9 July 2025
Wednesday. School holidays. Four teenagers in the lift this morning, and a father reading the newspaper in the foyer with the air of a man who has been told to stay put.
The hotel has its rules for the young, and I have copied them into the casebook so that I stop being asked. Thirteen and over is the recommendation, the matter being a murder. When every suspect is under sixteen, there must be at least four of them. When they are thirteen or under, a grown-up waits at the venue throughout. Hence the father. He had brought a thermos.
The young are excellent detectives. They notice everything and believe nothing, which is the whole of my training in one sentence. A girl named Wren told me before they went up that she had already read every detective novel in the school library and would be finished by lunch.
I will not say how they got on. The casebook never does. I will say that she now wants to join the gendarmerie, and I have told her to wait until she is taller than Croissant.
— Insp. A. Brochard, Gendarmerie
