Chapter One
The taxi pulled up in front of a small, but still imposing, five-story stone building. Two buildings, really. While they were interconnected on the bottom floors, the structure diverged above that into two triangular roofs that rose on opposite sides of the L-shaped structure that was bisected by a street corner. The place looked hundreds of years old. The stone facade, which might once have been white, now wrapped the structure in a rough, uneven mix of grey and black and mossy green. Dozens of narrow vertical windows rose from the street level in each half of the building.
The driver said something in Flemish, and Eve held out a twenty Euro note. She trusted he would give her correct change. He scowled slightly at the bill, and dropped a handful of gold coins into her palm. Then he quickly exited the car and pulled her two suitcases from the trunk. When she picked them up from the sidewalk, he nodded. “Daag,” he said, and a moment later the taxi shot away from the curb.
“Goodbye,” she murmured after him. “I know you know how to say it.”
She knew most people in Belgium spoke at least a smattering of English, if they weren’t completely fluent in English, French and Flemish. But there were always those who resented foreigners. She hoped that her reception at the Conservatory would be better. The old weathered building didn’t look very welcoming. It loomed aged and tired against a grey sky.
“Not as tired as I feel,” she whispered. Eve walked towards the arched wooden door on the corner. It was not even noon here yet, but she was wiped out. She’d left New York at dinnertime, and arrived in Brussels at eight in the morning. Then she’d navigated the train system to head north to Ghent, where she’d caught a taxi to the outskirts of the university. It had been a very long night.
She stopped at the door and took a breath. Then she reached out to pull on the handle and step into her new life as a student at an exclusive satellite building of the Royal Conservatory.
“Welcome to the Eyrie,” a pleasant, lilting feminine voice said as Eve stepped from the humid warmth of the street into a cool, shadowed foyer. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from the overcast but light skies outside to the dark, wooden confines of the interior of the music building. The woman stood behind a desk along the wall to her right.
“You must be Evelyn Springer,” the woman said. She was tall and thin, her hair a wild tousle of brown and blonde twists.
“Yes,” Eve said with a surprised smile. “But please, call me Eve.”
“We’ve been expecting you,” the woman said. “My name is Mrs. Freer. I’m the house manager and you can come to me if you have any problems during your time here. If you can just sign in, I’ll get Philip to help with your bags.” She pushed a black ledger to the edge of the desk and pointed at an empty line.
Eve took the proffered pen and quickly scrawled her name. “Thanks, but I can handle the bags,” she said.
The woman gave a thin smile and shook her head to disagree. “That may be, but you won’t want to. Your room is on the fifth floor of the East Tower, and the elevator is not working today.” She picked up a phone from a holder on the wall and dialed three numbers. After a few seconds, she said something in a language Eve did not understand, and then hung up.
“He’ll be down in just a minute,” Mrs. Freer said. “You’ll be sharing a room with Kristina Jones. She’s been here a few days already, so she will be able to…show you the ropes, I think you say?” She pointed down a narrow corridor. “You’ll find breakfast served in the cafeteria at six in the morning. They clean up at eight, so don’t sleep in if you want food. Lunch is then from eleven to one and dinner is at six p.m. Of course, there are many places down the street and along the water to eat at if you miss a mealtime here.”
Mrs. Freer pulled a large envelope from a drawer and held it out. “This is your course schedule and some helpful information about the institution. There will be an opening welcome lecture by Professor Von Klein on Monday morning in the Grand Hall. It’s expected that all new and returning students attend.”
A burly man with deep-set eyes and a chin like a hammer emerged then from a door behind the desk. He wore jeans and a blue-checked shirt that was half unbuttoned to show a white t-shirt beneath. Eve couldn’t tell if he’d been sleeping or working. His eyes looked sullen and dark.
“There you are, Philip,” Mrs. Freer said. “This is Eve Springer. She’s our new pianist…from the United States. Please take her and her things up to Room 505.”
The man grunted something at the house marm and swooped in on Eve’s bags like a hawk. “This way,” he said in a low growl. He led her down the hall away from the front desk. Eve noticed that he walked with a strange gait, as if one of his legs was longer than the other. Maybe it was just something with his shoes; he wore thick black work boots. They looked heavy, with Frankenstein’s monster soles.
“I can take one,” Eve argued, but he did not turn or acknowledge her offer. Instead, he led her past an elevator with a sign taped across the doors. A circle with a line through it. The universal symbol of NO.
He set one of the bags down and opened a door to a stairwell. She would soon marvel at his stamina. It only took two flights before Eve was breathing heavy and she wasn’t carrying anything but herself. But Philip just kept marching upwards and around as the stairs turned like a corkscrew up and through each level.
“Wow,” she gasped when they finally stepped out into a short hallway. “I sure hope the elevator isn’t broken long.”
That drew a gust of laughter from behind her. Eve turned and saw a girl in shorts and a pink halter top unlocking a room. “That elevator is always going out,” the girl said. “That’s why they stick the newbies on the highest floor. Welcome to the fifth floor of hell!”
The girl winked and ducked into her room before Eve could think of anything to say.
Philip merely grunted and set her bags down in front of a white door. An oval metal plate was screwed to the right of it with black numbers that read 505. He unlocked the door and handed the key to her. Eve realized that she had no idea if she should tip him, or if so, how much. But she fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a two Euro coin to hand to him.
“Thanks,” she said.
He pocketed the coin, but Eve couldn’t tell if the lines around his mouth were the wrinkles of a smile or a glare. He turned and clomped away to disappear down the stairwell.
Eve sighed and stepped into her new room.
It was a small space for two people. A counter with an oval mirror above it and two drawers below filled the wall to her right. To the left, two bunk beds had been built into the wall. In front of them, a small two-person couch faced a flatscreen TV mounted on the wall. A desk that matched the blond wood of the bunk beds stood beneath two narrow windows.
There was only one picture on the wall, but then again, there was very little unoccupied wall space. It showed a violinist playing on a beautiful classical stage. On the floor nearby, Eve saw the telltale shape of a violin case. So…she knew why her roommate was here. Just not where she was.
Eve set her suitcases down and didn’t bother to unpack. She just needed to lie down. Judging from the comforter on the lower bed and the plain sheets of the bed above, she guessed that her roommate had claimed the ground floor. She didn’t care at this point. Eve climbed the built-in ladder and flopped with a moan on the thin mattress. In her mind she replayed the last twelve hours of her journey from Grand Central Station to here.
Before she reached Ghent in her memories, she was asleep.
Chapter Two
“I take it you’re my new roommate and not just some loony who wandered in off the street?”
The voice was female, and very British. Eve pushed her head off the pillow to sit up, eyes still blinking the fuzzy hold of sleep away. A dark-haired girl with a pert nose and welcoming smile sat at the desk across the room watching her.
“Oh, um, hello,” Eve said. She felt embarrassed that someone had walked in on her sleeping. “I’m sorry, I just had to take a little nap after the trip. It’s a long ride from New York City. My name is Eve.”
The other girl nodded. “I hoped you were. Otherwise this could get quite awkward. I’m Kristina.”
“Good to meet you!” Eve said and flipped her leg over the edge to climb down the ladder.
“I hope you don’t mind that I took the bottom bunk,” Kristina said when Eve reached the floor. “I don’t like heights.”
Eve shrugged. “No problem. Have you been here long?”
“Almost two weeks,” she said. “As soon as they opened the doors, I hopped on a train. Couldn’t get out of London fast enough. And it’s only a couple hours from King’s Cross to Brussels.”
“Oh wow,” Eve said. “I’ve always wanted to go to London.”
The other girl rolled her eyes. “You can have it. Bunch of wankers there.”
Eve laughed. “They’re everywhere, you know.”
“I suppose,” Kristina said. “But I swear the lot of them around my house were intolerable.” She waved at the picture on the wall. “Anyway, you can probably tell I’m here for violin. What’s your instrument?”
“Piano,” Eve said. “I’m working on my master’s in composition.”
Kristina frowned slightly.
“Is this your first year,” Eve asked, “or were you here last term?”
Kristina shook her head. “Nope, I’m a noob, just like you. I think everyone on fifth floor is. They say if you survive up here the first year, you get to move downstairs.”
“What’s so horrible about fifth floor?”
Kristina raised an eyebrow. “These old buildings don’t have a lot of insulation, you know? So, I’m told we’re going to be hot for the next couple months and then cold all winter. I hope you brought blankets.”
“I didn’t bring much of anything,” Eve said. “I figured I’d get what I needed here.”
“Sounds like a shopping day trip to Brussels is in your future,” Kristina said. “But first, I’d suggest dinner. The hall just opened. Are you hungry?”
Eve’s stomach audibly growled at the mention of food, and she laughed. “I guess so. Let me freshen up and use the restroom. Can you just tell me where one is?”
Kristina led her down the hall to a small communal bathroom with five stalls and an open shower area. When she came out, they went straight to the stairwell.
“From what they tell me, we’ll also get to know these stairs better than the elevator,” Kristina said. “Although, I have to say, it was working just yesterday.”
By the time they reached the first floor and walked through the lobby, Eve was short of breath. She’d done plenty of walking in New York, but the long halls and stairs of this building were really going to get her in shape.
Mrs. Freer was still there behind the entry desk, and smiled faintly as they walked past. “Hi, Lucie,” Kristina said to her with a wave. Eve noted the first name. The house marm hadn’t told her that.
Two girls and a guy were talking in the corridor as they approached. Eve caught just a sliver of their conversation before they fell silent.
“…so much blood…”
“…but do you think they’ll catch him?”
“How do you know it was a guy…”
“They said that her neck was barely…”
A girl in dark blue shorts and faded tan sandals abruptly stopped talking as they approached, and Eve could feel all three sets of eyes follow them as they passed and entered the cafeteria.
“What was that about?” she asked. “They looked at us like we were Martians.”
Kristina stuck out her tongue. “Third year snobs,” she said. “You don’t need to know them.”
“Sounded like they were talking about a killer,” Eve said.
Kristina stopped and turned toward her. “They probably were,” she said. Her face grew troubled. “I might as well tell you now, because you’ll hear it soon enough. Genevieve DuPont was murdered in one of the piano practice rooms in the North Tower last night. She was one of the top students, and it happened right here…so everyone is pretty much in shock. She studied with Aldo Lado in Switzerland and won a bunch of awards. Genevieve was Professor Von Klein’s star pianist last year.”
“So, what happened?” Eve asked.
Kristina made a face and her eyes grew large. “She was practicing alone late at night, and some crazy trapped her in the room and strangled her with a piano wire. Everyone is pretty nervous about it, right now. They haven’t caught the killer, so what if he comes back?”
Eve felt a cold spot in the pit of her stomach. She had been ecstatic when she’d won admittance to the Eyrie. It was one of the more prestigious music finishing schools in Europe. There were only a few dozen students admitted each term. But now it felt like she’d walked into danger. “Geez, do you think he will?” she said.
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t use the practice rooms after dark if I was you,” Kristina said.
* * *
The cafeteria did not offer a smorgasbord of choices, but the food they did have smelled amazing. Eve took a plate of pork loin with some kind of brown gravy and a side of rice pilaf and followed Kristina to a table with a half dozen other students. The room was not huge, but the twenty or thirty people in it were clustered at a handful of tables in different corners of the room. Social cliques were the same in every country, Eve mused.
Before they sat, Kristina introduced two very animated girls and a guy wearing a distorted cubist art t-shirt with a German phrase she couldn’t read. “This is Jean and Barbara and Sienna,” Kristina said. “They’re on our floor.”
Eve recognized Barbara as the girl who had said the elevators never worked when she’d first arrived. Barbara smiled at her in recognition.
“Now you’ve met half of the people on our end of the fifth floor,” Kristina laughed. “Misery loves its own company!”
“And I’m Elena and this is Erika,” one of the other two girls at the table offered. “We have graduated from the fifth floor,” she said with a flawless white smile.
While they wore different outfits, Eve realized that she couldn’t tell the two apart. They both had shoulder-length dark hair, perfect complexions and wide expressive eyes dressed in long dark lashes. They could have been Maybelline models, if they weren’t wearing sweatpants and t-shirts.
Kristina pulled out a chair for herself and another for Eve so that they could join the group.
They settled in and soon Eve learned that Elena and Erika were second-year Italian twins from the fourth floor who each played soprano saxophone, while Jean was a bearded first-year German percussionist and Barbara and Sienna were actually native Belgians who could form their own string section if they were so inclined. They played it all.
Some of the group had already been out together, exploring the old town section of Ghent, which they said boasted an old castle with a medieval torture chamber museum and some good historic and modern bars along the main waterway. “We’ll take you there, maybe tomorrow,” Kristina promised.
It was Sienna who broke a lull in the conversation with talk of the murder.
“Did you see Genevieve’s Facebook?” she asked Kristina.
Kristina shook her head. “No,” she answered. “They’d taken it down before I heard about it.”
“Took what down?” Eve asked.
Barbara and Sienna gave each other looks and then focused on their dinner plates.
“Does she know about it?” Jean asked.
Kristina nodded. “I told her a little while ago.”
“It was pretty creepy,” he said.
“What?” Eve asked.
Kristina grimaced and said, “Somehow the killer got access to Gen’s Facebook account. After he strangled her, he posted a picture of her. They say he took it while killing her.”
“He had to have,” Jean said. “Although I don’t know how he did it while he was still strangling her. You could see her face was all red and her mouth was open like she was screaming. But the worst part was her eyes. You could just see that she was still alive, but that her light was going out.”
“Can we not talk about it anymore?” one of the twins asked. Her accent reminded Eve of old spaghetti westerns. “Gen was a friend of mine.”
Kristina whispered to Eve, “I’m glad I didn’t see it.”
Eve looked down at her plate and pushed it back. The pork had been delicious, but she found she wasn’t hungry anymore.
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