Kenneth Cameron
Winter at Death's Hotel
CHAPTER 1
The New Britannic was one of New York’s smaller and finer hotels — the city’s finest, in fact, it would have insisted, although people who judged by flash and size would have said otherwise. The very best service and tone, the hotel management asserted — service and tone and taste. Good taste, of course, the best taste, matched by hotels like the Criterion in London, as the service and tone were perhaps matched by Brown’s.
Most certainly, if you were English and of a certain sort, you stayed at the New Britannic when you were in New York. Of a certain sort: not new money, not great peerages, not political power; rather, achievement and reserve and even fame — but of course, no notoriety.
The bronze front doors opened into a paneled space with narrow beams overhead, pillars that rose at intervals of fifteen feet to Egyptian capitals in dark oak. Bronze chandeliers reached down, all electric; real imitation Aubusson stretched away to the mahogany Reception. Around the periphery, straight chairs, heavily carved, not very sittable; toward the center, leather chairs meant to look and be more comfortable; an occasional dark table, a lamp — again electric, of course. Sitting in a leather chair toward the periphery but facing the doors was a man in a dark suit and dark necktie and a very high collar, his face square, a little heavy, displeased; on his upper lip a mustache and a faint sneer of skepticism.
The group coming through the doors was small, only three people but with a lot of luggage, so that it took two “boys” to carry it. The man was noticeable, the two women not: he was tall, heavy, self-confident, dressed in London tailoring and London shoes and a London hat, with a London overcoat, a sprinkle of snow on the shoulders. He strode past the dark man in the leather chair — never noticed him, in fact — and went straight to Reception and said in an oddly high-pitched but loud voice, “I am Arthur Conan Doyle.”
“Of course, sir!” The eminence at Reception, still young but very grand, sounded both impressed and regal.
“Cook’s have reserved a suite of rooms.”
“Yes, sir.” Said as if some question had been raised about what Cook’s had done. He moved a register a fraction of an inch forward, followed it with an inkwell and a pen. “If you would just sign, Mr. Conan Doyle…”
“Doyle. ‘Conan’ is not the patronymic.”
“Ah. Mr. Doyle.”
Doyle wore pince-nez, which he touched with a finger as he bent over the register as if he feared losing them. Pen in hand, he read up a column of the names of those who had registered before him. His lips moved, slightly shaking the walrus mustache on the upper one. He occasionally made a joke, in fact, about his looking like a walrus because of his girth and that mustache, although inwardly he cringed at the idea that anybody would make the comparison but he.
“Our other guests at the moment,” the young man said, “include Mr. Henry Irving. Mr. Irving is doing a season at the Lyceum Theatre. And two of the principals of his company are with us, as well. And Mr. William Cody!”
Doyle looked up at him. “I know Mr. Irving.” Indeed, he had written a play for Irving. “I don’t know a Cody.”
“Of the Wild West. They’re completing an engagement at Madison Square Garden.” He waved a hand, pointing vaguely at Madison Square Garden a block away.
Doyle sniffed. “You seem to have a superabundance of show people.”
“Oh — oh, and we have General Sammartino of Argentina. And Mr. Cyrus Bickle of American Steel. And Miss Marie Corelli, the English novelist!”
A somewhat dour stare suggested that Doyle didn’t think of Marie Corelli as a novelist. Or perhaps not as English. He said, “I was assured by Cook’s that this would be a quiet, entirely respectable hotel suitable to British sensibilities.”
“We pride ourselves at the New Britannic on our Britishness, Mr. Doyle. We go out of our way to come up to British standards. And as for quiet, this is the quietest hotel in New York. It was built to be quiet.” He pushed a pamphlet across the desk: How the City’s Quietest Hotel Was Constructed along the Most Modern Lines.
Doyle sniffed again. “We shall be here only a few days, anyway. I am embarking on a lecture tour of the United States.” He signed the register—“Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle and maid.” He hid pretty well his profound annoyance that he couldn’t add “and valet,” as his man had got sick on the crossing and had been held for quarantine at Immigration. It left Arthur Conan Doyle—the Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the stunning novels and short stories about Sherlock Holmes, the Sherlock Holmes — about to begin an exhausting tour with no support except a wife and a lady’s maid. Not that his wife wasn’t a great help, a huge help, of course. Nobody knew his shirts as she did.
The personage behind the desk nodded to a uniformed inferior, handed over a key, and murmured something about a hydraulic elevator, then smiled and said, “Lift.”
Doyle looked at the woman, looked at the lift, sighed, and said, “Come along, Louisa.”
If asked, she’d have said she adored her husband, and she’d have added “of course.” That expression often invites an implied “but,” but she’d never have intended such a thing. She did adore him. She was aware of what she called his whims and his eccentricities, but he was a man and so entitled to them; besides, he was a suddenly and phenomenally successful author, also her first and only lover and the father of her two children. When he said, “Come along, Louisa,” she came along. Her eyes, however, did not stop flicking about the hotel lobby as if she were memorizing it. Those eyes were small, blue, shielded by spectacles; the rest of her was slightly plump, a bit settled about the hips and bosom — no doubt about her having had children. Her clothes were expensive and correct and no more than two or three years behind the fashion, as they needed to be to be thought really proper. And Arthur didn’t like what he called “faddish” clothing, by which he meant noticeable, and which she called “cheap.”
Still, those blue eyes searched the big space as avidly as the eyes of a woman studying a roomful of other women’s clothes. She had taken in the man in the dark suit at once, decided he was a hotel detective (she knew that Americans had such things), decided that that was slightly thrilling, filed it away. Now, as she turned to follow her husband, her eyes went to the bronze doors, through which were coming a pretty young woman with wonderful copper-colored hair and a good-looking young man. The woman looked nervous, the man pleased and as sleek as a wet seal. Louisa Doyle saw him trade a look with the hotel detective; something passed between them; the couple came on. (How interesting, she thought, he’s fixed it with the detective and they’re having an illicit liaison!) The woman was chattering — nerves, Mrs. Doyle thought; she’s never done this before — her voice gratingly American, quite astonishing, really. How they got those nasal sounds, she couldn’t imagine. She must try it when she was alone. And what had happened to the letter G in their participles and gerunds? Thrown overboard to lighten ship so that they could talk as fast as they did?
The copper-haired woman’s eyes touched Louisa’s, started away but came back, and the two women looked at each other, and suddenly the young woman smiled as if she and Louisa were sharing a wonderful secret. As if they were sisters. The woman looked momentarily radiant, happy (in love, Louisa thought, oh, my dear), and then she swept past, still chattering in a whisper to the handsome man.