by Kerstin Gier
“Bodyguard?” Viktor Yegorov furrowed his brow.
“Yes, your bodyguard or security guard or whatever you call him?” I looked pointedly toward Room 117.
Viktor Yegorov didn’t seem to be following me. “My wife and I are here without bodyguards or any other staff for that matter.”
“Er—are you sure?” Again I stared emphatically at the door to Room 117.
“Quite sure.” He smiled politely. “That’s what’s so wonderful about staying at Castle in the Clouds—nobody knows we’re here, so we can just be ourselves without having to worry. Officially, we’re spending Christmas on our yacht in the Caribbean.” He winked at me. “Where my wife would much rather be.”
“But…” I was confused now. If Mr. Huber from Room 117 wasn’t here with the Yegorovs, then who was he here with? And why was he carrying a gun under his coat?
Yegorov nodded in a friendly way as he passed me. “See you tomorrow.”
I just stood there in the corridor for a few seconds, deep in thought. And in the back of my mind, a new theory started to take shape.
What if Alexander Huber from Room 117 was the grand hotel kidnapper?
19
The next person I ran into was Tristan Brown—on my way downstairs, this time.
“Agent Sophie!” he exclaimed happily.
“I wish I was,” I replied. And it was true. If I’d been Agent Sophie from the FBI, I would have been able to call for backup right now. Or tell my people to run Alexander Huber’s photo through our database and compare it with the information on the kidnapping cases. Then I’d take out my handcuffs and my Baretti … Berebetta … or whatever my pistol was called and arrest the man. And then everyone at Castle in the Clouds would be able to sleep easy in their beds again.
“Is there something wrong, Sophie?” Tristan looked at me keenly. “Have you been crying?”
“No!” I wiped a finger under my eyes. “Is my mascara smudged?”
“It is now.” He grinned.
I wasn’t really in the mood for joking. “What are you doing here in the south wing anyway?” I asked. “And all alone, without your flock of admirers?”
“Jealous?” He brushed a nonexistent strand of hair back from his smooth, bronzed forehead. His eyes sparkled in amusement.
“Oh yes, dreadfully,” I said. “My life is so dull without you. And utterly meaningless.”
Tristan sighed. “Yes, those were the days, when I was still a hotel thief and you were a secret agent who kept turning up in the wrong place at the right time. We were a brilliant team, you and I. Until your friend the hotelier’s son came on the scene and ruined everything. I felt like a sleazy rich guy who goes around chasing after pretty chambermaids.”
I laughed out loud. “Believe me, I felt a lot worse—like a sleazy chambermaid who goes around throwing herself at good-looking guests.”
“But he’s still your boyfriend?” asked Tristan. I hesitated. True, Ben and I had danced a waltz on the roof terrace and had a few moments together that had felt quite intimate, but if I was being honest we hadn’t done anything that went beyond friendship. And the fact that I thought about kissing him all the time didn’t count.
The longer I hesitated, the more curiously Tristan looked at me. I decided to change the subject completely.
“Have you ever heard of the grand hotel kidnapper?” I asked.
Tristan raised one eyebrow. “Bored with hotel thieves, are you? So it’s a kidnapper now?”
“No, seriously.” We were still alone on the stairs, but I lowered my voice nevertheless. “The grand hotel kidnapper really does exist, according to … er…” No, I’d better leave the thriller writer out of this. Otherwise the whole story would seem like it belonged to the realms of fantasy. “According to people in the know. Every few years, he kidnaps a child with rich parents, and demands ransom money and valuables for their safe return.”
Tristan looked only moderately interested, so I quickly added: “And it’s quite possible, if not highly likely, that he’s in the hotel right now planning his next crime.”
Tristan’s other eyebrow shot up. “Quite possible if not highly likely?”
He both looked and sounded so skeptical that I felt myself getting annoyed. “Yes, that’s what I said,” I retorted. “There may not be much evidence yet, but a good secret agent always listens to her instincts. Even if she isn’t actually an agent at all. And my instincts tell me—”
I heard footsteps on the stairs and fell silent. It was Ben.
“Oh, great,” he said when he saw us.
Tristan let out a sigh. “Yes, great. You really do have a knack for timing, hotelier’s son.”
“Oh, there you are, Ben,” I said quickly. I was keen to stop things escalating again the way they had last time. “I was just coming downstairs to find you. Bye, Tristan, nice bumping into you.”
“Yeah, so nice,” Ben said, glaring at Tristan.
Tristan stared back, grinning pretty shamelessly. I pushed past them and made my way down the stairs.
“You mean you’re just going to leave me with that explosive information and walk away, Sophie?” Tristan called after me.
“Yes! Anyway, it’s top secret.” I didn’t turn around. They could stand up there staring at each other till the cows came home if they wanted. But after a few seconds, I heard Ben following me.
“What were you talking to him about?” he asked as he caught up with me. “I hate the way he says your name, by the way. As if he was the only one who knows it. What explosive information does he mean?”
“You heard—it’s top secret,” I said. “Anyway, where shall we go? Straight to the kitchen? What’s the soup of the day today? I hope it’s minestrone—the last one was amazing, even if Pierre says they only make it to use up all the vegetables they need to get rid of, plus if I don’t eat something soon I think I might actually die. I keep seeing all these weird spots in front of my eyes. Sorry I’m so late, by the way. I fell asleep. You were right; I really needed an evening off. Obviously, I’d rather have had a hot shower than a cold one, but it is supposed to be good for the circulation, and—”
“What do I have to do to get you to stop talking?” Ben broke in.
If there was ever a perfect opportunity to say “Kiss me!” this was it. We’d reached the ground floor by this time and were walking across the dimly lit ballroom, which wasn’t a bad place for a first kiss, I was sure Delia would agree. But before I could open my mouth, I saw Mr. Huber—aka the grand hotel kidnapper—walking toward us.
It took all my self-control not to squeal out loud and to carry on walking normally even though my knees had suddenly turned to jelly. My face froze, which unfortunately meant I couldn’t assume a nonchalant expression.
But Mr. Huber wasn’t looking at me; he was brushing snow off the shoulders of his coat as he crossed the room.
“Good evening,” said Ben politely, and Mr. Huber nodded to him.
I waited until we were through the double glass doors that separated the ballroom from the lobby. “That was him,” I gasped, which sadly took the evening in a very different direction from “Kiss me!”
“Who?” Ben bent to pick up a coat hanger that had fallen on the floor and hung it back on the rail again. He brushed my arm as he did so. The cloakroom by the entrance to the ballroom was housed in a little velvet-lined alcove set into the wall. All it contained, apart from a clothes rail with forty empty coat hangers (they were counted regularly) was a painting of a young lady with her hair piled ostentatiously on her head and a smug, reproachful look on her face. I called her “the frustrated cloakroom attendant” because the coat hangers were always empty—though Fräulein Müller still wiped the velvet down with a damp cloth and dusted the picture frame every week. Perhaps the cloakroom would finally come into its own on the night of the ball. I was glad the young lady in the painting was going to get a bit of excitement at last. Especially since I, like an idiot, decided to answer Ben’s question and thus r
obbed her of the opportunity to become a wonderful backdrop for a first kiss.
“The grand hotel kidnapper,” I replied. Ben clearly thought I’d lost the plot and treated me for the rest of the evening like someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Without a word, he led me to the basement, presented me with a huge bowl of soup (cream of leek, unfortunately) and said, “I’m not speaking to you until you’ve eaten at least a thousand calories.”
That wasn’t hard. We were the only ones eating at this hour, but the buffet in the staff dining room was still well stocked for anyone who didn’t finish work until later or was working the night shift. (The kitchen would even deliver meals to people’s rooms in the middle of the night if necessary.) As well as the soup, there was freshly baked bread and little mushroom pies, and at that moment one of Pierre’s colleagues walked in with a platter of sliced roast veal.
As if a spell had been broken, I wolfed down the soup followed by two slices of bread and roast veal, a pie, and—just to make sure I met Ben’s minimum calorie requirement—a piece of apple tart. Then I leaned back and looked at him defiantly. “And now?”
He hadn’t been watching me eat this whole time, of course—he’d devoured a generous helping of food, too, even if he wasn’t quite as ravenous as I was.
“Now we wait for your blood-sugar levels to return to normal,” he said. “And for you to banish this obsession with the kidnapper to where it belongs: fantasyland.” He slid a plate of cream puffs toward me. “I saw Don with his parents in the restaurant just now, and he was absolutely fine. He even stuck his tongue out at me. Don’t you think he’d have told his parents if someone had kidnapped him and drugged him?”
“Not necessarily.” I twirled a cream puff between my fingers. “My friend Delia’s cousin’s friend’s friend had her gin and tonic spiked in a club, and when she woke up she couldn’t even remember having been there.”
“So the kidnapper put a drug in Don’s and Dasha’s gin and tonics, but when they fell asleep he forgot to kidnap them,” said Ben drily, and I couldn’t help grinning.
“Okay,” I conceded. “Perhaps it is all a load of nonsense. But wouldn’t it be silly not to even consider the possibility that the grand hotel kidnapper is here in the hotel?”
“Especially when you know it’s Mr. Huber from Room 117?”
“There’s no need to give me that sarcastic look.”
“It’s not sarcasm; it’s despair,” said Ben.
“But listen. Mr. Huber”—I made the quote unquote gesture as I said it—“doesn’t actually work for the Yegorovs at all. They didn’t bring a bodyguard! And don’t you think it’s a bit suspicious that a man traveling alone, with a gun hidden under his jacket, happens to be staying in the room next door to the Panorama Suite? Where the richest people in this hotel and probably the whole world are staying with their little daughter? Don’t tell me he’s just a hopeless romantic who wants to dance at the New Year’s Ball.”
“A gun hidden under his jacket?”
“Yes, just ask Monsieur Rocher. I bet you’ll believe him.”
Ben said nothing for a while, and I took a bite out of my cream puff in sheer agitation. “All right then,” he said at last. “We should probably keep a closer eye on this Mr. Huber. Monsieur Rocher ought to have said something about the gun.”
“So you believe me now?”
He shook his head. “I googled the grand hotel kidnapper just now, just for fun. And yes, there have been various kidnappings from hotels over the past thirty years, but there’s no proof it was the same guy every time, like that writer claimed. The press reports all say completely different things, and I didn’t find anything about a Van Gogh being demanded as a ransom. So no, I don’t believe the writer’s story, and I definitely don’t believe this mysterious kidnapper is staying here in the hotel.”
“So who is Mr. Huber, then? A hit man working for the Russian government? Stella Yegorov’s secret lover? A private detective who—oomph.” Ben had stuffed a cream puff into my mouth.
“Please can we talk about something else, Sophie? I really liked you before you started coming out with all these conspiracy theories.”
I glared at him, insulted. How dare he lump me in with the kind of people who thought that humanity had been infiltrated by a race of reptiles or that the government was secretly spraying us all with mind-altering drugs.
“I don’t even want to kiss you anymore,” I said crossly. But I’d forgotten I still had the cream puff in my mouth, so it sounded more like: “Ibomemumwomishooumoor,” which Ben must have taken to be a secret language spoken among conspiracy theorists. But what was even worse was that I spat a sizable chunk of cream puff onto Ben’s shoulder as I spoke, and I could have sworn it made a little splat sound as it landed on his jacket.
I wished the ground could have opened up and swallowed me.
Luckily for me, at that moment a crowd of people came streaming out of the kitchen into the room where we were sitting (once the last dessert had been served upstairs in the restaurant, the chefs at least were allowed to knock off for the night), and I seized the opportunity to make a strategic, if rather cowardly, getaway. Before Ben could say a word, I was through the door and halfway back to my bedroom.
Well, what an end to the evening—the first evening I’d had off in ages. Instead of kissing Ben, I’d spat cream puff on him and run away. Now he was going to think I was not only a conspiracy theorist but disgusting, too.
I’d never be able to walk past the frustrated cloakroom attendant again without wishing I’d kept my theories to myself.
“I’m afraid Cinderella and Prince Charming may have missed the boat,” I texted Delia once I’d double-locked my door and thrown myself down on the bed. I didn’t even bother turning the light on. “I think he’s gone off me.”
Delia replied at once. “What a stupid prince. Sounds like he needs a kick up the butt.”
“I spat on him,” I wrote, and Delia sent back three thumbs-up emojis.
And then I cried a little bit and listened and waited in case Ben came and knocked on my door after all. But he didn’t come.
20
All the next day the weather was as foul as my mood. It was barely snowing now—the wind had dropped and it felt slightly warmer—but the hotel was shrouded in thick fog. It was like being surrounded by an obnoxious cloud that was just waiting for its chance to seep in through the revolving doors and rob you of your last memories of any sort of color (like lush-grass green or bright-sky blue).
When Nico, the bellhop, went out to walk Mara Matthäus’s dogs and didn’t come back, everyone thought he must have strayed too close to the edge of the ravine in the fog. If Old Stucky was to be believed, the ghosts and demons that haunted the mountainside liked luring unsuspecting people off the beaten path; it was a specialty of theirs. Luckily, however, Nico soon turned up. Old Stucky heard the dogs barking on his way to the stables and found the poor bellhop was standing there in the snow, completely disoriented. Nico was convinced he’d wandered miles from the hotel and was going to freeze to death alone in the wilderness, when in fact he’d simply gone around in a big circle and was leaning, without realizing it, against the bank of snow that covered the WELCOME TO A CASTLE IN THE CLOUDS sign.
Naturally, we weren’t interested in venturing outside with the children in weather like this, despite Gracie’s suggestion that we tie cowbells around everyone’s necks. After yesterday, Carolyn and I were not taking any chances. We watched the children like hawks (particularly Don and Dasha). They weren’t even allowed to go to the bathroom unsupervised.
This made it even harder than usual to keep them all entertained, but we managed. According to my colleagues, the adults were actually harder work than the children. Monsieur Rocher, who provided the guests with a constant supply of headache pills, sachets of herbal tea, vitamin C capsules, and helpful suggestions, assured everyone that the weather would improve very soon. For New Year’s Eve, he even promis
ed clear skies and a view of the fireworks display in the valley below. There weren’t usually any fireworks at Castle in the Clouds, but the guests did light sky lanterns (which were biodegradable and made of bamboo and paper, with no wires; my mum would have approved).
But not even the prospect of good weather could cheer the guests up. They had cabin fever from being stuck indoors for so long and were all feeling exceedingly irritable. And they were trying to compensate for their low spirits with special requests. Gretchen’s father had forgotten his wedding anniversary, and that morning he’d ordered a bouquet of twenty-one roses for immediate delivery. Don’s mother kept asking the staff to make the jackdaws caw more quietly because she had a headache. And the thriller writer sent down to the kitchen for a raw suckling pig, which he said he needed for his lecture, for demonstration purposes. And that was just three examples.
Although none of them deserved it, all of their demands were met (as much as possible, anyway): Gretchen’s father got his red roses—not immediately, but after two hours, during which he asked no less than seventeen times whether they’d been delivered yet; the Hugos flew off to the other side of the hotel and stayed there; and somehow, while the head chef’s back was turned, we managed to fob the thriller writer off with a cooked chicken, which he grudgingly accepted. Though, as he pointed out, a cooked chicken wasn’t going to bleed at all when he used it to demonstrate the methods of the serial killer in his book The Hashtag Slasher.
The lecture took place that evening in the music room and, unlike the politician’s reading, was very well attended—so well that we had a relatively quiet night down in the spa and Mr. Heffelfinger let me leave early, at half past nine.
Until this point, I’d managed not to run into Ben. I’d given the lobby a wide berth and tried to avoid all the places I usually met him. He wasn’t on shift at the moment, so I could venture into the lobby if I wanted and say good night to Monsieur Rocher. On the other hand, perhaps it was better to be safe rather than sorry and go up in the elevator—Ben never took the elevator. I’d spent the whole day thinking about our encounter the night before, and the more I thought about it the worse it seemed. I’d barely known Ben a week. For him, it was probably just a bit of fun, flirting with the intern or with one of the chambermaids during his holidays. And showing her the roof terrace. Anyway, what kind of boy—if he was genuinely interested in a girl—used a cream puff to shut her up? Like I said, there were plenty of other more enjoyable ways of doing that.
