“There is just one small thing. I can pay you whatever annuity you want, but it has to be in cash. I’m not going to lie to you, I have a large amount at home that belongs to my mother. It’s not dirty money, just the savings of an old and slightly mad Jewish woman who always thought it was just a matter of time before the Germans came after her again.”

“We can deposit the money into our account, that’s not a problem,” said the Léger daughter.

“No, no, we can’t do that!” objected the son.

“Well then, we’re never going to manage!” she said, with a display of dramatic despair, as if the fact that you weren’t supposed to launder money was her brother’s fault. She began to sob again, and he resumed his sighing.

“If it makes you feel any better, the manager of Les Eoliades is not at all particular. On the contrary, I’d say the cash would allow her to pay for thousands of hours overtime off the books. Perhaps you don’t realize, but this place is owned by an American pension fund that greatly appreciates any money it can save on its staff.”

“OK, I’ll raise it with the notary. It’s true, when you’re in our situation, you can’t afford too delicate a conscience.”

“What do you do for work, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m a detective.”

“Small world! My partner is too — and I’m a court translator.”

There we all were, part of that great, middle-class mass being strangled by its elderly. It was reassuring.

The Léger children would have sold their parents’ apartment for around 750,000 euros, so we agreed on a capital sum of 50,000 and an annuity of 20,000 a month for the life of their hemiplegic and aphasic eighty-six-year-old father and their mother with Alzheimer’s — a period of time estimated generously at three years, given the desperate look of them. So, nobody was being conned. As the papers for the apartment had already been drawn up in preparation for a possible sale, and obtaining a loan is a formality when you already own a mortgageable property, it took barely a week for my bank to lend me the money for the capital sum and the purchase of my life annuity.

Meanwhile, I went to visit my future property with the Léger son.