The Paragon Hotel

by Lyndsay Faye

  “April, we’ve discussed this.” A brittleness beneath his easy charm glints like granite. “You have everything ready?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “For Pete’s sake, girl, of course I won’t be leaving for work until all’s well. It’s probably nothing anyhow. You recall three weeks ago?”

  The vertical line of her hair slides up and down.

  “Well, that was all pretty silly in the end, wasn’t it? Please don’t interrupt us again.”

  April departs. They have a common goal, the pair of them—not a sordid one since they mentioned it in front of me but possibly a secret one. Quelque intrigue.

  “Sorry—April is the sweetest help we could ask for, but she’s a bit of a worrier. Might I ask you something? Why is it you came to my doorstep and not Miss Fontaine herself? She’s been to this house any number of times to have tea with Evy.”

  Hesitating just long enough to bait the hook, I answer, “I don’t know if it’s my place to say.”

  “Oh. I guess that means there’s a specific reason?”

  I fiddle with jam arrangements, an intoxicating aroma of violet berries wafting upward.

  “I think that the hotel residents were anxious over being seen in this part of town, Mr. Vaughan.” I cast a look over my horn-rims. “They mentioned the rising popularity of the nationally infamous Ku Klux Klan.”

  Tom Vaughan’s handsome face sags in relief. “Well, I’m mighty sorry to hear that, then. I’ll head over to the hotel myself and have a word when Miss Fontaine is there. I know what the KKK means in the South, and it makes me sick. But around here, there are hardly any blacks to begin with, you understand. The Klan is a political rallying tool and a charitable club. It’s all America first with them—promoting jobs for hardworking Protestants over Orientals and Catholic immigrants, protesting Jew banking, defending motherhood and maidenhood. Fund-raisers, not lynch mobs.”

  “So they don’t wear masks, then?” I question blandly.

  He nods his tawny head. “Come to it, yes, they do, Miss James, but that’s the culture of the organization. They have their rituals, just like the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Columbus. Not meant here in Portland to strike terror into any law-abiding folk, I assure you.”

  “There have been reports of vandalism against the hotel, however.”

  “Yes, and my men figure it for some rogue teens, not the conservative businessmen of this peaceful city attacking their neighbors.”

  “I’ll just make that a quote from you, then? For the article?”

  “Gladly. I’m sure we’ll catch the rascals in the act soon enough.”

  Staring at the object in my hand, I chew.

  It’s crumble crust and vanilla, a hint of salt, a kiss of sugar, crisp then pillowy, slathered with fresh butter and crowned with the blood-thick ambrosia Mr. Vaughan referred to as “blackberry jam.”

  “My God,” I say in unvarnished awe.

  He smirks good-naturedly. “My wife can cook! There’s no denying. You ever had blackberry jam?”

  “Never.”

  “Where are you from, Miss James? Sorry, I neglected to ask.”

  “Connecticut, and think nothing of it.”

  “Well, what do you think of the spread we make from the local weed?”

  I am so gone on it that I am never putting anything behind my teeth save that which is drowning in blackberry jam ever again.

  The front door crashes open.

  Evelina Vaughan stands between the entryway and the morning room. She looks much more like herself than she did at the Paragon—her real self, that is, and in a photo flash, I can see what Blossom meant when she said Mrs. Vaughan was Portland.

  She’s its generosity and eccentricity and isolation and passion and rebellion and melancholy and kindness.

  The lady of the house is a tearing grand mess. She wears a pair of mud-crusted galoshes, riding pants, and a man’s plaid flannel shirt knotted at the waist to fit her. A leather satchel hangs from her shoulder, and the hand hooked around the strap is covered in fine scratches, as if she went ten rounds with a paper blizzard. Her halo of apricot waves is still done up nineteenth-century style but has developed a large population of woodland residents. Leaves, pine needles, flecks of dirt.

  I watch Tom Vaughan’s heart cracking.

  April bursts back in at a run, having heard the door. “Oh, Mrs. Vaughan. Thank heaven you’re back. Are you—”

  “Please don’t take on so, April—we have a guest.” Mr. Vaughan stands hastily. “Go and draw some hot water for a bath at once, please. Sweetheart. Did you lose track of time? We’ve been expecting you since . . . well, we were worried.”

  Grey irises wide and hectic, she melts into his open arms like a butter curl.

  Since last night, I’d judge, from the penciled shadows under her eyes and the layers of dried forest on her galoshes.

  “Tom. Dear Tom. I didn’t leave a note, did I? You look as if I didn’t, and I’m so sorry, please forgive me.” Pulling back, she laughs, a happy wind chime sound with a thread of turbulence in it. “I’ve been—what was it I was doing? Oh yes, that’s right, I baked, and then I wrote in my journal, I was very good about it, you can check, and then I had a meeting with the Married Women’s Benevolent Society, and when I got home, all the walls were too thick, and you were out late at work, so I went for a walk. But wait, we’ve company, how lovely. Who’s this, Tom?”

  “I’m Miss Alice James.” Standing, I proffer a businesslike handshake, not in the least surprised she never noticed me at the hotel. “Very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Vaughan.”

  Her fingers are as cold as her smile is dazzling. “Charmed. Have you business with my husband, or were you waiting for me? I didn’t think I had an appointment, but. That’s really no guarantee against my having missed one!”

  Evelina Vaughan’s china complexion is thin with weariness and flushing in—well, I can’t call it excitement. But I’ve seen something similar. The difference on this occasion is that I think it’s naturally occurring, like the northern lights firing across a black skyline or iridescent seaweed floating off the prow of a clipper.

  Not the same as Rye, chemical every-colored eyes like an oil spill.

  Tom Vaughan tilts his wife’s chin tenderly back in his direction. “When did you leave the house, Evy?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t say exactly. After the meeting, and I read for a spell though I don’t recall which book. So it can’t have been very interesting, can it?” She laughs again. “I had a cup of soup and worked on the invitations for the Crippled Veterans’ Picnic next week. I’m sorry about the note, Tom, I’ll remember next time. But it was beautiful, the trees all telling me secrets and the wind shushing them. Oh, are those my scones, Miss James? How do you find them?”

  Mrs. Vaughan comes to a stop with a questioning smile on her face, dressed for riding without any horse. Her energy could blot out anything—a roaring hearth, a wildfire. She could knock the sun for a loop and not break a sweat.

  “Delicious.”

  I try to say this fastidiously. I manage rapt.

  Her husband, poor old sport, is plucking the worst of the great outdoors from her nimbus of hair so sadly and sweetly that I can’t look it straight on. “Join me in the other room, Evy?”

  “Oh, but we’ve a guest! And she even likes my baking. I believe we’ll have to keep her forever.”

  “Evy, please come with me.”

  My cue here is obvious. “I ought to be going anyhow, Mrs. Vaughan.”

  “No!” She lets her husband pass his arm around her back, nestling in. “I only just met you. I’ve been rambling for a few hours and probably look a fright, but—”

  “Evy, I came home at midnight from the station house,” her husband snaps. He softens immediately. “I thought it got dark without your noticing and you stayed with one
of the ladies from the meeting, like last time. You’ve been missing all night again.”

  She turns in the circle of his body, lips parted in shocked denial. “Oh, no. No, I was only walking. Not that far even, just . . . I can’t remember exactly. I’m so sorry about the note, please forgive me.”

  “It was dark when you left, yes?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “What time is it now, sweetheart?”

  Evelina Vaughan turns to her own bay window and stares at the daylight with about as much enthusiasm as would your average vampire. The almond-shaped grey pools shimmer.

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “I know, Evy.”

  “I never do, please, I swear.”

  “Shh, you’re all right. Say goodbye to Miss James now, and come along.”

  “Oh, Miss James.” She takes a step, the apologetic hand she lifts as marked as the plaid shirt she wears. “You must forgive the state I’m . . . in, apparently, though I didn’t know it. Come back for more scones, would you? When I’ve had the chance to rest and I’m more myself.”

  You’re more yourself presently than I’ve ever been in my life.

  She’s like a tamed deer standing there, balanced on small feet and blinking expectantly, and I’ve the maddest urge to feed her bits of her own remarkable baked goods.

  “I’d love to, if able,” I answer.

  “Will you tell me your business, though? Here you are in my house and apparently it’s just past sunrise, so I’m dying of curiosity you see. I can’t abide not being in on secrets, not when we’re to be friends as soon as I feel a bit better.” She smiles, an open-air expression without a hint of jealousy.

  “I’ve been staying at the Paragon Hotel writing an article, and I regret to tell you that yesterday Davy Lee went missing.”

  The smile freezes for some two or three seconds before it shatters like a fallen icicle.

  “What did you say? You. I’ve never—You live at the Paragon?”

  “Only since very recently,” I hasten to explain. “I work for a newspaper, you see, and the hotel is of immense social interest—you tutor there weekly, yes? I actually saw you, when you were last visiting Blossom.”

  She glances at her husband. The subtle contrast of her deep widow’s peak grows starker as she pales. “Yes. I . . . did go to the Paragon. Day before yesterday, after you mentioned there was a raid, Tom. I needed to see everyone was all right. What’s this about—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that the aftermath of a police altercation is a mighty poor time to pay social calls?” her husband demands. “Next time you want to see Miss Fontaine, invite her here, for Pete’s sake.”

  “What’s happened to Davy Lee?” she insists, silvery eyes darting minnow-like from one to the other of us.

  April’s ungraceful steps prophesy her appearance. One of her hands is wet. “Mrs. Vaughan, I’ve drawn your bath. Won’t you come up while it’s still nice and hot?”

  Her mistress’s gaze sharpens. “I’ll take a bath when I’m ready for one, thank you, April. Tom, you must not keep me behind glass as if I’m some sort of figurine. I know I’ve lost track again, but—”

  “Go on upstairs, sweetheart.” He glances at me. “Goodbye, Miss James, and believe that I’ll do everything I—”

  “Stop it!” Mrs. Vaughan snarls as I edge in feigned mortification toward the foyer. The expression I glimpsed when she spoke of Officer Overton returns, fang-bared and fearless. “Tell me what you know about Davy, Miss James, I’m ever so sorry to be rude, but. Davy’s special.”

  “He disappeared at the Elms yesterday, sweetheart, and we’re going to find him.” So stating, Mr. Vaughan marches to the front door and holds it open. “Goodbye, Miss James. I’ll be in touch, very soon.”

  Stepping through the portal is the only action this Nobody could possibly take. So I adjust my specs as if embarrassed and exit into the tangled wood. The door isn’t shut before Evelina Vaughan begins to shriek, however. I hear her first strangled breaths, and her devoted husband hushing her, and the audible wail, “No, you must let me go if that’s true, Blossom needs me! She needs me!” before, sweep-snick, the voices are silenced and I’m standing on an enchanted street corner.

  Wondering what in hell sort of family I was just introduced to.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve been running myself dreadfully raggedy. I’ve no sooner shed my simple disguise at the Paragon than I’ve slithered betwixt the bedsheets again. When I awaken, the rain has returned as if it never left, splish-plop, and the day vaulted over its meridian.

  3:17 in the afternoon, and Davy Lee could be anywhere.

  Or nowhere.

  The pang that hits me is unexpected, too sharp for someone familiar with horror. I’m not just worried for a fanciful kiddo I scarcely know, that would be bad enough—I’m on Evelina Vaughan’s page to the very letter.

  I’m almost sick over Blossom Fontaine.

  I check my dressings, dry-swallow a pill, and don a grey-and-blue-check organdy dress with a scoop neck. It’s comfortable without being something Nobody the snooty reformist wouldn’t be caught cadaverous in. Then I slide on a pair of heeled house slippers and head down the corridor, a strange high flicker of nerves in my throat.

  A rustle precedes her when I knock, and she opens the door. Candles glow within, a dozen or more, enough to mean something to a Catholic like me or a sap like her.

  Enough for a shrine to the departed.

  She wears an onyx silk dressing gown printed with shafts of golden wheat, and her face might as well have been carved from marble like the busts I’ve seen at the Metropolitan.

  Noting my own expression, she says sternly, “Alice, Davy Lee is alive. Extremely alive. He is most emphatically not suited for the wooden-box treatment. I found him, remember? We’re connected somehow, from the moment I saw his tiny, silly squalling face. I would know. Are we clear?”

  “As holy water,” I vow.

  “They are combing the woods. The only reason I’m not is that they’d have to drag me around like a sled.”

  “I know, yes. He’ll turn up any old minute. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day already.”

  “And getting longer. Come on in, supposing you don’t mind passing the time with an absolute ghoul.”

  “I think you look fine.”

  “Have a seat anyplace, and never mind the mess. Even pretending that I intend to make up the bed is beyond my capacity.”

  Her room may be a madhouse, but it’s a friendly one. Clothes hanging helter-skelter on the dressing screen and the edge of the vanity, liquor tumblers and silk stockings and lipstick pots scattered about, the candles pin-lighting puddles of domesticity. And curled in the tangled bedclothes, Medea’s face, wickedly satisfied by the chaos.

  When I look up after perching on the end of the bed, Blossom has already poured drinks. Handing me one, she settles in her vanity chair.

  “You’ve been to the Vaughans’, I take it? Did you draw fruit? Do you come bearing simply bushels of produce?”

  I readily spill. She’s attentive but seems to expect poor returns, and I can’t blame her. For all that Tom Vaughan was every inch the gentleman, he told me—what, exactly? That his policemen would be on the lookout? It doesn’t take a crystal ball to tell me just how valuable that will prove. Then I come to the shoelace I haven’t quite unknotted yet.

  “When she arrived home, Mrs. Vaughan seemed . . .”

  Blossom arches her brows with an unreadable expression. Something paws softly at the back of it other than mere surprise. “Arrived home? For heaven’s sake, I thought you went at the break of cock’s crow.”

  “Yes, but she’d been out walking. All night long.”

  I’ve socked the wind from her. Then the singer produces a guttural groan. “What time was this?”


  “I hadn’t been there more than half an hour. Obscenely early.”

  “Oh, God, no. The poor creature, I simply must make time to stop in on—Medea, for shame.”

  The cat abandons its successful effort to chew the toe off a stocking and growls as it slinks behind the dressing screen.

  “I’ve known Evy for some time now, and she’s always been something of a tissue upon the winds of extremities.” Blossom speaks slowly, gazing at the candlelight. “Mind you, for weeks, even occasionally two months or more, she’ll be smooth sailing and cloudless skies. Planning, riding, hiking, inventing a new charity, driving her cook to distraction because she wants to make everything herself.”

  “Yes, I already had her scones.”

  “With her blackberry jam?”

  “She made that?”

  “Well, there you are. Yes. Anyhow, up to a quarter of a year goes by at times without incident. Then, presto. Evy once stayed awake for two days baking every item on the list for a Christmas fund-raiser. Upside-down cakes, almond dominoes, cider jelly pie. It never occurred to her until she arrived with two hired hands to carry it all that the rest of the board had signed up to pitch in.”

  “What a nightmare that must be.”

  Blossom bites her lower lip. “She falls into the most agonizing state afterward. Like an invalid just come out of a fever with her hair shorn and her muscles wasted—but all this entirely between her ears, of course. I’ll have to think of something instantly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh.” She looks bemused, then shakes her head. “To cheer her. Tom’s an angel, really, he performs miracles. But it’s a concerted effort.”

  I don’t want to broach the subject, but I must, smoothing my fingers over the Chinese silk adorning the end of the bed. “Any dispatches?”

  Blossom doesn’t wince. But her entire face dedicates itself to preventing it.

  “The lines are quiet. No clues forthcoming.”

  “You said you weren’t feeling well. Are you going back out?”