The Bone Key

by Sarah Monette

  “I can’t. I haven’t any money, and she wouldn’t let me. And no one will marry me. You won’t marry me, will you?” She looked up at me then, her eyes huge and dark in her pinched face.

  “I . . . I . . . Miss Hunter, I’m really not—”

  “ ‘Not the marrying kind,’ I know. No man I meet ever is. It’s because I haven’t any money.”

  “I wouldn’t care about that, but I couldn’t . . . I just couldn’t . . . ”

  “Of course not,” she said bitterly. Behind her, I saw something move—the shards of terra cotta from the potted plants, starting to jerk and twist.

  “Miss Hunter—”

  “Nobody loves me!” she screamed at me, shoving me suddenly backwards. “Nobody ever will! And it’s all Aunt Erda’s fault! Damn her! Damn her! Damn her!” With each “damn,” the pot shards leapt higher and higher, starting to spin around her, to form a miniature cyclone here in the middle of the desolated conservatory.

  “Rosemary, stop it!” I shouted back at her, still too wrapped in dreams and moonlight to think of running.

  She recoiled as if I had slapped her. The pot shards crashed to the floor again. We stood, staring at each other, both of us panting for breath. I did not know how to help her; I was not the hero for whom she waited, the man whose touch could dissolve the wall around her and set her free.

  That was when I heard a noise, a noise I think I had been dreading, subconsciously, for days.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Booth,” Miss Hunter said stiffly. “I’ve—”

  “Hush! Do you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That’s the elevator.”

  I glanced at her; her eyes were as big as bell wheels. “Aunt Erda!”

  And just then, the noise of the elevator stopped.

  “Oh God I think it’s stuck,” I said, and then we were both pelting down the corridor. Miss Hunter had somehow picked up on my urgency, for she asked no questions, merely ran after me until we came to the elevator doors. They were closed. Looking up at the sundial-style pointer, I saw that it had come to rest, with a kind of smug stolidity, between “2” and “1.”

  “What’s she doing in the elevator?” I hissed at Miss Hunter.

  “She must have been coming to look for me. She won’t use the stairs on her own.”

  How like her, I thought savagely. “Go, run and wake . . . ” I nearly said Collie Ricks, but he had left the employ of the hotel almost twenty years ago. “Go get Mr. Marten. Hurry!”

  Miss Hunter shifted her weight, but her look was puzzled. “It’s only a stuck elevator, Mr. Booth.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said, looking for a way to get the doors open. “Go!”

  I glanced at her; even by the dim night-lighting of the hall, I could see the doubt in her eyes, the pull between her rational mind and whatever she had felt about the elevator on her own account. I had kept a nervous tally of the hotel guests who would use the elevator and those who would not, and I knew that Miss Hunter was among the Nots.

  “This is no time to be reasonable,” I said. “Please.”

  She went.

  By the time she came back, I had managed to pry the doors open. Although even the shaft made the back of my neck prickle, I leaned in and shouted up, “Mrs. Terpenning?”

  “Who’s that?” a voice demanded from the elevator. She sounded irate; I hoped that was a good sign.

  “It’s just me, Mrs. Terpenning . . . er, Mr. Booth. Your niece has gone to get Mr. Marten, and we should . . . we should have you out of there in no time.” It was the sort of comforting thing Blaine would have said; he would have brought more conviction to it, too.

  “What was she doing? What was she doing running around the hotel this time of night? And why were you with her?”

  I knew I had to lie before I opened my mouth. “I think . . . we were both woken by a noise. I met her in the conservatory. The poltergeist has been busy again.”

  “Fool girl,” Mrs. Terpenning muttered. I could not tell if I had been supposed to hear her or not.

  The shaft was too dark, and I was too aware of the weight of the elevator over my head. I backed away again and found Miss Hunter beside me.

  “Thank you,” she whispered; then, more loudly, “Mr. Marten is fetching Parris. They’ll be here in a minute.” She leaned gingerly into the shaft. “Are you all right, Auntie?”

  “No, of course not. What do you think you’re doing, running around the hotel like a hoyden?”

  Miss Hunter followed my lie. “I heard a noise, Auntie.”

  “And have you been hired by Pinkerton’s, that you have to go snooping about?”

  “No, Auntie.”

  Mr. Marten came trotting up, wearing an astounding peacock dressing gown. Parris was with him, in plain striped pajamas as sturdy and sensible as his person. Parris made his arcane investigations while Mr. Marten shouted reassurances up at Mrs. Terpenning—who shouted imprecations back down at him. We were joined by Carrie and Doris, in matching quilted bathrobes, and by Mr. Ormont, so there was a cloud of witnesses collected to hear Parris say, “It’s the same old trouble, Mr. Marten. I’ll go up to the attic.”

  “The same old trouble?” I said.

  Mr. Marten shrugged crossly, like a wet cat. “The elevator has never been very reliable. Parris knows what to do.”

  A cricket-thin voice said at my elbow, “He’s almost as good as Collie was.”

  I glanced down. It was Carrie, her long moonlight braids hanging over her shoulders like a schoolgirl’s. Her black shoe-button eyes twinkled at me. “I saw you’d guessed,” she said, her voice so low that no one but I could hear her. “But it’s very unkind of you to be frightened of us, Mr. Booth. Doris and me, we wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “I . . . I’m glad to hear it,” I said; she patted my arm and moved back to Doris’s side. I wondered if I believed her.

  We were silent for a time, fifteen or twenty minutes. Mr. Marten made only one, feeble attempt to convince everyone to go back to bed; after that, he stood like the rest of us, uneasy, unspeaking.

  Mrs. Terpenning’s voice said sharply, echoing out of the shaft, “What was that?”

  “What was what, Auntie?” Miss Hunter had gotten her mask back in place; no one would have guessed, seeing and hearing her, that it was her fury that lay at the root of all the destruction.

  “That noise. What was it?”

  “Probably just Parris up in the attic,” Mr. Marten said.

  But he was wrong. I knew it; Carrie and Doris knew it. Miss Hunter looked back at me, and I could see the same knowledge in her eyes. Even Mr. Ormont looked uneasy, and it was he who asked, “How long does it generally take?”

  “Parris is very good. Half an hour or so.”

  “Hour and a half,” said a creaky little whisper, but I could not tell if it was Doris or Carrie who spoke. Mr. Marten pretended not to hear.

  “There it is again!” cried Mrs. Terpenning. None of us in the hallway could hear anything.

  We waited in silence; it occurred to me how strange we would look to a late-arriving guest, all of us clumped anxiously around the gaping mouth of the elevator, like querents waiting for an oracle’s response.

  Fifty minutes after Parris had made his way up to the attic, Mrs. Terpenning cried, “Mr. Marten, are there rats in this hotel?”

  “Good heavens, no!” Mr. Marten shouted up the shaft.

  “I hear them! I hear them in the walls!”

  “Mrs. Terpenning, that’s just Parris working on the machinery. I assure you, there are no rats.”

  “I would never have come here if I’d known there were rats.”

  “Dear lady, there are no rats.”

  “Rosemary, we’re leaving tomorrow. I will not stay in an unclean establishment.”

  “Yes, Auntie,” Miss Hunter said reflexively. As Mr. Marten began shouting protestations up the shaft, she moved back to stand by me. “It isn’t rats, is it?”

  “It . . . I suppose it might be.�
��

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “ . . . No. No, I don’t.”

  Mr. Ormont joined us. “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, perfectly truthfully. “But Carrie and Doris told me . . . told me stories about this elevator. I don’t think it’s rats.”

  We fell silent again. Mr. Marten and Mrs. Terpenning argued themselves to a standstill. Fifty minutes became an hour, became an hour and ten minutes.

  Mrs. Terpenning screamed. As Carrie had said of Mary Anne Dennys, no one would scream like that who did not mean it. “Things in the walls! I can see them! There are things in the walls! No! No!” We could hear banging noises, as if she was throwing herself against the sides of the elevator. She was still screaming, though I could no longer make out any words.

  All of us had drawn away from the shaft, so that we were standing in a huddle, like sheep in the rain, against the far wall. Miss Hunter’s hands were pressed against her face; even Carrie and Doris had the wide-eyed, solemn look of children who hear their parents fighting.

  After five minutes, the screaming stopped. Miss Hunter’s breath hitched in, like a sob. Ten minutes after that, the elevator whirred back into life, and the cage descended to the ground floor.

  Parris was there almost as soon as the elevator was, his face white under the smears of oil and grease. It was he who opened the inner gate; none of the rest of us seemed to be able to move. Erda Terpenning fell forward into his arms; even before Parris checked her pulse, I knew that she was dead.

  Somewhere around dawn, sitting in the Brocade Room with Carrie and Doris and Mr. Ormont, I fell into a thin, miserable doze, my phobia about sleeping in public broken at last.

  Blaine said, “You are a coward, Booth. You always have been.”

  The dream was of my hotel room, with its white walls and functional furniture. Blaine was standing just inside the door, where Molly Sefton had been standing the first time I had been strong enough to ask her name.

  I was lying on the bed, as weak and comfortless as if I were in the depths of the fever again. “Blaine,” I said.

  “There’s evil here in this hotel,” Blaine said. “You know it, and you won’t do anything about it.”

  “What can I do?” I said, twisting and thrashing futilely in search of a more comfortable position. “I have no proof of anything.”

  “You could help Rosemary Hunter,” Blaine said.

  “No!” It was almost a shriek, though I did not feel as if I had the strength for anything more than a whisper.

  “I didn’t say ‘marry her,’ twit. I said, ‘help her.’ What’s the wall of clouds, Booth?”

  “It’s what imprisons the maiden,” I said, as I had said the last time he had asked me that question.

  “Who’s the maiden, Booth?”

  I woke up then, my heart hammering in my ears, to find myself slumped sideways in the armchair, alone in the Brocade Room. Someone had put an afghan over me. I stayed there, staring into the fire, pleating the afghan nervously between my fingers, and wondering: who was imprisoned by the wall of clouds?

  Rosemary Hunter?

  Or me?

  It was that dream which prompted me to seek her out before I left. I had had an unpleasant and inconclusive interview with Mr. Marten beforehand, trying to tell him what I had found in my researches. He had not wanted to believe me; in fact, I was fairly sure he had not believed me. He and Major Berinford and Mrs. Whittaker were busy papering over Mrs. Terpenning’s death with rationality and logic. Dr. Bollivar had signed the death certificate: heart failure.

  Mr. Ormont knew better; he was already gone, and I thought that he would not be returning to the Hotel Chrysalis for a fourth time. I myself wished to leave and never see this place again, but I had to talk to Miss Hunter first.

  I found her by the lily pond, sitting on her favorite bench and staring at the water. She looked up at my approach and smiled; it was a wan but valiant effort.

  “May I . . . may I sit with you, Miss Hunter?”

  After the first start, she hid her surprise well. “Of course, Mr. Booth.” She moved over, and I sat down.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “About your aunt.”

  “I wanted her dead. I did. You know that. But not like that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Mr. Marten is very apologetic, but . . . you know, he says it was claustrophobia and a weak heart. He won’t admit there’s anything wrong. With the elevator, I mean.”

  “ . . . No, he wouldn’t. He can’t.”

  “He’s offered to let me stay here as long as I like, on the house. But I’m going to leave as soon as—as soon as things are settled.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. She left me all her money, so I suppose I can do anything I want.”

  She sounded dreadfully forlorn about it, and I said, more forcefully than I had meant to, “Then do.”

  “Do what?”

  “Do anything you want. Don’t wait for someone to do it for you.”

  “Mr. Booth—”

  “No, please, hear me out,” I said, Blaine’s accusations of cowardice ringing somewhere inside my head. “That’s what you were doing, you were waiting for someone else to rescue you. But it doesn’t work. It can’t work. If anyone’s going to rescue you, it has to be yourself. Otherwise you’ll just end up another mean-spirited old woman.”

  “Like Aunt Erda.”

  “ . . . I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I did.” She touched my hand; I was not ready for it, and I flinched.

  I looked away, at the lily pond. I could feel her looking at me, could feel the way that what she saw was changing, as she ceased to see herself as a captive princess, ceased to see me as the hero come to rescue her. After a long, meditative silence, she said, “I’m sorry.”

  She did not say for what, and I did not ask her.

  We sat for another few minutes, in a more comfortable silence, and then she said, “I think I’ll travel. I spent five years studying French. It seems a pity not to get any good out of it.” She stood up; I stood up with her.

  She extended her hand. “Thank you. For not rescuing me.”

  I looked into her face. She was smiling, lines of character suddenly showing themselves around her eyes and mouth, making her less pretty but far more vital.

  “I . . . er, that is . . . I suppose you’re welcome.” She laughed, and we shook hands, and she made her way back toward the hotel.

  I took one last walk around the gardens, for love of their beauty, and then went back to the hotel myself. I collected my bag, said good-bye to Molly Sefton, and walked down the staircase for the last time between ΤΙΜΟΣ and chipped ΚΛΕΟΣ. Doris and Carrie were waiting for me in the front hall.

  “Miss Soames,” I said, setting my bag down. “Miss Milverley.”

  “Beautiful manners,” Doris said.

  “We’re sorry you’re leaving, Mr. Booth,” Carrie said. “You were lovely to talk to.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You don’t want to go worrying about things,” Doris said.

  “It’ll blow over. It always does.”

  “People forget so quick.”

  “Not like us.”

  “We remember.”

  “In another week, it’ll be just another old lady with a heart attack,” Carrie said. “People will come back, and everything will be fine.”

  “Everything?” I said.

  In unison, they shrugged.

  “More or less,” Carrie said.

  “It is a convalescent hotel.”

  “People do die here.”

  “That’s why we stay.”

  “Doris! Honestly! You couldn’t hold your tongue if your mouth was glued shut.”

  “Sorry, Carrie.”

  “And now you’ve got nice Mr. Booth thinking we’re murderesses or vampires or something. We aren’t anything of the sort, Mr. Booth.”

  “
No,” I said. “I know that.” I knew what they were. I knew, because I’d asked Mr. Marten what would happen to Mrs. Terpenning’s body, that Doris and Carrie generally laid out anyone who died in the hotel, and that had been the last piece of the puzzle. Not predators, but scavengers. The word “ghoul” is not a pretty one, and I preferred not to use it to their faces.

  “Such a nice boy,” Doris said.

  “Will it really, er, blow over?” I asked.

  “It always does,” Carrie said. “I think it’s something about the hotel. People just forget.”

  “Like little Pentecost forgot about us.”

  “He was such a sweet little boy. You’d never have thought he’d grow up to write such wicked poems.” From which I deduced that Carrie had read at least part of Roses for Horatio.

  “But he forgot us.”

  “People forget the nasty things.”

  “Maybe it’s the water,” Doris said brightly, and Carrie gave her a pained look.

  “Someday, I suppose,” Carrie said, “we’ll get a manager as bright as you, and he’ll put it all together, and then Doris and me will have to find a new home. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “No,” I said, thinking of Mr. Marten’s nervous indignation at what I had tried to tell him. I picked up my bag and then set it down again. “ . . . Will you do one thing for me?”

  “Of course,” Doris said.

  “We’d be glad to,” Carrie said.

  “The elevator,” I said. “Can you get him to tear it out?”

  Doris looked at Carrie. Carrie said, “We can try. He’s not so fond of the elevator, Mr. Marten.”

  “Not like Mr. Haverforth was.”

  “And it really isn’t safe.”

  “Nasty old thing. Always breaking.”

  “Parris hates it. We’ll talk to Parris.”

  I heard the car on the gravel of the drive and picked up my bag. “Thank you, ladies.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Booth,” Doris said.

  “Don’t come back,” Carrie said.

  I looked back at her. Her small bright eyes were perfectly serious, and I wondered, with a shudder, how much more Carrie and Doris could have told me about the hotel if I had known how to ask.