Chapter 13: Decorative

The rail went over the edge in one long piece, and I went with it as far as my waist.

Somebody screamed.

Something hard hit my ribs from behind, and an arm locked around me and hauled.

My feet left the terrace and came back down on it.

"I've got you," Quincy said into my hair. "I've got you, I've got you."

The section of railing fell four stories and landed on a stack of folding chairs in the hotel's service court.

It made a very large noise.

Nobody was under it, because nobody had ever gone near that court in the whole history of the Aldous Hotel.

I turned around inside his arm.

His face was a color I had not seen on it before.

"Your watch is at your wrist," I said stupidly. "You didn't check it."

"I don't care what time it is."

He held on to me for a few seconds longer than the situation needed, and I let him.

A hundred and forty guests in blue silk pressed back against the walls.

The hotel manager sat down on the terrace floor in his toast-colored suit.

"I told her it was decorative," he said to nobody.

Marguerite Moncrieff came through the crowd with the photographer a step behind her.

"There she is," she said, and pointed at me. "She was up here at five o'clock with a wrench."

"I was," I said. "Ask the manager."

"She fenced off that post," the manager said weakly. "She made me find a stanchion. Two stanchions."

"And then she took the fence down, and the rail fell on cue." Marguerite turned to the guests. "This woman tampered with a public railing."

"I tagged it," I said. "Orange sticker. Photographed from three sides at 5:14. You had the rope removed at 7:35."

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