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wives. But Charles Vidot enjoyed cooking with Adèle. Their kitchenette space was tiny and cramped, but after ten years of patient practice they now moved about one another in what felt to him like a smoothly choreographed routine. She diced while he mixed, she poured while he simmered. All while he recounted the details of his days to her, and with this series of small, brisk movements, Charles Vidot was able to unwind from his life at work and reattach himself to the cozy and satisfying comforts of home. The radio was whistling out Debussy. “You see,” he said to her, “it seems Monsieur Vallet had a lover.”
    “A lover,” she said.
    He could not tell if she was merely repeating what he said or asking for more details. “Yes”—he put the pan on the burner and turned on the gas—“a lover who has utterly vanished, leaving nothing but the faintest trace of her scent on the pillow.”
    Adèle smiled. “You smelled the pillow?”
    “Well”—he smiled—“I would not be much of a detective if I had not.”
    Adèle nodded. “And what did it smell like?”
    Charles paused to think. “Citrus and jasmine … expensive.”
    “So, perhaps whoever killed him also frightened his lover away.”
    “Perhaps,” he said skeptically. He put the two chicken breasts on the skillet, letting them simmer with the garlic and the butter.
    “But you suspect her?”
    “Probably, yes. She is certainly the most interesting element in this case.” He told her about the girl’s garbage bin and the strange remnants he had discovered there.
    “A few mouse bones spit from an owl do not necessarily make her a suspect,” said Adèle.
    “That is quite true. And if she were present I am sure she could have provided a reasonable explanation. But she is not, so…”
    There was so little room in the kitchenette that her waist slid against her husband’s as he shook the pan. He smiled at this, savoring the small satisfactions that fed their life together. He watched as she squeezed lemon onto a bowl of shredded carrots and placed them to the side. She gave him a small smile. Was it a remote smile? A hesitant one? He could not tell. She had been difficult to read as of late. “Have your headaches been back?”
    “Yes, earlier this week,” she said, “but the new pills from the pharmacist seem to help.”
    “Better than the tea?”
    “I don’t know. Perhaps. The doctor tells me my tea recipe is merely an old wives’ tale.”
    “Ah well, if it works, it works.” Charles leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I am glad I could come home early.” He had thought of staying at his office desk to peruse various notes on the case, there were interviews to comb through and the coroner’s statement to study, but he hated being in the station of late. A new chief of police for Paris, Maurice Papon, had recently been installed. In Vidot’s opinion, Papon was a thoroughly dishonorable man who, twenty years earlier, had stood out as one of the very worst of the Vichy collaborators. But history in France was a fickle thing, and as the nation healed from its great trauma, the powers that be had found a place for Papon. Once installed in his new office, this quisling had moved quickly, placing numerous other regrettable characters in various high positions throughout the department, including Vidot’s new superior at the station, a stout, lethargic toad of a creature named Maroc. As a detective, Vidot had encountered many disagreeable sorts, both criminal and civilian, and he liked to think he had a patient spirit and could tolerate any soul so long as they did not obstruct his path; but Maroc strained his patience. The man’s every expression insinuated either dishonesty or lethargy. Vidot found him nauseating and hated even being on the same city block with the man, and so this evening, after typing his case report in duplicate and leaving a copy in Maroc’s in-box, he locked up his files and made his way home.
    But he was not