said to Jane as if Cecily weren't present.
“You planned this?' Jane asked.
Stunning thought.
“Certainly. All the years that we were collecting, we were having things sent back to storage. Then, when my husband retired, we moved back here and started setting things out. I can't tell you the pleasureit was to meet old memories. It's a shame you haven't done the same,' she added, this time speaking directly to Cecily.
“How do you know I haven't?' Cecily asked.
“You're not the type. You girls with the handsome diplomat husbands never appreciate your opportunities. Here! Don't touch that!'
“I wasn't touching anything,' Ruth Rogers snapped back.
Jane hadn't even noticed she was there. Ruth and her sister, Naomi Smith, both in patterned dresses, had blended in. They were looking at a creche made entirely of varnished nuts. As Jane looked around, she discovered that Grady Wells was present as well, nestled helplessly among the knickknacks on a small tapestry love seat. He had the look of a man who'd just been told his wife was carrying quintuplets.
Jane went to sit next to him. 'Are you all right?' she asked.
“Huh? Oh, yes. Amazing, isn't it? I don't think I've ever come across anyone who had absolutely
“No, but I saw a wicker Madonna and child and a three-dimensional needlepoint replica of one of Ludwig's Bavarian castles.”
He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. 'That room's got a huge hunting tapestry in four hundred and seven shades of brown. It actually has a museum tag that says so. It makes you feel like you've just fallen down a well and broken your leg. Geez! What a place.”
They both looked up as Missy came into the room. She stumbled to a stop, gazing about in horror. Grady's laugh was a happy snort. Missy caught Jane's glance and came over to whisper, 'Is this deliberate or has there been a terrible accident with a moving van? How do you move around in all this . . . stuff!”
Mrs. Pryce summoned Missy to pay her respects before Jane could answer. 'I'm surprised that everybody's coming to this,' Jane said to Grady. 'I wouldn't be here except that Shelley told me I had to, and she could be a formidable enemy.'
“I was afraid not to come, for fear of what she'd say about me behind my back,' Grady replied.
“What about Mr. Neufield? Why would he come?'
“Is he here? Oh, yes. I see. Cowering behind the piano. I don't know. I guess just because he's so law- abiding. If he's told he has to do something, he does it. Army training in following orders, I imagine. Will Desiree show up, do you think?'
“I hope so. I want to see her reaction.”
They didn't have to wait long. Desiree Loftus came to a dead stop just inside the doorway. She took a quick inventory of her surroundings and started laughing. 'Dear God in Heaven! Has a carnival supply warehouse blown up and all the debris landed here?”
Everyone except Mrs. Pryce laughed. 'What? What was that you said?' Pryce demanded.
“My dear old thing,' Desiree said, coming forward and shouting. 'This is the most divinely gruesome accumulation I've ever seen. How
“You don't make sense!' Pryce said. 'Divine? Gruesome? Say what you mean or don't say anything. And don't think I'm serving any drinks here. You'll have to get your devil's brew somewhere else. This is a good Christian home.'
“Devil's brew?' Grady muttered to Jane as he nudged her gently.
Jane went into a fit of giggles that threatened to become full-blown hysteria.
“Dinner is ready,' the elderly maid said from the doorway to the room Grady had described as the bottom of a well. Everyone picked their way through the knickknacks toward that direction, expecting to find the food they'd brought on the table, but it wasn't. Mrs. Pryce's dining table was a long, narrow trestle type that looked as if it had been looted from a dilapidated Spanish castle. There was barely room to set ten place settings, with no space left for serving dishes. They all milled around a bit, not sure if they were to sit and be served or whether they ought to organize a search party to locate the food.
“Take your plates out to the kitchen and serve yourselves,' Pryce brayed. She pointed her cane in that direction, nearly stabbing Shelley in the shoulder. Shelley whirled on her and delivered one of her Looks, which normally cowed anyone unfortunate enough to rate one. But Mrs. Pryce was as selectively blind as she was selectively deaf. She appeared not to notice Shelley's glare.
“I'm losing my gift,' Shelley said, turning to Jane with a stricken expression.
“No, you're not. She's just that one in a million who's immune,' Jane comforted her.
The kitchen looked as if it had been pretty modern half a century before. But since then, nothing had been done except to put so many layers of paint on the cabinets that they looked rounded at the edges. Spiffy white tile counters had turned grayish yellow with age, and the grout was an indescribable color. The ancient linoleum floor had worn down to the bare wood in front of the sink. Filling their own plates turned out to be a difficult undertaking. The maid had set the various bowls and platters out all over the kitchen and the narrow pantry/hallway that led from the kitchen to the dining room. There was much confusion and jostling and backtracking.
“We're like a bunch of lemmings who have lost their compass,' Jane said as her mother backed into her.
“I was thinking of trains in India,' Cecily replied. 'Everybody crowded together in a narrow space, trying to move around and eat at the same time. This is ghastly. I've already put my elbow in somebody's coleslaw.'
“Don't spill anything on yourself,' Shelley said, squeezing in next to Jane and trying to snake her arm through for a ham and egg roll. 'I should have thrown a drop cloth over you to keep you tidy. Go sit down.'
“I am sitting down. It just looks like I'm standing,' Jane said with a laugh. 'It's the press of the crowd that's keeping me at this level.”
Jane finally extricated herself and went to the table, balancing a plate. Someone had apparently mistaken her plate for his or her own in the crush and put a glop of something with rice and coconut on hers that she would never have considered even tasting. Someone must have filled a plate for Mrs. Pryce, probably the maid, because Pryce hadn't been fighting the crowd in the kitchen. She was sitting at the head of the table in regal splendor in a thronelike chair that was the match of the one she'd occupied earlier.
“Where's my tea?' Mrs. Pryce suddenly said to the room at large. Those who were struggling to sit down and finding themselves literally rubbing elbows ignored her. 'I guess I just have to do everything myself,' she said, struggling to her feet and barging toward the pantry hallway.
“Funny, I had the impression she did
“Is there salt on the table?' Desiree asked. There was a general shifting as everyone looked for it. 'Oh, there. Bob, next to you.' Everybody had to shift their elbows around to pass a china salt shaker in the shape of a thatched cottage.
“Sorry, Grady,' Missy said as she jostled his arm, causing him to drop his spoon.
“What
Ruth kept looking back over her shoulder at the multitudinously brown tapestry as if it might suddenly fling itself over her head and smother her. Every time she craned around, she jostled her sister, Naomi, who was picking fretfully at her food.
“Is this part of you or me?' Cecily asked Shelley, slowly adjusting her legs under the table.
“Oh, I didn't get anything to drink either,' Jane said, getting back up. 'Mom? Shelley? You want- anything?'
“I'll get myself some coffee,' Shelley said, joining her. The crowd in the hall had thinned out, and there was no sign of Mrs. Pryce. Jane noticed that there was another door to the kitchen, presumably leading to the gloomy front hall. Mrs. Pryce must have gone that way. The maid was sitting on a high stool by the sink, staring out the window and absently picking at a hangnail.
Jane and Shelley got their drinks and returned to find most of the others crawling around on the floor, trying to help Grady find his contact lens. Mrs. Pryce found it by stepping on it as she came through from the living room. Instead of apologizing to Grady, she gave a general lecture on the wickedness of modern things, pointing out that spectacles were good enough for her generation.
“Okay, that's all I can stand,' Grady said, huffing a little as he got up from the floor. 'Could somebody drive
