Winter at Death's Hotel (23 page)

“Oh, damn! No, tell him—oh, tell him yes, but how thoughtless, how…Damn!”

She wanted a bath but she knew she hadn't time, so she settled for bathing her face and washing her hands and arms really well. Then she removed her stockings and debated changing into a dressing gown, but that seemed more intimate than she wanted to be with a policeman. And then it was time to face him.

***

Detective-Sergeant Dunne had been up to the Doyle woman's floor that morning, but she hadn't been there. Now he was tired and cranky and wanted to see his wife and his kids, and here he was, trudging down the corridors of a fancy hotel instead. This time, the door was opened by a homely maid with no bosoms and a black dress that would have been just right in a convent. Dunne took his hat off and held up his card. “Detective-Sergeant Dunne of the New York Municipal Police to see Mrs. Doyle.”

Mrs. Doyle had been injured for sure. She was doing her best to stand very straight on a crutch, but she was hurting, he thought. Her face looked as if somebody had pounded it with a mallet. Still, Dunne liked what he saw. He identified himself, told her he was looking into the murder of a woman whose body had been found in the Bowery: could he ask a few questions?

He sat where she pointed. She sat on a little sofa that cost more than he made in a couple of months, he supposed. She said, “Did Lieutenant Cleary send you?” She didn't sound friendly. In fact, a definite frost.

“No, ma'am. I doubt that Lieutenant Cleary knows I'm here. Do you know the lieutenant?”

“To my regret.”

Well, well
. Dunne asked her whether he might slip off his coat.

He asked a question about how she knew the lieutenant. She told a surprising tale of a visit from Cleary and Grady. She accused them of being threatening and rude. Of calling her “nuts.”

“I do apologize, ma'am. In the name of the police, I mean. And this was in connection with you seeing a lady downstairs in the lobby, was it?”

Then it all came out, as if she'd been waiting to talk to somebody who'd listen. She finished by saying she'd written to Commissioner Roosevelt, and the result was that Cleary “and his toady” had shown up.

“I didn't know it was like that, Miz Doyle, I truly didn't. How you must feel! Cheated, I mean. And badly used.” He put on his innocent face and his innocent voice. “Did you think to discuss it with the hotel detective?”

Her momentary pause told him that she had, and that, as well, the hotel detective meant something to her. Oddly, he felt a twinge of—was that jealousy? No, probably not, except it was of Manion, and he didn't like Manion. But she had recovered, and she said that she had talked to the hotel detective, yes, and she had asked the doorman, too, and it was her belief that perhaps the poor woman had never left the New Britannic. Alive.

“Miz Doyle, are you saying that you think she was murdered
here
?”

“Well, no—but isn't it a possibility? We should consider every possibility, shouldn't we?”

“I see, yes, a possibility.” He was thinking of the Wop's map and the sightings of old men in wagons. None this far uptown, though.

He was impressed. She seemed to him to have a lot in the upper story, and she was determined. And the way she talked about the dead woman suggested some special urge in her—something about the woman
because
she was a woman. What his wife called “feeling sisterly.”

Tea appeared; the maid passed him a tray of little sandwiches and cookies and things. Suddenly he'd been there an hour, and he'd thought it would be a difficult ten minutes. Now she was telling him about a woman at a newspaper and a sketch artist and how she'd known the woman she'd seen in the lobby was the victim.

“You should be on the police force. You're very thorough,” he said. He had devoured the sandwiches, now was working on some small chocolate things. His wife would scold him.

“Somebody has to be,” she said. He was to understand that she meant that the police work so far had been less than thorough. All he could do was nod and drink his tea; he didn't dare tell her that the police work was non-existent because of orders. He thought of asking her whether her interest came from her husband's being the one who wrote about Sherlock Holmes, but he didn't think he should ask that. It would be like saying she was only an idiot female, and she wasn't. Then she was telling him about forcing the hotel detective to help her get the patrolman's draft report on the first murder.

“Didn't take so much force, I guess.” He smiled, but he was mentally damning Jimmie Malone for being on the take.

She looked at him without a smile. “I don't understand you, Detective-Sergeant.”

“Hotel detectives like to help the ladies, I meant.” He got up. “Except their own wives.” He smiled to show her that that had been a kind of joke, although he'd said it to plant the idea that Manion was married.
Maybe
that
had
been
jealousy
he'd felt.
“You've been very helpful, Miz Doyle.” He was brushing crumbs from his lap. “I could only wish half the public was so helpful.”

“I want you to catch whoever did it, Detective-Sergeant!”

“Yes, well—New York is a big place, ma'am.”

“Does that mean you're sweeping her under the carpet?”

“It does not! It means that I'm a slow and careful man. In the force they call me ‘Never.' Never Dunne, y' see? But I do get done finally, though not at a time that pleases the great ones.”

She was giving him a shrewd look, both hopeful and skeptical. She said, “Do you work for Lieutenant Cleary?”

“Ah…in the formal sense, yes, ma'am.”

“Are you working for him at this moment?”

“Lieutenant Cleary isn't aware that I'm here, if that's your question.”

“Will he be?”

“Ah…not by me telling him, ma'am. Sometimes, what we don't say…”

“You mean you'd prefer that I not say anything, too.” She had a nice smile. Quite lively, maybe a bit of mischief around the edges.

Dunne struggled into his huge coat. “You've a good head, Miz Doyle.” He settled the coat on his shoulders and then took one of his cards and handed it to her. “Anything you think of or remember, I'd like you to let me know. I don't have my own telephone—we're not that wealthy in the police—but there's a number there for my squad's room.” He grinned. “And I'd like an excuse to come back for more of those sandwiches.”

He looked around the lobby for the detective but he wasn't there; he asked at Reception and found that Manion had an office on the mezzanine. Dunne went up there and collared Manion again and learned everything else he thought the man had to tell him. He also gave Manion what-for about having bought a patrolman's notes for Mrs. Doyle, and he threatened Manion again, not this time with the basement of 300 Mulberry but with arrest for bribing a policeman. To himself, he admitted that he wouldn't do such a thing because he would protect Malone, the patrolman, because he was an old friend, and then he thought,
And
that's corruption. Now I'm in it, too.
Manion, however, seemed convinced. Apparently he had decided that Dunne was right about what his spine was made of.

Dunne kept his hat in his hand until he was heading out the hotel's front door. He kept the thought of Louisa Doyle much longer than that.

***

Louisa was relieved when he was gone, yet pleased because he was the first
nice
policeman she'd met. Had she told him anything she shouldn't have? She didn't think so; she'd tried not to tell him anything that would steal Minnie's thunder. No, she had done well, and it was even better because she had liked the detective. But what had he meant about hotel detectives' wives? Or was that simply a way of telling her that Manion was married?

Heavens, was he?

She went into the bedroom and started to read one of Arthur's letters, which she found annoyed her because of the complaining, and she put it aside, then felt guilty. She wanted a bath, but she couldn't bathe yet because Galt was coming. She looked at her watch; it was late: if Galt and Ethel were going to the theater, they'd have to dress quite soon.

I
mustn't be annoyed with my husband's letters. It's something that's wrong with me, not with his letter—am I exhausted? irritable? unhappy? Well, I've every right to be unhappy, being marooned here with almost no money and no friends and no husband, but the fact is I don't think I'm unhappy!
Guiltily, she added,
Though I do miss my babies. And my husband.

She was contemplating what was meant by being happy when Ethel announced Galt, and she turned her attention to her ankle. He told her what she already knew, that the color was much better but there was still some swelling; had she been on it a good deal? If her progress continued, he thought she could exchange the crutches for a cane in a day or two.

A cane! That would be a blessed release—and rather fashionable, too. How many women got to use canes, when men used them all the time? She said, “A cane would be most welcome.”

“Not tomorrow. Maybe the day after, just for trying, and of course we'd have to get doctor's permission. Then in a couple o' days…You'll be up and dancing the hornpipe!”

They all three laughed.

And Louisa realized she had started to menstruate.

She excused herself, and Galt took this as a signal he should leave, as he did after a significant exchange of looks with Ethel. She, coloring, asked whether she could go now to get ready for the evening. Louisa, thinking more of the dampness between her thighs than of Ethel, let her go, giving with an inner smile that Ethel could be anxious about a man at her age.

She went into the bedroom, closed the door, and stripped. Garments fell around her like leaves from a dying tree. As she suspected, her drawers were stained. They were her oldest pair, and she had taken mostly to wearing combinations; had she known she was about to start? She didn't think so; certainly she'd made no other preparations. But it was a relief to know that her irritability hadn't really been because of Arthur; it was the curse.

She pulled off the drawers and threw them a couple of feet from the other clothes, then went into the bathroom and started herself a bath. Surely one of the luxuries of a good American hotel was this bath right en suite with one's bedroom; so many places made you trudge down the corridor, towel and soap in hand, to a bath somewhere at the far end of the building.

Where, she wondered, had Ethel put the German pads and their truss-like harness? They traveled in the smallest of the hand luggage; good heavens, could they have gone off with Arthur? More for him to complain about.
Oh, that's unfair.
That's the curse speaking again.
The little valise was in the first place she looked, the big steamer trunk, otherwise empty and resting against a wall. She should have had it carried to the cellar or wherever they stored things for the guests, but then what a pickle she'd have been in!

She emptied the valise and put it back, then put most of the pads in a drawer with her underwear, keeping one pad and the harness for now. She carried them into the bathroom, set them down on the porcelain sink, and let herself into the bathwater with the care of somebody trying to sit naked on a block of ice: she sat first on the wooden lip of the long tub, then put her good foot into the water and got her weight on the toes; then she raised her injured leg, balanced, and slowly sank back into the hot water, only at the last letting her ankle get wet.

It was delicious. Doing a day's work, or at least a day's activities, had truly wearied her. Arthur would say she had lost muscle tone lying in bed. Or that being ill “took it out of one.” She could agree with that. Now, however, the hot water was like a reward, a prize at the end of the day. And she had not done so badly: they had found three properties that might be outlets for Cleary's illicit money, and she had had what turned out to be a pleasant visit from a policeman, and—

She heard a sound, a sort of thump from her bedroom, as if a cat had jumped down from a chair. No, it must have been something in the street. Quiet the hotel certainly was, but it couldn't have been expected to block out every bang and knock.

She tried to give herself again to the water, but she had a little frown between her eyebrows; she could feel it; and she couldn't relax because she was listening.

Damn
the
noise!

Then there was…something. Another sound, unidentifiable.

“Ethel?”

It was as if somebody were standing just on the other side of the door—not making sounds, but
being
there
because of making no sound. As if the room and the door and she were all holding their breath.

“
Ethel?
”

Nothing. But a nothing into which the ordinary ticks and purrs and clicks of life poured, filling it and becoming normal again. There was nobody out there, of course. It was all in her head, or perhaps her womb. Hysteria. She said aloud, “Nonsense.”

She began to wash herself, soaping between her legs as if something evil lived there. It was the fear of the smell, which she knew Arthur disliked and which she tried always to save him from. Arthur wouldn't make love to her when she had her period, not that anything had ever been said, but he simply didn't. Nor had he when she had been pregnant, as if the only woman he wanted to do it with was the pristine bride he'd married.

An
odd
squeamishness, for a doctor.
It was only blood, after all. And she thought of the two women who had bled to death.

She soaped herself one more time and balanced again on her good foot and, by pushing up with one hand and reaching high to the towel bar with the other, was able to stand, her bad leg bent to keep weight off the ankle, so that she looked like a nymph in a bad painting; she'd have needed only to put a hand over her pubis and an arm across her breasts to look really revolting.