by Kerstin Gier
As the sun began to sink behind the mountains, the hotel grounds emptied out as the rosy-cheeked guests went back inside to get warmed up. The children got more and more excited as Christmas Eve drew nearer, and one after the other they said good-bye to us and went off with their families. Aiden came strolling over from the ice hockey rink to accompany Amy, causing her cheeks to turn pink, too. She looked like all her Christmases had come at once.
Only Don and Faye were left. As I wiped little Faye’s nose (the poor thing was suffering from a horrible cold; it was unbelievable how much snot such a tiny little nose could produce), Don started taking photos of us on his phone.
“What are you doing?” I said indignantly.
“Oh, it’s just for my documentary about school dropouts,” said Don. “Choose Your Career with Care. And I need material for my photography project, Fifty Shades of Snot.”
I was almost a little relieved to find him back to his old self. “You’d be really funny if you weren’t so mean,” I said. I snatched the phone off him and hurriedly deleted the photos.
“They’re already in the cloud, anyway.” Don grinned deviously, managing to look inexplicably cute at the same time. “You must have realized by now, Sophie Spark, that it’s best not to mess with me. Don’t count your chickens.”
I wasn’t. Nobody around here was safe, not if Don’s father really was going to buy the hotel.
“I watched you very closely today, and do you know what I saw?” I said slowly. “A little boy having a good time without being mean to everyone. Perhaps you just forgot to be horrible, or perhaps you’ve had enough of it.”
Don was silent for a moment. A whole range of emotions that I couldn’t interpret flashed through his big brown eyes. Then he crossed his arms. “It’s such a shame you can’t do a degree in psychology without having graduated from high school, Sophie Spark, hopeless loser.” He turned to leave. “But since tonight is Christmas Eve, I’ll give you a piece of advice for free: Don’t stop looking over your shoulder. You never know what’s about to happen.”
He really was back to his old self. “Thanks for that,” I murmured as he walked away. I hoped Santa Claus brought him back that stomach bug.
I dropped off little Faye with her mother, the only one still lying on her lounger watching the sunset, and heaved a sigh of relief. Work was over for the day, and I had the whole evening before me. The spa was closed for Christmas Eve—probably because once the guests had finished their delicious twelve-course Christmas Eve meal they’d be too full to do anything other than collapse into bed in a food coma. But most of the staff wouldn’t have a minute to themselves until then. From six o’clock on, the pianist would be in the bar playing international Christmas songs for the guests to sing along to, and at nine o’clock Jaromir was taking a handful of guests to Midnight Mass at the church in the next village. The poor man would surely rather have been spending Christmas with his family in the Czech Republic.
Pierre had invited me to come and celebrate with him and the other kitchen staff in the basement after their shift was finished, but I wasn’t really in the mood for a party. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps I could retire to the laundry room for a bit and hang out with Pavel; I could sing “Silent Night” with him and hear his interpretation of the line “Round yon virgin mother and child.” Perhaps Ben and his thermos would join us, too. I liked that idea.
Before that, I was going to have a good long shower—Hortensia and co. were on cleaning duty until eight o’clock—and put on my nicest clothes. I didn’t have any really fancy clothes with me, but I did have a smart yet comfy pair of black velvet pants that I had once worn to the opera, and I could wear my favorite green sweater with them. And perhaps I’d wear my hair down …
But unfortunately my transformation would have to wait a while because at that moment I happened to run into Ben’s father escorting the Yegorov family to the horse-drawn sleigh. Old Stucky was waiting for them with Jesty and Vesty, and he’d lit the torches that were attached to the sleigh by iron brackets. The sun had almost set, the full moon was on the rise, and the sound of distant church bells drifted up from the valley below.
Monsieur Rocher was right: Dusk was the best time for a ride in the horse-drawn sleigh—and even more so on Christmas Eve. I’d have loved to snuggle up under the fur blankets myself and be driven around the peaceful mountainside.
The Yegorovs’ excitement was dampened, however, by the fact that Viktor Yegorov had dressed Dasha in the wrong hat. She was supposed to be wearing one that matched her little sable coat. To judge by the fuss Stella Yegorov kicked up over this fashion faux pas, it was an even greater catastrophe than the loss of her perfume bottle the day before. She made it crystal clear that there was no point in them going on the sleigh ride at all without the sable hat, and nothing her husband said could persuade her otherwise. So Viktor Yegorov gave in and agreed to go and fetch the hat from their room, to put a stop to his wife’s whining—and that was where I came in.
I’d been trying to slip past them unnoticed, without making eye contact, but Gordon Montfort spotted me. He grabbed my arm and cried, “No, no, dear man. No need to fetch it yourself. You and your family go and make yourselves comfortable in the carriage and pour yourselves a glass of champagne, and my colleague here will run up to the Panorama Suite and fetch the little lady her hat.” He plucked the heavy room key out of Yegorov’s hand, passed it to me, and hissed, in German, “You have two minutes.”
I took the key hesitantly. “But I have no idea what a sable hat looks like,” I stuttered. By that point, however, Gordon Montfort had already shoved me through the revolving door and into the lobby.
Okay then. Two minutes. I could manage that. Although it would mean breaking Fräulein Müller’s Rule Number Four: “We never run! We walk briskly, discreetly, and quietly through the corridors, in a dignified manner.” Oh well, I wasn’t in uniform right now, so I could probably get away with breaking the no-running rule. And it was impossible to walk in a dignified manner in snow boots anyway, let alone run. It made you look like a duck on speed. But I had no time to think about that now. I just had to keep looking straight ahead, not left or right. Especially not left because that was where Ben was standing at Reception.
The shortest way to the Panorama Suite was across the lobby and straight through the ballroom. I sprinted over to the stage, and from there a flight of stairs took me up to the first floor and onto the corridor where the Panorama Suite was. I was panting by now and my heart was beating like crazy, but I’d made it to my destination in well under a minute. Only now did I lose precious seconds because I couldn’t get the key in the lock at first. But once I entered the room and switched on the light I spotted the sable hat at once, lying there on the bed. It was clearly made of fur and had the same mottled brown pattern as the coat Dasha was wearing. That was lucky.
Relieved, I hurried over to the bed and scooped up the hat. “And now we have to run like the wind, little sable, so that you didn’t die for nothing,” I said. But as I was saying it, I realized I wasn’t alone in the room.
12
Someone was hiding behind the curtain. And not very well, either: One black-clad shoulder was clearly visible poking out the side. For a second, I thought about just taking off with the sable hat and pretending I hadn’t noticed anything. But at that moment, the intruder emerged from his hiding place and grinned at me.
It was Tristan, and he laughed softly as I let out a gasp.
“Thank goodness it’s you,” he said. “I thought it might be a hotel thief.”
I was paralyzed with shock and the effort of running up all those stairs in my snow boots, so all I could do was whisper in horror: “Please tell me I’m wrong and you didn’t break into this room!” Which was, of course, the stupidest thing I could possibly have said under the circumstances.
“Well—I wouldn’t call it breaking in,” said Tristan in a conversational tone. “The window was open. So I thought I might as well test my theory. B
ut what are you doing here?”
“I have to take this sable h— What theory?”
I couldn’t think straight. What on earth were you supposed to do when you caught a guest red-handed breaking into someone else’s room? What … help! What would Jesus do? What would … Fräulein Müller do? Retreat discreetly to the hallway and call, in a hushed voice, “Stop, thief!” Even if the intruder wasn’t actually a thief but just someone who enjoyed climbing up buildings, saw everything as a big joke, and seemed to be hell-bent on driving the poor intern insane?
The two-minute deadline for bringing back the hat was almost up; I could hear the last few seconds ticking away as if in slow motion while all sorts of useless thoughts ran through my brain and I stared at Tristan, my eyes like saucers.
“Okay,” I snapped, “I have to take this stupid sable hat downstairs, and you need to get out of here right now before you get shot by the bodyguard. I’ll meet you in five minutes, in the same place where we met the first time, and if you don’t have a very good explanation for this then I’m afraid I’ll have to report you.”
Without waiting for Tristan’s reaction, I ran out of the room. It was probably completely the wrong thing to do, but at least it was better than just standing there like an idiot trying to decide what to do while time was running out.
One step at a time. Just take things one step at a time.
I slammed the door shut behind me, ran down the stairs and through the ballroom, raced past the concierge’s lodge and the reception desk, and burst out onto the forecourt. Although I felt as if I’d aged years in the past few minutes, nobody seemed to have missed me. Miraculously, only three minutes had passed. The Yegorovs had only just climbed into the sleigh and snuggled up under the fur blankets.
“There, you see!” Gordon Montfort snatched the hat out of my hand and handed it to Mrs. Yegorov with a little bow. “Here’s the hat. Now all that remains for me to do is to wish you a most enjoyable evening.”
“You are a treasure,” cooed Mrs. Yegorov, and although it was directed at Gordon Montfort, I felt as if she were speaking to me. I was a treasure—albeit a treasure who’d just let an intruder escape from their suite scot-free.
The sable hat was placed on little Dasha’s head, Old Stucky clicked his tongue, and Jesty and Vesty set off for their last ride of the day. The sun had dropped well below the mountaintops by this time, and the light from the torches cast mysterious shadows on the snow. The sound of church bells still floated up from the valley, mingling with the tinkle of the little bells on the horses’ harnesses and Dasha’s rapt childish laughter.
“What are you doing, standing there like a lemon?” demanded Gordon Montfort. “Get back to work.”
Before I could explain to him that my shift was already over for the day, he’d gone striding off. Lemon himself. The spirit of Christmas had obviously passed him by this year.
I strode off behind him, at a safe distance.
As I crossed the lobby, I noticed Ben’s worried look. “Everything all right, Sophie?”
“Everything’s fine,” I murmured, without slowing my pace. “I just need to get to…” Since I didn’t finish the sentence, he’d have to complete it automatically in his head, and surely not with: “… the linen closet on the second floor to meet Tristan Brown, who’s just broken into the Panorama Suite.” He must have thought I was desperate for the toilet.
When I got to the second floor, Tristan wasn’t there yet. What if he didn’t turn up? If he simply claimed he’d never been in the Panorama Suite at all? What if the bodyguard had caught him? Or he’d fallen off the wall of the building? Perhaps I shouldn’t have said five minutes—it must take a lot longer than that to climb all the way around the hotel, past all those lighted windows.
But just as I was about to drive myself mad with “what ifs,” the door to the hallway opened and Tristan came in.
“Ah, how lovely—this brings back memories,” he said, grinning broadly. “This is where we first met—you stepped out of that cupboard there looking so charming in your chambermaid’s uniform, with your hair done up like a schoolteacher.”
A far cry from tonight, when I’d stood before him sweating like a pig in snow boots, ski pants, and a parka. I hadn’t looked in a mirror since eight o’clock that morning, so I could only imagine what a frizzy mess my hair must be and how red my face was. Whereas he—of course—looked perfect as usual, dressed all in black, not a bit out of breath, with not even the tiniest drop of sweat on his golden-brown skin.
“I didn’t choose this meeting place for romantic reasons, you…” Unfortunately I couldn’t think of a single English insult. “Dummkopf,” I added lamely in German. “It was just that I was in a hurry and this was the first place that came to mind. What were you doing in the Smirnovs’ room? And don’t lie to me, or I’ll scream the place down.”
“Fine.” Tristan smiled benignly at me. “Perhaps we should go somewhere else? Where no one can eavesdrop on us?”
I opened the cupboard door and, with a theatrical sweep of my arm, showed him its empty interior. “Nobody there, see? So spit it out.”
“Okay,” he said. “But first of all: Those people are not called Smirnov; they’re called Yegorov.” He paused for an instant and smiled. “Ah, I see—but of course you know that already. I recognized them straightaway, too, when I saw them at dinner yesterday. As did everyone else who’s opened a magazine in the past few months, no doubt. If you ask me, Stella Yegorov likes being recognized. She doesn’t seem the type to enjoy going incognito.”
“And you thought there was bound to be a good haul in the oligarch’s suite,” I breathed, furious. “I swear, if there’s anything missing…”
“There is.” Tristan put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. In this pose, he could easily have passed for a model in a fashion magazine. “Shouldn’t we continue this conversation elsewhere? Somewhere we could sit down, for instance?”
“What’s missing, Tristan? What did you steal?” I was practically whispering, but I still sounded hysterical. “Stop playing for time.”
“You ought to know better, Agent Sophie. A thief steals things in order to get rich. Which is something I never do.”
“Oh really? Who are you, Robin Hood or someone?”
Tristan laughed out loud. “Yes, you could say that. I was only trying to help, I promise. After you told me yesterday that the old lady’s ring had gone missing, it was obvious to me what had happened. I just needed this little bit of proof.” He paused for a moment and then, with a flourish worthy of a stage magician, plucked something out of his pocket and placed it in my hand. It was a silver ring with a big pink stone.
I gasped. “Mrs. Ludwig’s ring.”
Tristan nodded. “And before you go accusing me of stealing it, all I’m doing is returning it to its rightful place. Which is certainly not in the drawer of Stella Yegorov’s nightstand.”
“But … how…? Why…?” I stammered.
“Why would Stella Yegorov want to steal a ring from a poor old lady when she’s dripping with jewelry as it is?” asked Tristan. “Well, some of these spoiled rich people are like magpies. They see something sparkly, and they just can’t resist.”
“I don’t believe you.” I narrowed my eyes, looking from Tristan to the ring and back again. “The ring isn’t even worth anything—why on earth would she steal it? And more important, when? And how? Mrs. Ludwig was following her around wherever she went, gazing at her like a teenage fangirl.”
Tristan shrugged. “It calls for a certain amount of skill and cunning. But for a kleptomaniac that’s all part of the thrill.”
“A kleptomaniac?” This was getting increasingly bizarre.
Tristan nodded. “At Tiffany’s a few years ago, a thirty-five-thousand-dollar sapphire bracelet ended up in her handbag—quite by accident, of course. It’s always an accident with these people. The shop assistant who gave the story to the press was fired.”
I was silent for
a moment. Slowly, the whole implausible story was starting to make sense. Though perhaps only because I wanted to believe it.
“So you’re telling me Mrs. Yegorov stole Mrs. Ludwig’s ring and hid it in her nightstand? Because she’s a kleptomaniac?”
“She might be a kleptomaniac, or she might just be a bored, greedy person who can’t resist a valuable piece of jewelry.”
“But that’s just it. The ring isn’t worth anything. Mr. Ludwig bought it at a flea market. The stone is a beryl, Mrs. Ludwig said, and the metal probably isn’t even real silver.”
Again, Tristan laughed softly. “You’re right about the metal, anyway. Because it’s not silver: It’s platinum.”
“What?”
He tapped the stone gently. “And to call this a beryl is a terrible insult to this wonderful, almost flawless emerald-cut pink diamond. Don’t look at me like that, Sophie. I know about these things. My grandpa is an art historian and a certified gemologist. He specializes in antique jewelry. He’s always getting called in to value things for Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and he works for museums all over the world. I could tell a diamond from a crystal by the time I was five. You don’t see many pink diamonds around, especially not ones this size. This little fellow must be nearly fifteen carats, I’d say. It gave me a bit of a shock, too.”
I felt like I needed to sit down. But for now I’d have to settle for undoing the zip on my parka. I was so hot I could hardly breathe, let alone think.
“Are you okay, Sophie?” Tristan slipped the ring back into his pocket.