the flowers and began picking up the bits of pasteboard. There weren’t many. She rose, put them into an ash tray on the mantel and struck a match. Her movements were slow and deliberate. They had an air of ritual about them. She touched the match to the little pile and it went up in flame.
The door was open. Julie felt rather than saw movement beyond in dimness. She looked around with an odd little gasp of apprehension, but there was no one in sight. When the flame died and the card that had accompanied Bill Conroy’s gift of flowers was completely consumed—not until then—Mouse turned and walked out of the study. Neither Frances nor Julie said anything. There wasn’t anything to say, but Frances’s brows slanted crookedly as she and Julie followed in Mouse’s wake.
Three quarters of an hour later Julie went back into the little room that had been Sarah’s study. She was by herself. Mouse and Joe were gone. The cake had been cut and a final toast drunk and a chorus of good-bys called. Rice and an old slipper had been flung after the car in which the bridal couple drove away through the dark November afternoon. The reception was still in progress, but the guests were beginning to go.
It would have been hard for Julie to have explained why it seemed important to her that every vestige of Bill Conroy’s visit should be destroyed, except that someone might see the torn flowers and might talk. If Rosetta hovered in the back of her mind she didn’t consciously name her. The real reason went much deeper. Mouse Tilden, Mouse Westing now, was one of the best and most patient and enduring people that Julie had ever known. She had borne Sarah like an angel fur uncounted years, not only without complaint or reviling, but with courage and fortitude and even, which was much more difficult, with affection. A new Mouse had been revealed that day, a Mouse with something fierce and mute and almost savage in her. The revelation had been a shock. Julie wanted to bury the evidence of Mouse’s attack of nerves. She wanted to wipe the slate clean and forget that the disturbing little incident had ever occurred.
The room, Sarah’s room, was dim. It was dusk out. Rain fell steadily beyond the single window and objects loomed vaguely in reflected light from the hall—the old sofa on which Sarah used to lie, a cashmere shawl thrown over her, the desk at which she had sat, her tiny feet on a footstool. She had been inordinately proud of her feet. The very air seemed stale and impregnated with the odor of Sarah herself, an odor compounded of the peppermint drops she used to suck, camphor, heliotrope and age—a scent thrown off by the failing body (she had always been delicate) that had resisted death so fiercely.
Rain drummed at the dark panes, behind their stiff lace curtains, pattered unevenly on the flagstones in the court below. The flower petals littered the carpet in front of the Baltimore heater whitely. The satin ribbon that tied the festive little box trailed across the blotter on the desk. Julie stared. The box was no longer there.
She looked for it, casually at first, and then with an increasing sense of urgency. It wasn’t anywhere in the study. At the end of her brief and futile search she stood still in the middle of the floor, coldness striking hard between her shoulder blades. The removal of so innocuous an object couldn’t and shouldn’t have meant anything to Julie then. But it did. Shakily and a little blindly, afraid but not knowing what it was she feared, she turned and fled out of the room in the direction of lights and people. She slammed the door behind her as she went. It made a loud noise.
Chapter Two
A STRANGE CROP OF FUNERALS
When Julie got to the Biltmore at half-past six that evening Brian was waiting for her. She had never been so glad to see him before. He would have been at Mouse’s wedding, only that he had to fly to Washington and his plane back to New York wasn’t due until five forty-five. He had called her from the airport before leaving. She had been afraid he would be late on account of the weather, but he wasn’t. He was standing near the head of the main staircase when she crossed the pavement where the rain was freezing as it fell, and pushed her way through the revolving doors.
The very sight of him was warming. Tall and loosely built, his lean, tanned face bore the intangible marks of intellect and humor. The introspective quality of his gray-green eyes set widely under a thoughtful forehead was balanced by the decision of his lightly squared jaw and his firm-lipped mouth.
More than one pair of eyes turned interestedly on the meeting of the tall man with a briefcase under his arm and the slender dark girl in furs, her small vivid face glowing beneath a tiny silver fox tricorn.
“Hello, honey,” Brian said, taking her arm. “Well, how did it go off?”
When he smiled at her like that, it made Julie feel safe and happy. She needed to feel safe; she had been more badly shaken than she had realized. “Wait,” she said rather breathlessly, “wait until I tell you.”
Ensconced in a niche in the lounge strewn with little tables and sofas and chairs and low lamps, with birds in cages swinging between the archways and filling the air with their soft soprano twittering, a vermouth in front of her and Brian sipping a Martini, Julie did tell him. Brian laughed at her—at first, anyhow.
“Bill Conroy went to the house, saw Mouse, gave her flowers and Mouse was upset—so what?”
“The little box that had the flowers in it was gone, darling. Why should anyone take it?”
“A servant—”
Julie shook her head. “I asked. Besides, if one of the caterer’s men or Mrs. Racker removed the box, why leave the flowers messing up the floor?”
“Was there anything in the box besides flowers?”
“Nothing that we could see, except the torn card.”
“Did you ask Frances about it?”
Julie said she hadn’t had a chance as Frances had had to go on to a cocktail party.
Brian said, “Well, if you’d like my opinion I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
Julie tried to tell herself that he was right, and presently they forgot about Mouse and Joe Westing and began to talk about the most engrossing topic in the world, themselves.
Brian was married, but he and his wife had been separated for years. Julie knew nothing concerning the first Mrs. Moore, except that he had been unhappy with her and that she had left home. He had never bothered about getting a divorce until he and Julie met, when he had started. proceedings in Connecticut, on the grounds of desertion. As soon as the decree was granted they were going to be married, quietly and without fanfare. He had a house in New York, a tiny house in a backwater off Morton Street that had belonged to his father, but he spent most of his time at his place at Hoydens Hill near that of Frances and Sam Ashe, so there had been no difficulty about establishing residence. Julie had a cottage on the Hill too. She had taken it the previous summer and had kept it on because she loved the place. Free-lance fashion illustration plus a small income let her live anywhere she wanted to. Brian’s divorce would become final in nine days, and on the morning of the tenth day they were going to be married.
Until his departure for Washington they had kept the news strictly to themselves. It was Brian’s idea. He had said, “It’s nobody’s business but our own, sweet—let’s not tell anyone until it’s an accomplished fact. You know what people are. They’d be all over us, and we’ve both got work to do.” Julie hadn’t minded. In a way it had been rather fun. She had let the cat out of the bag inadvertently to Frances that morning. She told Brian about it and he said resignedly, “Well, I suppose they’d have to know soon, anyhow.”
If Julie hadn’t been
