This paper is a story of discovery, one that takes the reader step by step on a voyage of literary detection towards uncovering the identity of a literary translator: Jeanne Heywood. It looks at the detailed process of enquiry needed, couples deduction with discovery and lures the researcher away from the comfort of their own desk into the carefully guarded realm of the archive. It follows the progress of the literary detective from private archives secluded away in an abbey in Caen, all the way to Special Collections housed in research institutes in Chicago and New York, from the Musée Rodin in Paris to the German Literature Archive in Marbach.