“After you left,” Simon said, “I spent a great many livres trying to track Rémi down. I contacted several old associates of Uncle Marin’s, who were in the business of finding Templar artifacts for him. The information they provided was not always acquired… ethically. You understand my meaning?”

I nodded.

“I’d rather not have used them, but ordinary channels were getting me nowhere. Still, who better to catch a crook than a bunch of crooks themselves? You see, they’d heard of someone calling himself the Raven. By reputation, he was a man whose specialty was pretending to be someone else. He would infiltrate some noble’s house, drain the coffers dry, and then disappear into the night—but not before murdering his former master.

“They claimed the Raven murdered people to reduce the chance of the victims coming for revenge. Can’t chase after him if you’re dead, yes? I suspect his motive was different.” Simon’s voice turned fierce. “I think he killed people just because he could. I think he liked it.”

I thought very much the same.

“Anyway, he’d always got away with it before. I suppose he thought with Uncle Marin gone, and the estate’s finances in shambles, I wouldn’t be willing to go after him.”

Simon’s eyes burned. “He was wrong. I spent nearly every sou hunting him down. In the end, I should have stuck to my own kind. Because it wasn’t the criminals who found him. It was another vicomte, Guy d’Auzon, living on an estate in the Val de Loire. I’d written to several landowners to be on the watch for Rémi, and possibly Colette—you remember her, the servant who fled with him?—applying for positions with false references. D’Auzon wrote back that they were there, and he’d already taken them in.”

“What happened?” Tom said, breathless.

“I rode for the Val de Loire straight away. Unfortunately, the vicomte took matters into his own hands. He challenged them in his home, and they attacked. D’Auzon, rash but no fool, had already armed himself. He shot Rémi straight through the heart.”

“What about Colette?” Sally said.

“Fled into the night, while the vicomte was reloading his pistol. Man should have brought two.”

Suddenly I felt a lot better about wearing mine. I rested my hands on the grips.

“That’s the way,” Simon said wryly. “Anyway, by the time I got there, Rémi was already laid out on a bier in the cemetery. I examined the body myself. He’d grown a beard, and there was a fresh cut on his chin, but there was no doubt: It was him. And thus ends the Raven.”

It was an amazing tale. And that should have been the end of it.

So why didn’t I believe that it was over?

“We don’t actually know,” I said, “that Rémi was the Raven. We just assumed that.”

Simon regarded me skeptically. “Who else could it have been?”

“A different man, behind Rémi, pulling the strings. For all we know, it could have been Colette.”