A Castle in the Clouds

by Kerstin Gier

  “The bullet just grazed your arm: painful, but not serious,” Monsieur Rocher explained. “I managed to convince the paramedics not to take you to the hospital—I thought you’d prefer to be here with us when you woke up. Mr. Montfort told us to bring you here to the library. I suppose he didn’t like the idea of people seeing your dingy little bedroom when they came to visit you. You’re the woman of the hour, you know—everyone is impatient for you to wake up. The thriller writer insists that the arrest of the grand hotel kidnappers was entirely due to his powers of deduction, but we all know who the real heroine of the story is.” He smiled at me over the top of his glasses.

  “Where are Ben and Dasha?” I tried to sit up. “And Tristan and the Ludwigs? And Pierre?”

  Monsieur Rocher eased me softly back into the cushions. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I should have told you that first. The Ludwigs, Pierre, and their accomplices are all in police custody. Ben is just fine. He’s been sitting with you holding your hand for hours. I think he may have had a little cry. Young Dasha woke up two hours ago, and the doctor says she’s in very good shape. Her father shed a few tears, too. And young Mr. Brown had to have stitches in the wound in his ear. I don’t think he cried, but he did come to check on you several times. He and his grandfather are flying back to London today.”

  My hand leapt to my chest. The stolen diamond necklace was still there. I’d have known without having to feel for it, to be honest—it lay so heavy on my chest that I could hardly forget it. I was frankly amazed to find I could be shot and drugged and treated by paramedics and manage to hide the world’s most valuable necklace under my uniform through it all, but it appeared that I could!

  No wonder Tristan had come to check on me multiple times …

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Almost half past one,” said Monsieur Rocher. “But in all the commotion we forgot to see in the new year and light the sky lanterns. The New Year’s Ball has never finished so early. The police cars and ambulances have only just left.”

  “But no one seems to have gone to bed.” I cocked my head toward the bar, where most of the party-type noises were coming from.

  “Oh, no! Hardly anyone has gone to sleep. Everyone’s in a state of great excitement. And curiosity. You must have lots of questions, too.”

  Yes. And the most pressing one was how Ben and I had got out of the stables alive.

  In our panicked state, as it turned out, we’d forgotten about a lot more than just the back door in the tack room. It hadn’t crossed our minds that Old Stucky might be in the vicinity, and we hadn’t stopped to wonder what effect a pair of pistol-toting men might have on two horses in an open stall.

  Old Stucky had come to check in on the horses one last time before he went to bed. He said a little voice in his head had told him to. And as he approached the stables, he saw that both of the Ludwigs—or “tha moarst earvul creechers Ol’ Stucky’s ever come acrorse,” as he called them—were in the process of breaking open the lock. This made him very angry indeed. And although he was a small, frail old man, he was still more than capable of defending his territory.

  “When ye mek Ol’ Stucky mad, he gets rearly mad,” he told the police later. “Better ta learve well aloon.”

  And the same clearly applied to the horses. Perhaps Jesty was just impatient for a well-earned rest or perhaps she was living up to her name: Either way, the kick she gave Mr. Ludwig could certainly be described as a “grand gesture.” Before he could pull the trigger on his gun, Mr. Ludwig was catapulted at least six feet into the air. He then crashed into the wall and slid to the floor, where Old Stucky walloped him over the head with a feeding trough. And anything else he could lay his hands on that was even remotely suitable for walloping someone over the head with.

  I would have loved to have seen this, but by that time Mrs. Ludwig had already knocked me out. She didn’t have a gun, but she had several more of those needles, and now she pulled one out and brandished it like a knife at Ben. After his opponent had been unexpectedly vanquished by the horse and Old Stucky, Ben had come charging toward Mrs. Ludwig with his NO SMOKING sign. But seeing me unconscious made him so angry that he tossed the sign aside, picked up the pitchfork, and drove Mrs. Ludwig back against the wall with it—assisted by Vesty, who clearly also wanted a role in this drama. Mrs. Ludwig realized she’d lost and, because she couldn’t expect any more help from her husband, dropped the needle, and resorted to begging for mercy.

  “I’ll let Ben tell you what happened next,” said Monsieur Rocher, standing up. “But first I’m going to make you a cup of tea. You need to get your strength up. And Madame Cléo brought you these wonderful truffles. She had made them for the ladies in Room 303, but they said your need was greater than theirs.”

  It was a strange feeling to be lying on these velvet cushions in the library waiting for Ben to come and see me, and being treated like a VIP guest. An extra pillow was soon tucked under my knees and another behind my back, and Pavel brought up a cashmere blanket from the laundry room and wrapped it around me. He, too, was crying a little. He couldn’t believe someone had tried to shoot me in the laundry room tonight of all nights, when he hadn’t been there. And he cried even more when he heard that Tired Bertha had provided a temporary hiding place for little Dasha.

  “You see, and everyone say she useless.” He kissed me on both cheeks before he left (I decided to break it to him gently the next day about the role the mangle had played in proceedings) and promised to pass on my thanks to Old Stucky. It seemed the tough little man had saved my and Ben’s lives. Along with Jesty and Vesty, to whom I would definitely be giving two extra carrots tomorrow.

  No sooner had Pavel left than Gracie, Amy, and Madison arrived with a plate of sliced fruit (it went untouched, though—we had Madame Cléo’s truffles, after all) and bombarded me with questions. I had to admit that our adventure made for an exciting tale: kidnappers lurking outside the door with guns and syringes like the wolf in “The Three Little Pigs”; then me and Tristan jumping out of the window with Dasha, fleeing through the snow, and sliding down the chute into the coal cellar. It was the stuff of a bestseller. And I hadn’t even told them the whole story yet—the most exciting part was yet to come.

  Gracie was quite offended that the Ludwigs hadn’t chosen her as their kidnapping victim. While Gracie lamented her dull fate, Amy told me how she’d spoken to Aiden and cleared up all the misunderstandings between them. And even if she hadn’t told me, I’d have guessed it from her beaming smile and her shining eyes. Aiden, leaning against the library door waiting for Amy, looked just as happy.

  Ella and Gretchen, on the other hand, were both extremely miffed. Tristan hadn’t turned up to the ball at all, and Ben had been so distracted the entire time that he’d caused a pileup on the dance floor during the waltz, bringing down not only Gretchen but also the Swiss politician and her husband. They’d all ended up in a heap on the floor. Madison had taken a photo of the disaster and secretly posted it to Gretchen’s Instagram account, with the hashtags #theglamourneverstops #groggygretchen #bluedanubewaltz.

  Now I was looking forward to talking to Ben even more. But still he didn’t come. Instead, Don came strolling in. He, like Gracie, should have been in bed a long time ago, but tonight was far too exciting a night for that. He’d seen the police taking away the gloved hit man with his own eyes. The Ludwigs’ violent accomplice hadn’t been able to free himself from the snowdrift in the end—the fire department had had to come and dig him out. The half-moon fir tree had done a very thorough job. Amazingly, he’d escaped with nothing worse than a mild case of hypothermia.

  “Is it true you took on three people and a gun on your own, and won?” asked Don.

  “Only briefly,” I said modestly. “But yes—I locked them in the coal cellar.”

  Don nodded approvingly. “Perhaps you’re not the worst babysitter in the world, Sophie Spark.”

  Yes, perhaps I wasn’t. And perhaps Don wasn’t the sneakiest child i
n the world—there had to be worse kids than him. A few. If you looked really hard.

  Even Gordon Montfort paid me a visit in my window seat. He clearly wanted it to look as if he was concerned for my welfare. He asked how I was feeling and praised my “quick-wittedness,” as he called it. I’d never known him to be so friendly. But I quickly realized all he really wanted to do was make sure my parents weren’t going to sue him. He probably didn’t think his insurance would cover an underage intern jumping out of the window, getting shot, and being injected with a sedative while on duty.

  I assured him my parents wouldn’t breathe a word of what had happened that night—for their own sake, if no one else’s—and he withdrew, greatly relieved.

  Then I asked Amy to help me up. Before anyone else drifted in as if by chance (when the only face I really wanted to see was Ben’s), I urgently needed to go to the bathroom. Amy, Gracie, and Madison escorted me to the “powder room,” as Fräulein Müller called the ladies’ toilets off the lobby. There was a crowd of guests gathered nearby, waiting to go outside and light sky lanterns, and the three Barnbrooke girls—sensing how embarrassed I was at having to walk past all these people—tried their best to shield me from prying eyes. I was still wearing my uniform with the missing sleeve, and I only had one shoe on. In the bar, someone was playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” on the piano.

  “Look, there’s Tristan!” cried Gracie. “Oh, he’s changed his clothes. That’s a shame. Just now he was wearing this ripped shirt with blood all over it. Madison really wanted to take a photo of him and Ella, but Ella didn’t want to be in it.”

  Tristan was standing beside his grandpa, leaning back against one of the pillars in the lobby and smiling at me. His ear was hidden under a thick bandage, but he still looked superhot. He was the most attractive man I’d ever seen.

  And kissed. Well, technically it had been the other way around. He’d kissed me. Although strictly speaking, it hadn’t been a proper kiss, more a means of resuscitating me. And it felt like forever ago. As if it had happened to another girl, in another life.

  I thought about the fantastic tale Tristan had told me down in the laundry room. That he wasn’t a thief; that he and his grandpa worked for a secret society that restored things to their rightful places. And I decided the story was so absurd that it just might be true. After all, Tristan had always told me the truth, hadn’t he?

  I decided it was time to return the necklace, so that the goddess Kali could get her third eye back at last and the balance of the universe could be restored. I could’ve dragged Tristan into another alcove or a cupboard or something to hand it over, like in the old days, but now I had a better idea.

  “Can you lend me your cat hat, Gracie?” I asked when we got to the powder room. Gracie plucked her beloved hat eagerly off her head and held it out to me, and she didn’t even bat an eye when I took it and hurried into one of the cubicles. I removed the necklace, wrapped it in several layers of toilet paper—the paper in the powder room was lovely and soft and thick—and tucked it inside the hat.

  “I’ve got a job for you,” I said as I came out of the cubicle. “I need you to carry a secret cat-hat message to Tristan Brown. It might be a bit dangerous, though.”

  “Oh yes,” said Gracie, and Madison cried, “I want to go, too!”

  “Okay. You can both go. It’s very important that nobody but Tristan sees inside this hat. Gracie, you give it to him and tell him Agent Sophie sends her best wishes and says bon voyage. And then Madison, you say, ‘long live the balance of the universe.’ Do you think you can remember that?”

  They both nodded eagerly and disappeared through the door in great excitement. I stayed with Amy, who was considerate enough not to ask any questions. In the mirror—which was enormous, with a magnificent golden frame—I saw I looked pretty much like my normal self, and nowhere near as bad as I’d feared. Amy still took a little comb out of her evening bag, though, and tidied up my hair a bit.

  Tristan and his grandpa were gone from the lobby when we came out of the bathroom, and for a moment I felt a little stab of disappointment in my chest. Gracie and Madison, beaming widely, told us the handover had gone off without a hitch.

  “He said to tell you that … What was it again, Agent Madison?”

  “That the third eye sees everything and that the universe thanks Agent Sophie,” said Madison. “And that you should leave your window open if the hotelier’s son turns out to be an idiot.”

  “Whatever that means,” said Gracie.

  “Hmm,” said Amy, sounding exactly like Monsieur Rocher.

  We returned to the library, and I settled happily back into my nest on the window seat. Next door in the bar, everyone was singing “Auld Lang Syne,” and outside on the terrace the sky lanterns were being laid out ready for the guests to come and light them.

  “You’re awake.” Viktor Yegorov was standing in the doorway.

  “How’s Dasha?” I asked.

  “She’s fine.” Viktor Yegorov came a few steps closer. He was much paler than usual and had dark circles under his eyes. “Thanks to you. I know I said nothing bad could ever happen to anyone in this hotel, and perhaps that’s true, ultimately.” He bent over me and took my hand. “But now I know why. It’s not the hotel that’s magic; it’s the people who work here. How can I ever thank you? You risked your own life to save my daughter’s.”

  “I did have help, though,” I said, pretending not to see the tears running down his cheeks. “From Tristan and Ben and … I don’t know if I’d call it magic, but…” I thought of the lights that had flickered on and off in the laundry room. And the wet thing that had brushed past my face when I was about to enter the ski cellar. And all that snow falling off the half-moon fir tree … “On second thought, maybe I would,” I murmured.

  Viktor Yegorov had let go of my hand now and was staring out of the window into the darkness. “I have to tell you—when I last stayed at Castle in the Clouds, many years ago when I was hardly more than a child myself, I was in despair,” he said quietly. “I’d decided I didn’t want to live any longer. But … this place and the people here—they saved me. They stopped me from taking my own life, and they gave me the courage to go on living. I’ll never forget what you did for my daughter today. I’d like to do something to express my gratitude. So if there’s anything I can do for you, just say the word. Money is no object.”

  He wiped the tears from his eyes and smiled at me.

  I found myself in a quandary. On the one hand, I’d just helped relieve him of a necklace worth millions of euros. But on the other hand, it had been stolen not for me but for the goddess Kali, and with any luck, Yegorov would never realize he’d lost it.

  “If you want this place to stay the way it is, there is something you can do for me,” I said slowly. “Well, not for me exactly, but for all of us here. How would you feel about a new business venture?”

  “Go on,” said Yegorov, suddenly listening very intently. His smile widened.

  “It’s supposed to be a secret, but the hotel is up for sale. You’d have to outbid another potential buyer, though.”

  Yegorov laughed. “That happens to be my speciality,” he said. “Consider it done.”

  And I did. Burkhardt might have a suitcase full of dirty money and know every trick in the book, but he couldn’t compete with a Russian oligarch. His plans for apartment buildings and golf shops turned to dust the moment Yegorov strode decisively out of the library.

  And then, at last, Ben arrived.

  He was slightly out of breath as he burst into the library. “I’m sorry I took so long,” he said.

  “Did you have to fix someone’s phone?”

  He grinned. “No. I was talking to the police. And I found this.” He brought a hand out from behind his back and presented me with my missing shoe. “It was lying on the stairs down to the ski cellar. Shall we see if it fits you, Cinderella?”

  “Why thank you, Your Highness.” I stretched my foot out toward hi
m. “Delia will be delighted. Even if it’s not a glass slipper, just one of Fräulein Müller’s extra-comfortable work shoes with extra-quiet soles.”

  “It fits you like a glove.” Ben grinned at me. “Now we can go outside, light a sky lantern, and make a wish.” He pointed through the window onto the terrace. “Look, there are the Yegorovs with Dasha.” Yegorov was holding his little girl in his arms. She looked adorable, her curly head tipped back and her eyes wide as she gazed into the sky. The events of the past few hours clearly hadn’t done her any harm.

  “My wish is that the Ludwigs stay behind bars for the rest of their lives,” I said. “Oh, that reminds me—do the police know about Mrs. Ludwig’s so-called engagement ring being part of the ransom from another kidnapping?”

  “What? The ring with the pink stone? The one the oligarch’s wife stole and you stole back?”

  I nodded. Eventually I’d tell Ben the truth about all this, but perhaps not today. “The police can use it to convict her for that crime, too.”

  Ben looked at me in dismay. “No they can’t, I’m afraid. You see…” And then he told me everything that had happened in the stables after he’d picked up the pitchfork and driven Mrs. Ludwig back against the wall.

  Mrs. Ludwig had suddenly looked very small and frail, and she’d opened her eyes wide and begged him not to hurt her. It was all a terrible misunderstanding, she said, and he was scaring her. And then she’d started crying, telling him she was so dreadfully sorry for all of this.

  “I was livid—because of her, you were lying unconscious on the ground. She’d put you through hell. But I couldn’t hit a whimpering old lady. Even if she is evil incarnate. So I did something very childish. I took her beloved engagement ring off her finger and chucked it out the door into the snow; I wanted to do something to make her suffer. She immediately stopped crying and started cursing like mad. You wouldn’t believe the swear words that old lady knows!”

  “You threw the ring away?”

  Ben nodded contritely. “I didn’t know it was evidence.”