“Abélard survives and flees to a monastery north of Paris to become a monk and live in celibacy—now that he also really kinda doesn’t have that many other options—and he convinces the girl to become a nun in a place nearby.”

“And then?”

“And then they begin a twenty-year-long correspondence.”

“A what?”

“They write love letters to each other, long, intense love letters. And in that way their love continued to flourish despite their separation, until they both died many years later. They are buried side by side in a cemetery somewhere in Paris, and their letters have been published and analyzed and studied by historians and romantics for centuries.”

Augustin grabbed one of the books off the desk in front of her and waved it in front of Schäfer. A pink Post-it note stuck up from one of the pages in the middle of the book.

“And now …” she said. “Now comes the million-kroner question: what do you think the young student’s name was?”

Schäfer looked into Augustin’s eyes and shrugged.

“Héloïse,” Augustin said. “Her name was Héloïse.”

Schäfer raised an eyebrow but still said nothing.

“There’s a ton of literature about their forbidden love story,” Augustin continued, “but I could only find one book with a Danish translation of the couple’s most popular letters.”

She cracked open the book she was holding in her hands and flipped through to the page with the pink Post-it note.

She set the book in front of Schäfer.

“This is a letter from Pierre Abélard to Héloïse. Read the underlined section!”

Schäfer leaned over the book and read, “ ‘While I am denied your presence, Héloïse, give me at least through your words some sweet semblance of yourself.’ ” He looked up at Augustin in surprise. “How did you find this?”

She sat down heavily in her desk chair and smugly flung her feet up onto the desk.

“I’ve tried analyzing Anna Kiel’s letters in a hundred different ways, but most of it is just a bunch of damned nonsense, and that sentence didn’t get any hits in the search engines. But then I had the idea to run it through Google Translate. First I tried German. Nichts. Then Spanish. Nada! But then I searched for the French version of the sentence—et voilà!”

Schäfer smiled at her. “Well done.”

He read the sentence in the book again. “So then how did you find it in Danish?”

“I checked out all the books they had on the topic at the city library and worked my way through the pile,” Augustin explained with a shrug.

Schäfer leaned back. “So, Anna Kiel ends the three letters to Heloise with references to this medieval story about forbidden love?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, we need to ask the journalist about that.”