"Are you out of your mind?" I said to Léa.

"At this rate, it's probably the only way we'll ever find out what happened to Johann Bergmann."

"I'm not going along with this. It's illegal, and it's downright insane, and besides, I still have to watch Jean-Luc and Sophie."

"It won't take too long."

"What if Sylvestre comes home early? He'll be concerned if I'm not here. I could even get fired."

"It would be totally worth it," Léa said, but I wasn't so sure. "Come on, Mattie," she said. "Aren't you even a little bit curious about what could possibly be in there?"

As a matter of fact, I was. I had idolized Johann Bergmann for most of my life, and I wanted nothing more than to see where he had lived in the last days of his life, to search for clues, to find out who had murdered him and why. If there was undiscovered evidence anywhere in the city, it was probably there, and I desperately wanted to be the one to find it.

"It's not worth the trouble, Léa," I finally said. "What if someone catches us?"

"Nobody's going to catch us," Léa said.

"How do you know?"

"As long as we're careful, we'll be fine."

"I still don't know about this."

"Well, I'm going to go check it out regardless. You can come if you want."

Léa walked away, and I almost sprinted after her, but instead, I turned to Jean-Luc and asked, "Can you handle yourself for a few minutes?"

"Of course," Jean-Luc said, already leafing through my copy of Le Petit Journal.

"I'll be back soon," I told him. "If your father comes back, tell him that I've left to run some errands."

Jean-Luc nodded, and I ran after Léa. A part of me knew that this was wrong, that breaking into Bergmann's hotel room would never end well, but at the same time, my curiosity would never be satiated until I followed Léa inside and found out exactly what was in there.

When I finally caught up to her, a few blocks down Boulevard de Magenta, she smiled and said, "Glad you finally decided to join me."

"How could I not?" I said. "As you said, how else are we going to find out what happened to Bergmann?"

"I suppose we'll know soon enough," Léa said. "How was your day, by the way?"

"It was fine," I said. "Jean-Luc came home early - apparently, he's going through a rough patch with one of his friends."

"That can be hard," Léa said. "I remember getting into a fight with one of my friends around Jean-Luc's age, although actually, he was more of an on-again, off-again boyfriend than a friend...anyways, things like that happen all the time, and sometimes, it's best to move on."

I nodded, but my mind drifted to Moreau. I remembered how he had shown me kindness when I had first arrived in Paris, how he had helped me reach out to Sylvestre and brought me to my first Order of the Nightingales meeting, and even though our friendship had gone cold, the last thing I wanted was to move on from him. I thought of what I had told Jean-Luc, how I had suggested that he talk to Antoine, and I decided that it would be best to follow my own advice. As soon as I got home, I promised myself that I would make amends with Moreau.

"I still can't believe that de Villiers is making us rehearse again tonight," Léa said. "It's a waste of everyone's time, in my opinion. We're all professionals - can't he trust us?"

"That does seem a little silly," I said.

"It's absolutely ridiculous!" Léa exclaimed as we made it into Montmartre. I spotted a half-constructed basilica in the distance as we passed by what felt like every café and cabaret in France.

"That's it," Léa said as we approached a tall, run-down building. "That's the Hotel de Montmartre. Bergmann was staying in a room on the second floor when he died."

"How are we going to get up there?" I asked.

"That's the easy part," Léa said as she gestured toward a nearby oak tree. "Getting into the room is going to be harder, but I'm sure we can do it." Léa then scrambled up the tree, while I hesitantly waited on the ground. "Come on, Mattie!" she exclaimed. "Don't tell me that you've never climbed a tree before!"

"It's been a long time," I admitted. Gertie and I had climbed a handful of trees when we were young, but Mum always seemed to disapprove.

"Just give it a try," Léa said, and I sighed and hoisted myself up to the first branch. As it turned out, I remembered more than I expected from my youthful adventures. I made it to the next branch without a problem, although I snagged my skirt just as Léa and I were about to reach Bergmann's window.

"Seriously?" I said as I inspected the tear. "That was one of my nicer dresses."

"You really should have worn bloomers for this, but I'll buy you a new one," Léa said. As I inched closer to Bergmann's room, eager to see what was inside, she unsheathed her sword, reached toward the window, and smashed it open.

I gaped at the broken window for a moment, shards of glass sticking out from the window frame. I then turned to Léa and asked, "Do you just carry your sword around with you all the time?"

"You never know when you might end up in a duel," Léa said with a smirk as she carefully crawled into the hotel room.

I followed her, trying my best not to step on broken glass. "I don't know about this, Léa," I said. "I feel like we're going to get caught."

"Here's the thing, Mattie," Léa said. "Nobody is ever going to suspect that two women did this, especially not a tutor and an opera singer. Trust me on this."

I wasn't so sure, but nevertheless, I stepped into Johann Bergmann's hotel room and looked around. At first glance, it seemed completely unremarkable, like every other hotel room in Paris. The closet was empty, the wallpaper was hideous, and the bed didn't even look like it had been slept in. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary here, and I wondered why on Earth I had let Léa convince me to come here in the first place.

Léa and I searched through the room, but we couldn't find anything. There was no sign that Johann Bergmann had been here at all. This was all just a waste of time, I thought to myself. I left Jean-Luc by himself and snagged my skirt on a tree branch for nothing.

I opened up the top drawer of the nightstand, expecting it to be empty just like every other drawer in the room, but I was delighted to find a pencil and a few sheets of staff paper. "Léa!" I called out. "I found something!"

"What is it?" Léa asked as she rushed over to me.

I handed her one of the pieces of paper, and she read it over, while I took the one at the top of the stack. My eyes drifted to the signature at the top right of the page, and sure enough, it was Johann Bergmann's. The composition wasn't anywhere near complete: in fact, it was barely more than a sketch. There were melodies, bits and pieces of accompaniment, a few hasty notes about where the piece was going, but it all stopped abruptly halfway through the first movement.

At the top of the page, there was a title for the piece: Symphony No. 10.

I stared at the piece in awe, Bergmann's melodies echoing in my head. I felt unbelievably fortunate to have found this, incomplete as it was. I had never expected to find myself here, in a hotel in Paris, with Johann Bergmann's sheet music in my hands. I smiled slightly, and a single tear fell onto the paper as I stared at this composition, the last remains of my deceased idol.

"Mattie, are you okay?" Léa asked. I nodded, and she said, "Did you find anything interesting? I've got some unfinished Bergmann compositions here - they're mostly sketches, but one of them is nearly complete."

"Can I see?" I asked, and she handed me a small stack of paper. At the top of the first page, I saw Johann Bergmann's signature and the title "Trombone Concerto No. 42."

"Wait a minute," I said. "Johann Bergmann never published a trombone concerto. How could this one be his forty-second?"

Léa shrugged. "Bergmann wrote a lot of music, but he only published his best work," she said. "Usually, he burned anything he didn't think was good enough to show the world."

I thought of all of that music Bergmann must have written, all of those worlds he'd created, now lost forever. How many pieces had he written that nobody would ever get the chance to hear?

"Anyways, he had an old sweetheart who played trombone, and I suppose that's why he wrote so many solo pieces for the instrument," Léa said. "I don't think there's anything else to see here though. Are you ready to go?"

I turned back to the symphony, and I carefully folded the music and tucked it into my purse. I had to keep Johann Bergmann's final piece, if only for sentimental value. Once the sheet music was safely hidden away, I nodded, and Léa and I began our descent onto the street below. This time, I was careful not to snag my skirt again, and once the two of us were on the ground, I looked up at a nearby clock.

"Bloody hell," I said. "It's almost time to pick Sophie up."

I immediately started walking toward Sophie's school, and Léa followed me, eagerly blathering on about what we had found. "Isn't it neat that we found some of Bergmann's pieces?" she said.

"Yeah, it is interesting," I said. "He was such a talented composer, and it's just fascinating to see his thought process. He put so much thought into everything he composed..."

"I only wish that we found something relevant to the case," Léa said. "It's not like Bergmann's compositions are going to help us catch the killer."

As usual, she was right. In terms of solving the mystery, our little trip had all been for nothing. However, for me, discovering Bergmann's 10th Symphony was more valuable than any clue we could have possibly found. I had a new piece of music by Johann Bergmann, something that I never thought I'd ever have again, and it was all mine.

Léa and I picked Sophie up from school, and when we returned to Sylvestre's house, I said goodbye to my best friend and knocked on the door. To my surprise, Sylvestre answered the door. "What is going on here?" he asked.

"I...I was out running errands," I said.

"Yeah," Jean-Luc said. "Like I said earlier."

Sylvestre shrugged and asked me, "Would you like a composition lesson today?"

"Actually, I should get home," I said. I needed to talk to Moreau, and I knew that I should do it now, while I still had the courage.

I said goodbye to Sophie, Jean-Luc, and Sylvestre, and I walked back to Madame Leclerc's boarding house, still thinking of Bergmann's unfinished symphony as I climbed upstairs. I imagined him in that hotel room, poring over his symphony, trying to figure out how to translate the sounds he heard in his head to markings on a piece of paper...

As I approached Moreau's room, I ran straight into someone. I quickly apologized, but then I looked up and realized who it was.

"Gertie," I said as I threw my arms around her in a hug. "You're here."