“Yeah, well . . . I was sitting down. I figured that you didn’t want her and her weird boyfriend as houseguests. Anyway, I said she could leave a message for you at the newspaper. You can take it from there. Brrr has plenty of campsites where you can sleep in your car and use the camp facilities, but the thing of it is, I’m afraid she’s gonna make a stink about losing Mount Vernon. She’s a crafty one! Ask anybody. Do you think I should notify the authorities?”
“It wouldn’t hurt!” Qwilleran was beginning to regret he’d commissioned her to research Koko’s antecedents. That little four-legged sleuth had known there was something fishy about her from the beginning! “So, what’s the good news, Gary?”
“Well! The reservations for the Great Storm show are all taken! We’ve got to add more performances! Even though there’s no charge for admission, they’re plunking down ten- and twenty-dollar donations!”
Qwilleran said, “I hope they won’t be disappointed. The script isn’t as sensational as the one for the Big Burning.”
“It’s you they want to see and hear, you chump! And what I heard and saw tonight—terrific! We should add Sunday matinees and some more evening performances in July and August.”
“Well,” he said modestly. Actually, before switching to journalism, Qwilleran had wanted to act on the stage. (He had also wanted to be a pro ballplayer or jazz pianist, but that was another story.) “How does Maxine feel about added performances? I don’t want to make do with substitutes.”
“My wife is suddenly stagestruck! She’s talking about taking the show on the road!”
Qwilleran spent the next morning polishing his column about Agatha Burns, aware that it should sound like a tribute to a hundred-year-old and not an obituary. There was an early deadline for Friday’s
He walked downtown to file his copy and stopped at the florist shop to order centerpieces for the wedding dinner. Claudine greeted him effusively, even though her big blue eyes looked at him with apprehension.
“Do you have any short lilies?”
She paused and glanced around the shop. “I never heard of short lilies. They grow on long stems—as a rule, that is. But I could call our supplier in Chicago. How soon do you have to have them?”
“They’re for a dinner party Saturday evening, and I’ve been instructed to order two low arrangements of mixed white and yellow lilies, without any stuffing.”
“I suppose we could cut the stems short.”
“Do you have low bowls?”
Two low bowls of imitation cut glass were produced and discussed. Was it necessary to have matching bowls? How many blooms would each contain? Four would be too few and six too many, but five would pose a problem: three yellow and two white, or vice versa? The solution: one bowl with white predominating and the other with yellow predominating, to be delivered to Boulder House for the Qwilleran table.
Showing much relief, Claudine said she would phone Chicago at once.
In the early afternoon, Qwilleran wandered into the classiest shop in town. Modest gold lettering in one corner of the plate-glass window stated: EXBRIDGE & COBB, FINE ANTIQUES.
Qwilleran asked Susan Exbridge, “Do you ever have any miniature porcelain shoes?”
“No, but I know where to find some. Are you starting a collection? There are some serious collectors here and in Lockmaster.”
“I’ve just met one of them, Edythe Carroll. She invited me to tea the other day, and I thought I’d like to send her a shoe.”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Susan said. “Her collection is a very private matter, pursued by her and her husband throughout their married life. She has told me she wants no more, now that he’s gone. The last shoe they found together was a Meissen porcelain while they were vacationing in Germany. Edythe keeps it on her bedside table.”
Qwilleran nodded sympathetically. “I quite understand. There must be a hundred or more in her glass-front cabinet. I must say that miniature shoes strike me as a strange item to collect. What’s the story behind them?”
“Come in the office for a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you what I know.”
Every inch of wall space in the office was covered with shelves—for reference books on antiques. Susan noted his appreciative glance at them. “These books belonged to dear Iris Cobb. I owe so much to her.”
“We all do,” Qwilleran said, as he sipped his coffee. Then—“On the question about the shoes, why were they made in the first place?”
“In Victorian times they held matches, toothpicks, salt, snuff. Some were pincushions. There was a great demand for them in the nineteenth century, and porcelain factories in many European countries were turning out high-heeled shoes, boots, slippers, and oxfords—with all kinds of decorations: flowers, birds, cherubs, and so forth. Collectors make a study of the dates, makers’ marks, glazes, et cetera. Prices can run as high as a thousand.”
