A gentleman is found shot at his own château gate, and every fact points to the young count who was seen leaving — who will not say where he was, because saying it would ruin a woman. Gaboriau was a cavalry trooper and a lawyer's clerk before he invented Monsieur Lecoq and the French detective novel; the whole book turns on an alibi its holder refuses to use, and the provincial magistrates are drawn from life. Fifty-five plates by painters including Daumier and Bonnard follow the story's night roads, courthouse steps and quiet rooms, matching the novel's dusk-and-evidence mood.
