Century Rain Part 15

"Nothing useful. One fellow reported seeing an odd little girl hanging around the place on the day of the accident."

"Odd in what way?"

"Said the child looked rather sickly."

"Well, then," Floyd said with a flourish of one hand, "round up the usual sickly children. Case closed." But nagging at the back of his mind was the memory of the girl who had been coming out of Blanchard's building when they had arrived the evening before. "There couldn't really be a connection, could there?"

"The fellow was just trying to be helpful," Custine said defensively. "At least the tenants all have your card now, and everyone I spoke to promised to get in touch if anything jogs their memories. No one knew anything about a sister." He set about b.u.t.tering himself another slice of bread. "Well, that's my news. Your turn."

The Mathis slid through thick Thursday-morning traffic, ankle-deep water hissing around the wheels where the overloaded drains had backed up and overflowed on to the street. The rain had finally eased and the sun was glinting fitfully off wet stonework and the fluted iron columns of street lamps; gleaming off statues and the Art Nouveau signs guarding the entrances to the Metro. Floyd loved Paris like this.

Through his blurred and slitted eyes the city looked like an oil painting that needed a few more days to

dry.

"So about Greta," Custine said, from the pa.s.senger seat. "You can't put it off for ever, Floyd. We had a deal."

"What deal?"

"That I'd tell you about my interviews, and you'd tell me about Greta."

Floyd's knuckles tightened on the wheel. "She isn't back for good. She won't be rejoining the band."

"And there's no hope of talking her into it?"

"None at all."

"Then why is she back, if it isn't to torment you with what might have been? She's cruel, our imperious

little Fraulein, but she isn't that cruel."

"Her aunt's dying," Floyd said. "She wants to be with her until the end. That's part of it, anyway."

"And the rest?"

Floyd hesitated, on the verge of telling Custine to mind his own business. But Custine deserved better

than that-his future was at stake here just as much as Floyd's. He just didn't realise it yet. "She's not going back to the touring band either."

"Fell out with them?"

"Seems not, just didn't feel they were going anywhere, and that she wouldn't be either if she stayed with them. So she got an idea into her head."

"She's going solo?"

Floyd shook his head. "More ambitious than that. Television." He said the word like an obscenity. "She wants to be part of it."

"Can't blame the girl," Custine replied, shrugging. "She's got the talent, and she's definitely got the

looks. Good for her, I say. Why aren't you cheering her on?"

Floyd steered the car past a hole in the road where some overall-clad workmen were swapping jokes but

showing no other sign of activity. "Because she's talking about television in America," he said. "In Los

Angeles, of course."

Custine said nothing for a few blocks. Floyd drove on in silence, half-imagining that he could hear the grinding of his partner's mental gears as he worked out the implications. Finally they slowed for a set of traffic lights.

"She's asked you to go with her, hasn't she?" Custine guessed.

"Not exactly asked," Floyd said. "More like delivered an ultimatum. If I go with her, there's a chance

for us to be together. She said we could see how it works out. If I don't, she walks out of my life and I'll never hear from her again."

They moved off again as the traffic light changed. "That's quite an ultimatum," Custine said.

"Understandable from her point of view, though-it would be useful to have a burly American boyfriend around to fend off the sharks."

"I'm French."

"You're French when it suits you. You pa.s.s as American just as easily when that suits you."

"I can't go. I have a life here. I have a business. I have a business partner who depends on me for his livelihood."

"You sound like someone trying very hard to convince himself of something. Would you care for my opinion?"

"Something tells me I'm going to get it anyway."

"You should go with her. Take the boat or plane or whatever to America. Look after her in Hollywood, or wherever it is that these television people have their empire. Give it two years. If it hasn't worked out, Greta will still be able to make a good living back here."

"And me?"

"If she makes a good living, maybe you won't have to worry about earning one."

"I don't know, Andre."

Custine thumped the dashboard in frustration. "What have you got to lose? We may have a case at this

moment, but most of the time we barely have two centimes to rub together. It's all excitement now, but

if this murder investigation doesn't pan out, we'll be back exactly where we were this time yesterday: knocking on a lot of doors in the Marais. Except we won't have a double ba.s.s."

"We'll always find detective work."

"Undoubtedly. But if there's one thing I've learned in your employment, Floyd, it's that there's only so much money to be made from tracking down mistresses and missing cats."

"What would you do?" Floyd asked.

"What I have always done," Custine replied. "Follow my instincts and my conscience."

"I'll hand the business over to you, of course, if it comes to it."

"Then you've at least thought things through that far. I'm glad, Floyd. It shows that you are thinking

clearly, for once in your life."

"I'm considering the options. That's all." Floyd steered the car on to the street where Blanchard lived.

"Nothing will happen until we solve this case."

"An unexpected breakthrough?" Blanchard asked when he opened the door to his rooms and let them inside. So little outside light made its way into the stairwells and corridors that the atmosphere of the building had barely changed from the previous evening. "Clearly a lot can change in an hour."

"I told you we had some leads," Floyd corrected him. "In the meantime, my partner and I need to have another look in Mademoiselle White's room."

"Do you think you missed something significant the first time?"

"That was a glance, not an investigation." Floyd nodded at the little briefcase Custine had brought with him. "This time we're here to do a proper job."

"I'll show you up to the room, in that case."

They waited a moment for the landlord to b.u.t.ton on a cardigan and fetch his keys. Politely, Floyd and Custine followed him as he ascended the stairs to Susan White's room on the fifth floor.

"Just to confirm-no one but you has touched this room until we saw it yesterday?" Floyd asked.

"No one at all."

"Could anyone else have found their way in without you knowing about it?"

"They would need a key," Blanchard said. "I have Mademoiselle White's key. It was on her person when she died-the police returned it."

"Could someone have copied that key?" Floyd persisted.

"Conceivably, but it's numbered for an apartment. No reputable locksmith would duplicate it without consent from a landlord."

Blanchard let them into the room. In daylight it looked larger and dustier but otherwise was as Floyd remembered it from the evening before, crammed with books, newspapers, magazines and records. The balcony doors had been latched open an inch to air out the place, and the filmy white drapes drawn across them were moving in the breeze.

"We'll need some time alone up here," Floyd said. "Please don't take offence, but we tend to work best without an audience."

Blanchard hovered at the door, and for a moment Floyd wondered if they were ever going to get rid of him.

"Very well, then," Blanchard said eventually. "I shall give you some privacy. Please, leave everything as you found it."

"We'll do just that," Custine a.s.sured him. He waited until the door had closed behind the landlord before asking, "Floyd-what exactly are we looking for?"

"I want to know what she was listening to on the wireless. Go and check that the old man isn't still snooping around outside, will you?"

Custine went to the door, opened it a crack and checked the hallway. "No, I can hear him moving down the stairs. You want me to check on the neighbours as well?"

"No need. They're probably at work." Floyd knelt down and started fiddling with the huge old wireless set. He had brought his notebook and made sure that the dial was still tuned to the same wavelength as when they had last examined it. Once again, the tuning band's pale illumination glimmered to life as the valves heated up, and there was crackling as he turned the dial and slid the arrow along the band from station to station. But there was still no music, no voices, no codelike noises.

"Perhaps the neighbour was imagining it," Custine said.