Hotel

"What is it?" Peter said. "What's happened?"

"Hit and run. Happened earlier tonight."

Christine asked, "Was anyone killed?"

The policeman nodded. "Little girl of seven." Responding to their shocked expressions, he told them, "Walking with her mother. The mother's in the hospital. Kid was killed outright. Whoever was in the car must have known.

They drove right on. Beneath his breath he added, "Bastards!"

"Will you find out who it is?"

"We'll find out." The officer nodded grimly, indicating the activity behind the barrier. "The boys usually do, and this one's upset them. There's glass on the road, and the car that did it must be marked." More headlights were approaching from behind and he motioned them on.

They were silent as Christine drove slowly through the detour and, at the end of it, was waved back into the regular lane. Somewhere in Peter's mind was a nagging impression, an errant half-thought he could not define. He supposed the incident itself was bothering him, as sudden tragedy always did, but a vague uneasiness kept him preoccupied until, with surprise, he heard Christine say, "We're almost home."

They had left Elysian Fields for Prentiss Avenue. A moment later the little car swung right, then left, and stopped in the parking area of a modern, two-story apartment building.

"If all else fails," Peter called out cheerfully, "I can go back to bartending." He was mixing drinks in Christine's living room, with its soft tones of moss-green and blue, to the accompanying sound of breaking eggshells from the kitchen adjoining.

"Were you ever one?"

"For a while." He measured three ounces of rye whiskey, dividing it two ways, then reached for Angostura and Peychaud's bitters. "Sometime I'll tell you about it." As an afterthought he increased the proportion of rye, using a handkerchief to mop some extra drops which had fallen on the Wedgwood-blue rug.

Straightening up, he cast a glance around the living room, with its comfortable mixture of furnishings and color - a French provincial sofa with a leaf-design tapestry print in white, blue, and green; a pair of Hepplewhite chairs near a marble-topped chest, and the inlaid mahogany sideboard on which he was mixing drinks. The walls held some Louisiana French prints and a modern impressionist oil. The effect was of warmth and cheerfulness, much like Christine herself, he thought. Only a cumbrous mantel clock on the sideboard beside him provided an incongruous note.

The clock, ticking softly, was unmistakably Victorian, with brass curlicues and a moisture-stained, timeworn face. Peter looked at it curiously.

When he took the drinks to the kitchen, Christine was emptying beaten eggs from a mixing dish into a softly sizzling pan.

"Three minutes more," she said, "that's all."

He gave her the drink and they clinked glasses.

"Keep your mind on my omelet," Christine said. "It's ready now."

It proved to be everything she had promised - light, fluffy, and seasoned with herbs. "The way omelets should be," he assured her, "but seldom are."

"I can boil eggs too."

He waved a hand airily. "Some other breakfast."

Afterward they returned to the living room and Peter mixed a second drink. It was almost two A.M.

Sitting beside her on the sofa he pointed to the odd-appearing clock. "I get the feeling that thing is peering at me - announcing the time in a disapproving tone."

"Perhaps it is," Christine answered. "It was my father's. It used to be in his office where patients could see it. It's the only thing I saved."

There was a silence between them. Once before Christine had told him, matter-of-factly, about the airplane accident in Wisconsin. Now he said gently, "After it happened, you must have felt desperately alone."

She said simply, "I wanted to die. Though you get over that, of course - after a while."

"How long?"

She gave a short, swift smile. "The human spirit mends quickly. That part - wanting to die, I mean - took just a week or two."

"And - after?"

"When I came to New Orleans," Christine said, "I tried to concentrate on not thinking. It got harder, and I had less success as the days went by. I knew I had to do something but I wasn't sure what - or where."

She stopped and Peter said, "Go on."

"For a while I considered going back to university, then decided not.

Getting an arts degree just for the sake of it didn't seem important and besides, suddenly it seemed as if I'd grown away from it all."

"I can understand that."

Christine sipped her drink, her expression pensive. Observing the firm line of her features, he was conscious of a quality of quietude and self-possession about her.

"Anyway," Christine went on, "one day I was walking on Carondelet and saw a sign which said 'Secretarial School.' I thought - that's it! I'll learn what I need to, then get a job involving endless hours of work. In the end that's exactly what happened."

"How did the St. Gregory fit in?"

"I was staying there. I had since I came from Wisconsin. Then one morning the Times-Picayune arrived with breakfast, and I saw in the classifieds that the managing director of the hotel wanted a personal secretary. It was early, so I thought I'd be first, and wait. In those days W.T. arrived at work before everyone else. When he came, I was waiting in the executive suite."

"He hired you on the spot?"

"Not really. Actually, I don't believe I ever was hired. It was just that when W.T. found out why I was there he called me in and began dictating letters, then firing off instructions to be relayed to other people in the hotel. By the time more applicants arrived I'd been working for hours, and I took it on myself to tell them the job was filled."

Peter chuckled. "It sounds like the old man."

"Even then he might never have known who I was, except about three days later I left a note on his desk. I think it read 'My name is Christine Francis,' and I suggested a salary. I got the note back without comment - just initialed, and that's all there's ever been."

"It makes a good bedtime story." Peter rose from the sofa, stretching his big body. "That clock of yours is staring again. I guess I'd better go."

"It isn't fair," Christine objected. "All we've talked about is me." She was conscious of Peter's masculinity. And yet, she thought, there was a gentleness about him too. She had seen something of it tonight in the way that he had picked up Albert Wells and carried him to the other room. She found herself wondering what it would be like to be carried in his arms.

"I enjoyed it - a lovely antidote to a lousy day. Anyway, there'll be other times." He stopped, regarding her directly. "Won't there?"

As she nodded in answer, he leaned forward, kissing her lightly.

In the taxi for which he had telephoned from Christine's apartment, Peter McDermott relaxed in comforting weariness, reviewing the events of the past day, which had now spilled over into the next. The daytime hours had produced their usual quota of problems, culminating in the evening with several more: the brush with the Duke and Dutchess of Croydon, the near demise of Albert Wells, and the attempted rape of Marsha Preyscott. There were also unanswered questions concerning Ogilvie, Herbie Chandler, and now Curtis O'Keefe, whose advent could be the cause of Peter's own departure. Finally there was Christine, who had been there all the time, but whom he had not noticed before in quite the way he had tonight.

But he warned himself: women had been his undoing twice already.

Whatever, if anything, developed between Christine and himself should happen slowly, with caution on his own part.

On Elysian Fields, heading back toward the city, the taxi moved swiftly.

Passing the spot where he and Christine had been halted on the outward journey, he observed that the barrier across the road had disappeared and the police were gone. But the reminder produced once again the vague uneasiness he had experienced earlier, and it continued to trouble him all the way to his own apartment a block or two from the St. Gregory Hotel.

TUESDAY

1

As with all hotels, the St. Gregory stiffed early, coming awake like a veteran combat soldier after a short, light sleep. Long before the earliest waking guest stumbled drowsily from bed to bathroom, the machinery of a new innkeeping day slid quietly into motion.

Near five a.m., night cleaning parties which for the past eight hours had toiled through public rooms, lower stairways, kitchen areas and the main lobby, tiredly began dissembling their equipment, preparatory to storing it for another day. In their wake floors gleamed and wood and metalwork shone, the whole smelling pleasantly of fresh wax.

One cleaner, old Meg Yetmein, who had worked nearly thirty years in the hotel, walked awkwardly, though anyone noticing might have taken her clumsy gait for tiredness. The real reason, however, was a three-pound sirloin steak taped securely to the inside of her thigh. Half an hour ago, choosing an unsupervised few minutes, Meg had snatched the steak from a kitchen refrigerator. From long experience she knew exactly where to look, and afterward how to conceal her prize in an old polishing rag en route to the women's toilet. And here, safe behind a bolted door, she brought out an adhesive bandage and fixed the steak in place. The hour or so's cold, clammy discomfort was well worth the knowledge that she could walk serenely past the house detective who guarded the staff entrance and suspiciously checked outgoing packages or bulging pockets.

The procedure - of her own devising - was foolproof, as she had proven many times before.

Two floors above Meg and behind an unmarked, securely locked door on the convention mezzanine, a switchboard operator put down her knitting and made the first morning wake-up call. The operator was Mrs. Eunice Ball, widow, grandmother, and tonight senior of the three operators who maintained the graveyard shift. Sporadically, between now and seven a.m., the switchboard trio would awaken other guests whose instructions of the night before were recorded in a card-index drawer in front of them, divided into quarter hours. After seven o'clock the tempo would increase.

With experienced fingers, Mrs. Ball flipped through the cards. As usual, she observed, the peak would be 7:45, with close to a hundred and eighty calls requested. Even working at high speed, the three operators would have trouble completing that many in less than twenty minutes, which meant they would have to start early, at 7:35 - assuming they were through with the 7:30

calls by then and continue until 7:55, which would take them smack into the eight o'clock batch.

Mrs. Ball sighed. Inevitably today there would be complaints from guests to management alleging that some stupid, asleep-at-the-switchboard operator had called them either too early or too late.

One thing was to the good, though. Few guests at this time of morning were in a mood for conversation, or were likely to be amorous, the way they sometimes were at night - the reason for the locked, unmarked outer door.

Also, at eight a.m., the day operators would be coming in - a total of fifteen by the day's peak period - and by nine the night shift, including Mrs. Ball would be home and abed.

Time for another wake-up. Once more abandoning her knitting, Mrs. Ball pressed a key, letting a bell far above her ring out stridently.