Page 18

Chapter Eighteen

The rest of the day was inevitable, then.

As clouds rolled in over the mountains, erasing the brilliant sun and casting the interior of the hotel in subdued shadow, June tidied up her business as much as she could.

First, she let herself into the Glass Room—where Pennybacker and the Swiss smiled at her while tactfully flipping the documents on the desk onto their faces—and told them about Sabine and Hannelore.

“And you want me to make it right, I suppose. Bickenbached again! This is going to ruin my hostage math.” But Pennybacker used a pen to point at a stack of paper, which the conductor passed to him, and made some notes on it. “I will see what I can do.”

Ordinarily this would have been where the harpsichordist made a sly or foolish comment, but he was uncharacteristically quiet as rain began to hiss against the window. This reminded June that Pennybacker had said he had a thought about the Swiss and the incident in the Avallon II. Later, she’d ask about it, if she remembered, if it still seemed important.

“I got—are you all right, Miss Hudson?” Pennybacker asked.

“I just have a bit of work I’m not looking forward to.” She started to say more, then stopped. They didn’t need to hear any of it. This belonged only to her. “What were you going to say?”

He said, “I got a letter from my wife. All these weeks of me sending letters and hearing nothing, and the moment I stop, she sends one! Just as you said.”

“What’d it say?”

“That I drove her into the arms of another man she felt nothing for.”

June said, “That’s a hell of a drive.”

“She wants me to think about what I’ve done.”

“Shouldn’t we all?” the harpsichordist asked. “What did you do?”

“I think I slept late on weekends,” he admitted. “Once, I laughed at one of her jokes, but”—he lowered his voice—“it turned out to not be a joke.”

The conductor asked, “And you want this woman back?”

Pennybacker pressed a hand over his heart. Quite suddenly, June was fond of the three of them. Their casual way with each other, their concerted effort to maintain a friendship across years and countries. The gentle ribbing that never needled over into real meanness. She should remember all this later. This was one of the ways happiness could look, even when discussing unhappy things. Yes, she should remember it well, in the Avallon IV. After the Avallon IV, when it would be hard to.

June said, “You shouldn’t reply to your wife, Agent Pennybacker.”

Pennybacker put his hands on the table with some agitation. “Don’t tell me to give up on her. I’m quite tired of my siblings—and now Rudy and Rufey as well—telling me to give up on her.”

“I’m not. If you want her back, don’t reply to that letter. Trust me, she’ll keep chasing.”

He asked plaintively, “How can you be sure?”

June pushed the door open. “I’m very good at my job.”

···

After stopping in the Glass Room, June spent two hours in her office, copying pertinent tasks and information over from her ledgers and to-do lists, making certain it was legible to third parties. She stacked the dishes she’d accumulated over the course of the day and checked the drawers to make sure she hadn’t stashed any perishables in them. She had; she plucked out a few browning apple slices that she had hidden away to give to the dachshunds and forgotten about. As the rain continued to fall outside, she looked over the outstanding orders for coal, firewood, and ice, making sure nothing would require her attention in the immediate future.

Then, she endured a conversation with Ovid Persinger in the storeroom, making sure the hotel was stocked for the rest of the week’s meals. She paused in the Grotto to tell Fortéscue to call a meeting with all his staff to improve morale.

“Are you going down?” he asked her. When she nodded, he disappeared into the back room and returned with a chocolate bonbon, which he placed in the center of her palm. “ Bonne chance , Hoss, thank you.”

Finally, she took the dachshunds to Toad’s office. Inside, the head of housekeeping was slamming things about, getting ready for the ritual of cleaning room 411. She whirled to June, ready to blast, but then fell silent as June pointed the dogs to their place under Toad’s desk.

“You’ll mind them, won’t you?” June asked.

Toad used a dry mop to gently but firmly press the wire-haired dachshund fully beneath the desk. “How long will it be?”

June considered how the water had felt and how long she had been putting it off. “Two days. No. You better give me three days.”

“Three days?”

“I put it off too long. There’s snails all over the Winnet fields.”

“Clemons knows?”

“We agreed on it together.”

Toad angrily threw four hand towels onto the housekeeping cart just outside in the hall. June wondered if she had been as upset back when it was Mr. Francis’s turn for this. Before June’s time, this happened more often; that was her understanding. The water more mercurial, the hotel more fragile. Everything Mr. Francis and June had done had been to establish a more permanent peace. It had been a long time since the Avallon IV had needed her.

June offered Toad the bonbon Fortéscue had meant for her. Toad took it in her large fingers and studied it as if it were a device she needed to understand and replicate. Then, with a snort, she bit it in half, and gave the other half to June. Together they stood in silence, sucking and savoring and swallowing, and then June neatly stacked four more towels on the cart and headed out.

···

Finally, June walked down to the Avallon IV, holding an umbrella and darkening the toes of her Mary Janes in the puddles. The rain began to really come down just as she reached the carved boulder; hurriedly she unlocked the door and stepped inside. She cast one look back up the hill at the Avallon, which looked gloomy and menacing in the downpour, like a giant peering over the edge of the world. An illusion, of course, a trick of the weather; everything ailing the hotel was invisible.

June reminded herself that she loved this place.

Then she closed the door behind herself.