I was shaking like a leaf, but not Madame Fò. She readjusted her outfit and thanked me, solemnly.

“Not first time. Nobody like Chinese. Police never help us. Thank you.”

We each went back to our own place.

To quote that rather impenetrable Chinese proverb: talk doesn’t cook rice.

Poor Monsieur Léger was put under formal investigation for murder and placed under court supervision for having cut short, in his own way, the decline of his much-loved wife. (How has this country lost all sense of the absurd?)

Since he refused to eat, he ended up being thrown out of Les Eoliades by the manager, and wound up in the care of Nurse Ratched who intubated him to force-feed him, and eventually finished him off by puncturing his esophagus.

Then, halfway through February, a copy of the title deed to the apartment on Rue Monge dropped into my letter box. I had paid 60,000 euros for a piece of real estate worth 700,000.

When I opened the letter, I plonked myself down on the floor of my entrance hall, as breathless as if I had just run a long race. Through hard work and a few trips to Switzerland, I had managed to reconstitute my father’s savings. I’d now converted more than 2 million euros into pink diamonds, and I was the owner of two apartments, one for each of my girls. I could stop now.

The Léger daughter with the eyes that sparkled at the thought of money, realizing that the property had reverted and that she would not have a cent of inheritance, refused to leave me alone, to the point where I had to call her brother to get the harassment to stop.

“She’s got to stop calling and telling me I’m a filthy thief!”

“I’ve told her to drop it, but she doesn’t want to hear it.”

“Listen, I’m an honest person, and I’m sure, knowing the police as I do, that you must have made your own little enquiries about me . . . I don’t have to take this, especially seeing as my own mother is still here. I’m relying on you to make it stop, because if it doesn’t, I’m going to have to file a complaint.”

“Yes, yes, yes . . . I’ll handle it,” he said, sighing.

“I’m not a monster and I’m prepared to make a gesture provided you take care of it. Open a savings account in your nephews’ names and I’ll give them each 20,000 euros to pay for their studies. There, I can’t do more than that.”

“That’s already huge. You’re a good woman!”

Yes, yes, I know, I’m a good woman.