Custine shook his head dismissively. “Years, Floyd. The encryption’s not meant to be easily broken. That’s the whole point.”
“So this whole wireless business was a wild-goose chase?”
“On the contrary. It told us rather a lot about Susan White, even if it didn’t tell us what was in those messages. We also know that someone made a point of smashing her Enigma machine. Whoever did that knew exactly how important it was.”
“So she was killed by an enemy agent,” Floyd speculated.
“I think we can assume so,” Custine replied. “And whoever did that must have destroyed the rotor settings for the machine as well. Nothing in the tin she entrusted to Blanchard resembles a list of such settings. They may have been written down elsewhere. She may even have committed them to memory.”
“Talking of Blanchard,” Floyd prompted.
“When the futility of intercepting those signals dawned on me, I put the wireless back as I’d found it the day before, complete with broken connections. I packed away my tools and set off down to Blanchard’s rooms, where I intended to bring up the delicate matter we discussed yesterday.”
“And did you?”
“I never got a chance,” Custine said. “When I knocked on the door to his rooms, I found it ajar. I pushed it open and called out to him. No one answered, but I heard… sounds.”
“What sort of sounds?”
“Scuffling, grunting. Furniture being shoved around. Naturally, I entered. That was when I saw the child: a little girl, perhaps the one we saw outside the apartment yesterday, perhaps another one.”
“What was the child doing?” asked Floyd, a sick feeling beginning to churn in his stomach.
“It was killing Monsieur Blanchard.” Custine said this with a perfect, detached calm, as if he had gone over the events in his head too many times to be shocked by them any more. “Blanchard was on the floor, with his head pressed against the leg of a chair. The child was squatting over him, holding one hand over his mouth while it grasped a clawed fire iron in the other. It was smashing the fire iron against his skull.”
“How could a child overpower a man like that?” Floyd asked. “He was elderly, but he wasn’t particularly frail.”
“All I can report is what I saw,” Custine said. “The child seemed to have enormous animal strength. It had stick-thin arms and legs, but was still hammering that fire iron down on him as if it had the strength of a blacksmith.”
“You keep calling the child ‘it,’ ” Floyd observed.
“It looked at me,” Custine said. “That was when I knew it wasn’t any kind of child.”
Greta looked at Floyd, concern filling her eyes. Floyd reached out and touched her arm reassuringly. “Go on,” he said to Custine.
“It was dressed like a little girl, but when it looked at me, I knew it was something else—something more like a demon than a child. Its face reminded me of a piece of shrivelled fruit. When it opened its mouth, I saw a dry, black tongue and a few rotten stubs of teeth. I smelled it.”
“He’s frightening me,” Greta said, shuddering with revulsion under Floyd’s hand. “Is this supposed to be one of those children you say keep turning up?”
“Whatever they are, they aren’t children,” Custine repeated. “They’re things that resemble children unless you look closely. That’s all.”
“This isn’t possible,” Greta insisted.
“We’ve both seen them,” Floyd said. “So did some of the tenants in Blanchard’s building.”
“But… children?”
“Somehow they fit into this,” Floyd said. “One of them probably killed Susan White.”
“What happened next?” Greta asked, fascination gradually overcoming apprehension.
“The child looked at me,” Custine said. He reached into the little bag of provisions next to his mattress and took out a bottle of whiskey, helping himself to a nip. “It looked at me and made a sound I will never forget. It opened its mouth—that was when I saw the tongue and teeth—and it… sang.” He said the word with distaste, washing it from his mouth with another slug of whiskey.
“What do you mean, it ‘sang?’ ” Floyd asked.
“Or wailed, or shrieked—I really can’t describe it adequately. It was not a sound a child was ever meant to make, like a kind of monstrous yodel. Don’t ask me how, but I knew what it was doing: it was calling out to others like itself. Summoning them.” Custine screwed the top back on the bottle and returned it to the bag. “That was when I fled.”
“You knew that would look bad.”
“Nothing would have been as bad as staying in that room. I looked around for a weapon, but the child-thing already had the one item in the room capable of doing any damage. I just wanted to get as far away from there as possible.”
“You hailed a taxi?”
“Yes,” Custine said. “I took it straight to rue du Dragon, where I left you the note. Then I came here.”
“The men from the Big House think you killed Blanchard,” Floyd said.
“Of course they do. It’s what they want to believe. Have they spoken to you?”
“I had a real nice chat with an Inspector Belliard shortly after you fled the scene.”
“Belliard is poison. Protect yourself, Floyd. Have nothing more to do with the case. Have nothing more to do with me.”
“Bit late for that.”
“It’s never too late for common sense.”
“Well, maybe this time it is. I spoke to our old friend Maillol. He was sceptical, but deep down I’m pretty sure he thinks you’re innocent.”
Custine shook his head resignedly. “One good man can’t help any of us.”
“I told him I’d clear your name. He said he’d look at any evidence I was able to turn up.”
“I’m warning you, as a friend: leave this whole business alone. Do what I intend to do, which is to get out of Paris at the earliest opportunity.”
“There’s nowhere for you to run,” Floyd said. “I can hop on the flying boat and be in America two days later. You can’t. Wherever you go in France, the men from the Quai will find you eventually. Our only hope is to clear your name.”
“Then you have set yourself an impossible task.”
“If I give Maillol one of those children, things might look a bit different.”
“No one will believe that a child was capable of those murders.”
“But if enough witnesses come forward—enough people who’ve seen one of these demons hanging around—that might change things.”
“Floyd,” Custine said, with sudden urgency, “please use your head. Those things are out there, even as we speak. They are in the city. They move without attracting suspicion. Furthermore, they seem to be doing their utmost to kill anyone who had the slightest connection with Susan White—which now includes the three of us.”
“Then I guess that makes it personal,” Floyd said.
“Drop the case, my friend. Drop the case and go with Greta to America.”
“Not yet. Like I said, I’ve already got an interview lined up with the sister.”
“You are playing with fire.”
“No,” Floyd said, “I’m playing with the only lead left in this whole case. And the only thing that’s going to lead me to those children, and get you off the hook.”
Custine slumped back against the wall. “I can’t argue with you, can I?”
“It’s no more than you’d do for me.”
“Which only goes to show that we both lack common sense.”
“It’s overrated anyway,” Floyd replied, smiling.
“Be careful,” Custine said. “Those children may be demons, but there’s no guarantee that the sister isn’t just as dangerous.”
At nine the next morning, Floyd watched Verity Auger walk into his office. The slatted light shining through the blinds caught her from one side, electric silver highlights dancing on every curve and curl. She wore a dark pinstriped business suit with low-heeled shoes, and if she had arrived with a hat she must have hung it up outside. Her neatly parted light hair fell in a straight line down to her shoulders and then flounced back up at the ends, as if it had changed its mind at the last moment. Her hair made Floyd think of the flukes of whales in old Dutch lithographs. She had very fine eyebrows, and her face seemed to shift from severe to serene and back again between heartbeats.