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 assured 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 passed 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.”
“An odd thing for a tourist to carry around with them,” Floyd said.
“I asked her about it, and all she would say was that she was practising her touch-typing, so that she wouldn’t be out of form when she returned home.”
“You’re right to mention it,” Floyd said. “It’s probably not important, but every bit helps.”
“Perhaps we should look at the typewriter,” Custine said.
“That’s the point,” Blanchard replied. “It doesn’t exist any more. The typewriter was found smashed to pieces on the pavement, next to Mademoiselle White.”
FOUR
“Hello, Verity,” said Auger’s ex-husband. “Excuse me for dropping by, but our mutual friends were beginning to wonder if you were still alive.”
Peter Auger was tanned and muscular, like a man who had just returned from a long and relaxing holiday rather than a gruelling diplomatic tour of the Federation of Polities. He wore a very expensive olive-green suit, offset with a scarlet satin neckerchief and the tasteful gold pin of the diplomatic corps. His bright-green eyes glittered like cut emeralds, twinkling with permanent amused fascination at everything and everyone around him.
“Of course I’m still alive,” Auger said grumpily. “It’s called house arrest. It makes socialising something of a challenge.”
“You know what I mean. You haven’t been answering the phone or p-mail.” To illustrate his point, Peter indicated the accumulating heap of message cylinders cluttering the in-bound hopper of Auger’s pneumatic tube.
“I’ve been getting my head together.”
“You can’t go on like this. When they do come calling you need to be strong, not some gibbering wreck. I heard that the preliminary hearing was scheduled for later this morning.”
“You heard right.”
“You seem remarkably relaxed about it.”
“It’s just a formality, a chance for both sides to stare each other out. It’s the full disciplinary tribunal that’s keeping me awake at night.”
Peter sat down, crossing one long leg over the other. For a moment, he studied the picture window, admiring the view of Earth and—superimposed on the brilliant white disc—a nearby precinct of Tanglewood. “They change their plans,” he said. “You need to be ready for surprises, especially now. They like to throw the odd curveball, especially when they’re dealing with someone like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Someone who’s never gone out of their way to suck up to authority. To put it mildly. I hear you even managed to piss off Caliskan last year. Now that takes some doing.”
“All I did was refuse to put his name on a paper he played no part in preparing. If he had a problem with that, he could have taken it to tribunal.”
“Caliskan pays your salary.”
“He still needs to get his hands dirty if he expects academic credit.” Auger sat down with her back to the picture window, facing Peter across a rough-hewn wooden coffee table. It supported a lopsided black vase containing a dozen dead flowers. “I didn’t set out to aggravate him. I got on fine with DeForrest. It’s not as if I have some automatic aversion to authority.”
“Maybe Caliskan’s had other things on his plate,” Peter said in that quiet, knowing way of his that she had always found as maddening as it was appealing. Charm was what he excelled at. If anyone sensed his underlying shallowness, they usually mistook it for well-hidden great depth of character, like misinterpreting a radar bounce.