All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred ninety-seven)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part one hundred ninety-seven)

Owen returned his intelligence. Phelan was in his room, had eaten there, had asked nothing about anything: not the whereabouts of Crownhaven, not the temper of Miss Gremot (“A pity. I might have warned him.”), not what the locals did for entertainment. Phelan was middle-aged, brown-haired, portly, his dress and demeanor suited, without evidence of calculation, to southern Indiana custom. No other guest had looked twice at Phelan.

“So what’s he playing at? The country mouse might fall faint from the novelty, a man of law at the door? City ignorance, or you think he’s up to no good?”

They were walking, for the pleasant morning weather, and the last comparing of notes.

“Got it in mind,” Weem said, “to spring a shocker on you. Wants you buttered-up and meek.” He issued a flattering snort of laughter.

“Likely he’ll go after what you were wondering yourself. And I see no reason for it, still, why Manfred could want poor Regina dead. She was twice his age and not especially well. If he had an affair… You know, I think Reg would be proud, if the girl were pretty or connected. Her good taste in choosing Manfred. Suppose there were a girl? Not me!”

Weem caught her arm. “Now, make sure you don’t. Joke with me, but if Phelan says you were Ryan-Neville’s girl, set him straight, straight as you can. You’re mistaken, Mr. Phelan. No, Mr. Phelan, that was not the case. See what I mean?”

They had got to Liberty Avenue, the Columbia’s plaza side, where one of a familiar pair leaned into the fountain. Élucide scanned benches for a stranger of dull appearance. “You’ve done your shopping, Mrs. Frame?”

“I bought one bobbin of white thread.”

It needed a week of downtown strolls, of picking sidewalk bins, for Mrs. Frame to get her price. A thimble might come next; by the end of the month, a quarter of gingham. She found the bobbin in her pocket, showed it, moved to tug at a branch in green fruit.

“I’d half steal a cutting of that haythorn.”

“Mrs. Frame!” Élucide said. “What part of England did your family come from?”

Mrs. Frame’s eyes rounded as though her fortune had been told. “Lord help me, I don’t know a thing like that!”

Mariette fished a coin from the fountain and tossed it further. “The deeper the water, the surer the wish. That’s how it ought to work.”

“Are those your own wishes you’re putting on other people’s coins?”

They crossed to the park, making for Arcadia, Élucide digressing to acquaint Weem—her only friend besides Clotilde to show interest—with Quackenbush’s gleanings on Jean Gremot, father of Alain, husband of an Alsatian bride, Elisabeth Neuling.

209

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred ninety-eight)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)