by Ben Guterson
“You’re right,” she said, though some part of her felt it didn’t quite add up. “I just got here.”
“Two rooms!” the man in black yelled. The woman with him was scowling and shaking her head.
“Please excuse me,” Jackson said, glancing furtively at the other bellhop speaking to the couple, “while I assist my colleague.” He nodded to Norbridge Falls and slipped away. Norbridge regarded the man and woman in black for a moment, and then looked to Elizabeth.
“You’re all set?” he said to her. He glanced at her backpack. “Traveling light! Very good. I like to do the same. One person, one bag, one hundred pounds of stuff—or maybe ninety pounds less than that. Why don’t we get you to your room? Number 213, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Sir—”
“Norbridge,” he cut in immediately.
“Norbridge,” Elizabeth continued, “when you said that Winterhouse was yours, what did you mean?”
He put a hand to his mouth and seemed to be giving her question careful consideration, as though he’d never heard anything quite like this before. His eyes narrowed, and he set his chin firmly. And then he reached out a hand and touched Elizabeth just behind her ear before pulling his hand back quickly. Something was in it.
“Do you always keep money back there?” he said, and he held his open palm before her to reveal a coin the size of a silver dollar, though this was golden and didn’t look like any coin Elizabeth had seen before.
She gasped. “How did you do that?” His hand had been empty, she was sure, before he had reached out to her.
Norbridge shrugged. “I’m not the one with money in my hair!” he said. He pinched the coin and held it up more closely to Elizabeth. It had a picture of the Winterhouse Hotel stamped on it, and underneath it were the words “Norbridge Falls—Proprietor.”
“You run Winterhouse?” Elizabeth said.
Norbridge smiled again, dropped the coin into his breast pocket. “I run it, yes! I own it! Winterhouse was built by my grandfather, Nestor Falls, back in 1897, and I’ve been running it ever since I took over from my father, Nathaniel Falls, nearly forty-five years ago. It’s late, though.” He glanced at the man and woman in black before studying Elizabeth again. He looked concerned. “You must be tired,” he said.
“A little,” Elizabeth said, because she didn’t want to contradict him. In truth, given her long nap on the bus and her surprise and excitement at now being at Winterhouse, she wasn’t tired at all. “But I’m good at keeping my stamina up.”
Norbridge clenched a fist before him as if to indicate agreement. “I love that word. ‘Stamina.’” He looked back to the man and woman in black and his face darkened. “Let’s get you to your room, though.” He snapped his fingers as though an idea had just come to him. “And why don’t we grab a piece or two of Flurschen on our way?”
“Of what?” she said. But Norbridge had already pivoted abruptly and was striding off as though it was the most natural thing in the world that Elizabeth would follow—and, indeed, she fell in step right behind him.
“So late, so late,” Norbridge said, to himself, it seemed, and as they reached the table with the puzzle on it, he lifted a hand in greeting and said, “Gentlemen, how is the puzzling going this evening?” though he showed no sign of slowing down.
“Three pieces today!” one of the men—tall and thin and mostly bald—said, pointing with pride to the table.
“The sky is coming along—but slowly, too slowly,” said the other man, who was short and very plump, with a thick mustache.
“A productive day’s work!” Norbridge called out, his back now to the two men as he kept striding onward.
The heavy man nodded to Elizabeth. “Good evening,” he said.
Elizabeth stopped. “Thank you.” She was right in front of the long table now, which was covered with thousands and thousands of puzzle pieces and the solid rectangular rim of the puzzle itself, with little clusters of joined pieces situated within the frame here and there. It was massive, an enormous sprawl of tiny shapes. “Good evening to you, too,” she said.
Norbridge stopped and looked over his shoulder at Elizabeth.
“Our pride and joy,” the heavy man said, spreading his hands out above the table as if to offer her a selection of jewelry.
“It’s massive,” Elizabeth said, trying to make sense of the picture that was developing inside the borders of the puzzle’s frame. “What is it?”
The thin man raised a finger as if about to start counting. “A great Himalayan temple!” he said, his voice booming. “High, high up in the mountains!”
“You can see the picture right there,” the plump man said, pointing to a huge tin box along the end of the table. On it was painted an imposing stone temple with colorful flags all around it, and in the background a rise of snow-clad mountains beneath a brilliant blue sky.
“That box looks very old-fashioned,” Elizabeth said. The pieces, too, she saw, looked thicker and sturdier than the stiff blobs of cardboard she assumed were typical for puzzles.
“This was my grandfather’s puzzle,” Norbridge said. “It’s an antique.”
“If we didn’t have the box,” said the plump man, shaking his head sadly, “we would have nothing to guide us. No picture, no image. Even so, it’s skill and grit and determination at this point.” He sighed. “We are making our way through. It’s a slog.”
Norbridge approached. “Mr. Wellington,” he said to the tall man. “And Mr. Rajput,” he said to the short man. “Please meet Miss Elizabeth Somers, who has just now arrived and will be staying with us into the new year. She travels with only a single bag and does not tire easily!” There were bows and greetings all around. “But as the hour is growing late—we need to get her to her room.” He arched his eyebrows as if to bring an end to the visit.
Elizabeth, though, was studying a piece just at the edge of the table. She had a strange sensation of certainty as she looked at it, something similar to the feeling, though not as intense or startling. Nothing was going to fall or shatter or topple, she was certain. Instead, she felt she understood just where the tiny shape needed to go. As the three men watched, she picked it up, looked here and there across the table, and then moved directly to a cluster of a dozen pieces already connected, and locked hers into the upper corner. She pressed it in snugly and looked up.
“It fits!” she said.
Mr. Rajput gasped. “Astounding!” he said.
“How did you see that straight off?” said Mr. Wellington.
“The colors, I guess,” Elizabeth said, though she was just as surprised herself at what she had done. “It just seemed to go there.”
Norbridge stroked his beard again and squinted at her. “Very nice!” he said. “Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to see what’s right in front of us.” He winked at the two men, and then extended his hand to Elizabeth. “You can help these gentlemen tomorrow, if you’d like. But now we should get you to your room.”
Mr. Wellington nodded to Elizabeth. “We hope to have your expert assistance whenever you have time to spare.”
“I love puzzles,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll be sure to come back.” She adjusted the strap of her backpack on her shoulder, waved good-bye, and trotted after Norbridge, who was already rounding the corner just ahead.
“And you will be pleased to show us to our room immediately!” someone yelled. Elizabeth glanced behind her to see the man in black screaming at Jackson and the other bellhop. “Be careful with my books!”
Jackson and three other bellhops lifted the long crate and began to follow the man and woman in black, the whole group looking for all the world like a funeral procession. Which is exactly what Elizabeth kept thinking as she hurried out of the lobby behind Norbridge Falls.
CHAPTER 6
THREE OR FOUR PIECES OF CANDY
POUR
POOR
DOOR
DOOM
ROOM
Norbridge led Elizabeth down a long
hallway lined with paintings of snowy mountains, sun-sparkling lakes, and what appeared to be various scenes of Winterhouse both inside and out. She was nearly jogging to keep up with him.
“I think you’re going to love it here,” Norbridge said without looking back. “Everyone’s getting ready for the big Christmas Eve party next week. Presents, fruitcakes, candy, our beautiful tree. We’re even going to have dancing after the big feast. We’ll have a string quartet with five violins and—”
“Would it still be a quartet if there were five violins?” Elizabeth said. “I thought a quartet meant four.”
Norbridge stopped. He looked to the ceiling for a moment. “It will be a quartet plus more people playing with them, I believe,” he said. And then, as though he’d intended to stop precisely at this spot, he pointed to a glass case set at eye level in an alcove to his left. Within the case, fastened crisply and lit with a small lamp, was what appeared to be a pair of old and tattered green wool pants.
“Can you guess what this is?” Norbridge said, very serious now. He had clamped his hand over a credit-card-size placard on the wall to hide it. He stood expectantly, stiffly.
Elizabeth peered into the case, moved her eyes around every corner of the little display.
“A pair of pants?” she said uncertainly.
“Yes. But whose?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any idea.”
“Ernest Shackleton!” Norbridge boomed. “The great Antarctic explorer! My aunt Ravenna Falls, one of the most beautiful women of her time, er, befriended Mr. Shackleton, and he gave her these pants as a memento.” He nodded proudly and lifted his hand from the small placard, which read ERNEST SHACKLETON’S PANTS.
“He’s the one who rescued all his men in the frozen sea, right?” Elizabeth said.
“You’re a scholar as well as a puzzle expert and a seasoned traveler, that’s apparent,” Norbridge said. “We have a lecture on Ernest Shackleton later this week. You should be sure to come. We’ll have lectures this week on the statues at Easter Island, the therapeutic properties of Indian tea, and a personal reflection on the ascent of Mount Everest. We also have cinematic movies in the theater and nightly musical concerts in Grace Hall. Come to all of them.”
“That’s a lot going on!” Elizabeth said. At her aunt and uncle’s house in Drere, she read or did her homework alone in her room every night while the television blared in the living room.
Norbridge took off walking again, charging away, and Elizabeth followed. “Well, we want to keep it lively around here,” he said. “We have interesting things to see on every floor. You can poke around. On the fifth floor we have a shirt worn by Harry Houdini, the greatest magician of all time, when he jumped out of a zeppelin and landed on the Empire State Building.”
“He did that?” Elizabeth made a mental note to look this up because she’d never heard anything about it.
“That’s what he told my father,” Norbridge said. “And then on the ninth floor we have a chess set used by Lewis and Clark—or just one of them, I can’t recall—when they discovered America.”
“I believe they were the ones on the Oregon Trail,” Elizabeth said, because she didn’t want to correct Norbridge outright.
“They discovered so much,” he said, his voice full of amazement as he led Elizabeth up a flight of stairs onto another long corridor. “What about the fourteenth floor? What do you imagine we have there?”
Elizabeth wondered how he could think she would have any idea. “I can’t even guess,” she said.
Norbridge stopped and gave a shrug. “Nothing,” he said. “There’s no fourteenth floor. Only thirteen. So there can’t be anything on that floor, can there?” Before she could answer, he pointed to the ornately paneled cherrywood door beside which they’d stopped.
“But look at this,” he said. On the wall next to the door was affixed a small silver plaque on which was written the following words: THIS ROOM RESERVED AT ALL TIMES FOR EDWIN AND ORFAMAY THATCHER. PLEASE DO NOT ENTER.
At this point, Elizabeth was thoroughly baffled. She read the plaque again, but she had no idea who these people were or why Norbridge was showing this to her. All she could think of was Becky Thatcher from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
“I’m sorry, Norbridge,” she said, “but I don’t know who those people are.”
“They’re billionaires,” Norbridge said quietly. “Maybe even trillionaires. They come here to Winterhouse once a year at most, and the rest of the time they pay to keep this room reserved.”
Elizabeth, who received no allowance, whose aunt and uncle barely had enough money to keep their house warm in winter, and who had to beg her aunt just to purchase one or two fifty-cent books at the semiannual book sale at the Drere library, couldn’t imagine spending money to permanently reserve a room in a hotel. “Why do they pay so much when they hardly ever come here?” she said.
Norbridge shrugged. “Because they can, I suppose. What does it matter when you already have more money than you could ever spend? If something cost a million dollars and you had a trillion dollars, would it make any difference if you went from a trillion dollars to a trillion minus a million?”
“I guess that makes sense,” Elizabeth said, still thinking it through. “I live with my aunt and uncle, and they don’t have anything, really.” Elizabeth explained how her aunt and uncle had sent her for the long Christmas holiday—even asking Norbridge if he had any idea who had paid for her, but he knew nothing more than Jackson did.
“Have you always lived with them?” Norbridge asked.
“My parents were killed when I was four,” Elizabeth said. It was a story she knew only from being told by Aunt Purdy. “At a Fourth of July show. The fireworks went off the wrong way, right where we were sitting. I was too young to remember it.” She spoke the words as plainly as she could and tried to keep from letting any sadness flood her. It wasn’t quite the case, though, that she had no memory of things—it was just that, in her recollection, there hadn’t been fireworks or a crowd or anything of the sort. Something had happened, something terrible, and she carried with her the awful remembrance of a jarring noise and fire and screams, but it was only because Aunt Purdy had insisted all of this had occurred during a fireworks show that Elizabeth had resigned herself to that story. There were times she wondered if her parents had died some other way altogether. One day, she told herself, when she was no longer with her aunt and uncle, she would try to find out what had really happened to them.
Norbridge closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s very painful to lose our loved ones. Very painful.” He pointed ahead. “We should keep going.”
“Those two men in the lobby,” Elizabeth said as they walked. “They’ve really been working on that puzzle for two years?” It seemed to her they had made less progress than she would have supposed, even though the puzzle was enormous.
“Mr. Wellington and Mr. Rajput come to Winterhouse with their wives three or four times a year,” Norbridge said. “They stay for a week or two, and a couple of years ago I dug out that old puzzle of my grandfather’s and they dumped it on the lobby table and started in. I think they argue more than anything, but they are pleasant enough, and they like to spend afternoons and evenings puzzling away. At the end of each evening they put a little sign up that says ‘Please do not touch our puzzle,’ and as far as I know, hardly anyone does. I’m happy to let them occupy themselves there.”
Norbridge stopped in front of two huge wooden doors that stood beneath a sign that said CANDY KITCHEN.
“But here we are,” he said, “although the kitchen is closed now.” He held one arm out to gesture to a glass-topped table just beside the doors. It was dotted with tall unlit lavender candles and huge china serving platters stacked with what looked to Elizabeth like sugared squares of candy. “Some Flurschen for you after your long bus ride,” he said proudly. “Please enjoy, Miss Elizabeth Somers.”
Elizabeth eyed the plates piled high with candy. She’
d had candy in wrappers or in boxes or bags, but never any sort of sugary square sitting out on a plate. “What is it?” she said.
“Flurschen. Winterhouse’s world-famous confection,” Norbridge said, as if informing her of something as basic as the name of the president or what to say when you knock on someone’s door on Halloween. “Please, have a piece. Or two. Or maybe three.” He gestured to the table once again, and Elizabeth stepped forward and eyed the candy dubiously—it didn’t look that tasty.
“I’ve never had it before,” she said.
“Walnuts, apricots, powdered sugar, and a bit more,” Norbridge said. “Go ahead.” A smile came over his face as he watched her hesitate. “Ah, I understand! Perhaps you want something more than candy! No worries, we will have a sandwich sent to your room. In the meantime, please have some dessert first!”
“What’s it called again?” she said.
“Flurschen,” Norbridge said. “It’s a made-up name. Doesn’t mean anything, but Nestor Falls felt it had that alpine sound to it. It’s really a sort of candy from Turkey.”
“Like Turkish delight!” Elizabeth said. “The candy Edmund eats in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe!”
Norbridge leaned forward. “Exactly,” he said, and after a pause: “But this is better.” He nodded to the plates. “Please, go ahead.”
The plates had stacks of the candy on them, each about the size of the kind of chocolates you find in boxes where you don’t really know what’s inside of each one until you take a bite.