The Sanatorium

Cecile uses the copper bracelets to mark her victims. Each time before the killer strikes, the victim finds a copper bracelet nearby. Like the black masks, the copper bracelets are a remnant of the old sanatorium. They were medical bracelets worn by patients that had their patient number engraved on the inside. The numbers inside the bracelets corresponded to actual case numbers for patients sent from the German asylum to the sanatorium for experimentation.

The killer also left the copper bracelets along with the fingers of the victims in a glass box near the body. Later, we learn that Cecile intended for news about the murders to get out and for the connection to the hotel’s history as a sanatorium to be highlighted on the news.

When Elin and Will first arrive at the hotel, Elin remarks that the display cases showing off medical equipment used 100 years prior in the sanatorium that once occupied the building where the sanatorium is held are weirdly displayed like art installations, even though they’re objects that represent the suffering of the sanatorium patients. The glass boxes containing human fingers represent the grotesqueness of building a luxury hotel on a site where so many people suffered. They mock turning the suffering of others into art, which is what people who objected to the hotel being built think the hotel does, simply by existing.

Pearse uses water both as a place of solace and destruction. Elin has both fond and fearful memories of water from her childhood. For Elin, however, her negative experiences with water have created an anxiety around water. Sam’s death in the shallow water of the tide pool mirrors the way Elin is nearly killed by the main suspect in the Hayler case. Elin is haunted by flashbacks of both incidents.

Water is the method of Adele’s murder, and it also is what ultimately gives Cecile away as the killer and what ultimately brings about the sense of clarity that Elin needs to solve the case. Elin must overcome her fear of the water when she rescues Lucas at the end of the novel. 

When Elin and Will first arrive, a snowstorm is just beginning to roll in, threatening to shut down the mountain. The physical storm gets worse just as the figurative storm at the hotel does. The avalanche that traps Elin and the remaining guests and hotel staff at the hotel happens just before Adele’s body is found in the pool. Laure has also just gone missing, and the people left in the hotel are trapped with a killer, having no idea who this person could be. The snowstorm serves as a device to trap the characters in one location and isolate them from the rest of the world. It also serves as a device to force Elin to act, as she’s the closest thing the hotel has to law enforcement without the avalanche being cleared.