Page 86 of The Furies

That was one I really didn’t want to contemplate, but it would have to be anticipated.

“You fail to get in touch with Melissa, she has no idea what’s being planned, and we have to decide whether or not to go in cold. I’d be very reluctant to do that, because now someone is certain to get hurt.”

“Possibly including my daughter.”

“Yes.”

Marjorie considered this.

“Well, then,” she said, “I’d better be sure to contact Melissa.”

“That would be a big help,” I said, with admirable understatement.

Of course, I hadn’t really shared the worst outcome with her, because that would only have added to her worries. What if we managed to enter the house only to discover that Melissa Thombs had changed her mind about leaving, and suddenly we were faced not with one hostile actor but two? At least I wouldn’t be alone. Misery loves company, and I knew just the companions.

CHAPTER XVII

Bobby Wadlin knocked on the door of room 29 before entering. Even though the registered occupants were, he was certain, elsewhere, one couldn’t be too careful. Bobby had learned that lesson way back, when he’d walked into what he assumed was an empty room at the Braycott, the guests having already checked out, only to discover three naked elderly people, on whom he’d never before set eyes, engaged in an act of sexual congress so bizarre that it continued to haunt his dreams a decade later.

Nobody answered Bobby’s knock at 29, though, and he could hear no sounds from inside. He made sure the hallway was empty before inserting his key in the lock and opening the door.

“Hello?” he said, but there was no reply. Bobby slipped inside and closed the door behind him. The room smelled musty, but then all the rooms in the Braycott smelled musty, except for the ones that smelled of something worse than mustiness, thanks to their occupants. The drapes were partly drawn, permitting Bobby to see without having to turn on the main light. The twin beds were made, and two overnight bags lay open on the floor. Both were packed, the clothes inside neatly folded.

He took a look in the bathroom and saw that it was empty. All the towels had been used, but that was hardly surprising, the Braycott’s towels being rough, thin, and pretty much unfit for purpose, unless that purpose was sanding a wall. Those staying at the inn for any length of time, or with previous experience of its hospitality, typically ended up supplying their own. Bobby then checked under the beds and in the closet, but found only dust. It was obvious to him that room 29 did not contain a child, or anything that might be associated with one: no toys, no diapers, no mess. Whatever else Pantuff and Veale might be hiding—and Bobby was in no doubt that they were hiding something, because everybody at the Braycott had something to hide—it wasn’t a kid. Yet Phil Hardiman and Esther Vogt claimed to have heard a child, and unless they were more committed than most to the conspiracy to drive Bobby Wadlin mad, or were both independently crazy in the same way, there was a child somewhere on the premises. It was baffling.

Poking his nose around the Braycott’s occupied accommodations, even those with DO NOT DISTURB signs on the doors, didn’t bother Bobby Wadlin: this was his hotel, and if anything, the guests were the intruders, not he. During his years in charge he’d seen everything in these rooms—drugs, weapons, sex dolls, dead bodies—and had kept his mouth shut about most of it, the bodies excepted. It paid to be discreet, especially when a significant proportion of one’s guests had criminal records, and demonstrated an admirable commitment to adding to them. But Bobby really didn’t want to dawdle in 29, because he felt as though he were leaving traces of himself—scents, skin cells, stray hairs—that Pantuff and Veale might detect and follow back to their source.

His hand was reaching for the door handle when he noticed the spare blankets at the bottom of the closet. Every room had the same pair, and they occupied the same space, but these appeared fuller than the norm. Bobby squatted, poked a finger at them, and struck a hard object. He unfolded the blankets to reveal a vintage Sunshine Toy Cookie tin in red, gold, and greenish blue (“Joy Cookies for Kiddies Cut in Toy Shapes”). This one, Bobby thought, must have dated from the fifties, and might have passed for an antique among people who didn’t know any better. He picked it up, shook it gently, and heard a sound that didn’t come from cookies.

Bobby eased off the lid and peered inside, moving the contents around so that he could see them more clearly. The box held a child’s wrist rattle, a pacifier, a tiny pair of scuffed pink shoes, a white rabbit about the size of his clenched fist, plaster casts of small hands and feet, a silver box containing a single baby tooth, and an envelope. Bobby opened the envelope and flicked through the photos it contained: perhaps two dozen in all, a record of the development of a little girl. In some of the photographs she was with a woman, probably her mother, but there was no sign of a father. Bobby didn’t set any particular store by this. Often the simplest explanation was the right one, and someone had to hold the camera. If not the father, then who else? He checked the backs of the pictures, but there were no names or dates, nothing to offer a clue as to who the woman and child might be.

Bobby restored the items to the cookie tin, and replaced it exactly as he’d found it, the blankets along with it. He used the peephole to make sure the hallway was clear before leaving the room, closing the door securely behind him. He then returned to the front desk, where two long-term guests, the Huffs, were peering unhappily into the lobby from outside. Bobby let them in, offered what might have passed for an apology as long as nobody examined it too closely, and retreated to his lair. There he made himself a cup of coffee with a shot of brandy to calm his nerves, and thought about what he’d found in room 29.

He was now even more perplexed than before. The objects in the cookie tin were not the possessions of a child, but those of a parent. While Bobby might not have wished either Pantuff or Veale as a father on even the worst kid in the world, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that one of them had sired a daughter and retained enough affection for her to keep with him some remembrances of her childhood. But if Phil Hardiman and Esther Vogt were correct, a female child had been heard running around the Braycott the night before. The only evidence suggesting the existence of such a child lay in room 29, but did not extend to food, clothing, or the girl herself. It really was most peculiar, and so preoccupied was Bobby by this mystery that even the prospect of a western did not distract him from it for almost an hour.

CHAPTER XVIII

Esther Vogt was seventy-six years old, but remained physically and mentally acute, and believed she might even have grown more so since her husband’s death, Adolf Vogt having been a quiet, somewhat indolent man with the intellectual curiosity of a piece of whitebait. Esther had loved him in her way—not deeply, and with a certain practicality that only occasionally extended to obvious affection—but his death had not impacted greatly on the level of social and intellectual discourse in her life. Like many widowed women of her acquaintance, bereavement had caused her to reexamine her priorities, and her attitude to the years remaining to her. She became a Friend of the Portland Public Library, joined a dining club, became an accomplished candlepin bowler, and even took to entertaining—and being entertained by—the occasional handsome older gentleman, because no one ever died believing they should have enjoyed less sex. Some of her new friends had pressed her to seek alternative accommodation in one of their retirement communities, but Esther liked the Braycott. It had an edge to it, and a lot of personality, and she had spent far too many years in a marriage with no edge or personality whatsoever.

Of course, the Braycott had its downsides, not least its manager, Bobby Wadlin. Esther considered him a fool, but a sly fool, and one whom it was better not to antagonize. She knew he didn’t like her, but she regarded him as being predisposed against liking anyone at all, Abigail Stackpole excepted, and then only because Abigail had slept with him once or twice without throwing up immediately after. Esther knew Abigail a little from their shared aqua aerobics sessions, and it seemed as though she had some kind of genuine affection for Bobby Wadlin, baffling though that might appear to anyone else. Then again, as Esther’s best pal, Rosemary, liked to point out, Abigail Stackpole was hardly beating off suitors with a stick and therefore had to take her pleasures as they came.

So Esther Vogt stayed on the right side of Bobby Wadlin even as, behind his back, she grew more and more familiar with the ways of the Braycott. Thanks to Abigail Stackpole’s carelessness, Esther had contrived to have made for herself copies of the keys to the front and back doors, as well as the storage closets and the basement. The former didn’t contain a great deal worth taking, although the liquid soap was of a surprisingly high quality—Wadlin, she figured, must be getting it from the back of a truck, because he certainly wasn’t paying market price—but the basement was a treasure trove, one with which even Bobby Wadlin was not intimately familiar as it was so full. Esther had grown accomplished at sneaking items from it up to her two-room apartment: rugs, pictures, lamps, even one very comfortable armchair, although she’d barely managed to get it into the elevator unaided, and had spent the trip between floors fretting in case Wadlin should choose that moment to make one of his rare forays into the environs beyond his desk. If the housekeepers noticed the enhancements to the standard décor, they either elected not to comment or just assumed that crazy old Esther was ransacking thrift stores in order to individualize her quarters, their silence guaranteed by the regular weekly tip Esther left in an envelope on her pillow. She’d even been tempted to sell one or two of the basement items, including an art deco mirror she was convinced might be worth a couple hundred dollars, but that would have been stealing, and Esther Vogt was a borrower, not a thief.

Now she had returned to the lower regions of the Braycott because she’d managed to spill ink on one of the rugs—Esther still wrote with a fountain pen, like a civilized human being—and didn’t trust the housekeepers not to bring the stain to their employer’s attention, tip or no tip. It wasn’t a very handsome rug anyway, and had looked a lot better in the basement than in her room, even with the lights turned low. She was sure the maroon imitation Persian that she’d spotted during her last visit would work much better.

Entering the basement, Esther noticed that someone else had been down there recently. She could see marks in the dust where some of the furniture had been moved, and a small bathroom mirror with a painted frame lay broken on the floor, fragments of the glass catching the light from the hall bulb. It was unlike Wadlin to leave glass on the floor, she thought, and the housekeepers knew better than to make a mess and not clear it up, especially as Wadlin might dock their pay just to teach them the necessity of respecting another person’s property. She decided to come back later with a brush and pan to take care of it. She didn’t want Wadlin to take it into his head to change the lock.

Esther reached by instinct for the light switch, but nothing happened. She tried flicking it a couple of times—because that was what you did when a light didn’t work, and you didn’t have to be an electrician to know it—but the room remained dark. Here, then, was a problem. It wasn’t as though she had a replacement bulb at hand, and even if she had, she’d still need a ladder to change the busted one. Neither could she exactly go to Bobby Wadlin and inform him that the basement required a new light bulb so she could appropriate one of his rugs to replace another soiled by her.

At least she had her cell phone in her pocket. The flashlight wasn’t great, but it would suffice. Once she’d switched the rugs, she’d have to live with her current furnishings, at least until Wadlin got around to changing the bulb himself. She sidestepped the broken glass and went looking for the maroon rug. When last she’d seen it, it had been standing rolled by the far wall. She shone the flashlight in that direction and it caught the rug just where she remembered it, between a squat mahogany dresser with a decorative floral pattern and a four-drawer chest that she wouldn’t have permitted to be placed in her room even had someone paid her to accept it, so ugly was it.

Esther began making her way carefully through the furniture and bric-a-brac, managing to avoid barking her shin more than once, although since this was against a cast-iron umbrella stand, it hurt. A lot. She reached the rug and tested the weight. It was heavier than it looked, but she decided she could just about manage it using both arms, with the cell phone held in her right hand to light her route back to the door while bearing in mind where that umbrella stand lay in wait. The rug smelled mildewy, but baking soda would sort that right out. Nearby she spotted a floor lamp she thought might serve nicely as a reading light, but it would have to wait. To be honest, her rooms were becoming cluttered. If she persisted in adding to them, a time would come when her unit began to resemble the basement itself.

As she started to make her way out, she reflected that it was a pity this space had been reduced to a storage facility. It maintained traces of decoration from its former incarnation as a bar: orange fleurs-de-lis patterns here, patches of red flock wallpaper there, and a couple of old taps lying on top of a dusty beer barrel. A section of brass footrail ran along one of the walls; why Wadlin hadn’t sold it, she didn’t know. A 1940s Four Roses Bourbon clock, its hands stopped at 5:30 and its numbers now faded from gold to black, hung above the shadow of shelves that had probably once held bottles. Esther could imagine music playing and people dancing, even during Prohibition, safe in the knowledge that the thick walls, combined with whatever bribes had been paid, would ensure the party could continue without fear of interruption by the police.

And if they did come, there was always the tunnel. Its entrance was still visible, a cave-like opening that had once been hidden behind paneling. It had long since been blocked up, but only four or five feet into the tunnel itself, creating an alcove that could be used for more storage. It remained dark, though, even when the basement light was on. The position and angle rendered it unfavorable to illumination, so whatever was stored in there was set to remain undisturbed since it couldn’t properly be identified. While the basement was cool, the area around the old tunnel mouth was cooler still, and in winter one could feel chill air coming from it. Esther guessed that, in common with every other job in the Braycott, its closure had been completed cheaply and imperfectly, and the materials used had begun to crack and decay. The rats had probably found a way through, because there were rodents down here. She’d seen and heard them, but their presence didn’t bother her as long as they didn’t go running across her feet. Esther, a lifelong vegetarian, believed they had as much right to be there as she did—more, even, as she wasn’t supposed to be in the basement at all, while rats were accepted, however reluctantly, to be part of the lifeblood of old places. God alone knew what they fed on, she thought. She supposed a rat would eat just about anything. Bugs, mice, other rats…

One of them was scuffling around in the tunnel right now. She could hear the ticking of its claws against the stone. It was big, too, by the sounds of it.

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