A Castle in the Clouds

by Kerstin Gier

  “Old Stucky has always been an excellent worker,” said Gilbert. “The hotel is his home, he doesn’t have any other, and it would be cruel to send him away just because he’s old. And he still looks after the horses very diligently and makes himself usef—”

  “That’s just your problem,” Gordon hissed. “You’re incapable of thinking about the bottom line—you’re far too sentimental. Use your common sense! Burkhardt’s offer is our only option. We’ll get out of this mess with all our debts cleared and a bit left over for us to make a fresh start.”

  “But the man is an unscrupulous crook! He’ll destroy everything our great-grandparents built. And he’s a philistine. Have you even looked properly at his plans?”

  “I like them. I like clear lines and modern decor. This ornate kitsch is way past its sell-by date.”

  “A hundred rooms instead of thirty-five? The music room split up into three separate bedrooms? Jascha Heifetz and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf gave concerts in that room!”

  “That was before we were born!” I could almost hear Gordon shrug.

  “But we were there when Roald Dahl gave a reading in our library! The same library Burkhardt wants to turn into a golf shop. How can you be so blasé about it? When I hear him talking about parking lots, cable cars, chairlifts, and apartment buildings, it sends a shiver down my spine.”

  I, too, felt a shiver run down my spine. I’d thought before that the hotel couldn’t possibly be making much of a profit—it’d had so few guests during the months I’d been here—but I was shocked to realize how bad the situation actually was. No wonder Don Burkhardt Jr. went around acting as though the hotel belonged to him, if his father was planning to buy it and turn it into goodness knows what.

  “Burkhardt is a hard-nosed businessman,” said Gordon. “We should be glad he sees some potential in this godforsaken corner of the earth. Our great-grandparents are dead, and so are our grandparents and our parents who lumbered us with this responsibility without asking us whether we wanted it. Personally, I’m done. If you keep standing in the way of this deal, I’ll just sell my share to Burkhardt and you’ll have to see how you get on with your half of the business once I’m gone.”

  “You can’t do that,” Gilbert pleaded.

  “You bet I can,” Gordon retorted. “Go ahead and sue me, if you can afford a lawyer.”

  There was silence for a few moments. Inside the cupboard, I held my breath.

  “Of course, I’d prefer it if we brothers could work together,” said Gordon at last, in a surprisingly soft voice. “Let’s end this with dignity, Gilbert, before it’s too late.”

  “What’s dignified about selling our souls to Burkhardt for a suitcase full of dirty money?” said Gilbert bitterly. “And what about your son? Have you even thought about him?”

  “I’m thinking about him more than anyone!” Gordon protested. “He’ll be free, unlike us! Free to choose a job he actually enjoys, free to live wherever he wants—without this millstone around his neck, without debts, without responsibility. He won’t understand it yet, but I’m doing the boy a huge favor.”

  They both fell silent again for a few moments.

  “But he loves this place,” Gilbert whispered then. “Just like I do.”

  Gordon groaned. “Sentimental nonsense. Nothing but sentimental nonsense. There’s more to the world than this godforsaken mountain, you know. What have you got against change and progress?”

  It sounded as though he was walking away as he spoke—I heard a door opening, and then his footsteps on the stairs.

  “Wait!” Gilbert sighed as he followed him. “We could cut a few more costs. It would break my heart, but Madame Cléo, for example, is a luxury we could manage without. And what about Mr. Odermatt from the bank? Wasn’t he going to go over all the numbers one more time?”

  I couldn’t hear Gordon’s answer. I stood stock-still in the cupboard for a few more minutes after their voices and footsteps had died away. Only now did I realize how hard my heart was beating. And I started to get the feeling I was running out of air.

  Very carefully, I pushed the cupboard door open and emerged from my hiding place. Too late, I realized there was someone standing right in front of it.

  Someone who looked just as surprised to see me as I was him. Except that he recovered much more quickly.

  “Well I never,” he said in English. “A chambermaid in a cupboard.”

  7

  The person standing in front of me was a complete stranger. He was young, very slim, athletically built, slightly tanned, with short black hair combed back from his forehead. He looked to be of Asian heritage, and his eyes were so dark that in this light I couldn’t tell where the pupil ended and the iris began.

  He had by far the most attractive face of any boy or man I’d ever seen (he was probably somewhere in between a boy and a man), and that was including all the actors in all the TV shows and movies I’d ever watched.

  His full lips curved into a mocking smile as he looked at the cupboard. “Were you alone in there?”

  “That’s none of your business.” I was glad to find that my voice was still working and that I was even able to find the right words in English. Attack was the best form of defense, after all. “Only hotel staff are allowed in this room. So I hope for your sake that you work here.”

  He smiled more broadly, revealing his perfect, bright white teeth. He probably found the idea of someone as good looking as him working as a waiter highly amusing. “Or else what?”

  “Or else you’d be trespassing,” I said sternly. “And I’d have to report you. I didn’t hear you come in.” Probably because I’d been in the cupboard straining my ears to catch all of the Montfort brothers’ conversation.

  The stranger was wearing black jeans and a dark sweater. And his posture was incredible—straight-backed, graceful, and languid all at the same time. He couldn’t be the British actor we were expecting: he, according to Monsieur Rocher, was over sixty. Perhaps this boy was a ballet dancer. Or a prince.

  “Well?” I asked, crossing my arms.

  The boy started laughing. “No, I don’t work here. Perhaps I’m a hotel thief, casing the joint?”

  Sure. And the Forbidden Cat was a unicorn.

  “Well if that’s the case, then you definitely shouldn’t be in here.”

  He bit back a laugh in a rather endearing way. “Okay then. Let’s rewind. There’s no sign on that door saying it’s off-limits. I thought it might be a shortcut.”

  “But there’s a room number on it, so you couldn’t have known there’d be a way through.” I pushed past him to the door and opened it. “See?” Perhaps he’d seen the Montfort brothers going in without using a room key and been curious about where the door led to. That was understandable.

  He came over and stood beside me, so close that I could detect the faint scent of freshly washed cotton and something lemony. It made me remember that I’d had fish for breakfast and hadn’t brushed my teeth yet. I pressed my lips together.

  “Yes, at first sight it looks like an ordinary door to a room,” he said. “But this thing here puzzled me.” He pointed to the small, luminous green emergency exit sign above the light switch, showing a little man running and an arrow pointing unmistakably in the direction of the back stairs.

  I’d never noticed it before.

  “Hmm,” I said. “But it’s only to be used in the event of a fire. And I don’t see anything burning around here, do you?”

  Now he was looking me directly in the eye, and I could see that his irises were not jet black but dark brown. “I’m not sure,” he said quietly. “And I like to be prepared. Just in case.” Then he took a step back. “I’m Tristan Brown. I’m spending the holidays here with my grandfather, Professor Arthur Brown. We arrived last night in the middle of the snowstorm.”

  “Brown, Room 211,” I murmured, mentally running through Monsieur Rocher’s list of guests. No special requests for Room 211, no horse-drawn sleigh rides, no spa treatments,
no skiing lessons, no allergies or intolerances, no dog, no VIP note made by Gordon Montfort; nothing that could tell me anything more about this guest. Room 211 was right at the other end of this floor, next to the room where the Barnbrooke boys were staying and opposite the couple with the baby.

  And he was trying to tell me he’d thought this was a shortcut. Nice try! To get here from Room 211, Tristan—I liked the name, it suited him, somehow—would have passed both the main staircase and the elevators. He could easily have taken either of those. What sort of guest went wandering around the hotel at this time in the morning opening random doors, emergency exit sign or no emergency exit sign?

  “Do you have a name?” he inquired. “And are you really a chambermaid?”

  “No, I just put this uniform on as a disguise.”

  Of course, it was completely inappropriate for an intern to speak to a guest like this. Fräulein Müller had already had to reprimand me for smiling too familiarly at the guests. In her opinion, the staff were part of the movable fixtures of the hotel and should neither display any emotion nor elicit any. Guests shouldn’t have to be reminded of the fact that the staff were human beings or even feel obliged to smile back.

  “You should be discreet, polite, and stay in the background at all times. You don’t see sofas grinning at people, now do you?” she’d asked. My smile had quickly been wiped off my face.

  If she could hear me now, she’d probably have chased me all the way back to my hometown with her feather duster made of Egyptian ostrich feathers. (She swore by them.)

  I’d better think about getting out of here ASAP.

  “Are you going to tell me what was in that cupboard that was so important?” asked Tristan from Room 211.

  I didn’t answer him, but pulled the door shut behind us and looked quickly along the deserted corridor. The bag with that day’s newspaper, which Burkhardt Sr. had ordered, was still hanging on the door handle of the Large Tower Suite, which meant that a) the newspaper man had managed to get his car up the mountain last night despite the chaos caused by the snow, and b) Don Jr.’s father might open his door and reach for his newspaper at any moment.

  Another reason to make myself scarce.

  Tristan Brown did not give up, however. He followed me doggedly down the corridor. “Have you lost the power of speech?” he asked.

  Ha! He’d like that, wouldn’t he? “If you really want to know, I was in the cupboard on the phone with my boss. I’m actually an undercover FBI agent, Special Division for Overseas Hotel Crimes. But that’s top secret, obviously.”

  Tristan kept pace with me. “I see,” he said, laughing. “But you could still tell me your name. I’d even be happy with your code name.”

  “Shh. The other guests are still asleep.” I sped up a little. “Why aren’t you?”

  “Jet lag. I flew in from New York yesterday. Manon? Lilou? Lola? You look French.”

  From New York. Wow. “But you sound British,” I said.

  We’d reached the main staircase. To get to the staff quarters in the south wing, you had to turn left, while Tristan’s room was straight ahead at the end of the corridor opposite us. I stopped by the alcove that housed an oil painting of a lady in a pearl necklace. She was so lifelike that at first glance you might easily have mistaken her for a real person, standing there behind the embroidered red velvet curtains with her elaborate hairstyle and her plunging evening gown. One of her elegant hands rested on the back of a chair, and in the other she was holding a pair of opera glasses. I felt her glaring at me reproachfully. And with good reason!

  “I am British,” Tristan explained. “I was in New York on business.”

  “On business?” I echoed sardonically, violating all the rules of Fräulein Müller’s code of conduct. This conversation with Tristan was like a game of ping-pong; I couldn’t help returning the ball. “You can’t be more than nineteen.”

  “We hotel thieves start young.” Tristan laughed. “Back to the French. Are you?”

  “No,” I said, annoyed by the note of regret in my voice. Okay, this guy was incredibly cute. And he smelled nice. And he was fun to talk to. But that was all. No reason for me to start acting so weird.

  At least I wasn’t the only one of us acting weird.

  “Someone’s coming up the stairs,” whispered Tristan, and before I could look around to see who it was, he’d pulled me into the alcove with the stern pearl-necklace lady and closed one of the velvet curtains behind us. I clearly wasn’t the only one with bizarre reflexes.

  The single curtain didn’t hide us completely, so I hurriedly closed the other one and we both peered out through the gap toward the staircase.

  There was a man in a suit coming up the stairs, as light-footed as he was purposeful, and I recognized him straight away as he walked past our alcove and carried on up to the third floor. It was the unremarkable-looking man from Room 117, the one Monsieur Rocher thought must be the Smirnovs’ bodyguard. What was he doing heading up to the third floor? The Panorama Suite was in the south wing, on the first floor. The main staircase and the elevators ended on the third floor, where Rooms 301 to 305 were located, along with the game room, the men’s staff quarters (off-limits to guests), and access to the two other top floors. We heard a door close softly upstairs. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was the door to the staff quarters. That was definitely a little odd.

  I turned to Tristan—he was standing so close to me that he made me jump. A tiny sliver of light filtered through the closed curtains into our hiding place. “Could you please tell me why exactly we’re hiding in here?” I said in a low voice.

  “Why? Because it’s fun.” He grinned and reached past me to open the curtains again. “After all, you’re an undercover FBI agent and I’m a hotel thief; we do this sort of thing all the time. Who was that guy?”

  He’d checked in as Alexander Huber, but that might not be the name his gun was registered under. If it was registered. And what on earth was he doing in the staff quarters? Was that one of the security checks bodyguards had to carry out—investigating the hotel staff?

  And why was Tristan’s face so close to mine?

  “I like your freckles,” he said.

  Under his steady gaze, I remembered I still hadn’t brushed my teeth. I turned away and stepped out of the alcove. “Sorry, I’m not allowed to talk about ongoing investigations. And I really have to go now or … er … I’ll blow my cover.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Tristan, completely serious all of a sudden. That suited him pretty well, too. I stared at him, trying to tear myself away.

  Then a door opened at the end of the corridor and before I knew it I was back in the alcove beside Tristan, pulling the curtain closed behind us again.

  He laughed softly. “Good reflexes, Agent … What was your name again?”

  “Shh,” I whispered. Damn it! Was I going to spend the rest of my life jumping into alcoves and hiding whenever I heard a noise? What was wrong with me?

  “If the water’s anything less than seventy-five degrees, I’m going nowhere near that pool!” I recognized the voice at once; it was Ella Barnbrooke, the girl who’d been complaining yesterday about having to stay in the Theremin Suite.

  “It’s real glacier water, and the colder it is the more calories you burn when you swim,” replied another voice, which I identified as that of her cousin Gretchen. The pair of them came quickly toward us, making no effort to keep their voices down. “Possibly even enough to eat one of those divine croissants they have here. Oh my God, why can I not stop thinking about food? I’ve thought about nothing else for hours.”

  “It’s this stupid jet lag,” said Ella. “When you go to bed at five in the afternoon, it’s no wonder you feel wide awake again in the middle of the night.” They walked straight past our alcove, and I held my breath for a moment.

  “I think I’m going to sneeze,” Tristan whispered.

  I stared at him in horror. But it seemed he was only joking. I saw the flash of his teeth i
n the half darkness.

  Outside, Ella went on, “And you weren’t only thinking about food—you were thinking about Ben, too. Admit it!”

  Gretchen giggled. Like Ella, she was wearing her white hotel bathrobe and matching terry-cloth slippers, and she had her long blond hair tied up in a ponytail. “Man, he’s cute. And I was afraid this vacation was going to be boring!”

  They stopped in front of one of the elevators.

  “You get first dibs on Ben, then, do you, cuz?” Ella put her hands on her hips. “And what about me? Do I not get a chance?”

  Gretchen giggled again. Or rather, she carried on giggling—she’d never actually stopped. “You can try your luck with him if you want; I don’t mind. That just makes it more exciting.”

  The elevator made a soft ping sound and the grille rattled open. “Okay then—may the best woman win,” said Ella as they stepped into the elevator. “The main thing is not to let Amy get her hands on him.”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” said Gretchen. “No man in the world would look twice at Amy when he had the option of Gretchen or Ella.”

  At that moment, Tristan actually did sneeze. Quite loudly, I thought. I glared at him, but Gretchen and Ella obviously hadn’t heard anything. Still, it felt like an eternity before the elevator doors slid shut.

  I quickly pulled the curtain aside and stepped out of the alcove.

  “You did that on purpose,” I said reproachfully.

  “Sorry.” Tristan smiled contritely. “Nearly blew your undercover mission there, didn’t I? So what are these American cheerleader types up to, then? No, don’t tell me. I want to guess. Cinderella’s wicked sisters are at the head of an international drug cartel, right? They’re on their way down to the swimming pool to meet with an Italian mafia boss. Shouldn’t you go after them, quick, and arrest them?”

  I sighed. Suddenly all this didn’t seem so funny anymore, just a bit silly. My “mental moment” was over. “I have to go,” I said.