Page 7 of The White Octopus Hotel
“Did Kate phone you?” she asked, startled.
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why else would someone from the auction house turn up here out of the blue?”
Eve sat down just as Molly came in with a tray of tea and biscuits. “That’s me done,” she announced cheerfully. “I’ll be back this evening. Don’t forget your tablets at lunchtime.”
The front door closed and then it was just the two of them.
“So which object did you find?” Victor asked.
“Pardon?”
“From the hotel.” He looked eager, almost greedy. “I’m guessing you found one of the objects. Is it too much to hope that you brought it with you?”
Eve reached into her bag and unwrapped the octopus.
“May I?” Victor asked, already reaching out his hand.
She passed it over. He put his glasses back on and carefully inspected it from every angle. There was something almost reverential about the way he held it.
“What does it do?” he murmured.
“I’m sorry?”
He looked up at her. “What kind of magic does it have?”
Eve watched him carefully. “Do you really think that objects from the hotel have magic?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think it, I know it. I’ve experienced it. I assumed you had too. Why else would you be interested in the place?”
Eve took the octopus from him, knowing she could only give half of the true explanation. She didn’t want to mention the tattoo that was currently climbing the small of her back, her sketchbooks at home, or her own octopuses with their single black tentacle tip,because then he might want to know when and why she’d started drawing them and she didn’t want to get into that with anyone, much less a stranger.
“Kate told me the story about the hotel,” she said. “I wanted to find out more about it because the ornament came to me via…unusual circumstances.”
She saw Max Everly placing the item on her desk once again, heard the warmth in his voice as he spoke to her.
Everyone should have something on their birthday….
She recalled the feel of his hand in hers and experienced the strangest pang of loss.
“The White Octopus Hotel has been a fascination of mine for decades,” Victor said. “I worked in auction houses for fifty years, and every now and then, if you’re lucky, you discover an object that is truly remarkable in some way. I have a few stories, but nothing that compares to the music box.
“It came across my path while I was working in France in my twenties. I’d heard of the White Octopus, but obviously I thought it was a myth—like everyone does to begin with. Some of its objects are better known amongst auctioneers than others. For example, most people with a passing interest in the hotel know that the telephone from the Smoking Room will allow you to make a single phone call to someone who’s died. Other objects, such as the guest book—and your own octopus—are a bit more mysterious. But the music box is famous in White Octopus circles.”
“For doing what?”
He smiled. “The music box,” he said softly, “isn’t what you might expect it to be. It looks more like a child’s plaything, really, with its little mouse musicians. But it can play the most beautiful music ever composed in the world.”
Eve sighed, feeling her interest drain away. “Music is subjective, Mr. Harris,” she said. “How can anyone possibly know what the most beautiful music in the world is? There’s no such thing.”
Victor shook his head. “You would need to hear it to understand. It’s like that with some of the objects.”
“So what happened to the music box?”
“It was sold, of course. To a private collector.”
