Chapter 4: A Chart for Dinner

On Sunday, Constance had nine guests coming for dinner.

Her seating chart put me in the middle of the long side, where I could be seen.

I looked at the chart for a while in the pantry.

Then I took a pencil and made my own.

Mason found me at it with the cook's wall clock in one hand and a placemat in the other.

"Miss Tanner, the seating is set."

"Who set it?"

"Mrs. Prescott."

"Then it's set by one person, and nine people have to live in it for three courses," I said.

"I'd like to try a rotation."

He put down the water pitcher he was holding, which told me he was ready to fight.

"There's a protocol," he said.

"Is it written down?"

"It's tradition."

"So it's written down in someone's head, and it costs everyone else a bad seat."

He had no answer to that. I watched him go looking for one.

"Nine guests, three courses," I said.

"At the end of each course, everyone moves two seats clockwise."

"Nobody gets stuck next to the same bore, and nobody sits in the draft."

"They will not move," said Mason. "They are guests, not furniture."

"Ring a bell," I said. "People will do anything for a bell."

He wrote the plan on a card, very slowly, and I knew he hated it. His handwriting was lovely.

At six-thirty the guests came in.

There was Godfrey's business partner, a retired judge, and the Garden Guild president and her husband.

The woman in the lilac hat came in last.

She saw me and gave me a little wave with two fingers.

Then Mason pulled out the head chair for me, because somebody had put my place card there.

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