Not, however, for long. Four minutes later, the beat policeman rounded the corner a street north of the alley and began his slow progress south. The dark lantern threw its soft beam into doorways; the policeman’s hand tried every door. On he came, not pausing at the crossing of Grand Street because there was no traffic now, and then hardly pausing for two bodies crowded into the angle of an ancient brick house, now empty, and its broken front steps. The policeman flashed his light on them, assured himself that they were alive, moved on and crossed Hester Street.
Three buildings lay between him and the alley. He tried each door — one, long ago a merchant’s home, now a warehouse; one new, with a neoclassical front, a jobber’s in hardware goods; the third a near-ruin with a closed saloon on the first floor.
He came to the alley. He opened his dark lantern and held it up to throw the light down its length. He was already poised to move on, ready to see nothing but a rat or two and perhaps a cat. But he paused.
He took a step back up the street to get a better angle. He moved closer to the building, almost leaning on it. He held the light out ahead of himself to try to get the beam closer to what he thought he had seen.
It hadn’t changed: it still looked like a bare leg, not down on the pavement but up in the air.
Fear of the new commissioner drove him into the alley. In the old days, he’d have left it for the next man and for the light of morning, but now it would be hell to pay and no pension if he passed up something like a man naked and dying of cold. He had a pal who’d passed up a drunk who’d fallen off Gansevoort pier and drowned; that had been the end of his pal’s police career.
Gripping his truncheon and the lantern — he carried a pistol, thanks to Know-It-All Roosevelt, but the nightstick was the weapon he trusted — he moved into the alley, the dark lantern thrust out ahead like a talisman that would protect him from evil. As he got closer, he saw that he had been right about the human leg. There it was, sticking out.
He went closer. Not a man’s leg, but a woman’s. Sitting on a trash can as naked as—
“Oh, Mother of God!” He bent to vomit.
CHAPTER 2
Louisa Doyle woke before six. She didn’t know that it was before six; she knew only that she felt wonderful, that she was happy and safe and loved, and that she was in New York and her husband was beside her in a marvelous bed. She put a hand out to feel the mound of him under the bedcovers; she moved a foot to feel his hairy leg, like a guarantee, a surety of marriage. Of protection.
She stretched. Daylight waited behind the closed drapes; streaks of it bled around the edges and told her at least that it was day. She heard sounds from the street, too, the rumble of iron wheels and the clop of hooves. It was all very well to say that the hotel was quiet, but, even with double glazing on the windows (a particular point made of it in the brochure), New York was too energetic and too loud to be kept out completely.
She slipped out of bed. She was wearing a rather too demure floor-length nightgown, ten inches of frothy lace at the bottom and the cuffs of the sleeves, a gift from Arthur’s mother. She laughed to herself, then at herself: Arthur’s mother thought that, even married, she should be fully covered at all times; she, who had been naked in bed with her athletic husband (they had made love again after the early supper: after all, it had been too early to go to sleep), but had got up in the night only to put on the nightgown. As he, she supposed, had got up to put on a nightshirt.
What funny things we are.
She peeked out between the curtains. An apparently gray day, although she couldn’t see the sky because of the buildings across the street. Directly below, somebody was sweeping the pavement. A man in a bowler hat was pushing a barrow that was covered with a tarpaulin. A hackney carriage was already waiting on the hotel side of the street; as she watched, another pulled up behind it. Across the street and toward Fifth Avenue, a man in a duster and a black soft hat was opening the front door of a shop.
Life. Life was beginning. Had she ever felt like this in London?
Something pinged and hissed in the room. Central heating. Another of the New Britannic’s boasts. There was a smell of warm metal. The hotel itself was coming to life.
She made a very quick toilette, promised herself to do better later, and, uncorseted, got herself into a favorite, very simple dress — the faintest plaid over dove-gray wool, the sleeves full to the elbow, its own tiny pillow of a bustle nestled up high on her rump. Shoes to match — gray, at any rate, leather — no hat needed, surely; it would be like going out into a house to step into the hotel corridor.
She planted a feather-light kiss on Arthur’s cheek, willing him not to wake, not to spoil her little adventure. She wrote a few words on a sheet of hotel paper, “Gone for a newspaper for you,” and propped it where he would see it on the bedside table.
There was a key somewhere; Arthur had been given it by the boy yesterday. How vexing not to have one’s own key. Well, she would demand one at Reception. Ask for one, anyway.
When she opened the door, she almost fell over a newspaper that had been dropped there. A glance told her that there was a newspaper in front of every door. The New York Times. Headlines about something American, in fact something New Yorkish; she’d look at that later. Staid columns of print. It seemed a let-down after the pleasure of seeing the city wake. She tossed it into an armchair and went out.
The corridor was carpeted, and so her feet went silently along. Did she dare to take the lift herself? She couldn’t make it work, she was sure; but there must be a boy on duty. It made sense that there would be a boy on duty all night.
She rang.
After some seconds there was a sound overhead, as if something mechanical had been woken and didn’t like it. Then there was a sound below, a clash of metal on metal. And then a kind of hum as the hydraulic (whatever that was; she must ask Arthur) began its work.
The doors flew open. A boy — a real boy this time, not an old man — grinned at her, said “Down?” and then threw his weight into closing the doors again with the same clash.
“Rest’ernt ain’t open yet, miss. Cuppa tea if yous ast fort at Reception.”
“Oh, tea would be very nice, thank you.”
“Juss ast fort.” He threw the gates open with a noise that he clearly enjoyed. “Watcherstep!”
The lobby was empty except for two women, both apparently middle-aged, thick, one with a bucket and mop and one with a large can, into which she was emptying ashtrays. She had a rag tucked into the back of her apron; she whipped this out and wiped each ashtray clean. Neither woman looked at her.
Louisa felt pleased, as if she’d been allowed to look in on the hotel’s secret life. She went to the Reception. There was nobody there, but there was a little metal bell, like a breast lying flat, and a sign, “Please Ring for Service.” She touched it, got a silvery clang, waited. A man she hadn’t seen before came out of some inner sanctum with a suggestion of pulling straight a tailcoat he’d just wriggled into. “Madame?”
“Oh, I’m up terribly early, I’m afraid. I, uh, might it be possible to have a second key to my room? And a cup of tea at this hour?”
“Tea, of course, madame. What room?”
She didn’t know what room. Arthur knew what room, but she didn’t. She said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to look it up. Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle. I, uh, thought it would be nice if I could find a newspaper for my husband. To read, I mean. Oh, other than the New York Times, which is a splendid newspaper, I know, but something — lighter?” Why was she babbling? She did this; she knew she did; flustered by a man younger than she with no power over her and no reason to care what she did or why. Almost angrily, she said, “Where can I buy a newspaper?”