Publisher's Synopsis
All is not well at the French Academy. The vacant chair of Monseigneur d'Abbeville needs to be filled to make up the Forty members-but there's a problem. Three candidates have died prior to taking the chair and the rumour around Paris is that a mysterious sorcerer, Éliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de La Nox, wants the chair for himself and has the means to get it. Hippolyte Patard, the Perpetual Secretary of the Academy, is as keen as anyone to take the curse off the chair and to find a new member to sit in it. Gaspard Lalouette looks like a promising candidate-but a few issues need to ironed out before he can take the chair...issues such as the removal of the threat of death hovering over the Haunted Chair!
