Winter at Death's Hotel Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Please Ring for Service.” She touched it, got a silvery clang, waited. A man she hadn’t seen before came out of some inner sanctum with a suggestion of pulling straight a tailcoat he’d just wriggled into. “Madame?”
    â€œOh, I’m up terribly early, I’m afraid. I, uh, might it be possible to have a second key to my room? And a cup of tea at this hour?”
    â€œTea, of course, madame. What room?”
    She didn’t know what room. Arthur knew what room, but she didn’t. She said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to look it up. Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle. I, uh, thought it would be nice if I could find a newspaper for my husband. To read, I mean. Oh, other than the New York Times , which is a splendid newspaper, I know, but something—lighter?” Why was she babbling? She did this; she knew she did; flustered by a man younger than she with no power over her and no reason to care what she did or why. Almost angrily, she said, “Where can I buy a newspaper?”
    â€œNewsstand right next to the hotel, madame—out the entrance and turn to the left.”
    â€œOh, thank you. Oh, I didn’t bring a hat.” She said it to herself, but he heard it and immediately rang a different bell for a boy—like most of the “boys” old enough to be her father—and said to him, “Tell the kitchen tea for Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle, now —will that be tea here or in the room, Mrs., um, Conan Doyle?—here, then. Then come right back and hop it next door to get her a newspaper; she’ll tell you which one.” He gave her a smile to tell her what a fine job he’d done of passing on her commands.
    She had to wait only seconds while the boy trotted somewhere in back and shouted “One tea now!” in a voice she could hear: the ground floor of the hotel was not to be congratulated for its quiet, then. And he was back, asking which paper.
    â€œOh, something, mmm, masculine. I should think something…” She was going to say “literary,” but the boy said, “Sporting, I’m on it,” and he was gone. Then he was back, she handed over a coin, and then she was seated in a leather armchair at one of the tables in the lobby holding a folded sheet of pink newsprint with POLICE GAZETTE across it in highly decorative, in fact vulgar, letters. Below that it said, EXTRA EDITION, the letters only slightly smaller, a jot more tasteful, and then in huge black type MURDERED AND DISFIGURED WOMAN’S CORPSE FOUND UNCLOTHED IN BOWERY ALLEY.
    Tea, toast, something called gooseberry jelly, and milk and sugar were put down in front of her.
    â€œGood heavens!”
    â€œMa’am?”
    â€œOh? Nothing. Oh, thank you.” A young woman was trying to spread a serviette over her lap.
    â€œWe got coffee, too. Just ast.”
    â€œYes, thank you, thank you so much.”
    She turned the pink page. There was an engraving of a woman lying in what could have been taken for an alley—something cylindrical might have been meant as an ashcan—but the woman was fully clothed. There was also a smaller engraving of a decrepit building and another next to it with a large sign that said “Bar,” under it the caption, “A Scene in the Bowery.” The rest of the page was type:
    â€œWorst Thing I ever Saw”
Says Policeman
    Veteran of Thirty Years
    â€œShe Shone in the Light of My Dark Lamp Like Marble”
    One of the most hideous crimes in the history of that hideous place, the Bowery, literally came to light yesternight when a policeman’s dark lantern picked out its disgusting lineaments from the gloom of an offal-strewn alley off Elizabeth Street. Making his rounds as was his wont, this grizzled veteran of three decades on the force, Patrolman James Malone, said to the Gazette of his awful discovery, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I never knew that human hand could be so