“But?” Lara dreaded what was coming next. There was something in his voice.

“Well, while there were rumors that in the year before he died, Giroux had been a frequent guest at Le Cirque Secret and that three paintings had been commissioned, the problem is that all of them are missing, so sadly I have nothing to compare this painting to. The lore around these paintings is high, so the scrutiny it would face will be great. Without another verified painting from the series as a reference, I’m purely going on dating and the materials used. But on first glance, those things match up. If this were to be one of the missing paintings, I cannot tell you what a huge find this would be in the art world. It will just take time to verify it.”

“All of the paintings are missing?” She put the biography back in the box where she’d found it.

“You haven’t told her?” Barrow looked at Gaston, shocked.

Gaston patted his friend on the back. “You, my friend, are the expert on Giroux and the occult. I thought you could do it greater justice.”

“I’ll start at the beginning,” said Barrow, his voice animated. “Le Cirque Secret is a longtime legend in Paris. From oral history, we think it existed for two years—1924 through 1926—but no physical evidence of the circus’s existence remains.”

Lara recalled the elaborate posters, tickets, and memorabilia of Le Cirque Margot that still hung in the Kerrigan Falls Historical Society office. “Surely something exists.”

Barrow shook his head gravely. “It has been the material lacking in my research on Giroux. The lore was that guests would receive a special ticket by delivery for the night’s performance. People went to the location printed on the ticket, only to find that nothing was there—just an empty field or abandoned courtyard.” He paused dramatically. “Until there was something. The circus would appear out of nowhere. If you had a ticket in your possession, you saw it in front of you. Legend has it, however, that if you were standing next to someone without a ticket, they couldn’t see anything and thought you were mad.”

At the dinner table the other night, Louie Favre had told roughly the same story. From reading Cecile’s diary, she felt that the wicked tickets Cecile had described were the culprit. Elements of what Cecile had written matched this story.

Gaston shrugged. “Well, it was the Jazz Age, Teddy.”

“He means they were all drunk,” said Barrow, rolling his eyes. “This one here is a nonbeliever.”

“They were also trying to outdo each other, so it could have been some cheap carnival in Bois de Boulogne,” said Gaston. “You have to admit, it might have just been some stage magic.”

“You think they were exaggerating?” Barrow looked over at Gaston, offended.

“Things just don’t appear out of nowhere,” said Gaston.