Free Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes

too. Ubub expanded on what he’d said: “Wuhwr da aw un suahmu.”
    I moved these sounds around in my mind for a while and decided he’d said something about “one summer,” and then deduced it was “ worked one summer.” I asked him if that was right, and again he nodded his head eagerly. Ulub smiled at his brother’s success.
    It might have been better to ask things that could have been answered yes or no, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to know (except about the cat), and, anyway, that struck me as a little insulting. Ubub clearly didn’t mind trying; therefore, I shouldn’t either. Then I thought of a question that might really tell me something.
    “Did you like them? The Devereaus?”
    Both of them shook their heads immediately and fiercely. “Nah!” The syllable exploded from Ubub’s mouth.
    “How come?” I asked, noticing the tobacco chewer was leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped before him, rapt, wanting to know, it appeared, the answer.
    Ubub looked up at the sky, stretching his long neck, and scratching it, as if he were turning over in his mind the best way to phrase what he wanted to say. Finally he said, “A din tah.” Ulub nodded his head in vigorous agreement with his brother.
    “A din tah,” I repeated mentally over and over, trying to figure it out. A din tah. I was fairly sure “A” was “They.” “A din” must have been “They didn’t.” But “tah”? What was “tah”? I hated for Ubub to think I hadn’t understood him, so I tried to make it sound as if I were just meditating over the implications of the words, and not the words themselves.
    “Hmmm,” I said, myself studying the sky, “so they didn’t . . .”
    “Tah. Tah -eh—” He tried but couldn’t get out what I bet was some consonant.
    “Talk!” I said. “Talk?”
    Again, both nodded happily.
    “Mr. Wood, you’re saying the Devereau sisters didn’t talk?”
    Nod.
    “To you, you mean?”
    Shake of the head. Both heads. No, they didn’t mean exactly that.
    “Nuch . . . N-uhn . . . En-itch Uhu-er.” Poor Ubub. He was trying so hard to be understood.
    The old man beside me was frowning as hard as I was over this exchange. He scratched the stubble of gray hair beneath his cap, resettled it on his head, and said, “ ‘Each other.’ Ain’t that what you’re sayin’? They didn’t talk to each other?”
    Ulub and Ubub seemed incredibly grateful to him, nodding eagerly.
    “They didn’t talk to each other ?”
    Enthusiastic nods. The old man looked mightily pleased and spat out a long stream of tobacco, as if he’d earned the right.
    It was a little like playing charades. I wanted to ask, Why not? Why not?, but I doubted the two of them would know, even if they could have expressed it.
    “You mean you never heard them talk to each other?”
    “Nah du war—” Ubub’s face started working, his tongue trying to form sounds that wanted to stay locked within his mouth, slipping around, getting no purchase, like a climber trying to find secure footing on a glass mountain.
    Everyone watched in suspense; we couldn’t help it.
    Finally he blurted out, “Mur-rah.”
    And Ulub nodded.
    Ubub added: “Uh-uhv-win.”
    Mary-Evelyn! I thought, at the same time the old man slapped his knee and exclaimed, “Mary-Eva!”
    “Mary-Evelyn,” I said. “You’re saying that the sisters never talked to Mary-Evelyn ?”
    Both of them looked at me, at the old man, at each other, nodding all the while.
    “But—” I was stunned by this news. Stunned. In whatever my mother (or anyone) had told me about the Devereau sisters, never wasthere any suggestion that they were “abnormal” in any way. My mother never said anything about the sisters’ not being able to talk, or anything like that. They came to the hotel, all of them together, or in pairs (never alone, apparently), and with Mary-Evelyn. They must have ordered their food or conversed with the other guests, just like anybody