Paris in the age of gaslight and the fiacre: a fashionable French painter is found strangled. Highly embarrassing for the Establishment: the painter's wife, a lady of dubious morals, was very much in the news a year or so ago, when the President of France (no less) happened to die in her bed of a heart attack. Felix Hassler may even have been murdered by one of his wife's lovers. She may even be an accessory. But the powers that be don't want her in the dock, with all the old scandals revived. The police are advised to be discreet. But Inspector Gautier is more interested in justice. During his investigation, he uncovers some splendid new scandals.