“Tooth and nail,” Lydia said, chuckling. “He would have preferred to have a free reign on who would be earning the overtime money I've put up for increased patrols. Interestingly enough, he already had every man on both sides of his family listed for duty. I had to straighten him out on that, but now I think well actually get some good men working. If you can imagine, he even had his ninety-eight-year-old grandfather listed for six hours overtime duty a night!”
“Sounds like you need a more reliable constable,” Katherine said, grinning.
“Cartier is fine,” Lydia said. “He is not particularly clever. But he can handle the drunks and the fist-fights, and he can organize a strawberry festival in the square with more aplomb than anyone I can imagine. In this case, he saw a chance to benefit by the community's need, but he was properly embarrassed and penitent when I helped him to see the light.” She chuckled again, having obviously enjoyed the morning.
They finished lunch and retired to the library where Lydia looked over the day's mail she had picked up while in town. She dictated two personal notes and signed three blank checks which Katherine was to fill out and mail in payment of bills received. While Katherine was working, Lydia read from a novel she had bought a week ago and was just now getting around to. Afterwards, they talked, mostly about books, until Lydia went upstairs for a pre-dinner nap.
“Dinner will be earlier tonight, at six-thirty,” she said before she left. “Some of Alex's friends are due for cocktails and conversation in the recreation room at eight. Alex asked me to invite you in his behalf.”
“I'm afraid I'd be out of place—”
“Nonsense,” Lydia said. “I am not going, because I would certainly be out of place in a roomful of energetic young people. But I know Alex would be hurt if you did not attend.”
“All right,” she said.
“Don't be glum about it,” Lydia said. “They're a likeable bunch and easy to get to know. It won't take you long to break the ice.”
Katherine said, “Are these the friends who have keys to Owlsden?”
“Why do you ask?” Lydia inquired, a puzzled frown on her face.
Katherine realized that her approach had not been nearly so subtle as she would have liked — had not been subtle at all, in fact. She said, in an effort to qualify her curiosity, “I just wondered if these were Alex's very best friends…”
Lydia accepted that as sufficient explanation. “Oh, I'd say most of these kids have keys,” she said. “But I never thought that they might regard them as status symbols, signs of favor or what-have-you. Perhaps Alex will have to hand out a larger number of keys in order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. It's silly that such a thing could be considered a sign of special favor instead of a convenience, but I can see that some people might be upset at remaining — unkeyed.”
After Lydia had gone upstairs to take her nap, and after Katherine had finished her secretarial chores— addressing envelopes for the letters she had written, filling out checks and balancing the figures in the household accounts ledger — she went looking for Yuri and discovered that he was in town on business. She was irritated at not being able to tell him about the footprints and about her suspicions that unwanted persons had entered the house during the night, then decided that suppertime would be soon enough.
The information was not that urgent, after all.
“—has no less than five and no more than twenty years to do something about the population problem.”
“Nothing will be done.”
“I agree. Nothing will be done until it's too late for—”
“You're expecting too much of the world leaders when you suppose they're even going to let us all survive long enough to face a desperate population problem. I tell you that—”
Katherine sat in a large, brown crushed velvet easy chair near the fireplace in the recreation room, listening to Alex's friends as they argued about a handful of the world's problems as if they actually had some special sort of answers for them. But that was the bad part of it: they had no answers. All they had was a deep-seated pessimism, always expecting the worst, making gloomy predictions of doom. She did not like them, chiefly for this reason.
Besides Alex and herself, there were four other men and two women in the cozy room, some holding glasses of wine, some eating the hors d'oeuvres that Patricia had placed out for them, some just sunken into the heavily-padded furniture, as if they would never rise up again. Nearest Katherine, on a two-seat divan, were Nancy and Alton Harle, a young married couple who were both dark and quiet except for occasional comments about as pessimistic as anything one could imagine. They had whispered conversations together, smiled a lot, but still managed to come off like ravens bearing news of death. On the divan right after them were Leo Franks and his girl friend, Lena Mathews. He was tall and slim, she short and blonde and quite pretty. They were the most talkative of the lot and held the strongest political opinions, some of which Katherine did not even understand — and didn't think she wanted to. The last two guests were Bill Prosser and John Kline, both of whom had been in Alex's high school graduating class. The group was volatile, quick to react to one another, almost rowdy. She supposed that they had made a sincere effort to include her in everything they talked about, but she did not feel a part of them at all. She felt like a stranger. Whenever she spoke up, it was to make an optimistic observation to counter their unrelieved scorn for the condition and future of the world. Though they listened politely and sometimes even picked up on one of her suggestions and elaborated on it, she had the distinct impression they were only humoring her — that their own bleak outlook on life had not been touched at all by her arguments.
During a lull in the conversation when wine glasses were being re-filled, Lena Mathews asked, “You graduated from Lydia's old school?”
For some reason, it seemed to Katherine that the Mathews girl made her alma mater sound antiquated and out of date. Still, being polite, she smiled and said, “Yes, but not the same graduating class.”
Everyone laughed appreciatively.
“What was your major?” Bill Prosser asked.
“Literature.”
“Liberal arts?”
“Yes.”
Patricia brought in a fresh tray of hors d'oeuvres, bringing with her another conversational lull.
As she left, Nancy asked, “What sort of things do you like to read?”
“Mysteries, love stories, anything,” Katherine said.
“I'm partial to ghost stories, novels about the supernatural,” Nancy said.
“I like those too.”
Katherine sipped her wine. Except for Nancy and her, everyone was silent and still, as if waiting for something. She had the distinct impression that the conversation was building to a pre-planned point.
Nancy said, “Devils and demons, witches and hideous things that crawl around in the night. All of that junk gets to me, for some reason — especially since these crazy Satanists have been operating around Roxburgh.”
Lena Mathews came in now, as if picking up her lines in a carefully rehearsed play. Or was that just Katherine's imagination. “I guess you've heard all about that ugly stuff.”
“A good bit of it, yes,” Katherine said.
“What do you think of it?”
“Excuse me?”
Lena said, “Do you think they really do summon up the devil?” She had come forward in her seat a little, holding her glass of wine in both hands, her eyes curiously alight.
“Impossible,” Katherine said.
“Still,” Lena said, settling back again, “if you believe in the Christian God, like we do, don't you also have to admit the existence of a Devil?”
“Perhaps,” Katherine said. “But though I'm Christian, I can't summon God when I want to. I doubt that the Satanists would have any more luck in summoning their master.”