Matthew climbed the fire stairs at the Voss.
He could have used the lift, though that would have meant going through the lobby.
At six in the morning, the day staff would be arriving.
Somebody was likely to ask why the chairman’s son had come in from the street with rust on his hands, so the stairs seemed preferable.
He reached the roof just as the hotel’s sign switched off.
People said the seven stars were the brightest thing on the lake when viewed from the far shore.
Up here, they were simply seven lamps in iron cages, surrounded by scaffolding and cables.
A timer in the basement turned them off at six every morning.
Matthew had been hearing that click for most of his life, marking the end of the night.
Across the lake, the first tram was leaving the depot, its lit windows visible in a short yellow row.
Julian was already tending to the six hives he kept along the low wall at the edge of the roof, where the sun reached first.
He was dressed for work in a gray suit and tie, speaking to the bees in the same reasonable voice he used with guests who complained about something.
“I understand,” he was saying.
“I do. It’s early for everyone.”
Nobody downstairs knew about the bees.
The staff thought their managing director arrived at seven because he was punctual and hardworking, which was true as well.
Matthew was the only one who knew he spent the hour from six to seven up here.
“This one’s the quiet hive,” Julian said, lifting the lid of the smallest box without turning around.
“They never sting. I could put my hand straight in.”
“Please don’t.”
“I’m only saying I could.”
Julian replaced the lid, then looked at his brother for a while without saying anything.
“You look like you fell off something.”
“Mhm…”
Matthew had put his injured hand behind his back on the way over.
It hadn’t been a particularly convincing attempt to hide it, judging by where Julian was looking.
His brother had never asked where he went at night, even when they were boys.
Matthew still hadn’t worked out whether that meant Julian trusted him or was simply too tired to find out.
Julian pulled off his gloves one finger at a time, then began speaking as though he were giving the morning briefing.
Matthew could tell he was working his way toward the bad news.
“Two things,” he said.
“The night concierge worked her last shift last night. That’s three this year. Graff is interviewing replacements this morning, so if you see strangers in the lobby, please don’t audition them.”
“I don’t audition people.”
“You asked the last one whether she believed in ghosts.”
“I remember that…” He chuckled.
“The second thing. Father would like you in the boardroom at eleven.”
“Why?”
“It’s about the painting you know so well.”
The board had paid a fortune for an abstract to hang in the boardroom, a huge canvas with a single red shape in the middle.
Matthew thought it was exaggerated and tried too hard.
So over a weekend he’d painted a canvas of the same size and hung it in its place, leaving the abstract safely wrapped in the storeroom next door.
His own showed the board as he saw them, which he’d thought quite fair at the time.
“I don’t work here,” he said.
“Matthew.” Julian folded his gloves and put them in his pocket.
“He’s talking about the Glasshouse again.”
That was considerably harder to dismiss, as Julian knew perfectly well.
Matthew remained on the roof for a moment after his brother went downstairs to run the hotel, then went into the Glasshouse.
It had been built in 1904 as an orangery for guests.
Nothing had grown there for forty years, though the infrastructure for it remained pretty much intact.
Matthew had made a home of the place, with all the utilities he needed to live comfortably.
Forty canvases leaned against the glass walls, since he used the room as his studio as well.
Nobody else wanted it, so he’d been able to settle there without much difficulty.
From the shelf above the sink, he took down an old children’s book about constellations.
He hadn’t read it in twenty years, but he opened it near the middle, where he kept the photograph.
In it, a girl of about twelve sat at a concierge desk, scowling at an open schoolbook.
Her hair was pulled back tightly, and she held her pen, apparently no happier with it than with the book.
Behind her were the pigeonholes of a key rack and the corner of a brass bell.
He turned the photograph over and read the words on the back: *Mouse, 12*.
The photograph had stood on the night desk in a small frame for as long as he could remember.
Twelve years ago, on the morning Sabine hadn’t come back, he’d slipped it out of the frame to keep for himself.
By that afternoon, the police had taken the desk apart and packed everything into boxes.
He’d put the photograph in this book afterward, never quite knowing what to do with it.
He had never met the girl, though Sabine had spoken about her every night for years.
She had always called her Mouse, which meant he didn’t even know her real name.
He knew she hated math and that she was fierce.
She’d wanted a dog too, though she’d never gotten one.
As a child, he’d been jealous of her because she was the one Sabine went home to every day.
Matthew set the photograph on the table beside the empty ring box and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking again about the knot.
Sabine had taught it to him when he was nine, using the brass rail of the night desk.
Then, so many years later, this stranger had tied it in front of him without the slightest hesitation.
He found that more upsetting than he could explain.
Apparently he had come to think of the knot as something Sabine had taught only to him, and realizing that wasn’t really the case made him feel rather ashamed of himself.
It was, of course, very reasonable for her to teach anyone else she liked.
Still, he wondered who the masked woman was and when Sabine had taught her so well.
He took the receipt from his coat pocket and smoothed it out on the table.
Room 707.
*Thursdays.*
He knew the room, as everyone at the Voss did.
The same guest had taken it every Thursday for as long as Matthew could remember, so the staff had simply called him the Thursday man.
He was an old man with a cane and a leather chess case who always tipped the lift operator in foreign coins that nobody could spend.
Matthew had known about him since he was small, though he’d never learned his name.
Until now, there hadn’t been much reason to ask.
He did know, though, that the house he had broken into last night had belonged to the Thursday man and that the man had been coming to his family’s hotel for thirty years.