The Count's Millions

Paris, 1870. The Count de Chalusse lies motionless in his mansion, struck down by a mysterious stroke. But the real drama erupts when his will disappears along with two million francs and all suspicion falls upon Marguerite, his beautiful ward who stands to inherit everything. As servants whisper in darkened hallways and secrets surface from the household's troubled past, the young clerk Maxence Patron becomes determined to prove Marguerite's innocence. What follows is a labyrinth of deception, false accusations, and extraordinary adventure that established Gaboriau as the architect of the modern detective novel seventeen years before Sherlock Holmes ever walked into a London consulting room. The Count's Millions is not merely a puzzle to be solved but a portrait of Second Empire France where wealth is power, accusation is destiny, and a woman's honor can be destroyed in a single whisperedrumor.