Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

The Maidservant’s Letter by Gigi Vernon

Paris, April 2, 1741

“You’re Monsieur de l’Amour?” the young maidservant asked uncertainly, stepping up to the small, flimsy table that served as his desk.

At his usual spot in the covered, arched passageway among the other hawkers of goods and services, Vincent nodded and smiled encouragingly.

She pulled a sheet of paper out of her apron pocket and handed it to him.

Vincent nodded, inspecting her over the top of his spectacles. Illiterate servants were his best customers and droves of them sought out his stall for his professional letter-writing and reading services. For a small fee, he kept them linked to family and lovers in the provinces. His advice and comfort he gave for free.

“Please. I’d like a letter read to me,” the girl said.

He hadn’t seen this particular maidservant before. She was prettily slender with small, sharp features set off by dark curls under a white, lace-edged cap. He had an uncanny memory for faces, even those he’d only glimpsed. What else had he to do now, spending his days and nights among the living and the dead in the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents?

The most popular in Paris, the cemetery was half a dozen city blocks wide and long, enclosed on all sides by tall houses perched atop arched passageways. A city within a city. On this sunny April day, the brisk wind made the faint odor of decay from the graves hardly noticeable to the residents, merchants, shoppers, and mourners who were going about their daily business.

As he did dozens of times a day, Vincent glanced across the cemetery beyond the spire of the Chapel of the Virgin toward the tomb of his fifteen-year-old daughter, and drew strength from her presence. He touched the crucifix he wore around his neck.

“Monsieur?” The girl recalled him to the present.

He turned brisk and efficient. “You have a letter you want me to read?”

“Yes, monsieur. A love letter,” she said with a bold, saucy glint in her dark eyes, as she pushed the letter toward him across his desk’s rough wood.

He took the letter, untied the blue ribbon around it, and asked, “You haven’t come to me before, have you?”

“No, monsieur. You were recommended to me by a friend,” she replied, her gaze steady under his scrutiny.

“Oh yes? Who would that be?” he asked, always pleased to hear about recommendations.

“Catherine?” she said uncertainly.

“Catherine Pousse?”

She nodded.

“Delightful girl.” He smiled with approval.

“She said you were the very best at reading and writing love letters. That’s why you’re known as Vincent de l’Amour. If she hadn’t said you were the best, I would never have come here.” She put a cheap bunch of wilted violets to her nose. “I don’t care for cemeteries myself.”

“No doubt that is because you haven’t known tragedy yet,” he said kindly.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, with a mixture of suspicion and pity, as if she thought he might be senile. Though Vincent’s hair and mustache may have been streaked with gray and his face etched with lines, his heart and soul were still young, younger than this girl whose scorn thinly disguised her fears.

A nearby funeral party fought the eddies of swirling dust kicked up by the gusts of wind, the priest bellowing his prayer at the grave’s edge, the men holding onto their black tricornes, and the women clutching their long black veils as they wept loudly.

Turning back to the girl, Vincent gave her a reassuring smile. “Let me see what you have here.”

The seal of the letter had already been broken. With a glance at the seal’s red wax imprinted with the image of a bird, he unfolded the letter. The blue paper was heavy and expensive, with a lustrous sheen to it. The young man must be wealthy and educated. Vincent hoped for the girl’s sake he was also of a good character, but he frowned when he saw that the note was addressed and signed with mere initials. Certain signs of a clandestine romance. He sighed with disapproval. But then, what did it really matter? The only thing that really mattered was life. And love.

He began to read aloud.

“M.? That’s you?” he asked, peering at the girl.

“Yes,” she said with a shrug and a frown as if she couldn’t understand why he was asking such an obvious question.

He continued reading:

Vincent looked up from the letter, and smiled at the girl’s happiness. Her features had softened with a faraway smile, and her brown eyes were alight with hope and dreams.

“Would you like me to read it again?” he asked gently.

“Will it cost more?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

“Yes, then, if you please.” She closed her eyes to listen better.

He began again at the beginning, and read slowly with feeling. Afterwards, he asked, “Would you like me to write a response?”

She opened her eyes, and for a moment he read joy there before her eyes widened with sudden fear at the sight of something behind him. A shadow fell across his desk, and he turned to see his friend, Monsieur Radnor, under-inspector of the Paris police. Tall and muscular with the upright posture of an ex-soldier, Radnor regarded them with arms crossed, unsmiling, black tricorne pulled low over his black eyes.

“Never mind. I have to go,” she said, her glance darting nervously to Radnor, as she snatched the letter from Vincent’s hand. “How much do I owe you, monsieur?”

“Two sous.”

She hurriedly dug the coins out of a pocket in her skirt, and dropped them on the table. “Mouche!” she said under her breath to Vincent in warning as she fled.

Fly, she’d called Radnor. Slang for the police who some considered to be no more than spies listening for words of treason against the king.

Impervious to the insult, Radnor watched the girl hurry away. “She’s lying,” he said in his low, slightly raspy drawl.

“You think everyone’s lying,” Vincent snapped. “She was simply frightened by you. And no wonder. You look like an undertaker or a Huguenot minister in all that black.” As usual, Radnor was in severe black from head to toe — a black tricorne over black hair pulled into a neat queue, a spotless black coat, waistcoat, britches and stockings, black gloves to disguise the absence of the tip of the middle finger on the left hand, and polished black shoes with paste buckles. Only the snowy white of his cravat and shirt at the neck and wrists relieved the black. “You’ve frightened all my other customers away too,” Vincent complained, standing up.

Radnor tossed a bright silver coin on the table. “I’ll buy you a good meal to make up for it.”

Vincent eyed the coin, undecided. An ecu would buy a very fine meal indeed, but then Radnor would expect information in return. He considered the coin as he began to close up, the work of only a few moments, requiring him to wipe the ink from his quills, cork the bottle of ink, put pens, sand, ink, and paper into the cheap wooden box he used to store his writing implements.

Observing him without offering to help, Radnor continued in his drawl, “I’m an under-inspector for the Paris police. People should fear me. Especially criminals like that young woman.”

“She’s in love. Surely His Majesty Louis XV hasn’t made love a crime. Yet.”

“She’s not in love,” Radnor said.

Vincent snapped the box shut and slipped it under his arm. “Why don’t you wear something more cheerful? A young man like yourself. How do you hope to find a wife?” He suspected it was an affectation on Radnor’s part, intended to be striking and attract attention. Feminine attention.

Radnor smiled humorlessly, but said nothing.

Vincent could imagine the effect the rare flash of white teeth from Radnor had on impressionable girls of easy virtue. He’d lectured Radnor on such matters before. “How do you know she’s lying?” he asked.

“I’ve seen her before. She’s a maid at the residence of a certain Monsieur du Sonton who reported the theft of his wife’s necklace and earrings last week.”

“You think this girl had something to do with it? She seems honest enough to me.”

Radnor rolled his eyes. “Not everyone in Paris is as honest and good-hearted as you are, old man.”

“Nor is everyone as corrupt and cynical as you,” Vincent quipped as he pocketed the coin. His box under his arm, he picked up the portable table and his stool and headed for the entrance of the house above and behind him. He opened the door, then climbed the stairs to his apartment on the top floor.

Without being invited, Radnor followed, still not offering to help. “That letter was no doubt sent to the maid’s mistress, Marie du Sonton. She filched it and intends to use it to blackmail her mistress. The oldest game in the world.”

Vincent stopped in the narrow, dim stairwell, and turned to face his friend. “You’re too young to be so certain of everyone’s guilt,” he reprimanded.

“Though I suspect that you led a sheltered life before you became known as Monsieur de l’Amour, you’re too old to be so gullible,” Radnor shot back.

“Have some faith in humanity.”

“You will find that your faith in the humanity of Paris is misplaced.”

“Not in this case. I’m sure of it.”

With a melodramatic snorting, Radnor asked, “Where would you like to dine?”

Watching Vincent turn toward home and the cemetery after the meal, not for the first time, Radnor thought his friend would make a good priest. Poor deluded Vincent and his misguided attempts to befriend those who were hopelessly lost. Radnor’s fondness for the older man, a fondness he did not quite understand himself, made him worry about Vincent’s blindness to the dangerous and sordid world of Parisian crime. The truth behind the maidservant and her letter would edify him.

Radnor’s instincts told him the maidservant was somehow connected to the theft, and he always listened to his instincts when a generous reward for the return of stolen goods was at stake. He sought out the informer he’d assigned to the Hotel du Sonton. The man’s name was Pierre Abiter, but in his mind, Radnor called the man “the Sniveler,” for he was constantly wiping his running nose and dabbing at his watery eyes.

The Sniveler was a felon paroled from the Bastille on the condition that he turn informer for the police. Though he had wanted to retire from housebreaking, he had been reluctant at first to turn informer. He’d settled into his new profession surprisingly well, however, and now was one of Radnor’s best and most reliable men.

Each day, the Sniveler made his reports to Radnor at the same time at the same tavern. Radnor found him at a table by himself in a corner, surrounded by used, wadded-up rags. Radnor ordered a jar of wine for the two of them.

“Anything to report?” Radnor asked, after they’d been served.

“An inside job for certain. My money’s on the housekeeper.”

“Any chance she had an accomplice?”

“No doubt.” The big fireplace suddenly belched smoke into the room, causing the Sniveler to cough and blink rapidly as he dabbed at his reddened eyes.

Radnor described the maid. “Know the woman?”

“Sounds like Marie Lasourde. One of the upstairs maids. A real slut, they say.”

So her name was Marie like her mistress. That didn’t prove anything. “Does she have a lover?” Radnor asked.

The man sneezed and gave his nose a resounding trumpeting blow. When he was finished, he said, “Several, according to the other servants.”

“Anyone new? A wealthy man?”

The Sniveler nodded with enthusiasm. “So they say.”

Radnor inhaled sharply with surprise. He’d been certain the woman was lying. “His name?”

“Don’t know, monsieur. But I can find out. One of the other maids is sure to know.”

“Do so then. And be quick about it,” Radnor said, annoyed at the prospect that he’d been mistaken about the maid and Vincent correct. He dropped a coin on the table between them and stood up, before remembering to ask, “How about Madame du Sonton? Has she a lover?”

“If she has, she’s kept it secret well. None of her household suspects a thing. But then she’d have to be especially good at lying to cheat her husband. He’s a jealous man. Very jealous. Hardly lets her out of his sight.”

Unwilling to give up his initial theory, Radnor instructed, “See what more you can discover about Madame.”

Cynicism was a coward’s approach to life, death, and love, and Vincent decided Radnor was in need of a lesson. He would prove Radnor wrong. He would find the maidservant and learn the truth. But first, he would pay a visit to Catherine Pousse at the laundry where she worked to ask her about her friend.

Catherine stood in the doorway of the large establishment, steam billowing out into the street from behind her, wiping her wet, red hands on her dirty apron, and pushing her damp hair from her face.

She was one of his favorite customers. A bouncy young woman with a fresh round face and a ready smile, honest, spotlessly clean, though always slightly disheveled and moist. Pleased to see him, she gave him a peck on the cheek in greeting as if he had been her father. He asked after her well-being, then described the maidservant who’d come to see him.

“I don’t know anyone like that, Monsieur de l’Amour. You sure it was my name she mentioned?”

“Yes,” Vincent said with a sinking feeling. “You’re certain you don’t know her?”

“Yes,” she said nodding. She smiled at him, and apologized, “I’ve got to get back to work now, monsieur. I’ll stop by for another letter to my mother soon.”

Disappointed to find that the maidservant had lied to him, Vincent turned towards the Hotel du Sonton. Was it as Radnor suggested? Was she involved in something illegal? Poor girl. Another one who had lost her way. That’s what happened to young people when they came from the provinces to Paris and were set adrift without guidance from parents or priests in the most corrupt city in the world. The lucky ones found him, and he willingly guided them, serving as a father to them. The unlucky ones found themselves in Radnor’s clutches, or worse.

That evening, the Sniveler appeared at Radnor’s apartment.

Angrily, Radnor pulled the man inside. “What are you doing here? I told you never to come here. If it’s known you inform for me, you’ll be no good to me.”

“Sorry, Monsieur Radnor,” the Sniveler said as he pulled his hat from his head, “but I thought you’d want to know that Marie Lasourde has disappeared.”

“How do you mean disappeared? Has she left town or been kidnapped?”

“Don’t know, monsieur. No one knows where she went. The other maid who shares a chamber with her says her things are gone.”

“All of them?”

“She left her gowns.”

She couldn’t very well have made a discreet escape lugging a bundle. Perhaps she didn’t need the gowns if she intended to live off the fortune that the necklace and earrings would bring. “What did she take?”

“Personal trinkets. Ribbons, a locket, letters.”

“Was she wearing her favorite gown by any chance?”

The Sniveler looked at him blankly. “Don’t know, monsieur.”

Disappearing in a favorite gown was a sure sign of flight rather than kidnapping. Every informer knew that. “Well, find out!” Radnor ordered, irritated by the man’s ignorance.

Radnor’s instincts had steered him true once again. He’d unearthed crime. Either blackmail or theft or perhaps both. Most likely the maidservant had taken flight the moment she suspected they were onto her. When they found her, they might even find the stolen jewels, and then he’d make a tidy sum to add to his savings. A few more lucrative cases like this one and he’d be able to purchase the more respectable office of inspector which he had held until the new, reforming head of the Paris Police had taken over a year ago.

The next morning, Radnor was awakened by a messenger sent by the Sniveler. A skinny, twelve year old recited to him: Marie Lasourde had been wearing her favorite gown when she’d disappeared. And she was sweet on Nicholas Keplin, the son of a successful chandler.

Nicholas — N. Just as he had suspected.

Radnor dressed carefully before setting out for the Keplin shop. He gave a quick brush to his coat, shoes, and tricorne, and tied and retied his cravat several times before he was satisfied with the knot, then smoothed his hair in its queue.

The Keplin shop was small and narrow, nestled in among the other shops on the fashionable and expensive Rue St. Honore, around the corner from the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents.

At the bell that rang upon Radnor’s entrance, a man came out of a curtained back room. Obviously expecting to see his usual kind of customer, the servant of a rich aristocrat, the man hesitated in confusion when he saw Radnor. “May I help you?”

Just as skeptical, Radnor eyed the pale, balding man. Marie Lasourde was obviously one of those women for whom security meant everything. “Are you Nicholas Keplin?” Radnor asked, glancing at the shelves full of candles, candle holders, lamps, and wall sconces.

“Nicholas is my son, but no doubt I can help you. We sell the finest candles in all of Paris here,” the man said out of habit, his eyes and voice still uncertain of Radnor.

“I’m not here to buy anything, Monsieur Keplin. I merely want a few words with your son. Can you tell me where I can find him?”

“What business do you have with him?” the shopkeeper asked, becoming openly suspicious.

“That’s my affair.”

“He’s not in town at the moment. He’s away on business.”

Radnor wondered whether the father was somehow involved. On closer inspection, however, the man seemed not so much guilty as confused. “Maybe you can tell me if your son has ever mentioned a young woman by the name of Marie Lasourde?”

The man’s face instantly reddened with rage, and he nearly spluttered as he asked, “Is that the name of the harlot who’s seduced him?”

“Then he does know her?”

“To my shame and disgrace. She’s a strumpet. Willful and indecent. What does he see in her? I’ve forbidden him to speak to her. He was such a good boy before he met her. He’ll marry the girl I’ve chosen. Marrying for love! Ridiculous idea!” Keplin fished in his waistcoat pocket and produced a lace handkerchief with which he mopped his perspiring forehead. “Is that what this is about? I knew it.” He squinted at Radnor. “Are you a relation to this Lasourde creature?”

“Hardly,” Radnor answered dryly. “I’m an under-inspector for the police and I believe this woman and your son may have fled the city with stolen jewels. Anything you can tell me about his whereabouts will help.”

The red of the man’s face deepened, becoming an ugly purple. He gasped, gripping his chest as he slumped to the floor, pulling candles off the shelf with groping hands. An apoplexy. Radnor strode to the curtained-off back room where he found apprentices to help.

After they’d helped the gasping man upstairs to his apartment, Radnor asked one of the young men if he knew where Nicholas Keplin was. “Toulouse, I think, monsieur.”

“Merde,” Radnor cursed under his breath. That meant contacting the Marshalsea of Toulouse for help, which meant that the reward for the recovery of the stolen jewels would slip out of his fingers into theirs. “Merde,” he repeated.

The more Vincent thought about the girl’s lie the more his sense of paternal duty toward her strengthened. He hurried to the Hotel du Sonton where he intended to steer the girl away from the evils of mendacity and back onto the path of virtue. A footman at the servants’ entrance in the back informed him that Marie Lasourde no longer worked at the hotel. When he asked for an explanation, the man shrugged his shoulders, and said he didn’t know anything more.

Distressed by the girl’s fate, Vincent walked slowly toward the front of the house. As he was about to turn into the cobblestoned courtyard and head toward the street, he narrowly avoided being run down by a carriage. The carriage, painted an ostentatious shiny green, clattered to a stop in front of the granite steps of the impressive entrance to the hotel. Still thinking about Marie Lasourde, Vincent watched absentmindedly as liveried footmen rushed out of the hotel to open the carriage door and pull down its step.

First a dainty stockinged foot in a white high-heeled slipper with a blue bow on it emerged, then the rest of the carriage’s occupant — a powdered and painted woman cloaked in red velvet. Madame du Sonton no doubt. In a tall, powdered wig that required attention to her balance, she carefully climbed the entrance steps and disappeared inside. The front door clicked shut.

He studied the pale yellow brick facade of the hotel which was tall, wide, and many-windowed, before his eye was drawn to the green carriage again. He noticed its door was painted with a coat of arms — a swan flanked by stars, branches, and such. It seemed somehow familiar. And then it came to him. The wax seal of Marie Lasourde’s love letter had been sealed with a similar emblem, too similar to be a coincidence.

Avoiding the steaming horse dung on the cobblestones, he trotted over to the coachman about to drive the vehicle away, and asked, “Pardon, monsieur, is this the du Sonton coach?”

The coachman surveyed him from deep-socketed black eyes under bushy, black eyebrows, as he considered Vincent and his question, then he jerked his head in assent once.

“And was that Madame du Sonton herself I saw just now?”

Another jerk of the head. The nods must have loosened the man’s tongue. “Back from her country estate,” he said through thick wet lips.

Vincent tipped his tricorne to the man and walked toward the street.

So the wax, the seal, and no doubt the paper had come from the du Sonton household. Marie Lasourde, or her beau, had obtained stationery from the house. That wouldn’t do. Marie lying and stealing for the man, then most likely losing her position over it? Or had it been Marie’s beau who obtained the stationery? Did he in fact live in the house? It made no sense. Why would the young man write to his sweetheart who could not read if they saw each other frequently? Vincent would find Radnor and tell him of his discovery. Radnor would discover the truth.

Radnor thanked Vincent for the information with a coin, then sent his friend away with the promise that he’d tell him how it turned out.

If the letter had not been sent by Nicholas Keplin after all, but by someone in the house, or who had access to the house, then Radnor had work to do. He returned to his original theory. It was far more likely that the M. of the letter was Madame Marie du Sonton herself.

As a rule, Radnor avoided doing any investigating himself, relying on his informers. But sometimes he had no choice. This was just such an occasion.

Upon his arrival at the Hotel du Sonton, he asked for Madame. Instead he was shown to the office of the housekeeper, a small closet of a room furnished with a desk stacked with papers and ledgers, and two hard wooden chairs.

“Madame Vries will be with you in a moment,” the footman told him. “You’re to wait.”

Radnor glanced at the papers on the desk. Receipts and tradesmen’s bills. With a glance at the door, he opened a desk drawer. Quills and ink in the first. The next drawer held stationery, sticks of sealing wax, and a seal. The stationery was the same pale blue of the letter Marie Lasourde had brought to Vincent. Hearing the click of heels approaching along the marble tiles of the corridor outside, he quickly closed the drawer and stepped away from the desk.

The door opened, and the housekeeper entered. She was a statuesque blonde, young and attractive to be a housekeeper, though one look at her hard eyes and strong, capable hands suggested how she had risen to such a position. She took a seat at her desk across from him. She did not invite him to sit.

“What do you want with Madame?” she asked. She had a long, sinewy neck in which Radnor could see the faint pulsing of a vein.

He sat anyway. “I’d like to ask her a few questions in connection with the theft of her necklace and earrings.”

“Madame’s busy. Ask me,” she said, her lips curling slightly with scorn, completely unimpressed by him.

Usually, women were intrigued by him, and he used their reaction to his advantage. “I have reason to believe that Marie Lasourde might be connected with the theft.”

Her eyes turned flinty. “That tart. Good riddance. I sacked her yesterday for returning late from her afternoon off.”

Sacked or disappeared? Very convenient, he thought.

“If she’s responsible for the theft, I should have sacked her long before. What are you doing to find her?” she ended on an accusing note.

Radnor ignored the accusation. “Do you know where she might have gone or where her family lives?”

“No idea. I’ve better things to do than keep track of all the maidservants who come and go in this place.” She gestured at the account books lying open before her on the desk.

They glared at each other. Radnor was accustomed to unhelpful Parisians, but he sensed a wary defensiveness in her that made him suspicious. As if she had something to hide.

“Now if you’ll excuse me.” She stood to dismiss him.

He stood too, and said, making no attempt to keep the threat out of his voice, “I really must insist that I see Madame now.”

Angry resentfulness flared in her face, but she did not argue. Instead, she stood up and flounced toward the door. Out in the corridor, she flagged a young footman and told him to inform Madame she needed to speak with her urgently. She cuffed the boy on the head when he hesitated. “Move!”

She led Radnor down the corridor to a wide, marble staircase with a gilded, curved banister. On the next floor, the young footman found them and led them to Madame in her antechamber, a dressing room of white and pale green, bright with sunlight pouring through two floor-to-ceiling windows.

Though it was noon, he must have interrupted Madame’s levée. She sat in a chair having powder and paint applied to her face by two chambermaids. A sheet covered most of a voluminous blue-striped silk gown. Her hair pulled tightly back in preparation for the wig, her face half-powdered and painted, the bare skin still showing pink in spots, she looked monstrous.

When Madame saw the housekeeper with him, she exclaimed, “Nina!” the familiarity apparently slipping out in her surprise.

“My apologies, Madame,” the housekeeper curtsied. “Monsieur Radnor of the police is here about the theft.”

Madame met the housekeeper’s eyes, and the two of them held each other’s gazes for a long moment, too long, as a wordless message passed between them. Then Madame looked at him and gave him a broad, false smile of challenge. She curtly dismissed the two maids.

M. and N. Marie and Nina. The suspicions that had been growing as Radnor talked to the housekeeper took final form. The two were lovers, writing love letters to each other when they were separated. He smiled wryly, not so much with shock at the lewdness — he’d encountered far worse — but at being caught off guard. It was naiveté worthy of his friend Vincent.

“Well?” Madame said, smiling at the understanding she read in his eyes.

“I believe I’ve discovered the whereabouts of your necklace and earrings. They are nearby.” He looked directly at the housekeeper. “And presumably safe.”

Defiance burned in Nina’s eyes as she moved to Madame’s side.

“Very good,” Madame said, reaching for the housekeeper’s hand, and drawing it to her to hold against the base of her throat.

“Your husband reported the theft because you must have neglected to tell him that you had given the jewels to a loved one.”

“They were a wedding gift from him, which made it all the sweeter to give them to another.” Madame glanced up at her housekeeper, then raised Nina’s hand to her lips, and kissed its palm.

“Yes, well, that is between you and him,” Radnor answered, then added, “and her. However, someone has to be held accountable for the crime.”

“But it will not be me or Nina,” Madame stated with the authority that wealth and nobility gave her. “Blame it on one of the servants,” she suggested lightly.

Familiar as he was with injustice and oppression, the casual cold-bloodedness of the solution unsettled him every time.

“Blame it on Marie Lasourde,” the housekeeper added. “She deserves to be hanged. For trying to blackmail us. Stupid whore.”

“I’ll deal with her. I think you might find it easier to maintain cordial relations with your husband if the necklace and earrings were somehow found,” Radnor said.

The Cemetery of the Holy Innocents basked in the warm spring sunshine, attracting to its precincts not just the usual mourners, but shoppers browsing and visitors paying their respects at graves.

Vincent de l’Amour had set up his desk in a patch of sunshine and sat hunched over a book, engrossed in his reading while he waited for customers.

How Vincent could be oblivious to the stench of death that saturated the entire area, the tumult, and the babel of chatter, prayers, wails, and weeping was beyond Radnor. Not to mention the insalubriousness of the place confirmed by the Academie des Sciences several years ago when they recommended to the king that the cemetery be relocated outside of the city. No one had paid any attention. Vincent least of all. Parisians preferred their dead at the heart of the living city.

Radnor pulled an empty wooden crate in front of the rough, unsteady table and sat. “You were right. It was love,” he announced dryly.

Vincent looked up, his eyes still far away. Blinking in an attempt to focus his thoughts, he asked, “Pardon?”

“Marie Lasourde and her lover Nicholas Keplin.”

“I told you so.” Vincent’s face crinkled into a smile of satisfaction.

“Of course they were attempting to blackmail her employer as I had guessed.”

Vincent’s relief turned to a worried frown. “Oh dear! I suspected that girl might have fallen into sin. What will happen to them?”

“Who knows? If Keplin senior recovers from his apoplexy, he’ll probably disinherit his son. But that’s the young lovers’ problem. I imagine they’ll manage with Marie’s criminal talents to support them. At any rate, they’ve fled Paris and they’re out of my jurisdiction.”

Vincent’s dark eyes turned bleak. “What a shame.” He shook his head sadly. “They’ll hang for the theft.”

“They may hang, but I think not for the theft of the jewels, for they were never stolen. Madame Marie du Sonton gave Nina Vries, her housekeeper and lover, the necklace and earrings in gratitude for her amorous favors and to spite her jealous and controlling husband.”

“Oh my!” Vincent’s eyes nearly burst out of his head with shock.

His reaction did little to lessen Radnor’s chagrin at losing the reward and refusing the bribe. Radnor would have been more gratified at his friend’s enlightenment if Vincent weren’t so damnably well intentioned and trusting. Radnor smiled without humor. “Still. You were right, old man. It was love.”