Sissy raised her hand and said, ‘Excuse me!’ but the woman ignored her and disappeared down the stairs.
For a moment, Sissy couldn’t think what to do. After all, it was none of her business why the woman had come up on to the roof. Maybe she had felt like a cigarette, or had an argument with her partner and needed a break to think about it. Maybe she had just wanted to look at the river and meditate.
Or maybe it was none of those things. Maybe she wasn’t a real woman at all. Maybe she was no more than a memory of a woman, an image of somebody who was no longer alive.
Oh, for God’s sake! Sissy admonished herself. Stop letting your damned imagination run away with you! Go ask her! It may be embarrassing but at least you’ll know!
She hurriedly scooped up her DeVane cards and dropped them, loose, into her bag. She could sort them out later. Then she hurried across to the exit door, and began to climb down the concrete stairs as fast as she dared, holding tightly on to the railing as she did so.
When she reached the landing, she found that the two cleaners were still at work. The bloodstains on the wall were fainter, but they still hadn’t managed to erase them completely.
‘Did a woman just come past you?’
The cleaners frowned at each other and then shook their heads. ‘Woman? No. We didn’t see no woman. Mind you, I can’t say that we was paying too much attention.’
Sissy hesitated for a moment. Then she thought she heard footsteps echoing up the stairwell from the flight below. She leaned over and saw a white hand sliding down the railing – a white hand with a pale green cuff.
‘Thanks,’ she told the cleaners, and continued to make her way down the stairs. She was frightened that she was going to stumble and fall. Her good friend, Grace, had fallen only last year, and broken her hip, and died from the complications. But she could hear the woman continuing downward, and she was determined to catch up with her. There was something strange about her, even if she were real. After all, why was she using the stairs, instead of the elevator? Maybe she didn’t want anybody else to see her. That’s if anybody else could see her.
She leaned over again and glimpsed the hem of the woman’s dress as she crossed the sixth story landing. Then she heard her shoes pattering down to the fifth.
‘Excuse me!’ she called out. ‘Excuse me, can you wait up a moment, please?’
Her voice echoed in the stairwell, but even if the woman heard her, she didn’t answer, and she didn’t stop. Sissy reached the sixth story, and hurried across to the next flight down.
She was only halfway down to five, however, when she thought she heard a door squeal on its hinges, and then bang shut. She stopped, and listened. All she could hear was a soft upward draft, and the muted, barely audible sound of people talking, and doors opening and closing, and vacuum cleaners, and elevators whining up and down.
There was no more pattering of shoes, and when she looked over the railing she could no longer see the woman’s hand.
She carried on down to the fifth-story landing as quickly as she could. She went across to the exit door and pulled it open and – sure enough – it made the same squealing noise that she had heard as she was coming down the stairs. She stepped out into the corridor, and as she did so the door closed behind her with a bang – which, even though she was expecting it, made her jump.
She looked to the left, guessing that the woman would be heading for the elevators, but there was no sign of her. When she looked to the right, however, she was just in time to see the woman’s pale green dress as she turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
Well, she thought, unless she has a room here, which she won’t have, because the fifth story hasn’t yet been cleared for occupation by guests, there is absolutely no place for her to go. The corridor in that direction was a dead end.
With renewed determination, she stalked along the corridor with her bag making a chunking sound with every step. She reached the corner, but the corridor ahead of her was empty. At the far end, there was a window with a view of the Hilton hotel on the opposite side of Lafayette Street, its facade glaring white in the sunshine, but there was no woman to be seen.
Sissy walked halfway along the corridor, then turned around, frowning. Maybe the woman had previously been booked into one of the rooms and still had her key. But what had she been doing on the roof, and why hadn’t she answered when Sissy called her? And how was it possible that she had passed those two cleaners without them seeing her?
She took her bag off her shoulder and rummaged inside it until she found her witch compass. She had bought it over twenty years ago, in an antique store in Glastonbury. It was the size and shape of a pocket watch, made of tarnished silver with a hinged lid. Inside, under glass, was a pointer like an ordinary compass, except that there were no markings for NESW.
She opened the lid and held the witch compass out in front of her, in the flat of her hand. Then she slowly walked along the left side of the corridor, all the way to the window. Nothing. The needle didn’t even stir. She paused for a moment and then she walked back along the right side. She made sure that she held the witch compass close to each door in turn, in case the woman was inside one of the rooms, and hiding inside the bathroom, or one of the closets, which would make it more difficult for the needle to sense her presence.
She was halfway back to the corner when the needle suddenly swung to the left. It wasn’t pointing to any of the doors, but to the middle of a length of totally blank wall.
‘What in the name of . . .?’ Sissy murmured.
She walked a few steps further, but the needle continued to point to the same spot. She stepped back, and there was no question about it. The witch compass was insistent that there was a spirit here, either alive or passed over, although she couldn’t guess how a living being could be right inside a wall.
She rummaged around in her bag again until she dug up her cellphone. She found the number of The Red Hotel on the back of the identity badge that Everett had given her, and tapped it out with her silver-polished fingernail.
‘The Red Hotel, good morning, bon jour . . . how may I help you?’ asked the receptionist.
‘Yes, this is Ms Sawyer. I’m visiting the hotel with Mr Savoie’s sister.’
‘Of course, Ms Sawyer. What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like you to put me through to that Detective Garrity, if he’s around.’
‘Detective Garrity? Oh – he’s not here right now. I think he went to get some breakfast. But his partner is right here in the lobby. Would you care to speak to him?’
‘Sure. OK. He’ll do.’
While the receptionist went off to bring Detective Mullard to the phone, Sissy kept the witch compass pointing at the wall, just to make sure that the spirit didn’t shift its location, or vanish altogether.
At last, Detective Mullard said, ‘Mullard here. Hi. Where you at, Ms Sawyer?’
‘I’m up on the fifth floor, Detective, between rooms Five-Oh-Nine and Five-Eleven. I think I’ve found some evidence and I need to take a look inside those two rooms.’
‘Evidence such as?’ said Detective Mullard. He made no attempt to disguise his lack of interest.
‘I’m not sure yet. But I believe it might help us to find out who abducted Ella-mae Grover.’
‘Oh yeah? The fact is I’m pretty tied up right now, ma’am.’
‘This won’t take you long, Detective. And if you don’t come take a look now, it may be too late.’
A pause. A sigh. Then, ‘OK, ma’am. I’ll bring up the keys. But I sincerely hope this isn’t going to be a waste of my valuable time.’
‘Oh, my dear Detective Mullard. Heaven forbid.’
Vanishing Point
While she waited for Detective Mullard to come up to the fifth floor, Sissy sat on the window sill and tidied up her DeVane cards.
She counted them out as she did so, to make sure that Le Mur hadn’t mysteriously appeared as an extra card. There were fifty-nine cards, as usual,
but she couldn’t find Le Mur. She searched through her bag again, but there was no trace of it. It had disappeared as inexplicably as it had appeared.
She sat there feeling as if the world were revolving slowly around her. This was extraordinary trickery – like nothing that she had ever encountered before. She was ninety percent convinced that it was Vanessa Slider, or her spirit, if she were dead, and her son, Shem, too. It was frightening enough that they were capable of entering and leaving rooms without leaving any trace of how they had managed to get in or out, but what really worried Sissy was that they could manipulate her DeVane cards to the point where she was reluctant to rely on them any longer. Supposing she acted on the advice of some card that didn’t really exist, like Le Mur?
Sissy had encountered plenty of hostile spirits before, but most of the time they felt simply cheated and bewildered because they had died. Almost all of the spirits with whom she communicated were gentle and loving – sad that their lives were over, nothing more – missing their loved ones as much as their loved ones missed them.
But this was something else altogether. She could feel that there was hatred here, almost tangible hatred.
She heard the elevator chime, and then Detective Mullard appeared around the corner of the corridor in his flappy green suit.
‘Ah, Detective. Thank you for coming up.’
‘Sure,’ he sniffed. ‘You said you had evidence?’
‘That’s right. I do.’
Detective Mullard stood looking at her for a few seconds, and then he said, ‘You want to, like, share it with me, this evidence?’
‘There’s somebody in one of these two rooms. A woman. I’m not sure which one, because they appear to be someplace between the two.’
Detective Mullard turned to Room 511 and then to Room 509. ‘I see. OK. You saw somebody go inside?’
‘No.’
‘You heard them, then?’
‘No.’
‘Then, excuse me for asking, how is it can you tell if she’s in there?’
Sissy held up her witch compass. ‘I used this. It’s kind of like a metal detector, only for spirits.’
‘Spirits? You mean like ghosts?’
‘Well, souls if you prefer. It can sense the presence of any kind of human spirit, alive or gone beyond. You see how the needle is pointing to the wall? I can move it here, like so. Then I can move it back again, but it’s still pointing to the same place.’
‘So, OK. How exactly does it do that?’
‘Simple. The needle’s made out of pure magnetized cobalt. A lot of ordinary compasses have a small amount of cobalt in the needle, although they’re mainly steel. But this is pure cobalt, and pure cobalt has some remarkable spiritual properties.’
‘Really?’
Sissy lifted up the compass even higher, so that Detective Mullard could see it more closely, but he leaned away from it, as if he were afraid it was some kind of practical joke, and it was going to snap at him, or go off with a bang.
Sissy said, ‘The word cobalt comes from the German word kobold, which means goblin. That was what iron miners in Germany and Bohemia used to call it. Whenever a mine had a large amount of cobalt ore in it, they claimed that they could see and hear spirits. Apparently they could see them running through the tunnels and hear them knocking on the walls.’
‘And this . . . needle? This is your evidence?’
‘It’s worth checking out, Detective. Where’s the harm? After all, what evidence have you come up with?’
Detective Mullard blew out his cheeks. ‘All right, Ms Sawyer. I’ll indulge you. But only out of good old Southern courtesy. To be quite frank with you, I think this is horse manure.’
‘Let’s see, shall we?’
Detective Mullard had brought key cards for both rooms. He opened 509 and they went inside. It was very similar to Sissy’s room on the second floor, only larger, with a gilded rococo sofa as well as a chair. Detective Mullard looked inside the bathroom, and then the closets. He even knelt down on the floor, lifted the side of the red embroidered throw, and peered under the bed.
While he was doing this, Sissy was holding her witch compass close to the wall. Its needle had swung around and was pointing directly at the wallpaper.
‘Nobody here that I can see,’ said Detective Mullard, climbing to his feet. ‘Nobody visible, anyhow. Maybe there’s a ghost, but I don’t have my ghost glasses with me.’
‘The compass is still telling me that there’s a spirit here,’ Sissy told him.
Detective Mullard looked down at the compass needle and shook his head. ‘Maybe you need to take it in for a service,’ he said.
‘Detective – there’s a presence here in this hotel, I can assure you. How do you explain that rug, all soaked in blood but not a single spatter anywhere around it? How did Ella-mae disappear from that washroom without leaving any bloody footprints? Where did that whistling noise come from?’
‘What are you trying to suggest here, Ms Sawyer? Are you trying to tell me that this hotel is, like, haunted? Hey . . . maybe we should call in Scooby-Doo.’
‘Haunted isn’t quite the word I’d use myself, Detective. And you can make a joke of it if you want to, but there is something here. You can’t see radon gas, can you? But it can still kill you.’
‘OK. I’m sorry. But you want to try being a detective here in BR and see if you don’t end up kind of cynical, especially when it comes to superstition. We’re not like New Orleans, we don’t go in for all of that voodoo crap, pardon my French. Look – maybe this woman is in the room next door, and that’s why your compass is pointing at the wall. Let’s go check.’
Sissy looked at the witch compass. The needle was shivering slightly, as if the presence which it had detected had started to edge very gradually toward the left, and further away.
‘You go,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here. It’s started to move, and I don’t want to lose contact with it.’
‘Whatever you say, Ms Sawyer.’
There was no question about it, the needle was showing that the presence was inching further toward the window. It could be that it was next door, in Room 511, and the needle was tracking its progress through the wall. Or it could be that it was right here in the room with her, but it was invisible. Maybe Detective Mullard’s suggestion hadn’t been so ridiculous after all: maybe they did need ghost glasses, if only such things existed for real.
Sissy heard Detective Mullard open the door to Room 511, and then the door quietly close itself behind him. After a few seconds, the needle stopped shivering, and stayed perfectly still. She waited, and waited. There was no sound from next door, but neither did Detective Mullard come back. She waved the witch compass from side to side, but now the needle simply swung in response to her hand movements. The presence had gone.
Lost it, damn it! And who knows where it might have slunk off to now?
She opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. Detective Mullard still hadn’t reappeared, so she went to Room 511 and tried the door handle. The door had locked itself, and so she knocked at it, and called out, ‘Detective! Did you find anything?’
No answer. She knocked again, and said, ‘Detective Mullard! Can you open the door? I think the presence must have taken a powder!’
Still no answer. She knocked a third time, but now she was beginning to think that if anybody had taken a powder, it was Detective Mullard. He had probably looked into Room 511, seen that there was nobody in there, and decided to leave without even bothering to tell her. So much for his talk about ‘good old Southern courtesy’.
She was starting to walk back along the corridor when one of the security men came around the corner, jingling his keys.
‘Ah!’ said Sissy. ‘Just the fellow I need!’
‘Ma’am?’ said the security man. He was African-American, with braided hair and a pencil moustache.
‘I have to get into Room Five-Eleven. I’m sure I left my bag in there.’
‘Ma’am?’ he rep
eated. Sissy could see him looking at her ID tag, and then at the bag hanging over her shoulder.
‘Oh . . .’ she flustered. ‘My other bag.’
‘No problem, ma’am,’ said the security man. ‘In any case, everything’s all clear now, and all of the guests can return to their rooms. I’m up here doing a double-double-check, that’s all.’
Sissy followed him back to Room 511. He swiped open the door with his key card and then held it wide so that she could go inside.
She looked quickly around. Detective Mullard certainly wasn’t here. He wasn’t in the bathroom and he wasn’t hiding behind the drapes and he was far too bulky to have squeezed himself under the bed, him in his crumpled green three-piece suit, even if he had any reason to. No, he had obviously taken a quick look, found nothing, and walked off without telling her. Great. She would give him a piece of her mind for doing that.
‘No, sorry,’ she told the security man. ‘I must have left it someplace else. Thank you anyhow.’
‘No problem,’ the security man repeated, although he was looking at her as if she were a likely candidate for Sunrise Assisted Living.
Sissy walked slowly up and down all of the fifth-floor corridors, waving her witch compass as she went, but the needle didn’t even twitch, not once.
She went back and held it close to the wall in between Rooms 509 and 511 one last time, just to make sure, but there was still no response.
When she reached the elevators, she turned around and listened again, and then she said, under her breath, ‘Where in the heck are you hiding, Vanessa? Come on, show yourself. Maybe we can work something out.’ She waited two or three minutes, and then she pressed the elevator button for up. She would have to return to the seventh story so that she could start her spirit hunt over.
It took her nearly two hours. Floor by floor, she went down through The Red Hotel, using the witch compass to sense for Vanessa Slider and her son, Shem, and scattering some of her herbs and spices on the carpets to see if they had left any footprints, or drag marks, or any evidence at all that they had been there.
The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) Page 12