“Oui. But she believed him. This man was very charming. Very. I think he could have convinced her of anything. But he was sexually obsessed. It seemed to be all he thought about; he tried seducing nearly every woman he knew. He even tried it with me. Of course, I didn’t tell her. But I have a feeling she knew, anyway.” She cut into her fillet. After a few bites, she picked up her wine glass and sat looking at it. “You know, Manon drank a lot. A bottle of wine a day. Every day. Then, a little while after he left Paris, telling her he’d be back in a few weeks, she stopped drinking. Completely stopped. I asked her why and she said, ‘Because Gerald thinks I drink too much.’” Gaby frowned.

“An odd time to do it, to stop, after he’d left.”

“I thought so. But she had her reasons. And then a little while later, perhaps a month later—and of course, he hadn’t come back to Paris—she left.”

“She left?”

“To go to London. He contacted her to tell her he was sick. He wanted her to come. He’d made arrangements, he told her, for her to come to the Summerston place as a nurse.”

“But Lady Summerston wouldn’t—”

“Apparently she would. For some reason she accepted the nurse-charade. Madeline—Manon—told me it had something to do with a private hospital where he had told his wife she worked. I didn’t understand any of this, but—”

Jury thought of the foundling hospital, which Summerston himself owned. “And when Gerald died, she returned to Paris?”

“Not for a few months. Two, I think. She spent them in the North at some friend’s place.” Her puzzlement was evident.

Jury pushed his plate away. “I think she spent them at that private hospital. She was pregnant, don’t you think? That’s why she stopped drinking a bottle a day. And she was gone long enough—about six months?—to have had his baby, right? I’m guessing she told him she was pregnant and might have given him an ultimatum which, in any event, he couldn’t have done much about as he was genuinely and terminally ill. He got her to come to London so he could manipulate her into not telling anyone, especially not telling Eleanor Summerston.”

The waiter collected their plates and slipped two dessert menus in place. Jury didn’t look; he let Gaby do the looking and didn’t bother her with questions until she was done.

“Crème brûlée,” she said. “I’ve always loved crème brûlée.”

Like a lover she’d lost who’d come back at last.

“Me too.”

When the waiter reappeared, Jury ordered two. “And how about some cognac?”

“I’m half-drunk already.” She laughed. The music again.