It was quieter in the lobby than it had been in the restaurant, but the rain still pounded away outside. Despite the weather, the Pierrots clustered beneath the entrance awning, drenched and miserable.

“I wish they’d go somewhere else,” said Souris, rubbing a patch clear on the steamed window. “It’s raining ropes out there.”

“We could let them in,” said Erf. “Everyone’s in the restaurant, yelling. They won’t know.”

“When Soufflé comes back, he’ll just kick them out again.”

Shenanigan stared at the mournful figures of the Pierrots. Rain dripped off their white noses. Their ruffs drooped. An idea occurred to her.

“You know, now, while everyone’s distracted, would be the perfect time to search Soufflé’s office for something incriminating.”

Souris frowned. “Like what?”

“Records, papers, maybe a diary if we’re really lucky. People are always writing important information down in diaries, in case someone else has to solve a mystery later.”

“That’s true,” said Phenomena. “Perhaps there’s an old book up there that will tell us what happened to Pierrot, or a very detailed account of how the Martinets robbed him, or a letter. A letter would be very helpful.”

“What if Soufflé comes back?” asked Erf.

“With just a few household medicines, I can make a sleeping draft that will knock him out for a good few hours,” said Phenomena thoughtfully. “Of course, it might also put him in a coma, but—”

“That’s unethical, Phenomena,” said Felicity primly.

“Well, I’m happy to be a little bit unethical if it saves lives,” Phenomena snapped. She clutched her makeshift Solution Solution to her chest in agitation. “With so few clues, I have to use every tool I can think of. Anything less is letting a murderer win.”

“You’re saying ‘I’ a lot,” Shenanigan noted.

Her sister scuffed the floor with a sensible shoe. “I failed, during our last investigation. I should have found the killer at the Reunion. If I’d looked at the evidence properly, maybe—”

“We all missed it,” said Felicity gently.

“Yes, but it’s okay that you missed it. You’re not—”

Phenomena shut her mouth with a snap, and looked ashamed.

“You were going to say ‘clever,’ weren’t you,” said Felicity.

“No.”

“Liar,” said Shenanigan.

“Sorry.”

Phenomena’s problem, Shenanigan realized, was that she saw being clever as a responsibility. She thought having a big brain meant she was honor bound to do something useful with it. Her sisters and cousin weren’t as clever, so to Phenomena, they weren’t as responsible for the case. If they didn’t find out what happened to Pierrot, and who killed Bernard, she wouldn’t blame anyone but herself.

For someone so clever, she could be very not-clever, Shenanigan thought. Obviously, the only person responsible for these crimes was the person committing them. Shenanigan was glad she wasn’t clever. She vastly preferred being smart instead.

“All right, no knock-out juice,” said Erf. “But we can still sneak up to the Management Suite and have a poke around.”

They all turned expectantly to Souris, who looked as if he had a stomachache.

“I can’t do that,” he said, shifting uncomfortably.

“Of course you can,” said Shenanigan. “You’re pretty much the only one who can, actually. You’re the one with the elevator key.”

Souris shook his head, hard. “I swore on my honor as a bellboy that I would not take unauthorized people up to the Management Suite.”

Shenanigan thought this might be a joke until she looked into his thin, serious face.

“I thought the whole ‘honor of a bellboy’ thing was something you made up,” said Erf.

“Of course not!” Souris said, deeply offended. “When you put a person in charge of a heavy piece of machinery, you have to be sure you can trust them. I swore an oath!”

“To your uncle?”

“To the Hôtel. I’m sorry, but I can’t break it,” he said stubbornly.

Shenanigan couldn’t believe it. “Give me the key, then. I didn’t swear on anything.”

“I can’t. And don’t think you can take it from me, either,” he added, as if reading Shenanigan’s mind. “Besides, the elevator always sticks between the fourth and sixth floor, and I’m the only one who can fix it!”

“We’re not having this argument in the middle of the lobby,” hissed Felicity, shoving them all into the Non-Smoking Room and slamming the vent closed. As she and Phenomena lit the old-fashioned oil lamps decorating the tables, Shenanigan and Souris glowered at each other. They had reached an impasse. This is another French word, and it is used to describe two people locked in a stalemate, each refusing to back down.

Silent lightning flickered in the windows. Maelstrom had gone out to check on his new boat, and was probably huddled on board now, listening to the rain drumming on the canvas awning. He was probably having a fine old time, Shenanigan thought bitterly. And Pomme…well, hopefully she was somewhere warm and dry, where no one was trying to kill or arrest her.

She kicked repeatedly at a table leg, willing Souris to complain about it. Why had Pomme left them? She’d told her Family she was going to, back in the Conversatoire, but that was before they’d found Bernard’s body. Why hadn’t she stuck around to make sure her cousins were okay? They hadn’t even had the chance to tell her that Ouvolpo had been framed. Did Pomme already suspect her Family? Did she know why Bernard had been murdered?

What she wouldn’t give for her cousin to come waltzing through the door, so Shenanigan could ask some questions of her own—

The troubled sky flung down another bolt of lightning, and the sudden glare lit up a memory half hidden in the murk at the back of Shenanigan’s mind.

That little salute from the figure on the restaurant roof—she had seen it twice before. The first time, it had been aimed at her from the back of Ouvolpo’s van as they sped away from Swift House. But the second time, it had been aimed across the restaurant at Débris—as Pomme showed off her new uniform.

A uniform that was covered in paint, because Pomme was an artist.

An artist who worked very, very fast. Perhaps fast enough to break into an art gallery, set up a fancy installation, and get out again in just a few minutes.

Shenanigan wasn’t like Phenomena. She didn’t put pieces of evidence together, or meticulously reason things out. She wasn’t clever. But she was smart, and she was like Pomme—when her mind worked, it too worked fast. Everything else fell into place at once, as if her brain had been waiting patiently for her to put it to use.

When Shenanigan had woken her cousin early that morning, Pomme was already dressed. Not because she was ready to leave, but because she had just returned from the Galerie Valerie. Her backpack was even by the door! And of course (Shenanigan could have kicked herself), of course Pomme had been shocked to see Bernard’s body in the crime scene, and not just because she knew him. She was shocked because she knew for a fact he hadn’t been there when the tableau was made.

She knew because—

“Pomme is Ouvolpo,” Shenanigan announced, and the moment she said it aloud she was certain it was the truth.

Felicity froze among a stack of guest books. “What?” she asked faintly.

“Yes, what?” repeated Phenomena.

“Pomme doesn’t even like Ouvolpo,” said Erf, baffled. “She called their newest stuff juvenile.”

“ ‘Artists are their own worst critics,’ ” said Shenanigan, her mind still in that high, clear place. “Isn’t that what you said, Felicity?”

“Yes, I did, but—”

Phenomena spun the canvas on the wall and took out her notebook. “Shenanigan, treat this like algebra. Show your working.”

So Shenanigan told them what she’d figured out. And, as she talked, anger began to bubble up inside her, slow and thick. Her sisters’ and cousins’ faces moved alphabetically, from disbelieving, to incredulous, to stunned.

“But”—Felicity slumped into Inheritance’s chair—“she was helping us!”

“Was she?” asked Erf. “Maybe she only took us to the Galerie Valerie to make sure we didn’t find out she was involved in Ouvolpo. Or learn anything that could expose them.”

“Or to case the joint,” whispered Felicity. “I mean, I met her at La Garde-robe days before it was robbed! Is that why she was there, do you think?”

Souris was oddly quiet, sitting on a table and staring between his dangling feet.

“Did you know?” Shenanigan demanded.

“No,” he said, looking dazed. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have…Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Never mind you, why didn’t she tell us?” said Shenanigan, knowing it was a ridiculous thing to say. Pomme had known Souris for years, Shenanigan only a few days.

“It must have been for a reason,” Souris murmured. “She wouldn’t just abandon me—abandon us—without explaining herself.”

“Why not?” asked Shenanigan. She felt hot. Her skin prickled. The balloon in her chest swelled. “People leave all the time. What makes you special?”

“She must have been in danger,” insisted Souris, “and thought she couldn’t come back here.”

“Would your Family really have hurt her, if they knew she was in Ouvolpo?” asked Erf, horrified.

“No!” said Souris. He hesitated. “But then, before today, I wouldn’t have thought they’d kill Bernard, either.”

Felicity reached across the table for her sister’s shoulder. “Shenanigan, are you all— Oh!”

Felicity had knocked over Aunt Inheritance’s long-cold cup of tea. A tide of Earl Grey spilled across the table, and Souris gave a cry of dismay as several of the guest books were soaked. The next few minutes were a flurry of mopping and apologizing and rearranging as they hurried to rescue the old volumes.

“I’m so sorry, Souris. It looks like this one got the worst of it.” Felicity held up a battered tome with a dripping lower left corner. “1926A?”

Souris groaned. “That’s our first guest book,” he said, distraught, “from when we opened!”

“I really am sorry,” said Felicity. “Look, it’s the last half, mostly, and only one corner.” She sat back in Inheritance’s chair, gently teasing apart the pages, blotting each one with a handkerchief. “Gosh. There are so many names here.”

“Tyran threw a huge party on opening night. It’s Family legend.” Even now there was a hint of pride in Souris’s voice. “Grand-mère said there were three hundred waiters, and a jazz band flown in from America, and an enormous glass rhinoceros filled with champagne. We were fully booked before we even opened.”

“Gabrielle Hofstadter, Room 129, orange,” Felicity read, her eyes scanning the paper rapidly. “Charles B. Armoire, Room 333, apple. A. Breton, Room 422…juice preference: Truth and Beauty, on the rocks? That’s pretentious. Pierrot, Room 51-something, apple. Zora Belacqua, Room 248, orange—”

The flames of the oil lamps held steady. Not a breath stirred them as what Felicity had just said sank in. Then the children crowded around the table in the dim globe of light. Among the forest of black and navy cursive was an entry in striking forget-me-not blue. One of the numbers had smudged, but they could make out the rest:

Pierrot Room 51 Pomme

They stared at it, as if the signature might unravel and slither out of sight the moment they looked away.

“He was here,” murmured Erf. “The night the Hôtel opened, December thirty-first, 1926. Pierrot was here.”

“Impossible,” Souris said. “For one thing, we don’t have a fifth floor. And Pierrot disappeared months before this, in June.”

“Says who?” asked Shenanigan.

“Toujours j’attends—”

“Has his signature and a date on the bottom, yes. And yet here is his signature again, months later,” said Phenomena.

“This means that the last place anyone saw Pierrot…”

“Was at the Hôtel Martinet, New Year’s Eve, 1926,” said Felicity.

The children were silent, each of them turning over a different part of the mystery in their minds. Shenanigan knew what each of them would be wondering.

Phenomena would be wondering if there was any other proof lying around the Hôtel. Felicity would be wondering how this information tied into Bernard’s death. Erf would be wondering if Ouvolpo knew about this. Shenanigan herself was wondering how a person in full clown regalia could possibly have walked into the Grand Opening of the Hôtel without anyone remembering seeing him there. She was wondering how much it cost to get people to forget. She was wondering if Souris knew.

“What if this guest book was what Bernard found?” asked Felicity, proving Shenanigan correct. “Proof that the story the Martinets have always told is a lie?”

“And then what, he just left it here? No. Anyone who found this would have taken it—either as proof, or to destroy. Either way, it wouldn’t be here, lying on a table for Inheritance to read,” said Phenomena.

“Who gave Gran the guest books?” asked Erf. “Did they want her to find this?”

“It was Soufflé,” said Souris, finally speaking up. “And I’m certain he didn’t know that signature was there.”

Souris’s dishonesty had been distracting Shenanigan ever since she’d met him, like a movement she kept catching out of the corner of her eye. Enough was enough.

“You’re hiding something,” said Shenanigan.

“Yes,” Souris said. He raised his chin. “I think he gave Aunt Inheritance the guest books to distract her. He knew she had been to the city archives because I told him.” He took off his hat, and now Shenanigan could finally see the lie that had been hidden beneath it. “I heard her tell Maelstrom, the morning you went to the Galerie Valerie,” he said. “Soufflé told me to keep an eye on you. Report to him about what your Family was doing.”

“Oh, Souris,” said Felicity sadly as Shenanigan punched the air in triumph.

“But I didn’t tell him anything about what we’ve discussed in here,” he said hurriedly. “I told him I’d tried to sneak in and listen to you, but you’d found me and kicked me out before I heard anything useful. He asked me what I’d learned, when he found me under the table in the restaurant, but I lied. I really did tell him I was looking for Felicity’s earring.”

“I knew it!” crowed Shenanigan. “I knew you were a spy! You’ve been lying to us the whole time!”

Souris looked miserable, but he met their gazes. “Yes, and I’m sorry, but that was before I knew Bernard was dead!” he protested. “Before I knew anyone was dead! Before I knew Soufflé was anything worse than a bad boss! I swore an oath—”

“If you say ’as a bellboy’—” Shenanigan growled.

“Well, I did!”

“All right, let’s just stop yelling,” said Felicity. “Souris, it’s okay. We’re all on the same side here—”

“No, we aren’t!” said Shenanigan, incredulous. She felt light-headed. “We can’t trust him after this!”

“I think we can,” said Phenomena. “If he’s defecting—”

“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care!” said Shenanigan. “What about Pomme? Were you lying about her too?”

“No!” said Souris. “I mean, she did ask me to keep an eye on you after she’d gone, but I thought she just meant to look after you once she’d moved out—”

“So you’re a double spy?” Shenanigan’s rage was sudden and violent, worse than when he’d admitted to working for Soufflé. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe again. “You’re a caterpillar and a false friend, Souris Bakir-Martinet!”

Shenanigan felt her hands ball into fists. Before she knew what she was doing, she had grabbed Phenomena’s flask, pulled off the lid, and poured the contents over Souris’s head.

She regretted it the second she had done it.

Erf hissed through their teeth. Felicity gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. Gourmet’s Solution Solution dripped from Souris’s nose.

Surprisingly, it was Phenomena who stepped forwards and handed Souris a handkerchief. Souris began to wipe the thick green substance from his face, his back straight. His uniform was ruined. Shenanigan thought of his mother, who worked in the laundry, and felt a burst of shame.

Say sorry, Shenanigan commanded herself. But she didn’t. Instead, she stayed rooted to the spot, her jaw clenched tight, as Souris glared at her.

“You keep saying you don’t trust me,” he said to Shenanigan. “That was why I don’t trust you.”

He turned to leave, and slid open the vent as he did so.

“So you don’t suffocate,” he said. And then he was gone.