CHAPTER SIX
In The Dead of Night
The Commandant of Brothels met Renee in the library of the house—another sunny room, not some dreary men’s study with thick, gargantuan furniture and gloomy bookcases covering the walls. Madame’s library was more genteel, offering several floor-to-ceiling cases of hardbound and paperback books… some dating back well into the 19th and 20th Centuries. She loved the smell of the room, the perfume of paper and glue and printing ink, which though faint now, still roused her imagination and romantic spirit. She particularly liked the words of Henry James, Jane Austen and the erotica written at the turn of the 21st Century. The more graphic and extreme the better. She had kindred spirits in those times… a fact that soothed her occasionally befuddled spirit.
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