City of Light (City of Mystery) (11 page)

 Trevor smiled. “If
memory serves, indeed.  I’ve never known you to be scandalized by scandal,
Geraldine.  I’m surprised you didn’t invite the old duffer and his sooty child
bride to tea.”

Gerry chuckled.  “Perhaps
I would have, but George Blout and I hardly frequent the same social circles. 
Our politics differ, especially when it comes to the care and sustenance of the
working class.”

“Well he certainly
cared for and sustained one of them.  How did he make his money?”

“Mills, I believe.
Textiles.”

“Located in
Manchester?”

Gerry looked at him
archly.  “So you’re implying he marries a girl straight out of one of his own
factories, a girl whose family he has exploited for years?  Perhaps you’re
right, although it would be a strange selection for either of them, wouldn’t
you say?”

Trevor shrugged.
“Not everyone is as politically motivated as you, Geraldine.  Nor as
dynastically blessed.  Imagine a girl coming up poor with no prospects.  She’s
pretty, but she knows that beauty will soon be swept away by the same hard work
that ruined her mother and indeed every woman she knows.  She might be willing
to put aside her resentment for a way out of her situation.  And I take it this
Blout man left her well-situated.”

Gerry looked
surprised. “He didn’t leave her at all.  George is every bit as alive as I am.”

“But Rayley implied
that – “

“Isabel Blout is a
bolter.”

Trevor frowned,
unfamiliar with the term. 

“A woman who bolts,
darling,” Gerry explained.  “Leaves.  Runs away.  Is just suddenly, simply
gone.”

“She went to Paris
on her own?”

Gerry shook her head
with exasperation, and leaned forward to refill her tea cup.  “Ran off with
some sort of French merchant, a man whose origins are every bit as murky as her
own.  The sort who tosses about his money but has no family and thus no
comfortable explanation for how this money came to be.  Her departure left George
supposedly quite humiliated…as you’re thinking he no doubt deserves to be, and I
quite agree.  A man who marries a child must prepare himself for the day that
child grows up.”

“Quite,” said
Trevor, although he felt a dash of sympathy for Blout. 

“George’s
interpretation of the events undoubtedly differs from my own,” Gerry said.  “Rumor
claims that no one is allowed to say her name in his presence and that he has
struck every memento of her existence from his home.  He’s even selling the
Whistler.”

“Whistler?   I say,
Geraldine, whistlers and bolters.  When you begin to speak of society, I hardly
know what you’re about.”

“James Whistler,
darling, he’s a portrait artist from America.  A very good one and quite
popular among the Mayfair matrons.  He’s probably painted half the women I
know, and I’ve heard it said that his portrait of Isabel Blout was especially
striking.  It would almost have to be, I suppose, considering his level of
talent and her natural beauty.  There was a bit of a hubbub about it at the
time, since it seems Whistler was so proud of the finished work he initially refused
to release it to Blout.  They say he wanted to keep it for his private
collection or sell it to a museum.” Gerry screwed up her face, struggling to
remember.  “I think perhaps George took him to court over the matter, or at
least there was some business with their solicitors.  George prevailed, of
course.  After all, the portrait had been a commission, paid for in full before
the artist ever picked up his brush.  And my understanding is that it hung over
the fireplace in the family home until the day Isabel disappeared.”

“You never saw it?”

Gerry regretfully
shook her head.  “I’m hardly likely to be invited to a party in the home of George
Blout or any man who knows my politics.  But I would have liked to have seen
it.  Tess described it as quite unlike the usual portrait of a society wife and
rather…remarkable.  As if the artist had somehow managed to get straight to the
essence of the woman.”

“And did the artist manage
to get straight to the essence of the woman?”

Gerry snorted in
amusement. “That was certainly the gossip.”

“Justified?”

“Whistler was the
consummate professional, a man who’d done a dozen commissions in Mayfair
alone.  Why would he suddenly insist on keeping one?”

“Perhaps this
picture was somehow better,” Trevor guessed.  “Representative of his best
work.”

“Then why not simply
reproduce it?” Gerry shook her head.  “You know I rarely come down on the side
of idle gossip, but in this case the speculation seems warranted.  Whistler’s
refusal to release the painting to Blout was a nip at the very hands that had
been steadily feeding him, tantamount to ruining a lucrative career as the
portraitist of London’s upper class.  It implies not just pride in the work but
a more intimate connection to the subject matter, wouldn’t you say?”

“I really can’t
say.  The whole story is quite bizarre and makes me wonder all the more how
Abrams might have gotten himself tangled with such a woman.  Married at sixteen
to a man four times her age.  A rumored affair with an American painter.  Then
she leaves both to decamp with a nouveau riche man in Paris….”

“Nouveau riche? 
Very good, Trevor.”

He flushed slightly.
 Geraldine’s education and world experience so exceeded his own that she
sometimes unconsciously made Trevor feel like a schoolboy.  “Emma has not totally
abandoned the hope I will someday learn French.  She persists with our lessons,
although I fear I give her little cause for optimism.”

“Nonsense.  She’s
very fond of you, Trevor.”

He could think of
nothing to say to this, and in the silence that ensued, Trevor squirmed a
little under the steady gaze of Geraldine’s heavy-lidded eyes.  Struggling for
a way to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand, he fished Rayley’s
letter from the pocket of his jacket and quickly scanned it to see if he had missed
any details.  “Abrams says she goes by the name Isabel Delacroix in Paris.”

“Indeed?” Geraldine
said, as swiftly diverted as he hoped she would be. “If so, then that is quite
the fabrication.  He may not speak of Isabel or even be willing to concede she
exists, but George Blout would never consent to a divorce.  Too public.  A
final blow to the male ego, I suppose.” Gerry paused.  “But you know, something
else is coming to me.  There’s a chance her infamous portrait may find its way
to Paris along with its subject.  I read in the papers some time back that
Whistler is showing as part of the art exhibition, and that some of his more
exalted London portraits were on loan to the American pavilion.”

“Her husband would
allow her image to be displayed before half the world?  It seems strange for a
man with such pride.”

“I believe he’d released
the portrait to a dealer.  Probably Madison and Perry, the gallery across from
Windsor Square. They merchandise the cast-off art of people from a certain
class.”  Gerry’s frown evaporated and she nodded with vigor, suddenly sure of
herself.  “If a group of Whistlers is on its way to Paris I can’t imagine the
Blout portrait wouldn’t be among them.  It was quite the sensation.”

“I say, Geraldine,
you claim to scarcely know Isabel Blout and yet you deliver up the full story
like bread on a plate.  You should gossip more.  You have the gift.”  Trevor
refolded Rayley’s letter and returned it to his pocket.  “I’ll follow up with
the portrait. There should be a record somewhere of any Whistlers acquired for
exhibition.”

“But how does all
this relate to your friend?  Is Isabel causing trouble in Paris now?”

“Apparently Rayley and
the lady have become acquaintances. How they might have met, I can’t say.”

 “What are you going
to tell him?” Geraldine asked. “He is doubtless awaiting your reply.”

Trevor clasped his
hands in front of his face, exhaled into the hollow of his palms.  Perhaps it truly
was no more than idle London gossip on the hoof, bearing its way toward Paris
and making it impossible for a desperate woman to reinvent herself in a new
city.  It wasn’t hard to picture.  A pretty young wife fleeing her aging
husband, the French displaying portraits of British women drawn by an American,
a new world order clashing against old values, the endless dance of sex and art
and nationalism and money. 

But something in the
situation niggled at him.  Trevor selected a biscuit from the tray on
Geraldine’s tea table, nestled himself more comfortably among the cushions on
her divan.  He would report what Geraldine had said, but he still didn’t
understand why Abrams had asked him for a history of Isabel Blout in the first
place.  So he had met her socially, so he had found her – as apparently had so
many other men before him – attractive.  What of it?  Evidently something was
niggling at Abrams as well.

“It’s just
speculation, darling, silly Mayfair chatter,” Gerry said, wiping a crumb from
her plump cheek.  “Probably more motivated by envy of the woman’s beauty than a
fair analysis of her character. You don’t have to share every detail with
Rayley.”

“No, Rayley isn’t
frivolous.  If he asked me to learn her history, he must have had a reason.”  Trevor
looked up, his gaze locking with that of Geraldine.  “I’m going to tell him to
stay away from her.”   

CHAPTER EIGHT

Paris

April 23

3:14 AM

Rayley awakened in
darkness so complete that it seemed to have closed over him like water.  He’d
been having a bad dream, he surmised, since his hands were clutching the
bedspread and his forehead was velvet with sweat.  He tried to remember, but
the dream was fading even as his eyes fluttered open, leaving behind only the
vague sense that he had been lost in a series of hallways, looking for a way
out.

He sat up on the
edge of the bed, pausing a moment for the vertigo to pass.  Yesterday’s autopsy
must have shaken him more than he’d been willing to admit at the time.  Graham’s
body had lain on the marble slab of the mortuary table looking quite pristine
at first, yielding no immediately obvious wound which would explain his death.  It
was only in Rayley’s second pass over the body that he had caught them, the
four very slight bruises forming a crescent pattern around the side of the
man’s mouth, nearly lost in the stubble of his beard.  Rayley placed his own
hand over Graham’s lips, shuddering only slightly at the coolness of the man’s
flesh and his impulse was immediately rewarded.   The bruises lined up
perfectly with the tips of his fingers.  

Of course the fact
that someone had placed a hand over the man’s mouth, even roughly enough to
cause bruising, hardly explained his death.  Rayley had glanced toward the end
of the table where the coroner, Rubois, and Carle all stood silently watching
him, their faces alert but noncommittal.

“Chloroform?” Rayley
had ventured.

The advantage of
modern words is that they rarely need translation. Rubois had nodded and the
coroner had left the room, returning almost at once with a file of blood that
Rayley could only assume must have been drawn from Graham’s body prior to his
arrival.  But could the French really test for the presence of chloroform in
blood?  The coroner said something quietly to Carle, who also slipped away.

Rayley’s mind was
churning.  Chloroform had been used routinely in surgeries for probably the
last thirty years in London and he could only assume Paris as well.  That would
put it most often in the possession of doctors and hospital attendants – dear
God, were they really back on Ripper territory again?  But then again,
chloroform was often used to reduce the suffering of women in childbirth and had
been popularized, in fact, when the Queen had requested its assistance in the
delivery of her eighth child.  The mother’s friend, it was sometimes coyly called,
and this undoubtedly made it easier to obtain than most drugs.  Available to
midwifes, most likely, or even for sale at neighborhood pharmacies.  All of Paris
could be awash in chloroform for all he knew.

The coroner had
extracted a small amount of blood from the vial and was carefully holding the
dropper up to the level of his eyes.  Rayley couldn’t imagine what he was
looking for.  As any police officer well knew, chloroform was colorless and
odorless, making it the perfect means for rendering a victim unconscious within
minutes, as well as being nearly impossible to detect through routine
examination.  But in that moment Carle had returned with a torn clump of a
baguette, and to Rayley’s utter mystification the coroner had dropped dots of
Graham’s blood in a pattern across its surface.  Motioning for the men to
follow, he’d led them to a second room and to a cage with perhaps a dozen small
white mice.  He pulled back the mesh top of the cage, dropped in the bread, and
then the men stood back and waited.  It seemed they were all holding their
breath.

The nasty little
vermin, made all the more horrid to Rayley because of their strange pink eyes
and nearly translucent skin, swarmed over the bread within seconds, fighting
each other for a taste of Graham’s blood.  Clever, Rayley thought, nodding
toward the coroner.  Disgusting but damn clever.  Within seconds, the mice were
stumbling.  Within a few more, sleeping.  And probably half of them dead within
a minute of that, but Rayley had already turned toward the door, not needing to
witness this final proof.  He had his answer for why Graham, a hale and
strapping young man, had slipped beneath the waters of the Seine without a
struggle.