“We are.” Though, even then, I knew we weren’t.
He thanked me, touching the notebook to his temple in an odd salute, and held out his arm. “Then I shall walk you down to Mr. Sylvan, who will, I am sure, escort you to your room. I understand he has set his staff of brownies to put it right for you.”
Brownies. A nod to his Scottish origins.
I took his arm and brought myself out of the booth—an action that has yet to be easy for a lady to accomplish. He gave my arm a reassuring pat once I was standing next to Mr. Sylvan. “You’ll see to it that our Mrs. Krause passes the night safely?”
“As I have these past three months, sir.” His moustache twitched with the effort of containing a sneer.
“Good, then. I’ll be in touch.”
Carmichael left by the street entrance, wishing a good night to Bert, who returned the same. The moment the door closed behind him, I felt the same ball of fear that I had when I ran into this bar hours before.
“I don’t know if I can go back there.”
“Very well,” Mr. Sylvan said without a hint of humor. “I’ll have my brownies pack your things. I’ll even have Bert here escort you across the street to the Emily Morgan.”
“She took all of my money. You know I can’t go anywhere else. Please—” I touched his sleeve, pleading, “Let me have another room?”
“I wouldn’t give you another room if we had one. Since you’ve no problem putting yourself on display, I’ll allow you to spend the night in the lobby. Prop yourself up on one of the sofas. That or the sidewalk. As you’re so far a paying guest, I’ll see to it you get a blanket. Those are your options. I’ve other guests to attend to. Please do let me know your preference.”
And he left, in direct defiance of Carmichael’s orders.
I looked to Bert, my arms folded tightly against myself for warmth. For strength. “Walk with me?”
“You know I can’t.” He stepped closer, touching a single finger to my elbow. All of the patrons had been chased from the bar for my interview with Carmichael, but the door was not locked. Someone could come in at any moment. “Last thing you need is more scandal. Now, you’ve had a fright, but you haven’t done nothing wrong. I can’t walk with you, but I can walk behind you, sure as anything. And just see if any of them in the lobby will have something to say.”
“Thank you,” I said, knowing I was speaking to the only friend I had in the world.
His eyes held me, his steps filled the wake of fear mine left behind. Out of the bar, down the hall, and through the lobby still dotted with guests—curious and festive. Hushes fell as I passed, and I left a trail of silence like a field of grass trampled behind me. I could only guess as to the expression on Bert’s face, the size to which he’d puffed himself, the implied threat in his posture and gait. He walked with me to the bottom of the stairs. Once there, I turned and whispered, “Thank you,” and he tipped an invisible hat.
Carmichael was correct. My room had been put to rights. Were it not for the thudding in my chest, I might never suspect that a crime of such supernatural horror had occurred only hours ago. My bed was turned down, everything neatly arranged on my desk and vanity. My trunk was closed. Every garment that had been draped about the room had been put away, including the stockings that had been drying over the grate. I noticed a teapot and cup on the bedside table, and a touch revealed it to be warm. I poured a cup, sloshing a bit with my shaking hand, and sat on the edge of my bed to drink it.
The night stretched before me, and I knew I would not sleep. I had no desire to try, to even lie upon the bed. I took my teapot and my cup, my grip now resolved, over to my desk. Once settled, I drew a fresh page of hotel stationery and penned the now familiar salutation to my husband’s sons. Ink poured forth as I explained my plight, pleading for mercy—and what was owed to me.
Then, glancing aside for thought, a glimmer caught my eye. A wink from the corner of the room. Not a reflection; the light was not strong or bright enough for that. Nonetheless, an existence made itself known. I put down the pen and went to my knees, my hand finding the attention-seeker immediately. My earring, the amethyst. I clutched it like a promise, brought it to my lips, and kissed the stone. As I was in a position of prayer, I offered one of thanks to the God who always seemed to rescue me. One earring would be useless for adornment, but the gem held value. It wasn’t much, but it was here. And it was mine.
Without leaving the floor, I reached up and grabbed the unfinished letter. I balled it within my other fist before crumpling my body in imitation. Those brats, I thought, picturing their names on the page. Fat, drooling monsters. It was just a matter of time now before they found me. Before they took the last of any good thing I’d ever have in my life. I knew this as well as I knew the pattern of the carpet on the floor beneath my face. I knew this because I was a fool. It had taken only one glimpse into a moss-green eye, one moment seduced by the scent of cigarettes, and one question that I’d answered with the truth.
Chapter 14
Excerpt from
My Spectral Accuser: The Haunted Life of Hedda Krause
Published by the Author Herself
I brewed for days, fearful to leave my room. In fact, I didn’t, choosing instead to order up pots of tea and simple meals of toast and cheese and fruit. Even of that, I ate little. Twice Mr. Sylvan tried to summon me by sending a note, and I responded to each by saying I felt too ill to speak to anyone. The poor messengers were sent away without even a nickel for a tip.
Midmorning on the third day, I answered a knock at my door to reveal Mr. Sylvan himself, shadows under his eyes and an overall weary expression on his face.
“Mrs. Krause, there’s someone to see you—”
“I’ve no wish to see anyone, Mr. Sylvan.”
I attempted to close my door, but he stepped forward just enough to ensure that I would crush his small foot if I did so. “It is Detective Carmichael. He’s requested an interview with you, and when I told him of the unlikelihood that you would come down, he informed me that he would carry you down himself, and I am inclined to believe him.” He spoke the entire sentence in a single breath. “Now, please, Mrs. Krause, you have caused me enough embarrassment for an entire career. Just put yourself together and come downstairs. Fifteen minutes.”
I did not take issue with his final statement, being in no shape to meet or visit with anyone. My hair was ratted and loose, my skin dry, my dressing gown stained with jam and dusted with crumbs. I looked every bit a madwoman deserving to be locked away, and the survival instinct that had guided me since I was a small girl kicked in. My hair was given the most attention, brushed until it crackled, then braided and pinned. A shoddy hairstyle is the first giveaway of class; the truly destitute don’t have the time or resources for such grooming. Anyone can wash a face or put on a clean, serviceable dress, but unkempt hair will remain unkempt without the proper ministration. A few precious dollops of my face cream brought a healthy sheen to my skin, and my best day dress had been returned from the cleaners the week before.
“Oh, Hedda,” I said to my reflection, satisfied, “with three minutes to spare.”
Carmichael was waiting for me by one of the large green fronds in the lobby. He stood as I approached, and I wondered if he realized how pleased he looked to see me. Later, in one of our cozy evening chats on that very same sofa, he would confess that he preferred my look on the first night we met, because he imagined that was what I would look like first thing in the morning, and I’d turned to liquid under his words. But this morning we were still all business. I extended my hand. He took it and asked if I was feeling any better.
“What I’m feeling,” I said, “is hungry. I haven’t had breakfast this morning. Shall we talk in the dining room over some eggs?”
He gestured with his hat, and I led the way, feeling the tips of his fingers on the back of my arm, just above my elbow. Guiding me? Guarding me? Ready to grip me if I ran away?
I ordered a fried egg and two pancakes, urging Carm
ichael to order too as it would be Mr. Sylvan’s treat. He kept to a cup of coffee, however, and took his detestable notebook out of his coat pocket and dropped it on the table.
“I looked over every officer’s interview notes,” he said, flipping it open. “They talked to all of the guests. Nobody heard or saw anything unusual until you came down the stairs.”
“And you believe them?” I looked at him over the rim of my cup. “All?”
“Yes. Right now I’ve no reason not to.”
“But you have reason not to believe me?”
“You’re claiming to have been robbed by a ghost, Mrs. Krause.”
“No.” I extended a finger of correction. “I saw a ghost, and when I was running in fear for my life, my room was robbed.”
“A coincidence of occurrence?”
“We often taunted each other.”
“Taunted?”
“She’d scratch at my door or howl my name, and I would sometimes call to her, daring her to show her face.”
He wrote. My food arrived, and without a momentary care, I dove in and took quick, successive bites, like a farm boy brought in from the fields. Carmichael chuckled.
“Hungry?”
“I’ve not been allowed to leave my room.” It was an exaggeration but one designed to inspire pity. I learned later that it did not. “Anyway, as I said, she teases and mocks me endlessly.”
“But this is the first you’ve seen her?”
“Yes.” I shoveled a bit of pancake, remembered, and said, “No.” I took the time to chew and swallow, pondering the better or worse of my telling. But then, what could be worse? “I saw her once before in a photograph.”
“A photograph of Sallie White?”
“Of her ghost, yes. I posed for a photograph, and when the print was delivered, an apparition appeared behind me. It was her.”
“How could you tell if you’d never seen her?”
“I know. A woman knows. A woman recognizes an enemy for what she is.”
“And you think Sallie White is your enemy?”
“Not the poor woman herself, God rest her soul.” He repeated my words and made a brief sign of the cross. A good Catholic boy.
“Her ghost.”
“Yes. But you sound like you don’t believe me.”
“I’d believe you more if you showed me the photograph.” He turned a page in his notebook, preparing.
“I burned it.” I speared a mouthful of egg and took a deep breath before shoving it into my mouth.
Carmichael sighed, knowingly. “Of course you did.”
“You don’t believe me?” It had become a refrain in our conversation.
He was sitting in the chair opposite me and committed his first break in etiquette by propping his elbows on the table, doing so with enough force to make the cups jump in their saucers. I, however, remained perfectly calm. At least a dozen men have treated me with violence, and I could see in his eyes that he didn’t have a heart to hurt me. Later he asked, “A dozen?” And when I nodded yes, he took me in his arms and said he’d find and kill them all if I only gave him their names. I laughed against his sleeve because, of course, I couldn’t name them. I’d been a child.
Now, though, he stared me down and said through gritted teeth, “I don’t believe you saw a bloody ghost.”
Bloody. “You don’t believe there was a ghost? Or you don’t believe I saw a ghost?”
“Both.”
“Then what is your theory, Detective?”
“Mr. Sylvan said you are always”—he flipped through his notebook and found the page—“spotty with your payment. He says he never knows from one week to the next if he is going to get even a dollar from you.”
“That’s not true. I—”
“Says you ingratiate yourself with other guests, getting them to buy you supper or invite you to join their party. Says you spend a good bit of time with our friend Bert in the bar.”
“Bert has been a friend to me when no one else has.”
“Mr. Sylvan says you have a lot of friends.”
Oh, how I hated the way he said the word, dragging it through every bit of mud and filth I’d worked so hard to rid from my skirts.
“Mr. Sylvan hates me.”
“That doesn’t make him a liar.”
“And what makes me a liar?”
Instead of answering, he ran the pages of his notebook across his thumb before opening it to rest on the page where I’d answered his questions.
I set down my fork, finally sated.
“You want my theory?” he said. “I think you ran out of money, then chose a night when this place was packed with people and ran screaming from your room, saying you were robbed.”
“I wasn’t robbed when I went screaming from my room.” I matched the timbre of my voice to his in near-perfect mimicry. “I was robbed after I ran from my room.”
“So you say.”
“So I say.”
“How do we know you didn’t hide your money and your jewels to make it look like a robbery?”
“Did your uniformed elves or hotel staff find anything when they were putting my room to right?” I thought of the single amethyst earring I had stashed in my pocket. Had it been overlooked? Or left to taunt me?
“They did not. But then, there’s a chance such a fortune never existed at all.”
At this, I laughed aloud, taking no measures to temper my outburst into something ladylike and demure. “I wear—rather, wore—my jewels every day. Every evening. Scarcely did a day go by that I didn’t receive a comment on one of my pieces, which I admit I found odd, given that it is quite rude to speak of one’s wealth in such an open, curious manner.”
“Did you have any record of an appraisal for their value?”
This question riled me, and I felt the survival instinct of my premarriage days kicking in. “Are you suggesting my jewels were fake?”
“I’m not suggesting anything.”
“I have proof.” How rewarding it was to see him sit back in surprise. “A few weeks ago, I took some of my pieces to a—”
“Pawn shop?”
“Dealer in fine jewelry. At least, that is how he was described to me by Mr. Sylvan.” I dripped the man’s name with contempt before describing in detail the items sold, and—with disgust—the price paid. “I will go with you right now to him.”
“What day was this?”
I furrowed my brow, thinking, and he produced a little calendar from within the pages of his notebook. The card was embossed with vines and roses in the corners, with six months of the year printed on each side.
“Well,” I said, holding it first close then far away, attempting to focus on the tiny boxes, “isn’t this nice? A little something from your wife to help you remember your anniversary?” I kept my eyes trained on the calendar to give the illusion that I didn’t care how he would answer.
“I’m not married.”
“Sweetheart, then?” I zeroed in on February. “Is there a birthday somewhere on here circled with a heart?”
I heard him tapping his pen. “What’s the name of the shop, and when did you go?”
I told him and set down the calendar while he made a note. “Just give me five minutes to pop up to my room and freshen up, then—”
“You’re not going with me.”
“But he’ll remember me.”
“I don’t need him to remember you. I need to see proof of the transaction.”
“Then, here.” I took the earring out of my pocket and pressed it into his hand. “Show him this. He’ll remember. He wanted very much to buy them.”
“Them?”
“It’s an earring, silly. They come in twos.” For measure, I tapped at my empty earlobes, remembering how they had often been complimented for their dainty beauty.
“Where is the other?”
I pursed my lips. “Sallie White has it. This is all I have left.”
He considered it, rolling it across his palm with his thumb. “Then
I’ll ask if anyone has tried to pawn a single earring.” He dropped it in his pocket as if it were nothing more than a matchbook. “Wait in the lobby for me.”
“Afraid I’ll run off?”’
“Maybe. I get a feeling you’ve been a runner before.”
Back within the hour, Carmichael found me in a favorite spot, sitting next to the fireplace, the morning’s fire burned down, reading a copy of the newspaper thoughtfully left behind by a guest. The story of the robbery had not made the front page but had been given a single column in the section with other tales of petty larceny and minor violence.
“Reading about yourself, I see?” He took off his hat and asked to sit in the chair opposite, making me wish I’d opted to sit on the little sofa instead.
“Hardly.” I folded the paper and set it on the small table between us. “I see very little detail that would apply to my account.”
“Well, you can thank me for that.” He’d walked in with a cigarette and tossed the remains into the fire. “I talked to the editor and said he was going to hear a lot of crazy details but to ignore them. If we can act like this was just an ordinary small crime, our thief might get comfortable. Lazy, maybe even try to hock some of his ill-gotten goods at a shop like the lovely one I just visited.”
I leaned forward and cooed, “So you do believe me?”
“Your story about going to Paragon Treasures, I’m afraid, isn’t going to do your case any good.” He opened his notebook and proceeded to read off a list of names, looking up as he finished. “No record of you, Mrs. Krause.”
“Read them again,” I said, listening harder. “There!” I stopped him. “Mrs. Dorrit. That’s me. I didn’t actually give him my name, but I bought a copy of the novel Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. He has quite a nice collection of books. Did you notice that, Mr. Carmichael? Do you read?”
He marked the page with his finger and closed his notebook. “Why didn’t you give him your name?”
I sat back. “It’s embarrassing, I suppose. Being reduced to such circumstances. Did you show him the earring? Did he recognize it?”
“I did, and he did. So someone out there knew you had a tidy sum of cash, and valuables besides.”
The Lady in Residence Page 14
