At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [3]
He paused.
“Unless you make special prices for them? Is that it?”
“More or less. They don’t know, usually, that they are special prices, or if they do realize it, they think it’s because they’re old customers.”
“And it isn’t just that?”
“Well, Colonel Luscombe, I am running a hotel. I couldn’t afford actually to lose money.”
“But how can that pay you?”
“It’s a question of atmosphere…Strangers coming to this country (Americans, in particular, because they are the ones who have the money) have their own rather queer ideas of what England is like. I’m not talking, you understand, of the rich business tycoons who are always crossing the Atlantic. They usually go to the Savoy or the Dorchester. They want modern décor, American food, all the things that will make them feel at home. But there are a lot of people who come abroad at rare intervals and who expect this country to be—well, I won’t go back as far as Dickens, but they’ve read Cranford and Henry James, and they don’t want to find this country just the same as their own! So they go back home afterwards and say: ‘There’s a wonderful place in London; Bertram’s Hotel, it’s called. It’s just like stepping back a hundred years. It just is old England! And the people who stay there! People you’d never come across anywhere else. Wonderful old Duchesses. They serve all the old English dishes, there’s a marvellous old-fashioned beefsteak pudding! You’ve never tasted anything like it; and great sirloins of beef and saddles of mutton, and an old-fashioned English tea and a wonderful English breakfast. And of course all the usual things as well. And it’s wonderfully comfortable. And warm. Great log fires.’”
Mr. Humfries ceased his impersonation and permitted himself something nearly approaching a grin.
“I see,” said Luscombe thoughtfully. “These people; decayed aristocrats, impoverished members of the old County families, they are all so much mise en scène?”
Mr. Humfries nodded agreement.
“I really wonder no one else has thought of it. Of course I found Bertram’s ready-made, so to speak. All it needed was some rather expensive restoration. All the people who come here think it’s something that they’ve discovered for themselves, that no one else knows about.”
“I suppose,” said Luscombe, “that the restoration was quite expensive?”
“Oh yes. The place has got to look Edwardian, but it’s got to have the modern comforts that we take for granted in these days. Our old dears—if you will forgive me referring to them as that—have got to feel that nothing has changed since the turn of the century, and our travelling clients have got to feel they can have period surroundings, and still have what they are used to having at home, and can’t really live without!”
“Bit difficult sometimes?” suggested Luscombe.
“Not really. Take central heating for instance. Americans require—need, I should say—at least ten degrees Fahrenheit higher than English people do. We actually have two quite different sets of bedrooms. The English we put in one lot, the Americans in the other. The rooms all look alike, but they are full of actual differences—electric razors, and showers as well as tubs in some of the bathrooms, and if you want an American breakfast, it’s there—cereals and iced orange juice and all—or if you prefer you can have the English breakfast.”
“Eggs and bacon?”
“As you say—but a good deal more than that if you want it. Kippers, kidneys and bacon, cold grouse, York ham. Oxford marmalade.”
“I must remember all that tomorrow morning. Don’t get that sort of thing anymore at home.”
Humfries smiled.
“Most gentlemen only ask for eggs and bacon. They’ve—well, they’ve got out of the way of thinking about the things there used to be.”
“Yes, yes…I remember when I was a child…Sideboards groaning with hot dishes. Yes, it was a luxurious way of life.”
“We endeavour to give people anything they ask for.”
“Including seed cake and muffins—yes, I see. To each according to his need—I see…Quite Marxian.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Just a thought, Humfries.