'The palm trees around the railway station were motionless, fixed in a Saharan sun . . . It really felt as if they were stepping into another world, and they were embarrassed to be entering it in the dark clothes that had been suited to the rainy streets of Paris the evening before.'

An officer from Scotland Yard is studying Maigret's methods when a call from an island off the Cote d'Azure sends the two men off to an isolated community to investigate its eccentric inhabitants.