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detective and the King of Bohemia in the matter of the photograph—and the unsuspected Zone of Diamonds! She had wed, then fled with, a worthier man, Godfrey, with the Zone and the photograph, and most important, with her integrity intact.
    Now the French village of Neuilly near Paris became the newlyweds’ home. And now I, Penelope Huxleigh—once Irene’s chambermate and Godfrey’s typewriter-girl—had joined them. Godfrey required a secretary to manage his correspondence in international law. Since arriving in France the previous summer, I had mastered the language in its written form, though I still stumbled over its spoken cadences.
    As an orphaned, unmarried parson’s daughter past thirty, it seemed fitting that I should amuse myself by polishing Godfrey’s punctuation and Irene’s jewelry. One in my social position cannot expect much glamour from life, although my association with Irene first, and now both the Nortons, unfortunately involved me from time to time in a mysterious doing or other.
    Indeed, had it not been for my sensible counsel on many occasions, my good friends might not be here to enjoy the proceeds of the queen’s diamonds. They remained an impetuous pair abroad, even the usually stable Godfrey, when it came to some puzzle in the neighborhood.
    Fortunately, all had been quiet after the Montpensier affair, which had begun with a drowned man on Bram Stoker’s Chelsea dining-room table in London years before and ended recently in perfidy and lost treasure in Monaco. Happily no sign of some new, outré investigation loomed on the horizon.
    So like any idle sailor polishing brass, I brightened the souvenirs of previous escapades and secretly hoped that they would be the last of their kind. A respectable married couple has far better things to do than to meddle in the affairs of others, especially when those affairs involve theft, murder, unsanctioned relationships and other even more unsavory matters.
    Casanova, gargling his consonants and vowels sotto voce behind me, bobbed his red-and-green head in agreement and hungrily eyed the Tiffany squid, his large yellow beak gnashing.
    I had not thought of that, and stopped polishing while I savored—theoretically, of course—the delightful appropriateness of killing two birds with one stone by feeding the repellent brooch to the equally odious parrot.
     

 
    Chapter Five
    A STRANGER IN PARADISE
     
    A wren alit on the back rail of Irene’s wrought-iron chair and cocked its meek brown head hopefully at her French pastry.
    She immediately paused, tweaked off a morsel and offered it on the platter of her palm. The bird snatched the prize and flitted to the paving stones to consume its treat.
    “Truly, Irene,” Godfrey said, laughing, “I know that you have been idle too long when you resort to charming the birds out of the chestnut trees. You require more demanding game.”
    Irene, unlike the bird, refused to be baited, but merely smiled and dusted pastry flakes from her skirt.
    Although Paris pouted under unseasonably shrouded gray skies, Irene bloomed like a Holland tulip in her costume of the new Buffalo red, a dramatically dark shade lavished along the high collar, basque, waist and skirt front with rococo scrolls of black cord passementerie. A Buffalo-red felt hat with ostrich feathers and black velvet ribbon perched on her brunette hair, and lent her the wren’s look of pert inquiry combined with an appealing touch of hopefulness, if not outright hunger.
    “You do not mean to say, Godfrey,” she asked ravenously, “that you have found some puzzle for me to unravel amongst your exceedingly dull legal documents?”
    “I fear my cupboard is bare,” he said, hastily sipping the black coffee he had learned to prefer since meeting Irene.
    Godfrey, too, looked most debonair, as the French say, attired in a shiny top hat and walking suit and carrying a malacca cane. One sometimes forgot that Godfrey was such a fine-looking gentleman, so royally