“Maybe she just had an aversion to the police,” I suggested. “Some people do. Besides, I’ll be using all of my Irish gift of the blarney. I’ll have her eating out of my hand.”

“Isn’t Molly wonderful?” Gus said. “You should see all the clever cases she has solved back in New York.”

I wished they weren’t quite so confident in my abilities. For one thing I was not at all sure that I could charm a hostile Frenchwoman when my French vocabulary was sadly lacking. Still, I had promised to do my best. Liam was sleeping soundly when I went up to bed. I stood looking down at him, thinking how easy life was for babies and how quickly they adapt. He had come across an ocean, then from a seaside pension to a noisy Montmartre attic, and now to this tranquil street and had slept peacefully in each of them. I bent to kiss his forehead.

“I wish your daddy was here,” I whispered. “He’d know what to do.”

And he’d make sure that I stayed well away from a murder case, I reminded myself. So maybe it was a good thing that he was thousands of miles away in New York. I climbed into bed and lay listening to distant sounds. I was safe. I was among friends. I should have been able to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. How could I possibly find out who killed Reynold Bryce? I was not the police, able to compare fingerprints or examine the details of Bryce’s life, and I didn’t have the ability to question large numbers of people. I’d be floundering in the dark as usual.

Start with what you know: that was another of Paddy Riley’s favorite sayings. What did I know about Reynold Bryce? He had inherited wealth and had established a reputation for himself in the States as a painter of rather sentimental Victorian pictures. Then he had abandoned America and his wife and gone to live in Paris. He had never returned to the States. Why was that? Had it been a hasty departure? Could he have perhaps run off to Paris with another woman? But then it would have been the subject of general gossip. Why had he left his wife behind, or had she refused to accompany him?

What else did I know? He was bigoted, prejudiced, and opinionated. Such people make enemies. I also got a hint that he had an eye for the ladies. Was there one lady in particular at the moment? The housekeeper would know about that, surely.