“Odd arrangement,” Floyd observed.
“But a very useful one. I get to hear their official complaints and grievances and their unofficial ones as well, simply by chatting as we pass on the stairs. The woman in question never expressed her displeasure in writing, but she never failed to complain about the room whenever our paths crossed.”
Floyd flashed a glance at his partner, then looked back at Blanchard. “The girl’s name, monsieur?”
“The woman’s name was Susan White.”
“Married?”
“She did not wear a ring, and never spoke of anyone else.”
Floyd noted down this information. “Did she tell you how old she was?”
“I doubt that she was older than thirty-five. Maybe only thirty. It was not easy to tell. She did not wear as much make-up as the other young women, the other female tenants.”
Custine asked, “Did she tell you what she had been doing before she came here?”
“Only that she had come from America, and that she had some skill as a typist. I should mention the typewriter—”
“Where in America?” Floyd interrupted, remembering that Blanchard had not been certain when they spoke on the telephone.
“It was Dakota. I remember that quite clearly now. It was in her accent, she said.”
“Then she spoke English to you?” Floyd asked.
“Now and then, when I asked her to. Otherwise, her French was much like yours.”
“Impeccable,” Floyd said, with a smile. “For a foreigner, that is.”
“What was Mademoiselle White doing in Paris?” Custine asked.
“She never told me, and I never asked. Clearly, funds were not a problem. She may have had some work, but if that was the case then she kept very erratic hours.”
Floyd turned a page on his notepad, thumbing it down to blot the ink on the notes he had already made. “Sounds like a tourist, spending a few months in Paris before moving on. You mind if I ask how you two got to know each other, and how far that relationship went?”
“It was an entirely harmless association. We happened to meet at Longchamp.”
“The races?”
“Yes. I see you’ve noticed the photograph of my late wife and me.”
Floyd nodded, a little ashamed that his scrutiny had been so obvious. “She was very pretty.”
“The photograph doesn’t begin to do her justice. Her name was Claudette. She died in nineteen fifty-four—only five years ago, but it feels as if I’ve spent half my life without her.”
“I’m sorry,” Floyd said.
“Claudette was a great fan of the races.” Blanchard got up again and poked around in the fire, to no visible effect. He sat down with a creak of ageing joints. “After she died, there was a long time when I couldn’t bring myself to leave this apartment, let alone go back to the races. But one day I persuaded myself to do just that, intending to put some money on a horse in her memory. I told myself that it was what she would have wanted, but all the same I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty that I was there on my own.”
“You shouldn’t have felt that way,” Floyd said.
Blanchard looked at him. “Have you ever been married, Monsieur Floyd, or lost a loved one to a slow disease?”
Floyd looked down, chastened. “No, monsieur.”
“Then—with all due respect—you can’t really know what it is like. That feeling of betrayal… absurd as it was. Yet still I kept going, saving a little money each week, occasionally returning with a small win. And that was where I met Susan White.”
“Did the girl gamble?”
“Not seriously. She recognised me only as another tenant and asked if I might help her with a small wager. At first I was reluctant to have anything to do with her, since I almost felt as if Claudette was watching me, as silly as that seems.”
“But you did help her.”
“I decided that it would do no harm to show her how to study the form, and she placed a bet accordingly. Rather to her surprise, the horse triumphed. Thereafter she arranged to meet me at the races once or twice a week. Frankly, I think the horses fascinated her more than the money. I would catch her staring at them as they circled in the jockeys’ enclosure. It was as if she had never seen horses before.”
“Maybe they don’t have them in Dakota,” Custine said.
“And that was as far as it went?” Floyd asked. “A meeting at the races, once or twice a week?”
“That was how it started,” Blanchard said, “and perhaps that is how it should have ended, too. But I found that I enjoyed her company. In her I saw something of my late wife: the same zest for life, the same childlike delight in the simplest things. The truly surprising thing was that she appeared to enjoy my company as well.”
“So you started to meet up outside the racetrack?”
“Once or twice a week I would invite her into this room, and we would drink tea and coffee and perhaps eat a slice of cake. And we would talk about anything that crossed our minds. Or rather I would talk, since—most of the time, at least—she seemed content to sit and listen.” Blanchard smiled, wrinkles splitting his face. “I would say, ‘Now it’s your turn—I’ve been monopolising the conversation,’ and she would reply, ‘No, no, I really want to hear your stories.’ And the odd thing is, she seemed quite sincere. We’d talk about anything: the past, the movies, theatre—”
“And did you ever get a look inside her apartment?”
“Of course—I was her landlord. When she was out, it was a simple matter to use the duplicate key. It wasn’t snooping,” he added a little defensively, leaning forward to make his point. “I have a duty to my other tenants to make sure that the terms of the contract are being honoured.”
“I’m sure,” Floyd said. “When you were in there not snooping around, did you notice anything?”
“Only that the place was always very neat and tidy, and that she collected a remarkable number of books, records, magazines and newspapers.”
“A proper little bookworm, in other words. Not a crime, though, is it?”
“Not unless they’ve changed the law.” Blanchard paused. “There was one thing that struck me as rather unusual, though. Shall I mention it?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“The books kept changing. They were the same from day to day, yes, but from week to week, they changed. So did the magazines and newspapers. It was as if she was collecting them, then moving them on elsewhere to make room for new ones.”
“Maybe she was,” Floyd said. “If she was a rich tourist, then she might have been shipping goods back home on a regular basis.”
“I considered that possibility, yes.”
“And?” Floyd asked.
“One day I happened to see her in the street, a long way from the apartment. It was a coincidence. She was making her way down rue Monge, towards the Métro station at Cardinal Lemoine, in the fifth arrondissement. She was struggling with a suitcase, and the thought flashed through my mind that perhaps she had packed her belongings and left.”
“Skipping on her rent?”
“Except she had already paid in advance up to the end of the month. Guilty over my suspicions, I vowed to catch up with her and help her with the suitcase. But I am an elderly man and I could not make up the distance quickly enough. Ashamed that I could not be of assistance to her, I watched her vanish into the Métro station.” Blanchard picked up a carved pipe from a selection on a side table and began examining it absently. “I thought that was the end of it, but no sooner had she vanished than she reappeared. No more than a minute or two had passed since she entered, and she still had the suitcase. This time, however, it looked much lighter than before. It was a windy day and now the suitcase kept bumping against her hip.”