“I know. It still isn’t very pleasant for the rest of us.”
“Yes,” Candida said. “The question in my mind is, is it something more than just not very pleasant for one of you?”
“What is it exactly that you mean? They’re upset, Candida. They’re very upset. So am I.”
“It’s odd, you know. With all the nonsense Paul spouts about thinking with your heart and not your head, he’s a very controlled man. All of you are very controlled people, really. Even Caroline.”
“If you expect to get an argument out of me over that, Candida, you’re very wrong. It’s always been my contention that Caroline puts it on more than she really feels it.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. I just meant she isn’t an abandoned, spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment sort of person. She thinks things through.”
“I suppose she does.” Alyssa didn’t suppose anything of the kind. To her, Caroline was not the sort of person who “thought things through.” Caroline was not the sort of person who thought. Caroline was the sort of person who planned. There was a difference.
Candida was biting her lip. “What I’m trying to say,” she said carefully, “is that I don’t think, if I knew one of you had done something, oh, unkind, say, or threatening, I don’t think I’d put it down to a moment of impulsive spite. I think I’d have to assume it was very deliberate.”
It was worse than cold. It was freezing. Alyssa shoved her hands into her coat pockets. She had her best cashmere-lined gloves on, but they didn’t help.
“Is there a point to all this?” she asked Candida. “Has somebody done something? Has Caroline taken to calling you up in the middle of the night and threatening to do you in?”
“Nobody’s called me up in the middle of the night.” Candida seemed to be contemplating some kind of revelation and then deciding not to reveal. Alyssa was intrigued. Candida went on. “I want you to look at something. It arrived in my mailbox just this morning.”
Candida snapped open the button clasp on her bag and brought out a clean white envelope. Alyssa knew from its size and shape and the quality of the paper that it was an engraved, or at least thermoplated, invitation. She took it out of Candida’s hand and opened it up.
“ ‘The pleasure of your company is requested at a reception,’ ” she read. “It’s one of those all-purpose invite cards the jewelry stores make up. For a party for this Friday night. So what? Who’s Hannah Krekorian?”
“Hannah Krekorian,” Candida said judiciously, “is the woman your father took to dinner last Friday night.”
“Is she really?” Now Alyssa was more than intrigued. “She has to be reasonably loaded. I wonder why I’ve never heard of her.”
“I don’t know if she’s loaded or not,” Candida said. “What I want to know is how this invitation ended up in my mailbox.”
“She invited you to a party.”
“I don’t see why. I’ve never met her. And even if she wanted to meet me, which she might, given one thing and another, she wouldn’t invite me to this party. She’s already invited Paul. In fact, unless I’ve gotten very bad at reading this kind of thing at my age, which I don’t think I have, she’s in the way of giving this party in honor of Paul. Not that she would tell Paul that, of course.”
Alyssa handed the invitation back. “I can never get over how good your sources of information are. They’re much better than James’s, and he says he’s channeling one of the oldest souls in the universe.”
“They’re good because they have to be good.” Candida dropped the invitation back into her bag and snapped the bag shut again. “There are only two places this invitation could have come from, you know. One of them is Paul’s study, or wherever he put this invitation when he got it. It was handed to him, I expect. That’s why the envelope was blank when whoever sent it to me wanted to write my address on it.”
“I see,” Alyssa said. “You think one of us sent this to you. Me or James, maybe, but not really. You’re much more likely to suspect Caroline or Paul. I think Paul has more sense than this, you know.”
“Maybe he does.”
“I don’t see why any one of us would want to bother, just to embarrass you. We’d embarrass Paul as well. We’ve all had more than enough embarrassment.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“Where was the other place it could have come from?”
Candida looked at her oddly. “Hannah Krekorian, of course.”