Motioning me to follow, he stops in front of a poulterer's window, where he makes a show of interest in a Norman goose. Then, without a word, he draws me inside the adjoining building. The door closes after us, he puts a finger to his lips, he points . . . up.

But who would have guessed up would mean five f loors? With a heavy bundle in your arms? By the time we reach the top, I'm rubbing my shiny forehead on the turnip bag, and Vidocq's belly is swelling to twice its normal stoutness-all the more so because he's trying to still the sound of his own breathing. A minute passes, the belly contracts . . . Vidocq puts his knuckles to the door and raps, lightly, three times. "Who is it?"

"Friends."

From inside, a scatter and a scuff le. Moments later, the door opens on a young woman-maybe not young at all-skinny as a limpet with a cat-nose and vole-eyes.

"Ah! " cries Vidocq. "La belle Jeanne-Victoire! "

"Monsieur Eugene," she says, even as glass.

"I'm looking for Poulain, my sweet."

"Not at home, to be sure."

"Ahhh." His eyes execute a quick sweep of the room. "Then we'll just wait for him, if you don't mind."

She pauses to consider, but he's already stepped around her, and the only thing left to consider is me: hat in hand, smiling with ref lexive courtesy, clutching that mysterious package to my breast.

"I don't believe you've met," Vidocq calls back.

It is a strange feature of Parisian apartments: The closer they get to Heaven, the more hellish they become. A ground-f loor apartment will, often as not, come with a nice fireplace, a rosewood dresser, Utrecht velvet on the armchairs, even a garden. By the time you get to the garret, you can feel the cold bleeding through the plaster cracks, you can hear the worms eating into the boards.

And yet people do live in the high-ceilinged pen that Jeanne-Victoire calls home. No doubt they freeze in the winter, but why bother with a fireplace when the drafts would kill any fire? Why bother with curtains when there's no light? Or wallpaper when your walls ooze a putrid tar? Even the f loor has been stripped down to its foundations, and as for furniture, there's a pair of straw pallets, crawling with dust mites, and a table listing on three legs. Everything else is a melee of rags and old shoes and broken boards and broken bowls.

And a single baby.

I don't see it at first. I'm just trying to find a place where I can, in good conscience, stand, and this means nudging away some old stockings and a birdcage, and it's in the act of relocating a kettle that I see, lying atop a chafing dish, something soft and purple-cheeked and still.

So very still I'm already reaching toward it-looking for a pulse point-and then I see the eyelids shudder and the hands feint in my direction.

It holds my eye, this baby. And it never makes a sound. "In blooming health, I see," says Vidocq, peering over my shoulder. "I congratulate you, Jeanne-Victoire. Your third, isn't it?"

No embarrassment in her eyes, either.

"The first with Arnaud," she says.

"A h , yes . You would need to start over again with Arnaud, wouldn't you? A whole new accounting system for Arnaud."

"Monsieur does not look so blooming himself. Police work must not be paying as well."

He grabs a fistful of Bardou's dirty blouse and grins like spring. "Austerity measures ! Vidocq lives to serve! "

He opens his arms wide. As though he were about to embrace her and everything in the room. Squeeze the life out of it.

"You wouldn't have a pipe, would you?" he asks.

She shakes her head.

"My mistake. I could have sworn I smelled one."

"Arnaud keeps one around, of course. For when he's here."

"Of course." Then, as if the thought has just occurred to him: "Do you mind if I look at his? I'm in the market for a new one."

"Ah, what a pity, Monsieur. I can't remember where he-"

"Never mind! " he cries, reaching into a broken water pitcher and pulling out a length of briar pipe. He smiles as he waggles it between his fingers. He f lares his nostrils. "Mm, still smoldering. Now that's what I call good tobacco."

Her chin is tucked all the way down to her collarbone, as though she's getting ready to charge. But all she says is:

"Arnaud will be so sorry to have missed you, Monsieur."

"Not half as sorry as . . ."

His eyes widen. Putting down the pipe, he steps round an overturned washbasin and pauses behind an old sheet-iron furnace, angled against the wall. Then, with a look of faint regret, he tips the furnace over.