The Lady in Residence

by Allison Pittman

  “I noticed something in his notebook. He dated the top of the pages whenever he started a new investigation and then dated it at the end, near the bottom. But, he didn’t just write the date. He also cut the bottom corner off the page so he could easily find the first page of the next case. He didn’t cut the page on this one. I feel like he almost knew. I feel like I almost know, but there’s something missing—”

  “There is—”

  “—and something probably so obvious—”

  “—it is—”

  “—like right under our nose—”

  “—or, like right behind your nose.”

  She was about to take a bite but let her hand drop. “Behind my nose? What could possibly be behind my nose?”

  He pointed with his bitten stub of a rolled tortilla. “You. You’ve had the key your whole life.”

  Chapter 20

  Excerpt from

  My Spectral Accuser: The Haunted Life of Hedda Krause

  Published by the Author Herself

  Epilogue

  I am known, affectionately, as the Lady in Residence. Some of the old-timers, the ones who have been around almost as long as I have, still call me by my name. Though, of all the people I knew from my first night here at the Menger Hotel, only Bert remains. Mr. Sylvan died of a gentle stroke behind his desk not long after the end of the Second World War. I witnessed it from across the lobby. He was simply writing in his ledger, looked up, sent me a rare friendly smile, and then dropped behind the counter. We had long since mended our feud—partly owing to the weekly payment I made for my room, and partly to the visitors who came to hear my story.

  For my part, I had abided by my promise not to go to the press with my story. But the hotel was full of guests that night who had been questioned by Detective Carmichael. They left, taking the tale far and wide, and many brought it back. They’d whisper to Mr. Sylvan, Is the woman who was robbed by the ghost of Sallie White still here? And he would nod in my direction if I happened to be reading in the lobby or knitting by the light of the fire.

  Because, Reader, as you know unless you purchased this book by pure happenstance, I never left the Menger Hotel after that night. Quite literally, for nearly the first year. I opened my bank account via written correspondence, followed by coffee in the Menger dining room with the bank president to reassure him of my existence and situation. All that time, Mr. Sylvan’s truth rang in my ears, and I feared he would toss out my things if my person passed the threshold. The next year brought the Spanish influenza, giving me more reason to embrace my reclusive status. I watched the seasons change through the brief moments of the front door’s opening to the street as guests came and went.

  And I simply stayed.

  The same allowance that, while I was married, afforded me every sort of luxury—new hats, new furnishings, elaborate luncheons and garden parties, and box seats at our theater—only promised to meet my needs from one month to the next, with a little saved up in case the boys ever found out and put a stop to it. Since that night—the night I chose to live alone with my clean conscience and unapologetic freedom—David Thornhill has faithfully deposited the rightful amount in my account, and some bank employee has faithfully delivered my envelope of cash for whatever incidentals I might chance upon.

  There were times when I was at my loneliest, my heart its emptiest, my days long and my nights longer, that I wished I had chosen differently. There had been time. I could have caught him in the street, had I chased him. I could have sent an urgent note to the police station, asking them to contact him on my behalf. He’d told me he lived within blocks of the hotel; I could have spent a series of spring days knocking on each door until I found him. But make no mistake: the woman he left behind, the tragic victim of her choices as some might paint me, was completely and utterly whole. Something within me came to life the moment I opened the envelope he had left behind.

  I was, for the first time, free.

  Young readers, with all the advantages of modernity, cannot imagine what it meant to be a woman simply allowed to live. Independently. I was not kept by any man, nor was I in any danger of falling into poverty or degradation for lack of one. I had come to San Antonio with vague expectations of rebuilding the life I lived with my late husband, hoping that with enough charm and enough promise, I would fall into the circumstance as I had before. Mutual companions, mutual caretakers, mutual rescue. I had lived three weeks in the whirlwind courtship of Irvin Carmichael, my heart nearly bursting with love for him every moment of every day. That night, in the dark of the Menger Bar, with Bert watching in the shadows, I stood behind a closed door, choosing not to open it.

  I had no model to follow in this course. Men, I understood. All my life—and, Dear Reader, it is without an ounce of exaggeration that I use the word all—my survival has depended on the lust-driven generosity of men. Early on, men who ensured my mother’s keep. But too soon, the responsibility fell on me, and I quickly learned my value. I’d been loaned out, sought out, and sold time and again. My late husband rescued me, Irvin Carmichael loved me, and now I had the means simply to exist. Not with money that originated in my husband’s death, but with the same he had given me in life. I recalled what I learned during my time going to my husband’s church. I had a value far beyond rubies and a Father in heaven who saw past my faults and would loosen the pain that bound me.

  While some might define my life as one of leisure, my conscience pricks at the idea of perceived idleness. Opportunities abounded for me to fill my hours and occupy my hands as well as my mind while doing some good for a world that had, ultimately, been so good to me. I rolled bandages and knit socks during the Great War, though I pity the poor soldier who had to wear my first efforts. Later I knit hats and mufflers for the “Bundles for Britain,” sometimes working here by the roaring lobby fire, but other times with groups of women in church basements. There I came close to forming friendships, though I bristled at questions regarding my circumstances. It seemed the only way to avoid speculation and judgment was to keep to my own company. Occasionally I did agree to a dinner, even spending a vivacious evening with a certain undisciplined baseball slugger. Most of my outings, however, were with gentlemen I knew from my days before the robbery. These were the men who knew me at the peak of my beauty, and what a comfort they were to reassure me that it hadn’t faded. I saw the Menger nearly burn to the ground and then swell to twice its size, the bar moved to a place where I’d have to navigate a sea-sized lobby to have my occasional brandy with Bert. But my life, my room, my memories remained small.

  Through all of this history—disease, depression, destruction, and war—I heard not a word from Detective Irvin Carmichael. And so I carved out a place for myself, vowing never again to measure my worth by a man’s words. Not that I would have turned him away, had I kept my power to bewitch him back to my side. Since the night all was taken from me, I wore only the ring given to me by my late husband, letting myself be haunted by the ghost of respectability.

  As for that other haunting, I cannot say that Sallie White ever left me completely. I never abandoned the habit of listening for her in those moments of darkness between shutting off my light and drifting off to sleep. Like other guests, I have seen shadows, felt brushes against me, experienced the flickering of lights and the persistent sound of doors opening and closing, but I’m not so quick to attribute them to a phantom presence. Our hearts like to tease our minds and make our eyes see what will bring a rush of feeling—both in love and fear. In the dullness of life, I sometimes longed for the terrible jolt of seeing Sallie White.

  Bert remained my constant companion, and once I’d decided my reputation was my own to determine, I visited him several evenings a week, running down the news of the world while enjoying a glass of wine in the summer or a hot toddy in winter. I teased him over the years, as my hair turned gray and the skin on my neck found new folds, he remained nearly unchanged. A bit of salt in his close-cropped curls, but hadn’t it always been t
here? His face softened with familiarity, and every time I walked in to see him standing behind the bar, I felt instant comfort and release. Once a year, on Valentine’s Day, after the bar closed, he cooked up the supper he’d made for Carmichael and me and we’d talk about that night. Over the years, the more my encounter slipped into memory, the more my irrationality became apparent. We could laugh, Bert and I, about my scream-filled run through the halls, my erratic moves through the lobby.

  “You could have been one of those actresses on the screen,” Bert said, though for all I knew he’d never been to a motion picture. I didn’t care for them myself. I always preferred the stage, seeing flesh and blood characters brought to life right in front of me. Films disconcerted me, knowing the men and women on the screen were actually existing in another place in time. But I knew what he meant. My exaggerated expressions—all in an attempt to convey the overwhelming realness of my terror.

  “I should not have left my room,” I said. Ten years had passed since that night. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, the last of the romantic couples chased away. I looked forward to this night all year—my celebration with the one person I counted as family. This was the only time I talked about the night, the only time I gave the memories free rein in conversation. Oh, I told the story to strangers, but there is a gulf of difference between telling a story and sharing a story. With Bert, my words found a soft landing. We could laugh and not feel offense; he could wonder and not question. On this night in 1925, I finally hit upon the perfect alternate history. “If I’d simply stood in my doorway and screamed for help, the robbery would never have happened.”

  “Might have taken some time for anybody to hear you.”

  “You would have heard me.” Of this, I was sure.

  “Might never have met that detective …”

  “Or had my heart broken …”

  “Or found your money.” This was always his favorite part of the story because my allowance kept me here. “God brings people in and out of a life. Or in and out of a place. Guess He wanted you and me to stay.”

  “Like Sallie?”

  He shook his head and chuckled. “Just when I thought you was coming to some senses, there you go.”

  I touched his arm and reassured him that I wasn’t going anywhere, neither in matter nor in mind. I finished my meal, and he walked me to the door, dropping a kiss to my cheek as too was our annual custom. A woman must be allowed to feel like a lady all the days of her life.

  I walked through the darkened hotel—a path I could have taken with both eyes blind. We say such things, but in my later years it has proven nearly true. I was still young then—not quite forty—and full of a good meal washed down with an equally good drink, and all the comfort of conversation on a cold night. The lobby was deserted, the only sound being “Good night, Mrs. Krause,” spoken by the man charged to run the desk overnight. I wished him the same and began my ascent, unable to explain the niggling of dread within me.

  I heard her before I saw her. She was humming a tune that would take years for me to track down: “The Old Rugged Cross.” The notes were soft and uneven, and they stopped the moment I turned the corner to my hallway.

  The way she stood at my door made me feel like she’d been standing there for hours. I knew—every part of me knew—this was Sallie White. My Sallie White. My personal phantom. However, tonight there was no translucence. No levitation. No blurring of her face. She waited, every ounce of her form as solid as my own. Yes, I wasn’t just seeing Sallie White, I was remembering her—all those times my mind played its trick, holding on to the idea of the dead come back to life rather than the living come to steal and to kill.

  “Mrs. Krause?” Her voice was thick and deep, though nothing like the strangled, abrasive sound that had called my name from beyond the door.

  “I know who you are.” I choose not to use her name in this book, as I have little more than speculation. Though, on our next Valentine’s Day, I offered it to Bert and thus confirmed a suspicion he’d held all along. When I asked why he’d never told me, he said, “Answers are only true if you find them for yourself.”

  She didn’t speak another word. She didn’t budge either, and I might have remained standing in my hallway to this day if I hadn’t stepped toward the door. I moved as if I could walk right through her, imagining her to be the shadow of the photograph, the mist of that night when she flew. I stopped before I touched her, studying every feature, matching it to memory and fear. Then I felt her hand—cold and dry—her fingers curled around mine, opening them. Something hard and small dropped into the middle of my palm, and my fingers closed again. She moved her face even closer, until I could no longer see her features but could feel her breath—living, warm breath—in my ear.

  “I’ve been ruined since that night, Hedda Krause.” Here was the tortured vocal of my nightmare, though when I drew away, I saw her smile. No warmth there, though. It was broad and menacing—the kind of smile that one assumes after playing a trick. And, oh, the trick she’d played on me.

  I knew Bert was downstairs, and the night clerk, for all the help he’d be. I could scream loud enough to wake the dead and bring them running to my side. Instead, I watched her walk away, feeling the heaviness in her step, knowing the coat she wore would do nothing to protect her from the cold of the night waiting outside. I held my breath as she walked right past the stairs and went to the little sofa on the landing where she nudged at a bundle that unfolded itself to become a little boy. She picked him up, his arms wrapped firmly around her neck, and disappeared down the stairs.

  Not until that moment did I open my door and turn on a lamp to bathe my little room in amber. I stepped over and held my hand beneath it, knowing what I’d find. My earring. Amethyst rimmed in tiny diamonds. Come back to me at last. Carmichael held the other. I went to my bed and—fully dressed—curled up beneath the covers. I had no feelings for Sallie White—no anger or remorse or pity. For her, I was as cold as I believed her blood to be. My only thoughts, as I brought the jewel so close to my eyes that I could see only it and my palm surrounding, was a longing for a reunion with its partner. To see him again. To take him if he’d have me.

  Thus, my answer. When the curious, the romantic, the thrill seekers and amateur detectives ask me: “Why do you live here? Why do you stay?” I tell them—I am simply waiting for that which I have lost to be found and to make its way home where its partner is buried beneath a new foundation. My soul is at peace in this world and will pass on in peace to the next, where I will seek the true Sallie White and take her in my arms to give her the strength and comfort she was never afforded here. Until that day, however, I continue to wish her good night as I usher each day into darkness. And when the sun comes up, I watch. I wait. I reside.

  Chapter 21

  Hold that thought,” Dini said. “Remember, the idea is uninterruption for the important stuff.”

  “What could possibly interrupt us?” Quin looked around as if anticipating a secret waitress to come from around the corner.

  “You have obviously never been given the care of a cast iron skillet. Five minutes to clean it out, or everything will stick and—you don’t want to know.” She charged him with pouring each of them a fresh cup of coffee, ignoring his startled look when she instructed him about how much of the generic nondairy creamer to add to her cup. Then she sent him to wait in the living room while she ran water into the cooled iron skillet and scrubbed it clean with her bare hand, rinsed it, then wiped it dry with the good paper towels bought expressly for this purpose.

  All the while, her mind raced. What could he mean, she’d had the solution all her life? Part of her buzzed with anticipation to hear his theory, while the rest of her silently grumbled at the idea of having this stranger—totally new to the entire legend—come with a solution she’d never conceived.

  Dini washed her hands thoroughly, using three pumps of the foamy, lemon-scented soap and scrubbing up past her wrists, wanting to rid herself of t
he slick feel and savory scent of the sausage and eggs. She rinsed, smelled, and, satisfied, went into the living room, dropping the tea towel on the back of the chair while ordering, “Alexa. Volume down.”

  Quin was sitting on her couch, looking entirely at home. Not lounging, exactly, but not perched, either. He had one leg crossed casually over the other, his coffee cup resting on his knee. Dini had a choice: the vintage-print accent chair on the other side of the coffee table or the sofa beside him. She stood, never before so indecisive about where to sit in her own home, and then she noticed her mug sitting on an animal-print coaster. He took a sip and set his mug right next to it. He might as well have patted the cushion beside him.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said as she settled in, a good half a cushion between them. “I went ahead and took the tour.”

  “Did you? Without a guide? How brave.”

  “I absolutely don’t want you to take this in any kind of a wrong way, but your house is adorable.”

  She laughed. “Why would I take that the wrong way?”

  “I don’t know if it’s a thing to call a person’s house ‘cute.’ But it is. It’s cute.”

  “That’s Realtor talk for small. Which it is. So …”

  “Just one question. What do you have locked up in that room? Do you have a secret first husband that went mad after you brought him here from Barbados? Is there a crazy Bernie locked up in there?”

  She swatted him with a llama-embossed throw pillow. “No. That’s where I keep all of my stage stuff. Costumes and trunks and—everything. All the tricks of the trade. I keep a combo lock on it for whenever I AirBnb the house. It means I can only rent it out as a single bedroom, but that’s okay. It means no kids, right?”

  “Do you rent it out a lot?”

  “Not really. Sometimes I’ll take a gig out of town, and I’ll just hang out and explore for a week or so. If the Spurs make the playoffs? Or like at Christmastime? I can make a few bucks. And then, I’ve worked a few cruises, so I’m gone for months at a time there. Arya takes care of the business end of it.”