A Rather Remarkable Homecoming

by C. A. Belmond

  I could just imagine the plump, girlish hands and earnest face of Aunt Pen as a child, busily scribbling all of these passages.

  “Oh, Jeremy, it’s so cute!” I said, reading choice bits aloud and showing him some of the funny doodles and drawings that illustrated a few of the entries. “Can’t you just picture Aunt Pen and Grandma Beryl and their brother Roland scampering around? Look, here’s an inventory of the seashells they found, and a record of who won a local archery contest,” I enthused. “Boy, they explored all up and down the coast. They put you and me to shame! We just pretended to be international secret agents when we were kids. Listen to some of these headers: An Adventure by the Seashore; A Voyage into the Woods; The Mystery of the New Neighbors; The Secret Garden of the Summer People.”

  “It’s a snooping society, all right,” Jeremy said. “Apparently being a nosey-Parker is definitely in your genes.”

  “It’s very clear that Great-Aunt Penelope was the ringleader of this outfit,” I observed. “Let’s see,” I calculated quickly, “she would have been thirteen then. The same age you were when I visited.”

  “Then Rollo’s father would have been eleven,” Jeremy mused.

  “And Grandmother Beryl was eight,” I said.

  We spent the afternoon exploring the little room, but everything else was just ordinary playthings. Finally Jeremy glanced at his watch. “We should head back into town,” he said. “I booked us into that restaurant for dinner.”

  “Good,” I said, tucking the notebook into my purse. I glanced around the room again.

  “Anything else you want from here?” Jeremy inquired.

  I hesitated. “Somehow I don’t want to tell Harriet about this secret room yet,” I said, looking around. “I would feel as if I were ratting out the club.”

  “That’s okay. But, I think we should keep the croquet set and that rocking-horse that was in the bedroom I used to sleep in,” Jeremy said.

  “And the teak credenza,” I said. “That’s a good piece. And those beaux arts lamps.”

  We turned and made our way cautiously down the wooden staircase. Once outside, Jeremy heaved the door shut behind us. He had a small combination lock that he carried on his keychain for his health-club locker back in London. He used it now to padlock the door.

  “That way nobody else can go sneaking in there,” he said.

  We made our way around the garage, which was empty, except for a fastidiously arranged rack of saws and hammers and other hardware tools that Grandfather Nigel had left behind, some hanging on hooks, others fastened securely with leather straps, all of which had not been disturbed ever since he’d left them there.

  “Gee,” I noted. “I never realized how well-prepared Grandfather Nigel was for any disaster made by man or nature. Look at these old-fangled whale oil lamps! And what’s that contraption?”

  “A homemade short-wave radio,” Jeremy said in fascination, turning the knobs; but it remained silent. There were also plastic jugs of distilled water, and boxes of big candles and matches, and even an old horse-harness and a pony cart. But Jeremy couldn’t remember ever seeing a horse on the premises.

  We followed the low wall until we emerged at the end of the driveway, and I saw that the surveyors’ car was no longer there, so they must have packed it up and gone home.

  We climbed into Jeremy’s Dragonetta, and as we pulled away from the house I leaned my head against the headrest and sighed.

  “Oh, Jeremy,” I said wistfully. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could spend the whole summer here again?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jeremy said. “In that house? We’d get trapped in all those spiderwebs. Years later someone might find us here, like a couple of dead flies.” He put an arm up and froze with a dopey look on his face, as if petrified in a web.

  “We could rent one of those sweet little cottages people always talk about out here. We could eat fish and drink ale and explore up and down the whole coast! Who knows? Maybe we will find out something wonderful about Shakespeare.”

  Jeremy tried to hide his dubious look. But the thought of that developer arrogantly sending his men over here to measure it up left me with a new sense of urgency, and I flung one more backward glance over my shoulder at the dark hulk that was Grandma’s house.

  “We just can’t let them sell her home!” I declared stoutly. “That house needs plenty more generations to love it. We can’t let it go down on our watch!”

  “Steady on,” Jeremy said as he steered the car toward the village. “Come not between the dragon and his wrath.”

  “Shakespeare,” I said.

  “King Lear,” he replied smugly.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. I racked my brain, then emoted triumphantly:“Our doubts are traitors,

  And make us lose the good we might oft win,

  By fearing to attempt.”

  Jeremy looked chagrined, and I said, “Measure for Measure, baby! So wipe that surprised look off your face and buy me the best dinner you can get here tonight!”

  Chapter Eight

  Well, he did. Buy me a great dinner, even though at first the evening looked none too promising.

  “Holy smokes!” I exclaimed as we rolled back into town and approached the hotel parking lot. It had been nearly empty last night and this morning. Now it was jam-packed with cars. Not only that, but every parking space along the street was taken, and not just in front of the restaurant, but all up and down the main street.

  We had to hover about, until finally Jeremy managed to swoop in just as a car pulled out of the space on the corner. “You landed on it like a duck on a June-bug,” I said approvingly.

  All along the sidewalk, as well as inside the restaurant, chiclooking people were noisily thronging as they waited for a table. Every available barstool and small table in the bar area was occupied. The reception desk had a long line of hungry customers, all trying to charm or bully the harried but intractable staff.

  “This is a fierce crowd!” I murmured.

  I peered beyond the maitre d’ into the large dining room, which was ringed by a wall of tall glass windows and doors leading to a spacious deck that overlooked the harbor, and was used for outdoor eating in the warmer summer months.

  Tonight, however, the weather was too chilly even for hardy English folk to sit out on the deck drinking in the gusty wind. So all the weekend visitors were crammed indoors, with everyone jockeying to get a table with a view.

  “We’re going to be here all night,” I groused.

  You know how it is; even the most civilized among us can’t help staring at other people’s food as it goes by on a tray, and the longer you wait, the more you feel like snatching it right off their plates in your teeth like an alley cat.

  “Don’t worry, just follow me,” Jeremy murmured, straightening up to his full height and assuming an attitude that I call his Important Person Look. Without seeming the least bit pushy or arrogant, he simply moved forward with so much grace and confidence that the crowd actually parted respectfully for him, as if he were the Duke of Cornwall himself.

  “We have a reservation,” Jeremy said quietly and calmly to the maitre d’, giving him our name as guests of the Homecoming Inn and as friends of the Port St. Francis Legacy Society. I recalled that Harriet had advised us to “mention our group’s name anywhere” when she e-mailed us the directions to Grandma’s house.

  And perhaps because of all the publicity we’d gotten on our previous cases, the reservations-desk attendant seemed to know who we were, for the maitre d’, a tall, elegant Frenchman with a pencil-thin moustache and a tough attitude, snapped into gear.

  “Ah, yes, Nichols and Laidley, of course!” he said briskly, selecting two menus and leading us past the envious, bejeweled crowd and into the dining room, with me at his heels and Jeremy following.

  All the while, I steadfastly avoided catching anyone else’s eye. I heard only one faint objection, which was some guy who muttered, “Nice to be somebody!” I tried not to look surprise
d as we were escorted straight through the noisy part of the dining room and up to one of the coveted tables with a view.

  As waiters pulled out our chairs and dropped snowy napkins into our laps, Jeremy told me, “I hear the local lamb is incredible. But of course it’s the fresh Cornish seafood that most people come here for. Want to order both, and we’ll share?”

  “Perfect,” I sighed. “How nice of you to offer to share you dinner. I do like being married at times like this.”

  “Hmmm. Which times don’t you like being married?” Jeremy countered teasingly.

  “When people address my mail to Mrs. Jeremy Laidley,” I said frankly. “I love your name, but there’s no sign of me in there at all! Some people just refuse to write Penny Nichols Laidley.”

  “What people?” Jeremy asked, amused.

  “Great-Aunt Dorothy does it every time,” I said promptly. “On the wedding gift, her Christmas card, all her charity invitations when she wants us to be donors. No matter how I sign my replies, she keeps addressing me as Mrs. Jeremy Laidley. I swear it’s deliberate, as if to tell me to know my place.”

  “Oh, well, phew, at least it’s not something that’s my fault,” Jeremy replied.

  A waiter approached us and said, “Before I tell you our specials tonight, would you like a cocktail or a glass of champagne?”

  Jeremy smiled at me encouragingly, so I said, “Definitely champagne.”

  A short while later, as we were drinking our bubbly, there was a mild commotion at the front of the room. This was due to the arrival of a dining party led by two men who looked almost identical, even though they were of different heights and wore different suits. Each had close-cropped sandy-colored hair, a pallid oval face, deep-set pale blue eyes, a protruding lower lip, and rather large ears that stuck out a bit and were pointed at the top. They wore an identical cold, veiled expression, so that if you happened to catch their glance, which I did purely by accident, you instinctively felt something in your gut freeze warningly.

  Theirs was a party of six diners. This included a bevy of tall, leggy girlfriends-for-tonight teetering on spiky high heels and clad in competing tight dresses, flashy necklaces and elaborately coiffed hairstyles; and they all left a heavy trail of cologne in their wake.

  The group was showily escorted to the largest table in the house, right in the center of the room so that no one could miss their arrival. As they all took their seats, I saw that the two hosts of the party wore big, glittering diamond cuff-links.

  “And who’s-them-when-they’re-at-home?” I whispered with a fake cockney accent to Jeremy.

  “That’s the Mosley brothers,” he answered in a low voice. “A pair of fairly sinister bookends.”

  I gasped. “The developers?” I asked in disbelief. Jeremy nodded. “Those are the guys who want to wreck Grandmother Beryl’s house?” I hissed in indignation.

  “Yep,” Jeremy said in a low voice. “I’ve seen their photos in the press. And, see those men and women who are joining them now?”

  I followed his gaze and saw that the Mosley party had indeed been joined by six other people who frankly looked like poor relations—three women wearing dresses with too much shoulderpadding, and three men who laughed a bit too loud the way guys do when they’re insecure.

  “Those are the local town council people that Colin told us about,” Jeremy explained. “The ones who willingly signed on to the development. I looked them up before we came here.”

  “If you’ve already done this kind of research,” I observed, “then you must think we’re in for a serious fight.”

  Before he could answer, there was a new buzz of interest among the diners; and all heads turned in a chain-reaction across the room to stare at the famous TV chef himself, Toby Taylor. I watched as he nodded and smiled, pausing here and there to greet an old friend or a special client along the way. But despite his casual attitude it was perfectly clear that his destination was the Mosleys’ table, where the conversation had already reached a lively hum. When the chef shook hands with both brothers, the chatter at their table rose to a higher pitch, with even heartier guffaws from the men in his group, while the women simply gazed at Toby in flirtatious admiration.

  Toby quickly signalled the waiters, who hurried over with large trays of appetizers. The sommelier appeared with more waiters in tow, and soon several corks were popped open at once. Toby leaned over to listen attentively as one of the brothers spoke to him, then the chef nodded vigorously, conferred quietly with a head waiter, and moved on.

  As if to prove that he was as interested in the peasants as well as the big shots, Toby now stopped at one small table to pour wine for a beaming, touristy couple; then adjusted a napkin at an empty table, and nodded to a group of elderly diners, before finally landing at our table.

  “Hallo! I’m Toby,” said the chef, turning his full-wattage smile on me and shaking hands with Jeremy. “What a distinct pleasure to have the famed team of Nichols and Laidley at my table!” he added, affably and easily, as if we were all old friends. Yet I got a creepy feeling that we’d been pointed out to him by the Mosley brothers, both of whom were now staring in our direction.

  “May I tell you our house specialties tonight?” Toby asked, and a waiter approached the table respectfully, his pen poised above his pad. Toby began to reel off the list as if he had just cast his line into the sea and was gently bringing in the day’s catch before our eyes.

  “Our appetizers tonight are bay oysters sautéed in farm-fresh sweet butter and organic parsley; Dover sole meunière; scallops with serrano ham; mussels from Torbay; local Padstow lobster; freshly-caught langoustines from Scotland on ice . . .”

  I gazed at him mutely, forgetting the Mosleys altogether as I contemplated this dizzying choice.

  “Or,” he said, smiling, “a mini sampler of everything.”

  “That’s the one,” said Jeremy decisively.

  “Excellent,” Toby said with a smile, and Jeremy ordered the lamb as a second course.

  Toby chatted about the wine, seeming just as he appeared on TV, joking and laughing while exhorting the joys and benefits of local, organic farming. He was dressed in his trademark attire of blue-and-white striped shirt and black pants. His hair was blond and he was not especially tall, but he was powerfully built, resembling a rugby player. He had an aura of down-to-earth alertness and confident skill; yet, there was just the slightest trace of a thuggish businessman that made me wary.

  Finally he bowed, and moved across the rest of the room, shaking hands and greeting people as he retreated to the kitchen.

  Soon the waiters began moving quickly and quietly around us, arriving with our food and wine. Jeremy and I clinked our glasses and drank, and we laughed and joked all through our meal.

  “When we were kids wasn’t there a folksy restaurant here?” I asked. “I seem to remember this dining room and deck, but it looked much different, like something out of the 1950s, with waxy checkered tablecloths, and food like mutton stew and macaroniand-cheese.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Jeremy agreed. “It was a menu for grown-ups who’d already gotten drunk on scotch and simply wanted big portions of food. But the fish was quite good then.”

  Just before dessert, our meal was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a waiter who presented Jeremy with an unopened bottle of champagne, which we had not ordered. With a flourish, the waiter told us that this was a rare vintage from their cellars, “compliments of the Mosley brothers”. The waiter held out a small silver tray to Jeremy with a note on it.

  Jeremy took the note, read it, and then said firmly to the waiter, “Thank you. But send the champagne back.”

  The waiter actually turned pale. “But—but sir,” he stammered.

  Jeremy gave him the fisheye. “Send it back,” he repeated. “With a thanks-but-no-thanks.”

  And I could swear that the whole restaurant watched as the waiter, who had flushed beet-red, carried the champagne back to the Mosleys.

  �
�Any idea how much that champers cost?” I whispered to Jeremy.

  “In the neighborhood of two thousand pounds,” he said. He shoved the note toward me that had come on the silver tray. It said only, Perhaps we can do business together.

  I stole a look at the Mosley brothers, whose faces betrayed nothing as one of them spoke to the waiter. However, only moments later, our waiter re-appeared at our table, bearing the gift of two glasses of a more modest cognac. He looked petrified now. But Jeremy diplomatically accepted it this time, and raised his glass to me.

  “If I drink it, does it mean I have to work with the Mosleys?” I asked, as the two brothers nodded briefly to us.

  “No way,” Jeremy replied. “It only means I don’t have to do pistols at dawn with one of them.”

  We sipped our cognac, which was smooth and warming, and a great companion to our coffee and a dessert of mixed berry fruit tarte with Devonshire cream.

  “Well, apart from the little Mosley drama,” I sighed contentedly, “this was a wonderful dinner.”

  As we rose to leave we passed through the bar again, and it still had a sizeable throng of people waiting to eat. A few sated diners lingered on the front porch, chatting in the cool dark night.

  “Hope there’s some room in the parking lot behind the hotel now,” Jeremy said as we walked down the front path to the sidewalk. “I want to move the car there—” Then his tone changed completely. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed.

  I followed his gaze, and saw that Jeremy’s Dragonetta, which was still parked at the street corner where we’d left it, now had an ugly, strange splotchy shadow over the windshield. As I drew nearer I saw what it was.