“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 button 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 assured 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.
“Blanchard also mentioned hearing noises. I don’t think the two of them were imagining the same thing independently.”
“There must be something wrong with the wireless, in that case.”
“Maybe there is. Look at this.”
Custine knelt down next to Floyd and followed his partner’s gaze. “It’s a carpet, Floyd. They’re a surprisingly common feature in houses.”
“I mean the scuff marks, you idiot,” Floyd said affectionately as he indicated two scratches in the carpet, spaced about the width of the wireless set. “I don’t know if they’re recent or not. I noticed them when we here last night—the carpet was rucked up, as well—but I didn’t put two and two together until now.”
“And now you’re thinking…?”
“I’d say they were caused by someone dragging the wireless away from the wall.”
“They must have been in a hurry to make such a messy job of it.”
“My thinking exactly.” Floyd patted Custine on the back. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
“Can’t hurt.”
“Make sure that door’s bolted. I don’t want the old man coming back in and seeing us fiddling with the wireless. That’ll really put ideas into his head.”
“It’s secure,” Custine said, after checking the door.
Between them they heaved the wireless set away from the wall, taking care not to add any more scuff marks to the carpet. It was a job for two people, and Floyd didn’t doubt that he would have had a difficult time of it had Custine not been there. “Look,” he said, when they had the wireless a clear half-metre from the wall. “Three screws on the floor and some wood shavings, suggesting that they were ripped out of the back of the wireless, for some reason.”
Custine peered over his shoulder, holding a handkerchief to his face against the dust. “Someone’s fiddled with it,” he said.
“In a hurry, too.” Floyd pulled aside the thin wood backing of the wireless, which was hanging loose, attached by only one screw. “It wouldn’t have taken five minutes to unscrew the back, but whoever did this obviously didn’t have time to find a screwdriver. They must have poked something into the gap and levered the backing away just enough to get at the innards.”
“Good thing I have a screwdriver, then,” Custine said and went to fetch his briefcase. Custine always kept a set of locksmith’s tools handy, no matter what case they were working on.
“Now see if you can get that backing off,” Floyd said.
Custine removed the remaining screw and the plywood backing dropped free, revealing the guts of the wireless.
“That’s… interesting,” Floyd said.
“Here,” Custine said. “Let’s turn it to the light. I need a better look.”
They angled the contraption until the open back was facing the balcony windows. A shaft of morning sunlight speared the room, crisscrossed by specks of dust, and fell upon the exposed heart of the wireless, gleaming back from a bird’s-nest tangle of wire, glass valves and enamelled parts. Practically the entire volume of the wooden cabinet was crammed with electrical components arranged in a looping, knotted jumble of intestinal complexity.
“That’s like no wireless I’ve ever seen,” Custine said. “It looks more like some mad piece of modern art, something you’d waste good money to stand in front of, stroking your chin and looking thoughtful.”
“Maybe she was a spy after all,” Floyd replied.
“But what is this thing? What was she making?”
Floyd turned off the wireless, then gingerly pushed a finger into the mess of wires, being careful not to disturb anything. Some of the wires were loose, he noticed: their bare metal ends sparkled in the daylight, and he could see nubs of solder where they had been ripped free from the larger electrical parts.