The World of Aristide Valentin

An Evening at the Home of Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police

• Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, is late for his dinner party.
• Valentin's house is peculiar and celebrated for its architecture, with no ultimate exit except through the front door guarded by Ivan and the armoury.
• Valentin is ruthless in the pursuit of criminals but uses his influence for the mitigation of sentences and the purification of prisons.
• Valentin is a great humanitarian French freethinker but makes mercy even colder than justice.
• Valentin is dressed in black clothes and the red rosette, an elegant figure with a dark beard already streaked with grey.
• Valentin's principal guest is not yet present, but other notable guests have arrived, including the English Ambassador, Lady Margaret Graham, and Commandant O'Brien of the French Foreign Legion.
• Commandant O'Brien is an Irish gentleman with an air at once dashing and melancholy, in uniform with sabre and spurs.
• Valentin is expecting a man of world-wide fame, whose friendship he has secured during some of his great detective tours and triumphs in the United States.
• Valentin stands at the open door of his study, looking out upon the garden, and regards the sharp moon with wistfulness unusual in such scientific natures as his.
• Valentin's guests are pillars of society, but he is not specially interested in any of them.
• Valentin performs his duties with precision, even though they are rootedly repulsive to him.
• Valentin's house has a large and elaborate garden, but there is no exit from the garden into the world outside, with a tall, smooth, unscalable wall with special spikes at the top.

How well do you know Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police? Take this quiz to test your knowledge of the peculiar and celebrated house he calls home, his ruthless pursuit of criminals, and his humanitarian yet cold approach to justice. See if you can identify his notable guests and his world-famous friend, and discover the mysteries behind the unique architecture of his home and garden. Are you ready to step into the world of Aristide Valentin?