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and drop all the names that he’ll never get to meet one-on-one. Lolly tells me the long knives are being sharpened for Mr. Darling.”
    Dennis Darling wouldn’t be the first interloper to come to Palm Beach in search of caviar and leave with egg on his face. A few seasons back we had a television crew down here doing a documentary on the rich and famous of our resort. The only people who would go before the cameras were the new rich, who don’t matter to the old rich, while those who do matter were presented from newspaper photos, shots of their homes from outside locked gates and hearsay. I will admit that Dennis’s invitation to Tennis Everyone! was a coup but, as Lolly had said, money never fails to get its way.
    “I hope he doesn’t try to connect the MacNiffs with today’s tragedy,” Father said.
    “I was thinking the same thing, sir. I’ll caution Mr. MacNiff at lunch tomorrow.”
    Fingering a beautifully bound edition of Hard Times, Father exclaimed, “Quite a cast of characters the police will be obliged to sift through, should it come to that.”
    Leaving him to sift through Charlie’s thoughts on England’s economy in the mid-nineteenth century, I retired to the peace, solitude and comfort of my grace-and-favor third-floor suite.
    Enjoying another English Oval while getting ready for the sandman, Father’s parting words echoed in my head. Quite a cast of characters.... And indeed they were. Excuse the cliché, but if hindsight were foresight I would have paid more attention to the rancor between Vivian Emerson and Holga von Brecht, Talbot’s affair with Holga, Dennis Darling’s mission in Palm Beach and Nifty’s lunch invitation.
    Connect all the dots and you get a picture of a young man lying dead in three feet of water.

FIVE
    W E BREAKFAST IN THE family kitchen, attended to by our housekeeper and cook, Ursi Olson, who, along with her husband, Jamie, cater to the McNallys. This bit of egalitarianism is an isolated occurrence in our faux Tudor manse with its mullioned windows and faulty copper roof. Our neighbors rough it in faux Spanish haciendas with red tile overhead.
    As Father and I both work there is no set lunch hour, except for Mother, who takes tea and toast before her afternoon siesta. Dinner in the formal dining room is strictly damask linen, Limoges china and the kind of stemware that explodes if put in the dishwasher. It gives new meaning to the word pretentious but thanks to Ursi’s superb cuisine one gladly endures the pomp and circumstance for the gastronomic delights that go with it.
    Father will occasionally lament the cost of maintaining such a lifestyle and I once suggested that we replace the damask with paper napkins, a move sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth when feeling financially pinched. A member of Parliament went on record as saying that Her Majesty would fare better pound-wise if she stuck to her linen napkins and gave up her fleet of Rolls-Royces. The queen was not amused—and neither was Father.
    Eating in the kitchen does not in any way prevent the Lord of the Manor from dressing as if he were arguing a case before the United States Supreme Court. Vested suit, tie and cuff links are his work clothes and, come to think of it, his play clothes. For Father, casual Friday means donning a shirt without extra starch in collar and cuffs.
    Mother always looks lovely and serene in a flowery print dress and, when gardening or shopping, a wide-brimmed straw bonnet. Owing to lunch at Mar-a-Lago I dressed down this morning and looked rather clubbish in white linen trousers, pink polo shirt of Sea Island cotton and a seersucker jacket. Jeff Rodgers’s drowning made all the front pages, but thanks to my interview it was yrs. truly who got all the attention this morning, saving us the trouble of awkwardly trying to avoid discussing the more disquieting news in front of mother.
    “Everyone called,” Ursi said, pouring herself a cuppa at the stove. “I felt like a movie