She would ask Arthur.
She left a coin by her teacup and got up, turned and almost fell on her front as she tripped on a small wrinkle in the carpet. Well known in her family as clumsy, she blushed very red and looked around to find if she had been seen. The two charwomen had vanished. One of the “boys” had been rushing toward her, now slowed as he saw she hadn’t fallen. “I’m quite all right!” she called, and turned her head and saw a man in a dark overcoat just coming through the bronze front doors. She realized it was the hotel detective. He smiled at her — he had seen her trip, the wretch, hardly a license for him to smile.
“You okay, Miz Doyle?” He had a hard voice and a manner she didn’t like. Maybe it was the “okay,” a word neither she nor anybody she knew would use.
“I’m perfectly fine, thank you.”
“We don’t want you suing the hotel.” He laughed. His want you had come out as wonchew. “I’ll tell Carver to see to that rug.” Tuh see tuh dat rug.
She didn’t know who Carver was, didn’t care. “That’s hardly necessary. It was my fault.”
Again, he laughed. “Accidents in the hotel’re never the guest’s fault. Ask any shyster.”
He swung around behind Reception and disappeared. She realized she was holding the pink Police Gazette in her hand. Could he have read the name? It would hardly have mattered; he’d undoubtedly be the type who read such a rag and would recognize it by the color of the paper.
And what was a shyster? Something Jewish, from the sound of it.
She folded the newspaper and held it against her dress as she crossed the lobby to the lift. She was very formal with the boy who drove the lift up to her floor.
Arthur was exercising with his chest expander. It had handles and springs and was supposed to give him the chest of a circus strongman, but so far she hadn’t noticed any change; not that she cared, as she liked Arthur exactly as he was.
“Where have you been?” he said as he pulled the handles apart as far as his arms could open. He was wearing trousers and a shirt, but no collar, and his braces were hanging down from his waist. He let the springs pull his hands back almost together and he exhaled.
“I was in the lobby, having a cup of tea.” She made herself sound very bright and happy.
“Oh, Louisa…” He pulled his hands wide apart again, and the springs twanged across his chest. He brought his hands back together. “…is that wise?”
“It seemed perfectly respectable to me. They offered me the tea; I didn’t ask for it.” (That was not quite true; it was the elevator boy who had offered it, and she had asked. Oh, well.) “And toasted bread. I was the only one there.”
He pulled his expander apart again, was standing with his head thrown back and his large but soft chest thrown out. “I don’t think…” The expander twanged as his hands almost hit each other in front of him. “…that we should risk doing the wrong thing until we know the local mores. ‘When in Rome…’”
“I’ve brought you a newspaper.”
He threw the expander in a tangle on the bed. “Why is it pink?” He took the newspaper from her.
“I’ve no idea.” She kissed his cheek. “I think it means to be rather daring.”
Arthur was frowning at the Police Gazette and trying to get his wind back. “Where did you get such a thing?”
She knew that tone, so she lied. “I found it in the lobby.”
He stared at the front page, opened it to the second, stared at page two, then started to stare at page three and quickly closed it. “I’m shocked that they would allow such a thing in a hotel of this reputation. I shall have a word with Carver.” He balled the Gazette in both fists and rather ostentatiously pushed it into a wastebasket.
“Who is Carver?”
“The manager. His father built this place. It’s all in the brochure.”
“Oh, please don’t say anything to him, Arthur.”
“Why not?”
“Well — suppose it had been left by one of the boys. Or that house detective. We might get someone into trouble.”
“Serve them right.” He thrust his arms over his head and bent down to touch his toes, or almost so.
She sat on the bed and watched him. “Arthur.”
“Yes, my dove?”
“What does it mean when they say a woman has been ‘mutilated’? I know what the word means, of course, but only in a general way. This sounds to me like some sort of secret code — the kind of thing men say to each other when they don’t want the rest of us to understand.”
“Where did you hear such a thing?”
“In that perfectly inoffensive paper you threw away. There’s been a murder.”
“So I saw! Louisa, I forbid you to read such trash!”
“It was the only thing to read.”
“We have a perfectly good newspaper in the sitting room! The New York Times, quite a good newspaper, I believe.”
“But I wasn’t in the sitting room.”
He stopped trying to touch his toes. “Louisa, you’re being obdurate.”
“And you’re making mountains out of molehills! All I asked was, what does ‘mutilated’ mean!”
They looked at each other. Like any couple who mean to make it work, they feared each other’s anger, she his more than the other way around — until, that is, she got really angry. He looked into her eyes, she into his. He broke the contact. “I suppose it means that some atrocity was committed on the victim’s body. Such things can’t be talked about in detail, dear.”
“Your Sherlock Holmes would talk about them.”
“Only with Watson, because he’s a doctor, and a fictional invention shouldn’t be taken as an example of how we’re meant to behave. Please do let’s drop the subject.”
He was standing now with his back to her, ready to start jumping up and down or something of the sort, but they could see each other’s eyes in a mirror. She went to him and put her arms around him from behind. “I miss the children,” she said.
He put his hands over hers on his satisfyingly large abdomen. “So do I. But we’re here, and we knew there’d be a separation, and we shall see them again in six weeks. Eh?”
“I know.” She kissed the back of his shirt. “I shall leave you to your muscles.”
“Don’t be ironical, Louisa.”
She repaired her costume — meaning mostly that she struggled into a corset without anybody’s help, felt quite righteous for having done so — and selected a hat.
“I’m going to buy something for the babies.” She was almost out the door when she said it.
“Don’t leave the hotel, Louisa! Louisa — I forbid—”
Louisa went downstairs again, really to see whether nice people were using the lobby, as Arthur feared they wouldn’t, but they were. Still, because she had another reason for going downstairs, she ascended a wide marble staircase to what was called the “mezzanine,” which seemed to be an extra floor that wasn’t counted in the number of stories. (“Mezzo” meant half, like the singer, she thought, so perhaps a mezzanine was half a story.) The mezzanine had a number of things on it — the ballroom, some offices, an elaborate ladies’ convenience with a separate room for dressing or simply resting — but what she particularly wanted to see was what was called The Arcade. It wasn’t really an arcade, as for example the Burlington Arcade was, but it was like a little street of shops, quite tiny things, really, but with windows on the corridor as if it were a street. The shops were just opening. She bought a picture-book for the younger child, foolishly because she’d have another five weeks of America in which to buy gifts, and she bought two shirts for Arthur at a price she wouldn’t dare tell him, but they would come out of her allowance, and anyway he’d be pleased because they were of excellent quality and came from something called Brooks Brothers, which sounded to her like Bond Street.