I couldn’t see Reginald’s face, but I could tell by the upright angle of his ears that he was indeed perturbed by my behavior. Grudgingly, I pulled a tiny piece from one of the brownies, popped it in my mouth, and washed it down with tea. Nell folded her arms and waited until I’d finished the entire brownie, and two more besides, then ordered me to drink her tea as well as mine. When I’d downed it, she unfolded her arms, reached for Bertie, and promptly changed from a tough-talking blackmailer into a timid, twelve-year-old child.
“Feel better?” she asked.
With a sense of shock I realized that I’d thrown Nell for a loop. It had never occurred to me that a tsunami-sized mood swing or two might unnerve someone as serenely self-possessed as Lady Eleanor Harris. Her cornflower eyes were twice their normal size, and she clung so tightly to Bertie that his stuffing bulged beneath his sailor shirt. Shamefaced, I reached across the table to pat her hand.
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” I lied. In fact, I’d slept better than I had for months, despite a series of vivid dreams that should have made a married woman blush. “I always get cranky when I don’t get enough sleep. And I guess I’m feeling a bit fed up with all of this running around.”
“Are you sorry you brought Bertie and me with you?” Nell asked soberly.
“Good heavens, no, Nell, not one bit,” I exclaimed. “You’ve both been great. It’s just that ...” I sighed. “This isn’t how I’d hoped to spend my second honeymoon.”
Nell relaxed her grip on Bertie, but her expression remained grave. “Being married isn’t easy,” she said knowingly. “I’m the only one at school whose parents still live together in the same house. Except for Petra de Bernouilles, but she’s a Catholic and they’re not allowed to divorce. Are you going to divorce Bill?”
“Nell! What an idea!” I dismissed the question with a breezy chuckle while telling myself that perhaps it would be better if my own hypothetical twelve-year-old weren’t quite as perceptive as Nell. “I’ll admit that I’m disappointed that Bill couldn’t come with me on this trip, but what’s one trip?”
“When’s the last time he came with you?” she inquired.
“The last time? That would be ... This is August, right?” I tilted my head nonchalantly and squinted into the middle distance. “A year ago,” I answered finally. “Bill was here last August. We spent a few days in London and a week at the cottage. It was wonderful.”
“A year,” said Nell.
“Hardly any time at all,” I said, and before Nell could point out that it was nearly half of my married life, I changed the subject. “By the way, I forgot to ask—did Bertrand hear any juicy tidbits from the maids?”
“Nothing new.” Nell straightened Bertie’s beribboned sailor hat. “They’re dotty about Gerald, but the whole town seems to be dotty about Gerald. Did you learn anything new?”
“Gerald promised to do what he could to keep William from leaving Boston,” I told her, “but I don’t.think he’ll be able to do much. He. says he’s through practicing law.”
“Did you believe him?” Nell asked.
“I did,” I replied. “And I still do. If you’d seen his face last night, Nell, you’d have believed him, too. I don’t understand why Aunt Dimity expected him to lie to me.”
“Perhaps because she heard him lie to William about the other thing,” Nell suggested. “The ‘quarrel that happened so long ago.’ I have an idea about that.”
“Tell me,” I said, glad to divert Nell’s mind, and my own, from all thoughts of Bill and the D-word.
Nell’s gaze wandered to the suburban sprawl that had begun to crowd out the countryside. “Yesterday,” she said, “when I was poking round the Larches, I opened the door of a sort of storeroom and I saw the most marvelous thing—a cross made of gold and covered with jewels.”
“It’s called a reliquary.” I nodded. “I saw it, too. I went into the room by mistake and there it was, gleaming away at me.” I paused, distracted by the memory of Gerald’s breath on my hand as he’d bent to examine my cut finger. “Gerald said that the reliquary’s part of a collection he’s cataloguing for ...” I frowned, unable to recall his exact words.
“For whom?” Nell asked.
“A private collector or a museum, I imagine.” I shrugged. “Gerald didn’t mention any names.”
“Hmmm,” said Nell, still looking out of the window.
“What are you thinking, Nell?” I asked.
“I’m thinking that the reliquary must be worth lots of money.” Nell turned her head to stare at me. “Vast sums.”
I returned her stare uneasily. The Larches’ dismal state of disrepair had made me forget all about Gerald’s large bank account, and I’d never thought to question his possession of the golden cross. “Go on,” I said.
“What if the reliquary—and everything else in that storeroom—belongs to the American branch of the Willis family?” Nell proposed. “What if Gerald’s trying to rob William of his legacy?”
Could the reliquary be the sleeping dog Dimity wanted Willis, Sr., to avoid? I could think of several reasons why it might be in Gerald’s interest to conceal the existence of a valuable inheritance: His family might have borrowed against it, he might be intent on selling it, or he might have sold it already. In any case, it wouldn’t do for the rightful heir to appear out of nowhere and lay claim to it.
“It’s possible,” I conceded. “I’ll ask Emma to look for records of a disputed legacy out there on the net. Though I still can’t imagine why it would have popped into William’s mind yesterday morning.”
Nell tapped the round tin. “Did you remember to ask Gerald about the butterscotch brownies?”
I slapped a hand to my forehead. “Forgot all about it.”
“Never mind,” said Nell with a small, self-satisfied smile. “I asked him when he stopped by the hotel.”
“Ten points to you.” I bowed graciously, pleased to see her smiling again. “What did he say?”
“Thomas Willis didn’t serve in London during the war,” Nell informed me. “He was too young. He’s only sixty-three now.”
“So in 1945 he would have been”—I peered at the ceiling—“ twelve. I can’t picture a boy your age exchanging recipes in war-torn London, can you?”
“My brother,” Nell said authoritatively, “would have been too busy exploring the bomb craters.”
I nodded my agreement, but my mind was already on other things. I opened the briefcase and took from it the list of names Miss Kingsley had passed along, the drama-tis personae of the Willis family. “Thomas Willis is sixty-three, and he’s the oldest of the older generation here in England. That means they’re all younger than William. Thomas retired because of his heart trouble, but what about the other two—Anthea and Williston? Gerald told me that his cousin Lucy’s been running the firm shorthanded since he left. I wonder why Anthea and Williston haven’t come back to help her out?”
Nell returned the tin to her purse and folded her hands on the table, her eyes twinkling. “I’m looking forward to talking with Lucy Willis, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.” I raised the list into the air with a flourish. “This branch of the family is getting more interesting by the minute.” I laughed and Nell chuckled, but as I put the list back into the briefcase I couldn’t repress the traitorous thought that perhaps Dimity had chosen my husband from the wrong side of the Atlantic.
13.
I’d planned to take a cab from Waterloo to Lucy Willis’s office, but it proved to be unnecessary. The moment Nell and I alighted from the train, a small white-haired man in a dark-blue uniform hailed us from beyond the ticket barrier.
“Good morning,. madam! Didn’t expect to see you back so soon. And if it isn’t Lady Eleanor. My, but you’re pretty as a picture today, my lady. Nanny Cole’ll sell those frocks hand over fist once the gentry see you parading in yours. Master Bertram’s in the pink, I hope? Oh, I see you’ve brought Master Reginald as well.”
“Paul!�
� I exclaimed. Paul, whose last name, if it existed, had never been vouchsafed to me, was the chauffeur who’d driven Willis, Sr., and me down to the cottage after our overnight in London. He worked for Miss Kingsley, but I had no idea how he’d learned of our arrival at Waterloo.
“A pleasure to see you, too, madam.” Paul put two fingers to his dark-blue cap, then beckoned to a railway porter who was, to my astonishment, trundling my suitcase and Nell’s along the platform on a wheeled trolley.
I swung around to face Lady Eleanor, who was busily arranging Bertie and Reginald in her shoulder bag. “Nell?”
She smiled past me at our luggage. “Dear Mr. Digby! He brought our bags to the station in Haslemere, just as I asked him to. And his daughter was every bit as helpful. She said I reminded her of her little niece, and when I asked her to ring the Flamborough and speak with Paul—”
“She got straight on it,” Paul put in. “Miss Kingsley’s sent a chap to drive your car back to Finch, and says I’m yours for the duration, madam.” Paul had solved the dilemma of what to call a married woman who hadn’t taken her husband’s last name by referring to me exclusively as “madam.” Lady Eleanor’s title was, much to Paul’s delight, legitimate, thanks to her grandfather, the pompous old earl.
Nell gazed up at me, wide-eyed. “Have I been presumptuous again?”
“A bit,” I said dryly, “but I don’t mind. I just hope that you’ll think kindly of me when you rule the world.”
Paul thought I was joking, and laughed. “She does have a way with people, does Lady Eleanor. Now, if you’ll be so good as to follow me, madam, and you, too, my lady, the porter’ll bring your bags. The limo’s just round here.”
In truth, I was overjoyed to have Paul and his black limousine at our disposal. I couldn’t seem to shake the fatigue I’d been feeling ever since I’d arrived at the cottage, and my lower back was aching slightly from the tension of the long drive. It would be a pleasure to stretch my legs in the spacious backseat while a knowledgeable native took the wheel.
Apart from that, the limo was equipped with one essential piece of equipment the Mini lacked: a cellular telephone. I put in a call to Miss Kingsley before Paul had finished loading our luggage into the trunk.
“Mr. Willis did not check into the Flamborough last night,” she reported. “He stayed at number three, Anne Elizabeth Court. It’s near the Inns of Court.”
The address sounded strangely familiar. I glanced down at the slip of paper bearing directions to the family firm and said, “But that’s where we’re going now. I thought it was a business address.”
“Lucy and Arthur Willis live in flats above the family’s offices,” Miss Kingsley informed me. “I assume Mr. Willis spent the night in one of them. He left the building approximately one hour ago.”
I groaned. “Any idea where he went?”
“I’m sorry, Lori, but Bjorn lost him in traffic.”
“Bjorn?” I said. “Bjorn the barman?”
“That’s right,” said Miss Kingsley. “It was Bjorn’s night off, so I asked him to keep an eye on Lucy’s residence, in case Mr. Willis showed up there.”
I’d have to remember to tip poor Bjorn big-time the next time I had a drink in the Flamborough’s bar. I was pretty sure that Miss Kingsley hadn’t so much asked as ordered him to spend his night off staking out the Inns of Court. I thanked Miss Kingsley, asked her to call if she had anything new to report, then rang Emma.
“Lori!” she exclaimed, sounding out of breath. “If my bell peppers rot on the ground, I’ll know who to blame.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Slow down. What’s going on?”
“It’s this search you sent me on,” she replied. “I’ve been up half the night sorting through your in-laws’ dirty laundry. I haven’t even been out to the garden yet.”
The flood of adrenaline that carried Emma through the rigors of harvesttime had evidently spilled over into her research project. She sounded giddy as a kitten. I glanced out of the limo’s tinted window, saw that we’d come to a standstill in a long line of cars on Waterloo Bridge, and figured I’d have time for several hampers’ worth of dirty laundry. “Do tell.”
“I haven’t gotten started on the old feud yet, but if it’s anything like more recent history, it’ll be a king-sized can of worms.”
“Sleeping dogs,” I corrected. “Never mind. Go on.” I could picture Emma settling onto the horsehair sofa in the family room at the manor house, leaning against the sofa’s arm and curling her legs up under her, with Ham sprawled on the hearth rug, and sunlight streaming through the windows behind her. The image made me so homesick for the cottage that I nearly missed the first part of what she was saying.
“It’s all to do with the older generation,” Emma began. “That’s two brothers and a sister: Thomas, the eldest, Williston, and Anthea. Three years ago, they were working full-time for the firm, then suddenly, poof, they all retired at once, leaving their children to pick up the pieces.”
“Gerald mentioned that his father had health problems,” I remarked.
“That takes care of Thomas,” said Emma, “but I’ll bet Gerald didn’t mention that they had to clap his uncle Williston into a madhouse!”
I jerked forward on the backseat. “You’re kidding.”
“That’s the least of it,” Emma went on. “Wait till you hear what caused his breakdown. Are you listening? Willuton’s wife ran off with Anthea’s husband.”
“Good grief ...” I muttered.
“It gets better,” said Emma. “Apparently Anthea’s husband—his name is Douglas—was sound as a bell until he decided to have a midlife crisis and came under the influence of a doctor who was prescribing questionable medication. It brought out the beast in Douglas, and he started going through legal secretaries like there was no tomorrow. The next thing anyone knew, he’d bolted for Canada, with Williston’s pretty young wife in tow. A year later, Williston went stark, raving mad, and they had to lock him up. He’s still in a convalescent home down in Kent.”
“What about Anthea?” I asked, scrambling to keep up. “What did she do after Douglas left?”
“Divorced him, chucked her career, and ran away to the family farm up in Yorkshire, where she’s known as Anthea Willis.” Emma paused for a breath. “She dispensed with Douglas’s last name, as did her daughters, and I can’t say I blame them. What self-respecting woman would want to be associated with a creep like Douglas?”
“Let me get this straight.” Emma’s zeal was admirable, but I felt as though I’d been hit by a hailstorm. “Thomas is sick, Williston’s crazy, Anthea’s gone into seclusion, and Douglas is a ... an expatriate junkie philanderer? Whew.” I mopped my brow. “Is all of this public knowledge?”
“Not really,” said Emma. “I got most of this information from Derek’s solicitor. If he hadn’t been an old friend, I don’t think he‘d’ve told me as much as he did. The legal world is pretty good about protecting its own.”
“Still,” I said, “it couldn’t have done the firm’s reputation much good.”
“Gerald held the firm rock-steady through the early days,” Emma told me. “Derek’s solicitor says that the clients trusted Gerald, and no one on the net has a bad word to say about him. They acknowledge that he made certain errors in judgment, but put it down to the pressure he was under at the time, which, as you can imagine, must have been considerable.”
“And his cousin Lucy’s been running the place since he left,” I mused.
“She’s doing a good job of it, too,” Emma added. “I didn’t learn much about her sisters or this other cousin, Arthur, but they must be pulling their weight, because the firm’s flourishing, in spite of everything.”
“Gosh,” I said, blinking dazedly down at the Thames. “Too bad you couldn’t dig up something juicy.”
Emma’s laughter blended with the sound of Ham barking in the background. She ordered the dog to be quiet, then asked me to hold, because someone was coming up the drive. I heard the front
door open, a muffled exchange of words, the thump of the door as it was closed again, and the distant sound of an engine revving. A moment later, Emma was back.
“Another delivery,” she announced. “I assume you want me to put the fax machine in the shed with the photocopier.”
“Fax machine?” I shook my head. “Aunt Dimity’s right, Emma. William must be stopped.”
“Any trace of him?” Emma asked.
“His spoor’s been sighted, but so far he’s evaded capture.” I relayed Miss Kingsley’s news, adding that I still intended to visit Lucy Willis, on the off chance that she might know where Willis, Sr., had gone.
“Watch what you say about Anthea and that creep Douglas,” Emma cautioned. “They’re Lucy’s mom and dad. And crazy old Williston is Arthur’s father.”
“I’ll write it all down on my wrist,” I promised. Nell reminded me to ask Emma to keep her eyes open for any reference to a disputed legacy, and Emma agreed to tackle ancient history after she’d seen to her peppers.
“Well?” said Nell, as I hung up the phone.
I stared at her blankly for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Nell,” I began, “remember when I said that this branch of the family sounded interesting ... ?”
Anne Elizabeth Court was a tiny square of redbrick Georgian row houses surrounding a microscopic patch of lawn. The street bordering the lawn was so narrow that I thought the limo wouldn’t fit, but Paul was accustomed to navigating the medieval byways of his city and sailed up to number three without the slightest hesitation.
The Willises occupied one of five identical four-story buildings on the west side of the square. All had shiny white railings running along the sidewalk, fan windows above pristine white doors, and brass plates that identified their residents. Whereas the other plates were engraved with the names of two or more tenants, however, the plate at number three boasted a single occupant: “Willis & Willis.”
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