“I’ve grown into it like an old shoe.”
“These are new times, a new Paris.”
Floyd picked up a pencil and rolled it between his fingers. “I think I preferred the old one. It smelled better.”
“Then maybe you should air out the place a little,” Belliard said, opening the office window. A sudden stiff breeze blew through the room, sending papers flying on to the carpet and slamming shut the main and connecting doors. Belliard turned from the window and walked towards Floyd, making no effort to avoid the case notes and paperwork now littering the floor. “There. Better already. It wasn’t the city that had a bad smell about it, it was your office.”
“If you say so.”
“Let’s stop playing games, shall we?” Belliard moved back to the side of the desk directly opposite Floyd and planted the heels of his hands on the edge of it. He was looking Floyd straight in the eye. “There’s been a murder in the Blanchard building.”
“I know,” Floyd said. “I’m the poor sap investigating it.”
“Not that one. I mean the one that happened about three hours ago.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Blanchard is dead. He was found on the pavement beneath his balcony, just like the unfortunate Mademoiselle White.” Belliard looked at one of his men. “You know, perhaps there was something in that business after all.”
Genuinely shocked despite the forewarning in Custine’s message, Floyd found it difficult to form the words he wanted to say. “Blanchard’s dead? Blanchard’s actually been murdered?”
Belliard looked at him with pale, discriminating eyes, as if judging the exact degree by which Floyd was surprised. “Yes,” he said, his thin, bloodless lips moving but the sound reaching Floyd delayed, as if travelling across a great divide. “And the unfortunate thing is that the last person seen in his presence was your associate Custine. As a matter of fact, he was observed leaving the building in something of a rush.”
“Custine didn’t do it,” Floyd said automatically.
“You sound astonishingly sure of that. How could you possibly know that, unless the man himself has offered you an explanation or an alibi?”
“Because I know Custine. I know he wouldn’t do something like that.” Floyd’s throat was suddenly dry. Without asking anyone’s permission, he poured himself a sip of brandy and knocked it back.
“How can you be so certain? Do you have that much insight into his character?”
“I have all the insight I need,” Floyd snapped, “and it wouldn’t matter a damn whether I did or not, because it still wouldn’t make any sense. Blanchard took us on to solve his homicide case—why would one of us murder our own client?”
“Maybe there was always an ulterior motive,” Belliard said. “Or perhaps the murder was completely impulsive: an act of sudden, blinding rage, entirely without premeditation.”
“Not Custine,” Floyd said. His eyes drifted to the telephone, where the slip of white paper was still jutting out visibly from underneath the base, in spite of his attempt to hide it. Belliard couldn’t see it from his present angle, and might not make anything of it if he could, but if he did notice it… Floyd felt nausea flood through him like water through the Hoover Dam.
“No matter what he may have told you, André Custine was a violent man,” Belliard said, almost sympathetically. “A man died in custody under his questioning. You knew that, didn’t you? An innocent man, as it happened; not that his innocence would have been much consolation while Custine was breaking every finger on one of his hands.”
“No!” Floyd said, aghast.
“I see from your expression that he didn’t tell you. What a shame. All this might have been avoided, otherwise.”
Feeling detached from himself, as if bobbing above his body like an invisible balloon, Floyd said, “What do you mean?”
“Simply that Blanchard might still be alive. Evidently, Custine lost it again.” Belliard pursed his lips disapprovingly, as if being forced to listen to an off-colour joke. “There’s no telling what might have set him off.”
“Don’t you idiots get it?” Floyd said. “There was one homicide connected with the Susan White case and now there’s been another. Don’t go trying to pin this on Custine just because of his past, just because you and he have some unfinished business. You’ll be going after the wrong man while the right man gets away with it again.”
“A nice theory,” Belliard said, “and I’d be tempted to give it the time of day if there wasn’t one niggling little detail out of place.”
Floyd closed the telephone directory, trying to make the action seem as casual and automatic as possible. “Which is?”
“If your man Custine is the innocent party here—just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—then why was he in such a hurry to leave the scene of the crime?”
“I don’t know,” Floyd said. “You’ll have to ask him that yourselves. No, actually, I do know: Custine was no fool. He’d have known exactly how you’d try to pin this on him, for old time’s sake.”
“Then you allow that he may have fled the scene?”
“I allow nothing,” Floyd said.
“When was the last time you saw Custine?”
“This morning.” Floyd noticed that one of the other officers was writing notes in a spiral-bound notebook with a black marbled fountain pen. “I dropped him at the Blanchard place while I went off to make some other enquiries.”
“ ‘Some other enquiries,’ ” Belliard repeated, a mocking note in his voice. “That does sound so very professional, when you put it like that. What was Custine supposed to be doing?”
Floyd shrugged: at this point he saw no need to lie. “There was something about the White case that bothered us. Custine needed to get a better look at the wireless set in her room.”
“And that was the last time you saw him or heard from him?”
“I tried calling the Blanchard apartment not long before you arrived. No one picked up.”
Belliard looked at Floyd with an amused glint in his eye. “That doesn’t quite answer my question.”
Floyd reminded himself that the last thing he should do was lose his temper with these Quai men, and forced himself to speak calmly and civilly, like a man with nothing to hide. “That was the last contact I had with Custine.”
“Very well,” Belliard said. “And was there any sign that Custine had been here in your absence? He’s your associate, so I presume he has his own key to your premises.”
“There’s no sign that he’s been back.”
“Nothing disturbed, nothing missing, no messages?”
“Nothing like that,” Floyd said, as wearily as he dared.
Belliard motioned for the other officer to snap shut his notebook. “We’re done here, I think.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a business card. “Now it’s my turn. We found one of your business cards on Blanchard’s body, and another turned up with the witness who saw Custine fleeing the scene. By way of reciprocity, here’s my card.”
Floyd took it. “Any particular reason why I might need this?”
“Custine may try to contact you. It’s not unusual, especially if someone’s just gone on the run. He may need personal items, he may need funds. He may wish to put his side of the story to a friend.”
“You’ll be the first person I call if that happens.”
“Make sure that I am.” Belliard reached for his hat, then stopped himself. “I almost forgot: there’s a small favour I need to ask of you.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I need to use your telephone. We have a team still sweeping the crime scene and I’d like to call them before I make my next move, just in case they’ve turned something up. There’s a wireless in the car, but it’s a long walk downstairs and I won’t be able to call through to Blanchard’s apartment directly.”