Monsieur Clement sighed. ‘Poor Dolores. I was her first. I’ll never forget that day. I was walking along the ramparts of Saint Malo and there was this vision coming towards me. She was dressed like a peasant, clogs and Breton coif, but nothing could hide that beauty. I took off my hat and asked, “What is an angel like you doing here?” She said she was working on a farm. I said such beauty should not be labouring. It sounds very trite now, but her beauty struck me like a thunder-bolt. I said, “Come away with me and you will never have to work again. You will have your own apartment in Paris.”

‘She grinned like an urchin and said, “Very well, I will meet you here in an hour.”

‘We had a happy time. Madame de Peurey got her claws into her and the next thing I knew, I had to go to a lawyer’s office and sign papers, promising all sorts of things – jewels, a carriage, a better apartment. But a year later, she left me for another wealthy manufacturer, and so it went on. I think Baron Chevenix was the last.’

‘When you met her in Saint Malo, what name did she give you?’

‘Dolores Duval, of course.’

‘At the farm where she worked, she was known as Betty.’

‘They have terribly strong accents in Brittany, not to mention their own patois. But once when we were talking of London, she seemed to know it very well. I asked if she was English and she looked alarmed and said she was French.’

‘Did she have any particular friends?’

‘Apart from the terrible Madame de Peurey, no, not while she was with me.’

Harry asked him to telephone the Crillon if he could think of anything else.

When he arrived back and went to Rose’s room it was to find that her fever had broken and she was asleep. He drew Daisy out of the room and told her about the chaperone.

‘I am going to see Lemonier,’ he said. ‘I feel the answer to Dolores’s murder lies in England.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

And (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry; – and upon thy sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Francis Thompson

Daisy began to feel better as the days passed and Rose regained her strength. Madame Bailloux turned out not to be the formidable dragon that Daisy had feared, but light-hearted and amusing. She set to teaching Daisy to speak French. She told Rose that the very thing to complete her recovery would be a gown made by the famous French couturier Paul Poiret. Paul Poiret, she said, despised the fashion for light colours. He damned them as ‘nuances of nymphs’ thighs, lilacs. swooning mauves, tender blue hortensias, niles, maizes, straws: all that was soft, washed-out and insipid.’

Daisy’s romance with Becket had come to an abrupt halt. Harry was out frequently with Becket, travelling to and from police headquarters, hoping all the while that Rose’s attacker had been found.