The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes w/ Nook Direct Link Technology (A Classic Mystery Novel)

They both styled themselves "Madame," but only the younger of the old ladies had been married. Madame Valière was still a demoiselle, but as she drew towards sixty it had seemed more convenable to possess a mature label. Certainly Madame Dépine had no visible matrimonial advantages over her fellow-lodger at the Hôtel des Tourterelles, though in the symmetrical cemetery of Montparnasse (Section 22) wreaths of glass beads testified to a copious domesticity in the far past, and a newspaper picture of a chasseur d'Afrique pinned over her bed recalled--though only the uniform was the dead soldier's--the son she had contributed to France's colonial empire. Practically it was two old maids--or two lone widows--whose boots turned pointed toes towards each other in the dark cranny of the rambling, fusty corridor of the sky-floor.