By the time I went back downstairs I was as warm as a Chinaman’s pressing cloth. So I went back into the bar and had the barman make me an ice-cold gimlet with the good stuff—the 57 percent Plymouth Navy Strength gin they give the sailors in nuclear submarines—just to help the four weaker ones I’d already drunk at La Voile d’Or to take the strain. I hurried it down with my evening meal, which was a couple of olives and a handful of pretzels.

I’d just finished eating dinner when another guest presented herself at the front desk. And it was quite a present: lightly scented, sober, tightly wrapped in black, which left you a pretty good idea of what was under the paper, and with a nice little diamond bow on the front. I don’t know much about fashion but hers was a sort of ballerina bodice-shaped dress, with one shoulder uncovered and, now that I looked at it again, not a bow on the waist at all but a little diamond flower. In her matching black gloves and shoes, she looked every bit as fine as Christian Dior’s bank balance. Mrs. French was one of our local regulars, a rich and extremely attractive English lady in her forties whose father was a famous artist who’d once lived and worked on the Riviera. She’s a writer by all accounts and rents a local house in Villefranche, but she spends much of her free time at the Grand Hôtel. She swims a lot in our pool, reads a book in the bar, uses the telephone a great deal, and then has a late dinner in the restaurant. Often she’s alone, but sometimes she’s with friends. A few weeks ago, Mrs. French seemed to be making a play for the French minister of national defense, Monsieur Bourgès-Maunoury, who was staying here, but that came to nothing. It seemed that the minister had other things on his mind—like the Islamic threat posed by the Algerian FLN, not to mention Egypt’s cut-price Hitler, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and perhaps the anonymous woman who was in the room next to his. He’s not a bad-looking fellow, I suppose; dark-haired, dark-eyed, perhaps a little oily, a bit small, and frankly a couple of leagues below where Mrs. French plays. I thought a nice brunette like her could do better. Then again, Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury is tipped to be the next prime minister of France.

“Good evening, Mrs. French,” I said. “I hope you enjoyed your dinner.”

“Yes, it wasn’t bad.”

“That doesn’t sound nearly as good as it should be.”

She sighed. “It could have been better.”

“Was it the food? Or perhaps the service?”