Winter at Death's Hotel (12 page)

Louisa didn't mind.

***

Arthur Newcome left the hotel after his dinner and walked west, then south, then west again. He wore his evening clothes under a black overcoat; he swung a walking-stick in his right hand. On his head was one of the new “Homburg” hats, thought not quite correct by the old guard (he should have been wearing a silk topper, they'd have said) but adequate for what he meant to do and the neighborhood in which he meant to do it, where a top hat would have attracted too much attention. If not thrown stones.

The stick hit the pavement each step with a light, metallic crack. The stick itself was ebony, the tip horn, but the grip was ivory tipped with a good-sized silver knob. Newcome had brought it from London and thought of it as his nightstick, a word that made him smile: it was what London policemen called the heavier truncheons they carried at night. He, too, was often out with his at night, and he carried it for the same purpose.

As he got farther west into streets that were less grand than the block off Fifth where the New Britannic stood, he put his left hand into the pocket of his overcoat and gripped a flick-knife that lay there. He had bought it in Italy; he supposed it was illegal here, didn't care. Its stiletto blade was as slender and bright and sharp as a filleting knife, in fact sharper—sharp enough to have shaved with, as he knew. He gripped the stick, swung it, pictured the defensive guards to which he could put it. The stick and the knife, his night-time companions.

In a street west of Tenth Avenue, he walked slowly, looking for the buildings' numbers. He had been there that afternoon and found the one he wanted; still, in the dark the buildings looked alike.

He stayed on the outside of the pavement. Where there was a cluster of men or boys, he went on without looking but raised the stick a little extra at each step. They let him go.

He found his building and went up the red-brown sandstone steps, let himself in and went up the stairs. He wanted the third floor, which would have been the second floor in London. The light was poor, only a gas lamp on the wall of each flight of stairs, another in the ceiling of each corridor that bored back into the house. Grit rasped under his feet. The light caught bits of paper kicked into corners of the stairs. He smelled recently cooked suppers, urine, dirt.

He knocked at a door. In his pocket, he gripped the knife and put his thumb on the silver button that would release the blade. As the door opened, he moved the stick across his body in a low version of the hanging guard.

“Yes?”

Light shone behind the woman. He could make out the silhouette of piled-up hair and light on bare shoulders. She smelled of makeup and eau de cologne.

“I was told to ask for Lady Jane.”

“Who told you?”

“A London friend. He said to use the name Aloysius.”

He could see the light change on her cheek as she smiled. “Come in.”

She moved away into the light. If she had possibly more width of shoulder than most women, and if she was perhaps somewhat taller, Arthur Newcome either didn't notice or didn't care. He let go of the knife and used the now free hand to close the door behind himself.

Louisa didn't, as it turned out, write to Roosevelt a second time. She had lain awake much of the night, partly because of her ankle and partly because of the two awful policemen. The truth was, she admitted to the darkness, they
had
frightened her. They had frightened her with their size and their rudeness, which seemed to say,
You're nobody; we don't care about your husband or your hoity-toity Limey manners; you're in our city and we're the
police. And they had frightened her with their threat—and yes, it had been a threat—to put her in the newspapers. That would be horrible for Arthur, even unbearable. Arthur was really a shy man who liked using his books as a kind of shrubbery, from whose protection he peeked at the world. She would do anything to keep him safe in that private place.

So if she didn't write again to Roosevelt (and what sort of man was he, anyway, to have foisted those two oafs on her?), what could she do? It had shaken her that the big one—Cleary—had said that the newspaper sketch was not of the murder victim. Could that be true? Were newspapers that cynical? She remembered that the
Police
Gazette
had featured a drawing of what was supposed to be the murder scene, but it hadn't had anything to do with the description of the actual scene, so that it must have been a picture they just had lying about. Would they have done the same thing for the woman's face? The face was so personal, so very much one's possession—would they have dared?

At three o'clock, that low hour of the night, she had admitted that of course they might have.

Now, in the flat grayness of the morning, she saw that she must find out how authentic the sketch of the woman's face had been. She was sitting up in bed, sipping tea and waiting for her breakfast to arrive. In the chinks of her tormented thoughts about the murder and the policemen, she was also thinking of Ethel and what Ethel did for her—dressing her, waiting on her, running out on errands for her, being terrified by policemen because of her. And Ethel dressed herself and hung up her own clothes and ran her own errands. As in fact Louisa had before she married.

“We're maun poor,” her mother had told her when she was a girl. Again and again, and then even more often after her father had died. “You might as well get used to it, as it's our lot.”

But she never had. She loved not being poor. How did Ethel bear it?

She put the teacup in its saucer and put both on the bedside table. She sank lower in the bed, the comforter pulled up to her chin in both fists. Outside, there was no sunlight, only a leaden sky above (she had looked) and a city like a black-and-white engraving below. There was snow on the pavements.

I
should
go
to
join
Arthur
.

“Ethel!”

“Yes, yes…” Ethel hurried in from the sitting room. “The breakfast is on the way, madame; I ordered it when you said, but—”

“Hang the breakfast! Ethel, do I overwork you?”

“Oh, no ma—”

“Of course I do. All I can offer is more money, as I need you, especially with this ankle. Would another four shillings a week do it? Would it justify the extra work?” Ethel began to protest, blushing, confused, but Louisa was already thinking about something else. She said, “I shall have to talk to that hotel detective again. I despise him, but he will know how the newspapers operate. And the police, as well!” She was thinking that the hotel detective was every bit as rude as the two policemen, but in a different way. Not so—aggressive. Not as if he had contempt for her. In fact, as if he were playing… She dismissed that idea and swung her legs out of the bed. “Crutch, Ethel.”

“But your breakfast, madame…”

“I shall eat it in the sitting room. That way, you won't have to carry it so far. I'll
try
, Ethel, I'll
try
not to demand so much of you. And I will pay you more. Will that help?”

She was making her clumsy way to the bathroom. “And I shall draw my own bath. I will!” She wished she could talk to Arthur about it. Arthur, of course, would scold her for raising Ethel's wages. Well, they had plenty of money. Or Arthur had plenty of money; she in fact had almost none. “Ethel! Remind me to ask Mr. Doyle for some money.”

She drew her own bath and lay in it, feeling virtuous. She would talk to the hotel detective, but no longer than was absolutely necessary, and then, if he hadn't been any help, she would find out whether that sketch had been authentic. But how? Well, somehow.

Her breakfast had arrived while she had bathed; now it was cold. She waved away Ethel's offer to carry it back, instead asked for a telegraph blank, and wrote, a piece of cold toast in her left hand, her mouth chewing,

MY DEAREST HUSBAND STOP MONEY RUNNING LOWEST STOP PLEASE WIRE YOUR BANK NEW YORK DELIVER CASH HERE STOP HUNDRED POUNDS ADEQUATE FOR NOW STOP YOUR LOVING DOVE.

He would be most put out, she knew. Well, better that than that she and Ethel starve.

She wrote him a long letter, as well. Where would it catch up with him? Chicago? Somewhere called Cheboygan?

Of course, if she could get herself on a train she could meet Arthur somewhere…

She tried to move her ankle. She sighed. Not yet.

“Ethel, please take my telegram down to the Western Union office, and on the way stop at the hotel detective's office and tell him that I wish to see him again.”

“Yes, madame.” Ethel hesitated, her hand in the air between them to take the wire form. “It's Thursday, madame.”

“Is it?” She was offhand, then realized that Ethel meant something. “Oh—your half-day.”

“Yes, madame. But I can stay if you need me, of course…”

“No, Ethel, of course not. I'd forgotten, is all. You deserve your half-day. Whatever will you do? It looks frightful outdoors.”

“I thought of doing the shops, madame. What they call the Ladies' Mile. That's Broadway. They have shops that are ever so big—they take up a whole and entire street, some of them.”

“But Ethel…” She started to say that Ethel hadn't any money.

Ethel, as if she knew exactly how madame's mind worked, murmured, “It's only looking.” She took the telegraph form. “Shall I help you dress before I go downstairs?”

Louisa wanted to say that she could do for herself, but she pictured it, standing on one foot and fastening a corset, then a bodice in the back. “I suppose you had better.”

She was ready for the newspapers to have nothing in them. Certainly, the front pages did not—nothing, at any rate, that she wanted to read. The murdered woman was gone and forgotten; the world had raced on—a blizzard in the Midwest (was that where Arthur was?), political chicanery in Albany (the state capital), canals seen clearly on Mars through a new telescope. But nothing about the copper-haired woman. It wasn't right; it wasn't
just
.

Until she got to the
Express
and a story halfway down an inside page: she saw that again it was by A. M. Fitch, that unshaven, beery, vulgar lout she had conjured up a day or two ago. “Where Are the Police in the Bowery Butcher Case?” It started well, challenging the police to produce results, but then it dribbled off into the same old stuff that Fitch had retailed earlier about the horrors of the crime, but in essence, that was that. The copper-haired woman was still erased.

She put the newspaper down. She thought about the visit of the two policemen. And Carver. What had Carver been doing there with the two policemen, anyway? What had he to do with Louisa's having written to Roosevelt? Nothing. Carver had probably come with Cleary and Grady to make sure that they protected the reputation of the hotel. But if that was so, then he
knew
—knew why they were there, knew that they were going to tell her that her story was nonsense. No, they had been more forceful than that—
he
knew
that
they
were
going
to
shut
her
up!

But how could he have known unless they had told him? And why would they have told him? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Because they were worried about the good name of the New Britannic? No—it was a conspiracy.

“Mr. Manion, madame.”

“Oh? Oh, good, Ethel. You may take away the newspapers now. And perhaps Mr. Manion would like coffee.”

Manion was wearing a different suit today but of the same double-breasted cut. It looked like armor on him, as if made from something uncompromising and rigid. His face had the same look, too—closed, hard, wary. But handsome—no, not handsome:
dangerous
.

“Mr. Manion, I won't get up. My ankle. Do sit, please. Coffee?”

He shook his head. “Thanks.” He asked about the ankle, hardly listened to the answer. He said, “I thought you were mad at me.”

She had to translate “mad” to mean “angry.” “We got off on the wrong foot, yes.”

“Wrong foot?” He laughed, not pleasantly. “That was as neat a piece of blackmail as I ever saw tried.”

“Mr. Manion! I had hoped this would not be unpleasant.”

“Oh, really? What now?”

She was ready to get up, crutch and all, and tell him to leave. He was as boorish as Bleary and Leary or whatever their names had been. “I thought you might be able to give me some information.”

“Without us fighting the Battle of Bull Run over it?”

“About the woman who was murdered.”

“Here we go again.”

“There was a sketch of her in the newspaper. How accurate do you think it would have been? I ask you in your professional capacity. And as a New Yorker, too.”

“What newspaper?”

“The
Express
.”

“Not the
Police
Gazette
?” He laughed. She blushed. “If it's the
Express
, it might have been okay. The artist there is kosher—the real article. Guy named McClurg. I've seen him in a couple of trials, you know, in court—he'd catch a likeness in about thirty seconds, as good as a photo.”

She had had to translate
kosher
; on first hearing it, she had thought he meant the artist was a Jew. However, what he seemed to mean was that the sketch would likely have been authentic.

“Are you aware that the police were here?”

He started to say something. She saw his wariness increase, as if he suspected her of something. Very slowly, drawing the word out, he murmured, “Ye-e-e-s.”

“How did you know?”

“I saw them in the lobby, didn't I?”

“How did you know they were police?”

He laughed. “Lady, I'd know a couple of bulls at a mile and a half.”

“Did you speak to them?”

Again, he hesitated. “Let's say I didn't. So what?”

“What did they do? Did they go straight to the lift?”

He processed
lift
and said, “They maybe stopped at the office.”

“To speak to Mr. Carver?”

“I didn't ask.”

“Did you see them with Carver when they came up here?”

“I said I was in the lobby. But maybe I saw them go with him to the ‘lift.'”

Allowing a little of her annoyance to show, she said, “Your
maybes
are not helping me, Mr. Manion!”

“Well,
maybe
that's why I use them.
Maybe
I don't want to help you.”

She looked at him, found he was already looking at her. She made herself hold the look, thought that she was showing her determination, her grit, her… But the trouble was that she was showing something else. She felt herself blush but still didn't look away. His face seemed to get more and more solemn but less and less closed, and then his lips allowed a small smile. She realized that he was looking at her as a woman, and she was looking at him as a man. Swallowing hard, she said, “I had hoped you would want to help me.”

“You didn't give me much reason the last time.”

She looked at him again, met his eyes—gray, rather light; not so many eyes like that—and looked down at her hands and said, “I'm sorry. But I thought…you had…”

“You thought I was a dishonest D who'd laid down for five bucks. Well, you were right. Like I said, it was harmless. You said the woman smiled at you. Yeah, she was smiling. She wanted to be there, and the guy wanted to be there. What's so terrible about that?”

“So you did see her.”

“I told you that yesterday.”

“Did you see her leave the hotel, too?”

“No.”

“The man?”

“Yeah, he left while I was still on duty. He went out the front door like he owned the place.”

She was thinking about what it might mean if the woman hadn't left the hotel:
Then
she
could
have
been
murdered
here. No, that couldn't be…

She said, “
Did
you talk to those two policemen who came to see me, Mr. Manion?”

“What if I did?”

“What did they say?”

He hesitated. He rubbed his big hands together. “They said I didn't see any woman that day with a guy in this hotel. She was never here. They said that Carver was sure I didn't see anything.”

She raised her head and looked at him again. “Did they give you money?”

He returned the look. His voice was bitter. “Twenty bucks. The tall one put it in my pocket.” He put a hand over his breast pocket as if he were putting it on his heart. “Like I was some flunkey he was giving a tip.” He took his hand away. “I guess they got it back from Carver.”

“How?”

He laughed at her. “They went into the office and stayed about four minutes. They didn't go in there to tell him what a swell hotel he's got, did they? I expect they told him they were going to have to tell the newspapers that a witness had seen a murder victim in his lobby unless he came up with some of the old spondoolicks.” He rubbed a thumb and two fingers together. “I expect Carver paid. Through the nose.”