In the Still of the Night

was a surprise.
    She got a note from a woman she vaguely remembered from her “previous life,“ as she and Robert called it. Lorna Pratt, now Mrs. Ethridge, writing an elegant hand on superb stationery, wrote to say that she had heard through her good friend, Addie Jonson, that Miss Brewster was hosting Julian West at her home with a few select invited guests.
    “I knew him when I was very young and greatly admire his work,“ she said. “I know this is terribly pushy of me, but might you have room for one more guest?”
    Lily had only a fleeting memory of the woman, who had come to one of her mother’s garden parties when Lily was a child and wasn’t much interested in adults. The only thing that she remembered was that the woman had been extremely well-dressed and pretty, and had seemed pleasant.
    Lily wrote back, saying Mrs. Ethridge would be a welcome addition, but made quite certain that the uninvited guest understood it was a paying proposition.
    “This is the one where we make a profit,“ Lily told Robert, who was playing a game of patience at the library table. “And we still have room for another. Several others, in fact, but I think the first time it would be a good idea to keep it to six guests plus the celebrity. That’s enough people for pleasant conversation with each other, but not a mob. We don’t want to scare off our first famous person by having a swarming herd of people demanding his attention. Especially since he’s such a reclusive person.“
    “Aren’t you even curious about that?“ Robert asked. “Why did Julian West, of all people, agree to this?“
    “You sound downright suspicious, Robert.“
    “I suppose I am, a little. I can’t quite put my finger on what motive he might have for coming here, but I don’t quite like it.“
    “Robert, this isn’t like you.“ Lily said, moving his ace of spades to the side of the other cards.
    Robert slapped her hand away. “I like keeping it there until I need the space. Maybe I’m just bored into inventing trouble where none exists. How about Mad Henry Troyer?“
    “As a guest? Mad Henry? This is a joke, isn’t it?”
    “Mad Henry is fun to have around.“
    “Mad Henry is a drunk,“ Lily said.
    “He doesn’t drink at all,“ Robert said. “He just has a naturally exuberant personality. I like Mad Henry. Always did.“
    “Does he still have money?“ Lily asked.
    “Wads. Tons. It falls out of his pockets and rolls across floors. People follow him around picking it up. His father discovered that gold mine, you remember, then considerately dropped dead so Mad Henry could have his toys. The villagers at The Fate will love him.“
    “You’re saying it like Voorburg does,“ Lily said with laugh. “But Mad Henry? I don’t imagine he knows what a novel is.“
    “Probably not, but I’d enjoy catching up with him,“ Robert said.
    Mad Henry considered himself an inventor and always had one or another peculiar project that he was engaged in. Lily found Henry annoying and remembered vividly the time he’d visited them for the summer in Nantucket and decided to rewire the house with something he claimed was a new metal of his own creation. It took the whole family, staff and several neighbors with buckets of seawater to put the fire out.
    “He’s given up anything to have to do with combustion, I hear,“ Robert said, laying out a new hand of patience. “I think there must be a card missing. I can’t seem to win.”
    He sounded so pathetic that Lily gave in. “All right, invite Mad Henry. But you’re in charge of him if he gets out of hand.”
    Robert grinned. “He’s really smart, you know. Most of his projects don’t work out, but someday he’ll invent something good.“
    “Better than the suspenders?“
    “He didn’t think he invented suspenders. He just made them easier to pack,“ Robert said, laughing. “Instead of them getting all tangled up, they were a series of stiffened wood bits that could be folded up neatly like a carpenter’s rule. And what’s more, you could change the color just by painting them.”
    She liked it when Robert laughed. He’d always been so good natured and since they’d come here, he was marginally less cheerful. If it took putting up with Mad Henry to make him happy taking in a bunch of intellectual guests that would probably bore him senseless, so be it.
    Lily didn’t read the newspapers that Robert and Mr. Prinney did, but she read the Voorburg newspaper carefully. Not