Chapter 43 #2
“I’ve already told you that we’re not to disturb Mr. Roth,” Matron said sternly. “We’re not to go up to the sixth floor under any circumstances. Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
Eve let the conversation drop, but a couple of hours later she went down to the music room and got the gramophone, lugging it all the way up the stairs, along with a box of records. Matron was furious.
“If you ever defy one of my instructions again, I will put in a request for you to be moved to a different hotel,” Matron said. “You’ll be gone by the morning.”
But the men were so delighted by the gramophone’s presence that there was no talk of taking it back downstairs. Max didn’t say anything about the music, but he kept looking over at the gramophone and focusing on it instead of doing that chilling stare into the past.
The next day, when Eve brought him his lunch, he looked up at her in a curious sort of way and said, “Are you real?”
For a moment, she was back in the Palm Bar, surrounded by black velvet and golden palm trees, a chilled Aviation in her hand.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Is your name really Eve Shaw?” he pressed on.
She nodded.
He continued to stare at her as if she was a puzzle. “But are you…can you be the same person who sent those parcels to me out at the front?”
Eve paused. Had she done this? Max hadn’t said anything about parcels back in 1935.
Perhaps he was confused and thinking of some other girl.
Perhaps he had a sweetheart back home in England—one of those many platinum blondes.
She was about to tell him it hadn’t been her when he said, “It was you, wasn’t it?
I’m glad I get to thank you in person.” His eyes flicked towards the gramophone.
“The records you sent. They meant a lot to my friend. Thomas.”
His hand gave a sudden convulsive twitch then, and he stopped speaking abruptly.
I shot him in the head….
His words from 1935 echoed back to her.
There’s no forgiveness for that, no coming back from it….
Our nightmares will never go away….
“I’m glad about the records,” Eve said quietly. “And so sorry about your friend.”
Max didn’t reply. He didn’t say another word for the rest of the day, but the twitches and tremors were bad. The next morning Eve found him out on the balcony. It was the first time he’d agreed to go outside, and she could tell that he was looking at the mountains and actually seeing them.
I ought to go now, Eve thought. Back to 1935. This isn’t helping me with the scavenger hunt. So why am I still here?
Surely if she was going to find any clocks or octopuses in 1918, then she would have done so by now.
But she couldn’t shake the conviction that the key to Room 17 had come to her for a reason.
She tried not to think about the possibility that it was to save Max on the rooftop, like he’d said.
This wasn’t about him. It was about the scavenger hunt.
Maybe the final octopus hiding here in the past was one like Cleo, only appearing in certain circumstances.
If she just stuck it out long enough, then perhaps she would find it.
But she couldn’t deny that she looked forward to seeing Max each day.
She looked forward to it so much that she was not quite ready, deep down, to give it up.
“Thank you, miss.” He took the pretzel from her.
“Call me Eve, if you like.”
“If you’ll call me Max.” He held out another letter addressed to his mother. “Would you mind posting this?”
“Of course.”
She took the letter and tucked it into her pocket. She wondered when and how the subject of Max’s parents should be broached with him again, but then he surprised her by saying, “I know they’re dead. Everyone thinks I don’t, but I do. My head isn’t quite that cracked.”
“Then…why the letters?”
“I can’t explain. I don’t know why I keep writing to them.
” He looked down at the pretzel. “You know, we got one piece of bread a day in Germany. It was about half the size of the palm of your hand. We used to boil snails and grind them up with nettles into a spread to bulk it out. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to food like this. ”
For the next week, Eve walked around the hotel at different hours of the day.
She tried midnight, 3 a.m., sunrise, 9 p.m., just in case a clock or octopus only appeared at a certain hour; just in case she stumbled across the Sugar Room.
Occasionally, when she was walking around the hotel, she thought she caught the faintest scent of freshly baked cakes, creamy chocolate, and roasting coffee.
This happened more often in the middle of the night, but there was never any sign of a patisserie.
Despite Nikolas Roth’s instructions, Eve tried returning to the corridor of floor six, in case that tentacle should appear to pull her through the wall again.
She even laid her hands flat against the wallpaper, reaching for the octopus with her mind, begging it to come for her, but there was no sign of it.
She wandered the steam baths, the tread of her heels echoing over the tiles, but there was no octopus and no trench horse.
There was, perhaps, nothing here in 1918 for her at all.
Finally, Eve stood in the empty frigidarium at midnight and put her hand in the pocket of her nurse’s dress, looking for the fumsup that was no longer there.
Instead, her fingers stroked the cold metal of the key to Room 17.
There had to be something here. Something that she was missing.
Perhaps she should try the balconies. She’d wandered the corridors and rooms at night over and over again, but she hadn’t been out to the balconies or the roof after dark.
It would be foolish to go back to 1935 before making sure there were no stones unturned.
It was, she told herself, the only reason she was staying. It had nothing whatever to do with Max.