It was adorable. It wasn’t silk, but everyone wore rayon these days. Its heart shaped, fitted bodice was appliquéd with ivory flowers inside the pleated bust. Tiny self-fabric buttons trimmed the front. The waist was pleated, and the bias-cut skirt, lined with blue acetate, fell in the fullest sweep permitted by the War Production Board. Thin spaghetti straps finished the look.
‘My dear,’ Marian said, ‘don’t you think this is a bit revealing about the neck and shoulders for a woman your age?’
‘Where is the dressing room?’ I asked.
The gown fit me like it had been made for me. Back outside in the showroom I admired myself in front of a full-length mirror in the flattering soft light. The dress didn’t even need hemming.
‘I was wrong,’ Marian said. ‘You look lovely. You have kept up your figure nicely.’
It was almost worth losing my job to be able to wear this gown. To a ball at the Mayflower, no less! If only I was going with Joe, and not Orazio Rossi.
‘Can you see without your glasses?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘That’s too bad,’ she said. At least she didn’t suggest that I remove them and stumble about blindly for the sake of beauty.
Best of all, I could accessorize this dress with black. I owned respectable black evening slippers, and I knew I could borrow gloves, an evening cape, and a handbag from either Ada or Phoebe.
‘How much is it?’ I asked.
‘Seventy-nine dollars.’
If I couldn’t buy it on time it would take every cent I had.
At the cash register I summoned up my nerve. ‘I’d like to open a charge account,’ I said.
‘Are you a government girl?’ Marian asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you bring a pay stub with you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, relieved.
‘I’ll write it up. One third is due now, and then two more payments over two months. The store will send you notices when the payments are due.’
I emptied my wallet. Marian hung my new ball gown on a pink silk padded hanger and carefully protected it with a Woodward and Lothrop dress bag. Cinderella, that was me!
I slipped inside the house, intending to sneak upstairs with my garment bag. So far Phoebe was the only person at home who knew I was going to a Mayflower ball, and I wasn’t ready to announce it yet.
Instead I ran right into Joe, who came out of the lounge.
‘I thought I recognized your footstep,’ he said, warmth in his brown eyes. Then he saw the long Woodies garment bag draped over my arm.
My heart sank.
‘Been shopping?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a ball gown.’
‘Going somewhere special?’
‘I’ve been meaning to tell you . . .’
‘I’m sure you have.’
‘It’s not a date! I’m going to a benefit ball at the Mayflower Hotel Friday night,’ I said, the words tumbling out of me, getting it over with as soon as possible.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That’s – what is that expression you use? – tall cotton.’ When Joe’s mouth tightened like that, there seemed to be no break between his moustache and beard, giving him an uncharacteristically fierce aspect.
‘It’s not a date,’ I said again. ‘I’m going with a friend. He had an extra ticket.’ I could hardly tell Joe the truth.
‘Best hang your dress up, or it will get wrinkled before the big night,’ Joe said. He wasn’t often sarcastic, but when he was he seemed like a different person than the man I’d known for almost a year. I didn’t like it.
‘I will,’ I said.
I went up the staircase, and Joe went back in the lounge, pulling his pipe out of his jacket pocket as he went.
THIRTY
‘Look what I found,’ Phoebe said, brandishing a liqueur bottle. It was almost dinner time, and Joe, Ada, and I had gathered in the lounge to listen to the news. Henry hadn’t arrived home yet.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Fernet!’ Phoebe said. ‘I thought I had a bottle somewhere. It was a gift from someone ages ago.’
‘What’s Fernet?’ Ada asked.
‘An Italian liqueur. Made from herbs and spices. Louise was asking about it,’ she said.
Joe turned down the radio. ‘I’m familiar with Fernet,’ he said. ‘In Europe it’s drunk as a tonic, for health.’
‘Let’s try some,’ Phoebe said.
‘I’ll get the glasses,’ Ada said. She left the lounge and came back from the dining room with four sherry glasses and a corkscrew. Joe deftly extracted the cork and filled our glasses with the caramel-colored cordial. It looked like prune juice.
I was eager to taste it. I wanted to know if it would disguise the harsh taste of enough laudanum to kill a person.
I sipped from my glass and almost gagged on its bitter taste, like a mixture of black licorice and mouthwash. Its pungent aroma filled my nostrils, found its way to my lungs, and made me gasp.
‘God,’ Ada said, ‘it’s revolting.’
‘It must be good for you, because no one would drink this for its taste,’ Joe said. He held up the bottle and read out the ingredients. ‘Mushrooms, fermented beets, coco leaf, gentian, wormwood . . . and the list goes on. Not to mention the forty-five percent alcohol content.’
I had my answer. Alessa could have downed this liqueur doctored with a couple of teaspoons of laudanum and a ground-up Nembutal tablet with no knowledge she was being poisoned. So she could have been murdered! Instead of feeling upset, as I expected, I was relieved to have the question resolved.
Phoebe made a face, and we all set our glasses down on the table.
‘So much for that,’ Phoebe said. ‘Let’s have some sherry instead, shall we? After all, tomorrow is a holiday.’
‘I’ll get fresh glasses,’ I said.
‘I’ll find the sherry and pour this down the kitchen sink, if it’s OK with you, Phoebe,’ Joe said, gesturing with the Fernet bottle.
‘Please do,’ Phoebe said. ‘And would you two see that Dellaphine and Madeleine get a glass of sherry also, before you come back?’
As I collected fresh sherry glasses in the dining room and arranged them on a tray – six this time, since Henry still wasn’t home – Joe came in from the kitchen to pour the sherry.
He put a hand on mine. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s me who should be sorry,’ I said. ‘I handled this badly. I can’t explain the real reason why I have to go to this shindig, but I swear it’s not a date.’
‘I believe you,’ Joe said, ‘because I can’t bear not to.’
‘I never thought I’d see the day when I’d use canned food to fix Thanksgiving dinner,’ Dellaphine said.
‘It’s just pumpkin for the pies,’ Phoebe said.
‘It’s the principle of the thing,’ Dellaphine answered.
My dinner-roll dough finished its first rising. I dusted my hands with flour and turned the dough out on to a floury wooden board, kneading it with the heels of both hands. The yeasty odor reminded me that I liked baking, though I rarely did any these days.
‘Dellaphine, do you think this is ready?’ I asked.
Dellaphine dried her hands and fingered the dough. ‘Yes, ma’am, it’s ready,’ she said.
‘Can I make cloverleaf rolls?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘The pan is in the right lower side of the Hoosier cabinet.’
I found two muffin pans, black with age, and greased them with a butter wrapper we’d been hoarding. Dellaphine allowed me a little melted butter to dip the tiny balls I formed of the dough into before I put three of them in each muffin compartment. I covered both pans with towels and found a warm spot on top of the stove to allow them to rise for the second time.
‘What time will we eat?’ I asked. ‘Ada’s playing for the midday Thanksgiving meal at the Willard Hotel. She said she thought she’d be home by two.’
‘Henry said his boss told him he could leave at three,’ Phoebe said. ‘Will
Madeleine get out early today?’ she asked Dellaphine.
‘Yes, ma’am, but she don’t know what time,’ Dellaphine said.
‘Let’s plan for dinner at four,’ Phoebe said. ‘If necessary we’ll wait for Madeleine.’ Dellaphine and Madeleine might eat in the kitchen, but Phoebe wouldn’t sit down to Thanksgiving dinner until Dellaphine’s daughter was home.
Joe stood in the kitchen door. ‘Can I help?’ he asked, looking stoic.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Dellaphine said. ‘You can go outside and shuck them oysters.’
Joe appeared disconcerted. ‘I know oysters,’ he said, ‘but “shuck” is a new word for me.’
‘I’ll show you how it’s done,’ I said. I’d shucked oysters at my parents’ fish camp for years. ‘You’ll need to wear gloves.’
On the back porch, bundled up in coats and scarves, Joe and I perched on the brick steps with a basket of oysters and a mixing bowl between us. A few autumn leaves still clung to the trees. Joe and Henry had burned all the fallen leaves last weekend, and a ring of charred grass showed where the pile had blazed in the center of the remains of our Victory Garden. Earlier I’d turned the soil over after fertilizing it with the pile of vegetable scraps I’d composted, ready for next year’s planting.
Our Victory chickens, as Ada called them, huddled in their house, feathers ruffled against the cold. They laid fewer eggs in cold weather. Phoebe had needed to purchase a dozen at the market for the Thanksgiving baking.
‘This,’ I said to Joe, ‘is a shucker.’ I handed him the flat two-sided pointed blade. It was about four inches long with a short handle and guard to protect your hand. ‘Hold the oyster like this, along the hinge. Be careful: the shell is sharp, and so is the shucker.’ I demonstrated how to shove the point of the shucker between the lips of the oyster, twist it, and force the reluctant oyster shell open. ‘You want to separate the meat from this thick muscle here and dump the oyster and liquor into the bowl.’
‘This is harder than it looks,’ Joe said, struggling with the knobbly, slippery shell.
‘Like anything, it takes practice.’
Soon Joe was shucking like an expert, and before long we had about a pint of oysters to show for our labors.
‘We’ll mix these into the stuffing,’ I said. ‘Let’s go dump the shells into the chicken pen.’
‘What on earth for?’ he asked.
‘Calcium. Makes the eggshells strong.’
Down at the chicken pen we flung the oyster shells over the fence and watched the chickens fight over the bits of muscle and meat that still clung to them.
‘I didn’t know chickens were such scavengers,’ he said.
This surprised me. Joe often told me how he visited his grandparents’ farm outside Prague every summer. Surely, he’d seen chickens fed scraps before.
‘They’re like pigs,’ I said. ‘They’ll eat anything.’
‘Are we out of sight?’ Joe asked, angling his head back to look at the house.
‘Of course not,’ I said.
So he didn’t kiss me, but took my arm and put it through his, and we lingered outside, enjoying each other’s warmth and company.
Joe broke the comfortable silence first. ‘Did you see the paper this morning?’ he asked.
‘No. Why?’
He squeezed my arm. ‘It appears the Nazi siege of Malta has ended. A convoy passed through the island from Alexandria intact on the twentieth of November.’
‘No bombers?’
‘Not one.’
Relief washed through my body. Rachel and her children were truly safe now.
‘That is wonderful news,’ I said. ‘Wonderful.’
‘Add it to the success of Torch and the Russian victory at Stalingrad, and it seems we have a chance to win this war.’
‘You had doubts?’
‘Yes, the Allies got such a late start. Almost too late.’
Dellaphine called to us from the kitchen door, asking for her oysters.
When we got back into the kitchen, Dellaphine watched us break up a pan of cornbread and mix the oysters into it. She added some bacon fat, onions, sage, and a liberal shake of Durkee Poultry Seasoning. We stuffed the turkey and had enough left to fill an extra pan to eat with leftovers.
Dellaphine and I covered the turkey breast with slices of thick maple-cured bacon. Joe lifted the heavy turkey in its roasting pan and slid it into the oven.
Dellaphine wiped perspiration from her face with a bright pink bandanna she’d stuck in her apron pocket. It was hot in the kitchen and would get hotter as the day progressed.
‘I think I can rest a spell now,’ Dellaphine said, stretching, massaging her back with her big hands. ‘The cranberry sauce and potatoes are cooking, and the squash and onions are chopped and ready to fry when the turkey comes out of the oven.’
‘Everything smells delicious,’ Joe said.
‘Have you eaten Thanksgiving dinner before?’ I asked.
‘I was in the country this time last year, but this is my first Thanksgiving dinner. I was living in a cold-water walk up in Baltimore and didn’t know a soul well enough to ask me to a meal.’
‘Wait until the turkey starts to roast,’ I said. ‘The aroma is like nothing else.’
‘By the way, where’s Phoebe?’ Joe asked.
Dellaphine plopped on to a kitchen chair and fanned herself with her bandanna. ‘She went upstairs to put her feet up, she said,’ Dellaphine answered.
We knew what that meant. That was Phoebe’s code for dosing herself with laudanum for one of her sick headaches.
‘She’ll be missing her boys,’ Dellaphine said defensively, noticing our expressions. ‘It being a holiday and all.’
‘I hope she’s careful,’ Joe said. ‘That stuff is dangerous.’
‘She is,’ Dellaphine said. ‘Besides, I keep my eye on that bottle. And on the sleeping pills, too.’
The warm kitchen, the good news about Malta, the contented feeling of standing arm and arm with Joe all receded, as sharply as an airplane disappearing over the horizon.
Alessa was dead of a laudanum overdose, and everyone, even her husband, believed she’d committed suicide. Since tasting the Fernet yesterday, I knew she could have been murdered. The liqueur’s bitterness would have disguised the nasty taste of the amount of laudanum and Nembutal necessary to do the job.
‘Are you all right?’ Joe asked me. Both he and Dellaphine stared at me with concern.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I spoke to you, and you didn’t answer,’ he said. ‘You were looking off into the distance.’
‘I’m sorry, I was thinking about Malta,’ I fibbed.
‘Come into the lounge and sit with me,’ Joe said. ‘We can listen to the President’s address from Warm Springs.’
I forced thoughts of Alessa to the back of my mind.
Later Phoebe drifted into the room to join us, her pupils almost completely dilated.
‘I’m not good for much of anything except laying the table,’ Ada said.
‘It looks lovely, dear,’ Phoebe said. For the first time since I’d come to ‘Two Trees’ we were using Phoebe’s good china, silver and crystal.
‘I got these as wedding presents,’ Phoebe said. ‘It seems so old-fashioned now.’ Like Phoebe herself, who, though only nearing fifty, seemed older because she wore her skirts several inches below her knee and crimped her hair.
‘I think it’s all beautiful,’ I said, from the perspective of a bride who’d gotten no wedding gifts. I’d married Bill in the midst of the Depression. If his job as a telegrapher hadn’t included the small apartment above the Wilmington Western Union building, we couldn’t have married at all.
We heard Madeleine come in the back door from work, and Phoebe left us to go into the kitchen.
‘Did you hear about Malta?’ I asked Ada. ‘And Stalingrad? And El Alamein?’
‘That’s all everyone talked about at the Willard.’ She lowered her voice. ‘It’s awful of me, i
sn’t it, to hope that Rein is dead.’ Rein was Ada’s husband, the German pilot who’d left her to join the Nazis and the Luftwaffe.
‘I don’t think it’s awful. I wish lots of people dead, starting at the top.’ Hitler himself. Why was it that someone hadn’t assassinated the man yet? I couldn’t understand it.
We heard the front door slam. It was Henry arriving home.
‘Henry’s here,’ Joe said, coming in from the lounge. ‘Does this mean we can eat? I’m actually slavering.’
We crowded into the kitchen to admire the turkey as it came out of the oven. To our surprise Henry brought a contribution to the meal. He sheepishly handed two bottles of champagne over to Phoebe.
‘It’s already chilled,’ Henry said. ‘The wine shop near the bus stop was open until four.’
‘Thank you, Henry, how wonderful!’ Phoebe said. ‘Ada and Louise, can you find the champagne flutes? The rest of you get out of here so Dellaphine and I can dish this up.’
Henry carved the turkey on the sideboard while Joe poured champagne into Phoebe’s crystal flutes. Ada and I washed them first, as they were so dusty with disuse.
We loaded our plates with turkey, oyster stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, baked winter squash, creamed onions, and hot cloverleaf rolls, then picked up our champagne and went to the table. Dellaphine and Madeleine followed us, filling their plates and taking a flute each. They stayed long enough to join us in prayer before carrying their meals into the kitchen.
Phoebe’s prayer was the standard Episcopalian grace, which seemed way too Anglican Prayer Book and short to suit my Southern Baptist upbringing, but it did cover all the bases. ‘Bless O Lord this food to our use, and us to your loving service, and keep us ever mindful of the needs of others, we ask in Christ’s name, amen!’
‘Amen!’ we chorused, and for the next couple of hours we put our troubles aside and were thankful for all that was good in the world.
THIRTY-ONE
Later that evening when I was alone upstairs in my bedroom, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my notebook open, I put Thanksgiving behind me and focused on the mess I was in.
For the last week I’d snooped around Alessa’s death like the amateur I was, poking into police and OSS files without authority and openly quizzing everyone I could locate who knew Alessa. I’d implied that she was murdered without thinking of what that meant. Now that I knew she could have dosed herself with laudanum and Nembutal without realizing it, I recognized the grave danger I was in. Her killer would be happy to dispatch me, too.
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