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“At about three in the afternoon, when she phoned from Gare du Nord.”
“That would have been four o’clock French time.”
“Yes. She said she was about to leave, that she had changed her ticket for an earlier train.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“No, she just asked if I could pick her up at the station in Markham. I was surprised, as I hadn’t been expecting her back until later. To behonest, I wasn’t really expecting her to come back even though she’d said she wouldn’t be staying overnight. I suppose I hoped she’d patch things up with Pierre. I asked her how it had gone with Pierre and she burst into tears and told me that he hadn’t been at the flat.”
“Did she say how long she’d waited at their flat?”
“No. But it takes about fifteen minutes to get from their flat to Gare du Nord by metro, and when she phoned me, she was already at Gare du Nord and had managed to change her ticket for an earlier train.” With difficulty, she worked backward from four o’clock French time. “To have had time to do that, she must have left the flat at about three o’clock. No, earlier, because in between leaving the flat and arriving at Gare du Nord, she’d been shopping.”
“Shopping?”
“Yes, she was wearing new clothes when I picked her up at the station and when I complimented her on them, she said she’d decided to treat herself to something new.”
PC Locke frowned. “How was she when you picked her up at the station?”
“I was expecting her to still be upset, but she wasn’t, she was—defiant, I suppose. Apparently, she’d got chatting to someone on the train who told her that Pierre didn’t deserve her and that she could do better.” She gave a small smile. “She obviously decided to take his words to heart.”
“Where were the clothes she’d been wearing when she left?”
“In her bag, I presume.” Iris thought for a moment. “Actually, they couldn’t have been, she only had her handbag with her. She hadn’t taken anything bigger because, as I said, in her mind she was only going for the day. It’s why she’d bought a return ticket.”
“Did she have a carrier bag, from the shop where she’d bought the clothes?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember seeing one.”
“Do you remember what she was wearing when she left?”
“Yes, a pale blue dress and blue canvas shoes. She liked things tomatch. We’d bought the dress together, it’s why I noticed she wasn’t wearing it when she came back.”
“Can you show them to me please? The dress and the shoes?”
“Yes, of course.”
PC Locke followed Iris upstairs. Iris pushed open the door to Laure’s bedroom, then stopped. She hadn’t been in since Laure died, although the police had.
“I-I haven’t been in yet, not even to take the sheets off the bed,” she said, faltering. “I know I’ll have to at some point but I can’t face it.”
“It’s probably best to leave everything as it is for the moment.”
“It smells of her.” Iris’s voice broke. “Her perfume.”
“Take your time.”
Iris nodded, then walked over to the wardrobe. She opened the door and rifled through the clothes on the rail, assaulted by memories of Laure wearing each item. There weren’t that many; Laure had arrived empty-handed and had only bought a few pieces the day they’d gone shopping together, two dresses, a skirt, a pair of jeans, some shorts and T-shirts.
“It’s not here,” Iris said, blinking back tears. “Her dress. It must be in the wash.”
“What about the canvas shoes she was wearing?”
The few pairs of shoes that Laure owned were neatly lined up along the bottom of the wardrobe. Iris scanned them quickly.
“Not here either. Downstairs maybe.”
They trekked back down the stairs and Iris checked the hallway, the cupboard under the stairs where she and Gabriel kept their shoes, and outside the back door. She even checked the garage. But Laure’s shoes were nowhere to be seen. And her blue dress wasn’t in the wash.
