But it proved to be one of the new high-rise apartment buildings with no manager living there. Rambeau swore in French at length. 'It is more delay. But we will still proceed.' He took Mendoza back to his office. Mendoza had been interested to see that that office was laid out on the general lines of his own, a much larger one beyond, housing a number of desks where men typed reports, questioned witnesses. Rambeau issued peremptory orders to the man nearest the door. 'It will not take long to find out,' he said to Mendoza, and within twenty minutes was looking at a sheet of paper with a name and address on it. 'So. The building is maintained by what you would call a management corporation. They oversee many such buildings, apartments and offices, for the owners. They will know, some answers.'
Suddenly he erupted into a whirlwind of energy. He bundled Mendoza back to the car, to another tall building down anonymous streets, finally into the office of a small man in a sharply tailored suit. They went on talking with many gestures for some time and the small man brought manila-covered files from a row of file cases in a larger office. At last he went away and was gone for some minutes.
Rambeau said, 'So we progress. He has gone to get us the key. And it was something I should have foreseen. Rents in Paris are very high now, and often girls like Juliette, they share an apartment with another, two other girls. That has happened here. Only the one girl officially leases the apartment, you see. Up to four months ago, that apartment was leased under the name of Claire Ducasse. Since then, the checks for the rent are signed by Juliette. The lease is to end in December. Who knows what happened?-perhaps this Ducasse has lost her job or gets married or has a little argument with Juliette. But of course the address and phone number will be in her name in the directory. Never mind. We have got there in the end.'
The small man came back and handed him a key and they exchanged formal bows. Rambeau drove rapidly back to the apartment building. Juliette Martin's apartment was on the fourth floor, and the door opened into a pleasant living room with upholstered couch and chairs, a lady's writing desk with a fold-down lid, a small T.V. in one corner, all very neat and clean. There was one bedroom with twin beds, a bureau, a chest of drawers, a lamp table between the beds. Clothes hung in the closet. A metal stand held shoes on the floor. Rambeau went back to the living room and made straight for the desk while Mendoza began to search drawers in the bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later, Rambeau said, 'There is something stranger than we had thought here, my friend. There is no correspondence at all in the desk. No address book. No list of phone numbers beside the telephone, and it is across the room from the desk, it would only be natural- Me, I am a bachelor, but that is not to say I know nothing about women. Always they keep the love letters, even the little notes, the letters from friends. They keep so much!-but aside from this there should be her bankbook, the canceled checks-she is a businesslike young woman, she would keep perhaps a book of accounts-and there should be receipts for the rent.'
Mendoza stood in the middle of the living room, rocking a little heel to toe, his eyes vacant. He said, 'There's nothing in the bedroom ?Media vuelta! But, pues si. They had to have her keys. That made the delay. That and maybe something else. Saturday to Tuesday.'
'What are you saying?'
'They had to get her keys to get in here. I don't know if she'd have packed her address book, planning to be gone only three weeks or a month-the people she might send postcards to, she'd have known their addresses. The fiance, friends. Our anonymous X's would have known her address from the letters to Grandfather, but they needed the keys. They got those as soon as she arrived. That autopsy report-yes, it's on the cards she was kept on enough sedatives to be docile all that while-Saturday to Tuesday-and somebody came over here to clear out the apartment. The address book, if it was here, everything personal. I think she'd have kept Grandfather's letters, you know. So that even if the police ever got this far, there'd be no definite connection.' He focused on Rambeau. 'Does it strike you that this place is a little too clean? It hasn't been occupied for nearly a month. There ought to be more dust.'
'In the name of seven devils!' said Rambeau. 'To remove all the fingerprints? That is not so easy to do.'
'No,' said Mendoza. 'Maybe that was just somebody trying to be extra thorough. And Trennard identified the photographs, but that isn't quite the same as identifying the body. And such a businesslike, ambitious fellow, apparently he hadn't got an eye for a pretty girl, it could be argued that he couldn't be sure. Do you know what it adds up to, Rambeau? I don't think they ever expected anybody to get this far. But just in case, they made a clean sweep.'
' Sacree Mere,' said Rambeau. He brought out a cigarette and then put it away again. He said, 'If there is anything for the scientists to find-but now I will say something also. Grandpere. He becomes an obsession with me as with you. But if you are right, something else emerges, and that is-money. All of this-what we deduce-has cost someone a respectable amount of money. The bribing of the witnesses to the Hoffman business, and now a flight to Paris-'
'Yes, and it's another dead end,' said Mendoza. 'Where do we go from here?'
Rambeau said violently, 'By the good God in heaven, we will go on from here! This animal, he insults me with his little cleverness. We will scour France for this Claire Ducasse- I will bring the technicians here, and somewhere there will be Juliette's fingerprints. We will inquire at all the shops and businesses within half a mile of here and that office-she must have purchased food, clothing, necessities at local places, and she will have gone to shops with her friends-somewhere she will be known and perhaps the friends remembered. There are the banks-we will find where she kept an account, examine the records. My friend, there must be something to lead us on.'
'I wonder,' said Mendoza.
PALLISER AND LANDERS walked down Jefferson Boulevard toward Thirtieth Street. The nearest parking slot had been a block away. Landers said, 'This is a damned waste of time.'
'Probably,' agreed Palliser. They went into the drugstore on the corner. It was a dingy old place with miscellaneous merchandise on two long counters. No customers were in at the moment, and there was a man sitting on a high stool behind the pharmacy counter at the rear of the store, bent over a ledger. Palliser said, 'There it is.' Just inside the front door on the wall was a cork bulletin board and there were several little handwritten signs thumbtacked to it. FREE KITTENS, and a phone number. GOOD TRANSPORTATION CAR $300. SEWING MACHINE OR SALE-BABYSITTING- 'Freeman remembered the fellow's name was Len. I just thought we could have a look at him.'
At the bottom of the board, there was a little card attached with one thumbtack to the cork. In neat ballpoint print it said, Len, any hand work, with a phone number.
Palliser looked at it, took it down, and walked down the length of the store. The man on the stool looked up inquiringly. He was a middle-aged black man in a pharmacist's white smock. 'Do you know anything about this fellow?' asked Palliser, showing the card.
'Oh, sure. I wrote that for him, I don't think he can read and write, he's kind of simple. He comes in here on errands for his mother sometimes and she always sends a note, says what she wants. I guess he could do any kind of work like cleaning or yard work-he's big enough.'
'Do you know what his last name is-where he lives?'
'Sure. She writes me checks sometimes. Up on Twenty-ninth, their name is Williams. She's Martha Williams. The apartment on the corner.'
They left the car where it was and walked the block up there. It was another ancient apartment building. The mailbox said that the Williamses lived in 4-A at the rear.
There wasn't any bell. Landers knocked on the door. After a dragging minute it was opened by a tall thin black man with a vacant face and dull eyes. Palliser asked, 'Did you do some work for a fellow named Rawson last Friday, on Thirtieth Street?'
Before he answered, they realized that he was drunk. Beyond him they could see a bare, untidy living room. A T.V. was on with the volume turned down and there were a couple of empty bottles on the floor in front of it. He was nearly falling-down drunk and he certainly didn't look too bright. He said, 'Huh?' And Palliser hesitated. There wasn't anything to be got out of him. And then Williams said in a thick, slurred voice. 'Tha' fella-yeah-yeah- I guess I show him! Tha' damn cheapskate dude.' He hiccuped and clutched the door for support. 'Him inshult a guy, give
