He was about to add something but then his face changed again. He seemed to freeze as if his worst nightmare had just come true. I glanced left and right, but if there was someone he had recognized in the crowd, I didn’t see them. “Oh mon Dieu!” he whispered. He seized Tim’s hand and pressed something into the palm. Then he turned and staggered away.

Tim opened his hand. He was holding a small blue envelope with a gold star printed on the side. I recognized it at once. It was a packet of sugar from the train. “What was all that about?” Tim asked.

I took the sugar and examined it. I thought he might have written something on it—a telephone number or something. But it was just a little bag of sugar. I slipped it into my back pocket. “I don’t know . . .” I said. And I didn’t. Why should the steward have left us with a spoonful of sugar? Why did he want to meet us later that night? What was going on?

“Funny people, the French,” Tim said.

Ten minutes later, we were still at the Gare du Nord. The money that Bestlé had given us was in dollars. We needed euros and that meant lining up at the Bureau de Change. The line was a long one and it seemed to be moving at a rate of one euro per hour.

We had just reached the window when we heard the scream.

It was like no sound I had ever heard, thin and high and horribly final. The station was huge and noisy but the scream cut through the crowd like a scalpel. Everybody stopped and turned to see where it had come from. Even Tim heard it. “Oh dear,” he said. “It sounds like someone has stepped on a cat.”

Tim changed thirty dollars, and taking the money, we moved in the direction of the metro. Already a police car had arrived and several uniformed guards were hurrying toward the trains. I strained to hear what the crowd was saying. They were speaking French, of course. That didn’t make it any easier.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s terrible. Somebody has fallen under a train.”

“It was a steward. He was on the train from London. He fell off a platform.”

“Is he hurt?”

“He’s dead. Crushed by a train.”

I heard all of it. I understood some of it. I didn’t like any of it. A steward? Off the London train? Somehow I didn’t need to ask his name.

“Tim,” I asked, “what’s the French for murder?”

Tim shrugged. “Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.” I stepped onto the escalator and allowed it to carry me down. “I’ve just got a feeling it’s something we’re going to need.”

LE CHAT GRIS