Ben glanced at the inspector. “Then why take me in at all?”

“Due to the aforementioned.”

“Yes, the evidence.” Ben sat up straighter. “Might I know your sources?”

Inspector Marceau shook his head.

“What will you do with me then?” Ben asked.

“Bring you to the gaol,” he replied, “deliver you to your cell, perhaps ask a few more questions, and then write a report based on my findings.”

“Do you intend to find the real murderer?”

“I shall do my best.”

Ben felt helpless. The inspector might have been sincere, but there was an absence of confidence in his tone. He knew he could explain why he had the bodies in the cellar, but without a license to practice, his explanations would not matter.

As if reading his mind, the inspector said, “Exhumation is a serious crime.”

“There was a reason.”

“What good reason is there to disturb the dead?” Marceau crossed his arms. “You caused a great deal of pain to the boy’s family.”

“I understand that.”

“Then why?”

He heard the echo of Remi’s pain. Why?

“Leith, the young man, was murdered. He did not drown.” Ben said.

The inspector raised his silver brows. “No?”

“I was at the docks the morning they discovered him.” Ben gestured to his own neck and wrists, indicating the lacerations he’d found. “He’d been bound and strangled. If he’d drowned, there would have been water in his lungs.”

“But the doctor reported⁠—”

“If you think the doctor is a reputable source, you are sadly mistaken.”

Marceau’s mustache twitched with the hint of a smirk. “He said you might disagree.”

“And I do!” Ben snapped. “He’s a drunk.”

“But he practices within the law, whereas you do not,” Marceau said. It was an observation, not an insult, but Ben still felt its sting. “You have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, however, so I might be inclined to hear your side.”

“And what would you do with that information?” Ben asked.

“Delay your sentence.”

A flicker of hope found its way to Ben. “How?”

“Truthfully, I’m not from the Isle.” Marceau glanced out the window. “I was dispatched from the mainland and asked to look into current matters. As I said, I do not think you are guilty, but I will need the entire story if I am to aid you.”

Ben considered the inspector thoughtfully. “What do you want in return?”

Marceau shrugged. “Above all else, I want the truth.”

“That’s very honorable of you.”

Ben pressed his lips together and sucked in a breath as the door opened. He was not yet ready to leave the safety of the carriage or its meager comfort. But Marceau did not wait, and les gens d’armes were there to guide him out. Jacques waited on the cobbled path, and people had started to gather. Ben ignored them as he stepped out of the carriage and into their scrutiny.

“Do we have a deal?” Marceau leaned in a fraction to be heard above the growing noise.

“If you send for Remi,” Ben paused, catching movement in the crowd. A red tuft of hair bobbed above the other heads, and Hugo’s inscrutable countenance made itself known among the others. There was a darkness about him that left him blackened, even when the rest of the world was bathed in light. “If you send for Remi—let her speak with me—then we have a deal.”

“I will do as you ask.” Marceau nodded. His eyes sparkled with understanding. “It has been quite a long time since I last heard a love story.”

“Thank you.”

The inspector left him in the care of les gens d’armes. As they led him to one side of the gaol, he watched Jacques dragged to another. He felt the alarm rising in his chest, and when they brought him to a cell with iron bars, he gawked. The island was more behind on modern progress than he had originally thought.

“The inspector requested that we bring you to an uncrowded cell,” one of the men said, shouldering Ben inside the cage. His height made it impossible for him to find a comfortable position in the cramped space, but he said nothing.

When the men eventually left him, locked up and alone, he collapsed on the cot and sat on its edge with his head pressed between his palms. Hours passed in silence before the inspector returned for him; by then, it was evening, and Ben had been wading in misery. He approached the bars as Marceau sat in a chair he’d brought along with him.

“Did you speak with Remi?” he asked. “Will she come?”

With a notepad in hand, he frowned. “No, she refused.”

Ben’s heart sank.

“I will try again tomorrow,” the inspector assured him. “Give her time.”

Ben did not speak. His hands stiffened on the cold bars as he held back the nausea roiling in his gut. She would not come to him, would not see him. He couldn’t blame her, and yet, he still felt himself breaking.

I might have lost her forever.

A moment of shared sympathy passed between the men before the inspector cleared his throat and tapped the notepad’s blank face with his pen.

“Now then, let’s start from the beginning.”

REMI

Remi could not eat and barely slept.

Losing sleep meant nothing to her, but eating had been hard. Everything that touched her tongue tasted like ash. Elise called for the doctor on the second day, but he’d been drunk and dismissive.

“She’s hysterical,” he’d said simply. “I’ll prescribe her laudanum for sleep, but I cannot help any further than that. Widows in mourning often need sunshine.”