Century Rain Part 5

"That's very decent of you-" Floyd began.

"It's not just decency," Blanchard interrupted sharply. "There is a selfish component as well. Until her killer is found, there will always be doubts in my other tenants' minds that perhaps she did fall accidentally."

"But the police have never made any such suggestion."

"A suggestion does not have to be voiced," Blanchard said. "Please-take the box and see where it takes

you. Talk to the other tenants-discreetly, of course. She may have spoken to some of them as well.

What shall we say, in terms of a retainer?"

Floyd reached into his jacket and took out one of his dog-eared business cards. "Those are my usual

terms. Since this is a homicide investigation, my a.s.sociate will also be a.s.sisting me. That means the rates are doubled."

"I thought you wanted to save me money."

"It's your call. But if we're going to investigate Mademoiselle White's death, there's no point in half- measures. Custine and I can cover twice as much ground in half the time it would take me on my own."

Blanchard took the card and pocketed it without a glance. "I accept your terms. For my money, however, I will expect a swift resolution."

"You'll get it, one way or the other."

"That suits me fine."

"I need to know what she told you about her sister."

"That's the funny thing. Until that last conversation, the one when she gave me the box, she never mentioned any family at all."

"Did she give you a description of her sister?"

"Yes. Her name is Verity. She has blonde hair, not red-Mademoiselle White was particular about that detail-but she's otherwise about the same height and build." Blanchard pushed himself to his feet. "In

that respect you are fortunate. I took a picture of her at Longchamp." Blanchard pulled out a pair of photographs from beneath one of the owls on the mantelpiece. "You may keep both of them."

"Are these your only copies?"

"No. I had a number of duplicate prints made when I was expecting the police to take an interest in matters. I a.s.sumed they would want them for their inquiries."

Floyd examined one of the pictures of Susan White. It was a full-length shot of her standing up against a backdrop of railings, with the elongated blur of a horse pa.s.sing behind. She was holding on to her pillbox hat as if the wind had been about to s.n.a.t.c.h it away. She was laughing, startled and happy. She did not look like someone who would be dead in a few weeks.

"She was an attractive young woman," Blanchard said, settling back into his seat. "But I hardly need tell you that. She had the most beautiful red hair: it's a shame that you can't really see it, bundled up under that hat. She usually wore green. I always think redheads look good in green, don't you?"

"I wouldn't know," Floyd said.

Custine examined the picture. "Quite a looker. Are they all like that in America?"

"Not in Galveston," Floyd replied.

Two further flights of stairs led up to the rooms that the American woman had occupied during her last three months of life. Blanchard informed Floyd that the apartment had not been occupied since her fall. "It's barely been touched," he added. "The room has been aired out, but other than that it's exactly as she left it. Even the bed was made. She was a very tidy young woman, unlike some of my tenants."

"I see what you mean about the books," Floyd said, the floorboards creaking as he moved to examine the collection Susan White had acc.u.mulated. Books, magazines and newspapers occupied every horizontal surface, including a significant acreage of the floor s.p.a.ce. But they were neatly stacked and segregated, hinting at a strictly methodical process of acquisition and storage prior to shipment. He remembered Blanchard's sighting of her making her way to the Metro station with a loaded suitcase, and guessed that she must have made dozens of such journeys every week, if the collection had been changed as often as Blanchard claimed.

"Perhaps you will see some rhyme or reason to it that escapes me," Blanchard said, hesitating at the threshold.

Floyd bent down to get a better look at a stack of phonograph records. "Were these part of the stuff she was collecting and shipping as well?"

"Yes. Examine them at your leisure."

Floyd leafed through the mint-condition recordings, hoping for some insight into the woman's thought processes, but the records were as varied in content as the rest of the material. There were jazz recordings, some of which Floyd owned himself, and a handful of cla.s.sical recordings, but the rest of the collection appeared to have been compiled at random, with no consideration for genre or intrinsic merit.

"So she liked music," he commented.

"Except she never played any of those records," Blanchard said.

Floyd looked at one of the records more closely, studying the sleeve and then the groove of the platter itself with a narrowed, critical eye. Lately, a great many low-quality bootlegs had begun to turn up on the record market. They sounded acceptable to the untrained ear, but to anyone who really cared about music, they were an insult. Rumour had it that the bootleggers were operating somewhere in the Paris area, stamping out the cheap copies in an underground pressing plant. Having been stung by one or two of these poor copies himself, Floyd had learned to sniff them out. It seemed likely that more than a few of the dead woman's records were bootlegs, but if she didn't even listen to them in the first place, she had only herself to blame.

Returning the record to its sleeve and standing up, Floyd noticed an old clockwork phonograph tucked away in one corner of the room, next to a more modern valve wireless. "Was that phonograph hers?" he asked.

"No. It came with the room. It must have been there for thirty years."

"And she never played any of these records on it?"

"I never heard her play any music at all. On the few occasions when I happened to be pa.s.sing this room or visiting the one below it, I only heard noises from the radio."

"What sort of noises?"

"I couldn't hear them properly. She always had the radio turned down very low."

Floyd rubbed his finger through the dust on the top of the wireless. "Have you used this thing since she died?"

"As I said, the room has been aired, but that is all."

"You mind if I find out what she was listening to?"

"You are in my employment now, Monsieur Floyd. I authorise you to do as you see fit."

"I'll check the balcony," Custine said, "see how easy it would have been to fall from it."

Floyd knelt down next to the wireless set, having first smoothed out the scuffed and rucked-up carpet in front of it. It was a twenty-year-old Phillips set in a walnut-veneered cabinet; Floyd had owned one much like it during his first five years in Paris. He turned the wireless on, hearing the hum of warming valves and a crackle from the speaker grille. It still worked.

He felt a breeze on the back of his neck as Custine opened the double doors that led to the balcony. The distant sound of traffic pushed itself into the room, disturbing the silence like a disrespectful guest. Floyd's hand moved instinctively to the tuning dial, preparing to make the little arrow slide along the illuminated band displaying printed wavelengths and transmitting stations. He knew all the stations that still broadcast the kind of music he and Custine liked to listen to and play. There were fewer of them each year. Fewer each month, it seemed lately.

With the dial where Susan White had left it, Floyd turned up the volume. All he heard was static.

"It's off-station," Floyd commented. "Either that or whoever was sending on this wavelength isn't sending any more." He took out his notebook, flipped to the first clean page and made a note of the position of the dial. Then he turned it, sliding the arrow from one end of the tuning band to the other. The wireless hissed and crackled, but at no point did Floyd tune in to a recognisable signal.

"Well?" Blanchard asked.

"There must be something wrong with the radio. I should have tuned into something by now."

"The wireless set was working perfectly before Mademoiselle White occupied the room."

"And maybe it was working when she was here as well. But it's dead now, unless every station in France has just gone off the air." Floyd returned the dial to the approximate position it had been in when he entered the room, then switched off the wireless. "It doesn't matter. I just thought there might be a clue to her state of mind, if we knew what she had been listening to."

Custine came back in from the balcony, shutting the double doors behind him. "It's secure," he said. He touched his midriff. "The railings come up to here. How tall was she, monsieur?"

"About your height."

"Then I suppose she might have tripped and gone over, if she was unlucky," Custine observed. "But there's no way she could have fallen just by leaning against them."

"Then discount that hypothesis," the landlord said. "Consider instead the possibility that she was pushed."

"Or that she jumped," Floyd said. He closed his notebook with a snap. "All right, I think we have enough here for now. You'll keep this room as it is for the time being?"

"Until the matter is resolved," Blanchard a.s.sured him.

Floyd patted Custine on the back. "C'mon. Let's have a chat with the other tenants, see what they have

to say."

Custine leaned down and picked up the biscuit tin from where Floyd had left it, next to the wireless.

"The door to this apartment," he said, addressing Blanchard. "Was it locked when they found her?"

"No. It was open."

"Then she could have been murdered," Custine said.

"Or she could have left the door open because she had something else on her mind," Floyd said. "It

doesn't prove anything. What about the front door-was that open as well?"

"No," Blanchard said. "It was locked. But it's a slam lock. When the murderer left, he would only have had to close it behind him: he didn't need a key for that."

"And you haven't noticed anything missing from here?"

"I'd have mentioned it if I had."

Custine patted the tin. "Maybe they were looking for this but didn't find it because she'd already pa.s.sed

it on to Monsieur Blanchard."

"Did anything in that box look like it was worth murdering someone for?" Floyd said.

"No," Custine replied, "but when I was at the Quai, I saw people murdered for a loaf of bread."

Floyd turned to the landlord. "I'll telephone you tomorrow if I have any news, otherwise I'll just

continue my investigations until I have something worth reporting."

"I would like to hear from you every day, irrespective of your findings."

Floyd shrugged. "If that's what you want."

"You may call me in the evening. At the end of each week, I will expect a typewritten progress report, together with a breakdown of the running expenses."

"You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"Something awful happened in this room," Blanchard said. "I can feel it, even if you can't. Mademoiselle White was frightened and a long way from home. Someone came and killed her, and that isn't right."

"I understand," Floyd said.

They had almost reached the door when Blanchard spoke again. "There is something I forgot to mention. It might not mean anything, but Mademoiselle White kept an electric typewriter in her room." He stood with his hand on a large wooden cabinet that was resting on a small bow-legged table. "It was a German model-the name of the firm was Heimsoth and Reinke, I believe-very heavy. This was the box it came in."