Then, carefully tucking the tickets in her purse, she zipped it tight, checking the area for possible pickpockets. Not that she knew what a pickpocket looked like, she thought, noticing the usual mix of tourists and natives going their various ways in the station. One man, who was leaning against a pillar, turned his head quickly away, and she wondered if he’d been watching her. Was he a pickpocket? He was good-looking in the usual way, with very short hair and that stubbly, unshaven look they all had, and was wearing the required scarf over his black leather jacket, which was trimmed with metal studs. Or maybe he’d found her attractive? She’d heard that Frenchmen were more appreciative of older women, unlike the youth-obsessed Americans. It wasn’t impossible that she might attract an admiring male glance, she thought, feeling her cheeks warm as she joined the others and headed for the platform.

The ten-mile ride to Versailles wasn’t nearly long enough for Lucy, who could have sat on the train all day, gazing out the windows at the little towns and quaint houses, their stuccoed walls and clay-tiled roofs so different looking from the houses in Maine. When they arrived in Versailles, they discovered it was actually a small city, with buses and a busy open market.

“Oh, let’s have a picnic,” said Sue, and they were soon darting from stall to stall, stocking up on provisions for lunch. Then, carrying their bags of bread and wine and cheese and fruit, they followed the brown signs to the château, the gate of which was right on the tree-lined street.

“Somehow I thought it would be more isolated,” said Ted. “This doesn’t seem very secure at all.”

“It wasn’t,” said Sue, who was consulting a guidebook. “There were guards, but anybody could go in if they had a sword and a jacket, and if they didn’t happen to own them, they could rent them.”

“If they’d had TSA screening procedures, France might still be a monarchy,” said Pam. They were climbing the cobbled drive, gazing at the enormous château, which was golden in the morning sunlight.

“It’s big, but it doesn’t seem big enough,” said Sue, referring once again to her guidebook. “This says that twenty thousand people lived here, from the royal family and their courtiers on down to the scullery maids.”

“That’s bigger than Tinker’s Cove,” said Ted, who had a journalist’s fondness for statistics and was always comparing population and circulation figures.

“It must have been grand,” said Pam in a dreamy voice. “Imagine having your hair powdered and wearing a long silk dress and meeting your handsome lover, in his stockings and silk breeches. . . .”

“Great, until they chopped your head off,” said Bob.