The Dark Secret of Josephine

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The Parisian intrigue as a result of which Napoleon received his first great command—that of the Army of Italy—and the devilish scheming of a pirates' "moll' queening it among outlaws of the Spanish Main, may seem worlds apart. Yet in this story of Roger Brook—Mr. Pitt's most daring and resourceful secret agent—they are knit together by a mysterious episode in the early life of the Empress Josephine.

She was born in Martinique. Mention is made in her own memoirs of her mulatto foster-sister Lucette, and Lucette's brother who later black­mailed her in Paris. They also give an account of her love affair with William de Kay. But how far did it go? It is certainly a fact that her first (or was he her second?) husband, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, endeavoured to rid himself of her on a charge of bigamy.

It was in far from happy circumstances that Roger first heard of Josephine. He had sailed for the West Indies on pleasure bent, with a party that included three lovely ladies; but in those days the blue Waters of the Caribbean were infested with sea-rovers and, as contemporary accounts record, many a terrible scene of torture, rape and murder was enacted among its palm-fringed islands.

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