The Education of Francine Robinsworth Duchesney, A Summer Abroad

Cover Art (c) Roger Kopman. An early history of Paris Sleuths Extraordinaire, Mrs. Duchesney and Louis Bertrand. "Whatever the unknown in Europe," young Francine Robinsworth Duchesney told her parents at supper, "it has to be better than the known in a small town, where truth is hidden behind smiles, pleasantries, and an over abundance of stretch lace at weddings." On an old borrowed map hidden beneath her bed, Francine Robinsworth Duchesney had scribbled in bright blue "the other side of the world." Born with exceptional curiosity in a small town jam-packed with well-preserved century-old mysteries, where idle indiscretions lined cellars and attics like jars of last year's apricots, she found no lie was so well constructed, no secret so well kept, no treasure so deeply buried, that she could not discover and reveal it to an uneasy audience. So, when this youngest of eight Duchesney children receives an unexpected invitation to go abroad, most of her neighbors are relieved to see the annoyingly little amateur sleuth go. Europe will teach Francine how easily a young woman's mind and heart can be swayed by a dangerously vivid imagination and the unprecedented eagerness of intriguing men. In Switzerland, one man will ask her to stay "a while." In Paris, another will invite her to stay "forever." Only one will change her destiny forever with a small token, a mystery, and a priceless souvenir of A Summer Abroad. Later, she would write in her diary, "Whatever the truth is about my own life, it's still waiting somewhere else on a blank page in a place where people make no attempt to predict the future based upon a person's past."