Page 46 of A Matter of Pedigree
Celerie was sitting on the sofa, studying the windows. “He wouldn’t let me touch a thing in that apartment except the kitchen, and believe me, it could use some freshening up.” She shook her head. “I see him coming and going, sometimes, but all I get is a nod. He’s always forgetting something, so he comes and goes a lot. Some mornings it takes him three or four tries before he’s out the door.”
Carole smiled. “A real absent-minded professor. Somehow I wouldn’t have expected him to marry a woman like Angelique. She’s much younger, isn’t she?”
“Hard to tell; those French women keep their looks.” Celerie was jotting something on a pad of paper she’d pulled out of her bag. “They seem quite happy. I mean, I never hear them arguing or anything, and I would if they did. Those walls are not as thick as you’d expect.”
“I bet you’re glad Hosea’s gone,” ventured Carole. “He must have been a bit of a wet blanket.”
“I can’t say I miss him,” admitted Celerie. “But we certainly didn’t wish him any harm.”
“Neither did we,” Carole was quick to say. “Frank had nothing to do with …”
“Of course not.” Celerie’s affirmation of Frank’s innocence was a bit too quick and too vehement. “Do you have any color preferences?”
Carole wanted to get the conversation back to Prospect Place. “I couldn’t help admiring the curtains in Hosea Browne’s apartment, the night we were there,” she said.
Celerie raised an eyebrow. “That dark red?”
Carole knew she’d made a mistake. “No, the lining.”
“Kind of a pinky beige?”
“Yes!” agreed Carole, who didn’t have a clue.
“You certainly do have quite an eye for detail,” said Celerie.
“Not really. I couldn’t tell you another thing about the room, except that it was old-fashioned.”
“Like Hosea himself,” agreed Celerie. “A gentleman of the old school, if there ever was one. His brother is quite different.”
“Jonathan? Was that his name?” Carole asked, pretending ignorance.
“Yes. He’s back from Peru. He was involved in some sort of accident, he said. He’s got his leg in a cast, and he’s using a crutch. I hear him playing that Peruvian flute music all the time.”
“Poor man,” said Carole. She knew she ought to be guilt-stricken, but what was done was done, and she was actually pleased, not to mention relieved, that he was out of the hospital and apparently on the road to recovery. “What about the little old lady in the basement?” she asked.
“Millicent Shaw?”
“Yes. What’s she like?”
“Sweet. Agreeable. I don’t really know, except that I don’t like her curtains. They’re made from Indian bedspreads, I think, unlined, and they look horrible from the outside. They don’t go with the style of the house at all. Kind of sixties hippie chic, if you can believe it.”
“Did she and Hosea get along?” asked Carole, persisting in her effort to get some information out of Celerie and hoping she wouldn’t become suspicious.
“As well as any of us did,” said Celerie, with a shrug. Then she straightened up, as if receiving a sudden inspiration. “I think I have an answer to your problem.”
“You do?” Carole was all ears. Did Celerie have a suspect in mind?
“Festoons!”
Carole didn’t have a clue. “Festoons?”
“Absolutely. Lush and gorgeous, with plenty of passementerie …”
Carole was even further in the dark. What the hell was passementerie? She was pondering this question when the door opened and Polly let herself in.
“What sort of passementerie?” inquired Polly. “Fringe? Balls?”
Ah, thought Carole, mother to the rescue. It must mean fancy trim, the sort of stuff they put on cushions and curtains.
