Just after dawn, on the back porch, Step-and-a-Half found a trove. Pots, pans, a whole set of kitchenware, a very good carving knife. Step-and-a-Half gathered up her finds and brought them back to the little room behind her shop that she used for sorting her pickings. She scoured the knife clean and placed it among her own cooking implements. Then she went through the rest of the objects, frowning with critical attention and testing the strength of handles and weighing the heaviness of the pots in her hands. After she had decided what to do with all she’d found, Step-and-a-Half treated herself to a breakfast of chicken wings, a pile of hardtack, and a wrinkled carrot. As she chewed, she assessed the bolts of fabric that surrounded her — the calicos and broadcloth, the light and heavy woolens. She wanted to give a present to a person she thought deserved it.
Once she’d finished her meal, Step-and-a-Half pulled forth a length of heavy cotton printed with stripes, but then shook her head and replaced it. She turned aside from the flowered prints altogether after a few moments of thoughtful attention. No, they weren’t at all right. The wools were better, warmer, for skirts. The linen would do for a blouse. That way the top could easily be washed, and the linens wore very well, she was told. She tested a heavy butter-colored fabric with the tips of her fingers, and then smiled at the texture of a very pale blue. This blue was the color of the palest sky on a cloudless November day, a watered blue just a shadow brighter than gray. And the subtle plaid in the brown woolen, just the slightest hint of gold and yellow in the blue and green weaving, would be perfect for Mazarine’s hair. She nodded, putting the fabrics on the broad table fitted with a yardstick tacked tightly to the near edge.
The Christmas sun came bitter through the window, just a ray or two played across the frozen fronds of ice. The little potbellied stove cast out a steady heat from the tiny room just in back where Step-and-a-Half did her account books and wrote out new orders. For a collector of scraps and town remnants and discards, Step-and-a-Half had extremely fastidious personal habits. She was, in fact, the influence on Roy that had caused him to clean his jail cell the year before and effected such a surprising alteration in his standards. Around Step-and-a-Half, Roy had to blow his nose on a real handkerchief, wipe his lips on a real napkin, and excuse himself when he made rude noises. Fortunately, she herself was a snorer and used to vast sounds occurring in her sleep — the windows rattled in the store when they slept there, he on the floor and she in the little cot bed, but they dreamed in black unawareness.
Step-and-a-Half lowered her eagle’s face to glare at the fine expanse of the cloth now. She adjusted the angle of the fabric just so, then hefted an extremely sharp pair of shears with painted black handles and made the first cut, which she followed with a steady concentration until she’d lopped off the perfect length. She folded the soft plaid wool, then measured and cut the two pastel linens. Last, in a kind of reckless gesture, she swore hard and swiped down, from a side shelf that featured her most luxurious materials, a figured midnight blue satin that she herself found irresistible. Every woman who spent any time at all in the shop, poring thoughtfully over fabrics, stopped before this fabulous satin and fantasized, she could see, herself in a gown made out of it. An evening gown — though where could it be worn, here, in this town? A nightgown, then. Something so warm and cool at once, so understated, so exquisite that fingers couldn’t help extending and stroking and figuring and then, with a regretful sigh, rejecting.
Step-and-a-Half cut a dress length off quickly, before she could argue herself out of it. She laid it on the counter along with some colored threads, pursed her lips, set examples of buttons against the plaid and the linens, and added those along with the rest in a little bag. Lastly, she put some ribbons in. Hair ribbons for a girl. She wrapped the package up in plain brown kraft paper and thin string, then bundled on her coat. Pulled on a man’s fur-lined leather hat, mitts, slipped her feet into rough boots, and banged out the door with the package underneath one arm. She was muttering, irritated with herself for thinking of this much too late. If she’d only thought of it yesterday, she could have dropped it off in the cover and comfort of her favorite time of the night.
DECEMBER’S FUGITIVE thaw turned into implacable cold; the wind brought on a headache as a person walked outside. In her room, far from the stove, Delphine slept under every quilt in the house and when she got out of bed she immediately put on a set of wool long johns underneath her skirt. She wore her coat in the house. Now, she was standing near the stove, bundled up, peeling potatoes for a potato pie. Thinking of browning a lump of uncased sausage she’d brought home from the shop. Maybe an onion, if they weren’t all sprouted. Suddenly the door banged open and then shut on an icy blast of air. Roy rolled into the house shedding his padded woolen coat and unwrapping two knitted scarves from his head.
“Murder and mayhem,” Roy announced in an aghast voice. “Terrible doings. Clarisse under suspicion!” He nodded to Delphine, as though, since she was Clarisse’s friend, she should know all the details. Then he continued to speak in newspaper headlines. “Whole town in shock. Sheriff found stabbed!”
Roy sat down at the kitchen table, his mouth agape. He shook his head in bewildered protest. “Hock,” he stated, as though trying to persuade himself. Then wonderingly, he said again, “Hock. Of all people!”
Delphine held up the peeler, riveted in shock. She stared at her father as though he’d suddenly spoken fluent French or grown a hoof.
“Of course, upon reflection,” Roy said, “when we say ‘of all people,’ so often the person is the logical person to become a victim after all. He was the sheriff. He was in love with Clarisse Strub. He was found with his pants down around his ankles, obviously planning to violate more than the privacy of her bedroom.”
Delphine waved the peeler in distress, still unable to speak.
“Hock.” Roy returned to his shocked attempt at self-persuasion. “Hock. Yes, Hock. Died in the Strub girl’s boudoir. They’re saying that the necessities of her profession drove her around the bend.” Roy’s face turned grim. “I concur, poor duck. Her uncle shouldn’t ever have let her take on clients. Sawing up the dead. Replacing their blood with vinegar! And she’s just a sweet young thing. You ever hear of a girl undertaker?” Roy’s hands twisted together, clasped as though in prayer. He bit his knuckle, and softly marveled. “A slip of a thing, yet she gutted him neat as a pig.”
“She didn’t use vinegar, and she was tough as an old rooster,” Delphine muttered, turning from her father, wildly revising the narrative she’d concocted after leaving Clarisse’s house on Christmas morning.
Roy glanced up at his daughter, then shook his head as if she had it all wrong. “She was a little duck,” he insisted, “and Hock entered the sanctity of her nest. I never saw it coming, never took it all that serious. Oh, Hock wrote songs for her that he’d even try on the rest of us, but it was all a romantic fairy tale. And then, under the pretext of an investigation he conducted ‘a search,’ had a warrant, everything. Now they think she”—Roy nicked his head in the direction of the pantry, the boarded-over cellar door—“killed them, too.”