Mr. Grey and the Hotel Ghosts

by A. J. Matthews

  "No, nothing that I can't explain." Mike tucked the circuit tester into his pocket. "Now, if you'll excuse me, folks, I'd better get back upstairs ready to let those power company guys in."

  Martin and Claudia stood aside to let him through.

  Mike paused at the doorway. "Mr. Grey, I don't know what's going on here. Maybe it's something, maybe it's nothing. I'm sure you'll find out. But I can't say the place, the atmosphere, feels bad as a whole. Know what I mean?"

  "Yes, Mike." Martin nodded. "If it's possible, I'll find out what's going on."

  Mike nodded and moved off in the direction of the stairs.

  Claudia looked at Martin. "He felt something weird on the roof garden."

  "I heard." His lips twitched. "Nice to meet someone honest enough to admit to an odd experience."

  * * * *

  The basement yielded little. Some of the small rooms bore signs of electrical appliances having been removed; the redundant cabling was still in place. Others held heaps of dusty old furniture, including a room with a stack of chandeliers, their gilt cracked and peeling.

  "All the useful stuff that was down here was taken away years ago," Claudia said, as they made their way upstairs. "The basement mostly held the utilities, laundry, boot-blacking room, all that kind of thing. I saw the figures from the hotel's heyday. The sheer amount of washing they got through in a day was awesome."

  Martin nodded. "A big hotel is like a swan; all serene and elegant on the surface, paddling away like mad underneath."

  * * * *

  In the restaurant the aroma of expensive meals eaten long ago still lingered, overlaid by the general air of mustiness. All the furniture had been removed, apart from the lectern, leaving worn trails in the red carpet and still-plush areas where tables and chairs once stood. A mezzanine floor occupied one whole side; it was the kind of place where the great and the good came to see and be seen over the heads of lesser folks. Darker patches on the wall showed where pictures once hung.

  Claudia watched as Martin turned slowly on the spot, his eyes half-closed. "Do you feel anything?"

  He opened his eyes and shook his head. "I'm only getting a general sense of the past. I can imagine how busy this place once was."

  Claudia consulted her notes. "'The Chestnut Grove was one of the finest restaurants in New York City in its day,'" she read aloud. "'It played host to statesmen and famous folk from all across the world.'"

  "All of them long gone. So much for fame."

  "Yeah, I guess so." She shrugged. "Shall we look at the kitchens?"

  * * * *

  The large room was empty. Old capped-off gas pipes protruded from the tiled floor like stumps in some petrified forest, marking where ovens and ranges had once been. The stainless steel hot-cabinets remained against one wall; Claudia peered into them as Martin looked around.

  "Hey!" He turned to see her pulling a framed picture from one of the cabinets. When he walked over she held it up for him to see. "This is a signed photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt!"

  He looked in the cabinet. "There are others here," he said, drawing out a sizeable stack and setting them on the floor. He looked through them. "Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Puccini. David Niven. President Franklin Roosevelt. Winston Churchill! All signed." He looked at the next photograph and frowned. "Who's this?"

  Claudia peered over his shoulder, her closeness bringing a waft of warm scent that made his nostrils twitch. "President McKinley. Guess you wouldn't know him much in the UK." She leaned closer, a breast pressing lightly against his back, and he felt her start. "Whoa! It's dated 13th September, 1901!"

  "Is that significant?"

  "I'll say! He was assassinated up in Buffalo the very next day." She shook her head. "This could be the last formal portrait ever taken of him. What with this and the others that are signed," she pursed her lips, "they'll be worth a tidy sum!"

  "It appears someone else thinks the same. I have the sneaky feeling these were hidden here for collection later."

  "Wonder who hid them?" She took out her notepad and made a quick entry. "Guess we'd better find out." She looked at the pile of photographs and shook her head. "This case just gets better and better!"

  Chapter Two

  "Feel like lunch?" Claudia asked as they emerged blinking into the wan sunlight of early afternoon. "There's a deli around the corner from here." She touched his arm. "My treat."

  Martin hesitated, then nodded with a rueful grin. "Jet lag's making me feel all over the place. But I am definitely hungry."

  "Good! Let's go eat."

  In the delicatessen Martin surveyed the huge range of food offered, trying to peer through the few gaps presented by the throng of people at the counter. "How on earth will you get served?" he asked in a near-shout over the hubbub of orders. "This'll take ages!"

  "Not so, Martin." Claudia grinned and winked. "Trust me! I'll order. What do you want?"

  "I've heard of something called 'lox,’" he said. "Could you tell me what it is?"

  "Lox? Lox is smoked salmon, really thinly sliced. Great with cream cheese and a bagel. You want to try some?"

  "Sounds okay to me," he said.

  Claudia nodded, and disappeared into the crush. She reappeared some minutes later with a pressed paper tray on which were two paper bags and two Styrofoam cups the size of small pails, full of cappuccino coffee. All the seats were taken by folk deep in earnest conversation but luckily, two were vacated as they passed so they slipped in quickly.

  "So, what do you think?" Claudia asked, uncapping her coffee to release the heady aroma. She inhaled it appreciatively.

  Martin took a bite of bagel and chewed appreciatively. "This is delicious!" he said around the mouthful.

  "Isn't it just? You should try a little of everything while you're over here. We have some great food in this city."

  He thought ruefully of muddy coffee and limp sandwiches bought over several years of office lunch breaks and resolved to make up for lost time.

  "So," Claudia drawled, "what do you think of the situation at the hotel?"

  "Something is definitely happening there." He mused for a while, chewing on his bagel. "I'll need to spend some time in different parts of it, to get a kind of background check."

  "You say you can sense ghosts, or spirits?" she asked, clearly intrigued. "What exactly do you see?"

  The people at the next table looked askance at them.

  "I see them as people." He shrugged. "Overlaid and interwoven with their surroundings, but essentially as people. Sometimes I see events as they happened. Sometimes they are re-enacted by the spirits, especially when they first appear to me."

  The couple at the next table was looking from one to the other, their mouths open.

  "How long have you had this ability?"

  "Since I was a teenager. When I was twelve, I saw the spirit of a farmer's daughter who lived in my uncle's house in the 1800's. The place was always said to be haunted. Sometimes a baby could be heard crying in one of the upstairs rooms, when there were no children in the house."

  "What did you do?" Claudia asked. "Were you frightened?"

  "Not in the least. I knew by some instinct the girl meant me no harm; rather, she needed help. I saw her several times, until she was able to show me how she could be moved on."

  "Moved on? As in put to rest?"

  "Yes. I saw the cause of her distress. She'd had an illegitimate child by a soldier billeted nearby. The child died soon after birth, and her father buried it near one of the outbuildings to hide the shame. I sensed that she had died soon after, perhaps from complications following the birth. Her spirit showed me the spot the child was buried in, I persuaded my uncle to dig, and…" He shrugged. "There were the bones of the child."

  "Whoa!" Claudia gasped softly.

  Her word was echoed by the man at the next table. "Sorry, folks!" he said, putting his hands up. "Didn't mean to intrude, but that is so fantastic!"

  "I suppose so." Martin smiled at
him. "It seems natural to me."

  "Yeah? What happened next?"

  "The child's bones were properly interred in the village churchyard, and the woman's spirit never appeared again. It was all she had wanted, that chance to lay her child's own soul to rest in a dignified way."

  "That is so cool!" the woman said after a long pause. "You must get a real warm feeling out of helping that way."

  "I'll help any way I can. Not just for those who hire me, but for the souls of the departed." Martin gave a shrug. "They were people once."

  The man offered his hand. "My name's Bruce Baker, this is my wife, Ursula." Martin introduced himself and Claudia. Baker shook hands then went on. "I run an architectural business, with an interest in a resort in the Catskills. Maybe I have something in your field which might interest you if you're over here a while," Baker said with a significant look and drew a card from his wallet. "Look me up when you're done here. I'll make it worth your while."

  Martin took the card. "Thanks."

  "You're welcome," Baker said as he looked at his watch. "Got to go, honey," he told his wife, and rose from his seat. He nodded to Martin and Claudia. "It was nice to meet you, folks."

  The couple disappeared through the door into the street and Claudia grinned across the table at Martin, sitting nonplussed with Baker's card in his hand.

  "Does that happen often here?" he asked plaintively.

  "Yep. Welcome to New York!" She laughed, then cocked an eye at him. "I take it you weren't always in this business?"

  "No," he said. "When I left college I went straight into the Inland Revenue. Fifteen years." He winced. "More years than I care to remember."

  "You're a tax man? Ouch!" She winced in sympathy. "So you left?"

  "After a fashion. The British Civil Service allows its officers a career break after they've worked for a certain number of years. We get a number of months, or even years, depending on time served. I qualified, so I followed my inclinations."

  "You went into this line of work?"

  "Yes. I feel I can be of use to people, both living and departed."

  She dabbed at the crumbs of her bagel and licked them off her finger. "Would you call yourself a parapsychologist?" she asked, crumpling up the bag.

  He sipped some coffee, then nodded slowly. "Yes, but it's not really an accurate term. In truth, I'm not sure what to call my work. 'Spiritualist' gives the wrong impression, 'medium' much the same."

  "You're definitely not an exorcist?" She smiled, cradling her cup in her long fingers.

  "Definitely not," he replied equably.

  "Are you married, Martin?" she enquired, idly toying with her coffee spoon. "Your profile didn't say."

  "I was. I got divorced four years ago." He shrugged. "I'm afraid we both grew apart. My… abilities didn't really help, especially when I began to travel around the country. My ex-wife didn't understand how important my work can be."

  Claudia shook her head sympathetically. "It takes all sorts, I guess."

  "Yes. Not her kind of thing at all." He sighed. "Life got a little taut towards the end."

  Claudia reached over and gave his hand a quick squeeze in sympathy. "I understand. By the way, I loved that Occult Times article on the case you solved in Warwick," she said, resting her chin on her hand. "Won't you tell me something of the background?"

  Martin opened his mouth to reply when Claudia's phone warbled a cheerful tune. She pressed a button and looked at the screen. "Damn," she said quietly. When Martin raised an inquiring eyebrow she shrugged. "My boss just sent me a text message. He's in the area, called to say he'll meet up with us at the Chestnut Mansion." She gave a sour-sounding laugh. "We're less than a day into the job and he's already after a progress report."

  * * * *

  Kyle Marshall turned out to be around forty, tall, with short blond hair, and fleshy-looking. A paunch overhung the flamboyant cowboy belt buckle he wore on his pants, almost concealing it. Hard blue eyes raked over Martin as they shook hands in the foyer of the old hotel. "So you're Mr. Grey," he said. His attitude conveyed the distinct sense of being unimpressed.

  "Yes, Mr. Marshall," Martin replied quietly. "Nice to meet you."

  "Yeah, likewise," he said, turning to Claudia. "How's it going here?"

  "We've had power outages again, Kyle. The power company should be here anytime."

  "Shit, how many more times is this gonna happen?" he complained to the ceiling. "Claudia, this is costing the company a mint!"

  "I know, Kyle."

  "That's good, Claudia. Just so you know what's at stake here. Anything else happening?"

  "Someone put aside the photographs that hung on the restaurant walls. I think they were intending to steal them later when the coast was clear."

  "Who would be interested in a load of junk like that?" he scoffed.

  "Collectors, Kyle. The photos are all of famous people; they're all autographed. They could be worth a fortune."

  "Yeah?" He snorted. "Maybe we should sell one or two, to defray the costs." He spread his hands and shrugged. "Whatever. Call the security company; have them check the guys watching this place. We don't want anyone screwing us."

  Claudia grimaced. "I don't know, Kyle; it'll look like we don't trust anybody."

  Marshall looked at her impatiently. "Why should we care? This is a business. We got to stomp on this kind of thing. Do it!" As Claudia moved away to make the call, he turned to Martin. "How about you, Martin?" he asked with a jerk of his chin. "What do you say about this ghost business?"

  "I'm getting a feel for the atmosphere. Something's happening here."

  "Really?" His skepticism was obvious and Claudia flashed Martin a despairing look as she spoke to the security firm on her phone. "Can you fix it?"

  "I'm sure I can."

  Marshall looked at him. "Confidence. I like that. Keep it going, Mr. Grey." He clapped him on the arm. "And try to wrap it up soon, okay?"

  Martin nodded in a non-committal fashion, earning another mildly derisive look from the realtor. Marshall checked his watch. "Okay, enough already. I'm out of here. See you back at the office, Claudia."

  With this he departed in a swirl of his cashmere overcoat.

  "Is he normally that bad?" Martin enquired as Claudia rang off and came over to him.

  She grimaced again. "Oh, yeah, he's a real jerk at times. Most other times he's just a royal pain in the ass."

  "I know what you mean. It's something I definitely don't miss about the tax office."

  "You're lucky, Martin." She sighed. "I had hoped New York would be a real career break for me. Nowadays, I'm not so sure. I'd give a lot to tell Kyle Marshall to shove his job, and go back home."

  "Aren't you a native New Yorker?"

  "No, I come from some little place you've probably never heard of." She smiled, the tiredness lifting from her pretty face. "I come from Indianapolis, Indiana, as it happens. The 'Hoosier State.' Racing and basketball. I graduated from college, worked real estate back home in Indy for a while. When that palled I decided to see what the Big Apple could do for me. I've been here five years this fall." She lifted a shoulder. "It's been fun, most of the time. Others…" She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "So, enough of me, back to business. What are your plans now?"

  "I plan to go to my hotel, sleep for a few hours, and then come back here to stand watch for the night." He smiled. "This is one time the jet lag will help."

  "Do you need help setting up here?"

  "No, it's okay, thanks. I don't need much equipment, and what I've got is light and easy to use. For the rest I rely on my own abilities."

  She nodded. "Okay. I'm going out with a girlfriend tonight. I'll stop by on the way home, see how you're doing. You won't be alone in the building anyway; there're two security guys here for the night shift. If you have any trouble, just holler."

  "Will do." He looked at her quizzically. "Do you think the security men have been hiding the photos?"

  "No," she said decisively. "We hi
re a good security company; most of their guys are ex-cops or ex-armed forces. It's just the kind of idea Marshall's nasty little mind would spring to, believing they'd steal anything. Their boss was kind of angry when I phoned. I'll call him later to soothe his feelings."

  She chewed her lip. "As to who would be doing it, I've no idea. Several people have the need to be in and out of this place, for maintenance or whatever. It's mainly why we have a guy on duty during the day, to let them in. Any one of them could have hidden the photos."

  "I suppose it'll all be sorted out. Now the photos have been found, the thief probably won't risk trying anything else."

  "Hope you're right." She checked her watch. "I got to go show my face at the office. Want to share a cab?"

  "Fine by me."

  "Good, let's go."

  * * * *

  Martin returned to his hotel, watched some of the output from the local TV stations with open disbelief at their inanity, then slept through the afternoon and into the early evening. He had a bite to eat in the hotel restaurant, then visited a nearby deli to buy food for the night.

  Seven o'clock found him in the Chestnut Mansion foyer once more, busily unpacking and checking his equipment. One of the night watchmen came to look over his equipment.

  "You figure on finding anything, sir?" he asked after a while.

  "Oh, I know there's something here," Martin replied cheerfully. "It's just a case of finding out what and who and why."

  "Yeah?" The man looked skeptical, and gestured to the equipment. "So, what does this gear do?"

  "These are tape recorders fitted with extra-sensitive microphones," Martin said, showing him. "I'll set them up in the ballroom and the kitchen. This is a camcorder, modified to run at a slower than normal speed. That'll go in the ballroom too. These others are motion detectors linked to small cameras," he said, indicating small black boxes with small silver lenses. "If anything crosses the path of the beam, they take a picture and register the contact on a central control. I'll dot them about the place. It'll be okay if you trip one, I can adjust for your security check."

  "You figure the ballroom's spook-central in this place?"

  "Yes, in a manner of speaking."