CHAPTER 5I don’t think Lever dressed for a party with less enthusiasm. I put my hair up and put a bunch of flowers in it, and promptly took them out and put it down again. There was no use adding an extra hurdle to the evening. The same was true of driving the eight icy miles to Alexandria. I called a taxi, and was glad I had. The roads were foul, but they were the driver’s problem, not mine, and at that he made it faster than I’d have believed possible. It wasn’t quite half-past seven as he skidded to a stop in the cobblestoned gutter in Chatham Street and said immediately, “Jeez, I guess it’s that little white house all lighted up like a Christmas tree you want to go to, not this graveyard.”
I looked out. He’d stopped in front of the Candlers’. The two yellow gas jets burned feebly in t
