10 March 2027
Wednesday. Tonight’s party were students from four different countries, and one of them asked me, in excellent English, how much English the hotel requires.
A fair amount, I told them. The hotel is full of written things, as hotels are, and the story and the hints are spoken in English. One confident reader can carry a party, but it goes better when most can follow. They had three confident readers and a fourth who read faster than all of them, which seemed to me more than adequate.
With them was a young man who is hard of hearing. His friends repeated anything spoken, and he in turn noticed a great many things the rest of them walked past. It is a team game; nobody needs to be good at everything. I am not good at most things, and I am an inspector.
They came down the stairs arguing in four languages. I understood none of it and agreed with all of it.
— Insp. A. Brochard, Gendarmerie
