Madonna and Corpse

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“Turn off that damned alarm!” René Descartes — Inspector René Descartes, of the French National Police — waved his arm in a sweeping arc of annoyance that encompassed not just the bored police officers and the nervous museum staffers, but also the museum itself, its collection of ancient paintings, and possibly even their long-dead creators, as if the artists themselves might bear some of the blame for rousting him from sleep at one in the morning.

“We’re working on it,” croaked the museum’s director, a withered crone named Madame Clergue. Christ, how old is she? wondered Descartes, jotting her name in a pocket-sized notepad that he’d fished from inside his jacket. She probably bought these pictures from the guys who painted them. Beneath her hastily donned raincoat, Mme. Clergue appeared to be wearing only a thin cotton nightgown. Its embroidered collar was unraveling, sending tendrils of thread curling upward toward her wispy white hair.

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