Peter stood, ungraciously, allowing Ellie to slide out of her place. I let her go ahead of me out of the restaurant. The moment we were out of earshot she turned on me. “What do you think you’re doing, embarrassing me in front of my in-laws? I felt like a complete fool. I don’t know what on earth you want with me. We only shared a couple of casual conversations in our whole life.”

“Oh, but I think you do know, Miss Hatcher,” I said. “And it’s up to you. You can have the conversation with me, or with the inspector from the Sûreté.”

Those blue eyes opened wide. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. I’m talking about Reynold Bryce’s murder. I was curious as to why you didn’t mention that you had seen Mr. Bryce on the day he died.”

“It didn’t come up in casual conversation. Why should I tell you anything?” she glared defiantly. “I hardly know you.”

“And yet you wanted me to lie that we had been together during all of your stay in Paris. At the time I thought you merely wanted to give your in-laws the impression that you were chaperoned during your stay here if they discovered you had been in Paris longer than you had told them. But later I realized it was quite different. You wanted an alibi, didn’t you?”

“For what?”

“For killing Reynold Bryce.”

“But I didn’t kill him.” She looked around in case anybody was within earshot, then took my arm, dragged me into an alcove, and sank onto the bench there like a deflated balloon. “I swear I didn’t kill him.”

“That’s not what the police think,” I said. “They know you came to visit him right before he died. The housekeeper has testified that you looked flustered and uneasy and insisted on seeing him. And she heard you say, ‘I don’t want your money.’” I decided to risk pushing this one step further. “And the Hôtel d’Alsace is missing one knife from their kitchen—a knife that has fingerprints on it.”

She gave a sob and buried her face in her hands. “Then it’s all over, isn’t it? The truth will come out and Peter will never want to marry me now.”

“I believe they still use the guillotine in France,” I said matter-of-factly.

She dropped her hands with a look of pure terror on her face. “But I didn’t kill him,” she whispered.

“The police won’t believe you. After all, you had the best motive, didn’t you?”

She looked utterly hopeless and a tear trickled down her cheek. “How did you find out?”