The story continues after that. Much like an episode of Columbo: there’s always something more that wasn’t seen before.
It wasn’t a man, the figure in the corner.
When I awoke, I found myself on the floor beside the bed. Someone was fanning my face with hotel stationery. After a few deep breaths, my vision sharpened. It was a woman. She was middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair held back by the sunglasses propped on her head. Her hair was cut neatly into a bob, styled straight, much like my own. She was wearing a loose-fitting white blouse and dark pants. She was crouched over me, a worried look on her face. I didn’t recognize her face, not at first.
“Are you all right?” she asked as she stopped her fanning.
My first instinct was to reach for the phone again.
“Please,” she said. “You don’t need to do that.”
I brought myself to a seated position, pushing my back against the bedside table. She took two steps backward, giving me space, but she kept her eyes on me.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize there was another guest in the room. But I must—”
“You must nothing. Please. Hear me out before you touch the phone.”
She did not sound angry or even tense. She was merely offering a suggestion.
I did as I was told.
“Would you like a glass of water?” she asked. “And maybe something sweet?”
I wasn’t ready to stand. I didn’t trust my legs. “Yes,” I said. “That would be most kind.”
She nodded once and left the room. I could hear her rummaging around in the sitting room. Then I heard the rush of water from the bathroom tap.
A moment later, she was back in the bedroom, crouching in front of me. She passed me a glass of water, which I took in my shaky hands and drank greedily.
“Here,” she said once I’d finished, “I found this in your cleaning cart.”
It was a chocolate, for turn-down services. Strictly speaking, it was not mine to eat, but this was an extraordinary circumstance and she’d already opened the wrapper.
“You’ll feel better,” she said.
She passed me the square of chocolate, put it right into the palm of my hand.
“Thank you,” I replied. I placed the whole square on my tongue. It dissolved instantly, the sugar working its magic.
She waited a moment, then asked, “Can I help you?” She reached out her hand.
I put my unsteady hand in hers and with her assistance, I was soon standing beside her. The room came into sharper focus. The ground was solid beneath my feet.
We stood there beside the bed, looking at each other for a moment, neither of us daring to look away.
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”
I studied her more closely. She looked vaguely familiar, but she also looked like every other middle-aged female guest who frequented the hotel.
“My apologies, I’m afraid…”
And that’s when it hit me. From the newspapers. From our one brief encounter in the elevator. It was Mrs. Black. Not the second Mrs. Black, Giselle, but the first Mrs. Black, the original wife.
“Ah,” she said as she neatly tucked the chocolate wrapper into her pants pocket. “Recognition dawns.”
“Mrs. Black, I’m terribly sorry to intrude, but I do believe that your former husband…I believe Mr. Black is dead.”
She nodded slowly. “My ex-husband was a cheater and a thief and an abuser and a criminal.”
I started to put it together then, only then. “Mrs. Black,” I asked. “Did you…did you kill Mr. Black?”
“I suppose that depends on your point of view,” she said. “I believe he killed himself, slowly, over time, that he became infected by his own greed, that he robbed his children and me of a normal life, that he modeled corruption and evil in just about every way a man can. My two sons are his clones, and they’re now drug-addled slobs who flit from party to party, spending their father’s money. And my daughter, Victoria, all she wants is to clean up the family business, to run it with some decency, but her own father wants to disown her. He wouldn’t have stopped until Victoria and I were both destitute. And he did this even though she’s a forty-nine-percent shareholder. Well, she was a forty-nine-percent shareholder. She’ll be more than that now…”
She looked at Mr. Black, dead on the bed, then back at me.
“I came only to talk to him, to ask him to give Victoria a chance. But when he let me in, he was drunk, popping pills, slurring his words, muttering about Giselle being a gold-digging bitch, just like me, how we’re both good-for-nothing bimbo wives, the two biggest mistakes of his life. He was obnoxious and a bully. In other words, he was his usual self.”