Madame Raoul turned her head away. ‘Don’t worry. Now I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say, I will be good and peaceful. I won’t worry them.’

Madame Raoul’s initials and those of her husband created a flowing bas relief. Folding the tissue paper around it, Laure said, ‘It looks almost untouched.’

The dying woman took several painful-sounding breaths. ‘If you look closely enough, there are bloodstains.’

‘Whose?’

‘Mine. From the sewing. I could never wash them out.’

Walking home, Laure reflected that the bloodstains, tiny as they must be, told the real story of Madame Raoul’s pillowcase and not the perfection of the snipped, conquered and embellished linen.

In the apartment, Laure ran a tepid shower, dried and got dressed in a sleeveless dress, twisted her hair up and took a cab to the Marais where she was meeting friends for dinner at the Lapin Blanc. In the cab she decided the pillowcase should be framed in a plain wood frame and hung in Room 7.

Early the next morning before she had left for work, her mobile shrilled. It was Madame Maupin. ‘Just to let you know that Madame Raoul died peacefully in the night.’

‘I’m sorry. She was an unusual woman. Did she have any family at all? I need to know for the museum records. For when we return the pillowcase.’

‘None at all,’ was the answer. ‘I’m afraid she was in prison for many years and her family disowned her.’

Laure was reluctant – very reluctant – to ask the question. ‘In prison for what?’

She heard the sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘For murder. Madame Raoul killed her husband.’

CHAPTER 4

MAY HAD DONE HER STUFF AND CONFIRMATION THAT Vanity Fair had commissioned an in-depth feature arrived the following week. After wrangling, it was agreed that she would shadow Laure for three days and would sit in on interviews provided she had signed a document undertaking to preserve confidentiality of the donors.

She rang in to check over the dates and Laure said, ‘I’ll put you on to Nic for the details.’

‘Oh, good.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched an animated Nic take the transferred call.

Sharp at the agreed time, May turned up in a tight pair of jeans and a black satin bomber jacket embroidered with red dahlias and the black neoprene rucksack. She held a tray of takeaway coffees and offered it to Nic. ‘Americano with a dash of milk, right?’

‘Right.’ Nic’s smile contained a helpless quality.

May turned to Laure. ‘Flat white?’

Laure laughed and pointed to the jacket. ‘You’re supposed to be unobtrusive.’

‘Of course.’ May took off her jacket and stuffed in into the rucksack. ‘OK?’

Extraordinarily enough, when May dropped into a chair in the interview room, she appeared – God knew how – to shrink into the wall.