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Mr Ambrose looked on the spectacle for a moment, then nodded gravely. ‘Yes. Here, in foreign countries, such practices are not considered… reproachable.’
‘But… they are doing it together! Everyone, in plain sight of each other!’
‘Yes. As I said, you are in England no longer, Mr Linton.’
Wide-eyed, I gazed down onto the beach in front of us, where multitudes of people were laughing, running about, and swimming in the water. People of both sexes! Very well I remembered the bathing places in England where, when women wanted to bathe, they did it in the confines of a bathing machine - a marvellous contraption in the form of a horse-drawn carriage without a bottom, which was pulled into the sea and protected you from all prying eyes. Here, in the country of baguettes and revolutions, women seemed to have no inhibitions about letting the men see them in their swimwear. Moreover, unlike in England, this swimwear did not consist of several heavy, knee-length gowns and a giant hat, under which the woman could hardly be detected. Not only were the feet, calves and knees - yes, knees! - of every female on the beach clearly visible, so was pretty much everything else up to an area which, in England, ladies wouldn’t even have thought of, much less dared to mention!
I stared at the women for a good two minutes. Then, suddenly, a point of more immediate importance than French standards of morality occurred to me.
‘Why,’ I asked Mr Ambrose, ‘does Lord Dalgliesh have a crowd of bathers on the island that is supposed to be his secret hideout?’
‘That is a very good question, Mr Linton.’
‘And?’
‘And I do not have the answer. Come on. Our guide is getting impatient.’
Indeed, the waiter was already several steps ahead and gesturing for us to keep up. He seemed to find nothing strange about the sight down at the beach, which made my cheeks glow with heat. Frenchmen! Unbelievable…
I sneaked a quick glimpse at Mr Ambrose. He didn’t seem to find it unusual, either. Had he been at many such places? Had he seen a lot of female knees?
Quickly, I clamped down on the thought. We were here on a secret mission. Mr Ambrose’s bathing habits were none of my concern, and neither were any female knees he might have studied.
By now, the waiter had vanished around a corner. We followed him, and found him pointing up to a building rising up above us.
‘Voilà le bâtiment principal, Monsieur!’
It wasn’t the ruin of a castle.
I admit, my adventurous imagination might have run away with me a bit, imagining Lord Dalgliesh’s secret headquarters, but still, I hadn’t expected anything like this. The building was large, and painted in a brilliant white. Two rows of wooden supports, one stacked above the other, supported a raised veranda and balcony, and a pair of majestic white steps led up to the first floor. Rows of large windows glinted in the sun and, above the main entrance, words were painted in a cheerful blue:
Hôtel de la Mer azur
‘The Hotel of the Azure Sea,’ Mr Ambrose translated.
‘Thank you so much, Mr Ambrose, Sir. My French extends that far.’ I looked from the hotel to the crowd of happily gossiping people sitting on the veranda. ‘Do you think it is possible Lord Dalgliesh’s ship has landed on the wrong island?’
Silence.
When he hadn’t answered after a few more moments, I looked sideways at him. His eyes were glittering.
‘I don't think so,’ he murmured, and the glint in his dark eyes grew. ‘I don't think so at all. Oh, that man. He is a genius.’
A group of children ran by, laughing and screaming. They were not screams of pain. One of the little pests pointed at me and yelled: ‘Eh, regardez ce gars! N'a-t-il pas un chapeau totalement ridicule?’
And they burst into laughter.
‘What did he say?’ I hissed at Mr Ambrose.
‘He complimented you on your manly appearance, Mr Linton.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Focus, Mr Linton. The infant is of no importance.’
Putting a finger in each corner of its mouth, the ‘infant’ started pulling faces at me and dancing around me, chanting ‘Chapeau gaga, Chapeau gaga!’ French brats had a bloody strange way of showing their admiration. His little fiendish accomplices were cheering him on. I tried to chase them away, but I might as well have tried to chase away a swarm of hungry mosquitos.
‘This is insane!’ I growled.
