Dance with the Devil

share their keys with others, there were now thirteen suspects who had easy access to the mansion, thirteen including the family and servants who could have been at that bonfire the night before. “Do you think that's wise?” Katherine asked.
        “To give out keys?”
        “Yes.”
        “My dear, don't start talking at me like Constable Cartier. I've had enough of him this morning!”
        “How did it go in town?”
        “Tooth and nail,” Lydia said, chuckling. “He would have preferred to have a free reign on who would be earning the overtime money I've put up for increased patrols. Interestingly enough, he already had every man on both sides of his family listed for duty. I had to straighten him out on that, but now I think well actually get some good men working. If you can imagine, he even had his ninety-eight-year-old grandfather listed for six hours overtime duty a night!”
        “Sounds like you need a more reliable constable,” Katherine said, grinning.
        “Cartier is fine,” Lydia said. “He is not particularly clever. But he can handle the drunks and the fist-fights, and he can organize a strawberry festival in the square with more aplomb than anyone I can imagine. In this case, he saw a chance to benefit by the community's need, but he was properly embarrassed and penitent when I helped him to see the light.” She chuckled again, having obviously enjoyed the morning.
        They finished lunch and retired to the library where Lydia looked over the day's mail she had picked up while in town. She dictated two personal notes and signed three blank checks which Katherine was to fill out and mail in payment of bills received. While Katherine was working, Lydia read from a novel she had bought a week ago and was just now getting around to. Afterwards, they talked, mostly about books, until Lydia went upstairs for a pre-dinner nap.
        “Dinner will be earlier tonight, at six-thirty,” she said before she left. “Some of Alex's friends are due for cocktails and conversation in the recreation room at eight. Alex asked me to invite you in his behalf.”
        “I'm afraid I'd be out of place-”
        “Nonsense,” Lydia said. “I am not going, because I would certainly be out of place in a roomful of energetic young people. But I know Alex would be hurt if you did not attend.”
        “All right,” she said.
        “Don't be glum about it,” Lydia said. “They're a likeable bunch and easy to get to know. It won't take you long to break the ice.”
        Katherine said, “Are these the friends who have keys to Owlsden?”
        “Why do you ask?” Lydia inquired, a puzzled frown on her face.
        Katherine realized that her approach had not been nearly so subtle as she would have liked-had not been subtle at all, in fact. She said, in an effort to qualify her curiosity, “I just wondered if these were Alex's very best friends…”
        Lydia accepted that as sufficient explanation. “Oh, I'd say most of these kids have keys,” she said. “But I never thought that they might regard them as status symbols, signs of favor or what-have-you. Perhaps Alex will have to hand out a larger number of keys in order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. It's silly that such a thing could be considered a sign of special favor instead of a convenience, but I can see that some people might be upset at remaining-unkeyed.”
        After Lydia had gone upstairs to take her nap, and after Katherine had finished her secretarial chores- addressing envelopes for the letters she had written, filling out checks and balancing the figures in the household accounts ledger-she went looking for Yuri and discovered that he was in town on business. She was irritated at not being able to tell him about the footprints and about her suspicions that unwanted persons had entered the house during the night, then decided that suppertime would be soon enough.
        The information was not that urgent, after all.
        
        “-has no less than five and no more than twenty years to do something about the population problem.”
        “Nothing will be done.”
        “I agree. Nothing will be done until it's too late for-”
        “You're expecting too much of the world leaders when you suppose they're even going to let us all survive long enough to face a desperate population problem. I tell you that-”
        Katherine sat in a large, brown crushed velvet easy chair near the