Woman in the Fifth

I would posit that you might be the only American living on the rue de Paradis in a chambre de bonne.’

‘It’s cheap.’

‘We do know how you found the room. A certain Adnan Pafnuk, who worked at the Hotel Select on the rue Francois Millet in the Sixteenth. You were a guest at this hotel from December 28 of last year for a period of ten days, during which time you fell sick with the flu and had a dispute with the day clerk — a Monsieur Brasseur …’

His face was impassive as he said this, but I could see him simultaneously studying mine … and registering my growing nervousness as the revelation hit me: I am the prime suspect here.

‘Brasseur was a deeply unpleasant man.’

‘So we have learned from anyone who worked with him. Nonetheless, it is also intriguing to note that — just as you had a little war with Monsieur Omar and he was found dead on his beloved toilet — so you also had a little war with Monsieur Brasseur and he was struck down by a car—’

‘You don’t think that I—’

‘What did I tell you about interrupting me, monsieur?’

I hung my head and wished a hole would open up in the floor and whisk me out of this nightmare. Coutard continued, ‘We have, of course, checked the motor vehicles records. You do not own a car, nor did you rent a car on the day that Monsieur Brasseur was run down. He remains paralysed — and it appears that the condition is permanent. But who’s to say that you didn’t hire somebody to mow him down?’

‘My motive being … ?’

‘Wasn’t there a dispute about money?’

‘He overcharged me for the doctor who came to see me when I was ill.’

‘Voila: the motive.’

‘I am not in the habit of running down people who cheat me, any more than I cut the throats of neighbors who treat the communal toilet like an open sewer.’

‘Perhaps. But the fact that your fingerprints are all over the toilet brush that had been shoved down Monsieur Omar’s throat—’

I now knew why I had been kept waiting over ninety minutes. They were running a computer check, comparing my prints with those found at the crime scene.

‘I used that brush to clean the toilet,’ I said.

‘And you’ve just interrupted me again.’

‘Sorry.’

‘So you quarreled with Monsieur Brasseur. You quarreled with Monsieur Omar. But you befriended Monsieur Adnan. Was your friendship just a friendship?’

‘What are you implying?’

‘Once again, the peculiarity of the story is fascinating. Consider: an American comes to Paris and falls sick in a hotel. Nothing unusual about that. But then the same American meets a young Turkish gentleman in the hotel — and before you know it, he takes over his chambre de bonne. Now that is an unusual narrative twist, n’est-ce pas?’

I raised my hand. He nodded that I could speak.

‘If I could explain …’

‘Off you go.’

I took him through everything that happened at the hotel, and how Adnan had looked after me, and how hearing that I was short on funds—

Now Coutard interrupted me.

‘Because you had lost your job and had to flee the States after your tragic affair with your student?’

A long pause. I wasn’t surprised that he knew this — but hearing him confront me with this fact still unnerved me.

‘Your detective work is most impressive,’ I said.

‘It must have been a great tragedy for you, losing your professorship, your family, your maitresse.’

‘Her death was the worst aspect of it all. The rest—’

‘I saw all the press coverage — courtesy of Google. May I say something which is perhaps beyond my professional concern? As I read about your downfall, I actually felt sorry for you. So what if she was your student? She was over eighteen. She was not coerced. It was love, yes?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘The fact that everyone accused you of trying to make her have an abortion—’

‘I never even knew she was—’

‘You do not have to plead your case with me, monsieur. As far as I’m concerned, you were a victim of a very American inability to accept moral complexity. It all must be black and white. Right and wrong.’

‘Isn’t that what a police officer deals with all the time?’

‘All criminal action is fundamentally gray. Because everyone has a shadow … and everyone is haunted. Which leads me to another curiosity about this case: your whereabouts at night. Monsieur Sezer told us you were usually out until dawn, and slept in most days until the early afternoon.’

Sezer was evidently doing his best to shop me — for reasons best known to him. Did he have Omar bumped off? Was that why he was trying to pin it on me?

‘I’m a night owl, yes.’

‘So what do you do all night?’

‘Often I simply walk, or stop in an all-night cafe and write on my laptop. But many nights I am at home.’

‘But the owner of the boulangerie on the rue du Faubourg Poissonniere informed us that you arrive every morning just after six to buy two pains au chocolat. You do this without fail six mornings a week.’

‘I am a man who likes to stick to a fairly strict routine.’

‘Do you work somewhere at night?’

‘Only on my novel.’

‘The novel that has yet to find a publisher?’

‘Yes, I am an unpublished writer.’

‘Perhaps that will change.’

‘It will.’

‘I admire your self-belief. But I can’t wholly believe that you simply walk all night or spend time writing in a twenty-four-hour cafe. Which cafe might that be, by the way?’

‘I use several,’ I said, wondering if he could hear the lie in my voice.

‘So which ones exactly?’

‘There’s this place in Les Halles called Le Tambour. And there’s also the Mabillon on the boulevard Saint- Germain—’

‘That’s a long way from your quartier.’

‘Half an hour on foot.’

‘If you walk fast.’

‘All right, forty-five minutes if you’re limping. As I told you, I like to wander at night.’

‘You’re a flaneur ?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Might you also be a flaneur who holds down a full-time job?’

‘I don’t have a carte de sejour.’

‘That has never stopped the vast majority of immigres from working here. Professionally speaking, I don’t care at all if you are holding down illegal employment or not. I am investigating a murder. As you are “of interest” to us, I simply want to find out your whereabouts on the night of the murder.’

‘As I said, I was—’

‘Yes, yes, strolling the streets of Paris like Gene Kelly.