More importantly, though, his men had managed a tentative count of the dead while he'd searched the statue and perused the ledger. And if that count was correct, the room contained twenty-six corpses-to the ledger's twenty-eight entries. At least two members were unaccounted for.

“Inside job,” he said to Bouniard. “I suppose it would almost have had to be. I…”

“Sir,” Julien pressed as Chapelle's brow furrowed in thought. “What is it?”

“Didn't I hear Darien Lemarche listed amongst the dead?”

“Uh, yes, I believe so.”

“How many of you,” the sergeant asked, surveying the room as a whole, “are up on the latest gossip?”

Several Guardsmen exchanged glances and guiltily raised their hands.

“Was Lemarche still involved with Adrienne Satti?”

“Last I heard, yes, sir,” one of them replied.

“Find her. Now.”

They failed; no matter how they tried, they found no trace of the woman among the dead. Chapelle nodded with each report, his expression growing ever more certain.

Damned aristocrats! He could have told them it would end badly, with her. Although, he admitted to himself, I didn't expect it would go this badly.

“We'll have these bodies picked up, gathered, and…reassembled as best as possible,” Chapelle told his men. “I'm fairly certain I know what's happened, but we have to identify them, all of them, to be sure.

“I also need a volunteer,” the sergeant barked as his men fell eagerly in line to depart. “Someone to stay behind and ensure the room's not disturbed until the clean-up workers arrive.”

Julien Bouniard moved forward, arm half-raised, only to fall back-eyes and mouth agape, obviously shocked to the core-as a blond-haired figure appeared before him.

“I'll stay, sir,” volunteered Henri Roubet, a constable some few years older than Julien himself.