The Kingdom of Bones

THIRTY-SIX

The manager laid down her letter of recommendation and said, “Anyone held in such regard by Mister Patenotre is guaranteed a welcome at this hotel.”

“I should think he’ll be happy to hear it,” Louise said. “I have two servants.”

“Got a nice room for them in our annex. I assume they can share?”

“I would guess so. They’ve been married for longer than I can say.”

“That’s fine, then,” the manager said. “For how long will you be staying with us?”

“It’s hard to be sure. I have it in mind to find somewhere more permanent, but…you know how it is.”

He got up from behind his desk and walked around it. His office was paneled and splendid and as badly lit as a chapel in a funeral home. She rose and took his offered hand and they shook on the deal like a couple of men.

He handed back her letter and said, “Please regard us as your home in Richmond for as long as you need one. We usually announce arrivals with a few lines in the Dispatch.”

“In this case, I’d rather you didn’t,” Louise said. “It’s not always the wisest thing for a woman who travels alone.”

“I understand you perfectly. Can I help you in any other way?”

“Somewhere to lock up my trinkets would be nice.”

“I’ll arrange a deposit box. Stop by the desk the next time you’re passing, and you can pick up the key.”

She declined the assistance of a bell-hopper and made her own way up to the second-floor room, to where the Silent Man and his wife had already gone ahead with her bags. On show in the lobby was a plan for the hotel’s expansion, intended for sometime in the near future. Instead of the modest low-rise building of the present day, the architect’s drawing showed four great towers of seven and twelve floors, a footbridge linking two blocks across Eighth Street, and a Murphy’s flag flying proudly on each roof.

So despite what the manager had said, it would not do to become too attached to the place. Like everything and everywhere else, all here was in flux, a fast-moving river that carried all before it toward a new tomorrow. She’d grown up in a world where values were constant, and could be relied upon not to change. Now it was as if nothing could be relied on at all.

The Mute Woman was alone in the suite. Louise’s trunk was open and some of her dresses were already hanging in the closet. She went over to her trunk, intending to set out her few familiar objects on the dressing table in the way that she always preferred. But the Mute Woman closed the lid and stood there with her hand on it, holding it closed.

She pointed toward the floor above.

“Patenotre’s rooms?”

A nod.

Louise left her, and ascended one floor. In the corridor she found the Silent Man, waiting. He’d already picked the lock on Patenotre’s suite for her.

“The usual warning?” she said.

She let herself into the suite and closed the door behind her. As always she felt the steady pressure of their expectations, and the faint humiliation of their disapproval. From the beginning, they’d treated her the way that experienced sergeants might treat a raw young officer, their deference tinged with contempt. No, correct that; they’d held off until her failure to slaughter the child they’d procured for her. After that, the honeymoon was over. But by then, it was too late to change. The journey was well under way.

She knew that she was not their most cooperative student. She knew where this journey would lead. And if the outlook seemed bleak…well, what had she asked for?

She looked around. The sitting room had been tidied. It had that too-straight, untouched look. She went over to the writing table and tried the drawers, which she found unlocked. In them she found personal papers, unpaid bills, and some letters of no interest. There were a few items torn from newspapers and magazines, most of them making some reference to Patenotre’s home county in Louisiana. She found a few loose coins, but no real cash or anything of value.

She didn’t trouble to leave things as she’d found them. In fact, she went to the couch and punched a couple of the cushions, just to make them look sat-upon. At that point there came two taps on the wall, spaced a second apart.

Louise crossed the room in silence and spun into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. It had no lock, but it had a thumb latch that she slid across. Then she waited and listened. After less than a minute, she heard the door to the sitting room open and close. Then the sounds of drawers being pushed all the way shut, of cushions being picked up and slapped into shape.

When the bedroom doorknob was turned and the door rattled against the latch, Louise took a step back. She was not nervous.

She heard the maid on the other side of the door call out, “Mister Patenotre? Do you want me to make your bed up, sir?”

Louise pretended to yawn, making a sound that could have come from anyone—man, woman, even an animal—and which could have been intended to mean anything at all.

In the same raised voice, the maid said, “I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you, sir,” and went. Louise heard the outer door close a few moments later.

She looked at the bed. It was still made up from the day before. Jules Patenotre hadn’t returned to his rooms last night, nor would he ever again. But it would suit her best if he didn’t disappear just yet. She threw back the covers, mussed the sheets, and put a dent in the pillow, giving the bed a slept-in look. Then she searched the bedroom.

Shoes. How many pairs of shoes did a man need? Behind them in the bottom of the closet she thought at first that she’d struck lucky, because she found a locked box about the size of a gun case. Louise didn’t have the Silent Man’s skills, but she went and got the letter knife from the sitting room, and forced the lock.

The resemblance to a gun case was no coincidence. The box contained two guns. It also contained a collection of obscene postcards and a small number of books. She took out one of these and read the title: A Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Medicine and Venery. It was one of an edition of three hundred from a publisher with no address other than “Paris.”

She left the box’s contents as she’d found them. The damage to the lid wasn’t obvious. The rooms had yielded nothing of use, but she wasn’t done with Jules Patenotre yet. Before leaving, she took one last look around. She’d have the Silent Man or his wife come in and untidy them every day for a week or two. It would blur over any apparent link between her own arrival and her patron’s disappearance. It wouldn’t matter that his room key stayed behind the front desk, as long as the clerks didn’t keep a record.

She went back down to the lobby.

“The manager promised me a strongbox?” she said to the clerk on duty.

“Right here for you, ma’am,” he said, and reached under the desk to bring out a ledger. “If I can get a specimen signature in our security book.”

“How does this work?”

“I’ll walk you through it.”

She signed as Mary D’Alroy, and then he led her to the small room just off the lobby where the wall of strongboxes was to be found. He showed her how two keys were used to open the door to her personal safe.

“This one you keep,” he explained, showing her the key on the smaller tag. “It fits your box and no other. This second key is the hotel’s master key. You need both keys to open any box.”

With that, he left her alone. As soon as he’d gone, she dug into her clutch bag and took out the key that she’d found in the pocket of Jules Patenotre’s coat. She tried it in each of the strongbox doors in turn, until she found the one that it matched. Then she took the hotel’s master key out of her own safe’s door and used it to open the second lock.

She drew out Patenotre’s long tray and lifted the metal lid. This was more like it. There was a substantial amount of money, both in paper and gold coin. Her reaction was not of greed or of pleasure, but of relief. She transferred it all across to her own box. There was another key, a big one, with nothing to say what it was for. She took that. There were some pieces of jewelry, but she left these behind. Such things could be identified. The risk of that exceeded any value they might have—which, in all honesty, looked as if it wouldn’t be much. She was no expert, but to her eye these were sentimental pieces, not heirlooms.

There were also some papers, legal documents—probably the last remaining records of a now-extinguished line. She was going to leave those as well, but she gave them a glance first in case there was anything involving stocks or shares. Without her close-work glasses, she had to strain a little. What she saw prompted her to stuff all the papers into her clutch bag for a closer reading later on.

She’d been in the room for about five minutes. Long enough. She slid both boxes back into the wall, closed the heavy doors on them, locked both sets of locks, and then took the hotel’s master key back to the desk.

“Very ingenious system you have,” she told the clerk as she handed in the master.

“We like to think it’s pretty well foolproof,” he said. “Good day to you, ma’am.”

She read his name off his badge.

“And to you, Charles,” she said, and went back up to her suite.