second story, where it became Grandy s exquisite
and rather famous bathroom. His kitchen—another famous room—was directly at the back of the house. His study was not large—a one-story piece of the house tucked in between the kitchen and the living room. The dining room lay north.
He ran the entire establishment without servants. In the kitchen, he would preside over a collection of quaint copper pots, garlands of gourds, strings of onions, mixed in among all the latest gadgets in chromium and glass. He kept there a chefs hat which he wore
seriously. Meals in his house were rituals in which the preparation of the food was just as important as the eating of it. He would bustle about and illuminate the proceedings with lectures in his fascinating voice. His lore, his stock of old wives' tales, was inexhaustible.
Mathilda came down in the green dress, and there he was in his cap, doing delicate last-minute things to the sauce. Oliver lounged against the wall. Francis was dusting glasses with a towel. Jane was setting the table.
Althea, on a high stool, was timing the spaghetti with Grandy's big round silver kitchen watch. She was still in her yellow gown—some soft silk with a wide skirt. She wore a lot of yellow. It was odd and striking on her. It gave a gold-and-silver effect and was arresting when black velvet would have been obvious.
Grandy came to embrace Mathilda. The big spoon waved back of her shoulder. He smelled of talcum and a little garlic. He beamed tenderly.
'Grandy,' she murmured, close to his ear, 'I need to talk to you. I have things to tell you.' She knew it wasn't a good time, not with the sauce at the stage it was.
'I know,' he crooned in her ear, 'I know, dear, I know.' Mathilda felt sure then that he did know. It didn't occur to her that he had been told, but just that he knew somehow. 'After dinner,' he murmured. 'Let us be alone, eh?'
She was convinced that they must be alone while she told him. 'Yes,' she said eagerly, 'alone.'
He looked into her eyes. How anxious he was, how tender, how wise! Yes, he would know, of course. He sensed it already. She was quite safe. There was no hurry.
They trooped after Grandy, who carried the deep wooden bowl of spaghetti as if he held it on a cushion to show the king. But Grandy was the king too. There was candlelight. Mathilda at his left, then Oliver. Althea at the foot. Then Francis. Then Jane. Happy family. Mathilda felt gay. No hurry; and, meanwhile, it was all so terribly amusing.
There was Oliver, on her left. A mild man, married to dynamite, and he didn't know what to do, she could tell. He was a mild man, a little man, in spite of his size, a drifting kind of creature, willing to be available and kind. But he didn't know what to do about the
flagrant behavior of his bride. He fluctuated between stern anger and the determination to put his foot down, and another mood, a conviction of weakness and the tired thought that it didn't really matter.
But Althea, in all her glamour, was down at the foot, being a young matron with such amusing reluctance. And Francis, beside her, was looking very gloomy, very much subdued. Mathilda was glad to see it. She felt it was only just that he should have to sit
at the table with the ax hanging over his head.
At the same time, she felt a surge of violent curiosity about him. What was the man up to, this Francis Howard? What kind of man? Well-bred, you could tell at table. Really quite attractive, if you liked that dark type, that lean kind of face. 'Fortune hunter.' She
remembered her formula. She looked at his clothes. They were in expensive good taste. But if money wasn't his motive, what could it be?
She thought; angrily, as she'd been taught to,
Francis asked Jane for the bread. The little blond girl looked as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Tyl's green eyes took stock of her.
Nobody had even mentioned Rosaleen. Rosaleen was gone, although she had sat on Grandy's right hand in her day.
But they began to ask Mathilda questions, and she left off her puzzling to tell the tidbits she'd saved for Grandy. About Mrs. Stevens' drinking spells. About Mr. Boyleston and his one eye at the bridge table. All at once it seemed funny and rather gay. Besides, it burned Althea up.
Down at his end, Grandy listened. And his black eyes were restless and shrewd. Once he said, 'Poor Tyl' in the middle of the laughter and watched her face sadden obediently.
Francis saw it too. He thought,
unhappy. He wished the dinner were over. He wished he didn't have to sit here, looking soulful, when what he would really like to do was to smash in that beaming hypocrite's beaming face and snatch Mathilda and shake some sense into her, and then take Jane and get out of here. Damn such a game!
Althea's little foot was in his way under the table. He brought his own foot to rest, touching hers, and let it stay. Damn such a game, but if you have to play it, play it!
When Mathilda had done, Grandy went to work and changed the mood. He brought sea mist into the room, gray, fast, lonely danger, salty death. He made them remember the coral bones of those lost at sea. He told one of his favorite ghost stories.
Tyl began to look less vivid. She sobered and shrank. The wild mood, the free feeling ebbed away. After all, she was only poor Tyl, plain little Tyl, with all that money, who could never trust anyone very much. She'd have made a lovely ghost, a sad little green-eyed ghost with a broken heart and seaweed in her lank brown hair. She might have come to haunt them. She shivered a little. She saw Francis looking at her with scorn.
Scorn! From that quarter! She straightened her back. She said adoringly, 'Oh, Grandy, it's so good to hear you talk!'
Francis trod on Althea's toe. 'In the guest house. After dinner. Will you?” Her silver eyes were both surprised and delighted.
'I think they just stepped out, Mr. Keane ,' said Jane. Jane was the shy little outsider all the while, the one who made the obvious remarks and did the right thing.
Grandy looked at Mathilda, took the dish towel out of her motionless hands.
'Fine thing,' Oliver said. He was trying to look very black. He seized on the state of Althea's health. 'She had that cold. She oughtn't to be out.'
Grandy said, 'Poor Francis,' gently, watching Mathilda.
She was wildly puzzled. Why was Grandy watching her so? What did it mean if Francis and Althea went out to the garden? Why 'poor Francis'? Why Althea, anyway? She had a nightmarish feeling that the others knew what she did not know. She rejected it fiercely. Not so. It was she who knew and they who had been deceived. And the quicker she made it plain the better.
Grandy said, 'Shall we—'
She thought he meant that they would talk now. “Yes, now,' she said. But the doorbell rang.
'There now, answer the doorbell, Oliver. Please, dear boy. Who can it be?'
They went into the long room. Grandy took his chair by the fire. Tyl took her low chair at his feet. Jane, who had followed them, went a little aside, picked up a bit of knitting and put herself meekly into the corner of a sofa. It was just as if Grandy had composed the picture, directed the scene. Even the firelight flickered with just the proper effect. Luther Grandison at home. Curtain going up.
Oliver came in from the hall. 'Its Tom Gahagen.'
Gahagen was the chief of the detective bureau, a small, lean, nervous man with a tight dutiful mouth, but a friendly face. He listened with an air of waiting, while Grandy enlarged charmingly upon Mathilda's miraculous return from the sea. Then he said,
clearing his throat naively, 'As long as I'm here, Luther, there are a few questions. I thought it would be all right just to drop in and talk it over. Didn't want to make it formal, y'understand?'
Grandy nodded. 'About poor Rosaleen?' Then he appeared struck to the heart by his own forgetfulness. He took Mathilda's hand. 'My dear child, forgive me. You don't know—'
'Francis told me,' Mathilda said.
'That's your husband?'
Mathilda's eyes widened. She heard Grandy say smoothly, 'Yes, yes, her husband. . . . What did Francis tell you, duck?'
'Just that she—' Mathilda couldn't continue. She was shocked because Grandy had said Francis was her husband. She'd had it in her head all along that Grandy, somehow, knew better.
Gahagen said, 'Very sad, the whole thing. Sorry to bring it back to mind, but there's a point we've just come across. Funny thing,
