Winter at Death's Hotel (7 page)

“Yes, sweetie, lovely flowers from Mr. Carver and Mr. Irving and, oh, lots of people! Beautiful flowers everywhere.”

Louisa tried to move her head so that she could look around and see what flowers the woman was talking about. Or was the woman mad? Had she somehow got into a room with a madwoman? She thought through what she would say and enunciated carefully, “Where am I?”

“In your
room
, honey. In the New Britannic Hotel.”

The hotel. But they'd left the hotel. Arthur had staged a little scene and then that pleasant man, what was his name, had got him in to see the manager, Carver—
oh, Carver had sent flowers, oh, that one, the slimy one
—and they'd put all the luggage into carriages, Arthur and Ethel, and— Then she remembered.

“I tripped. On the carpet.”

“Well, you sprained your ankle, honey. Mr. Carver says it wasn't the carpet, but that don't matter, does it.”

“I fell.”

“Yes, and pretty bad, too, sweetie, although I wasn't there to see it. Right down on your poor face, I heard. Have you got pain, sweetie?”

Pain? Had she pain? She didn't think so. She wasn't sure that she had anything, not pain and not pleasure. She felt as if she had been wrapped in something quite neutral, cloud or soft batting that nonetheless didn't make her too warm, and the sense she usually had of her feet and her legs and her forehead had been drained away. Still, if she was back in the hotel—well, not back, because she'd never left the hotel; she remembered tripping now, a sense of terrible calamity happening, about to happen, and then nothing. She had hit the floor, presumably. Or perhaps Arthur had caught her?

“Arthur's on the train?”

“Yes, sweetie, I was told to tell you he'd made his train in plenty of time, and he knew you'd be worried. He's sent you two telegrams, which Doctor says you're not to try to read yet, but I can tell you they're both very loving and nice and he misses you. So you're not to worry.”

She wasn't worried, but she'd have been happier if he were here and were saying things like “to hell with the damned train; you're my wife!” rather than sending telegrams. With that slightly depressing thought, she fell asleep again.

***

When she woke a second time, she knew where she was almost at once (the “almost” was a fraction of a second of panic)—hotel, room, Arthur-on-train, fall—and she was aware that her ankle hurt like billy-o. She tried to move her leg, and the pain caused her to make a sound, not a ladylike scream at all but a kind of guttural
Aaaghh
.

“Oh, thank God, you're awake.”

“Ethel?”

“It's me, madame.” Ethel's bovine face loomed over her like a balloon that had floated in the window.

“I thought you were on the train.”

“Oh, no, madame! My place is with you. How are you?”

“I want to sit up.”

“Doctor said—”

“Sit me up! Aaagh! Like knives in my ankle. Is it broken?”

“Sprained, madame. Mr. Doyle and the hotel doctor had quite a set-to about it. Mr. Doyle—
Dr.
Doyle he is, really, isn't he? as he reminded the hotel man—said it was only a sprain and you could recover on the train, and they'd only need a litter and two attendants to get you on and off the train, which could be done through a window, but the house doctor said it was broken and he was going to hospitalize you. And then Mr. Carver called in a specialist and
he
said you'd only sprained your ankle and bed rest was called for, and Mr. Carver said of course the hotel would provide the very best care without you having to move to a hospital or some such. By that time, Mr. Doyle and I had divided up the luggage again, and I got all his into one carriage and off he went to catch his train, and the boys and me brought everything back up here—one of them calling me honey again to my face, and didn't I give him what for!—and they brought you up on a freight lift, and here you are!”

Louisa was absorbing the fact that her husband had gone away before he had known how badly she was hurt. She said in a somewhat slurred voice, “I suppose Mr. Doyle wasn't really worried for me.”

“He was, madame, oh, he was! But you kept saying, ‘You must go, Arthur, you must,' and telling him to go, and it was you ordered me to divide the luggage.”

“I did?” She thought how noble of her that must have been. “I must have struck my head, for I don't remember.”

“Oh, you took a terrible crack on the noggin, madame! Head first it was, and you've rather a black eye, I'm afraid, although it don't show so much if you keep that side in the dark. And your glasses broke to smithereens.”

“A black eye?” She was horrified. It seemed…unseemly. Then it seemed rather thrilling. “Get me a mirror. The hand mirror from my little case will do.”

“Oh, madame, I wouldn't if I was you.”

“Oh, havers, Ethel! Anyway, you're not me.”
Good
heavens, where did “havers” come from? That's one of my mother's words.
“Fetch the mirror, do, please.”

Ethel's balloon floated away, then reappeared. Hands tried to push her up in the bed; there was a lot of stacking and smacking of pillows. The mirror was put into her hand. “Doctor said not to upset you.”

It wasn't simply a black eye. It was a swollen cheek, a cut eyebrow, and a large purple-blue bruise with rather disgusting yellow edges that went from her forehead down almost to her jawbone. Louisa stared at it. She moved the mirror so as to get different angles on it. “Well,” she said, “I've never looked like this before.”

“No, madame.” Ethel was almost whispering.

“I shan't be able to go out.”

“Well, madame, with the ankle…”

“You mean I can't go out anyway. Is that's what meant by compensation? Or is it fortunate coincidence? There's something called the fortunate fall, which is I suppose what it might be said I had, if getting the face and the ankle at the same time were what was wanted. I'm babbling, aren't I. It must be the morphine.” She tried to focus, to clear her fuddled brain, but couldn't. “Some woman was in here who said I'd had morphine.”

“That was the nurse, madame. Mr. Carver insisted on bringing her in.”

She handed the mirror back, then held on to it to have another look at herself. It made her smile, then grimace as she moved her ankle. “Vanity,” she said aloud. She remembered admiring herself in the mirror the day before. Served her right, her mother would have said.

The room began to drift away. She managed to say, “I'll need my other eyeglasses, Ethel.”

She lay back and sighed.
Oh, Arthur
. What had she done now? She had worried him; she had made him almost miss his train; she had probably ruined his preparations for his first lecture.
It's all my fault
. She said, “What time is it?”

Ethel's voice came from a far place. “It's only a little past eight in the morning, madame.”

“It was yesterday I fell, was it?” She had a hard time pronouncing “yesterday,” and by the time she got to “was it,” she was asleep again.

Then she woke and realized that Arthur's first lecture had already been given and he must be headed somewhere else—Cleveland, was it? No, something with an Indian name—and she slept and woke, fuddled again—something about the doctor—and slept, and the windows were dark and the lamps were on and the strange woman who called her sweetie was there, and so she slept.

***

Telegram to Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle, sent from the Union Depot, Buffalo, NY:

MY DARLING DEAREST WIFE STOP RACKED WITH GUILT FOR LEAVING YOU STOP FORGIVE MY CHURLISHNESS STOP MY SELFISHNESS UNFORGIVABLE STOP HOPE RECOVERING AND WILL JOIN ME SOONEST STOP LOVE LOVE LOVE ARTHUR

Telegram sent to Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle from the Iroquois Hotel, Buffalo, NY, same day:

MISSING YOU UNBEARABLY STOP AMERICAN TRAINS PECULIAR STOP NO COMPARTMENTS STOP LECTURE HERE DISASTER STOP NO INTEREST FUTURE OF NOVEL STOP THINKING RETURN ENGLAND SOONEST STOP LOVE YOU MISS YOU STOP HAVE INSUFFICIENT UNDERWEAR STOP LOVE ARTHUR

***

And Louisa woke. Morning again. Knowing where she was but feeling muddled.

“Ethel?”

“Yes, madame.”

“He gave me more morphine, didn't he.”

“Oh, yes, madame; you were groaning in pain.”

“Well, I don't appreciate having been rendered unconscious for almost—good heavens, how long is it, nearly two days now—however well intentioned the physician. I want to get up.”

“Oh, no, madame! Doctor strictly forbids it!”

“Ethel, I have a call of nature!”

Ethel produced a hideous enamel pan from under the bed. Louisa looked at it. She was expected to straddle it, as she had had to do yesterday, she remembered now. For not the first time, by far, she envied Arthur for his ability to project urine to a distance. She said, “I suppose the doctor isn't a woman.” She slowly pulled back the bedclothes and tried to move her legs to the edge of the bed. “Aaaarghhh!”

“Madame, madame—”

“Hush, Ethel! I'm not going to sit ever again on some cheap enamel object that looks as if it was made for scooping goldfish out of a pond! Give me your hand.” She gripped Ethel's hand so tightly that Ethel made a face. “Now I'm going to hop to the WC. You're going to hold on to me so I don't fall and smash the other side of my face. Ready? Off we go…”

She had done a lot of hopping as a little girl, but she had not then been feeling the after-effect of morphine. It was as if she had a ten-pound weight tied to her good foot. Still, she managed to get to an armchair, on which she leaned until she'd recovered her balance and her breath, and then she hopped on and at last got to the lavatory door. “I can make it from here alone. Don't leave.” She started to close the door, then looked out. “I want to send a telegram, so get a form. And Mr. Doyle's itinerary. And a boy to carry the telegram to wherever they send them from. Or perhaps the hotel has its own office. Find out.” She half-closed the door again, then opened it. “And order me some breakfast. I'm ravenous. Tea, toast, a three-minute egg, some jam but not that horrible gooseberry stuff. And a cup of tea for you as well if you want some.”

Half an hour later, enthroned in a huge pile of pillows and dressed in a clean nightgown and an ecru satin bedjacket of which she was particularly fond (an almost military cut—rather a joke, even to lace epaulettes), she was finishing her breakfast and studying her right ankle, which she had left poking out of the bedcovers. It was as black-and-blue as her face but far more swollen. “Elephantiasis,” she said aloud. There was nobody to say it to: she had sent Ethel out for the newspapers—“All of them!”—because she had remembered that poor woman who had been murdered. She sighed. “You really are a clumsy juggins, Louisa.” She tried to move her foot a fraction of an inch side to side. “Aaarghh!” She reread Arthur's two telegrams for the sixth or seventh time and thought how really sweet he was. What did he mean about the underwear, she wondered.

When Ethel came back with the newspapers, she said that the doctor and Mr. Carver were coming up. Louisa swore—or as nearly swore as she dared in front of Ethel—and tried to object but failed. She decided that the best thing was to seem busy, even to
be
busy; she had Ethel bring the cards from the mostly hideous flowers she could now see all around the room, and a pencil and paper for making a list.

Some of the flowers seemed to be from people she knew in the hotel—Henry Irving; the remarkable Mrs. Simmons; even her nephew, Mr. Newcome; Carver—but others were from people she had never met: “the wait staff and kitchen workers of the New Britannic,” somebody named Mrs. Alonzo Gappert, several enthusiastic lovers of Sherlock Holmes (who, she suspected, really wanted an introduction to her husband). There was a small bouquet from Marie Corelli, the novelist, whom she remembered smiling at after Mrs. Simmons had said something disparaging; she also remembered Arthur's giving some sort of look when the name was mentioned at Reception. Well, she had this to say for the woman: hers and Newcome's were the most tasteful flower arrangements of the lot. Both were fairly small, subtly colored—far superior to the two dozen blood-red roses of Carver's or the three-foot-tall monstrosity of lilies and ferns from one of the Holmesians.

As she wrote her thank-you notes, she thought of poor Arthur, far away somewhere; of that dead woman, disfigured—is that what the word meant, that her face had been like Louisa's own, bruised and discolored?—murdered, left in an alley; of her children, whom she missed and wanted with her: how lovely it would be to snuggle into the bed under the flowered ceiling, a child on either side of her, a pile of children's books, their warm, scented small bodies—

“Mr. Carver and Dr. Strauss, madame.”

Carver
was
obnoxious—Uriah Heep crossed with Mary Shelley's creature—as she saw the instant he oozed around her doorframe, as if he had no more skeleton than a leech. He said he'd come to make sure she was recovering, but what he really wanted was her signature on a “little paper” that absolved the hotel of any fault for her fall. He had a fountain pen ready in his hand. She remembered a bit of her mother's advice:
Never
sign
anything
if
they
bring
their
own
pen
. It was much better than her mother's advice about sex had been.

“No, Mr. Carver, I won't sign. I'm afraid I'm not compos because of the drugs
your
doctor has given me. How would that look if it ever came to law?”

He went away, to be replaced by the doctor, a large man with a beard, his suit mostly unpressed, a gold chain crossing his waistcoat as if anchoring one side to the other, a general look of failure, and a German accent. He told her his name was Strauss; he tried to give her more morphine, which she rejected; and he said he wanted her to be seen by somebody named Galt, who took care of “old Mr. Carver upstairs.” Galt was recommended as an expert on sprains—“old people, they fall a lot”—and she said she'd see, although privately she thought that the doctor ought to be the expert on sprains, not somebody upstairs. What good was he?