Free The Formula for Murder by Carol McCleary Page B

The hotel bored three hundred and sixty-five feet below the basement floor into the chalk-basin and with the help of two fourteen-horsepower pumps they are able to pump twenty-five thousand gallons of water into iron tanks in the cupola tower that distributes hot and cold running water to every bedroom. That, my dear Oscar, is truly amazing.”
    “Yes it is. How did you…”
    I love surprising Oscar with my knowledge since he believes us poor Americans are so ignorant, so I continue. “You must know that Sir James Langham built a mansion on this site in 1820, subsequently named Langham Place, because it’s ninety-five feet above the Thames high water mark on fine gravel soil, making it healthier than the peat bogs in Belgravia nearer the Thames. In fact, this area is not only regarded as the healthiest in London, but has a much lower death rate than any other of the city’s districts.”
    Poor Oscar just sits looking at me confounded. I almost break down and tell him when I was waiting for him I overheard a gentleman explaining in detail, to his dinner companions from Italy, about the place.
    “Nellie, you never cease to amaze me.”
    “Why thank you. What also impresses me is they have telephones, a real rarity anywhere, a post office, two libraries that have up-to-date newspapers and journals from around the world, public lavatories, a railway ticketing and shipping office, all under one roof. And their employees are qualified to converse in every language, from pure Yankee to High Dutch. I wonder if this is the way all hotels will be one day.”
    “Maybe, but they will never have the beauty like this place.” Once again Oscar pauses, sweeping the room with his eyes, soaking in all its exquisiteness. “Art, which comes in all forms—paintings, sculptures, people, décor—has one purpose, to display beauty, and this place does it magnificently. I believe we are nothing but God’s canvas. And it’s amazing what some of us do with it. Look at the elderly ladies here…” He pauses for a moment and nods at one and then another.
    “They all have gigantic tiaras and parrot noses.”
    “Oscar!” But I couldn’t help laughing. He’s right.
    “Thank God I won’t end up looking like that truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons. Did you know that the romantic novelist Marie Louise de la Ramée or Ouida, as she liked to call herself, lived here for four years before she died? What a marvelous eccentric! One day she invited me to her room. She was lying on her bed wearing only a sheer, green silk, sinister nightgown, surrounded with masses of purple flowers and candles. She refused to have the black velvet curtains drawn; claimed the obtrusive daylight made it hard for her to think. Couldn’t help but love a lady who said she did all her best work in bed!”
    Oscar laughs with such delight I can’t help but laugh myself.
    “Your first American to be a guest here was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, or better known to the public as Mark Twain, stays here whenever he comes to London. In fact, my own novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, that will soon be out was negotiated with the publisher at this very table. Also present at that dinner was Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories. 9 Have you read his mystery stories?”
    “No, not yet.”
    “Well, you must. It will sharpen your detecting skills.”
    “Congratulations on your book. What is it about?”
    “The philosophy of beauty. It’s about what one can choose to do with his life and how he can either destroy it…” Oscar pauses for a moment, as if his life is passing him by.
    As much as I hate silence, especially awkward ones like these, I keep quiet for his sake. He is a dear soul who has to endure a lot of cruelty and criticism from society, yet somehow he manages to keep his humor and love for life or, more appropriately, beauty. I wish I was as strong as him.
    “… or