It was well after midnight when a young man in a crumpled suit came through the revolving door.
Rhea could tell at once that he wasn’t a guest.
He had no luggage, for one thing, and he stopped just inside the door to look around the lobby, as if he had never stayed anywhere this grand.
Then he went straight to Samson and showed him something that looked like some sort of a badge.
Rhea saw it immediately.
Her first thought was that someone at the sale had noticed her after all, so she kept very still behind the desk while she waited to find out.
It was so quiet at that hour that she could hear every word.
Samson bent down to listen to the man’s questions, then explained politely that the chocolates were housekeeping’s business, and housekeeping had gone home hours ago.
So he had come about the chocolates, which meant he was after the Gentleman rather than her.
Rhea felt a little better, at least for the moment.
Mimi came out of the office behind the desk to see who it was and met him on his way to the desk.
Within a minute, she had offered him tea and a chair, though she knew no more about the chocolates than Samson did.
“You should ask Miss Ellis,” she told him, pointing at the desk.
“She has arrived barely this week but she already knows everything about the hotel.”
Rhea wished Mimi had kept that to herself.
The young man came over to the desk and introduced himself as Detective Inspector Leo Farrow.
Rhea knew the name from the papers.
He was the detective investigating the burglary at Vidal’s, which meant that, sooner or later, he would be looking for her as well.
The safest thing, she decided, was to answer exactly what he asked and not a word more.
She stood up, just as she would have for a guest.
“Good evening, Inspector. How can I help?”
He explained about the chocolates, though it took him a while, since he kept going back to add things he had forgotten.
He seemed very nervous, arranging his crumpled jacket more than once while he talked.
An old chocolate maker had recognized the gold foil on the Gentleman’s chocolates, he told her, and The Voss was among the hotels that bought them.
“I’m told The Voss buys more of these chocolates than any other hotel,” Leo added.
“That’s why I started here.”
He clearly regretted it as soon as he’d said it.
Rhea kept smiling, though her thoughts had gone straight to the masked man in Vidal’s study.
If the Gentleman took his chocolates from the Voss, then did it mean he frequented the hotel as well?
She had no idea yet what to make of that.
“Has anyone asked for more chocolates than usual?” he said.
“A guest, or anyone on the staff?”
“Not on my shifts, Inspector. Every request at night comes through this desk, so I’d know.”
It was the truth, which made it easy to say.
“There were two thieves at Vidal’s that night, of course,” he went on.
“One of them leaves a chocolate everywhere he goes. The other one didn’t leave anything at all, apart from the knot and rope which allowed them to escape. To be honest, that’s the one I keep thinking about.”
Rhea would much rather he had kept thinking about the Gentleman.
He winced.
“The papers call them the Nightjar, and I’m afraid that was my fault. I only meant that the thief was quiet.”
So he was the one who had given her that name.
“It’s a ridiculous name for a thief, Inspector,” Rhea said, since she had wanted to tell someone so all week.
“It’s a very good bird, though,” he said, as if he couldn’t help himself.
“Most birds sit across a branch, but a nightjar lies flat along it, so it looks like part of the tree.”
Rhea didn’t answer.
Just like the nightjar, she blended in, standing there in the Voss with a hidden agenda of her own and frankly she didn’t like how well the description fit her.
“I’m sorry,” Leo said.
“I always end up talking about birds.”
“I didn’t know that about nightjars, Inspector,” Rhea said, as she hadn’t meant to make him feel foolish.
He looked so relieved that Rhea found she liked him, though she knew she shouldn’t, since he was basically investigating her.
He took a photograph out of his folder and laid it on the desk between them.
It was her knot, the one her mother had taught her at the kitchen table when she was eight.
“The second thief tied this around a pipe in the study, then climbed down to the garden on the rope,” he said.
“Whoever it was knew exactly what they were doing. Do any of the staff here tie knots like this? Porters, maybe, or anyone who used to be a sailor?”
Rhea studied the photograph without moving at all.
She knew that looking away too quickly would be a mistake, and so would looking too long, so she looked at it just as she would have looked at any photograph a guest showed her.
“I’ve never seen one like it, Inspector.”
“Nobody has,” Leo said, putting it away.
“I’ve asked every sailing expert around the area.”
He then took a card from his wallet, wrote something on the back and set it on the desk.
“If you notice anything at all, please call me,” he said.
“A guest who asks for more chocolates, for instance.”
“Of course, Inspector.”
Rhea turned the card over.
On the back, he had written a second number, which she understood was his own.
A detective’s number might be useful one day, so she put the card in the drawer under the desk.
“Would you mind if I came back another night?” Leo asked.
“In case I think of anything else.”
“Someone is always at this desk, Inspector.”
From the office, Mimi waved goodbye to him like an old friend.
He thanked them both and turned to go, but as he got next to the door he stopped.
“If you ever see a man leave a chocolate on a pillow…”
“Every night, Inspector,” Rhea said.
“It’s called turndown service.”
He laughed, mostly at himself, until he suddenly realized what that meant, just as she did.
Every evening, housekeeping turned down the beds and left a chocolate on each pillow.
It was standard procedure.
Whoever the Gentleman was, he left his chocolates exactly the way hotel staff did.
That could mean the Gentleman was somehow more closely connected to the hotel than Rhea had anticipated.
Leo took out his notebook right there in the middle of the lobby and wrote something down, with Rhea watching him the whole time.