Toni and Jean Claude arrived at nine, and they were warmly greeted at the door by the owner.
“Monsieur Parent. How nice to see you.”
“Thank you, Andre. This is Miss Toni Prescott. Mr. Nicholas.”
“A pleasure, Miss Prescott. Your table is ready.”
“The food is excellent here,” Jean Claude assured Toni, when they were seated. “Let us start with champagne.”
They ordered paillard de veau and torpille and salad and a bottle of Valpolicella.
Toni kept studying the emerald ring Jean Claude had given her. “It’s so beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Jean Claude leaned across the table. “Tu aussi. I cannot tell you how happy I am that we have finally met.”
“I am, too,” Toni said softly.
The music began. Jean Claude looked at Toni. “Would you like to dance?”
“I’d love to.”
Dancing was one of Toni’s passions, and when she got out on the dance floor, she forgot everything else. She was a little girl dancing with her father, and her mother said, “The child is clumsy.”
Jean Claude was holding her close. “You’re a wonderful dancer.”
“Thank you.” Do you hear that, Mother?
Toni thought, I wish this could go on forever.
On the way back to the hotel, Jean Claude said, “Chérie, would you like to stop at my house and have a nightcap?”
Toni hesitated. “Not tonight, Jean Claude.”
“Tomorrow, peut-être?”
She squeezed his hand. “Tomorrow.”
At 3:00 A.M., Police Officer René Picard was in a squad car cruising down Grande Allée in the Quartier Montcalm when he noticed that the front door of a two-story redbrick house was wide open. He pulled over to the curb and stepped out to investigate. He walked to the front door and called, “Bon soir. Y a-t-il, quelqu’un?”
There was no answer. He stepped into the foyer and moved toward the large drawing room. “C’est la police. Y a-t-il, quelqu’un?”
There was no response. The house was unnaturally quiet. Unbuttoning his gun holster, Officer Picard began to go through the downstairs room, calling out as he moved from room to room. The only response was an eerie silence. He returned to the foyer. There was a graceful staircase leading to the floor above. “Allo!” Nothing.
Officer Picard started up the stairs. When he got to the top of the stairs, his gun was in his hand. He called out again, then started down the long hallway. Ahead, a bedroom door was ajar. He walked over to it, opened it wide and turned pale. “Mon Dieu!”
At five o’clock that morning, in the gray stone and yellow brick building on Story Boulevard, where Centrale de Police is located, Inspector Paul Cayer was asking, “What do we have?”
Officer Guy Fontaine replied, “The victim’s name is Jean Claude Parent. He was stabbed at least a dozen times, and his body was castrated. The coroner says that the murder took place in the last three or four hours. We found a restaurant receipt from Pavilion in Parent’s jacket pocket. He had dinner there earlier in the evening. We got the owner of the restaurant out of bed.”
“Yes?”
“Monsieur Parent was at Pavilion with a woman named Toni Prescott, a brunette, very attractive, with an English accent. The manager of Monsieur Parent’s jewelry store said that earlier that day, Monsieur Parent had brought a woman answering that description into the store and introduced her as Toni Prescott. He gave her an expensive emerald ring. We also believe that Monsieur Parent had sex with someone before he died, and that the murder weapon was a steel-blade letter opener. There were fingerprints on it. We sent them on to our lab and to the FBI. We are waiting to hear.”
“Have you picked up Toni Prescott?”
“Non.”
“And why not?”
“We cannot find her. We have checked all the local hotels. We have checked our files and the files of the FBI. She has no birth certificate, no social security number, no driver’s license.”
“Impossible! Could she have gotten out of the city?”
Officer Fontaine shook his head. “I don’t think so, Inspector. The airport closed at midnight. The last train out of Quebec City left at five-thirty-five last night. The first train this morning will be at six-thirty-nine. We have sent a description of her to the bus station, the two taxi companies and the limousine company.”