And then I realize how Elspeth McCrory got all the inside dope on Rose McGlynn so quickly. The story of the hotel robbery must have been covered in all the papers. She just stole the background info and stuck it into her story. Pretty crafty, Elspeth, but how much of it was true?
I’d give anything right now for an hour in a library—or a computer with access to LexisNexis—but looking at my watch I see it’s after five. The microfiche librarian is loudly packing up her purse and glaring at me resentfully. I’m not sure how late the Poughkeepsie library stays open, but I am sure that if I don’t get back to the hotel by dinner my absence will be noted. Besides, why go to the library when I have a firsthand source? Harry should be able to tell me all I want to know about the Crown jewel heist.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE NET OF TEARS
Where the river turns from salt to fresh the selkie sheds her skin. It is here that the conqueror has his prison. Our men are here—fathers, sons, brothers, sweethearts—behind the high walls. The river runs beneath the stone walls and it’s possible to slip between the bars and swim to the pool of tears where the men come to see one last glimpse of their women. It’s dangerous, though, because the salt tide from the sea comes and goes here and if a selkie is caught inside the prison when the tide flows back she will drown.
I took the chance, though, to see Naoise one last time.
He was waiting by the pool, bent over the water, so that when I surfaced I came through his reflection. For a moment he must have thought he was still looking at himself, then he smiled, and then he frowned.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Deirdre, it’s not safe.”
“When did you ever care about safe,” I said, laughing at him, but then, seeing how his back was bowed over as if by some unbearable weight I relented and held his hand. “You didn’t think about safe when you stole Connachar’s jewels.”
“Shh.” He touched a finger to his lips and looked behind him into the shadows. When he turned I saw the scars between his shoulder blades where the knife had severed his wings.
“I did it for us—to release us from this prison—besides, they weren’t his to begin with. He stole them from others.”
I sighed and was frightened to hear the sound echo off the walls of the dungeon. It multiplied, as if the walls had absorbed all the sadness they had ever seen and were sighing back. But then I saw the other forms in the water—my sisters—come to see their men one last time, and I realized the sighs came from them.
“A lot of good it did. He has his jewels again and you are here.”
He bent all the way down to the water then, as if to press his lips to the river and drink, but instead he whispered in my ear.
“Not all. I saved the best. The net of tears—the net that must be broken to free us. I hid it . . .”
But as he spoke I felt a tug at my legs and a chill, like ice, moving through the water. The tide was retreating. If I didn’t leave now I would be trapped here. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, to stay here with Naoise, better than living on dry land without him. I felt the river coaxing me to stay . . . to drown.
“Go,” Naoise said, “you must go,” and he leaned forward and pushed me away, whispering one last word in my ear. I could see through the water his back turned to me. I could see the long scars where his wings had been and, frightened, I kicked off from the slimy rock and dived deep. My tears drowned in the river, their salt flowing back to the sea. I didn’t care then if I ever found the grate and made it out into the light and onto the land. I went deeper and deeper until my hands scraped something hard—the bars—and then other hands were pulling me through.
I opened my eyes and what I saw, there beneath the river, frightened me. My sisters, the selkies, were struggling in the ebb tide; long blue tentacles of salt water pulling at them, flaying their skin. I watched as the skin of one selkie was shredded into long strips and something white and raw kicked free and swam upstream. But another one was ripped in half by the struggle and her poor mutilated body sank to the bottom of the river.
I didn’t have the leisure, though, to pity my sisters, because soon I was caught in the same struggle. No one had told me it would feel like this—to shed one’s skin. And worse than the sharp salt fingers digging into my skin was the awful cold of the freshwater river waiting to claim me. A cold born of the glaciers to the north. It would be better, I thought, to die here and be eaten by fish, than to live in that cold. And as I saw others around me sink to the bottom I knew they had given in to that wish.
But then I remembered what Naoise had told me at the end. He had told me where to find the net of tears. How could I take that knowledge to the bottom of the river?
So I struggled against the tide and kicked free into the ice-cold water and blinding sunlight. I barely had strength left to crawl up onto the riverbank. Naked. Alone. My sisters—the few who had survived—had come up on the opposite riverbank. I was alone in a world of mud and ice and for a long time I lay there wishing I had died beneath the river.
When I get back to the hotel from Poughkeepsie I learn that Harry’s gone down to the city to arrange for several paintings to be sent up on loan for the Arts Festival. I’m disappointed that I’m not able to ask about the Crown jewel theft, but truthfully, I’m so busy with preparations for the festival that I’d have little time to talk to him. I barely have time to talk to Aidan and then I notice he’s avoiding me anyway, which puts me in an awkward position since he’s the events coordinator. So when, on the morning before the first day of the festival, Ramon tells me that Mr. Kron has returned and left several Hudson River School landscapes behind the desk to be stored in the safe—which, Ramon tells me, is too small—I turn to Joseph to help me figure out where to store them.
It’s early enough that his coterie of art students hasn’t joined him yet. He’s sitting at a window in his suite, his injured foot propped up on a footstool, surrounded by the faded mural of Ichabod Crane’s flight from the specter of the Headless Horseman. Like the mural in the Half Moon Suite, this one also incorporates the view of the Catskill Mountains into the narrative. The bridge that Ichabod Crane must cross to safety seems to span the distant mountains, and its arch is echoed by a small ornamental bridge in the rose garden. Joseph, seated on the far side of the bridge, appears to be right in the path of the fiery missile of the horseman’s head.
I sit on the edge of the footstool and, because I still can’t get used to having a conversation face-to-face with him instead of working side by side in the flower bed, I find myself looking out the window as we talk. It’s an appealing view—not as spectacular as the east side of the hotel with its panoramic sweep of the Hudson Valley, but beautiful in a quieter way. The sun hasn’t reached this side of the ridge yet. Scraps of mist still cling to the ground; the grass is glazed with a light dew that will burn off soon enough. The garden is full of the quick darting shapes of birds hunting for food. The only guests I see are the Eden sisters sitting quietly in Brier Rose. Minerva has a pair of binoculars, but Alice is sitting with her eyes closed, as if meditating.
“The garden looks beautiful,” I tell Joseph.
He shakes his head. “The ground is bone dry. I’ve asked Clarissa and Ian to stop watering the annuals and concentrate on the roses and other perennials. It won’t look as pretty in a few weeks, but the season is almost over and at least the roses will survive to next year.”
There’s something melancholy in the way he says at least the roses will survive. As if he didn’t expect to be around to see them. I wonder if this forced leisure has made him feel expendable and he has already mentally removed himself from the scene, just as he’s apportioning water to the longer-living plants and pruning back the deadwood.
I can’t think of any better way to tell him how much I still need him than to do what I’ve come to do anyway: ask for his advice. I tell him that the paintings that have just arrived won’t fit in the hotel safe.
“The safe wouldn’t be the best plac
e for them at any rate; too many people have access to it. I can’t tell you how many hotel safe robberies I’ve heard of over the years . . .”
“Do you remember the Crown Hotel robbery back in the forties?” I ask, remembering the article I read in Poughkeepsie.
Joseph turns abruptly away from the window and stares at me. “Who told you about that? Was it Mr. Kron?”
It would be easy to nod my head, but I can’t lie to Joseph. “I looked up the newspaper for the day my mother first came here. A woman named Rose McGlynn died at the Rip Van Winkle train station. She was visiting her brother who’d been sent to prison for robbing the Crown Hotel.”
Joseph’s face looks suddenly chalky, washed of color. I lean forward and touch his hand, which rests on the arm of his chair. His fingers feel cold as earth.
“Is that how you heard about the robbery,” I ask him. “Did my mother tell you about Rose McGlynn? Was my mother somehow involved in the robbery?”
Joseph pulls his hand away as if my touch had stung him. “Can you really imagine that your mother would involve herself in something like that, Iris?”
“Well, I think it’s likely she knew Rose McGlynn. They were traveling together on the same train, they’d both worked at the Crown, and they both came from Brooklyn. If it was really Rose McGlynn’s brother who committed the robbery . . .” I stop because Joseph looks stricken, but also because of what has occurred to me. “Rose McGlynn’s brother was named John. That’s how my mother was registered at the Dreamland Hotel. Mr. and Mrs. John McGlynn. John McGlynn could have been the lost lover whom she ran away with.”
“No,” Joseph says, “John McGlynn wasn’t your mother’s lover. Your mother would never betray your father like that.” Joseph swings his injured foot off the footstool so abruptly that the heavy plaster cast smacks into my thigh. I cry out, less from the physical pain—which is considerable—than from the sting of Joseph’s anger. But then I’m angry too.
“I’m tired of everyone telling me my mother was a saint. She died in a hotel room registered as another man’s wife. She was leaving my father and she was leaving me. If it had anything to do with that robbery I want to know.”
Joseph has struggled to his feet and is reaching for his crutches, which lean against the wall behind me. I grab his arm to steady him—and stop him long enough to answer my questions.
“Does it occur to you, Iris, that these might be dangerous questions to ask? That someone might get hurt.” He lays his large hand over mine—I think to remove it from his arm, but instead he draws my hand closer to him and holds it against his chest. Through the worn cloth of his shirt I can hear the faint pulse of his heart. “I promise you that your mother wasn’t having an affair with John McGlynn. She never meant to leave you or your father.” He squeezes my hand a little harder. “Shayna maidela,” he says, “I drove your mother across the river that night and I know she meant to come back. She went to settle something . . . to see someone . . . but I can’t tell you who. Not now. It’s not my secret to tell. Can you trust me enough to wait just a little?”
I look into Joseph’s brown eyes, eyes so scored with wrinkles it’s like looking into two wells sunk deep in parched ground. There’s never been anyone I’ve trusted more. Besides, I have an inkling suddenly of what he knows and why he can’t tell me. I remember the argument he had with Phoebe the night she went out onto the ledge and I feel sure it was something to do with my mother and Peter Kron.
“Do you promise you’ll tell me when you can?”
“If you promise me you’ll be careful.”
I nod, meekly, like when I was little and he made me promise not to trample over his flower beds.
“Good,” he says, releasing my hand and reaching behind me for his crutches. “Now let me show you where to keep those paintings.”
We don’t have to go far. There are two closets in the Sleepy Hollow Suite, one in the hall that joins the living area to the bedroom (which is the one Phoebe complained had loose floorboards) and one on the other side of the living area—which, I notice for the first time, has a double lock and a deadbolt on its metal door. Joseph takes out a heavy ring of keys from his pocket and unlocks it.
“Every once in a while we’d have a guest who wanted a secure storage area for valuables, so your father had three suites outfitted with locked closets and made sure he kept the keys. We don’t usually open them for guests unless they specifically request it. It’s perfect for storing those paintings.”
“But we’ll have to go in and out of your suite every time we need a painting. They’re for different lectures so we’ll be bothering you all week. Maybe we can use one of the other suites that has a locked closet.”
“The other ones are taken—unless you want to use the one in Mr. Kron’s suite, but I don’t fancy you traipsing in and out of his room.” Joseph looks up from his keys and holds my gaze for a moment before looking away. I wonder if he shares Phoebe’s idea that I’m romantically involved with Harry. “Use this one, Iris. You’ve got the key to the outside door, so you don’t need to bother me to get in. I can close the connecting door between the bedroom and the living area and there’s an outside door from the bedroom I can use. I’ll make sure no one goes in there who’s not supposed to. At least I’ll be doing something.”
When I get back downstairs Aidan is in the office looking at the paintings.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” I ask him. “Did you see the one of the hotel?”
“This one here? It looks more like a Greek temple. And it makes these hummocky little hills around here look like the Swiss Alps. I’d say these river school painters were prone to a bit of exaggeration.”
“It was the whole romantic notion of the sublime,” I say, happy that Aidan’s even talking to me. “They were exalting the American landscape.”
“Well,” Aidan says, leaning the painting back against the wall, “of course I’m not an art expert like your fellow Jack, but even I know these are worth too much to be lying around the front office.”
I decide to ignore the reference to Jack. “There’s a locked closet in Joseph’s suite we can use for them and any other valuable artifacts that won’t fit in the safe. I was going to bring them up now . . .”
“Why didn’t you ask me? Do you not trust me with them?”
“Honestly, I was afraid you’d think the job was too menial for you . . .” I say before I can help myself. At least it’s the truth—I have been squeamish of asking him to do anything this last week—but I didn’t mean it to sound as if he’d been shirking his share of the work.
Aidan glares at me for a moment, but then drops his head and rubs the back of his neck. “This ain’t going to work, love,” he says so softly I have to move closer to hear him. Over his shoulder I see Ramon at the desk, but he’s busy checking in a guest. “Maybe I should just leave.”
I touch the tips of my fingers to his elbow. “But this job is too good an opportunity for you to waste.”
“Is that the only reason you want me to stay?” When Aidan looks up at me I’m alarmed at the expression in his eyes—he looks like a trapped animal. Maybe he really does want to leave.
“You know it isn’t . . . it’s just everything is so complicated right now. Can you trust me enough to wait just a little?”
The words sound familiar as I say them and then it occurs to me that I’ve repeated what Joseph asked of me not more than half an hour ago. At the desk the guest who is checking in drums his fingers while waiting for Ramon to run his credit card. Beyond him the lobby is empty and quiet in the bright sunlight streaming in from the terrace. A faint breeze stirs the sheer curtains at the French windows and the hems of the newly upholstered couches. I have a sense of the whole hotel perched on the ridge waiting, like a ship at anchor before it launches into the sea. Aidan beside me seems equally poised for flight.
Aidan touches the back of his hand to my face. “I’ll wait for you, Iris,” he says, “for as long as I can.”
When I’ve made sure the paintings are safely stored I go into the breakfast room to find Harry. He’s talking into a cell phone, but he motions me to sit and signals to a waiter to fill my coffee cup, all the while conducting a conversation mostly composed of large figures and obscure code.
“Offer long, above, fifty thousand shares BONZ, Bob Oscar Nancy Zebra nine spot sixty-nine. For the day.”
After a minute I realize he’s placing a stock order.
As soon as he folds the phone shut he turns his whole attention to me. “You’re looking lovely this morning, Iris. That outfit reminds me of Coco Chanel.”
I laugh and feel lighter than I have all morning. Of the two men I’ve spoken to so far, Harry is the first to notice what I’m wearing today—a boxy green linen suit and several long ropes of fake pearls—and the first to make me laugh.
“It belonged to my mother, but it’s hardly Chanel. She had a knack for copying whatever was in vogue and as for these”—I twirl the fake pearls around my finger—“guests were always leaving their costume jewelry behind. There are boxes of this stuff up in the attic.”
Harry lifts an eyebrow and reaches across the coffee cups to finger one of the pearls. “Yes,” he says, “fake. But are you sure all of it is? Maybe I should have a look at those boxes.”
The Seduction of Water Page 24