The walk to the boulevard Haussmann was longer than she had thought, but Lucy didn’t mind. She was enjoying walking along the streets of Paris, pausing here and there to examine a shop window or to witness a charming incident, like the bride in an enormous full-skirted wedding dress she saw stuffing herself into a tiny Renault.

Elizabeth was on duty at the concierge’s desk when Lucy finally reached the hotel, but she was due for a break. She took her mother into the staff room, where there were coffee and snack machines, and bought two bottles of water.

“Are you having a good time in Paris?” asked Elizabeth, seating herself in an armchair with a cracked leatherette seat and unscrewing the cap on her bottle of Vichy water.

“We were until today,” said Lucy, taking the adjacent seat, a similar chair covered in ugly tweed. “Our teacher at Le Cooking School, Chef Larry, was attacked. Stabbed. And now the police have taken our passports.”

Elizabeth’s mouth was full of water, and she swallowed hard. “What?”

“I found him and called for help. They took him to the hospital. I don’t know if he’s alive.”

“So you might actually be involved in a murder?” asked Elizabeth. “That’s bad.”

“I know. That’s why I came. There was a cop. He took our passports.”

“Are you suspects? That’s really bad, Mom. The French have this thing, garde à vue. It means they can lock you up for pretty much as long as they want, if they suspect you of committing a crime.”

This was news to Lucy, but it confirmed her worst fears about the French system, so she forged ahead with her plan. “I thought . . . I’m actually hoping that maybe you could ask one of your supervisors for some advice. Maybe your boss, Monsieur Fontneau, could help us? Concierges have all sorts of connections, right?”

Elizabeth was quiet. Her index finger was running in circles, stroking the lip of the bottle. “He’s my immediate supervisor, Mom, and I’m trying to impress him. I don’t want him to know my family is involved in a crime.”

“Well, what about the hotel manager?”

“Are you crazy? That would be worse. Monsieur Bertrand is terribly proper. Besides, I’m pretty low on the totem pole. I don’t really get to talk to top management.”

“Don’t they have some sort of service for resolving employees’ problems?” asked Lucy, who was growing rather cranky. She wasn’t at all pleased with her daughter’s attitude.

“I’ll think about it,” said Elizabeth in a rather doubtful tone, which convinced Lucy that no help was to be found in this quarter. She was about to say something she would probably have regretted when two young men in Cavendish blazers entered the break room.

“Mom, these are my colleagues, Adil Sadek and Malik Mehanna. They work on the front desk.”