I step up to the reception desk and bring my palm down on the service bell. No immediate stirrings, and for a time I stand and wait, staring into the pattern of complicated vines bulging out from the velvet wallpaper. It's as old and smoke stained as everything else but isn't dreadful, probably even an admired extravagance when first plastered up fifty or sixty years ago. In fact the only thing that seems to belong to the present decade is the bottom-of-the-line computer that sits behind the desk and displays a blue screen unblemished by text. Beside it a quarter-full coffeepot sitting on a hot plate, islands of turquoise mold floating on its surface.
Ring the bell again. This time there's the sound of crumpling tinfoil from the back office, and then a man with papery skin and a bald head mapped with burst capillaries steps out into the dull marine light.
''What can I do you for?'' he asks, the inside of his mouth caked with sandwich residue.
''You can do me for a room. Something large, with generous natural light. And quiet, if you can manage that.''
''They're all the same. 'Cept for the honeymoon suite.'' He lifts his eyes to mine, but there's nothing in them.
''It's got a TV, phone, separate shower?''
''Ever been in a hotel room that didn't?''
''Well, in Europe . . .'' I begin foolishly, but the blankness of his eyes remains set. ''The honeymoon suite sounds like just the thing.''
I register, pay for the first night (I'm not asked how many more may follow), take the key and directions from Mr. Hospitality, and ascend a set of stairs marked by a brass plaque with GRAND STAIRCASE on it in raised letters, though now not so much grand as unnecessarily wide. Turn right and all the way down to the end, unlock the door, kick it open, flick on the bedside lamp.
It's big. One could certainly say that about it. Bigger than the standard. Right on the corner, too, so that each exterior wall has its own window overlooking its own street, as well as a semicircle of glass between them and a ledge wide enough to sit on. The smell of vegetable oil and burnt beef, moisture stains blotched over the ceiling, furniture of a sufficient age and ugliness to be sold at ''antique'' prices in the city but which in this room show only their age and ugliness. All of that and still not bad. Unimaginable what set of misfortunes would ever bring present-day honeymooners to spend a single moment in such a room, but for Bartholomew Christian Crane, long- resigned bachelor and aficionado of the seedy, not bad at all.
Sometime in the dead of night the phone at the reception desk downstairs starts to ring. It's one of the old ones with a real tin bell inside, and the sound it makes carries up the stairs, down the long hallway, and through the heavy bedroom door without any muting of its volume.
Four rings, five--doesn't that zombie who checked me in have anyone work the desk overnight? Six rings, seven --who the hell would be calling an empty hotel at this hour for so long? No doubt some long-suffering wife of a regular at the lobby bar attempting to locate her gin-soaked lesser half.
With each ring I'm pulled closer to consciousness, although I resist opening my eyes. But by the time ring number fifteen finishes I take the Lord's name in vain, pull on socks and pants, slip over the hardwood floor to the door, and step out into the hallway, ready to go down and rip the phone cord out of the wall. But for a time I only stand there. Arms crossed, cool drafts breathing against my back.
I must have risen too quickly--everything suddenly prickling and light, a black ring closing around my eyes. Throw out my hands for balance and almost touch the walls, the hallway constricting around me like a swallowing throat. A clicking sound that is my tongue wrestling for words that have dried away.
In the middle of the nineteenth tolling it stops. Echoes in the perfect quiet until it's replaced by the whisper of dust balls scuttled across the floor by the sour air blown out from under every door.
I remain there for a time, pretend that I'm ready to slide down the banister and throw the fucking thing out onto the street if it starts up again. But it doesn't, and eventually the cold forces me back to my room. Pull up the covers and wish for sleep. Eyes held shut, listening to the imagined footfalls of the old hotel.
chapter 5
It is an unfortunate fact that the largest and most handsome building in Murdoch is its jail, the whimsically named Murdoch Prison for Men. The original building, set in a green cleft next to the courthouse, is a modest but dignified red brick block with oak doors and a marble cornerstone marking its inauguration by some Lieutenant Governor or other, as well as the date, July 16, 1897. Since then several additions had been made to the rear, and the structure moved within its high walls down a long slope to the edge of the creek that runs through town.
Its history was obvious enough. Over the decades, with each quarry closing, and the ongoing confirmation that a tourist market was never to be, a sympathetic provincial government would construct another cellblock and expand the region that the jail was designated to serve. These days one of Murdoch's greatest boasts was that it had criminals bused in from far and wide to serve their summary terms or await trial. And while other small-town jails across the country were being shut down in favor of new, computer-managed institutions with state-of-the-art metal shops and swimming pools to assist in ''rehabilitation programs,'' Murdoch's would go on with the job assigned to it at the end of the nineteenth century so long as the people who lived in the woods up here continued to do bad things.
This will be Thomas Tripp's home for the course of the trial no matter what I have to say, as those accused of firstdegree murder are statutorily denied the right to a bail hearing. And it's just as well, as far as I'm concerned. I like my clients in jail as a rule. I do what I can to obtain bail, of course, but if I fail I'm always a little relieved, for this way I know where to find them, and can thus avoid one of the primary challenges of conducting a criminal trial: locating your client.
Inside, the Murdoch Prison for Men looks like every other jail--waxed hallways, pale green paint over floor, walls, and ceiling, barred gates where doors would otherwise stand--except older. Including the guard with blushing nose and alcoholic cheeks who takes me to the interview room and asks en route, ''Up from Toronto, are ya?''
''I am.''
''Where ya stayin'?''
''The Empire Hotel.''
''The Empire, eh? Nobody but drunks stay there.''
''That's fine. I'm something of a drunk myself.''
He swings around to shoot me a quick look. But he's a man whose career has been built upon the efficient dispatch of wiseasses, and he doesn't miss a beat.
''Think yer man did it?''
''It would be inappropriate for me to comment on that. Besides, with all due respect, it's none of your fucking business.''
''Quite so, quite so.''
Before he opens the door to Interview Room No. 1 he pauses to smile in a way that is either an expression of friendliness or a practiced mask meant to hide something far more uncongenial.
''Well, I can tell you this,'' he says. ''Everyone around here thinks yer man quite a strange one.''
''The last time I consulted the books, being a strange one wasn't illegal.''
''That may be. But taking little girls away sure as hell is.''
''Thank you
He meets my eyes for a moment, makes a horsey sound with his nose, but opens the door.
''You just make yourself comfortable,'' he says before closing it, which, it is immediately apparent, is exactly what he says before closing these doors on everyone.
Who knows whether the guard takes his time bringing Tripp in because he's busy with other matters of legitimate urgency or is savoring the opportunity to give me the finger from the other side of the one-way glass, but it's nearly a quarter of an hour before he returns with my guy.
''Thomas Tripp, meet Mr. Crane. Mr. Crane, Thomas Tripp,'' the guard says formally, standing between us with hands extended as though to bring us all closer together in the way of old friends.
''Thanks. But I think we can get along on our own now,'' I tell him, gesturing for Tripp to sit down, but he
