French National Security Agency

The Sûreté is the Paris-based French security service that investigated King Victor, Angèle Mory, and the Comrades of the Red Hand during the events surrounding King Nicholas IV’s visit to Paris. Its history, recounted by M. Lemoine, links criminal disguises and revolutionary intrigue to Mory’s rise from actress to Queen Varaga, and supplies crucial background to the monarchy’s eventual fall.

Identity and Investigative Role

The Sûreté’s officers suspected that Captain O’Neill, a daring robber operating in Paris, was in fact King Victor, but they could not obtain the proof needed to establish the identification. They also suspected that Angèle Mory, an actress at the Folies Bergeres, was associated with King Victor’s operations. These suspicions placed both figures within the service’s field of attention, though the evidence available at the time remained incomplete.

The service’s remit extended beyond ordinary criminal investigation. When the young King Nicholas IV of Herzoslovakia was due to visit Paris, the Sûreté received special instructions to help ensure his safety. It was specifically warned to supervise the activities of the Comrades of the Red Hand, a revolutionary organization whose plans made the royal visit a matter of political security as well as personal protection.

The Plot Against the King

According to M. Lemoine’s retrospective account, the Comrades approached Mory and offered her a large sum to assist their plan. Her assigned role was to captivate the young King and draw him to a place where the revolutionaries could reach him. Mory accepted the bribe and undertook to carry out that part of the scheme.

The plan did not unfold as its organizers expected. Mory won the King’s love, and he showered her with jewels. She came to seek not merely the position of a king’s mistress but the status of a queen. The account therefore distinguishes the revolutionaries’ intended use of Mory from the ambition she developed for herself: the service’s narrative of the plot is also a story of an agent who exceeded her employers’ design.

Mory’s Rise and the Revolution

Mory achieved her ambition by entering Herzoslovakia under the identity of Countess Varaga Popoleffsky, presented as a relative of the Romanovs. She eventually became Queen Varaga. In Lemoine’s telling, the transformation from Parisian actress to queen is the striking outcome of the scheme’s unexpected turn: the woman recruited to help the revolutionaries ensnare a king instead secured a place beside him on the throne.

The Comrades of the Red Hand regarded Mory’s conduct as betrayal and made two attempts on her life. They later helped bring the country to a point at which revolution broke out. The King and Queen perished during that upheaval, bringing the story of Mory’s rise to an abrupt political end. Lemoine’s account thus presents the service’s concerns about the revolutionary organization as part of a wider crisis that culminated in the destruction of the monarchy.

M. Lemoine’s Unofficial Work

The Sûreté’s later involvement in the investigation at Chimneys is represented through M. Lemoine, who explains that he arrived the morning after the murder. Rather than immediately presenting himself as an official colleague of Superintendent Battle, he chose to investigate unofficially. He reasoned that an overt association with Battle might alert the people he was pursuing, while the suspicion directed at him could help keep them from recognizing his purpose.

Lemoine later apologized for not appearing as expected and said that this unofficial approach had allowed him to observe a good deal over the preceding two days. His conduct extends the Sûreté’s methods beyond its earlier Paris investigation: discretion and concealed purpose remain useful when a formal role might warn suspects. Through his account and his actions, the organization connects the novel’s revolutionary backstory with the investigation unfolding at Chimneys.