Century Rain

NINETEEN

It was still raining when they reached street level, but it was the last dregs of mid-afternoon drizzle, and the grey blanket of the sky was punctured by odd-shaped splashes of pastel blue. After all that happened underground, the mundane continuation of city life—the constant welter of pedestrians and vehicles—felt to Auger like a peculiar kind of insult. She waited until the official had returned to his subterranean world, locking a gate behind him, before speaking to Floyd.

“I don’t know where to begin,” she said, addressing him in English now.

“You can begin by thanking me. I got you out of a fix down there.”

“That fix wasn’t any of your business. What were you doing, following me like that?”

“I wasn’t following you,” Floyd said. “I just happened to see you in trouble.”

“You just happened to see me. Of all the Métro stations in the city, you just happened to be passing the time of day in Cardinal Lemoine?”

Floyd shrugged. “Well, not exactly.”

Auger started walking away from him, raising her hand in the probably vain hope of catching a taxi. In her state, they were more likely to speed up than slow down.

“Where are you going?” Floyd asked, his tone reasonable.

“Anywhere but here. Anywhere I think there’s a chance I won’t be followed by a nosy man in a shabby raincoat.”

“Is that how they teach you to show gratitude in Dakota?”

She swung around, teetering a little on her heels. The pavement beneath her was slick and slate-coloured with rain. “I’m not ungrateful,” she said, glaring at him, “but my gratitude ends here. Now please walk away, or I’ll have to call the police.”

“In your state? I’d like to see you try.”

A taxi sped by, making a special point of sluicing her with dirty brown rainwater. “Just get away from me,” she said, screwing up her face as the water seeped into her shoes. “We concluded our business this morning. Or don’t you remember the nice termination fee I gave you?”

“Some of that termination fee just bailed you out of trouble,” Floyd replied.

“I wasn’t worried about him. I was handling things perfectly well until you barged in.”

“He was right, though, wasn’t he?” Floyd looked at her with an amused expression. He had very deep wrinkles around his eyes. He was a man who either laughed a lot or cried a lot.

“Right about what?”

“You did go into that tunnel. There’s no point denying it—I had a tail on you from the moment you left my offices.”

“I noticed her,” Auger said. “I hate to break the bad news, but she isn’t very good.”

“She’s cheap. The point is that she saw you duck into that tunnel, the one our friend claimed you just came out of.”

“I thought you said you weren’t following me.”

“And I wasn’t. Not personally. But given what I’d learned, I wondered if it might be… informative to sit and wait in Cardinal Lemoine.”

Gradually, she felt some of her anger abating, or perhaps being put away for later use. In a softer voice she said, “Why exactly did you help me? You had nothing to lose by letting that man hand me over to the authorities, which is most likely exactly what he would have done.”

“Nothing to lose,” Floyd said, “except that they’d never have got to the bottom of whatever it is you’re up to.”

“And you think you have a better chance of that?”

“I’m halfway there,” he said.

“Well, that makes two of us,” she said, sotto voce.

“I’m sorry?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you’re a bad man, Wendell, but I do know that this isn’t something you want to get involved in.”

He narrowed one eye. “Now that’s hardly the kind of thing you should say if you want me off your case.”

Another taxi made a concerted effort to drench her. She stepped away from the kerb, closer to Floyd. “But why are you on my case? I told you who I am. I explained all about my sister.”

Floyd took out a narrow sliver of wood and placed it between his teeth. He bit down on it, making a dry cracking sound. “You did, and it sounded mighty plausible. For about thirty seconds.”

“Then why did you let me walk out of your office with the tin?”

Floyd winked at her. “Have a guess. And while you’re at it, why don’t I drive you somewhere you can get warm and dry and put some colour back into your cheeks?”

“Thanks, but I’ll take my chances with the taxis. Failing that I’ll walk, or construct some sort of raft.”

“My car’s just around this corner. I can take you to your hotel or to my office. Either option would offer you a change of clothes and some warm water.”

“No,” she said, turning away from him again.

Just at that moment, a heavy truck roared past pushing a tidal wave of toffee-coloured water along the road ahead of it. Auger let out a little shriek of exasperation as a filthy spray enveloped her from head to foot. As the truck veered past, the driver offered a consolatory wave of his hand, as if everything that had just happened was an act of divine fate far beyond his own control.

“Take me to the hotel,” she said. “Please.”

“At your service,” Floyd replied.

From Cardinal Lemoine, Floyd took Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel boulevards, until he reached the nexus of intersecting streets around Montparnasse. The few patches of clear sky that had emerged a little while ago had shrivelled away again, as if deciding that the effort simply wasn’t worth it. The rain had stopped, but the entire city huddled under a swollen mass of ominous clouds that seethed and circulated overhead like so many prowling wolves.

“You have to understand things from my point of view,” Floyd said, glancing at his passenger in the rear-view mirror. He seemed to be taking his chauffeur duties very seriously and had insisted that she ride in the back, where there was more room. “I was taken on to solve a case. It doesn’t matter to me that the man who hired me is now dead. Until the case is closed, I have a duty to find out what happened. All the more so now that my partner is under suspicion of murder.”

“But I already told you—” she began.

“You already told me a pack of lies designed to get me to hand over the box,” Floyd said. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”

“I’d keep your eyes on the road if I were you.”

He ignored the remark. “Take this business about you and your sister coming from Dakota.”

“What of it?”

“You might have fooled Blanchard, but your accent isn’t anything I recognise. I’m not even sure you’re American.”

“You obviously don’t know your own country very well.” Auger shifted in her seat, rearranging the damp folds of her coat. “By your own admission, you’ve been in Paris for twenty years. That’s easily long enough to have become out of touch.”

“If you’re from Dakota, then I’m far more out of touch than I thought.”

“I can hardly be blamed for your ignorance. Tanglewood is a very small community and we have our own way of doing things. Have you ever met Mennonites, or Amish, or Pennsylvania Dutch?”

Floyd steered the car on to boulevard Edgar Quinet, skirting the huge cemetery at Montparnasse. “Not lately,” he said.

“Well, then,” Auger said, as if this settled the matter conclusively.

The play of cloud-filtered light across the cemetery illuminated a huddle of mourners taking turns to cast flowers into the open pit of a grave. Their umbrellas merged into a single black canopy, like a private thundercloud.

“Well what?”

“If you’d met any of those people, I’m sure you’d find their accents and manners just as out of the ordinary as my own. Small communities breed their own ways.”

“Tanglewood must be very small indeed. Did I tell you I couldn’t find it in the gazetteer?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Anyway,” Floyd said, “I can’t begin to imagine what business a girl from a small town in Dakota would have in a Paris Métro tunnel. Or her sister, for that matter.” He met her eyes in the mirror. “The thing is, Susan White also had a thing about Cardinal Lemoine. She was observed entering the station with a heavy suitcase and leaving with a light one.”

“If there’s a significance to that, I’m afraid it quite escapes me.”

“According to the late Mister Blanchard, and judging by what I saw when he let me into her room, your sister had a mania for collecting things. Her room was a holding area for huge numbers of books, magazines and newspapers, maps and telephone directories. It looked as if she collected just about anything she could get her hands on.” Floyd waited a beat. “Pretty odd behaviour for a tourist.”

“She liked souvenirs.”

“By the ton?”

Auger leaned forward. He smelled her perfume: it made him think of roses and spring. “What exactly are you saying, Mister Floyd? Let’s get it out into the open, shall we?”

He turned the car on to boulevard Pasteur, slowing down behind a bus carrying an advertisement for Kronenbourg beer. “Your sister’s actions simply don’t add up.”

“I already told you she had mental problems.”

“But Blanchard got to know her pretty well, and he never suspected that there was anything wrong with her head.”

“Paranoiacs can be very manipulative.”

“What if she wasn’t paranoid at all? What if all that was just a story you tried to sell me to throw me off the scent?”

“You’re saying that my sister’s actions might have had some rational explanation?”

“Miss Auger.” They were off first-name terms now. No more Verity, no more Wendell. “I just watched you crawl out of a Métro tunnel. Right now I’m about ready to believe anything, up to and including the possibility that the two of you were not sisters at all, but fellow spies.”

“So now we’re getting to it,” she said, rolling her eyes in disbelief.

“Let’s look at the facts, shall we?” Floyd continued, unperturbed. “Susan White obviously wasn’t acting alone. She must have had an accomplice whom she met with in Cardinal Lemoine. The accomplice made the suitcase switch, or emptied the one White was carrying and took the contents away. My guess is that the accomplice then made their way into that self-same tunnel you just came out of. There’s obviously something in there that means a great deal to you.”

“Go on,” she said, her tone mocking. “Let’s hear the rest of your preposterous little theory.”

“It isn’t a whole theory yet, just the start of one.”

“I still want to hear what you think you’ve got.”

“My partner found something odd in Susan White’s room. The wireless set had been altered, probably by Susan herself. It looks as if she was using it to receive instructions, or perhaps to tap into communications between rival spies.”

“Ah. So now we’ve got two groups of spies? It gets better, it really does.”

“Custine never did crack the code. Turns out his attempts were futile anyway: Susan was using an Enigma machine.”

“I’m quite sure that means something to you, but—”

“It’s a sophisticated enciphering machine. Which makes me think she was a spy. So what does that make you?”

“You’re being totally absurd.”

“Except I’m not the one who just crawled out of a Métro tunnel.”

For a long while, Auger said nothing at all. Floyd took boulevard Garibaldi as far as place Cambronne and then steered on to Emile Zola, heading towards Auger’s hotel.

“Look,” she said, “I can’t expect you to understand any of this, but everything I told you about my sister was the truth. However, it’s also true that she had some kind of fixation with Cardinal Lemoine station. I told you she believed forces were moving against her, didn’t I?”

“Maybe you did,” he allowed.

“I can’t explain the wireless, or that machine you mentioned… except to say that if you listen to the radio these days, there are a lot of odd transmissions. And who knows where she found that machine? I take it this is something you can buy, if you want one badly enough?”

“Get to your point, Miss Auger.”

“My point,” she continued, “is that it’s more than likely that my sister picked up one of these odd radio channels and absorbed it into her private conspiracy. As for the tunnel… well, I can’t deny that she thought there was something down there. She mentioned it more than once in her postcards. She also mentioned that she had hidden something valuable in there. Whether she had or not, I couldn’t say, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave Paris without finding out for myself.”

“And this didn’t strike you as being just the slightest bit dangerous?”

“Of course I knew it was dangerous. And of course I couldn’t very well tell the man in the station what I was doing.”

Floyd’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “So that’s all it was? Just tidying up some of your sister’s unfinished business?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically.

“It still doesn’t explain why there have been two deaths. Got a neat explanation for that as well, have you?”

“As you already said yourself, Blanchard probably felt guilty about what had happened to Susan. Perhaps her death was an accident after all. Those low railings look unsafe to me.”

Floyd slowed the car to a crawl as they neared the hotel, looking for a suitable parking spot. The bad weather had brought everyone out in their cars, with only a few brave souls chancing the sidewalks.

“You know what?” he said. “I’m half-tempted to believe you. I’d like nothing more than to close this case with a clear conscience. Maybe you are exactly who you say you are, and all the suspicious circumstances I keep seeing are just red herrings left behind by your sister.”

“Now you’re beginning to talk sense,” Auger said.

“There’s a woman in my life who wants to leave France,” Floyd said. “She wants me to pack my bags and leave with her. A large part of me wants to go with her.”

“Maybe you should listen to that large part.”

“I’m listening,” Floyd said, “and right now the only thing that’s keeping me here is the thought that I might be turning my back on something big. That and the fact that my partner is in a lot of trouble with the police, and will be until this case is closed.”

“Don’t get sucked into Susan’s games,” Auger said. Making an obvious effort to sound uninterested, she asked, “So who is this woman, anyway?”

“You’ve met her.” Floyd had spotted a parking space. He crunched the Mathis into reverse and prepared to ease the massive car into an available space, thinking of the car as a coal barge and the space as a vacant berth. “She’s the woman who followed you from my office.”

“The cleaning girl?”

“The cleaning girl, yeah. Except she isn’t a cleaning girl. Her name’s Greta and she’s a jazz musician. Good at her job, too.”

“She’s pretty. You should go with her.”

“Easy as that, is it?”

“There’s nothing to keep you in Paris, Wendell.”

He looked at her. “We’re back on Wendell now, are we?”

“I’ve seen the state of your office—business isn’t exactly booming. I’m sorry about your partner, but I assure you, there really isn’t a case to be investigated here.”

The Mathis’s rear fender kissed the front fender of a dented Citroën behind them. Floyd slipped the car into first gear and was inching it forward when Auger suddenly lunged hard across the back seat, away from the side nearest the hotel. “Drive,” she said.

Floyd looked back at her. “What?”

“Get out of here. Fast.”

“I can’t. I have to pick up Greta.”

“Wendell—just drive.”

Something in her voice made him obey her without further question. He lurched the Mathis out of the parking space, not minding that he scraped the car in front of him in the process. He just had time to glance towards the lobby of the hotel and see the small child standing on the steps immediately in front of the door, playing with a yo-yo. The child was male, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and shiny buckled shoes over white socks. But there was nothing boyish about the child’s face. Floyd would never have given the boy a moment’s attention had Auger not been so obviously alarmed, but now that he looked more closely, he saw that his face was wrinkled and cadaverous: a withered parody of a child’s.

The boy looked towards them and smiled.

“The boy?”

“Just get us out of here,” Auger said.

Across the street, the glass door to a brasserie swung open. Greta rushed out with her coat bundled over one arm, a waiter following her with a tray in his hand and a bewildered look on his face. Greta turned around without stopping and threw some money towards him.

Floyd hit the brakes.

“What are we waiting for?” Auger asked, her alarm increasing. She leaned forward anxiously and grasped the back of Floyd’s seat, trying to see what was holding them up.

Floyd leaned over and popped the front passenger-side door. “Make that ‘who,’ not ‘what.’ I had Greta watching the Royale in case I didn’t pick you up in Cardinal Lemoine.”

Floyd’s attention darted back to the boy. He had reeled in his yo-yo and was taking slow, thoughtful steps towards the car. Behind the Mathis, a queue of vehicles was already making its impatience known.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Auger said, her knuckles white on the seat back.

Floyd signalled to Greta to move faster. She slipped behind the Mathis and slid in through the passenger-side door, pushing wet strands of black hair from her brow. Even before she had pulled the door shut, Floyd had the car moving again, picking up speed towards the Mirabeau bridge. At the intersection with the quayside road, he swung the car back north, towards the Eiffel Tower. The low clouds had snipped off the top of the structure, as if it had never been completed.

“Would someone mind telling me what’s going on?” Greta asked, pushing her coat over the back of the seat.

“I found Miss Auger.”

Greta looked at the woman in the back of the car. “So I gathered. But why the sudden excitement?”

“She told me to drive,” Floyd said. “She sounded as if she meant it.”

“And you just do whatever she says?”

Floyd caught Auger’s eye in the rear-view mirror. “Is it safe now?”

“Just keep driving,” she said. “Since you made a point of not crossing the river, I presume you’re taking us back to your office?”

“Unless you have a better idea,” he replied. “What happened back there? What made it unsafe for us to hang around?”

Auger shook her head once. “It doesn’t matter. Just drive.”

“It was the boy with the yo-yo,” Floyd said. “Wasn’t it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

He turned to Greta. “You kept a good watch on the hotel since I left?”

“No, Floyd. I painted my fingernails and browsed fashion magazines. What do you think I was doing?”

“Did you see the boy?”

“Yes,” Greta said, after a moment’s consideration. “I did. And I didn’t like the look of him either.”

From the back seat of the car, Auger watched Floyd check the mirrors as he turned the car into rue du Dragon. It was now late afternoon and the street had already taken on something of the gloom of evening. Auger found it difficult to believe that only seven hours had passed since she had paid a visit to the detective’s office. It might as well have been weeks ago, for all she had in common with the determined and confident version of herself who had walked out of the building, prize in hand. She had thought that the mission was all but finished, barring the trivial business of returning to the portal. You poor, pitiable fool, Auger thought. Had she stood face to face with her former self, she would have slapped her cheek and laughed in spite.

“I don’t see any nasty-looking children,” Floyd said.

“What about the tail from the Quai?” asked the woman in the front passenger seat, whose accent was distinctly German. Floyd had told Auger her name, but she had forgotten it as soon as she saw the boy waiting outside the hotel.

“I don’t see anyone,” Floyd said. “But you can bet someone’s still got their eye on me.”

Auger leaned forward. “Someone’s following you as well?”

“I’m a popular guy.” Floyd parked the car outside the horsemeat butcher Auger remembered from her visit that morning. The shop front was covered in a mosaic of red, white and black tiles, with the figure of a red prancing horse picked out in a Romanesque style beneath the words “Achat de Chevaux.”

“Floyd,” said the German woman, “this is all happening a little too quickly for me.”

“It’s happening a little too quickly for me as well, if that’s any consolation,” Floyd replied. “That’s why we’re all going up to my office to have a nice little chat, and maybe we can sort some of this out.”

The German woman looked at Auger with a sneer of disapproval. “Is she seriously going to walk along the street looking like that?”

“We’ll take her upstairs, let her get clean and dry,” Floyd said. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind if she borrows some of the clothes you left behind.”

“She’s welcome to any that will fit her,” the woman replied, looking Auger up and down with a less than complimentary eye.

“Thank you,” Auger said, with an exaggerated smile.

“Ladies, if you’re going to start scratching each other’s eyes out, could you at least wait until I’ve had a shot of whiskey? I can’t stand violence on an empty stomach.”

“Shut up, Floyd,” the German woman said.

Floyd got out of the car and went around to the passenger side to open the door for Greta. Auger was already out of the car, looking around for anything she didn’t like, or that seemed out of place. But the street was as quiet and sleepy as she remembered it, and even a loitering child would have stood out.

“He wants to talk to you,” the German woman said, tapping Floyd’s arm and pointing to the shop with the horse sign. Behind the glass, the proprietor was gesturing at Floyd, waving him inside.

“Monsieur Gosset will have to wait,” Floyd said. “He only ever grumbles about the rent, or the noise from his upstairs neighbours.”

The three of them entered Floyd’s building. The elevator that had stalled Auger’s exit earlier was waiting for them like an iron trap. They all got in and Floyd pushed one of the brass buttons. With a buzz and a lurch, the car began its climb to the detective’s floor.

“I’m still waiting for an explanation, Floyd,” the German woman said.

“Maybe I should begin by introducing the two of you properly,” Floyd said, putting on a veneer of civility. “Verity Auger, Greta Auerbach. I’m sure the two of you will get along like a house on fire.”

“Or something,” Auger muttered.

The elevator came to a stop. Floyd opened the gate and led them on to the landing. Gesturing for them to hang back, he walked to the pebbled-glass door that led into his office and examined the gap between the door and the frame, just above the lock. He turned back to them with a finger pressed against his lips.

“Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “I put a hair across this gap before I left this morning. It’s not there any more.”

“You think someone’s been in there?” Auger asked. Involuntarily, she touched her hip, feeling for the reassuring presence of the automatic. As tempted as she was to draw the gun now, she didn’t want the hole she was in to get any deeper.

“Wait,” Floyd said. Very gently, he tried to turn the doorknob. Auger heard it click against resistance. The door was still locked.

“Maybe the hair blew away,” Greta suggested.

“Or maybe someone found their way inside with a skeleton key,” Floyd replied.

A door a little further down the landing opened a crack, a bar of watery daylight cutting across the carpet. An elderly woman pushed her powdered face into the hall and said, in French, “Monsieur Floyd? You had better come inside, I think.”

“Not now, Madame Parmentiere,” Floyd replied.

“I really think you better had,” she said. Then she stepped back, the door creaking open another few inches. Looming behind her, a fire iron in his hand, was a large man dressed in a vest and braces.

“Custine!” Floyd said.

“You’d better listen to the lady,” the man said, lowering the fire iron. “I don’t think it’s safe for us to go into the office. The boys from the Big House have this building under heavy surveillance, and every once in a while they send someone inside to see if you’re home.”

“Come in, please,” Madame Parmentiere insisted.

Floyd shrugged and led the way into the woman’s apartment.

The layout of the rooms was completely different from the offices occupied by the detective, and even to Auger the décor and ambience suggested that they had stepped back fifty or sixty years, into a Paris at the turn of the century. There were no concessions to the modern era: not a wireless set or telephone to be seen, and certainly no television. Even the clockwork phonograph that sat beneath the window looked as if it would have suffered a fit rather than play anything more modern than Debussy. The furniture was upholstered with a maroon velvet plush, the sweeping wooden legs and armrests covered in gold leaf. The interior doorways were framed by pairs of peacock’s feathers, tilted like ceremonial scimitars. A brass bird’s cage was suspended from the ceiling, but there was no evidence that a bird had ever occupied it. Stationed around the room were at least a dozen antique oil lamps, their tinted glasses throwing shades of blue, green and turquoise on to the immaculate white walls even though none of them were lit. The room faced south and was drinking in what little remained of the day’s light.

Madame Parmentiere closed the door behind them. “You cannot stay here long,” she said.

“I know,” said the man Floyd had referred to as Custine, “and we won’t inconvenience you for a moment longer than is necessary. But may we sit down for the time being?”

“Very well,” the old lady said. “I suppose I had better make some tea, in that case.”

They all found seats, while Madame Parmentiere pushed her way through a curtain of gleaming glass beads into what Auger presumed was an adjoining kitchen.

“So who wants to start?” Floyd asked, sticking with French. “Right now I don’t know where to begin.”

“Who’s she?” Custine asked, nodding in Auger’s direction.

“The sister,” Floyd replied.

“Not much of a redhead, is she?”

“We were half-sisters,” Auger said.

Floyd spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “What can I say? She’s got an answer for everything, André. Every damn question you can throw at her, she’s worked it all out. She even had me half-believing that a well-bred girl might take to snooping around the tunnels of the Paris Métro.”

“I told you…” Auger began, but abruptly changed tack, addressing Custine. “Anyway, who are you? I’ve got as much of a right to ask that question of you, as you have of me.”

“This is André Custine,” Floyd said. “My associate and friend.”

“And equally hopeless case,” Greta added.

Auger looked around at them. “I can’t tell whether you like each other, or hate each other.”

“We’ve been having a trying few days,” Floyd replied, before suddenly lowering his voice. “Is it me or is there a bad smell in this place?” he whispered.

“It’s me,” Custine said cheerfully. “Or rather the shirt I just removed. How else do you think I got into the building without being picked up?”

“Monsieur Gosset,” Greta said, her face lighting up with understanding. “You smell like horsemeat!”

Floyd buried his head in his hands. “It just gets better and better.”

Of the four of them, Custine was the only one who seemed completely calm and unfazed, as if this was exactly the kind of thing that happened most afternoons. “I’d had enough of Michel’s hospitality at Le Perroquet. He means well, but there’s only so long a person can stay sane in that kind of room. Thankfully, he was able to use his contacts to find me temporary lodgings elsewhere, but I needed to return here first, having been in something of a hurry when I dropped by yesterday. But how to enter the building unobserved?” He smiled, clearly enjoying the chance to be the centre of attention. “That was when it hit me: I could kill two birds with one stone. I knew that Gosset received a daily consignment of horsemeat from somewhere north of the city. I remembered the name of the delivery firm and that Gosset owed the agency a favour. A couple of telephone calls later and I’d secured myself a snug little hideaway in the back of the delivery lorry.”

“You won’t be able to pull tricks like that for much longer,” Floyd observed. “Sooner or later they’ll be searching every truck in Paris, head to toe.”

“By then, I hope such subterfuge won’t be necessary.” Custine reached up and took a cup and saucer from the tray that Madame Parmentiere had just brought into the room. In his huge hands, the delicate chinaware looked like fragile props from a doll’s house. “Anyway, here I am, although I don’t intend to stick around for more than a few hours.”

“Given any thought as to how you’ll get out of the building?” Floyd asked.

“I’ll cross that bridge when it becomes a necessity,” Custine said, sipping at the very weak tea. “Chances are they’ll be expecting me to arrive, not leave, so they may be off their guard.”

“I like a man who thinks ahead.”

Custine aimed one little finger towards Auger. “I only got half the story. You claim to be Susan White’s sister, or half-sister, or whatever?”

“There’s no ‘claim’ about it,” Auger said. “I am who I said I am. If you and Monsieur Floyd don’t like it, that’s entirely your problem.”

“This, incidentally,” Floyd said, “is what passes for gratitude in Mademoiselle Auger’s scheme of things. I was treated to it when I got her out of trouble in the Métro station and again when we were near the hotel.”

Custine studied Auger. “What happened near the hotel?”

“Auger saw something she didn’t like,” Floyd said. “Now she’s refusing to talk about it.”

Auger sipped at her own tea. The whole setting, with the four of them—not to mention their host—sitting down in these very genteel surroundings, felt ludicrously inappropriate. Less than an hour ago, she had been managing the controlled contraction of a wormhole throat, after dispatching a ship back to the real Mars in another part of the galaxy. Now she was balancing chinaware on her knee while sitting primly upright on an old-fashioned upholstered armchair, in a room where even the thought of violence seemed incongruous.

“I panicked,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Only when you saw that strange child,” Floyd said.

Custine made a low growling sound before speaking. “What kind of child?”

“A nasty-looking little boy,” Floyd replied. “Like something from a Bosch painting. Ring any bells, André?”

“Funnily enough—”

“Nasty little children have been popping up all over this case,” Floyd elaborated. “A girl here… a boy there… maybe more than one of each. We’ve been trying to discount their significance, but Mademoiselle Auger was spooked by the boy she spotted long before she’d had a good look at him.”

“Meaning what?” Custine asked.

“Meaning she was looking out for a child, or something like one,” Floyd replied, fixing Auger with a determined gaze.

“I told you,” Auger said, “I simply panicked—”

“Who are those children?” Floyd demanded. “What do they have to do with the killings? Who are they working for? More to the point, who are you working for?”

“Excuse me.” Auger put down her cup and saucer and stood up from the armchair. “This is all very nice, but…” She fumbled for the automatic, sliding it from her waistband. There was a collective intake of breath, even from Custine, as her hand reappeared with the gun. “Just for the record,” she said, working off the safety catch, “I know how to use this. In fact, I’ve already killed with it today.”

Floyd sounded calmer than he looked. “So can we dispense with the cover story, at long last? Nice girls don’t carry guns. Especially not automatics.”

“That’s fine, then, because I’m really not a very nice girl.” Auger pointed the gun at Floyd. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“That’s good to know.”

“But understand this: I will if I have to.”

“She sounds as if she means it,” Custine said. The low rumble of his voice reminded Auger of a passing train.

Floyd stood slowly from his seat, putting down his own tea. “What do you want?”

“A change of clothes. That’s all.”

Floyd glanced at Greta. “Clothes won’t be a problem.”

“Good. Open your office. One of you has a key.”

Custine was the first to reach slowly into his pocket and tossed a key through the air. Auger grabbed it with her free hand and tossed it to Floyd. “The rest of you stay here,” she ordered. “If anyone moves, I’ll shoot Wendell. Got that?”

“No one’s going anywhere,” Custine said.

“Move very slowly,” Auger instructed Floyd as she started backing out of the apartment, keeping the gun trained on him. She risked a glance over her shoulder before entering the hallway, but everything was as they had left it, with the elevator still waiting. She backed herself against the wall next to the pebbled-glass door.

“Go inside,” she said. “And if you’ve got a gun in there, don’t think of using it.”

Floyd answered in English. When they were alone, it made more sense than French. “Detectives only have guns in the movies.”

“You said Greta had left some clothes that would fit me. Find a suitcase and throw the clothes into it.”

Floyd unlocked the pebbled-glass door. “What sort of clothes?”

“Don’t get cute. Just throw in a selection and let me worry about it later.”

“Give me a minute.”

“You’ve got thirty seconds.”

Floyd disappeared into the warren of rooms. Auger heard doors being opened and closed in haste, things being thrown around and rummaged through. His voice echoing, he called back, “Why don’t you tell me what all this is about, now that we’re on such excellent terms?”

“The less you know the better.”

“I’ve heard that too many times in my life to find it satisfying.”

“Get used to it. This is one time when it definitely applies. What’s holding you up?”

“I’m looking for a suitcase.”

“A bag will do. Anything. I’m getting impatient here, Wendell. Don’t make me impatient.”

“What colour stockings do you like?”

“Wendell…”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. You’ll just have to make do with what you’re given.” More doors were opened and shut. She heard things scraping on wood. Floyd raised his voice again. “So what’s next, Auger? Back to the States, mission accomplished? Or are you not really from the States after all?”

“All you need to know is that I’m on your side,” she said.

“That’s something, I guess.”

“And that I’m here to help you. Not just you, but you and everyone you know.”

“And those children? And whoever killed Susan White and Blanchard?”

“I’m not with them. Hurry up.”

“You could at least tell me who you’re working for. Like it or not, I’ve helped you now. I didn’t have to bail you out in the station.”

“And I said thanks. For what it’s worth, you did the right thing, and if you could see the big picture you’d agree with me.”

“So describe the big picture to me.”

She tapped the barrel of the automatic against the doorframe. “Don’t push your luck. Have you found a bag?”

“Just filling it now.”

Auger felt something in her relent. In some small, grudging way she couldn’t help but recognise a kindred spark of stubbornness in Wendell that she knew all too well.

“Listen,” she said, “I’d tell you everything if I knew all of it myself. Well, maybe I wouldn’t tell you all of it, but I’d tell you enough to satisfy your curiosity, if that was what you wanted. But the fact is that I haven’t got it all figured out yet.”

“How much did Susan White have figured out?”

“Not everything, but more than I have, I think.”

“Let’s hope that isn’t why she ended up dead.”

“Susan knew she was on to something big, something worth killing for. I think she was scared by the scale of it.”

“Were the two of you both working for the same government?”

“Yes,” Auger said carefully. “And it is the United States.”

Floyd returned carrying a double-handled canvas bag of dubious condition. It was brimming with clothes, almost all of them black or shades of purple and blue so close to black as to make no practical difference.

“But you were never sisters, were you?”

“Just colleagues,” Auger said. “Now stay put and kick the bag in my direction.” He complied. “That’s good.” She picked it up, taking both handles in one hand. “Thank your girlfriend for this. I know she wasn’t crazy about lending me her clothes, but it’ll all be worth it in the end.” She kept the gun pointing at Floyd. “I’m sorry it had to happen this way. I hope things work out for all of you.”

“Why can’t you just tell me everything you know and let me be the judge?” Floyd asked.

“Because I’m not that cruel.” Auger started backing towards the elevator. “All right, here’s the deal: I’m leaving now, and I don’t want anyone following me. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” Floyd said.

Auger stepped into the elevator car, dropped the bag by her side and slid shut the trelliswork gate. “No funny tricks on the way down this time, all right?”

“No funny tricks.”

“Good.” She pressed the lowest of the brass buttons. “I said it before, but I’ll say it again: it’s been a pleasure doing business.”

The car began to descend.

“Wait,” Floyd called, his voice almost drowned out by the whining racket of the elevator. “What did you mean by ‘not that cruel?’ ”

“I meant exactly what I said,” Auger replied. “Goodbye, Wendell. I hope you have a long and fulfilling life.”