Free The Blood of Lorraine by Barbara Pope

of Martin’s desk. Antoinette Thomas promised to be a tough customer.
    “It was him, I tell you,” she said again, her green eyes flashing, daring Martin to call her a liar. She did not flinch even as he made a show of scrutinizing her face. She sat straight up, arms crossed, returning his disapproving stare.
    Antoinette Thomas was taller than Geneviève Philipon, and healthier. In less dire circumstances, she might have been considered an attractive woman, even seductive. Her thick dark brown hair stood out on each side of her face, the tangle of unruly curls bristling with electric energy. An angry ruddiness colored her cheeks, and some hidden store of pride stiffened her carriage. As she held back her head waiting for Martin to respond to her ridiculous accusation, she lifted her firm square chin and thrust her chest forward. Her breasts were not limp and dry like the wet nurse’s.
    Yet these breasts had not nourished her son. If what the wet nurse had told Martin were true, Antoinette Thomas had not been a mother at all, beyond giving birth to the unfortunate Marc-Antoine. How could any true mother disembowel her own baby? Martin shuddered as he remembered the greenish-gray corpse lying in the morgue. And then, equally unbidden, came the image of his own dear wife, with her great belly, waiting eagerly for the day that she would nurse a child at her breast. Martin squeezed his eyes shut, for to think of Clarie as he looked upon Antoinette Thomas seemed almost a sacrilege.
    Martin stayed very still for a moment, clearing his mind to prepare himself for battle. With a hard case like Antoinette Thomas, it might take all manner of threats and manipulation to get her to confess to what she had done and why, and, most important of all, to tell him who had incited her to make up her inflammatory little fable.
    “The Jew,” she repeated, filling up a silence broken only by Charpentier clearing his throat at the little desk to the left of Martin and the muted sound of footsteps through the window behind him. Her voice was quieter and less confident. She crossed her arms over her chest again, protectively this time.
    Martin leaned back in his chair, trying to effect a casual pose, even though his stomach was churning with disgust. “Madame Thomas,” he began, “before we get to your”—he paused to underline his skepticism—“your accusations , we need information for the official record. Please answer truthfully and slowly so Monsieur Charpentier can write everything down with utmost accuracy.”
    Martin heard another cough, and much shuffling of papers behind him. Charpentier had caught on. Martin was about to grind the witness down by asking in slow, excruciating detail about her past and present life. He would make her spell out every name, every address, every date. And drive her a little mad in the process.
    This should not have been difficult. Martin’s refusal to respond to her provocations seemed to have put her in a state of animal-like alertness. Although she maintained her pose, straight as a statue before him, the way she clutched her shawls together with white-knuckled fists gave her away.
    Still, instead of answering Martin’s simplest questions, she hurled demands and invective at him and his clerk.
    “Tell me why I am here! Ain’t it your job to find the Jew that killed my boy and took out his guts? Don’t you know about them, what they do? You bring in a poor, grieving mother, when they are out there right now finding more innocent children to use in their wicked ceremonies.”
    She caught her breath and smiled for just an instant, as if she had surprised even herself with the last inventive flourish.
    It was enough to get on anyone’s nerves. Nevertheless, Martin kept his voice low and steady. “Please spell your full name, maiden and married,” he repeated.
    And repeated. Until she began to respond. Until she understood that this was a game she could not win. Martin proceeded, stony,