Winter at Death's Hotel

Начало книги

The New Britannic was one of New York’s smaller and finer hotels — the city’s finest, in fact, it would have insisted, although people who judged by flash and size would have said otherwise. The very best service and tone, the hotel management asserted — service and tone and taste. Good taste, of course, the best taste, matched by hotels like the Criterion in London, as the service and tone were perhaps matched by Brown’s.

Most certainly, if you were English and of a certain sort, you stayed at the New Britannic when you were in New York. Of a certain sort: not new money, not great peerages, not political power; rather, achievement and reserve and even fame — but of course, no notoriety.

The bronze front doors opened into a paneled space with narrow beams overhead, pillars that rose at intervals of fifteen feet to Egyptian capitals in dark oak. Bronze chandeliers reached down, all electric; real imitation Aubusson stretched away to the mahogany Reception. Around the periphery, straight chairs, heavily carved, not very sittable; toward the center, leather chairs meant to look and be more comfortable; an occasional dark table, a lamp — again electric, of course. Sitting in a leather chair toward the periphery but facing the doors was a man in a dark suit and dark necktie and a very high collar, his face square, a little heavy, displeased; on his upper lip a mustache and a faint sneer of skepticism.

Читать дальше →