Chapter 1
September 10
The Daughter of Mr. Yummy
An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who keeps a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
I STOOD AT THE WHEEL of the leaking launch, approaching the dock on Small’s Island and the end of my fiftieth year, throttling down, gauging the speed of my approach and the severity of the impact if the engine should stall when I shifted it into reverse to bring the launch to a halt. I expected the engine to stall when I put it into reverse, because it had been doing that lately, so when it stalled I wanted to be moving slowly enough to drift into the dock without doing too much damage to the launch or the dock or the guests, but I was trying not to look concerned, since I have learned during my fifteen years as assistant innkeeper at a small hotel on a small island that it isn’t a good idea to upset the guests before they even set foot on the dock.
I had three passengers in the launch, a disappointing number. Three would have been a disappointing number at any time, but it was particularly disappointing on this trip because Albertine had advertised my marathon reading of Dead Air in the hope that she might attract a crowd. Actually, to be precise about it, we couldn’t have accommodated a crowd, since we have only thirteen rooms and three cottages, but she — well, we, to be precise about it — had hoped to draw a full house, something we haven’t seen in years.
Ahead, I spotted Albertine running along the path from the hotel to greet the guests when the launch struck the dock. I eased the throttle down another notch, came slowly to the dock, and reversed the engine. It stalled.
“Grab hold of something,” I said in the even tone of an unflappable captain. “We’ll be coming into the dock.” If you had been aboard the launch with the other passengers, you would have thought that everything was as it should have been, that Cap’n Peter probably always brought the launch into the dock this way. I’ll bet you would have. Of course, when the launch hit the dock and both shuddered, and you were sent staggering and grabbed for the nearest thing that would help you keep your feet, and the launch rebounded back toward Babbington whence you had so recently come, you might have had second thoughts about your captain, but if you had looked his way you would have seen him smiling, waving to Albertine, preparing to throw her a line, and the twinkle in his eye would have convinced you that the rough landing had been nothing more than a matter of style. It would have. I’ll bet it would have.
I threw the line to Albertine, and she snubbed it around a piling and arrested the rebound. She rolled her eyes at me, I shrugged (but not enough for you to have noticed), and she extended a hand to the nearest of the passengers. When they were all safely off the boat, she delivered a speech of welcome, her usual speech of welcome, with, as usual, a few impromptu additions and alterations.
“Welcome to Small’s,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to have you here. I’m Albertine Gaudet, the Innkeeper.
“I hope your journey was pleasant — or, if you came on the Long Island Rail Road, I hope that at least it wasn’t too unpleasant. You have my sympathy. I’ve always thought that it would be nice if there were a private Small’s Hotel car, with cocktails and swing music, at least during the summer season, but — well — there isn’t. I apologize for the launch too, by the way. We call it a launch, but it’s really just an old boat, isn’t it? We used to bring people from the mainland in a handsome old Chris-Craft runabout. You would have liked that. It was a fine boat, and everyone loved it, especially my husband, Peter, whom you’ve met — the launch captain, formerly the Chris-Craft captain, and also Assistant Innkeeper — but it was expensive to maintain and so we sold it for — well — for a nice piece of change, though not as nice a piece of change as we had hoped it would bring us and not as much change as we needed.
“Well, anyway, I hope that while you are here you will consider yourselves my guests. Of course, you’re paying for the privilege of being my guests, which might seem to put us in a relationship rather less intime than that of hostess and guest, but don’t we all, in one way or another, wind up paying our hosts for their hospitality? If we’re invited to dinner, we’re expected to pay with conversation, aren’t we? Some gossip? Maybe even a little wit? And if we’re invited to spend the night — well.
“I hope you will find your accommodations satisfactory. All of the hotel’s thirteen guest rooms are located on the second floor, and every room has a view of the bay, as you might expect in a hotel on an island as small as this one. (The third floor, by the way, is our living quarters. Enter only if invited, please.) If you’re not happy with your room, just let me know. Obviously, we have more rooms than guests — currently, at least — so it will be a simple matter to move you around until you end up wherever you want to be. If you’re not happy in the main building, you might like to take a look at the cluster of cottages at the water’s edge. The rates for the cottages are a little higher than for rooms in the hotel because the cottages are larger than the rooms in the hotel, and because they offer more privacy, and also because we transported them to the island from the mainland at great expense of money and labor. My husband will be glad to tell you the story. Just ask.
“While I’m on the subject of privacy, let me assure you that you are not required to be sociable while you are here. We will not urge you to participate in any group activities. There are no group activities. Well, none except for the readings that Peter will be giving, but I assume that you’ve come for those, so they don’t really count as group activities, not in the same way. I wouldn’t think so. They’re a special case, a category of their own, sui generis. Other than that, though, no group activities. Except for the morning mud wrestling. Just kidding. Really, no group activities.
“You are not, of course, enjoined from organizing group activities on your own, if you feel you must, but on the whole we assume that you have come here to be alone and to be left alone. While you are at Small’s, you are an island dweller, an isolate, and I urge you to live like one. Take refuge in our old hotel, on our island. Absent yourself from the world awhile. Relax. Go rowing or sailing. We have a rowboat and four small catboats for the exclusive use of our guests — but — ah — you should know that the rowboat and three of the catboats leak — a little — not too much. First come, first served. If you don’t like boats — and it’s surprising how many people who come here don’t like boats — you can perambulate the shoreline, take a swim, sit in the lounge and read, or do nothing more than sit on the dock — though I’d watch out for splinters and nails — dabble your feet in the water, watch the moonlight play on Bolotomy Bay, and let the world rattle on without you for a while.
“Of course, if you really want to be left alone, you should move into one of the cottages. They’re not that much more expensive, and they’re very romantic, the perfect place for a honeymoon, an anniversary weekend — or a discreet affair, for that matter. If any of you decide that you’d like to move to one of the cottages, just let me know.
“All your meals are provided, of course, and that includes midnight snacks. In a small refrigerator in the kitchen you will find ‘leftovers.’ We call them that, but I assure you that our chef makes these ‘leftovers’ fresh daily, specifically for snacking. I want to make it clear that although they resemble leftovers, they are deliberately made to resemble leftovers and are not actually left over from anything. (Some people have a very difficult time understanding this concept, which is why I’m explaining it, and I ask you please not to be offended by the explanation if you understood the concept before I began explaining it.) You may tiptoe from your room in the middle of the night to snack on these goodies — indeed you are encouraged to tiptoe from your room in the middle of the night to snack on these goodies, for if you do not, they will just sit there in the refrigerator and go uneaten, and by the next day they will actually have become leftovers, and then what would we do with them?
“Well! That’s everything, I think. Go on up to the hotel, why don’t you, and Peter and I will follow with your luggage.”
The guests started on their way up the path toward the hotel, and Albertine and I began piling their bags onto a couple of our red wagons, the kind that Dick and Jane used to pull in primers.
“What have we got?” Albertine asked.
“Well, the couple — ” I began.
“The fun couple, Dick and Jane.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not their real names,” said Albertine with a wink and a smile.
“Ohhh,” I said, raising an eyebrow and slipping into what I like to call my Franche accahng, “hohn-hohn-hohn.”
“I told them that we are very discreet.”
“Oh, we are, we are.”
“And that if they want to be called Dick and Jane, we will comply.”
“Oh, we will, we will.”
“They’re likely to be easy guests.”
“The grumpy guy, on the other hand — ”
“Oh, great,” she said. “Mr. Abbot. Cedric R. Abbot. ‘Call me Lou,’ he said on the phone. ‘Everybody does.’ But you’re already calling him the grumpy guy?”
“I’m afraid so. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think he’s one of those grumpy guys who’s always got a smile on his face, but when you look at that smile you know it’s a lie — you know the smile I mean?”
She smiled the very smile I had in mind, the smile that she uses when her picture is being taken in spite of her having made it perfectly clear that she does not want her picture taken.
“Uh-oh,” I said, responding to the smile. “What went wrong while I was gone?”
“I’ve had some adventures in repairs and maintenance.”
“What now?”
“The boiler again.”
“Did you call the Tinkers?” I asked. For nearly all of the fifteen years that we have been running Small’s Hotel, we have turned to the Three Jolly Tinkers when we’ve needed major repairs. Sometimes the Jolly Tinkers have fixed things; sometimes they have not; and sometimes the repairs undertaken by the Jolly Tinkers have become continuing projects, and some of those projects have been in continuous operation for nearly the entire fifteen-year span of our relationship without showing any signs of coming to a successful conclusion — repairing the boiler, to name a single example.
“I did,” she said, “but they can’t come out until tomorrow, because — ” She stopped.
“Because what?” I asked.
She turned toward me. There was a tear in her eye. “Because the Big Tinker died,” she said.
“Oh, no.”
“There’s a curse on this hotel,” she said. “It’s a nightmare.”
I said nothing to that. We hauled the luggage to the hotel, and I distributed it to the guests’ rooms.
[to be continued]
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