Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery by Barbara Neely Page B

Grace's reply.
    When Grace came out of the room, Blanche had moved away and was dusting the small table near the top of the main stairs. At first, Grace seemed not to notice Blanche. She leaned against Emmeline's door and closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, they were moist. Her lips were a hard pink line. Big red spots, like clown makeup, dotted both her cheeks. She pushed herself away from the door and walked toward Blanche.
    “Please don't disturb my aunt just now, Blanche,” she said at last. “She's...resting. And the room next to hers is just a guest room, so you needn't bother with it, either,” she added.
    Blanche watched Grace as she went down the stairs. She heard the front door close. She slipped back into Mumsfield's room and looked out the window. Grace was walking slowly toward the duck pond, her head thrown slightly back and her arms folded across her chest.
    I should have done the old lady's room first, Blanche chided herself. Might've had a ringside seat for the shouting match. More likely it would have been postponed. Blanche stared at Emmeline's door for a few moments, bristling with the desire to knock and trying to conquer her natural inclination to defy the voice of authority. It was one of the reasons she had not lasted in the waitressing, telephone sales, clerking, and typing jobs she'd tried over the years. She always returned to domestic work. For all the
châtelaine
fantasies of some of the women for whom she worked, she was really her own boss, and her clients knew it. She was the expert. She ordered her employers' lives, not the other way around. She told them when they had to be out of the way, when she would work, and when she wouldn't. Or at least that's the way it was most of the time. Now she sighed in frustration and turned away from Emmeline's door.
    She didn't bother to knock on the door on the right, next to Everett's room. It had to be Grace's room. She went in, and as if in reward for her decision to do as she was told, for a change, the room she entered was fascinating.
    The white four-poster bed was hung with pale cotton drapes lined in white with tiny blue polka dots. The same cotton covered the seats of the two delicate-looking chairs and the table by the bed. It seemed a wonderfully calm place to hide, and Blanche congratulated Grace on being smart enough to provide it for herself. Yet, there was something about the room that made her uneasy. She looked around at the small items. These were thethings most likely to tell her something about the person who occupied the room. Among these people, the furniture and pictures might have been chosen by a decorator.
    What she noticed was that the old-fashioned silver-backed comb, brush, and hand-mirror set on top of the bureau looked exactly the same distance, one from the other. The top of the pen on the small desk across from the bed was lined up with the top of the leather writing paper case and the address book beside it. The clock on the bedside table was exactly the same distance from the water carafe as it was from the lamp. There was no radio, no television, not even a telephone to break the room's silence.
    It seemed the wrong room for Grace. It was Everett, with his casually elegant clothes, fresh manicure, and well-shined shoes, from whom she'd have expected neatness. She'd once worked for a man who designed men's clothes and was himself known for his wardrobe and style. She'd picked up enough from him to know how much planning and study went into looking perfectly casual. But it was Grace, with the tail of her blouse peeking out from the top of her skirt and the edge of her slip from the bottom, who lived in this monument to unchanging order.
    But despite the room's orderliness, its look of calm, the hair on Blanche's arms was stiff with electricity. The air felt nervous, jumpy. She walked around the room picking up the small clock, the hand mirror. She flicked the feather duster about as she went. The