The lace was certainly dark, and as Karen inspected it she knew her first assessment had been correct. The lace was beyond repair; the staining substance had had a corrosive effect, leaving great rents in the delicate web. Into Karen's mind popped a vivid, most unwelcome picture of Mrs. Grossmuller kneeling by her husband's body, the flounce of her wedding dress trailing in a pool of his blood.
She really must get her imagination under control. It would be an effective scenario for a horror film-the abused wife putting on the dress she had worn as an unwilling bride before wreaking her vengeance on her torturer. But Mrs. Grossmuller hadn't stabbed Henry, she had poisoned him.
Karen let out a gasp of laughter. One day she might be able to tell the Mrs. Grossmuller story and find it genuinely funny. But at best it would always be black humor, for there was something sad and twisted behind the old woman's insistence-guilt or fear or frustrated anger. Like the anger she herself had felt, and was only now beginning to acknowledge?
Resolutely Karen turned her mind back to business. The lace she had removed from the petticoat was just right. It was the same width, and there was so much of it that she could remove the damaged sections and still have enough left to edge the dress.
She took the lace into the bathroom and dunked it in warm water, to soak overnight. Now all she needed to restore the dress were pearls (hers wouldn't be genuine, but the originals hadn't been either) and a silk flower to replace the limp brown specimen on the hipline. She cut off a pearl bead to serve as a sample and began a list of needed materials on a page at the back of the book. As she had already discovered from her earlier attempts at mending the old garments, ordinary cotton and polyester sewing thread was often too coarse. Shops specializing in fine fabrics carried silk thread. She ought to lay in a supply, in a variety of colors, and get needles to match. Buttons- old ones, if possible. They wouldn't be easy to find, but there must be sources for such things.
She kept glancing at the clock. At twelve-thirty she decided Cheryl wouldn't call so late. At any rate, she was now tired enough to sleep soundly. As she had hoped, the need to concentrate on a specific task had quieted her nerves.
There was nothing wrong with Alexander's nerves, but unfortunately his bladder was not as good. He wanted to go out and he would not take no for an answer. When he started to lift his leg against the bed flounce, Karen gave in. There were too many things Alexander could ruin if he chose, and unless he got his own way, he probably would choose.
She had to disassemble the tottering structure of pans in order to open the door. Alexander shot out like an arrow from a bow. The night air was still and hot, with trails of ground mist curdling among the shrubbery. A furious rattle of foliage and a feline squawl explained the dog's haste; the cat paused on top of the storage shed to address a rude remark to its pursuer. Karen saw its eyes glow eerily red. A Siamese cat. Mr. DeVoto always had Siamese.
Alexander returned the cat's compliments in his own tongue. Not until the Siamese left, melting into the darkness with only a rustle of leaves to prove it material, did Alexander go about his business. He took his own sweet time about it, probably to punish Karen for being so reluctant to let him out, and she swore at him under her breath as she shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. There was no sense in yelling at him and disturbing the neighbors; and he wouldn't pay attention anyway. She did not want to go out after him. The mist was thickening, and although there was not a breath of air stirring, the pale trails of fog seemed to sway and shift, with a motion of their own.
Alexander finally gave up-she assumed he had been backtracking the cat-and came in. Karen double-checked the locks again, and rebuilt the tower of pots. Alexander followed her from room to room whuffling irritably. He knew he was entitled to a dog biscuit but Karen held off giving it to him until after he had gone upstairs with her.
In the dream that quickly seized her she was picking her way across a landscape covered with tumbled ruins, cyclopean columns, and fallen blocks of stone. The stones were carved with reliefs; but though she examined them with an absurd and nightmarish intensity, she could not make out their meaning. At last, dim in the purple distance, she caught a glimpse of some intact structure towering high above the plain. She ran toward it. A tottering column crumpled and collapsed; the fragments struck the earth, not with a solid thud, but ringing like metal.
The dog's barking shot her out of sleep, every muscle knotted. Alexander was at the window. The scraping of his claws on the glass made her skin crawl.
Karen fumbled for the lamp. It seemed to take forever to find the switch. The dog was getting frantic. He ran to the door, clawed at it, trotted back to the window.
The cat, Karen thought. He must have heard the cat. Siamese have loud voices. Audible through closed windows, the hum of air-conditioning?
Clinging to the idea of the cat as to a lifeline, she got out of bed and went to the window.
The mist had condensed into a layer of solid fog. The roofs and chimneys of the houses on the street behind the garden were invisible; nearer shapes shone ghostly, soft gray tree trunks pearly with wet, garden chairs gleaming like silver thrones in the glow of the lights by the back door.
Something was sitting in one of the chairs.
It was on the terrace, close enough to the lights so that she should have been able to identify the shape that occupied it-filled it, rather, like a giant featherbed that had been punched and pummeled into a rough imitation of a human form. It might have been the fog that softened its outlines so that they appeared to melt into nothingness.
Alexander was still trying to bark, but he was so short of breath the sound came out in weird little squeaks. It was probably this touch of low comedy that kept Karen on her feet. The sound that came from her taut throat was a rather pathetic echo of Alexander's squeak, but she meant it for laughter, and the hands she raised hardly shook at all. She unfastened the window and threw up the sash.
The thing in the chair rose up and drifted across the yard. It was quite opaque. However, its means of locomotion were as uncanny as its general appearance, for it seemed to float, without haste, threading a path around the rose bushes and the trees until it was swallowed up by the fog.
Alexander ran to the door.
I can't open it, Karen thought.
But neither could she remain in her room without knowing what might be outside the locked door. Alexander sounded like one of his own squeaky toys, but his small size and shortness of breath did not deter him; he wasn't cowering or hiding. How could she, a member of a supposedly superior species, do less?
Karen unlocked the door, but she let Alexander go first. Not until she heard a horrible crash from the kitchen did she realize she had made a mistake. Alexander had flung himself head-long into the pile of assorted hardware, and now she would never know whether some or all of them had already fallen, producing the far-off ringing sound that had entered her dreams and had, perhaps, wakened Alexander from his.
The lights in the hall burned steadily. She took a poker from the set of fireplace tools and went out of the room.
By the time she reached the kitchen Alexander was pushing the pots around with his nose looking for something edible. He had clearly lost interest in going out. The door was locked.
She gave Alexander the treat he deserved and they went upstairs together. The dog was sound asleep within minutes, but Karen sat by the window looking out until the sounds of morning traffic began and sunrise brightened the blanket of fog muffling the garden.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KAREN sat at the dining room table. On it lay an antique petticoat she was shortening and altering for a customer who had been visibly disconcerted when the waistband didn't begin to go around her purportedly twenty-five-inch waist. Since the petticoat was too long anyway, the solution was simple-take off the waistband and shorten the garment from the top-but the execution was not so easy, for the measurements had to be accurate and the fabric of the new waistband had to match the time-softened muslin of the original.