A biography of Marguerite Steinheil (1869-1954), who ascended the social ladder in Belle Epoque Paris on the rungs of many lovers, until a night in May 1908 when her husband and mother were killed. Found tied to her bed, she claimed that a group of robed robbers had broken into the home and committed the murders; eventually she herself was tried but acquitted. She subsequently got to London and married an English aristocrat. Her lurid tale is told with due reference to Dreyfus Affair and to the uneasy relationship between preserving social heirarchies and justice.