13 November 2024
Wednesday. I have been asked to inspect a hotel before anybody has been murdered in it. Most irregular. I went anyway, in my second-best hat.
The hotel is being built in a workshop in Perth, which is a long way from the Rue de Rivoli, but I am assured it will be in Paris by the time it opens. Carpenters, painters and electricians, all of them very calm, none of them French. They have made fan-shaped lamps of the most elegant kind, a corridor panelled in dark timber, velvet everywhere and a lift with a brass gate that looked at me in a way I did not care for.
I asked why 1920. They said it was the golden age of the whodunit. I said every age is the golden age of the whodunit, if you are the one doing the dunit. They wrote that down. I suspect they will not use it.
Croissant, my bloodhound, sniffed every skirting board and found a sandwich. He is not a gifted detective, but he is thorough.
— Insp. A. Brochard, Gendarmerie
