RGL continued to expand considerably during the thirty-year post-war economic boom thanks to reconstruction, and then again during the subsequent ‘pitiful’ thirty years thanks to the oil crisis and its energy business, which was ultimately sold for a fortune in the ’90s to some giant in the construction and public works industry, with Philippe de Rigny only keeping the brokerage subsidiary, Oilofina, just to keep some skin in the game.

Seeing as there’s only one boat that returns to the mainland in the evening, it was really a very simple task trying to track down a man in a suit on the island; all I had to do was ask anybody at all if they’d seen him. He was busy eating lunch on his own at a table in the single restaurant that was still open in the off season. I went in, greeted the owner and sat down in the chair opposite him.

‘It’s hard to go unnoticed in such a small place, especially if you’re sticking your nose into other people’s business. Why are you so interested in my family?’

He told me what I already knew, and I feigned astonishment.

He was acting on behalf of the administrators of the trust which held the assets of a family consisting of two women, a quasi-centenarian and a seventy-two-year-old alcoholic, which was downright disturbing for people who’d been gorging themselves on management fees and risked losing their job.

‘What exactly do you want to know?’

‘Our office is making unofficial enquiries. The family is not in the know.’

‘You haven’t answered my question. What do you want to know?’

‘Who would benefit under the trust if some misfortune were to befall Marianne de Rigny as well.’

‘Okay, you’re telling me that the daughter of this woman just died of an overdose, but she herself has no brothers or sisters?’

‘She had a brother who was lynched along with his son during a riot in Africa. A truly appalling way to go! And the brother also had a daughter who died in an earthquake in Nepal.’

‘An overdose, an earthquake, a lynching, all in the same year! That’s some serious curse the family’s got going on, I’ll say!’

‘She also has a twin brother, but the family disowned him a long time ago. We can’t find any trace of him. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.’

‘Disowned? But that doesn’t mean anything legally speaking.’