14
It was half past six, and Alix was sitting on a bus, three rows behind the housekeeper, as she made her journey home. She would, Alix knew, be carrying her own personal set of keys to virtually every working room in the hotel, as well as a pass card guaranteeing access to every guest room. Chambermaids had pass cards, too, but they were kept on cords tied around their waist so that they could not possibly be dropped or mislaid. Only staff as senior as a housekeeper were entitled to put their keys in a handbag. Somehow Alix had to get inside that bag.
It happened in a neighborhood supermarket. Alix watched as the housekeeper paused by the first aisle, reached into her bag to get her shopping list and left it open as she put on her reading glasses, then ran her finger down the piece of paper, mentally ticking off everything that she had to buy.
Alix walked by her, glancing down at the bag. There were two sets of keys clearly visible: a small ring with her car and front-door keys, and a much larger bunch of hotel keys, one of which looked like a credit card. That was the one Alix wanted.
But for the next ten minutes she had to wait, her frustration growing, unable to find an opening. The housekeeper had almost reached the checkout when she suddenly stopped dead in the middle of an aisle. She replaced her glasses on her nose, consulted her list again, hissed crossly at her own forgetfulness, and scuttled away to another aisle, leaving her cart behind her.
Alix walked steadily toward the cart. Making no sudden movements, she reached into the bag with her wire cutters and snapped the link that attached the housekeeper’s pass card to her key ring. She palmed the card and put it in her own shoulder bag. At the checkout she paid for a lettuce and a jar of Bolognese sauce, then disappeared into the night.