After her visit to Sol’s kitchen, Rhea took the back stairs to the seventh floor with the master keys in her pocket and a linen list from housekeeping in her hand.
If anyone asked, she was doing a linen check, though she knew it wasn’t a great excuse, considering that the room she was heading to was the one room housekeeping wasn’t even allowed into.
She had wanted to see inside 707, old Emeric Vidal’s room, since her first night.
After meeting Victor Voss last night, she wanted more than ever to know what was inside.
Tonight had seemed as safe as any night could be.
The chairman had come down for his whisky again, then gone back up at the usual hour, so she had assumed he would be asleep by now.
Gus was down in the lobby with the Birdcage, and she had taken the stairs on purpose, since the last time she had come up here, he had found her within minutes.
As for Matthew, he was sitting in the dark on the roof.
He had asked for silence, so she had found the switch for the roof in the service hallway and turned off the Glasshouse.
Then she had gone back to the desk to wait for him to call down and complain, but he never had.
So for once, she knew exactly where he was.
On the seventh floor, she stopped.
At the far end of the hallway, light showed under the tall doors of the chairman’s office.
Apparently he wasn’t asleep at all.
If he came out now, she would have to explain herself to the very man she had come to investigate, and her excuse wouldn’t hold up well in front of him.
She went on anyway, keeping to the thick carpet.
The DO NOT DISTURB sign still hung from the handle of 707.
Her key turned more easily than she had expected, but she didn’t stop to wonder about it.
She slipped inside, closing the door behind her.
She didn’t dare switch on the lights in case they showed under the door, so she used the light of her phone instead.
Nothing in the room seemed to have been touched since Vidal’s last visit.
The bed was made, an overcoat hung on the back of the door, and dust lay over everything.
On the table by the window, a chess game had been left in the middle, with a chair on either side of the board.
Rhea didn’t play chess, so the position meant nothing to her, but the two chairs did.
Vidal hadn’t played alone.
Someone had sat across from him in this room, but she had no idea who.
The room safe stood open in the corner.
She crossed to it quickly, but it was empty.
The man could have kept more of the seven pieces in that safe, but now it was impossible to say.
She would have settled for any other clue that told her who had sold him the ring, since that person might know what had happened to her mother.
But the room didn’t have much to say about it.
Only then did she look down at the floor.
There were footprints in the dust.
One set went straight from the door to the safe and back again.
Another set, clearer than the first, wandered past the chess table and the safe, then stopped at the wardrobe.
It didn’t come back.
Then it dawned on her.
Somebody was inside the wardrobe.
Rhea froze, quickly going over her options.
Whoever it was had heard her come in and had been listening to her ever since.
For some reason she thought of the strange woman she had seen at the sale, who had written down the name of everyone who bought something from Vidal’s study.
If it was her, Rhea was in more trouble than any linen list could get her out of.
Still, she couldn’t call anyone without explaining what she was doing here herself, and she had no intention of walking away while someone hid in Vidal’s room.
So she set her feet, held up the light and pulled the wardrobe door open.
Matthew Voss was standing among the old man’s coats.
He lifted a hand against the light, and the cuff of his coat slid back over a bruise on his wrist.
Rhea remembered him falling down the steps with that stupid lamp, so she didn’t think much of it.
She was relieved it wasn’t a stranger, though finding a Voss in Vidal’s room suddenly worried her for entirely different reasons.
“Mr. Voss.”
“Miss Ellis.”
“You’re in a wardrobe, sir.”
“I sleepwalk.”
“All the way down here, sir? From the Glasshouse?”
“As you can see.”
Rhea didn’t smile, though it took some effort.
He stepped out, carefully lifting a sleeve off his shoulder.
“And you, Miss Ellis?”
“A linen check, sir.”
“At this hour?”
“Housekeeping isn’t allowed in, sir. I do what I can.”
He looked at the dust on every surface.
“So I see.”
She would have liked to know what he had really come for, but asking would only invite the same question back, so she let it go.
Rhea switched off her light and opened the door slightly to make sure the hallway was clear.
That was when she saw the chairman standing in the doorway of his office at the far end, with his reading glasses in his hand.
He was looking down the hallway toward them, and for a moment she was sure he had seen the door move.
If he walked this way, he would find them both.
She closed the door again as quietly as she could.
Behind her, Matthew had gone completely still.
They stood together in the dark by the door, so close that her shoulder was against his coat, and neither of them moved.
It was the closest she had ever stood to him, and she didn’t like how aware of it she was.
“Is the linen all in order?” he whispered.
Rhea didn’t answer him.
While they waited, she thought it through.
If she reported Matthew in the morning, he would only have to say that he had found her here too.
Besides, she had seen after the sale how much trouble he took to keep his father from knowing where he went, so she doubted he wanted the chairman to hear about this any more than she did.
After a long while, she risked another look.
The office doors were shut again, with only a thin line of light beneath them.
“I suppose neither of us was here,” Matthew said quietly.
“No, sir.”
She locked 707 behind them, and they went along the hallway to the back stairs without a sound.
At the bottom of the stairs that led up to the roof, he stopped.
“Can I have my power back?”
“In the morning, sir. You did ask for silence.”
He went up laughing quietly, and Rhea waited until she heard the roof door close above her.
Mr.
Matthew certainly was a strange one.
First he had turned up at Vidal’s sale, and now in Vidal’s room.
On the way back from the sale, she had also learned that he knew the old man dealt in stolen goods.
With so much connecting him to Vidal, she couldn’t possibly believe he had simply sleepwalked into that room, of all places.
She may have come to the hotel intending to watch Victor Voss, but now she would certainly have to watch his son as well.
But, more importantly, someone else had been in that room ahead of them both, and had left with whatever was in the safe.