I went to the front desk, where a man with a pimp mustache and a blue bow tie was reading the latest on the Tour de France in L’Équipe, although his girth told me it had been a long time since he’d ridden a racing bicycle. We knew each other. His name was Henri and, according to Spinola, he’d been in the Resistance, which was an organization that seemed to be growing all the time. Certainly it was twice the size it had ever been throughout the war.

“That’s the newspaper that believed Captain Dreyfus was guilty of selling us secrets, isn’t it?” I said.

Henri shrugged. “These days, there’s no politics in it. Just cycling.”

“In France? That is politics.”

“You know, sometimes you are very French, for a German.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. So is there another German here? Monsieur Hebel?”

“He’s in room 28,” said Henri. “Second floor. You’re to go straight up, Monsieur Wolf.”

I nodded. “You know Robin Maugham, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“How well does he know Monsieur Hebel?”

“Well enough to have a drink with him.”

“Once? Or more than once?”

“More than once, I should say.”

I paused for a moment, wondering if I should tell him about Spinola, and then rejected the idea. I wasn’t in the mood to field a lot of questions to which I had no answers. All I wanted was to get the negative and the photographs and then leave without any complications.

“I suppose you heard about poor Spinola?” he said.

“Yes. The cops came to see me at the Grand, asking about our game tomorrow night.”

“He was a nice man and a good customer. I’ll miss him.”

“Me, too. How did you hear?”

“I have a friend in Maréchal Foch.”

The Avenue Maréchal Foch was where the Nice Commissariat of Police was headquartered.

“He’s an inspector in the Police Judiciaire. He seems to think there was a woman involved.”

“According to all your best writers, there usually is. But did he say why?”

“No. Only this and the fact that he was shot. With a small-caliber pistol.”

“Maybe that’s what makes them think it was a woman. The small-caliber pistol, I suppose.”

“Monsieur, small or large, it makes little difference when the bullet goes straight through your heart. There was almost five liters of blood on the floor where they found him.” Henri shrugged in that Gallic way, which is as eloquent as anything ever written by Voltaire or Montaigne. “I suppose that this is the end of your weekly bridge games with Mr. and Mrs. Rose. Pity. I shall miss you all.”

I shrugged. “You know, Henri, there’s an unwritten rule in bridge that when your partner gets killed you’re supposed to try and find out who did it.”

“Sounds more like the Mafia.”