The Musée du Costume in Avallon is an extraordinary delight in the real town of Avallon. The charming woman who runs it looks something like my Mme Roussel, but that is not her name and there has not been a murder in her curated town house. However, the rest of Avallon has been reconfigured for my storytelling purposes. Avallon does indeed have a chocolate shop, a small store that specializes in local cheeses, a wonderful butcher/charcuterie, and a café at the crossroads. But I would not for a minute charge their proprietors with being the gossips that my invented characters are. My thanks again to early readers Steve Shea and Ceil Cleveland, to Isabelle Breton, to the great team—my editor, Alicia, and Shailyn, Sarah, and Susannah—at St. Martin’s, to Kimberley Cameron, for setting me on this path, and to my dear friend Alice, for exploring Avallon with me in the dead of winter.