A FAIR CITY TALE

FIRST OF ALL, I had better explain the title I have chosen for my story; it, of course, refers to Perth in Scotland.

To those of you not acquainted with Scotland, Perth was always known as the Fair City. What is sometimes forgotten is that Perth was the original capital of Scotland. In Roman times, it was known as Bertha and has also been called St. John´s Toon, hence the football team´s name, St Johnston.

It is a beautiful city in a lovely setting, steeped in folklore and history.

In March just past, I made an internet booking to stay at a hotel in the city for my wife, Mary and I, who had been invited to a family anniversary in Carnoustie and as I am originally from Perth and had family connections there, that was the obvious place to stay.

We started out from L’Ampolla and drove to Girona, about a three hour drive, spent the mandatory two hours hanging around the airport, a two hour flight to Edinburgh, where we were met by family and drove into Perth and dropped at our hotel.

The hotel was part of the Toby Inn chain and we vaguely remembered having a meal there many years ago when it was just a carvery. We registered and made our way up to our room, No. 306; a nice room when you entered, the bathroom on your left and coats and baggage on your right, then you carried on into the twin bedded sleeping area complete with TV, telephone, writing desk and all the necessary bits and pieces that you expect in a hotel.

IT WAS ONLY when you looked out of the window, that you realised from the surrounding rooftops and structures that though internally, it was modernised, the building was a few hundred years old. I give you all of this background information, as it is, I believe, relevant to what happened. Needless, to say, it had been a long and tiring day.

We had dinner in the restaurant (no alcohol) and retired to bed probably at about 10pm and as I normally get up to the bathroom most nights, I took the first bed next to the same and it didn’t take long before I was fast asleep.

My next recollection is that I’m sleeping, but there was a light on or it was daylight through my eyelids and I can hear two female voices talking, in English, but I can´t understand what they are saying. I try to wake up but I can´t seem to do it, and I’m thinking it must be the room maids turning over an adjacent room and they would soon stop talking.

After a while, the talking stopped and I woke up and opened my eyes. I saw Mary sitting on the next bed and I knew straight away that something was wrong. I asked “what’s happened?”.

Mary was quite shaken up and this is her part of the story.

I had no sooner got to bed when I fell into a deep sleep. I was awakened by a noise and a light from the bathroom area and I thought that’s Bill up at the bathroom.

Then I realised I could hear you breathing in the next bed, so whatever it was it was not you.

I got out of bed your side and went over to the bathroom, tripped over something on the floor and put on the light outside the bathroom to see what I had tripped over. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large lady’s handbag and to my horror, lying on the floor at the foot of my bed, a woman with long dark hair and wearing a full length brown fur coat.

I shouted out “what are you doing in my room” and fully expected you to wake up, but no, you were restless, but didn’t open your eyes. I repeated “what are you doing in my room?” and “get out of my room”.

THE WOMAN STOOD up, looked at me and said “I’m looking for my mother:” I then said “how did you get into my room?”.

She replied “with my key”. I picked up our key which was on the table and said “Show me your key”.

She raised her hand and held up an identical key to our´s, No. 306. I said I did not know how she had got that key, but she had to get out of my room immediately and started to usher her towards the door and she said “I will have nowhere to sleep now for my mother not here”.

I told her to get back down to reception and find out where her mother was for she was certainly not in room No. 306. She went out into the corridor and I shut the door behind and lo and behold you woke up, and asked me “what’s happened?”

Then it suddenly hit me that the situation was so unreal and you would probably think I was dreaming so I thought I would sort this out myself, I looked at my watch and saw it was 2am and said “I’m off down to reception – I need some answers”.

WHEN MY WIFE went out of the room, I couldn’t take all she had told me in and I did wonder if maybe she had dreamt it, but then I remembered that I had heard voices and seen the light (no pun intended!) so something was definitely amiss.

After about five minutes, Mary came back just dressed in pyjamas and slippers and said, “There is not a soul to be seen, reception is deserted and that woman has disappeared”.

I thought I would lighten up the atmosphere in the room, so I said, which I now realise, was stupid, “was the woman dressed in somewhat old fashioned clothes?”.

Mary replied “I suppose she was”,

I then said “well, you can never tell when you muck about with these old buildings, she might have been a restless spirit whose old mum had met an untimely end in here, in days gone by”.

When I looked at Mary’s face, I said “that’s not funny is it, – I’ll shut up”. I added “as reception is deserted, I will see the manager before breakfast and get some answers”.

For some strange reason, it took a bit longer for Mary and I to get back to sleep in what was left of the night. Early next morning, I was at reception where a young man heard my complaint of having an intruder in our room and said, when the manager came on duty, he would get him to contact me.

SURE ENOUGH, AFTER breakfast, the manager came up to us, listened to our account of the night before and I asked to be given another room as we did not feel comfortable in 306.

He immediately agreed and added that staff would move our belongings to a fresh room and would my wife and I have dinner in the restaurant that evening at the hotel’s expense as a gesture of an apology for what had happened and he would make enquiries as to what had taken place.

That night we had a lovely meal with wines and a personal waiter in the restaurant to look after us. The next morning the manager informed us that it was now in the hands of the police, as it would appear that the woman had been staying in the hotel in another room and when they had entered the room, the woman had gone, but had left behind a lot of handbags with credit cards in them, all under different names and she was nothing but a common thief.

NOW YOU WOULD think that ties up all the loose end of this tale, but think, the only person who could identify this woman as our intruder was my wife, yet we never had a visit from the police.

How did they know what room this woman was staying in to gain entry?

I believe the hotel had something like 80 plus rooms and if this woman was a thief, surely she would have taken all the stolen credit cards with her.

We had one more night in the hotel before we left for home and as the police still had made no contact with us, we have to assume that the hotel never reported the incident at all. Now there could be two reasons as to why that happened.

1)The hotel did not want any adverse publicity or,

2)This was not the first time that the woman had been seen in room 306 looking for her mother and maybe her old mum had met an untimely end there in days gone by and that publicity could have been more damaging …………. Bill Taylor

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Posted by editor on 2010-06-29 Filed under July 2010, Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry