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in pretty well defined channels, you know. In our business the motto is: “Toujours change, et toujours la même chose.”

“Always change, and always the same thing,” she translated.

“You speak French,” I said, unnecessarily.

She nodded. “I was educated at a convent in the south of France, near Beaulieu—that’s between Nice and Monte Carlo.”

“I know the place,” I said. “I stayed at St. Jean Cap-Ferrat for a season, and that’s right next door to it. When the sun sets over Villefranche Harbor and the Mediterranean, why . . .” I was silent as I remembered the beauty of Southern France.

She looked at me curiously. “You're a peculiar kind of a policeman—I don’t think I ever quite met your kind before.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because I can quote a French author?”

“Partly that,” she said. “And because you noticed a sunset over Villefranche Harbor, and because . . . oh, you seem so different, you know, from what one would expect from a detective.”

“Thanks,” I laughed.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it in just that way—” she interposed, afraid that she had belittled my profession.

“Oh, no offense,” I said. “You know, a policeman