From behind Peter a voice murmured, “Excuse me, Mr. McDermott, can I have a word with you?”
Turning abruptly he recognized Sol Natchez, one of the elderly room-service waiters, who had come quietly down the corridor, a lean cadaverous figure in a short white coat, trimmed with the hotel’s colors of red and gold, The man’s hair was slicked down flatly and combed forward into an old-fashioned forelock. His eyes were pale and rheumy, and the veins in the back of his hands, which he rubbed nervously, stood out like cords with the flesh sunk deep between them.
“What is it, Sol?”
His voice betraying agitation, the waiter said, “I expect you’ve come about the complaint—the complaint about me.”
McDermott glanced at the double doors. They had not yet opened, nor, apart from the barking, had there been any other sound from within. He said, “Tell me what happened.”
The other swallowed twice. Ignoring the question, he said in a pleading hurried whisper, “If I lose this job, Mr. McDermott, it’s hard at my age to find another.” He looked toward the Presidential Suite, his expression a mixture of anxiety and resentment. “They’re not the hardest people to serve … except for tonight. They expect a lot, but I’ve never minded, even though there’s never a tip.”
Peter smiled involuntarily. British nobility seldom tipped, assuming perhaps that the privilege of waiting on them was a reward in itself.
He interjected, “You still haven’t told me …”
“I’m gettin’ to it, Mr. McDermott.” From someone old enough to be Peter’s grandfather, the other man’s distress was almost embarrassing. “It was about half an hour ago. They’d ordered a late supper, the Duke and Duchess—oysters, champagne, shrimp Creole.”
“Never mind the menu. What happened?”
“It was the shrimp Creole, sir. When I was serving it … well, it’s something, in all these years it’s happened very rarely.”
“For heaven’s sake!” Peter had one eye on the suite doors, ready to break off the conversation the moment they opened.
“Yes, Mr. McDermott. Well, when I was serving the Creole the Duchess got up from the table and as she came back she jogged my arm. If I didn’t know better I’d have said it was deliberate.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“I know, sir, I know. But what happened, you see, was there was a small spot—I swear it was no more than a quarter inch—on the Duke’s trousers.”
Peter said doubtfully, “Is that all this is about?”
“Mr. McDermott, I swear to you that’s all. But you’d think—the fuss the Duchess made—I’d committed murder. I apologized, I got a clean napkin and water to get the spot off, but it wouldn’t do. She insisted on sending for Mr. Trent …”
“Mr. Trent is not in the hotel.”
He would hear the other side of the story, Peter decided, before making any judgment. Meanwhile he instructed, “If you’re all through for tonight you’d better go home. Report tomorrow and you’ll be told what will happen.”
As the waiter disappeared, Peter McDermott depressed the bell push again. There was barely time for the barking to resume before the door was opened by a moon-faced, youngish man with pince-nez. Peter recognized him as the Croydons’ secretary.
Before either of them could speak a woman’s voice called out from the suite’s interior. “Whoever it is, tell them not to keep buzzing.” For all the peremptory tone, Peter thought, it was an attractive voice with a rich huskiness which excited interest.
“I beg your pardon,” he told the secretary. “I thought perhaps you hadn’t heard.” He introduced himself, then added, “I understand there has been some trouble about our service. I came to see if I could help.”
The secretary said, “We were expecting Mr. Trent.”
“Mr. Trent is away from the hotel for the evening.”
While speaking they had moved from the corridor into the hallway of the suite, a tastefully appointed rectangle with deep broadloom, two upholstered chairs, and a telephone side table beneath a Morris Henry Hobbs engraving of old New Orleans. The double doorway to the corridor formed one end of the rectangle. At the other end, the door to the large living room was partially open. On the right and left were two other doorways, one to the self-contained kitchen and another to an office-cum-bed-sitting room, at present used by the Croydons’ secretary. The two main, connecting bedrooms of the suite were accessible both through the kitchen and living room, an arrangement contrived so that a surreptitious bedroom visitor could be spirited in and out by the kitchen if need arose.
“Why can’t he be sent for?” The question was addressed without preliminary as the living-room door opened and the Duchess of Croydon appeared, three of the Bedlington terriers enthusiastically at her heels. With a swift finger-snap, instantly obeyed, she silenced the dogs and turned her eyes questioningly on Peter. He was aware of the handsome, high-cheekboned face, familiar through a thousand photographs. Even in casual clothes, he observed, the Duchess was superbly dressed.
“To be perfectly honest, Your Grace, I was not aware that you required Mr. Trent personally.”
Gray-green eyes regarded him appraisingly. “Even in Mr. Trent’s absence I should have expected one of the senior executives.”
Despite himself, Peter flushed. There was a superb hauteur about the Duchess of Croydon which—in a perverse way—was curiously appealing. A picture flashed into his memory. He had seen it in one of the illustrated magazines—the Duchess putting a stallion at a high fence. Disdainful of risk, she had been securely and superbly in command. He had an impression, at this moment, of being on foot while the Duchess was mounted.
“I’m assistant general manager. That’s why I came personally.”
There was a glimmer of amusement in the eyes which held his own. “Aren’t you somewhat young for that?”
“Not really. Nowadays a good many young men are engaged in hotel management.” The secretary, he noticed, had disappeared discreetly.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
The Duchess smiled. When she chose—as at this moment—her face became animated and warm. It was not difficult, Peter thought, to become aware of the fabled charm. She was five or six years older than himself, he calculated, though younger than the Duke who was in his late forties. Now she asked, “Do you take a course or something?”
“I have a degree from Cornell University—the School of Hotel Administration. Before coming here I was an assistant manager at the Waldorf.” It required an effort to mention the Waldorf, and he was tempted to add: from where I was fired in ignominy, and blacklisted by the chain hotels, so that I am fortunate to be working here, which is an independent house. But he would not say it, of course, because a private hell was something you lived with alone, even when someone else’s casual questions nudged old, raw wounds within yourself.
The Duchess retorted, “The Waldorf would never have tolerated an incident like tonight’s.”
“I assure you, ma’am, that if we are at fault the St. Gregory will not tolerate it either.” The conversation, he thought, was like a game of tennis, with the ball lobbed from one courtside to the other. He waited for it to come back.
“If you were at fault! Are you aware that your waiter poured shrimp Creole over my husband?”
It was so obviously an exaggeration, he wondered why. It was also uncharacteristic since, until now, relations between the hotel and the Croydons had been excellent.
“I was aware there had been an accident which was probably due to carelessness. In that event I’m here to apologize for the hotel.”
“Our entire evening has been ruined,” the Duchess insisted. “My husband and I decided to enjoy a quiet evening in our suite here, by ourselves. We were out for a few moments only, to take a walk around the block, and we returned to supper—and this!”
Peter nodded, outwardly sympathetic but mystified by the Duchess’s attitude. It seemed almost as if she wanted to impress the incide
nt on his mind so he would not forget it.
He suggested, “Perhaps if I could convey our apologies to the Duke …”
The Duchess said firmly, “That will not be necessary.”
He was about to take his leave when the door to the living room, which had remained ajar, opened fully. It framed the Duke of Croydon.
In contrast to his Duchess, the Duke was untidily dressed, in a creased white shirt and the trousers of a tuxedo. Instinctively Peter McDermott’s eyes sought the tell-tale stain where Natchez, in the Duchess’s words had “poured shrimp Creole over my husband.” He found it, though it was barely visible—a tiny spot which a valet could have removed instantly. Behind the Duke, in the spacious living room a television set was turned on.
The Duke’s face seemed flushed, and more lined than some of his recent photographs showed. He held a glass in his hand and when he spoke his voice was blurry. “Oh, beg pardon.” Then, to the Duchess: “I say, old girl. Must have left my cigarettes in the car.”
She responded sharply, “I’ll bring some.” There was a curt dismissal in her voice and with a nod the Duke turned back into the living room. It was a curious, uncomfortable scene and for some reason it had heightened the Duchess’s anger.
Turning to Peter, she snapped, “I insist on a full report being made to Mr. Trent, and you may inform him that I expect a personal apology.”
Still perplexed, Peter went out as the suite door closed firmly behind him.
But he was allowed no more time for reflection. In the corridor outside, the bellboy who had accompanied Christine to the fourteenth floor was waiting. “Mr. McDermott,” he said urgently, “Miss Francis wants you in 1439, and please hurry!”
4
Some fifteen minutes earlier, when Peter McDermott had left the elevator on his way to the Presidential Suite, the bellboy grinned at Christine. “Doing a bit of detectiving, Miss Francis?”
“If the chief house officer was around,” Christine told him, “I wouldn’t have to.”
The bellboy, Jimmy Duckworth, a balding stubby man whose married son worked in the St. Gregory accounting department, said contemptuously, “Oh, him!” A moment later the elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor.
“It’s 1439, Jimmy,” Christine said, and automatically both turned right. There was a difference, she realized, in the way the two of them knew the geography of the hotel: the bellboy through years of ushering guests from the lobby to their rooms; herself, from a series of mental pictures which familiarity with the printed plans of each floor of the St. Gregory had given her.
Five years ago, she thought, if someone at the University of Wisconsin had asked what twenty-year-old Chris Francis, a bright co-ed with a flair for modern languages, was likely to be doing a lustrum later, not even the wildest guess would have had her working in a New Orleans hotel. That long ago her knowledge of the Crescent City was of the slightest, and her interest less. She had learned in school about the Louisiana Purchase and had seen A Streetcar Named Desire. But even the last was out of date when she eventually came. The streetcar had become a diesel bus, and Desire was an obscure thoroughfare on the east side of town, which tourists seldom saw.
She supposed, in a way, it was this lack of knowledge which brought her to New Orleans. After the accident in Wisconsin, dully and with only the vaguest of reasoning, she had sought a place where she could be unknown and which, as well, was unfamiliar to herself. Familiar things, their touch and sight and sound, had become an ache of heart—all encompassing—which filled the waking day and penetrated sleep. Strangely—and in a way it shamed her at the time—there were never nightmares; only the steady procession of events as they had been that memorable day at Madison airport. She had been there to see her family leave for Europe: her mother, gay and excited, wearing the bon voyage orchid which a friend had telegraphed; her father, relaxed and amiably complacent that for a month the real and imagined ailments of his patients would be someone else’s concern. He had been puffing a pipe which he knocked out on his shoe when the flight was called. Babs, her elder sister, had embraced Christine; and even Tony, two years younger and hating public affection, consented to be kissed.
“So long, Ham!” Babs and Tony had called back, and Christine smiled at the use of the silly, affectionate name they gave her because she was the middle of their trio sandwich. And they had all promised to write, even though she would join them in Paris two weeks later when term ended. At the last her mother had held Chris tightly, and told her to take care. And a few minutes later the big prop-jet had taxied out and taken off with a roar, majestically, though it barely cleared the runway before it fell back, one wing low, becoming a whirling, somersaulting Catherine wheel, and for a moment a dust cloud, and then a torch, and finally a silent pile of fragments—machinery and what was left of human flesh.
It was five years ago. A few weeks after, she left Wisconsin and had never returned.
Her own footsteps and the bellboy’s were muffled in the carpeted corridor. A pace ahead, Jimmy Duckworth ruminated, “Room 1439—that’s the old gent, Mr. Wells. We moved him from a corner room a couple of days ago.”
Ahead, down the corridor, a door opened and a man, well dressed and fortyish, came out. Closing the door behind him, and ready to pocket the key, he hesitated, eying Christine with frank interest. He seemed about to speak but, barely perceptibly, the bellboy shook his head. Christine, who missed nothing of the exchange, supposed she should be flattered to be mistaken for a call girl. From rumors she heard, Herbie Chandler’s list embraced a glamorous membership.
When they had passed by she asked, “Why was Mr. Well’s room changed?”
“The way I heard it, miss, somebody else had 1439 and raised a fuss. So what they did was switch around.”
Christine remembered 1439 now; there had been complaints before. It was next to the service elevator and appeared to be the meeting place of all the hotel’s pipes. The effect was to make the place noisy and unbearably hot. Every hotel had at least one such room—some called it the ha-ha room—which usually was never rented until everything else was full.
“If Mr. Wells had a better room why was he asked to move?”
The bellboy shrugged. “You’d better ask the room clerks that.”
She persisted, “But you’ve an idea.”
“Well, I guess it’s because he never complains. The old gent’s been coming here for years with never a peep out of him. There are some who seem to think it’s a bit of a joke.” Christine’s lips tightened angrily as Jimmy Duckworth went on, “I did hear in the dining room they give him that table beside the kitchen door, the one no one else will have. He doesn’t seem to mind, they say.”
Christine thought grimly: Someone would mind tomorrow morning; she would guarantee it. At the realization that a regular guest, who also happened to be a quiet and gentle man, had been so shabbily treated, she felt her temper bristle. Well, let it. Her temper was not unknown around the hotel and there were some, she knew, who said it went with her red hair. Although she curbed it mostly, once in a while it served a purpose in getting things done.
They turned a corner and stopped at the door of 1439. The bellboy knocked. They waited, listening. There was no acknowledging sound and Jimmy Duckworth repeated the knock, this time more loudly. At once there was a response: an eerie moaning that began as a whisper, reached a crescendo, then ended suddenly as it began.
“Use your pass key,” Christie instructed. “Open the door—quickly!”
She stood back while the bellboy went in ahead; even in apparent crisis a hotel had rules of decorum which must be observed. The room was in darkness and she saw Duckworth snap on the ceiling light and go around a corner out of sight. Almost at once he called back, “Miss Francis, you’d better come.”
The room, as Christine entered, was stiflingly hot, though a glance at the air-conditioning regulator showed it set hopefully to “cool.” But that was all she had time to see before observing the struggling figure, half upr
ight, half recumbent in the bed. It was the birdlike little man she knew as Albert Wells. His face ashen gray, eyes bulging with trembling lips, he was attempting desperately to breathe and barely succeeding.
She went quickly to the bedside. Once, years before, in her father’s office she had seen a patient in extremis, fighting for breath. There were things her father had done then which she could not do now, but one she remembered. She told Duckworth decisively, “Get the window open. We need air in here.”
The bellboy’s eyes were focused on the face of the man in bed. He said nervously, “The window’s sealed. They did it for the air conditioning.”
“Then force it. If you have to, break the glass.”
She had already picked up the telephone beside the bed. When the operator answered, Christine announced, “This is Miss Francis. Is Dr. Aarons in the hotel?”
“No, Miss Francis; but he left a number. If it’s an emergency I can reach him.”
“It’s an emergency. Tell Dr. Aarons room 1439, and to hurry, please. Ask how long he’ll take to get here, then call me back.”
Replacing the phone, Christine turned to the still-straggling figure in the bed. The frail, elderly man was breathing no better than before and she perceived that his face, which a few moments earlier had been ashen gray, was turning blue. The moaning which they had heard outside had begun again; it was the effort of exhaling, but obviously most of the sufferer’s waning strength was being consumed by his desperate physical exertion.
“Mr. Wells,” she said, trying to convey a confidence she was far from feeling, “I think you might breathe more easily if you kept perfectly still.” The bellboy, she noticed, was having success with the window. He had used a coat hanger to break a seal on the catch and now was inching the bottom portion upward.