ears.

  “And here we are,” Brown said, as the jaws of the cage cranked open. He said it casually, as if he made this harrowing ascent on a daily basis, which he probably did, and he was the first to step out onto the platform. He looked back expectantly. “Ladies?”

  For once the notion of “Ladies first” felt more like a gauntlet thrown to the ground than a social courtesy, but, for what Rayley suspected were utterly different reasons, both Isabel and the American journalist seemed up to the challenge. The reporter dropped her hands from her ears and stepped out, pointedly ignoring Brown’s offered hand. Isabel followed, giving the man one of her casual, radiant smiles. Then, one by one, the men clustered within the elevator filed out and onto the platform of the Eiffel Tower.

  “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary” Graham muttered, and Rayley was in total agreement. The base of the tower stretched around them, laid out much like the promised city square, the comparison Eiffel had used on the evening when they all first met. Brown began to walk the parameters, using a cane to point out where the restaurants would be, each at a different corner. A British-American bar, a Flemish brasserie, a Russian restaurant, and, of course, a French one as well. Each would have the capacity of seating 600 diners, he added, a figure that might have stunned Rayley had he not been concentrating so hard on controlling the impulse to scream. Brown was walking slowly, flanked by the ladies with the men struggling to stay close enough to hear, for although it was a mercifully calm day, the wind at this height blurred his voice. Rayley’s feet stumbled across the rough floorboards, which Brown had assured them were a temporary measure designed to protect the marble tiles beneath from the boots of the workmen. Worst of all, the entire structure was gently swaying, bringing back memories of his wretched channel crossing.

  “Six hundred people in four establishments,” Graham said with amazement, as the group came to a stop on the corner where Brown said the Russian restaurant would be. “That’s over two thousand possible visitors in the restaurants alone.”

  “Correct, Sir, but just a start,” Brown said. “There will be shops flanking the sides and an open area in the middle for musicales and entertainments. Just as a public park in any neighborhood, inviting thousands out to converse and mingle.”

  A neighborhood dangling in mid-air, Rayley thought. And with everything on a much larger, rather intimidating scale. He thought of the pub where he used to gather with Trevor and the rest of the boys back in London – well, in truth he rarely had joined them, but Rayley’s memory had been busily rewriting history ever since his feet had first struck the soil of France. That pub could have housed no more than sixty men, elbow to elbow on a Friday night. Picturing a place ten times larger strained his imagination, and he wondered what it would feel like to sit drinking in a bar that size, where there was no hope of ever knowing the man beside you, where the pub was not a reflection of its own small section of the city, with the same faces coming in each night, but was rather a bar floating above the earth entirely, enticing travelers from all corners of the world. People who had never seen each other before, would never see each other again. Would it change their means of interacting? It seemed it must. The Tower is not just a step in engineering, he thought. A structure of this size has the power to recreate us socially, to change how we view our fellow man.

  But his thoughts appeared to be exclusive to him, for the rest of the group was murmuring in satisfaction. Most of them had little notebooks out and were scribbling down Brown’s every word. He had moved closer to the periphery now, and was pointing at something in the distance with his cane. Rayley hung back and, to his surprise, Graham lingered with him. It was cold this high in the air, and Graham had pulled his scarf so that it covered the lower half of his face.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “A marvel, to be sure.”

  “To be sure. With the floor so incomplete, I’m surprised they have such a substantial railing.” Tilting his head, Rayley directed Graham’s attention to the elegantly wrought railing behind where Brown stood. It stretched to the middle of the man’s chest, an artful tangle of filigreed steel. “It seems much higher than it would take to prevent someone from slipping.”

  Graham shook his head. “It’s not to protect against an accidental fall, it’s to prevent leapers. Can you imagine how many people would be tempted? Such a romantic way to say au revoir, not to mention the chance to get one’s name in the history books.”

  “Lives have already been lost in the building, or so I would have to assume.”

  Graham shrugged. “They admit to three, so I’d guess the number to be twice that. The death of a few workers is to be expected in such an ambitious enterprise, I would imagine, and a price Paris is more than willing to pay. For the public will be thrilled with the scope of this clean and modern new city in the air, the grandeur which appears to have been manufactured in an instant.” Graham attempted to snap his fingers on the word “instant” but his woolen gloves hampered the drama of the gesture. “The elevator doors will open and they will immediately cease to question the risk or the cost. It will seem as if the tower has always been here. They will wonder how they ever managed to live without it. This is what progress does, you know. Each step into the future makes us ever so much grander and more demanding and thus ever so slightly less human.”

  Rayley was surprised by this burst of philosophy from such an unlikely source. “When the elevator doors open,” he said, “I wonder how many of them will suddenly realize they have a fear of heights.”

  Graham chuckled, his seriousness gone at once on the breeze. “It’s true,” he said. “I’ve certainly never been this high before. Well, I once climbed a mountain on a trip to Scotland, but that’s rather a different thing, isn’t it? Atop a mountain, you look down and see the ground and trees gradually sloping away, and here you look down and see nothing and nothing and then the ground. There’s something unnatural about it. It’s as if we are dreaming, is it not? Tell me Abrams, do you ever fly in your sleep? Because that is what it feels like to me, as if we are all suspended here in some collective dream.”

  “I suspect Monsieur Eiffel would tell us that was precisely his point.”

  Graham glanced toward the group. “Ah dear, I see the photographers are setting up, so I’d better go and make sure my lad has his lens pointed the right way. He’s a fool, you know, mentally infirm even by the limited standards of his profession. They all claim to be perfectionists, but I think it’s just a cruel desire to make people stand in ludicrous positions for a long period of time while they keep their heads beneath their cloths and laugh at us. Excuse me.”

  “Indeed.” Rayley rocked back on his heels with a sigh. He had gotten a little more comfortable with the wind and the cold and the slight sway of the boards beneath his feet but he had forgotten about the damn photographers. Now they would be stuck here for much longer, perhaps an hour. He dug in his pocket for his watch.

  “He has a private apartment at the top, you know.”

  She had appeared at his side just as she did the first time – abruptly, without warning. He wondered if she somehow calculated it, if she had trained herself on ways to approach men with stealth, the better to overwhelm them with the unexpected gift of her beauty.

  “Eiff
el,” she continued, when it became clear Rayley was not capable of answer. “It’s only for his most select guests. It’s on the third level at that point in a building I believe engineers call the tippy-top.” She laughed, showing small, even teeth.

  “The elevators go higher?” It was a stupid question, since they clearly didn’t, but it was the only thing he could think of to say. If he ever managed to get back to London, he would spend more time with the other detectives, Rayley vowed to himself. He would insist that they teach him how to talk to women.

  “Oh no,” she said. “You ascend on foot.” She pointed to a spiral staircase near the center of the platform, far away from where the photographers and journalists had clustered. They were determined to show the background of Paris in their shots and were thus setting up along the guardrail. They’d all seemed to simultaneously realize they must perch their cameras on platforms in order to shoot above the railing, a complication for which none of them had prepared, and everyone was scrambling around looking for boards and boxes the workmen might have left behind in order to create makeshift risers. There was also the issue of having a human in the foreground by the railing to create scale, so there appeared to be a debate as to who might volunteer. After a brief moment, the young American woman agreed to serve as a model for them all and earned a round of hearty, if somewhat glove-muffled, applause.

  Clever girl, Rayley thought. She would have her picture in every paper of the civilized world within the week.

  He turned back to Isabel, whom he suspected might be joking, or trying to test just how gullible he truly was. “How many people know of the existence of this apartment?” he asked.

  “Very few. I understand it’s beautifully outfitted, can you imagine? Sofas trimmed in velvet, cut crystal glasses on the shelf, and the most wonderful art.”

  Rayley was relieved that his frantic newspaper reading frenzy of the last few days offered him the chance, for once, to make a sensible response. “I understand he has quite the collection.”

  “Of art?”

  “Among other things.”

  They smiled as if they were a pair of conspirators, and Rayley relaxed. That was a far better attempt at this flirting business. For he knew that Gustave Eiffel, despite playing the grieving widower and devoted papa, was also known to keep company with the most glamorous women of Paris.

  “He calls it his aerie,” Isabel said. “Accessible to his most select circle of friends. But the second level of the tower is open to all.”

  “Only to the mad,” Rayley said. He had read quite enough about the second platform, which was said to have a view of the city that would stop the heart.

  “So shall we?”

  “What?”

  “Shall we climb?”

  “Oh, no. God no.”

  “But we have plenty of time.” She made a slight gesture toward the journalists, photographers, and engineers. “They aren’t paying any attention to us at all.”

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to leave the group,” Rayley said and was immediately shamed. He sounded like a nervous schoolboy. “I don’t think the second level is open,” he amended, although that remark sounded scarcely better.

  She laughed again. “None of this is really open, is it?”

  “We’re here as guests. So if we should be found-“

  “Fine, Detective. I’ll go alone.”

  Oh God, Rayley thought. Ohgodohgodohgod. Because, with a defiant glance at the others, who were all literally focused on the American reporter, Isabel had begun to walk toward the spiral staircase. He had two options. He could either go with her or let her climb alone. No, now that he considered, he supposed he had three. He could walk over to Brown and inform on her.

  All of the choices were equally unappealing.

  She’s pulling a bluff, he suddenly realized. The calculated use of the word “detective,” obviously designed to shame him, had instead given her away. She doesn’t truly intend to climb a half-built staircase that most likely leads to nowhere, he thought. It’s a test. We will get no more than a few steps up and she will turn to see me behind her. She will relent and we will laugh about this later. I will have gained her respect and we shall raise champagne in some bar, some properly-sized bar located on the ground, and we shall toast each other’s courage. And we will laugh about later too, years from now, perhaps on lazy Sunday mornings spent in bed.

  The last thought only seized the most peripheral part of his mind for Rayley was not a delusional man. He knew that in the real world, in the Paris sleeping below them and in the London sleeping across the channel, he stood not a shred of a chance with a woman like Isabel Delacroix. But the fantasy was enough to get his feet moving. He approached the staircase and, with a sharp exhalation, put his foot on the first step.

  She was no more than two or three feet above him.

  It was a tightly-wound spiral, with each step not quite large enough to accommodate a man’s foot. The heel of his boot hung off the back of the step, forcing him to lean forward onto the balls of his feet, keeping one hand on the flimsy railing and the other on the more substantial center post. In this pose it was almost impossible to avoid the sensation that she was in his arms, for he had caught up to her quickly. This was a good thing, for if she now lost her footing, she would tumble directly onto him. An appealing thought, followed by the less satisfactory question of whether or not in this bizarre hunched position he would have the strength to catch her. Rayley had a brief vision of the two of them rolling head over heels back to the platform while a dozen reporters and photographers turned to watch.

  But as for now, her feet were just above him, her legs not only visible, but unavoidable. He should be a gentleman and stay close enough to catch her and being a gentleman at this small distance offered the bonus of periodic glimpses of ankles and even, once or twice, the flash of a calf. He quickly saw that the climb was arduous, each step steeply pitched and the spiral forcing them to twist and lean ever more to the center. Surely she will stop soon, Rayley thought. No more than ten feet should be enough for her to make her point, to know that if she is determined to do something foolhearted, I will come with her. Even if I don’t want to. Even if my hands are shaking and my breath is in my throat.

  Her feet. Her ankles. Her legs. He could not not look. Her foot was long and not as delicately shaped as one might expect. The ankle was sturdy, the leg above it showed sinew and muscle. She has worked at some point in her life, he thought with surprise. This is the leg of a barmaid, a housekeeper, a farmer’s wife. A woman who has used her body for more than caviar and clothing.

  “How high do you intend to go?”

  The question cost him. Not just pride, but oxygen. He had monitored his exhalations for some time to save up the breath to ask it, and he was relieved to find his voice did not sound strained.

  She merely laughed, a sound which appeared to cost her nothing.

  “Why do you think the steps are so narrow?” he asked. He knew the proper answer. The spiral was wound tightly to minimize the swaying of the staircase. The question was only a desperate attempt to slow her down.

  “So that you can’t change your mind,” she called back wickedly. “Rather difficult to turn and go back, wouldn’t you say?”

  He nodded, although he knew she couldn’t see him. He was already tired and he could think of nothing in his experience exactly like this. They plodded upward, past the makeshift ceiling of the first platform, through layers of steel and cables and yet she did not stop. Rayley knew he couldn’t look down. The sight of the floor below him, the ground yet farther beyond that….if he stopped he knew he would never start again. He would die, just here, on this staircase, with the hips of Isabel Delacroix bobbing above his head.

  And then, suddenly, light and air. They had broken through the layers of construction to the base of the second platform. And Isabel stopped.

  “Astounding,” she said, and this time she made no effort to conceal the gasp in her voice.

/>   Rayley turned his head slightly and saw that she had used the perfect word. The city had grown even smaller, the details even less visible than from the platform below. Paris becoming an impressionistic jumble of shadow and colors, worthy of its greatest artists. If the view from the first platform made you feel like a giant, this vista turned you into a god. He thought of Graham’s remark that being so high was like dreaming, but Rayley had never been granted a dream as grandiose as this.

  Isabel twisted and sank down to one of the steps, squeezing as much of her hips onto it as she could. Rayley kept his arms braced against the center pole and the handrail, leaning forward, and it occurred to him that this would be the perfect position in which to kiss her. If he ducked his head only a few more inches, their faces would be brought together. But she might refuse, perhaps even scream. God forbid, maybe even push him.

  She belonged, after all, to another man.

  “Shall we climb higher?” he said.

  He would spend the rest of his life wondering why he had said this.

  She shook her head. Her hat had gone askew in the efforts of her ascent and small wisps of hair were coming loose from beneath the brim. There was a flush in her cheeks and even – impossible to ignore at such proximity – a glimmer of perspiration on her upper lip. “I don’t understand the aerie,” she said, when she had caught her breath. “This is the perfect view. To go yet higher would be…a waste.”