In the Still of the Night

said.
    There was giggling and blushing and Lily and Mrs. Prinney almost got teary. Lily soon “gathered eyes“ and the women departed the dining room to leave the men to their port. As usual, most of the women scattered to repair their hair and shake the wrinkles out of their frocks.

    The plan for the evening was games. Robert excused himself from the men in the dining room and set up some extra tables in the yellow parlor. He set out decks of cards for bridge on two tables, and a pachisi board, dice and tokens on a third. If people didn’t want to play anything, they could just chat. And later, there was a dance music broadcast on the radio. He had brought the radio from the library to the parlor. Last night had been formal with place cards and a lecture from Julian West. This evening was to be friendly and family-like.
    Only Mr. Prinney excused himself from the gathering. “I have a lot of work to do and Chief Walker has taken over my office for most of the day,“ he told Lily.
    He looked tired and older than usual, Lily thought. “You have no obligation to entertain the guests,“ she said. “That’s Robert’s job and mine.”
    The two respectable widows who quilted were also cutthroat bridge players and insisted that Phoebe and Lily make up a foursome. Addie sat by herself, glancing through a book. Bud Carpenter stood quietly by the door, being the perfect servant. Robert, Rachel, Mad Henry and Raymond played pachisi. Mad Henry lost round after round, because he was making notes of the frequency of the combinations of the dice. No doubt to produce better dice, Lily speculated. Julian had resumed his solitary place on the sofa.
    Lily was feeling terribly smug. It was a good party in spite of the fact that one of the guests was now lying in the town funeral parlor. She wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
    She didn’t notice that Howard Walker had once again sat down by Julian West. Then, suddenly, as Lily was about to play a three of hearts, all hell broke loose.
    “You bastard!“ West shouted at Walker. “Leave me alone. I had nothing to do with that woman’s death. I hardly remembered her. Just ask Bud. He keeps an eye on me like a mother eagle with a chick, damn the man.“
    “Mr. West—“ Walker started to say.
    “I swear to God if I get up in the night to take a piss, there’s Bud outside the bathroom door asking if I’m all right. I didn’t leave my room all night. Just ask him.”
    Walker turned to Bud Carpenter, who was looking unconcerned with the Great Man’s outburst. “Is this true?“
    “Yes. Absolutely true, sir. The Captain went to his room and stayed there all night. I would have known otherwise. I’m a very light sleeper... sir.“ He added the last word grudgingly.
    The ladies playing bridge with Lily were ignoring the shouting, but Lily was upset. “Could you take this conversation somewhere else?“ she asked.
    She was ignored. West was well under steam now and had a few more things to say while he was at it. “Why don’t you go after that woman?“ He pointed at Addie. “I hear she had quite a history with Mrs. Ethridge. She stole her boyfriend or some stupid thing.”
    Addie threw down her book and said, “How dare you!”

    “And she’d written a letter to Raymond Cameron. A very personal letter, I hear.”
    Raymond’s face turned puce, but he didn’t shout. “I didn’t know Mrs. Ethridge.“
    “You never met her?“ Walker asked. “Never even heard her name?“
    “I suppose I’d heard the name,“ Raymond said, off-guard. “I believe she might have been a client of my Uncle Joe, who was a lawyer. I worked in his office one summer. I might have seen the name there.“
    “We’ll talk more about this later,“ Walker said, standing up. “It seems as though an awful lot of eavesdropping has gone on here.”

Chapter 18

    Robert was so angry he couldn’t sleep that night. Everything had been going so swimmingly well. Then Walker had to go off half-cocked and question West at a purely social occasion and ruin everything. Poor Lily. She’d worked so hard at this whole project of having congenial paying guests and a celebrity guest. The celebrity was an ass. And one of the paying guests was dead, probably at the hand of another of the guests.
    In fairness, he couldn’t genuinely fault Howard Walker. He was supposed to have been at Grace and Favor as an honored local guest originally. It wasn’t his fault Mrs. Ethridge had gone and gotten her