Chapter 19
Harry carefully set down his empty glass. “The war is over, Mr. Everly,” he said quietly. “The nurses all left many years ago.”
Eve glanced over at the curtain again. It was impossible not to stare at those feet sticking out from beneath.
The shoes looked as if they had once been smart but were now severely scuffed and scratched and wearing thin around the toes.
They were completely, perfectly motionless and she might have thought there wasn’t a person behind the curtain at all if it wasn’t for the cough.
The cough, Eve recalled one of the guests saying, that signalled a lie.
“The war’s been over for seventeen years,” the barman added.
“I know when the war ended,” Max said coldly. “You were there, on the station platform that day, weren’t you? You knew her.”
The barman cleared his throat, with another anxious glance towards the curtain and those shabby shoes. “I never said that there weren’t any nurses here, Mr. Everly,” he said. “I’m only trying to point out that it was a long time ago. The woman you’re speaking of probably returned to her family.”
“She wrote to me a week ago, asking me to meet her at the hotel. So where is she? People don’t vanish into thin air.”
Beside him, Eve winced. People did vanish into thin air. That very thing was going to happen to Max himself. Perhaps she should say something, try to warn him. Harry glanced at the curtain again, then turned back to Max and shook his head.
“I don’t know.” He whispered the words, but the Eavesdropper still heard them.
There was another round of coughing from behind the curtain, much worse than before.
It was like no cough that Eve had ever heard.
There didn’t seem to be any relief in the act; it was just a hacking, hopeless sound that went on and on and made the hairs on the back of her arms stand up.
It almost didn’t sound like a human cough at all.
The remaining staff in the room had fallen silent.
The only sound came from the unseen person behind the curtain, spluttering and choking in that awful, desperate manner.
Eve stood up abruptly and walked straight to the curtain.
A single bony finger curled around the edge of the fabric.
The gesture that was rumoured to speak of a great lie.
A monumental lie. But what? His skin looked grey and there was black dirt wedged beneath his nails.
Behind her, Luca cleared his throat and said, “It’s best to leave well enough alone, miss.”
She ignored him, keeping her eyes fixed on the curtain. There was something very dreadful about the cough, the shabby shoes, and the clutching finger, but she reached out and laid her hand gently against it.
“Can I do anything?” she asked quietly. “To help you?”
The finger jerked slightly at her touch and then an entire hand snaked around the curtain, thin and grey and cold, covered in weeping sores, and gripped hold of Eve’s hand.
She heard the scrape of chair legs as a couple of staff members stood up behind her, uttering startled exclamations, but Eve already knew somehow that the Eavesdropper wasn’t dangerous.
He was just afraid and alone, had been like that for too long, and was now lost in the dark.
She held on to his hand for several stretched-out moments, and everyone was relieved to hear the terrible cough from behind the curtain start to lessen and eventually subside altogether.
Then, with one final squeeze, the hand released her and slipped back behind the folds of the curtain.
“Damned unnatural place,” Max said. Eve turned to see him on his feet, picking up his fedora.
He put it back on his head, then nodded in her direction.
“You have nerves of steel, madam, but a word of advice: Don’t stay for the scavenger hunt.
Don’t stay here at all. Check out of the White Octopus now. While you still can.”
“Mr. Everly—” Eve began.
But Max only tipped his hat. “Good night.”
He walked past her and out the door. Eve glanced back at the remaining staff in the room and saw that they were still looking fixedly at their drinks.
She was tempted to approach Alfie and ask what the deal was, why they were all acting so bizarrely, but she wanted to continue her conversation with Max.
So she turned towards the door, glancing at the curtain as she strode past. The shoes, and whoever was wearing them, had gone.
When she emerged into the corridor, she saw Max stride around the corner.
She quickened her pace and caught up with him as he entered another room.
The sign on the door read Fountain Room.
Eve followed him over the threshold and stared at walls fashioned from glass panels, with numerous fountains positioned in between a collection of orange trees.
The air smelled of citrus and all around there was the splash, splash of water cascading and tumbling, scattering a dance of diamond reflections across the mirrors.
The windows looked out towards the magnificent steam baths, striking and splendid in the starlight.
Eve glimpsed a few final partygoers still out there, drinking champagne on the lawn in their fur coats.
There was every manner of fountain within the room.
Some were large and freestanding, while others were shallow basins attached to the walls.
There were several octopuses here—on the fountains themselves and depicted upon the floor tiles.
She hastily added them to her list. That made thirty-one still to go.
Max stood beside a medium-sized bronze fountain sporting a large galleon that was balanced precariously on the very edge of a gigantic wave.
Eve walked over. “Mr. Everly. What I’m about to say will sound strange and I imagine you won’t like it much, or even believe me, but for the sake of my conscience I’ve got to tell you that one day—one day fairly soon—you will disappear.”
He glanced at her through the spray of the fountain, one eyebrow raised. “Disappear?”
“You become a missing person. No one ever finds out what happened to you.”
He didn’t look concerned, and why should he? Eve knew she was only making herself sound like a lunatic.
“So you’re, what?” he asked in a bored tone. “A fortune teller?”
“Something like that.”
“Perhaps you can peer into your crystal ball and tell me what became of my friend?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Everly, but I’m chasing my own ghosts. I don’t have the time or energy for anyone else’s.”
She could hear Bella, giggling as she ran amongst the fountains. As always, Eve wanted to shudder but forced herself not to. She would not show weakness. She would not acknowledge her sister at all.
Max walked around to join her. “You know,” he said, “after all this time, I still see my friends who fought with me in France. I see them walking down the street, or mixing drinks in bars, even though they’ve been dead for seventeen years.
So perhaps it is that. Of course, that must be the explanation.
But your eyes…Are you quite certain that none of your relatives worked here during the war? ”
Eve shook her head. “They couldn’t have.”
“You simply must be related. Either that or I’m imagining you, which is also quite possible.”
“What was the nurse’s name?”
“Her name was Eve. Eve Shaw.”