Sundays at the Ashcroft
A Super Short Story
Elliot Vale is the new bellhop at the fine Ashcroft Hotel. This is where his story begins.
Nothing in the lobby looked old, though all of it was. The marble floors shined bright. The piano near the restaurant was concert quality but the young fella playing it was not. Even the air smelled expensive.
On his third day, the concierge leaned across his desk and said, “You want to hear about the Sunday murder?”
The concierge was Walter. Seventy. Silver hair slicked flat. Voice like wrinkled cardboard.
Elliot adjusted the brass buttons on his uniform as he peeked left, then right before leaning closer. “There was a murder here?”
Walter looked off into the distance, then back at Elliot.
“Yes, sir. On a day just like this.”
Rain streaked the front windows behind him. Across the street, a woman in an oversized gray sweater arranged flowers under the awning of a narrow storefront while a tiny cream-colored dog barked at pedestrians.
Elliot had noticed her each morning that week.
Walter followed his gaze.
“Flower girl’s pretty,” he said.
Elliot looked away immediately, fumbling his words. “Um, no yeah, ah, ahem, what’s that?”
Walter said nothing and slid a yellowed newspaper clipping across the desk.
SUNDAY SOCIALITE VANISHES AFTER HOTEL SHOOTING.
October 14th, 1978.
Below the headline sat a black-and-white photograph of a glamorous woman stepping from a limousine.
Beside her stood a man smiling at the camera.
Young.
Sharp suit.
Movie-star handsome.
“What happened?” Elliot asked.
Walter settled deeper into his chair like a man preparing for a performance.
“Woman’s name was Vivian Laurent. Rich husband. A few too many enemies.” He tapped the article. “Every Sunday she met her lover here at the Ashcroft.”
Outside, the flower girl knelt to fix a crooked bucket of tulips.
The little dog inside her cardigan glared at a pigeon with homicidal intensity.
Elliot tried not to smile.
“One Sunday night,” Walter continued, “people hear a gunshot from Suite 814.”
Elliot snapped back.
“When hotel security opens the room, the lover’s dead. Shot once in the chest.” Walter lowered his voice slightly. “Vivian’s gone. So’s a diamond necklace worth half a million schmackaroos.”
“Ever find her?”
“Nope.”
“The necklace?”
Walter smiled faintly.
“Nope.”
A guest approached with luggage before Elliot could ask more.
Walter handed over room keys. “Go work, kid. Mystery’ll still be dead when you get back.”
By noon rain started falling hard enough to drive people inside. Walter handed Elliot twenty dollars.
“Room 406 wants the Sunday Times. Lobby stand’s sold out.”
Elliot looked toward the windows.
Walter smirked.
“Don’t sprain anything crossing the street.”
Wind chimes rattled softly above the door when Elliot entered. Mercer Blooms smelled like wet earth and chrysanthemums. And perfume. Her perfume, Elliot thought.
The flower girl looked up from trimming stems.
Close up, she seemed less polished but more beautiful than the women he’d see at the hotel. A small scar curved beneath her chin. Loose brown curls escaped a messy knot behind her head.
The tiny dog poked from her sweater pocket and growled immediately.
“Friendly?” Elliot asked.
“Taffy’s selective,” the woman replied with a cute smile.
The dog barked once as if confirming this.
“I need a Sunday Times.”
“Last one.” She handed him the paper. “Your lucky day.”
Her voice carried the rough warmth of someone who spent too much time alone.
Elliot glanced toward her name tag.
ROSE.
Fitting, he thought.
“You work at the Ashcroft,” she said.
“How’d you know?”
“Oh, I have my ways.” That smile again.
Then he realized what he was wearing.
“You stand like someone important might yell at you.”
He laughed gently behind his smile.
Taffy looked deeply disappointed by this development.
Rose scratched beneath the dog’s chin.
“Taffy, huh?”
“She was smaller when I named her.”
“She’s still pretty small.”
“Don’t encourage her ego.” Another smile that knocked Elliot over.
Elliot handed her cash for the paper, then hesitated.
“You ever hear a story about a murder at the Ashcroft?”
Rose rolled her eyes immediately.
“Oh God. Walter got to you already.”
“You know about it?”
“Everybody around here knows about it.” She leaned against the counter. “Half the neighborhood thinks Vivian Laurent escaped to Europe. Other half thinks her husband buried her somewhere.”
“What do you think?”
Rose shrugged lightly.
“I think people like mysteries. They want everything to mean something.”
That answer stayed with him the entire walk back.
That night Elliot dreamed in black and white. Like he’s the protagonist in a noir novelette.
Suite 814.
Cigarette smoke curling toward the ceiling.
A woman laughing softly behind a closed bathroom door.
He imagined himself standing over a dead man sprawled beside spilled champagne.
A diamond necklace missing.
Rain hitting hotel windows like thrown gravel.
In the dream Vivian Laurent emerged from shadows wearing dark sunglasses and nothing else.
But when she removed the glasses, she had Rose’s eyes.
Elliot woke at that moment. A full suite of emotions sorting themselves out quickly.
Over the next week he found excuses to cross the street.
Newspapers.
Coffee.
Flowers the hotel absolutely did not request.
Rose noticed.
“You know people might think we’re dating,” she said one afternoon while wrapping lilies in brown paper.
Elliot leaned against the counter. “And what’s wrong with that?”
She blushed a little and smiled. The moment felt strangely salubrious.
Taffy climbed onto the counter between them carrying a crumpled piece of paper in her mouth.
Rose took it. “Where’d you even get this?”
Elliot glanced down.
The receipt was old.
Very old.
ASHCROFT HOTEL — 1978.
Room 814.
Both of them paused.
Rose frowned. “That’s weird.”
“Maybe Walter planted it.”
“Walter? No, I don’t think so.”
Taffy barked proudly.
Elliot took the receipt carefully.
Something electric moved quietly through him.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition.
Like the story wanted to be found.
Walter became impossible to stop once Elliot showed interest.
According to him:
Vivian Laurent met her lover every Sunday around 7pm.
The husband knew.
Hotel management covered for her.
The necklace wasn’t insured.
Each version changed slightly every time Walter told it.
Elliot noticed.
“You’re making shit up,” he accused one evening.
Walter looked offended. “Memory improves with age.”
“That’s literally the opposite of what happens.”
Walter pointed a crooked finger toward him.
“You know why people still talk about it?”
“Why?”
“Because nobody solved it.” He leaned back. “People can live with tragedy. They hate not having closure.”
Outside, snow began drifting through the streetlights.
Across the street Rose flipped the CLOSED sign in her shop window.
Elliot watched her through the glass.
Walter noticed.
“That girl likes you.”
“Ah, I don’t think so.”
“She keeps her lights on until your shift ends.”
Elliot looked back toward the flower shop.
The lights were still on.
Warm against the snow.
Waiting.
Rose eventually admitted she liked hearing about the old case too.
Not because of the murder.
Because of Vivian.
“She vanished,” Rose said one night as they sat inside the flower shop drinking terrible coffee. “People don’t just disappear”
Taffy slept curled between them beneath the counter.
“She could’ve left, found some place half a world away.” Elliot said.
Rose shook her head.
“You don’t leave your entire life unless something inside it was killing you.”
Outside, snow softened the city into silence.
Elliot studied her carefully.
“You ever want to disappear?”
Rose smiled faintly into her coffee cup.
“Every February.”
He laughed quietly.
Then stopped when he realized how close they’d drifted sitting there.
The room suddenly felt smaller.
Warmer.
Taffy opened one eye suspiciously.
Elliot cleared his throat. “Walter thinks hotel management covered everything up.”
“Walter thinks the moon is full of little green men.”
“Fair point.”
Rose stood to lock the front door.
As she crossed the shop, Taffy suddenly darted toward the back hallway barking furiously.
Rose frowned. “What now?”
The dog disappeared into the storage room.
A loud clatter followed.
Then silence.
Elliot and Rose exchanged a look before following.
The storage room smelled like cardboard. Shelves overflowed with unused ribbon spools and cracked vases.
Taffy sat proudly beside a rusted floor vent she’d somehow knocked loose.
Something glittered beneath it.
Rose crouched first.
“Wait,” Elliot said instinctively.
Too late.
Rose reached inside the vent.
When her hand emerged, a strand of diamonds spilled across her fingers like crushed ice.
Neither of them spoke.
The necklace looked smaller than Elliot imagined.
Older too.
Not magical.
Just real.
Taffy barked proudly.
“Oh my God,” Rose whispered.
Elliot stared at the diamonds.
Then at the old hotel receipt still folded inside his coat pocket.
And suddenly the story stopped feeling romantic.
Forty years of rumors.
Disappearances.
Murder.
People building legends around strangers.
And all that time the necklace had been sitting forgotten inside a wall.
Rose looked up at him softly.
“What do we do?”
Elliot thought about Walter.
The Ashcroft.
Vivian Laurent disappearing into myth.
Then he looked at Rose standing barefoot in a dusty storage room holding history in trembling hands.
And realized he didn’t actually care about solving the mystery anymore.
He just didn’t want this moment to end.
The next morning Elliot crossed the street before work carrying two coffees. Not terrible coffee. And a paper.
Rose unlocked the shop while Taffy supervised from her sweater pocket.
“You’re early,” Rose said.
Elliot said nothing. Just smiled.
The city still looked half asleep. Snow melted slowly along the sidewalks. Across the street the Ashcroft stood enormous and elegant and full of people with stories.
Rose unfolded the Sunday paper across the counter.
On page three sat a tiny article:
ASHCROFT NECKLACE RECOVERED AFTER FOUR DECADES.
That was all.
No romance.
No legend.
No mystery.
Just facts.
Rose looked up at him.
“Disappointed?”
“A little.”
“Me, too.”
Taffy climbed into Elliot’s lap like she’d finally approved him.
Outside, church bells rang somewhere beyond the waking city.
Sunday again.
But this time Elliot stayed where he was instead of watching from across the street.
This has been another Super Short Story where Substackers give me three random words and I write their story.
Thanks to Muffs to Muffins for providing the words: Sunday, Taffy, Novelette. Be sure to give her a follow.
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I was perched right in that story with them! So good and such great writing.Truly enjoyed the entire read. Well done, and thank you for including me. What fun!