divine

Two different riddles, three villains, one of which was really the darkest paint, three murders, one suicide, the abduction of a child, three strong Victorian women – one of them is unusually tragic, the other is quite a deceiver, like Becky Sharp, and divine retribution. Suffice it to say that one of the main characters is a young woman who lives with a man who claims to be a father, but exploits...

The Ambassador’s office was indeed a very thankless one, while my own position as second secretary of the Paris Embassy was a post not to be envied, even though it is popularly supposed to be one of the plums of the diplomatic service. With Paris full of spies endeavouring to discover our secrets and divine our instructions from Downing Street, and the cabinet noir ever at work upon our correspondence,...