Lucien Anatole Joly, inspecteur principal of the Police Nationale’s Provincial Department of Criminal Investigation, Cotes-du-Nord, tapped his long and graceful fingers noiselessly on the lined tablet that lay on the flat writing arm of his chair, which was in the center of the second row. He was not the sort of man who skulked to the back of the room when he attended a lecture; he came to listen and to learn.

So far, however, the Eighth Annual Conference on Science and Detection, held for the first time in St. Malo, had failed in its promise of useful edification. After a full morning the lined tablet held only a quarter of a page of Inspector Joly’s neat, symmetrical script. Moreover, he was bored.

Inspector Joly was easily bored and not inclined to bear it magnanimously. There were many things he did not bear magnanimously. His subordinates referred to him as "Monsieur Giscard" because-Sergeant Denis had confided to him one day-of a resemblance to the former president of France; they were both tall, both bald and long-faced, both lean. So Denis had said. But Joly knew better. He knew very well that he looked nothing like the old conservative, whom he in fact admired greatly. No, the nickname had caught on because of a certain regal stiffness the two had in common, an awkwardness and impatience with trivia, and sometimes with social intercourse in general, that often projected itself as arrogance. Well, that was fine with him. As reputations went, it wasn’t a bad one for a policeman.

The morning session had been a lecture and slide presentation by a dour Finnish entomologist who mumbled away in such a bizarre combination of French and English that he would have done as well to deliver it in Finnish. No doubt a part of the problem was the subject: "Sarcosaprophagous Insects as Forensic Criteria"-less than inviting in any language. Even with the language barrier, however, Joly now knew far more about the actions of blowfly larvae on decomposing corpses than he liked.