The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

the train? But where were they now—and who was their host? He crept across the parlor and peeked out the opposite doorway—directly into a small ante-room that housed a dauntingly steep staircase and, beyond it, an archway to another parlor. Peeking in from this archway at that exact instant was a short, well-fed woman dressed in black. As one they both recoiled in surprise, the woman with a squeak, Svenson with his open mouth inaudibly groping for an explanation. She held up a hand to him and swallowed, using her other to fan her reddening face.
    “I do beg your pardon,” she managed. “I thought they—you—had all gone! I would have never—I was merely looking for the cake. If any is left. To put away. To bring to the kitchen. The cook will have retired—and it is a very large house. There may very well be rats. Do you see?”
    “I am terribly sorry to surprise you,” replied Doctor Svenson, his voice tender with concern.
    “I thought you all had gone,” she repeated, her own voice reedy and wheezing.
    “Of course,” he assured her. “It’s most understandable.”
    She cast an apprehensive glance up the staircase before looking back to Svenson. “You’re one of the Germans, aren’t you?”
    Svenson nodded and—because he thought it would appeal to her—clicked his heels. The woman giggled, and immediately covered her mouth with a pudgy pink hand. He studied her face, which reminded him of nothing more than a smirking child’s. Her hair was elaborately arranged but without any particular style. In fact—he realized he was desperately slow at this kind of observation—it was a rather ambitious wig. The black dress meant mourning, and it occurred to him that her eyes were the same color as Bascombe’s, and that her eyes and her mouth bore his same elliptical shape…could she be his sister? His cousin?
    “May I ask you something, Madame?”
    She nodded. Svenson stepped aside and with his hand indicated the parlor behind him. “Do you apprehend the
smell
?”
    She giggled again, this time with a wild uncertain gleam at work in her vaguely porcine eyes. She was nervous, even frightened, by the question. Before she could leave, he spoke again.
    “I merely mean, I did not expect them to be…working…
here
. I assumed it would be elsewhere. I speak for us all when I hope it does not too much
infuse
your upholstery. May I ask if you spoke to any of the women?”
    She shook her head.
    “But you saw them.”
    She nodded.
    “And you
are
the present Lady of the house.”
    She nodded.
    “Can you—I am merely making sure of
their
work, you understand—tell me what you saw? Here, please, come in and take advantage of a chair. And perhaps there is some cake left after all…”

    She installed herself on a settee with striped upholstery and pulled a plate of untouched cake slices onto her lap. With impulsive relish the woman crammed the whole of a slice into her mouth, giggled with her mouth full, swallowed with practiced determination, picked up another slice—as if having it in her hand was a comfort. She spoke in a rush.
    “Well, you know, it is the sort of thing that seems, well, it seems awful, just
awful
—but then so many things seem that way at first, so many things that are good for one, or actually—eventually—delicious—” She realized what she had just said, and to whom, and erupted in another shrill laugh, stifled only by another bite of cake. She choked it down, her full bosom heaving with the effort beneath the bodice of her dress. “And they did seem happy—these women—alarmingly so, I must say. If it wasn’t so frightening I would have been envious. Perhaps I still am envious—but of course I have no reason to be. Roger says it will do wonders for the family—all of this—which perhaps I shouldn’t tell you, but I do believe he is right. My boy is a child—he can do nothing for his family for years—and Roger has promised, aside from every other generosity, that Edgar will inherit from him, that Roger—who has no children, but even if he did—he had a fiancée, but doesn’t any longer—not that
that
matters—she was a wicked girl, I always said, never mind her money—he’s quite eligible—and most impressively connected—he will pass it all back when the time comes. Fair is fair! And do you know—it is nearly certain—we shall be invited to the Palace! I cannot say it should have happened with Edgar on his own!”
    Doctor Svenson nodded