In Nouméa, the British wives had gathered at Mrs. Pope’s for Friday craftwork before the day got too hot. The meetings gave them something to look forward to, especially in the cyclone season, when the weather could turn without warning and, before they knew it, thoughts of Christmas at home could balloon into despair. It was no wonder some of the wives had already been sent away.

Weekly coffee allowed them to show off a new frock, exchange a recipe, and share an activity, though the knitted space rockets for the local orphanage, their last project, had turned out looking like woolly condoms, and the women had been a laughingstock. Even the Australians had laughed; Mrs. Pope still hadn’t got over it. Her husband had suggested she might invite other wives—New Zealanders and Dutch. After all, they spoke English—but Mrs. Pope said no. Speaking English was not the same as being British. Besides, they themselves were a small number, and when you were in a minority, you had to stick together.

Since it was nearly Christmas, they were cutting out paper chains to decorate the British consulate for Mrs. Pope’s Three Kings party. They talked about their fancy-dress outfits—Mrs. Pope would be wearing gold this year—and the news from home, though the latest papers still only went as far as October, so strictly news wasn’t new, it was just more of what they’d already heard. Rationing. The Festival of Britain. The Norman Skinner trial. Then they returned to things more local. Apparently, there’d been a development on the theft from the Catholic school. The French police had a new lead.

“No!” gasped the women.

“Yes!” said Mrs. Pope. She cut out a paper star. She knew how to milk a moment.

“Do tell us!” chorused the women.

Mrs. Pope put down her scissors and leaned forward. She said in a low voice, “Maurice says they think the suspect is British.”

“British?” Absolutely no one could believe it. They had to say it again. “British?”

“I can’t believe they think a British person did it,” said Mrs. Peter Wiggs. “I thought it was one of the natives.”

“It appears not,” said Mrs. Pope. “Of course, it’s frightfully embarrassing.”

The women agreed the whole situation was both frightful and embarrassing, almost as if the entire British community had been accused of theft.

“What will the French police do? Will they interview us?”

Mrs. Peter Wiggs, also known as Dolly, was Mrs. Pope’s right-hand woman. She was a sweet person, but her intelligence she saved for special occasions.

“No, Dolly. They won’t interview us. Not unless we are behaving suspiciously, which we are not, because we are British citizens and we didn’t commit the crime. But I hear they are looking at the paperwork of all new arrivals.”

“It seems an awful lot of trouble,” said Dolly. “Just for a theft.”

“It’s the principle, Dolly. Besides, the French have always had it in for us.” She put some glue and sparkles on her paper star. “If you ask me, they never got over Waterloo.”

“What about those two nice women? From the Natural History Museum?”

“What about them, Dolly?”

“I hope they’re not suspects. They seemed so nice.”

“Nice?” repeated Mrs. Pope. “Did you not see the assistant? She was practically a call girl.”

“I liked her hair,” said Dolly.

The housemaid arrived with a plate of mince pies, but Mrs. Pope waved them away. The pastry was soggy and the woman had misunderstood and put stewed goat inside them instead of pawpaw.

She said, “Those two women won’t last up north. They’ll be back before Christmas. Mark my words.” And then she said, as if the two thoughts had suddenly become connected, “I fully intend to find out who broke into the Catholic school.”

Across the table crawled a strange insect with a long proboscis and feelers on both sides. It was dragging another insect with it. Mrs. Pope watched a moment, the way it carried the other, testing the way, like the blind. She lifted an old newspaper and flattened it.