The Corpse Had Excellent Table Manners

How it begins

The dead man had put his bread plate in the wrong place.

This was not, Tessa Navarro reminded herself, the most urgent fact about the evening. It was nevertheless the one nobody else seemed willing to discuss.

Across the dining room, the hostess was explaining that the steward had behaved strangely all night.

Tom Sen stood beside the service door, his hands still and his face carefully empty.

Tessa had seen that expression often. It was the expression people wore when the truth could cost them employment and a lie might cost more.

"He moved the place card," the hostess said. "I saw him."

"At your request," Tom answered.

The room became quieter.

A constable bent over the table. Someone had drawn the curtains, though the evening outside remained light. Twelve candles burned above dishes nobody wanted cleared.

Tessa looked at the dead man's chair.

He had spent the first course correcting a younger guest's use of a fork. He had spent the second telling Tessa that standards were what separated a household from a crowd. She had disliked him thoroughly and listened closely enough to know one thing.

He would not have tolerated his own setting as it now appeared.

"May I ask when the plate was moved?" she said.

The hostess turned. "Surely this is hardly the moment for a lesson."

"No," Tessa said. "I think it may be the moment for an answer."

Tom looked at her then, directly.

She had come to the house to instruct three daughters in the art of making other people comfortable. So far, she had managed the opposite.

Beside the dead man's glass, a small wet crescent marked a place where something had stood before the room agreed on its story.

Tessa took out the notebook she used for lesson plans.