Chapter 4 #2
Eve sighed, feeling her interest drain away. “Music is subjective, Mr. Harris,” she said. “How can anyone possibly know what the most beautiful music in the world is? There’s no such thing.”
Victor shook his head. “You would need to hear it to understand. It’s like that with some of the objects.”
“So what happened to the music box?”
“It was sold, of course. To a private collector.”
“Did you ever come across anything else from the hotel?” Eve asked.
He nodded. “I have a key to one of their rooms—Room Twenty-seven. It was once rumoured to be able to take a person back in time, to visit the hotel as it was in its heyday. That theory was debunked long ago, though, since apparently there isn’t any such room at the hotel.
The man I bought the key from told me that he’d travelled to the hotel—which is quite difficult to get to, from what I understand—but had been unable to locate this particular room.
These duds and red herrings do appear from time to time, unfortunately.
It’s difficult to track down White Octopus items in the first place because many of the sales are held privately.
It’s an auction house secret. Those of us who knew about them used to wear an octopus badge.
It wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but to those in the club it was a signal, a way for us to identify one another.
By the time I retired I hadn’t seen anyone else wearing a badge in years, though, so perhaps it’s died out.
My colleague George was a keen enthusiast and was lucky enough to track down the reading glasses. Are you familiar with them?”
Eve shook her head.
“They allow you to see what you need to see in that moment. As soon as George put them on, he saw a woman walk through the door. She turned out to be his future wife.”
“But she would have walked through the door whether he’d put the glasses on or not,” Eve pointed out. “That’s not magic. That’s just coincidence and suggestion.”
Victor gave a shrug. “Maybe. Maybe not. There are only two groups of people when it comes to the White Octopus Hotel—those of us who believe in its magic and those who don’t.
One thing I know, though, is that you’re holding a piece of the hotel right there in your lap, and if it found its way to you, then it did so for a reason.
There will be something magical and remarkable about that octopus, even if you don’t yet know what it is. That’s how it works.”
Eve folded the octopus up in its tissue paper and replaced it in her bag.
The visit had turned out to be deeply unsatisfactory, but then so was everything else—this world, this life, this business of waiting for it all to finally be over.
She was annoyed with herself for expecting more from this old man, and she was suddenly desperate for a cigarette.
“I don’t know if they still make them, but there used to be buyers’ catalogues,” Victor went on.
“For the various items. Where they had last appeared, how much they’d sold for, and their magic, if known.
There was one item I especially wanted.” He paused.
“I spent nearly forty years looking for it, in fact. A sheet of writing paper from the hotel.”
“Let me guess,” Eve said. “It lets you pen the most gushing love letter ever written?”
Victor shook his head. He wasn’t smiling this time as he leaned towards her slightly. “No. The writing paper lets you write a letter to a younger version of yourself.”
Eve felt her breath catch as a tiny, treacherous flame of hope sparked into life inside her, furious and fierce and frightening.
Could such a thing be possible? Could there really be such powerful magic in the world?
Eve knew she shouldn’t do the what-ifs. The therapists she’d had over the years had said it was unhelpful, and yet it was impossible not to because there were so many of them.
What if Bella had never died?
What if her mum and dad were still married?
What if Eve had a normal life and wasn’t haunted by rabbits?
There was one hopping around on the floor right now, white with a black splodge over its eye, snuffling around Victor’s slippers. Eve tried to pretend she hadn’t seen it, tried to control the cold prickle of dread that crept over her skin at the sight of it.
“You mentioned an octopus badge,” she managed. “Does it have to be a particular design?”
“No, any octopus would do,” Victor replied. “I once saw an auctioneer in Berlin who just wore a tentacle. You can take my old badge, if you like. It’s not as if I have need of it anymore. I rather like the idea of it being out on a quest again.”
“If you’re sure,” Eve said. “Thanks.”
He heaved himself out of his chair and shuffled into the next room, leaving her alone.
As she glanced around, waiting for him to come back, her eye fell on a framed collection of cigarette cards on the wall.
She came across cigarette cards at work sometimes and had always been interested in these tiny, often very beautiful cards by anonymous artists that had once appeared inside boxes of cigarettes.
She’d seen the vast Edward Wharton-Tigar collection at the British Museum and had admired the cigarette-card portraits in the National Portrait Gallery.
They were an insight into the interests and concerns of people of their time and were sometimes referred to as the poor man’s encyclopaedia.
Eve had her own small collection at home—all fifty of the Art Treasures cards issued by J. Millhoff & Co. Ltd. in 1926.
But this series of Victor’s was a collection she hadn’t seen before—the Measurement of Time collection by B.
Morris & Sons Ltd., dated 1924. The cards seemed to depict various methods of measuring time.
She saw water clocks, hourglasses, and sundials, along with less familiar methods such as an Egyptian clepsydra and a Chinese knotted-wick timekeeper.
Another card featured a lamp timekeeper from the sixteenth century and beside that was a falling-ball timekeeper from the seventeenth century.
“I didn’t know there were so many methods for measuring time,” Eve said when Victor returned.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” he replied.
“We’re the only species that feels obliged to try to measure it at all.
Here.” He held out a tiny enamel octopus pin.
“Might I ask a favour? If you ever come across a sheet of the writing paper, would you let me know? I would like very much to put in a bid for such an item.”
“Of course,” Eve replied. “If you’ll do something else for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you still have the key to Room Twenty-seven?”
Victor paused. “Yes.”
“Might I borrow it?”
“I can’t see that it will help,” Victor replied. “Like I told you, there is no such room at the hotel. But…well, it’s not much use to me either. You can have it.”
A moment later, Eve left the house with a small brass key, perfectly ordinary looking except for the octopus motif at the top, its brass tentacles wrapped around the number 27.
She lit a cigarette as soon as she was out the door.
As always, Eve found it impossible to suppress a shudder at the sight of that number.
The twenty-seventh—her birthday, the day that everything changed.
A twinge of guilt crept over her at the lie she’d spoken to Victor.
Of course she would not tell him if she found the writing paper.
Of course she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t tell anyone.
If such a thing existed, and if she ever found it, then she would keep it for herself.
Because if the writing paper was real, if it did exist, then there was a chance, however slim, that the great sin of Eve’s life could be undone.