City of Light (City of Mystery) (47 page)

“I’m going to the
tower,” Rayley said, unsteadily pushing to his feet. “Right this very moment. 
If Isabel is there I must tell her that she’s safe, convince her to come with
me back to London.”

“Very well,” said
Trevor. “I’m going with you.”

“I can handle this,
Welles.”

“You’re blind.”

“Ah yes,” said
Rayley, weaving on his feet. “Quite right.  Perhaps you should come, after all.”

5:29 PM

They were both audibly
gasping for air by the time they reached the tower. Security around it had
gradually and incrementally increased during the last days, as Parisians had watched
the details begin to fall into place.  Even the most cynical of Eiffel’s detractors
were beginning to concede that he would indeed have his moment of triumph.

Rayley had been
practicing his speech as they ran, weaving through the crowds on the avenue,
breaking into a full sprint as they approached the broad flat lawn leading up
to the tower.  Voices seemed to glance off him as he hurried through the
half-built pavilions.  Not just French and English voices, but German and
Italian too, as well as tongues he could not readily identify.  The Exposition
was two weeks away but the world was slowly beginning to assemble in Paris,
brown and white and yellow faces all looking expectantly upward toward the
spire in the center of it all.  The tower is our new church, Rayley thought. 
Progress has become our new world religion.

But despite how
furiously his mind had churned, Rayley had been able to think of no way that he
and Trevor would be allowed quick admittance to the elevator.  Their Scotland
Yard credentials, which made so many doors swing open in London, caused nothing
but puzzlement here.

Trevor may have been
portly but Rayley was weak, worn down by his days in captivity, blinking in the
bilious glow of the dawning streetlights and still unsteady on his feet.  So it
was Trevor who reached the elevator first and who surprised Rayley by pulling a
soggy packet from his pocket.  Rayley didn’t see what it was, but the flic
standing guard at the elevator jerked to attention and a second man, dressed in
a black jacket, wrenched open the doors and motioned them inside.

They tumbled in
behind him.  Rayley grabbed the handrails and struggled to get a deep breath. Trevor
was bathed in sweat and was fumbling for a handkerchief.  At Rayley’s
questioning glance, he gasped out a single word: “Rubois.”

So the man was my
friend in the end, Rayley thought, for he must have given Trevor the sort of
credentials carried by Parisian detectives, had perhaps even given up his own. 
The doors closed, with a groan of protest, and the elevator began to rise.  They
had made some progress with the clanging, but it was still a loud affair and
Trevor jerked with surprise.  Rayley sank back against the railing and tried to
compose himself.  It was too much to take in – his sudden rescue, the dash
across town, the fact he was back in this elevator where he had vowed to never
again venture, the utter uncertainty of what they would find at the top. 

Trevor had caught
his breath as well and turned toward the handrail.  Rayley followed his gaze
through the glass and over what he could only assume to be the rooftops of the
city.  But even he could tell that it was different at night than it had been
in the day.  Paris seemed somehow larger, a thousand small dots of light, as if
they were looking at a starlit sky below them, rather than above.  Rayley
cautiously inched a bit closer to Trevor.

“Quite a view,” he
shouted.

Trevor’s lips were
parted in awe.  “You didn’t tell me,” he said.

“Tell you what?”

“That it is
magical.”  Trevor turned toward him, suddenly younger, his expression like that
of a child.  “It’s a miracle,” he said.  “A bloody miracle lying here before us. 
The end of one world and the birth of the next.  Didn’t you see it?”

“Welles,” Rayley
said.  “We both know that I saw nothing at all.”

5:34 PM

The first staircase
they managed well enough.  The second was so alarming to behold that Trevor
insisted Rayley take hold of his jacket and let him guide the way.  But the
steps were too tightly wound to allow them to ascend as a unit, so they were
forced to retreat, losing both time and a bit of nerve in the process.  It was
ultimately decided that Rayley must climb on his hands and knees, with Trevor
following close behind.  Their process thus was painfully slow and methodical
and Trevor paused once, halfway up, and dared to look around him, before quickly
concluding that Rayley was fortunate to be unable to grasp the full reality of
their present situation.

But then they were
there.  A small landing with a parapet, which stretched around three sides of a
room.  A room, yes, but one designed to resemble a chateau in miniature, with
arched windows and a blue door.  Trevor edged toward it while Rayley, wishing
it was permissible to still crawl, cautiously followed.  What does one do in
such circumstances?  Knock?  Instead, Trevor turned the knob and let the door
open of its own accord, which, thanks to the wind, it most definitively did. 
The two men peered inside.

The first thing
Trevor saw was the Whistler. The painting was so large that it commanded an
entire wall of the room, stretching nearly from the elaborate molding of the
ceiling to the plush Persian carpet on the floor. 

The first thing
Rayley saw was Isabel.  She was wearing the same teal-colored gown she had worn
for the portrait, her hair styled in the same way.  She had not assumed the
same pose however, but was rather sitting on a small divan.  She looked up at
him without surprise, as if he was arriving for an assignation they had planned
long ago.

“Detective,” she
said. “Please come in.  And close the door.  It’s so windy at night.”

“Isabel,” Rayley
said, his voice quivering. “I have come to take you back to London.”

“London?” she said,
wrinkling her nose. “What waits for me there?  Look around you.  What woman in
her right mind would abandon all this for dreary London?” 

She had taken one of
the posters of Henry’s face, Trevor noticed, and had fastened it in some manner
to the bottom of her own portrait.  Isabel followed the trajectory of his gaze,
and smiled. 

“Behold our family
portrait,” she said. “Courtesy of Armand Delacroix.  I take it that you are a
detective too?  Scotland Yard, no doubt.  You all have somewhat the same look.”

“Delacroix has been
arrested,” Rayley stubbornly continued.  “You don’t have to fear him anymore.” 
He too had glanced toward the spot where the poster was fixed but, based on his
utter lack of reaction, Trevor suspected he did not recognize it as Henry’s
face.  It was hard to ascertain exactly how much Rayley was managing to take in
of this strange room and what, if anything, he was beginning to understand.  Signs
pointing toward the truth lay all around them, for even three days on the
street had forced cracks in Ian’s façade.  Without cosmetics, his skin was
coarse and stubbled. The finely arranged dome of dark hair was ever-so-slightly
off-center and the teal dress was ill-fitting, as if whatever undergarments were
needed to sustain the illusions of femininity had been lost somehow in the transition.
 Ian looked at Trevor in defiance, clearly attuned to his thoughts, and picked
up a pair of velvet gloves from a mother-of-pearl table at his side, pulling
them on over his work-worn hands.

“Isabel,” Rayley
said. “Did you hear what I said?  Armand Delacroix is in custody.”

“That’s not his real
name, you know,” Isabel said, with a light and tinkling laugh.  “I remember the
night we devised his French identity.  We were back in that dreadful little
cottage in Manchester with his wife Janet.  I like her very much.  Charles said
he must have a new name and Janet suggested ‘Armand,’ which means ‘soldier.’
Did you know that?  But of course not. You don’t speak French.”

“You said you wanted
to go home,” Rayley said.  “You still can.” 

“And Delacroix means
‘of the cross,’” Isabel continued.  “He loved the name at once.  I believe that
is precisely as he saw himself, as some sort of solider of the cross.”  She
paused, awkwardly brushing back a strand of hair with a gloved hand.  “Charles
was quite religious, you know, in the beginning.  It seems the worst people
always are.”

“It’s over,” Rayley
said.

“Yes,” she said,
surprising them both by suddenly rising to her feet and moving toward the
door.  “No doubt you are right.”  She walked out onto the parapet, Rayley
feeling his way behind her and Trevor remaining in the doorway, one hand braced
on each side of the frame.  They would have to persuade her to come with them
of her own volition, he thought.   They could scarcely drag her down that
damned staircase against her will. 

“Look,” Isabel said,
pointing in the distance.  Rayley obediently turned his head, and Trevor also peered
cautiously from the doorway.  “It’s the last time we will ever see Paris like
this,” she said. “For in two weeks the crowds shall come in earnest and it will
all be changed.  The world as I know it will come to an end.”  She paused
thoughtfully and then added.  “My brother is dead.”

“Yes,” said Rayley.
“It’s a horrible shock, a dreadful shock, but life does go on, just as they say
it does, that awful cliché.  There’s a woman on our forensics team, you know,
just last year she lost her sister…”

“I will learn to
love again, is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what
I’m saying,” Rayley said. “Just let me bring you back to England and I promise
you it shall all be settled there.”

“Very well,” she
said. “But we must take the portrait.”

The portrait?  From
the doorway, Trevor winced.  It behooved them to keep her calm, but this was a
fine request. They could scarcely steal a Whistler from the Eiffel Tower and
they couldn’t transport the monstrous thing down that snake of a staircase if
they tried.  The last five minutes had been confusing indeed, but there was one
thing of which Trevor was sure.  The Whistler portrait of Isabel Blout would
remain at the top of the Eiffel Tower until the end of time.

“Henry’s portrait,”
Isabel elaborated.

“Ah yes,” Rayley
said with obvious relief. “Trevor, will you fetch Henry’s portrait from the
wall?”

All right, so she’s
gone mad and we’re probably right behind her, Trevor thought.  But whatever it
takes to get the three of us back down to the ground…

He had turned to go
back inside, to pull the damn poster from where she had affixed it to the
Whistler when it occurred to him, almost immediately, that he had been played. 
Isabel was no fool.   She knew that Rayley was half-blind but that Trevor saw
everything, and she had found a way to distract him.   Rayley’s shout confirmed
the rest.  Trevor spun around and dashed back out to find Rayley hanging over
the parapet, his toes barely touching the ground.

She had jumped, of
course she had, but against all odds he had caught her.  He had her hand in his
and he was holding on with the strength of a man possessed.  Trevor leaned over
the railing too but could not reach far enough and so, praying that Rayley’s
grip would not fail, he wrapped his arms around the man’s waist and tried to
pull him back, in the hopes Isabel would rise with him.  But moving the weight
of two men, even two small ones, up and over the railing was beyond him, so
Trevor dropped to his knees on the parapet and reached through the railing
toward the dangling Isabel.

“It’s all right,
Ian,” he said. “Give me your other hand.”

The man looked
directly at him, the artifice of femininity all gone now, a slight smile on his
face. 

“Give him your
hand,” Rayley gasped, his voice shaking, although whether from the sustained
effort of holding on or the shock of a growing realization, Trevor could not
say. 

And then a movement,
slight.  Was it the wind or was it an act of human will?   Rayley’s feet were
both off the parapet now, putting him in danger of toppling over as well and
Trevor was flattened to the floor, straining his own arm through the bottom of
the railing and Ian, still smiling, shifted the slightest amount.  No more than
a centimeter. 

Just enough to
loosen a hand within a velvet glove.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Paris

April 30

2:12 PM

On the afternoon
before they were due to depart for London, Trevor and Rayley went walking along
the Seine. The Exhibition had not yet officially opened, but the crowds were growing
daily with any number of enterprising entrepreneurs already on hand to serve
them.  Sidewalks were crowded with families, musicians playing the violin or
cello, hoping for spare coins, stands selling foaming glasses of soda bicarbonate
and clouds of candy floss.  It was all creating a bit of a mess, Trevor
noticed, items dropped here and there, the acrid smell of human bodies, crushed
each to the other, the hint of decay wafting up from the swollen river.  But he
supposed this was the price of progress.