A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies (30 page)

“Do you want to go with him?”

“I’ll not answer that. And I couldn’t ask you to do what you said, missus, get a Pinkerton for me.”

“You didn’t ask. I shall be at the Essex Hotel, but I think, Eunice, when I want to contact you, to let you know what’s found out, if anything, I shall do it by the mail. And don’t start wailing again because I’ve said that word. Don’t say anything. But I want you to go out now and find Mr. Pym, whom I’m willing to suggest is somewhere nearby.”

Eunice gave a gasp. “Oh! What’re you going to do to him?”

“I’m not going to do anything. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to look at him. Go to him and take him away somewhere. He’ll be wanting to know what you’ve told me, and you don’t need to tell him what I know. I meant what I said when I said I’ll keep your secret. You won’t believe me, but you might have done me a very great service by not posting that letter.”

“That’s not the truth. You’re feeling sorry for me.”

“Think as you wish. Did he tell you that in the letter to my uncle I had asked for my husband to be checked?”

“He said you had one that was with another lady. But you know, not that it’s a help to you, lots of the ladies here, they have the same kind of them. Of husbands.”

“I’m very sure of that. When I write to my uncle this time, I’ll only speak of your case.”

“You don’t want to know of the other lady?”

Charlotte smiled at her. “I think,” she said, “I’ll be better off keeping things simple. Now go and do what I’ve told you. Take him to another floor, into a room somewhere. Don’t come back to this room.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“Probably not,” said Charlotte.

The little maid took hold of one side of her apron like she was about to make a curtsy, and Charlotte said, “Don’t
do
that.” Eunice came closer to her, and stood on tiptoe—she was shorter than Charlotte, by a lot—and kissed her on the cheek.

“Eunice?”

“What, missus?”

“Don’t forget my aunt’s dress.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t.” She scooped it up off the bed.

“And tell Mr. Pym, if he attempts to establish contact with me, in any way, I shall go to Mr. Alcorn, and also to his college, and also to his mother and father, and I shall make things very unpleasant for him indeed, whether or not he’s going off to his tutor at his hospital. I expect that Mr. Pym would not be interested in having me do what I would do.”

“He’ll wonder why you would say so, if I haven’t told you all of the truth.”

“You can say I’m very cross because I don’t believe in stealing people’s stories and passing them off as one’s own, as a general rule. You can tell him you told me that part of it, because I had forced you to.”

The little maid nodded. She tucked up the tablecloth of sandwiches under one arm and hugged the dress to her chest, as if she were already trying it on.

“Goodbye, Eunice, and if you thank me again, I will scream.”

“Goodbye, missus.”

Charlotte threw the bolt to let her out. No one was in the hall. He was probably waiting for Eunice on the stairs.

She gathered up her purse, her jacket, her coat. She left Everett Gerson’s big mittens on the bureau; a maid could have them. She counted the rest of her money. Enough for a cab. Enough for a room, if the Essex required a deposit. Enough for tea, for lunch. She was hungry again already. Well, the sandwiches had been breakfast, not lunch.

She’d have a bath as soon as she could. She wondered what the tub would be like, and if the running water came out hot, or would have to be heated. She looked down at her shoes. They were going to be ruined out there. Maybe she’d go shopping in the morning. Buy new ones.

She opened the door and peeked out into the hall, and a voice said, “Better if you went through the tunnel to next door, Mrs. Heath, and went out into the street from over there.”

“Why, thank you, Moaxley. Is there a policeman outside?”

“A lady from the Society. Got herself fixed up like she’s selling hot apples off a cart. We know her pretty well, not that she’s aware of it. You might want to go in a direction away from the apple cart.”

“Is there going to be a carriage for me?”

“There is.”

“I should have known you’d turn up.”

“It’s my job. Would you want for me to go with you?”

“I’ll be fine. I know the way.”

“Well, then,” said Moaxley, and Charlotte said, “You looked splendid in your army uniform, the other night.”

He took the compliment huffily, but he put back his shoulders and let his chest, very slightly, expand. “Least I could do for the occasion,” he said. “Mind your step when you get to outside. It’s rotten wet out there.”

“I’ll be careful.” Moaxley held out his hand and she shook it. “I’ll just stay by the top of the stairs till you’re into where you need to be headed. And by the way, not that it’s my place to say so, about the dress, it’s as they say, you know, becoming, on you.” She hadn’t put her coat on. His smile made her blush.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

And she went quietly down the hall to the tunnel-panel. Pushed it open. Looked into that gray, lustrous light, like the light near the mouth of a cave. What time had he said he’d be there for the meeting?

Five o’clock. A private dining room. “I bet he’ll get there early,” she thought. “I bet he’ll come alone. I bet his family doesn’t know where he is. I bet his coat smells like horses from that sleigh driver.”

There’d be plenty of time to draw up the thing she was just now beginning to plan. Hotel stationery would do just fine. This time it would have a letterhead.

She wouldn’t need a lawyer. She’d act as her own. An affidavit, was that what it was called? A solemn legal document. She’d act like Uncle Owen and Uncle Chessy, put together. “I, Charlotte Heath, born Charlotte Kemple, hereby swear that I shall ask my husband no questions concerning behaviors of his,” she planned.

Was “behaviors” a suitable word? It would do.

“I shall not receive information pertaining to those unasked questions, provided that the behaviors, aforementioned, are solemnly sworn, by my husband, to have ceased, in a way that would cause them to be ceased
permanently
. And I shall expect from my husband, in return, exactly the very same thing.”

She’d tinker with the actual wording. Print her name at the bottom, then sign it. Sign it before or after he agreed to it? After. What if he didn’t agree to it? He would. He wouldn’t.

He would. He would have to. She thought about the way he looked at her when she hadn’t mentioned noticing that he was wearing the striped muffler. He’d wanted her to mention it. He’d looked hurt.

I bet he’s got it on when he comes into the hotel, she thought. I bet he won’t expect me to be there ahead of him. I bet he doesn’t know I understand what he was doing when he went out to the Valley, where he’d found me the first time.

“Godspeed, Mrs. Heath,” called out Moaxley in a hoarse whisper, and Charlotte stopped for a moment to let her eyes get used to the light. Maybe, she thought, she wouldn’t go shopping first thing in the morning. Maybe she’d send for her horses. There would have to be a stable near the Essex.

She propelled herself forward, at a trot, rounding the tunnel corners with ease, with her heart tensed up and her hair coming out of its pins and tumbling around her. She didn’t stop to pick up the pins or fix her hair. She wouldn’t care if she looked windblown. Her legs, as if acting on their own, picked up the pace and went faster, at nearly a run, like those babies in the lanes, the ones who didn’t fall down.

Acclaim for Ellen Cooney’s

A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies

“An awakening to self, to possibility. Ellen Cooney’s prose is beautifully descriptive.”

—
Charleston Post and Courier

“Charming.”

—
Entertainment Weekly

“An undeniably unorthodox form of equal justice…. These revels are done with wit and gaiety, along with a grain of chastening sense.”

—
The Boston Globe

“Imaginative and suspenseful, and you won’t guess the ending until you’re there.”

—
Portland Press Herald

“Atmospheric…. [
A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies
is] a pleasant book to curl up with…. Intriguing.”

—
Newsday

“The period detail is so complete readers will feel as though they are right here in New England, circa 1900.”

—
Pages

“This remarkably talented author writes in a refined, understated prose.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

“The richness of lives that are limited without being narrow is [Cooney’s] forte.”

—
Ms.

ALSO BY ELLEN COONEY

Gun Ball Hill

Small Town Girl

All the Way Home

The Old Ballerina

The White Palazzo

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2007

Copyright © 2005 by Ellen Cooney

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2005.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:

Cooney, Ellen.

A private hotel for gentle ladies / Ellen Cooney.

p. cm.

1. Hotels—Fiction. 2. Runaway wives—Fiction. 3. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. 4. Male prostitutes—Fiction. 5. New England—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.05788P75                           2005                           2005043135

www.anchorbooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-27974-3

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