Winter at Death's Hotel (31 page)

“What does ‘all in good time' mean?”

Minnie put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “It means that on Monday we scoop the other papers. Then they'll start to scramble: they'll be all over your hotel, the cops, Harding—all of it. So we have to keep something for Tuesday, see? So what I do for Monday is ask questions; it's a tease. Then on Tuesday, when the other rags are coming out with their versions of what we've already given, we keep the bulge on them—exclusive interviews with high police officials, a statement from Carver—oh, yeah, he'll be dying to give me one by then—and probably something from Roosevelt, because he's gonna get on his horse the instant he reads the Monday paper! Terrible Teddy will draw his anti-corruption six-shooter, and it'll be better than the Wild West.”

“Minnie—what about the
murders
?”

“They'll be in there. They're the hook, for God's sake!”

“But what's being
done
about them?”

Minnie shrugged. “Cops've got nothing, because they haven't done anything. That's the guts of the story—Cleary's too busy taking bribes to do the business of the Murder Squad.”

“Is that really true?”

Minnie opened her eyes very wide and spread her hands. “It sells newspapers.”

“But the head of the investigation is Detective-Sergeant Dunne.”

“But it's Cleary I'm after!”

“Minnie—dear Minnie—there's somebody out there who is murdering
women
.
That's
the gist of your story.”

Minnie shook her head. “That's old. I mean, I'll go over it again, but you can't trick the same dog twice, or whatever that saying is. If we had another murder, sure. But the two we got were days and days ago. In the newspaper trade, that's a lifetime.”

Minnie had her dessert. Louisa felt her doldrums returning. She had expected to have some kind of woman-to-woman talk with Minnie, something confidential and perhaps whispered, something in which they would share Louisa's fears and talk about the murders. She admitted to herself that she had fears now; why couldn't Minnie sense them?

Walking back to the hotel in the bright glow of West Twenty-Third Street's shops, the two of them hand in hand, she said, “Could you find a newspaper story from the past for me?”

“Louisa, please! I already spent time on the ‘Shakespeare' thing; that didn't pan out very good. I used it, but there's really nothing there.”

“This is something else to do with the hotel.”

“That's better, anyway; that's a tie-in. What?”

Louisa told her about the French maid. Minnie said, “It might do for a para. I don't see a story in it.”

“Minnie, forget your stories! I'm taking about the murders! Here's another instance of a woman who may have been… I don't know what, but it was probably something dreadful—and again it comes back to the hotel!”

“You say ‘again,' but the only ‘again' is that you saw the first victim in the lobby. I'm gonna put that in print—leaving you out, leaving you out, I know—but it's thin, Louisa. It's suggestive; it's innuendo; it ain't facts. So you got a sighting of a victim and you got somebody two years ago who disappeared—this is a pattern? Give me the facts—that's what my editor's always saying. Give me the facts. Louisa, what you got is
notions.
”

“It could be the same madman.”

“I'd love to be able to say it is. Maybe I'll drop a hint that it is on Tuesday, how's that? But what's really the same? A woman disappears, but nobody saw her, no body's turned up, no this, no that. Then you see a woman in the lobby and she gets croaked, only it's two years later and nothing connects either one with you or the hotel.” Minnie squeezed her hand. “Sherlock Holmes you ain't.”

Louisa wanted to tell her again about the noises, about Mrs. Simmons's dog, about the “ghosts.” About her fears. About her disappointment in Arthur.

About her self-pity?

But she was spoiling the evening, and she didn't want to do that, so she laughed and squeezed Minnie's hand and said, “So I'm seeing things and jumping at shadows and leaping at conclusions. It's quite athletic!”

“You just need your husband back. You need a good…you know.”

“Minnie!”

“Don't deny it, Louisa.”

“Minnie, that's what
men
say—‘She just needs a good…' mmp-mmp-mmp.”

“Well, I wouldn't mind a good mmp-mmp-mmp myself.”

They began to laugh.
Like
a
couple
of
schoolgirls
, Louisa thought. She giggled, and when Minnie tickled her ribs she screamed all the louder. When they stopped in front of the New Britannic, tears were running down their faces. Somewhat sobered by the stares from the night doorman, they subsided. Louisa blotted her face with a small handkerchief and passed it to Minnie.

“Anyway,” she said, “could you look up the missing French maid in your archive?”

“Our what? We call it the morgue, sweetie. Hon, I'm not gonna have the time. I'm just not.” She grabbed Louisa's other hand, now held both of them. “Louisa, if I do this right, I'm made. I'll be able to write my own ticket. I'm going to get a job on the
World
if it hare-lips me!” She was suddenly serious; the tears were real now, for some vision of herself, of her future. “See?”

Louisa, who thought that stopping the murders was the only thing that mattered, didn't see but said she did. She kissed Minnie's cheek. “You'll be a star.”

They held each other's hands for several seconds, then let them go, suddenly embarrassed. Minnie said, “I'll tell you what. I have to go in tomorrow even though it's Sunday. We're planning the whole week. If I get a few minutes, I'll send one of the kids down to see what he can find—because I really do owe you for Roscoe G. Harding. Okay? I don't promise anything. Frenchwoman, disappeared two years ago, the hotel—right? Boy, it isn't much.”

“Stop by tomorrow if you can.”

“I can't. Well, maybe late, late afternoon.”

“Tea?”

“Oh, God, you're so English! If I can, hon, if I can—I gotta go…” She was backing along the pavement. Louisa watched her go, waited while she walked to the corner of Fifth Avenue, where she turned and waved. Louisa waved, then turned toward the hotel and let the night doorman open the doors for her. She didn't tip him.

***

In the morning, she went to St. Bartholomew's Church. She chose it because it was in her guidebook and was described as having “a sumptuous richness” and because the cab would cost the same to take her there as to Trinity Chapel, which was much closer but hardly described at all. She was able to limp along on the cane from hotel to cab and cab to church. (The crutch had appeared at her door that morning in the hands of one of the boys, with an apologetic note from Newcome.) The ice had helped the ankle, whose swelling was no worse and whose pain was now bearable—mostly. And she wanted now to triumph over the ankle, as if it were standing in for things she couldn't put ice on or ignore—Arthur, the murders, the hotel.

The service at St. Bartholomew's was very like home, the music splendid, the sermon rather flashy and superficial. It wasn't a high church, but quite a fashionable one. The parishioners could also have been described as showing a sumptuous richness. The dresses were good, men's silk hats and frock coats abundant. Private carriages lined the street when she limped out.

The
comforts
of
religion
. She had sought them but not found them this morning. She had prayed,
Almighty
God, take away my fears, take away my loneliness
, but she came out of the church unaware that anything had been lifted from her shoulders. Her church-going that morning, she thought, was religion as tourism, not very comforting but a pleasant part of the New York tour. She thought that if she were in New York another Sunday, she would go to one of the old churches, St. Mark's or Trinity; but the idea of being in the city for another week saddened her and seemed to make her ankle hurt more.

Ethel had Sunday morning off. Mrs. Simmons spent Sundays with relatives; Newcome was God knows where. Marie Corelli was away again. She'd have welcomed seeing even the austere and overpowering Victoria Woodhull, but she had gone back to England, according to Marie. Louisa ate a solitary lunch and lay down, couldn't sleep, went to the hotel's reading room and looked for a book and found nothing she could keep her mind on. Several of Arthur's books were there on a shelf labeled “adventure,” although looking over the other authors' titles she couldn't understand what people found in them.

She went back to her room and sat at her window. She watched the clock, hoping Minnie would come. A pigeon landed on her windowsill, cheering her, then flew off, saddening her. She thought of ordering more ice but realized she would have to pay the boy and so didn't.

When Minnie came at five, Louisa threw her arms around her and pecked her cheek.

“My Lord, Louisa, you saw me just last night!”

“I'm dying of boredom.”

“Lucky you. I've been on my feet for hours. But—guess what?”

“I can't.”

“I got a raise! My editor came in—on a
Sunday
!—to work on my story and he gave me a raise! And we're talking about giving me a regular feature on crime, mostly the unsolved ones. And you know why? Because he's afraid I'll jump to someplace better. And I will!” She had taken her hat off and now threw it in the air. “The world's my oyster!” She sat on the sofa next to Louisa. “You look glum.”

“Sunday. I'm Scottish.”

“You're lonesome, I can tell. You need your man. Nice to have around sometimes, men.”

“
You
need to fall in love.”

“I used to do that a lot; it isn't what it's cracked up to be. You fall in love with what's-his-name, Arthur?”

“Well…” Louisa was embarrassed but wanted to tell her. “I certainly set my cap for him.”

“Oh, it was that way!”

They both laughed. “Not quite what you think. I told you that my mother worked but made me go to school; I stayed two years past the mandatory age, and then I was given a scholarship to a teacher-training college, which was supposed to train girls to go to the outer islands to start schools. My mother was failing by then, and I had an appointment to go to Lewis—that's an island far away from the mainland—at the end of the summer. I thought it would be just me and my mother, and that would be my life. Then we went to the English coast because I got a temporary job there, and my little brother fell ill and Arthur—he was a doctor, you know—came to tend him, and…one thing led to another.”

“Louisa! How far did it lead?”

She blushed and laughed. “Not as far as I wanted it to.” They both giggled. “He was a doctor—I could see myself married to him, my mother living with us… And then I fell in love with him.”

“And he fell in love with you.”

Louisa looked out her sooty window. “Arthur is a good man. He has a profound sense of duty.” She smiled quickly. “Now, you mustn't ever tell anybody I said that. I've never said it before.” She frowned. “Perhaps I've never thought it before.”

“Not wildly romantic, huh?”

“We're all different, Minnie.” She took one of Minnie's hands, became a bit brittle. “Now you tell me your secrets! Tell me about all these men you were in love with.”

So they sat on the sofa like two much younger women, sharing confidences and giggling. Minnie did most of the telling: she wasn't a virgin; she'd ducked out of an engagement twice; the men she made a fool of herself over were never the kind you take home to mother. “If I'd had a mother.” She had a tough exterior, but inside was a lot of hurt and a lot of disappointment. She turned over her left hand and showed Louisa a scar the size and shape of an oak leaf on the palm, the skin shiny, slightly puckered. “My mother did that when I was seven. She pressed my hand on the woodstove. To punish me. God, I hated her. I left when I was fifteen, just
left
. And never been back.” Then she went back to telling racy stories of her adventures with men.

Louisa held her hand and smiled and laughed and said, “Oh, Minnie,” from time to time, loving the softer Minnie that was emerging, glad of this woman friend she had found, and as the dusk fell outside it seemed the most natural thing in the world after one of Minnie's confessions to kiss her lightly, really as one child might have kissed another. Minnie, rather red from her tales and her giggles, looked surprised, then gave Louisa a small kiss back, which Louisa returned; and then Louisa was astonished that Minnie was kissing her,
really
kissing her, a kiss that lasted, became a firm pressing together of mouths, and then the tip of Minnie's tongue's first probing.

And then Minnie pushed herself back and said, “Oh my God!” She jumped up. “Omigod, omigod—!”

“Minnie—!”

But she was out the door, and the door slammed and Louisa was alone. She struggled up, had to look for her cane, then limped to the door and opened it, but the corridor—the still-strange corridor of the annex—was empty.

“Minnie?”

She went the slow route to the lift and down to the ground floor. She walked through the lobby, looking in the deep chairs as if Minnie might have decided to sit and rest in one.

“My friend,” she said to the doorman, “did she go out? A young lady.”

“Young lady came through a few minutes ago. Brown coat, little brown hat?”

Louisa went out and stood on the hotel step—the one she'd tripped on after buying the
Police
Gazette
; it seemed like years ago—but Minnie was gone.