Bloodless

16

Constance Greene sat in the Suwanee Room of the Chandler House, sipping bao zhong tea and gazing out at the attractive little park across West Gordon Street. The hotel’s tearoom was long and narrow, one wall consisting almost entirely of old, rippled-glass windows looking over Chatham Square.

Constance was finding Savannah quite to her taste, especially after spending time in Florida: a place that was too modern, too much a clash of tropical paradise with frantic metropolis. Recent murders or not, Savannah was a genteel town that embraced its past — not the awful history of slavery and oppression, but a simpler time, of the Trollope-reading, take-a-turn-in-the-park sort, when each tree was planted with a thought for how it would improve the landscape a hundred years hence. Rather than rushing to tear things down during the architectural vandalism period of the 1950s and ’60s, Savannah had preserved its link with the past, which in a personal way spoke to Constance and her own peculiar connection to distant times.

The Chandler House served breakfast from eight to ten each morning. Constance had arrived at quarter to ten and requested the table in the far corner of the room. Here, with her back to the wall, she could discreetly watch the other guests as well as the activity on the street and square. Amusingly, a couple of the clientele — tourists, obviously — had stopped her to ask for directions. They must have assumed she was a local, or perhaps even a hotel employee in period dress.

She had ordered a poached egg with remoulade and watercress, along with the bao zhong. There were two waitresses on duty, one young and one middle-aged, and — as there were now few customers — they were standing in the back. As ten o’clock neared, Constance pushed the half-eaten egg away and ordered a scone with clotted cream and blackcurrant jam. By twenty past there was only Constance, absorbed in a crossword puzzle, scone untouched, and the two waitresses nearby, relaxing and gossiping now that their shift was almost done.

Constance, gazing out the window at the passing traffic, listened intently to their conversation. The waitresses were talking in low tones, but not so low that she could not catch what they said. She casually recorded the relevant employee names and details in the squares of her crossword with an antique gold pencil. After a quarter of an hour, Constance contrived to knock the dish of clotted cream off her table.

“I’m so sorry!” she said as the waitresses rushed over to clean up the mess. While the women dabbed at the floor and tablecloth with fresh napkins, Constance rose, and in so doing jostled the rest of the spilled cream off the table — onto the black skirt of one waitress and the sleeve of the other. Constance renewed her apologies and insisted on helping clean up.

“Sit down here, across from me, and let me get you some fresh napkins,” she said.

“Oh, ma’am,” the middle-aged woman replied as she wiped the back of her hand across her starched serving apron, “we couldn’t do any such thing.”

“Nonsense,” said Constance, practically steering them into the other chairs at her table. “I wouldn’t think of leaving until I’ve made this right.”

Both women sat down protesting, but with decreasing sincerity as Constance — moving with far less clumsiness than a moment before — brought over a large number of cloth napkins and a pitcher full of ice water.

“You just use all the napkins you need, now,” Constance said, doing her best to parrot the speech patterns she’d heard other patrons use.

“But, ma’am,” said the younger, “there’ll be trouble if Mr. Drinkman—”

“If he should come in, there won’t be any trouble once I’ve spoken to him.”

The younger one’s eyes brightened. “Oh, so you’re a VIP guest?”

Constance smiled and waved a dismissive hand, saying nothing but implying everything. As the conversation continued, after a bit of shrewd name dropping, thanks to the crossword puzzle, Constance had both of them on an informal basis — Helen and Joan.

“I won’t keep you,” Constance said after the cleanup was finished. “I know how busy you must be, with Pat Ellerby drowned... not to mention the shock of it all. And everyone being questioned by the police.”

“Now, that’s the situation and the box it came in,” said Helen, nodding vigorously.

“Just between the three of us, do you think Mr. Drinkman is up to the task?” Constance said. “Pat never said much about him.”

“So you knew Mr. Ellerby?” Joan, the younger waitress, asked.

Constance nodded with a sorrowful look.

“Mr. Drinkman is trying hard,” Joan said. “But he’s got his work cut out for him, getting up to speed. Mr. Ellerby kept to himself, didn’t explain much about how things worked around here. Especially when it came to her.”

“Her?”

Joan cast her eyes up. “Miss Frost. He was very... protective of her.”

“More like she was very possessive of him.” Helen poured more water on a napkin and made a final dab at her sleeve. “It’s been a hot mess, I can tell you. Some guests got so spooked they left. Others have come running like ants to a picnic, especially with that vampire talk starting up again.” The waitresses exchanged a significant look. “And here’s Mr. Drinkman, busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest. You’ll excuse me, ma’am.”

“I heard Pat Ellerby was missing for a day before they found his body,” Constance said.

Both waitresses nodded. “He took his cigarette breaks in the square, but never at a set time. Often he’d disappear, just like that.” Helen snapped her fingers. “One minute he’d be reading the financial pages of the paper, and the next he’d have run off and shut himself up in that room of his.”

“What room?” Constance asked.

“He has a room at the foot of the basement stairs he keeps to himself,” said Joan. “Uses it for stock trading and that sort of thing. ‘Playing the market’ is what he called it. It was his passion, that’s for sure. And...” She paused a second. “Well, I think he was starting to get awful good at it.”

“How do you know?” Constance asked.

“These last few months, he’s bought himself some things. A new truck — a King Ranch, no less. And a fancy watch.”

“Joan!” Helen said reprovingly.

“How do you know they weren’t gifts from Miss Frost?”

“She isn’t the kind to pass out gifts,” Helen said.

“But Ellerby was one of her favorites?” Constance asked.

“He was the favorite,” Joan said. “But that didn’t make him an exception to her temper. Why, just a few nights back, she appeared out of nowhere, in the lobby — first time I’d seen her out in public in a year or two at least — and she headed on down to Ellerby’s basement office when he was out. So much for her being so weak and frail she can’t even leave her rooms! And, Lord sakes, you should have heard the argument upstairs later, when he came back! It sounded like an entire warehouse full of china was being smashed.”

The waitresses’ eyes sparkled at this schadenfreude-laced memory.

“When was this?” Constance asked casually.

“Let’s see...” Joan thought a moment. “That was the night before Mr. Ellerby disappeared. No... two nights before.”

Constance wondered if Frost was angry because she’d caught Ellerby skimming from hotel profits. “But until you saw her in the lobby, you thought she was too weak to leave her rooms?”

The two waitresses exchanged glances again. “Well, that’s what we’ve been told,” Helen said. Despite her volubility, Constance noticed that something about this question made her choose her words more carefully. “Especially these last couple of years.”

“Is she ill?”

“She’s... eccentric, like. And the older she got, the more she depended on Mr. Ellerby. He arranged all her meals, her cleaning and linens, doctor’s visits. He would go up there and read her poetry and listen to her play the piano. Classical.”

“Despite the recent argument,” Constance said.

“It might be you could chalk that up to a, well, lovers’ quarrel.” Joan lowered her voice. “Some folks around here had some queer ideas about the two of them. Now that he’s dead, she’s just stricken.”

“Meals have to be left just outside her door,” Helen added. “She won’t let anybody in. And nobody else has the key to her back stairs.”

Before Constance could ask about this, Joan added, voice still low: “Nobody wants to go in, either. It could be... dangerous.”

Assuming this to be a joke, Constance tittered politely. She let the titter die into a slight cough behind her napkin as she saw neither of the women were smiling.

The conversation abruptly ceased at the appearance of Drinkman in the doorway. The waitresses scrambled to their feet, gathering up the soiled napkins and clearing the crockery from her table. Constance watched as they bustled out a back door and into the kitchen. Then her gaze turned back to Chatham Square, and her violet eyes — enigmatic at the best of times — closed partway, like a cat’s, blinking at long intervals as she sat perfectly still in the late-morning sunlight.