How I died

There is a ghost in room 506

Room 506

 

Like all good books this one starts with a murder. Mine to be precise. Watch carefully and see if you can spot it.

 

Watch carefully as I stand in front of the door to the balcony with the net curtains drawn. Pulling one of the curtains slightly aside I peer through the gap and out of the window. The lake beyond my balcony is still and tranquil.  Leaning trees dip their spring leaves in the brackish water.

 

Watch carefully as I slip a cigarette from its packet and place it between my lips. I hold it there as I fumble in my pockets for a box of matches. Failing to find one I look around the hotel room. On the desk is an ashtray, in the ashtray is a paper book of matches. The cardboard of the book is white with a blue print on it. Hotel del Europe, it says in a blocky print. Under the name of the hotel in the same blue ink is a picture of a sailing boat  on a lake with palm trees at the edges. I light the cigarette with a cardboard match and inhale deeply. My hand shakes.

 

Watch me as I struggle out of my brown suit jacket and walk around the room in my shirt sleeves. It is late spring in 1951 and the weather is beginning to relax into summer heat. I finish my cigarette and stub the butt out in the ashtray. I sit on the edge of the bed and put my face in my hands. I am contemplating change. I have made a decision in my life that I know will make it infinitely more dangerous but infinitely more interesting. The change starts here. I am edgy and restless. I am unknowing, my fate was already sealed when I entered room 506. 

 

I rise from the bed and press the bell for room service. A bellboy appears, sharp as a pin in his immaculate red uniform. I order ice and soda water. The bellboy returns with an ice bucket and a soda siphon. With stainless steel tongs I put two cubes of ice in a tumbler and pour myself a generous drink from my silver hip flask. I light another cigarette. I go to my travelling case, I take out a leather folder. I take this folder over to the desk, in the light from the window I inspect and check the contents. A British passport bearing my photograph but a name that is not mine. An airline ticket to Moscow in the same name. A bundle of papers, including several names and address, details of a bank account and a number of maps. I place the folder, the papers and the passport in the hotel safe under the bed. I put the key in my pocket.

 

I go into the bathroom and roll up my sleeves. Bending over the sink I splash my face with cold water. I wet my hair and slick it back with a comb. I dry my hands on a hotel towel. I pull down my sleeves and adjust my cufflinks, I tighten my braces. Returning to the bedroom I put on my jacket. Check my pockets for my wallet and room key. I leave the room for dinner.

 

I eat alone. Half a dozen native oysters to start, freshly plucked from the salty waterways that feed the lake outside my window. A chicken casserole flavoured with tarragon and thyme, accompanied by a glass of the house white. A lemon mousse, followed by rich black coffee and another cigarette.  The waiter is attentive. I drink a glass of iced water before leaving the table.

 

Back in my room, I undress. I take a striped nightshirt from my case and put it on. I go into the bathroom and use the toilet. I swallow an aspirin with water from the tap, I have a headache. I wash my face with the hotel soap. I brush my teeth with Colgate.  I gargle. When I spit out the toothpasty water I experience a moment of dizziness, the room sways. I grip the side of the sink for support. The moment passes and I leave the bathroom.

 

I move the ashtray from the desk to the table by the bed. From my case I take a slim paperback, Camera Obscura by Nabokov, in the original Russian. I met Nabokov once, at Trinity in the thirties. He left the college years before I joined, but he’d come back to visit his old tutor. We had tea together with the old professor, we discussed butterflies, Russia and the apostles. I had never read his work before we met but afterwards I made an effort to read his stuff and became quite a fan.

 

I pull back the sheets and climb into bed. I puff the pillows. I spark a final cigarette and smoke, reading the novel. When the cigarette is finished I extinguish it, fold down the corner of the page I am on and put the novel by the bed. I turn off the light. I slide down the bed and rest my head on the pillow. I turn sideways to face the window. My throat tickles, I cough into the darkness. Sleep overcomes me. I dream.

 

 

In my dream I am watching a brilliant blue butterfly in a killing jar. The magnificent wings smash against the glass of its prison, but as the poison takes hold the animal’s struggles grow weaker. I am gripped with fear and panic for the creature as it tries feebly to lift its fragile wings. I can feel it choking. I grab the jar and try in vain to remove the lid, it is stuck fast.  As the insect’s movements grow weaker I can feel the strength ebbing from my arms.  My fingers are numb and rubbery. Nabokov appears behind me, holding the pin that will fix the creature to its place in his display case. He takes the jar from me and holds it lovingly. He says to me in Russian : “Look at the butterfly. What bliss there is in its blueness.  But it is too late, too late to save it now.” I turn and look at him and I am suffocating with the creature in his hands.

 

I wake in the hotel bed and I am still choking. My chest heaves. I cough, it is impossible to draw air into my lungs. I pull myself to the edge of the bed and vomit off the side. I taste blood. I lie on my side on the bed, panting for air. The room swings like a pendulum. I try to breathe but my chest is paralyzed, I can only take tiny shallow breaths.

 

It takes me half an hour to die. I lie on the bed twitching and shuddering. My central nervous system is shutting down, I am suffocating in a room full of oxygen. My lips turn purple, my face blue. My agonised breaths become weaker and further apart, with a final weak gasp, it is done. I am finished.

 

Did you spot it? When collectors kill butterflies they do it with prussic acid. The active ingredient in prussic acid is Cyanide.

Cyanide.

In small amounts you can’t taste it.

It was on my cigarettes. It was in the ice. It was in my scotch and soda.  It was in the papers I took from my leather folder. It was in the oysters, and the casserole, and the lemon mousse. It was in my hotel towel, my toothpaste and my soap.  It was in the pages of my book, and in my nightshirt. When the police started testing for it, they found it everywhere. The room had to be completely stripped, decontaminated and redecorated before the hotel could use it again.

The police cordoned off the room and spent a long time investigating, but they never found out who put it there. I could have told them if I’d been able.

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

This is the first chapter in a book of short stories about room 506. The ghost is the fifth man of the cambridge five, there are some clues to this in the story if you can spot them. The last chapter will be about him and why he was murdered.

Reviews

[Senseless whatever]

Great concept. Well conveyed and keeps the reader intrigued.