“Forming a new partnership? But Nell, that’s ...” Entirely possible, I finished silently. Bill had been elbowing his father to the sidelines for months now. What if he’d finally succeeded in elbowing him out of Boston altogether? Willis, Sr., had made no secret of his desire to establish a European base for Willis & Willis, but Bill hadn’t taken him seriously.
Perhaps Cousin Gerald had. Gerald was out of a job at the moment, and any lawyer in his right mind—let alone one who was currently unemployed—would jump at the chance to work with my experienced and extremely well-connected father-in-law.
“But why Gerald?” I said aloud. “Why not his respectable cousins? Can you picture William hooking up with a womanizing embezzler?”
“No,” said Nell, “but William might not know about Gerald’s reputation. He didn’t ask Miss Kingsley.”
“Well, that’s the first thing he’s going to hear about from me,” I said, pressing down on the accelerator.
No wonder Aunt Dimity had sounded the alarm. The idea of Willis, Sr., discussing business with a black sheep like Gerald was bad enough, but the thought of him putting the entire Atlantic Ocean between us was far worse. My own father had died before I’d learned to walk, so Willis, Sr., was, in all the ways that counted, the only father I’d ever known. I would do everything I could to keep from losing him.
The Willis mansion without Willis, Sr., would be a much colder and lonelier place to live.
The closest thing to a hotel in Finch was the upstairs back room in Mr. and Mrs. Peacock’s pub. A handful of tourists had stayed there over the years, but few had returned, put off, perhaps, by the fact that the Peacocks had changed nothing in the room—not even the sheets and pillow cases—since Martin, their army-bound son, had vacated it some twenty years ago.
Haslemere, Derek had assured me, offered a much wider range of accommodation. It wasn’t a touristy place—not a chain hotel in sight—but its wooded hills and open patches of heath had drawn a steady stream of city-worn Londoners since the coming of the railway in 1859, and the town catered to their needs with a goodly number of small hotels, B&Bs, and guest houses.
In the end, my choice of lodgings was based on pure panic. After four weary hours of highway driving, we found ourselves in Haslemere at last and moving rapidly toward the top of the High Street, where five roads converged in what looked to me to be a life-threatening maelstrom of traffic. When the Georgian Hotel loomed on my right, with its name spelled out in graceful gold letters on a creamy Queen Anne front, I bailed out.
Panic paid off. The Georgian was a comfortable hotel a stone’s throw from the center of town, with a spacious bar lounge that opened onto a walled garden. The staff seemed friendly, too. Miss Coombs, the red-haired, freckle-faced young receptionist, welcomed us at the front door and escorted us into her sunny office, where we signed in for an overnight stay.
I registered under my own name—Lori Shepherd—rather than my husband‘s, in part to avoid drawing attention to a possible connection between myself and Gerald Willis, but mainly because it was still my legal name.
Nell registered under the name of Nicolette Gascon. I had no idea why, or what it portended, but she announced her new identity with such self-assurance that I decided to ask questions later rather than risk an argument in front of the amiable, but no doubt observant, Miss Coombs. As soon as we’d finished the paperwork, Nell went up to our room, with a heavily laden porter in tow, to call her parents and let them know we’d survived our ordeal by tire.
I stayed behind to ask Miss Coombs for directions to Gerald Willis’s house. The address Miss Kingsley had provided was, as were so many addresses in England, useful only to those already familiar with the area. “The Larches, Midhurst Road,” didn’t appear in Nell’s road atlas, but I thought it might mean something to the receptionist at a local hotel.
It did.
7.
“The—the Larches?” Miss Coombs’s freckled face turned as pink as one of Emma’s prizewinning peonies. “You’re going to see Ger—Mr. Willis?”
“That’s right,” I replied. “Do you know him?”
Miss Coombs nodded and her cheeks grew even brighter. “That is to say, he stops by once or twice a week for a drink in the lounge. He came in yesterday, in fact, to use my telephone”—her hand drifted over our registration cards to touch the instrument on her desk—“since his own wasn’t working.”
“So I discovered.” I smiled cordially, but couldn’t help staring at the young woman’s fingers as she caressed the receiver.
Miss Coombs followed my gaze to the telephone and quickly pulled her hand into her lap. “Mr. Willis is always having to cope with one little difficulty or another,” she explained, in a professionally chatty tone of voice. “Last month it was a leaky roof, and the month before he had to completely refit the WC. The Larches isn’t in very good repair, I’m afraid. Or so I’ve heard.” Her eyes wandered back to the telephone and she gave an unmistakably wistful sigh. “I’ve never actually been there myself.”
Oh-ho, I thought. What have we here? Was Gerald Willis breaking hearts in Haslemere even as he dallied with his lady friend in London? Miss Coombs was giving me the distinct impression that he stopped in at the Georgian to sample more than its beer. The vague disdain I’d been feeling for Cousin Gerald began to take on a definite shape. It was one thing to wine and dine a sophisticated woman in London, but it was quite another to prey on a provincial innocent like Miss Coombs. It turned my stomach to think of my courtly father-in-law having anything to do with such a snake.
“Can you tell me how to get to Mr. Willis’s house?” I asked again, though by now I was fairly sure that Miss Coombs could tell me the color of his shutters. “I really must see him.”
The young woman hesitated, unsettled, perhaps, by the thought of an American interloper claiming a privilege that had so far been denied her. She hadn’t had the presence of mind to check out the ring finger on my left hand, and on a whim I slipped my wedding band off. If Cousin Gerald thought I was single, he might be more inclined to make a pass at me, and I was looking forward to taking the wind out of his sails.
Miss Coombs’s training prevailed at last, and she pulled a photocopied map from the file cabinet behind her desk. When she’d finished marking the route, she held the map out to me, but I gestured for her to keep it and asked for directions to Saint Bartholomew’s Church. I hadn’t mentioned it to Nell, but I was determined to see those blasted bells before I spoke with Bill. He was bound to ask why we’d gone to Haslemere, and I’d never been able to lie to him convincingly. I had to have something truthful to tell him, even if it was only half-truthful.
Miss Coombs bent over the map once more before handing it to me. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Miss”—she glanced down at the registration cards and corrected herself coolly—
“Ms.
Shepherd?”
“Thanks, but I think that’ll be all for now.” I left the office without the slightest doubt that the poor woman had a queen-sized crush on Cousin Gerald. After pausing in the hallway to hang my wedding ring on the neck chain that held the heart-shaped locket Bill had given me when he proposed, I sprinted up the stairs, feeling rather pleased with myself. In less than twenty minutes, I’d gotten directions to Gerald’s home, met one of his admirers, and discovered that he was refurbishing a run-down house—turning it into a love nest, I suspected, in which to entertain his country conquests. Eager to impress Nell with my investigative acumen, I burst into the room—and stopped short. A strange woman was leaning over the bed nearest the door, and she appeared to be rifling my suitcase.
“Excuse me,”
I said peremptorily, and she turned, but I had to stare long and hard before I realized that the stranger standing not three feet away from me was Nell. Her own father would have needed a second glance.
Nell Harris was always well dressed. Her fashion sense had been honed, and her closets filled, by none other than the famous Nanny Cole, the most sought-after couturiere in London and a longtime friend of the Harris family. I’d come to Haslemere wearing my favorite summer-weight cotton sweater, jeans, and sneakers, but Nell had donned a natty pair of cuffed and pleated gabardine trousers and a demure white linen blouse with delicate embroidery on the collar and cuffs.
She wasn’t wearing them any longer.
Nell had traded her pleated trousers for sheer black hose and an exceedingly short black leather skirt, exchanged her demure blouse for a skin-hugging black turtleneck, wrapped herself in an oversized black blazer, cinched it in at the waist with a broad black leather belt, and pulled a black cloche over her curls. Bertie, who sat on the bureau, impassively watching the proceedings, sported a blue-and-white-striped Breton sweater and a tiny black beret. They looked like something out of a Shirley Temple movie scripted by Jean-Paul Sartre.
I closed the door behind me and eyed Nell warily. “Nicolette Gascon, I presume.”
“Mais oui,
”
Nell replied, putting a hand to her cloche. “Do you like my disguise? I’ve brought one for you, too.” She nodded toward the bed, where she’d laid out a severely tailored dark-gray tweed skirt and blazer I’d buried at the back of my closet at the cottage; a high-necked pearl-gray silk blouse, plain black flats, and a clunky black briefcase belonging to Derek.
“What am I? The mortician?” I said, fingering the tweeds.
“No,” Nell replied. “You’re William’s executive assistant.”
Nell returned to her unpacking while I sat on the peach-colored armchair beside the bureau and folded my arms. The room was charming—cinnamon walls and pretty floral bedspreads, a marble-topped writing table before a broad, recessed window, fresh flowers in a china vase on the writing table, and a dainty bowl filled with potpourri next to Bertie on the bureau. I was particularly glad to see that we had our own bathroom. The Georgian might be more than two hundred years old, but its amenities were blessedly up-to-date.
“And who is Nicolette Gascon?” I inquired patiently.
“William’s ward.” Nell explained. “We’ve come down from London to bring him some important papers.” Nell paused to give me an anxious glance. “Am I being presumptuous ? Papa says that I am sometimes, and that I shouldn’t be, because it annoys people.”
I had to laugh: “Oh, what the hell, why shouldn’t we pull a fast one on Gerald? He’s probably doing the same thing to William.”
Nell nodded happily. “That’s what Bertrand thought.”
I got up and reached for the tweeds. I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about changing out of my comfy jeans and sweater, but I couldn’t spoil Nell’s fun. “So this was Bertie’s idea?”
“Bertrand,”
she corrected. “He’s going to stay behind to chat up the maids.”
While I changed into the hideous tweeds, I told Nell about my interview with Miss Coombs. “There’s no doubt about it,” I concluded. “Miss Coombs is in love with Cousin Gerald.”
“Really?” said Nell. “So are Mandy, Karen, Jane, Denice, and Alvira. And Mr. Digby wouldn’t be at all surprised if the bartender wasn’t half in love with Gerald, too.”
I paused in my struggle to zip the tweed skirt. “Who ... ?” I asked.
“Mandy, Karen, and Jane are chambermaids; Denice works in the garden; and Alvira’s the cook’s helper,” Nell explained. “Mr. Digby is the porter. He said I reminded him of his granddaughter, and we had such a nice talk. His son-in-law manages the Midlands Bank here in town. Cousin Gerald has an account there. A remarkably large account. He draws on it twice a month.”
My investigative acumen seemed somehow less impressive than it had a short while ago. Nell hadn’t mentioned the Larches yet, but I expected at any minute to hear that Mr. Digby’s great-grandnephew was the plumber who’d refitted Cousin Gerald’s WC.
“So Gerald has ‘vast sums of money,’ ” I mused, recalling Aunt Dimity’s note. “I wonder how he manages that without a job?” I pulled on the tweed blazer and grimaced at my reflection in the mirror. I looked like the Executive Assistant from Hell.
“Mr. Digby told me that he takes the train into the city twice a month, regular as clockwork, right after he draws on his account,” said Nell. “Mr. Digby’s daughter works at the ticket office,” she added.
My reflected grimace turned into a disapproving sneer. The mystery woman in London twice a month, the entire female staff—and possibly the bartender—of the Georgian Hotel once or twice a week, and who knew how many others in between? No wonder the poor boy was trying to dip his hand in Willis, Sr.’s pocket. With a gruel ing schedule of debauchery like that, the expenses could add up.
“The more I hear about Cousin Gerald, the less I like him,” I said aloud. I handed Nell the town map, bid Bertrand adieu, and picked up my briefcase. “Now let’s go and find out what this lowlife has to do with my father-in-law.”
I didn’t actually close my eyes when we went through the five-way intersection at the top of the High Street, but I considered it. Derek had told me that the redevelopment of England’s south coast was putting a strain on the infrastructure, and I now saw what he meant. It was half past four and rush hour was well under way—fleets of semis lumbered along roads built for oxcarts, and increased commuter traffic choked all the main arteries. Once we’d passed the crossroads, however, the congestion let up and I relaxed.
It was a lovely drive. The forests of southern England had been thinned by the great gale of ‘87, but there were still plenty of tall trees around Haslemere, and the Midhurst Road was a dappled ribbon winding between them.
“There it is.” Nell spotted the sign before I did. It was small and white and hanging from an iron post at the mouth of a grassy drive that led back into the woods, and it had “The Larches” painted on it in green letters.
“Cousin Gerald must value his privacy,” I commented, turning cautiously into the drive. There were no other houses in sight, and we drove a good fifty yards into the trees before we got our first look at the Larches.