Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad,” Floyd said. “At least there’d have been some kind of order under the Germans. Still, it was the right outcome as far as I was concerned. There was a lot of dirty work to go around. A man who could speak American and French and pass as either was very valuable in those days.”

  Auger nodded. “I can imagine.”

  Floyd waved a hand, compressing years of his life into a single dismissive gesture. “I got a job as a bodyguard and chauffeur for a local gangster. That taught me more ropes than I ever knew existed. When the local gangster opposition wiped out my boss, I made a couple of sideways moves and found myself running a small, struggling detective agency.”

  “Shouldn’t there be another chapter—the one where you end up running a huge, successful detective agency, with branches all around the world?”

  “Maybe next year,” he said, smiling ruefully.

  “I like your attitude, Mister Floyd. You don’t seem to feel that the world owes you a living.”

  “It doesn’t. I’ve played jazz with some of the best musicians alive. And I’ve seen them paid in bottles of medicinal alcohol, which they gladly sucked down until they went blind from it. While I still have a roof over my head, I can’t feel too sorry for myself. This little operation won’t make me or my partner Custine rich men, but somehow or other we stumble on from year to year.”

  “Actually—and this is going to sound somewhat indelicate—it’s your little operation I came to talk to you about. Or rather one particular investigation being conducted by your agency.”

  “I wondered when the small talk was going to end. Pity—I was actually beginning to enjoy it. Shall we get to Susan’s belongings?”

  He could see the relief on her face. “You have them, then. I was so worried when I heard about what happened to her landlord.”

  “I have the box she gave him for safekeeping,” Floyd said. “I don’t have anything else, and it’s only good luck that I have the box.”

  “Why did Mister Blanchard give it to you?”

  “He thought the contents might shed some light on why she was killed. The old man was pretty convinced she was murdered.”

  Auger sighed. “Well, I can understand why he might feel that way. But it wasn’t murder.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “I knew my sister. Not well, as I’ve already told you, but well enough not to be surprised that this happened.”

  Floyd opened the desk drawer and took out the biscuit tin. He placed it on the desk between himself and Auger, then removed the metal lid so that she could see the items inside. “Go on,” he said.

  “Susan had problems. Even when she was still living at home, she was always getting into trouble, always making up stories to suit whichever version of the truth she wanted people to believe at a particular moment.”

  “Her and half the human race.”

  “The trouble with Susan was that she didn’t know where to stop. She was a fantasist, Mister Floyd, living in a dream world of her own making. And it only became worse as she got older. It was one of the reasons we drifted apart. I was on the receiving end of her fantasies one too many times.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with her being killed.”

  “What started as simple fantasising gradually took on a darker edge. I think she began to believe her own fairy tales. She started seeing enemies everywhere, imagining that people were whispering things behind her back, plotting against her.”

  “In these times she might have had a point.”

  “Not the way you mean it. She was a paranoid delusional, Mister Floyd. I have the medical files to prove it.” Auger reached into her handbag and produced a sheaf of papers. “You’re welcome to examine them. Susan received treatment for her delusional problems throughout her twenties, up to and including electroconvulsive therapy. Needless to say, none of it worked.”

  Floyd took the papers and flicked through them. They looked convincing enough. He passed them back to Auger, noticing as she took them that she had no rings on her fingers. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “But what I don’t understand is how your sister ended up in Europe, if she was so unwell.”

  “In hindsight it was a silly idea,” Auger said, stuffing the medical papers back into her handbag, “but she’d had a promising few months and the doctors thought a change of scenery would do her even more good. She didn’t have much money herself, but between us, the family was able to scrape together enough to put her on the boat and give her some pocket money to spend when she got here.”

  “That must have been some pocket,” Floyd said, remembering the rate at which Susan White had bought magazines and books.

  “I can’t account for Susan’s actions once she was here,” Auger said. “She could be very persuasive, and it’s possible she may have exploited the good trust of other people to get what she wanted.”

  “That’s possible,” Floyd allowed. “Mind if I ask something that might sound a little indelicate?”

  “I’m not easily offended.”

  “How did you know she was dead, if she was so out of touch? From what we can tell, Susan had almost no contact with anyone else in Paris. The authorities didn’t know who she was and didn’t care, either. And yet you’ve arrived from Dakota just over three weeks after she died.”

  “I didn’t know she was dead until I reached the apartment building,” Auger said. Her face was an unreadable mask: she might have been incensed or indifferent, for all Floyd could tell. “But I had a very good idea that something must have happened to her. Susan didn’t keep in touch with me, but she did send regular postcards back to our uncle in Dakota. He’d heard from her about once or twice a week since she arrived in Paris.”

  “So the postcards dried up?”

  “Not just that. The last few she sent showed signs that she was going off at the deep end again.” Auger paused and lit another cigarette. Floyd wondered why she bothered: she had barely smoked the last one. “She started going on about people being out to get her. The same old story, in other words: everything we hoped she’d put behind her. Well, clearly she hadn’t. But it was worse this time, as if in Europe her fantasies had come to full bloom. Nobody is the same person on vacation as they are at home, Mister Floyd: we all change a little, sometimes for the better. With Susan it was very much for the worse.”

  “What was in these postcards?”

  “The usual stuff, only magnified. People shadowing her, people out to kill her. Conspiracies she saw all around her.”

  “Was she in the habit of underlining things that mattered to her?”

  He caught a moment of doubt cross her face. “Now and then, I suppose. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Floyd said, waving the question away. “Passing thoughts.”

  Auger looked at the tin sitting on the desk between them. “She mentioned that box. She said she had accumulated a lot of evidence and given it to her landlord for safekeeping.”

  “But if she was delusional, none of the papers in that box are worth anything.”

  “I’m not saying that they are,” Auger answered. “But Susan made a final request, in one of the last postcards we got from her. It said that if anything was to happen to her, she wanted me to come and collect that box. She said it was the most important thing any of us could do for her, and she would die happy if she knew that the box would eventually end up in safe hands.”

  “And did you answer her?”

  “I sent a telegram back to her saying I would collect the box should anything happen to her.”

  “But you knew it was valueless. Are you seriously telling me that you came all the way across the Atlantic for a boxful of worthless papers?”

  “They weren’t worthless to Susan,” Auger said, with a bite in her voice. “They were the most important things in her world. And I made a promise. I don’t know about you, Mister Floyd, but I don’t break promises, no matter how pointless or absurd they might be.”


  Floyd reached out and pushed the tin across to Auger. “Then it’s yours. I can’t see any reason not to give it to you, especially after what you’ve just told me.”

  She touched the box guardedly, as if not quite believing her good luck. “You’ll just let me walk out of here with this, no questions asked?”

  “Questions have been asked,” Floyd said, “and you’ve answered them to my complete satisfaction. I’ll be honest with you: I looked through everything in that box and saw nothing of value. If I’d found cash, or bearer’s cheques, or the key to a safety deposit box, I might have wanted some more concrete proof that you are who you say you are. But a handful of old maps, some meaningless papers and an expired railway ticket? You’re welcome to it, Miss Auger. I just hope it brings your sister some peace, now that the box is back in family hands.”

  “I hope it does, too,” Auger replied. She picked up the box and slid it under her seat. “There’s just one more thing to deal with. You’ve been very reasonable, Mister Floyd, and I’m sorry to take your case away from you as well.”

  “My case?” Floyd asked.

  “Like I said, there was no murder. My sister may have killed herself deliberately—she attempted suicide once before—or she may have had an accident in her delusional state, imagining herself to be under attack. But the one thing I am absolutely certain of is that there was no murder, and therefore there is no murder case.”

  “It’s all right,” Floyd said. “The case closed itself the moment Blanchard hit that sidewalk.”

  “Right,” she said, nodding. “You were his agent in the investigation?”

  “Yes, and now that he’s not around, there’s no one to pay our expenses. Anyway, from what you say, there wasn’t exactly a case to begin with.”

  “Do you think Blanchard’s death had anything to do with Susan’s?”

  “It’s crossed my mind,” Floyd said. “One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, of course… especially of someone who’s only been a dead a matter of hours. But it occurs to me that maybe Blanchard had an idea of what had really happened all along. Maybe he felt he could have done more to help her, and that guilt began to weigh on his mind. In the end, it was too much for him to bear.”

  “Then Blanchard killed himself because Susan died? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “The two deaths can’t be unrelated. Suggesting that the landlord killed himself as a result of some vague sense of responsibility might not satisfy a jury, but it’s a lot neater than blaming some mysterious third party.”

  “Look,” Auger said, “I’m sorry about the way this has happened. You’ve been the piggy in the middle of something that didn’t concern you.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a plain manila envelope. She slid it across the table towards Floyd, who left it sitting there like a ticking bomb. “It’s not much, but I do appreciate your efforts—you looked after the box, after all—and I feel you deserve some kind of termination fee now that the case is closed.”

  Floyd put his hand on the envelope, feeling its seductive plumpness. There were easily several hundred francs in it, maybe more. “There’s no need for this,” he said. “My contract was with Blanchard, not you.”

  “It’s common human decency, Mister Floyd. Please accept it. I talked to some of the people at the apartment building and I know you’ve not been having an easy couple of days. Please accept this as recompense.”

  “If you insist.” Floyd took the envelope and dropped it into the same desk drawer that had held the biscuit tin. “And I do appreciate the gesture.”

  “Then we’re done, I think,” Auger said, standing up. She slipped her bag over her shoulder and tucked the tin under one arm.

  “Guess so,” he replied, also standing.

  She smiled. It was the first time he had seen any recognisable expression on her face. “Somehow I expected there would be more to it than this. Papers to sign, legal people to argue with… I didn’t think I’d walk out of here with the tin without putting up a fight.”

  “Like I said, it’s just a tin with some papers in it. And I wouldn’t want to make your life any more difficult than I have to. Losing a sister like that…”

  She reached across and took his hand. “You’ve been very kind, Mister Floyd.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “I hope things work out for you and your partner. You deserve some good luck.”

  Floyd shrugged. “Me and everyone else on the planet.”

  She turned around, looking back at him over her shoulder. Her hair framed her face in a nimbus of shining white, like the sun behind a thundercloud. “Thank you again. I can see myself out.”

  “It’s been a pleasure doing business.”

  She paused at the door. “Mister Floyd? You never did tell me your Christian name.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’d like to know. You’ve been so kind, after all.”

  “The name’s Wendell.”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s always sounded like a sucker’s name to me. That’s why my friends call me Floyd.”

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I rather like it. Wendell seems such an honest sort of name—to me, at least.”

  “Then to you I’m Wendell.”

  “In which case… goodbye, Wendell.”

  “Goodbye, Miss Auger.”

  “Verity, please,” she said, correcting him, then walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.

  Floyd waited a moment and then slipped his hand into his pocket, reassuring himself that the postcard was still there.

  He liked her. She had the looks and seemed to be a nice enough lady. But he couldn’t help wondering how she would have reacted if he’d mentioned “silver rain.”

  SIXTEEN

  Auger shut the door behind her, clutching her handbag and the biscuit tin to her chest as if they might be snatched away at any moment. On the landing outside the detective’s premises, a heavily made-up old woman studied her with sly, knowing eyes while enveloping herself in a haze of silver-blue cigarette smoke. She said nothing, but the look on her face conveyed both accusation and bored indifference, as if she had witnessed every possible sin in the world and had long since ceased to be shocked by any of them. Her attention flicked momentarily to the tin Auger was holding so protectively, then her eyes lost focus and whatever gleam of malice had been there a moment before. Auger was about to take the stairs down to the next landing when she noticed that another woman—this one young, with very black hair held back from her face with a spotted red headscarf—was on her hands and knees, waxing and polishing the lower steps.

  The woman looked up as Auger was about to descend. “Please,” she said, nodding towards the black iron framework of the elevator shaft that rose up the centre of the stairwell.

  Grateful that the elevator car was ready and waiting, Auger stepped inside and slid shut the trellised gate, then pressed the button for the ground floor. With a thud and a whine, the elevator began its inching descent, creeping past the cleaning girl. The elevator descended another floor and then came to an abrupt, rattling halt, exactly between landings. Auger swore and pressed the button again, but the elevator refused to budge. She tried forcing open the sliding gate, but it had locked itself tight.

  “Hey,” she called out. “Can someone help me? I’m stuck in this thing.”

  She heard the cleaning girl say something, but it sounded more sympathetic than useful. Auger tried the elevator button again, but with no more effect than before. Feeling suddenly dejected, it began to dawn on her that she might be stuck inside it for hours while some overworked engineer made his grumbling way across the city on a Saturday. Assuming anyone had the presence of mind to call for assistance, which might be one assumption too many. She called out again—if the cleaning girl didn’t answer or understand her, then perhaps she might be able to rouse Floyd—but this time she heard nothing at all in reply.

  A minute passed with no further sign
of movement. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing and the occasional metallic rattle as her movements caused the elevator car to chafe against its restraints. The building sounded utterly deserted.

  She heard a door shut somewhere above her, followed by a rapid succession of descending footsteps. The footsteps quickened in pace and then became thuds, as if someone was skipping two or three steps at a time. Auger peered through the meshwork screen that constituted the elevator car’s roof and saw a dark figure circle the landing immediately above her. Before she could call out, the figure had bounded down the steps surrounding the part of the shaft in which she was stuck in a series of flighty jumps and was on the landing below, continuing towards street level. Auger had only seen the figure in full view for an instant, and that blurred by motion, but she had not been able to make out any facial details. The figure was wearing a high-collared coat, a fedora jammed low on his head with the brim turned down. For an absurd moment she wondered if it might have been Floyd, but even as the idea occurred to her, she dismissed it as stupid.

  A moment later, the elevator buzzed back into life and resumed its descent. It came to a halt on the next landing and, not wanting to take any further chances, Auger opened the gate and made the rest of her journey on foot. With the box still in her possession, it was a relief to reach daylight. Somehow she felt safer outdoors, illogical as that may have been.

  She looked up and down rue du Dragon, but there was no sign of the running man, or of anything else obviously out of place. The street was as quiet and sleepy as it had been when she had arrived, but there were some pedestrians walking along it, and if anyone was to try anything against her, she knew she could count on one or two witnesses from the equine butcher’s shop on the ground floor of Floyd’s building.

  A little further down the street, Auger stepped into the doorway of a boarded-up hosier’s shop, long out of business, and snapped the lid from the tin. Inside, as Floyd had shown her in his office, was a thick rubber-banded bundle of paperwork and documents. She took this bundle and stuffed it into her handbag. Having no further use for the tin, she pushed it into a pile of cardboard boxes and other debris that had built up in one corner of the shop doorway.