38It had gotten to the point that Paul-Henri woke with dread each morning, not wanting to go to work and have to face Chief Charlot. Every day she found something to pick on: the windowsills were dusty (they were not), his uniform was unclean (never!), he made too much noise typing on his keyboard (nothing he could do about that). He was afraid to breathe for fear of disturbing her—and needless to say, in that kind of atmosphere, there was precious little detective work going on. At least he was able to take care of the everyday work well enough, and heaven knows there was not usually much excitement going on at the Castillac gendarmerie.
But this month, they had a murder on the books. And to Paul-Henri’s eye, instead of throwing all her efforts into the case, Chief Chantal Charlot seemed
