Everything in Its Place

Constance Ward received you in the same parlour, under the same aldermen, but the tea this time was poured by a maid and the hostess did not rise. The seating plan was still on the table between you, wives at the far end, Crane at the head, and she did not look at it. She looked at your hands, as one checks a guest for what they may be carrying.

“A card,” you said. “Passed along the top table at a quarter to ten.”

“You’ve been talking to the waitresses.” It was said without heat. She opened the bureau, took out a printed menu for the Thrift Day supper, turned it over and laid it flat. On the back, in her fine upright pencil, were a few words. Hollis. Pickets at the front gate again. Use the back stair. C.W.

“The constable warned me before the soup,” said Ward. “I passed the warning on, as one does. I should have been a very poor Chair if I hadn’t.”

“Gil Tanner says the pickets stood off at dusk. Mr Rudd made it a rule.”

“Then the constable was mistaken, and so was I.” She smiled. It was the first time you had seen her smile at something that was not working. “You will find, Dr Voss, that a town acts on what it believes is happening, not on what is. I believed it. I told Hollis. Hollis believed me, because it was in my hand, and on a menu card.”

Jonah leaned over to read it upside down, which he had been practising. “Thomas,” he said, very quietly. “If people define a situation as real—”

“—it’s real in its consequences,” you said. You turned the card over twice. A rumour had sent a man to the iron stair instead of the lamp-lit gate, and the people who kept the rumour moving were the people who kept order. In Saltmarsh the control agents spoke to one another long before they spoke to anyone else.