“Even the late Mr. Spottiswood allowed as how that quilt wasn’t too bad,” Alice said as she carefully tucked a few sprigs of evergreen at either end of the pole, being careful not to let them touch the fabric. “I confess, I feel sorry for the poor man, but I won’t miss him.”
“Sorry for him?”
“You have to be pretty unhappy to be that mean, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Well, anyway,” she said. “Things will be a bit more pleasant around here with him gone, won’t they?”
“Yes, we might actually see a bit of Christmas cheer around here.”
“True,” she said. “I think Clay’s idea of Christmas decorating was to put a bit of mistletoe in the doorway so he could bother all the pretty ladies. But actually by around here I meant here in Caerphilly. The design world’s a small town, you know. Having Clay barge in has shaken things up a bit. And not in a good way.”
“Who was the most hurt by his arrival?” I asked.
“Sarah and Martha,” Alice said, with surprising promptness. “Your mother and Eustace have a much more traditional sensibility. So do Linda and Violet, though they’re not in the same league. Violet’s barely making a living, and poor Linda’s lucky her late husband left her comfortably off.”
Linda, I remembered, was Our Lady of Chintz’s real name.
“And he didn’t much hurt Vicky and me, either. If you want a quilting room, or a room designed with plenty of quilts, we’re the best. But we don’t do anything outside of our niche. And I suppose our vampire girl has her own niche. Not a big call for decorating with bats and coffins, is there? I understand she makes the better part of her income selling Goth crafts on Etsy.”
I nodded as if I’d already known this.
“But Sarah and Martha are both working in similar areas,” she said. “More modern styles. A clean, open minimalist look. Strong colors. I think when he arrived here a few years ago, he took quite a bite out of both their businesses,” she went on. “They’ve been bouncing back—people are starting to see Clay for the one-trick pony he is. Oh, it’s quite a handsome pony, but it’s always the same, and frankly, a little too much Clay and too little client. He’s not a bad designer if you like what he likes, but if you don’t, too bad—that’s what you get anyway.”
“Mrs. Graham?” Sammy appeared at the head of the stairway that led down to the garage. “The chief would like to see you now.”
Chapter 9
“I’m ready,” Alice said. “Dying to get it over with so I can pump Meg for all the details she won’t tell me!”
Bless her for that—it might reduce the chief’s annoyance, if he heard I’d been talking to a witness he hadn’t yet interviewed.
I decided it might be wiser for me to stick to talking to people who’d already been debriefed. So I followed them down the stairs and through the kitchen, intending to see what Mother and Eustace were up to.
They were standing together in the archway that separated Eustace’s breakfast nook from Mother’s great room. As I watched, they looked into the great room. Then the breakfast nook. Then the great room again.
“No,” he said. “You’re right.”
“Too abrupt,” Mother said.
“I could change the paint color?”
“No, it’s not that,” Mother said. “Maybe if we mass a few poinsettias on either side of the archway.”
They studied the archway some more.
“No,” they said simultaneously.
I’d seen this before. They could keep up these conferences for longer that I’d ever imagined possible. Sometimes the conference erupted into painting and furniture moving, and anyone foolish enough to be nearby would get drafted into the action and could kiss the rest of her day good-bye.
“Oh, hello, Meg,” Eustace said, spotting me. “What do you think of—”
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ve got to check on—on Linda.”
I’d almost called her Our Lady of Chintz in front of someone other than Mother. I needed to be careful. Linda. Linda. Linda.
I went back through the kitchen and into the dining room.
Linda was standing in her room, looking frazzled. She was batting uselessly at the branches of spruce that protruded into her room as if she’d caught them trying to sneak farther in and dump needles on her fabric. One of them had snagged her shapeless brown woolen tunic.
“This tree is impossible,” she said, turning to me. “The branches take up half the room.”
Half was an exaggeration, but the branches did stick out rather far.