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Erik:

I took my seat on the train back to Evrondes, my mind reeling. My visit to Bontriomphe and Bontriomphe had been…informative, but not informative enough for my taste.

I really was having the worst difficulty absorbing it all.

While that revelation about the register and how the record of 'our' marriage had got there had shocked me, I did not hold it against her. She had done it for the boy's sake. Curiously enough, the knowledge that she had committed fraud and told several notable lies gave me a sort of fellow feeling about her. It made her flesh and blood.

The way in which Anne had secured the proofs of her marriage convinced me that she had not sought legal advice beforehand, nor told any lawyers afterward. She would not have told anyone about that sordid episode in her life. Therefore, I was going to go into the law offices purporting to be none other than Erik Touchet, Anne's long absent husband, newly returned and ignorant of her whereabouts. I would be anxious for news of her, and full of a sincere longing to be reunited. I paused on the threshold, took a breath, and went in

My triumph in the Registry Office made me confident—perhaps overconfident. I came up against a head clerk who would not be moved. I had told him who I was, and for whom I was searching. He had admitted that Madame Anne Touchet was indeed a client of their firm, but that their policy of client confidentiality made it impossible for him to tell me more unless I had proof, not only that I was Erik Touchet, but that I was the same Erik Touchet who was married to her. He was also eyeing my mask askance.

A voice broke in to our argument. "It's all right, Paul, I'll handle this." I turned to see a tall, lanky man leaning casually against the door frame leading in to one of the Bontriomphes' private offices. He was about my age, I judged. He had dark hair, a wide mouth like an amiable frog's, and large ears that stuck out at right angles to his head. "Would you care to step into my office, Monsieur?" He pointed at the room behind him.

"Do I have the honor of addressing one of the Messieurs Bontriomphe?" I inquired, as he shut the door behind us.

"Indeed you do. I'm Aristide Bontriomphe. Apollyon is my brother, Alphonse our father." He lowered his long frame into his desk chair, but did not offer me a seat. "If I understand correctly, you say you are M'sieu Erik Touchet, the husband of Madame Anne Touchet, our valued client, but you have no official identification on you. I am prepared to take you at your word, and disclose everything we know about her and her affairs—that is, if you will remove your mask, and permit me to see your face."

I froze, and could say nothing. It was genuine; the request was so reasonable phrased, and so unwelcome.

"Madame Touchet has a three year old son by her husband, you see, and he is rather a unique looking child. She tells me he takes after his father. If you are who you say you are, I will know immediately." he said, affably, spreading his hands.

"I would prefer not to do so." I said.

"Then I am afraid I cannot help you."

"I do this only with great reluctance. I have not been in contact with my wife in over four years, during which time she, and the son I did not suspect existed, have apparently dropped off the face of the earth."

"I understand. It need only be for a moment, and I have every sympathy for you."

I reached up, and pulled the mask up.

He drew in his breath sharply, and raised his eyebrows, causing a series of parallel lines to climb his forehead and vanish into his hair. "Thank you, Monsieur Touchet. I am quite satisfied."

I replaced my mask as he rang a bell for a clerk, and requested the Touchet files, explaining to me as he did so, that the more important clients' files were kept in the senior Bontriomphe's office.

"But what of Anne?" I asked, anxiously, wondering what he meant by 'more important'.

Several minutes later, after he had told me she was alive and well, and so forth, I asked the first of the questions I had really come to ask. "But who owns the Grey Goose?"

"By French law as it now exists—you do, M'sieu Touchet." was his reply. "As a married woman, she was obligated to purchase it in your name—but then she did it with the money you left with her."

"What?" I experienced that feeling of unreality again, as I had in the registry office, when I found her name linked with mine.

"Perhaps I should begin at the beginning, which is now—almost four years ago. Let's call it four years, that's simpler. Four years ago, when Madame Touchet first came to call on me, with a hundred and fifty thousand francs in cashier's checks, I thought, at the time, that she had made an extremely fortunate marriage. In the intervening years, I have reversed that opinion. I now believe it was you who made the fortunate marriage.

"I remember it very well," he said, continuing. "She looked very fresh and cool despite the heat—it was August and it was stifling, but she had on a white cotton dress and a hat with scarlet poppies on it, and looked as fresh as a daisy. She had made an appointment with us through her former employer, the Comte de la Fere. We have the honor of being his solicitors. She told me that you had gone abroad and left a lot of money with her to be invested, so she would have something to live on until you returned, but she had had a baby in the meantime, and had done nothing with the funds until she was sure she would live. She had come to us for assistance.

"I told her that while we would be happy to help her in any way we could, we weren't an investment firm. I was about to recommend one, when she said 'No, I know just what I want to do with this money, and I needs lawyers for that.' She then outlined her plan to me. She wanted to buy an inn—not just any inn, but that particular one. She wanted to have it modernized and renovated, and then she wanted to take over the kitchen there, and become the cook.

"I pointed out that she was very young—you robbed the cradle, sir, when you married her, but I think in her case you had to; she wouldn't have stayed on the market for long—and lacked the practical experience needed to run a business.

"She surprised me by agreeing; she said she only wanted to run the kitchen, which she did understand. Most of the work—the accounting and such—would be done by proxy, through us, and she wanted us to hire someone to run the inn itself. She pulled out a list two pages long, listing all the improvements she wanted done, complete with simple estimates, even to the point of little bits of yarn to show what colors she wanted on the walls.

"I asked her how she'd found the time and the patience to draw up that list, and she said that her baby had come down with colic—I'm not married, but I know that means they cry non-stop for weeks on end—so since she wasn't sleeping anyway, she thought she might as well do something useful. 'Useful' is one of your wife's favorite words.

"Yes, I know. Like William Morris' axiom 'Have nothing in your home which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.'" I replied. It was not altogether a lie; I went by what I had observed of her.

He nodded. "That sounds like her. I didn't get to meet your son on that occasion. He was being looked after by Madame Childes, your wife's former superior in the Comte's kitchen, and your wife's one sister, the one who'd only just had a baby out of wedlock—."

"Might you mean Martine?" I hazarded a guess, remembering what Madame Hussenot had said of Anne's sister.

"Yes, that's the one."

"I never liked Martine." I commented, for all the world as if I knew every last one of the Norberts. Well, it was true. From what I had heard of Martine, I didn't like her.

"I don't blame you. A very unhappy young woman, Mademoiselle Martine—one of those who goes around angry because she thinks life owes her something and isn't paying up. Anyway, Madame Touchet turned over the cashier's checks and the letter you wrote her—By the way, we sort of had to turn that power-of-attorney into a legal document after the fact. It should have been notarized at the time, but since we have a notary in our office, it was easy—just a little bit shady…and put the wheels into motion toward the purchase of the Grey Goose.

"I did everything that I could to dissuade her from making what I thought was going to be a disastrous mistake—especially after I found out what sort of condition it was in, and that the town itself was so small and poor. But she insisted—she said that the railway made it a better prospect than it seemed, and all that was needed was good food to turn it into a going concern. The only thing I did do was get her to invest the money itself in government securities, and then take out a bank loan against them to buy the inn and do the renovations, rather than paying cash for everything. And I told her it would be folly to borrow and spend more than a hundred thousand. I thought that way I could prevent her from absolute destitution when the inn failed, as she would still have the income off of fifty thousand, which would keep her and the boy in relative comfort, at least until he started school.

"So we went ahead and purchased the inn. The Boulangers, who owned it, wanted forty thousand, but you got it for thirty. I thought that twenty would have been a fairer price, but Madame Touchet said that the inn was their only asset, and that she was buying the goodwill as well as the property. That was also why she didn't want it known that she was the owner—or the owner's wife. She didn't want to incur the envy and resentment of the community."

"I can believe it of her, but Anne never used the word 'incur.'" I said.

"You're right, she didn't. What she actually said was that she didn't 'want to put all their noses out of joint straight off.' Once all the modernizations were complete, all the redecorating done, the repairs made and the new gardens dug, one hundred and seven thousand and some odd francs had been spent on the place. It's all here in the files. The biggest single expense after the purchase of the inn itself was that damn refrigeration machine, excuse my language. It was a difficult transaction, since a technician had to come along with it and overstayed his visa. But she says it more than pays for itself, especially in hot weather.

"Now, most small new businesses fail within five years. Over ninety percent of them fail. I was only hoping to save something from the wreckage for your family to live on. But your wife was wiser than that. The inn did not quite break even in the first year. In the second, it turned a healthy profit. The loan of a hundred thousand francs was paid back in the third—in full. Monsieur Touchet, what with the improvements, the rise in property values, and the potential for future earnings, you and Madame Touchet own, free and clear, without encumbrances, a property and business worth approximately a third of a million. In addition to which, the original one hundred and fifty thousand francs, now invested in securities, has grown to two hundred and seventeen thousand, between the accrued interest and the investment of the inn's profits. There is also seventy thousand francs in liquid funds in the bank. In her last letter, Madame Touchet talked of purchasing a small property down by the railroad station and turning it into a combination bakery-café. If I were you, sir, I would only encourage her to as she sees fit."

No wonder the Touchet files were kept among those of their more important clients.

"But—I know she was a good cook, and could only have gotten better with time—how could she have amassed so much in such a short time?" It was an honest question. I really wanted to know the answer.

"Ah. There lies something I wanted to talk to you about. I believe it's on account of the truffles."

I confusedly thought for a moment that he meant the dog Truffle and her expected puppies. "Truffles? I don't know what you mean."

"What do you know about truffles?"

"Not much." I confessed

"Let's begin there. They are a type of fungus that grows underground. Truffles are a prized gastronomic delight. They cannot be cultivated commercially. They cannot be cultivated at all, in fact. They're very rare, highly desired by men who believe in certain aphrodisiacal powers they are reputed to have, loved for their earthy flavor, and used in a wide variety of savory dishes. They only grow in a few isolated areas of France, none of which are anywhere near Evrondes, and they are extremely expensive. I would go so far as to say that they are phenomenally expensive. And Madame Touchet uses them lavishly."

"You mean to say she's spending too much on them? But then the inn would be losing money, not making it."

"You're right. It would be—if she were spending too much on them. She isn't. As far as I can tell from the accounts she sends in every month, she doesn't spend a sou on truffles. She charges a third less than Paris restaurants would for the dishes she makes using truffles, and she even resells some truffles—at going market rates. Since she isn't buying them, it begs the question of where, exactly, is she getting them?"

"What does she say?" I asked, puzzled.

"She doesn't. I have come to the conclusion that she must be involved with the black market. Could you persuade her to give it up? Some of the people involved in that trade are prone to violence, and not only are there laws against it, but even if she should evade criminal charges, she is liable to get into a great deal of trouble over the taxes."

"I—will do my best."

"Thank you. Now, is there anything else I can do for you, sir? If you happen to be in immediate need of funds, I can—." He raised his eyebrows at me.

"Thank you, but no. However—if you would undertake a commission for me?" I had had an inspiration.

"Anything that is in my power."

I opened the trick compartment in the heel of my boot, and removed Ayesha's collar. "I am not coming home a pauper, but the greatest part of my funds is tied up in this little bauble."

"I see." He took the diamonds from me, turned it over in his hand, admiring their flash.

"You see there the fruits of four years of labor. You will have wondered why I should have absented myself so soon after my marriage."

"I confess I have. Even if Madame Touchet had the temperament of a harpy, her cooking would more than make up for that. I couldn't imagine why any reasonable man would leave her."

"I had made a prior commitment, which I had to keep. I was not, as she may have said, working for the Vanderbilts as an architect—that would hardly prevent my keeping in touch with my wife—I was elsewhere, doing something else, which I am not free to talk about. If you are wondering why I would bring home my pay in the form of diamonds, rather than cashier's checks—it is because I might not have been able to bring anything home at all, otherwise." I invented.

"I see." he said, again. "If it were anyone else, I don't think I would believe it…What can I do for you concerning this?"

"You can find me a buyer." I said. "I would like a receipt, of course."

"Certainly…And while I am not, as I said, a married man, may I offer a word of advice?"

"I suppose." I said, tentatively.

"Keep one of these sparklers, and have it set into a ring or a pendant for Madame Touchet. It will go a long way toward reconciling her toward your absence."

"Well taken, sir."

There had been more—he had called in a jeweler of his acquaintance to make an estimate of its worth, and other such details, but now I was on the train again, headed—headed toward home, or the closest thing I had to it on earth, having learned so much, and yet so little. I still didn't know where the money had come from, although I knew what she had done with it.

And then there was the fact that I was apparently the owner of record…which was extremely interesting.

A/N: I am not sure if the legal points made in this chapter are completely accurate, but in most places, for most of the 19thy century, a married woman had very few propery rights. On the whole, under such circumstances,a woman's husband would be the owner of allshe possessed.

Wow! The responses to the last chapter have been wonderful. Let me assure all those who miss them that the recipes are coming back. They just haven't fit into the last several chapters.

Lucia: I tried to send you an e-mail on 7/21—did you get it? If not, let me know…

Bella: Thank you—I thought the set-up, as it was, would be in character for both little Erik and Anne. Did you get my e-mail?

Nota Lone: Please don't do that. It sounds…painful.

Butterfly Guitar: I can be sneaky that way. Thank you.

Alittlerayofsunshine: I'm doing my best…

Kramedart Trademark: Thank you, my palindromic friend.

Awoman: I hope you enjoy your trip. I miss you!

Stine: Glad you liked the salad and scones!

HDKingsbury: I, myself, get worked up when I write lines like Anne's in chapter 23. I can't help it. Did you get my last e-mail?

MetalMyersJason: He definitely wants to stay with his son, and he will get to do just that. Keep reading; you'll see.

An Anti-Sheep Cheese Muffin: passes Muffin a band-aid There you go, hon.

Thank you also to: Sat-Isis, C. Dragonstongue, ante mortem, Phantom Raver, Sarah Crawford, and Sarahbelle.