Why hadn’t he told her the truth about the book and the house? She would have laughed, but that was surely no reason to lie. Gabriel was well accustomed to his research being scoffed at. And dash it all, what had possessed him to say he’d stay in Paris until Henrietta was found? It had been false, saying that he wouldn’t be missed in Oxford. The dean would have his neck.
In the mile and a half between Salle le Peletier and the Quartier Pigalle, the buildings grew shabbier, the sidewalks thicker with pedestrians and alley cats and rubbish, and the street chatter grew more coarse. Quartier Pigalle, at the foot of Montmartre hill, brimmed with literary cafes and, up in the garrets, painters’ studios. A disreputable class of women infested the quarter, although at this time of day such creatures were still sleeping off last night’s wine.
Gabriel longed to whisk Miss Flax in and out of this neighborhood, posthaste. Despite her colorful past, Miss Flax somehow retained an air of innocence.
“Here it is.” She stopped at two large doors on Rue Frochot, painted a dingy yellow with the number 16 hanging on nails. She tried the rusty ring that served as a door handle. The door swung inward.
The boardinghouse’s courtyard was tight, weedy, and reeking of sour waters. Rainwater mottled the plaster walls. A rawboned woman bent with a bucket over a rain barrel at the bottom of a gutter pipe.
“Bonjour, madame,” Gabriel said.
The woman straightened. She inspected Gabriel’s gentlemanlike attire with approval, but she did not seem to be as impressed by Miss Flax’s matronly appearance. “Oui?”
“Are you the landlady of this establishment?” Gabriel asked in French.
She nodded, wiping raw knuckles on her apron.
“She is the landlady,” Gabriel said softly to Miss Flax.
“Good. Tell her we are here for Sybille’s belongings—oh, and find out how long Sybille lived here.”
“I am the uncle of Sybille Pinet,” Gabriel said to the landlady. “I am here to collect her things.”
“High time you did! I have already let her room, but she left me a box of trash. I was meaning to haul it to the rag and bone shop later today.”
“I did not know my niece well,” Gabriel said. “I had quite lost sight of her when I received a telegram from her place of employment at the opera house, informing me that she had been murdered.”
“Yes, murdered.” The landlady almost smiled.
“For how long did she let a room here?”
“Near two years—no, a year and a half. Would have been two years in the spring.”
“Almost two years,” Gabriel murmured to Miss Flax.
The landlady led them across the courtyard, through a low doorway, and into a murky room that was half office and half refuse heap.
“I remember Sybille as a meek young girl,” Gabriel said.
“They always turn out that way from those convent orphanages. She grew up in one of those since the age of four, she told me. Mild as a little lamb she was, and always paid her rent on time and kept her room clean. Scarcely made friends with the other girls. Never a peep out of that one. No trouble at all. Well, until lately.”
“Oh?” Gabriel said, ignoring Miss Flax’s glare. She did not like being left out of things, but he sensed the landlady was in a hurry to be rid of them. He wished to learn all that he could from her while he had the chance.
The landlady dug through boxes and buckets on the floor. “In this month or so past, she stayed out past curfew several times. I insist upon a strict curfew. Even these ballet girls who work late can be in by midnight, and I will not have my establishment going to the dogs like some. Mademoiselle Pinet claimed to have lost track of time, but that was not like her, you see, and she also seemed, as of late . . . haunted.”
“Haunted?”
Miss Flax pursed her lips with exasperation.
“Wait,” Gabriel whispered to her.
“Nerves,” the landlady said. “Almost on the verge of tears over her bread in the mornings, for no reason! And those dark circles round her eyes.” The landlady clucked her tongue. “Mixed up in bad business, sorry to say. Ah. Here we are.” She picked up a small wooden crate.