No Light came on / Alice Campbell

Gay, a buyer for a New York antiques firm, comes to pre-war Paris on business, where she meets her wealthy fiftyish Midwestern cousin, Lou Rentrew, who prefers to be called “Marise”.

Lou, only recently widowed, has been living in Paris for some time, and what do all wealthy middle-aged American widows in Paris like to do? Get involved with attractive gigolo types, of course! Lou’s latest crush is Maurice de Chabenil, a handsome young Frenchman who has inherited a title but no fortune. He is also clearly a cad, albeit a charming one. Lou seems to have surrounded himself with a motley crew of servants: the keyhole-listening butler/chauffeur Manx, the feisty cook Hortense and the recently dismissed maid Alixe. Then there is Lou’s enigmatic Hungarian refugee seamstress, Madame Estrella, and the seamstress’s dodgy brother, a doctor called Boros, and then there are the Americans and the English: Lou’s gay brother-in-law, the antiques dealer Horace Rentrew. All in all, they are very shady characters, even if there are fancy shops and swanky hotels. Anyway, poor, gigolo-loving Lou is soon murdered in the posh nursing home she has checked herself into. And then Lou’s fabulous Marie Antoinette necklace is stolen! Gay herself is chloroformed in her bed and tortured with hot coals while clad only in high heels, brassiere and step-ins. But Gay, the brave girl, puts her clothes back on and keeps snooping around (she tells the story, by the way) until finally the shocking truth comes out.