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accompanying sketch, Corbeau recognized Madame Boucher, whose athletic, almost mannish build and taste for the light, loosely corseted gowns her mother might have favored had been a gift to cartoonists and satirists alike.
    “She disappeared several days ago,” Javert said.
    Corbeau looked up from the papers. “Was His Majesty behind it?”
    “Not that I know of,” Javert said in a way that suggested if it were the case, he would have known. “Madame Boucher’s group is well loved by the masses. She herself is well loved—glamorous, young, pretty, and tragically widowed. His Majesty is too smart to make a martyr out of her. But he’s not anxious for her return. If it were up to him, I think he’d be happy for her to remain gone, and the group to simply fade away.”
    “Maybe that would be best.”
    Javert frowned at her.
    “I’m surprised at you, Inspector. I’d have thought, above all, you’d want to see justice done. Fortunately, the decision to investigate does not reside with you, or with His Majesty. It resides with me. And I need your help finding her, quietly and before the papers get wind of this.”
    “Why the secrecy? People disappear all the time. Why not put Vautrin on it?”
    “Vautrin’s assistant took the initial report. He concluded that—” Javert cleared his throat and leaned in conspiratorially, “Madame Boucher was kidnapped with the aid of black magic.”
    “You believe that?”
    “From the report, it certainly seems possible.”
    Corbeau scoffed. “Vautrin thinks anything he can’t explain is black magic.”
    “But in this case, he may be right. And if black magic is actually afoot, I’m glad he kicked it up to me, because he has no business investigating it himself.”
    Corbeau sat back and took a long pull from her cigarette. “It would serve him right for getting rid of Vidocq.”
    “But it would serve the rest of us very badly. Most people remember a time when there was no organized civil police force.”
    “Then they remember how you couldn’t walk down most streets in broad daylight.”
    “They also remember a tax being raised to pay for a police force. The panic that would ensue if word of Madame Boucher’s, shall we say irregular disappearance , became common knowledge would make people forget we cut the crime rate in half. People are out of work and prices are rising fast, sometimes doubling in the space of a day. People are already pissing their pants in the Montagne Ste. Geneviève. If it gets out that the angel of the Church of the Divine Spark was spirited away by demonic forces, and the police could do nothing about it, the hysteria will spread across the entire city. That kind of panic left you an orphan. There will be many more orphans, throughout Paris. And the people will blame us, Inspector.”
    And as much as Corbeau hated to admit it, she knew he was right. It wasn’t the time to stand back and watch Vautrin hang himself with his own stupidity and shortsightedness, much as she would have relished it. There was just one problem. “You seem to forget, Monsieur , that I’ve been demoted to Vautrin’s girl-of-all-work.”
    “Leave Vautrin to me. I have a good idea who has taken Madame Boucher and why. Make the case, bring her in, and you’ll never have to worry about Vautrin again.”
    “Her?”
    Javert motioned for her to pass the papers. He riffled through the articles and notes until his fingers came to a well-worn newspaper sketch. Two elegantly dressed women stood before one of the most expensive shops on the Boulevard St. Germain. The one on the left—a strong-featured blonde in her late twenties—Corbeau recognized as Hermine Boucher. The other woman was smaller and more simply dressed. Her face was turned to one side, and a fur hat partially hid straight, dark hair, which ended, bluntly and shockingly, at the level of her chin.
    The young widow of Henri Boucher was renowned for her beauty, but it was the other woman who caught Corbeau’s