The interior wall held an exquisite neoclassical fireplace framed by gold-veined marble columns. Above the mantelpiece hung a late-seventeenth-century oil painting, a portrait of an oval-faced, plump-shouldered woman in a silver-blue satin gown with billowing sleeves. A cluster of chairs and a satinwood settee sat invitingly before the hearth, but Lucy led us to a pair of chairs in front of the walnut desk and took her place behind it.
“How may I help you?” she inquired, taking a fountain pen and a leatherbound notebook from the desk.
“Alors, Mademoiselle Willis—” Nell began.
“Stop.” I cut Nicolette off in midstream. I’d been nursing a guilty conscience about the trick we’d played on Gerald down in Haslemere. It had left me feeling ashamed, and I had no intention of spending the rest of the journey pretending to be someone I wasn’t.
Lucy was staring rather forbiddingly at Nell, as though silently reprimanding her for wasting valuable time, but the moment I introduced myself, her eyes lit up with pleasure.
“How delightful,” she said. “Cousin William told me you were in the country, but I’d no idea you were coming up to town.”
“We came up this morning,” I told her.
“After sending Cousin William ahead to test the waters?” Lucy shook her head. “I’ve been meaning to lay that old quarrel to rest for ages, but”—she pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed wearily—“I don’t get the chance to travel much anymore. I must say that I’m glad Cousin William took the initiative. One can never have too much family.”
Wait till you meet Honoria and Charlotte, I thought grimly. Aloud I said, “I couldn’t agree more. Nell and I stopped to see Gerald first, and—”
“You’ve spoken with Gerald?” Lucy asked, laying her pen aside.
I nodded. “We met with him at his home yesterday.”
“Three visitors in one day?” Lucy said, a sardonic edge to her voice. “That makes for a change. The last I’d heard, he’d become a hermit.” She examined her fingernails before asking diffidently, “How is he? In good health and so forth?”
For a moment I was back in the pedestrian passage, breathless in Gerald’s embrace, my palms pressed snugly against his firm, broad, and undoubtedly healthy chest. “He seemed pretty fit to me,” I murmured.
“He’s cataloguing a collection of sacred objects,” Nell put in, with a glance in my direction. “Reliquaries—things like that. They were beautiful. Valuable, as well, I should imagine.”
“His father’s collection,” Lucy said, nodding. “Uncle Tom picked up most of the pieces for a song after the war, but he never found the time to organize them. That must be why Gerald’s doing it now. My uncle’s ill, you see, and Gerald’s had a lot of free time on his hands recently.” Lucy closed her notebook with a snap and put it back in the desk drawer. “I do hope you can stay long enough for a cup of tea,” she added, her smile returning.
“That depends,” I replied, “on whether you can tell me where my father-in-law went after he left here. I need to speak with him, but I don’t know how to get hold of him.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lucy, “but he didn’t tell us where he was going next. Isn’t his Mercedes equipped with a telephone?”
“Not yet,” I said, making a mental note to have one installed the moment I caught up with Willis, Sr. “I guess we’re all yours, Lucy.”
“Splendid.” Lucy motioned toward the hearth. “Make yourselves comfortable and I’ll ring for tea.”
Nell hefted her white shoulder bag and moved to one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, while I took a place on the settee, wondering what Gerald had done to earn Lucy’s disdain. It was easy to see that she’d neither forgotten nor forgiven his mistakes, and though she must have felt duty-bound to ask after him, it seemed unlikely that she lay awake nights fretting over the state of his health.
“Lucy,” I said when she’d taken the chair opposite Nell‘s, “I wish I could say that this was a purely social visit, but actually I have a favor to ask of you.”
Lucy crossed her legs and regarded me steadily. “What would that be?”
“It’s about this plan my father-in-law has to set up shop here in England,” I said.
Lucy’s eyebrows rose. “Cousin William said nothing to me about moving to England.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, and when Lucy nodded firmly, my heart sank. I should have known that Willis, Sr., would ask Lucy to keep his proposal confidential, just as he’d asked Gerald. “Okay,” I said reasonably, “but if he ever mentions the subject, I’d appreciate it if you’d quash it.”
“Why?” Lucy asked, mystified.
“Because ... he’s needed at home,” I said.“Would you tell him that, if he ever says anything about moving? Remind him that he’s needed at home?”
“I will,” Lucy promised. She seemed puzzled but sympathetic as she went on. “But I promise you, all we talked about was family history. Are you familiar with the long-running feud?”
“I know that it existed,” I said, “but I don’t know what started it.”
“There are competing theories,” Lucy said. “William wants to discover which one is correct.”
“Does it really matter?” I asked. “After all of this time, what could possibly be at stake?”
Lucy lifted her hand and drew it slowly through the air. “Everything you see around you,” she replied. “If William’s theory is valid, it could be argued that number three, Anne Elizabeth Court, belongs to your branch of the family.”
I blinked at the gilt ceiling, the exquisite carpet, the magnificent fireplace, and heard the distant yapping of no-longer-sleeping dogs. Here was a prize worth fighting for. “You don’t seem to be worried.”
“I’m not,” Lucy agreed. “I’m convinced that our version of history is the correct one. Shall I explain why?”
“I’m all ears,” I said.
Lucy pointed at the portrait hanging above the fireplace. “Allow me to introduce Julia Louise Willis. She’s the link between our two families.”
I turned to look at the portrait. My eyes had been drawn to the woman’s glorious silver-blue gown when I’d first entered the room, but now I studied her face as well, and saw in it a reflection of Lucy’s. Both women had full lips, high foreheads, brown eyes, and dark-brown hair, though Julia Louise’s was poufed to an astonishing height and draped with a lacy square kerchief, contrasting with Lucy’s flattering and modem bob. Arthur had no doubt inherited his bulk from his plump ancestress, and so, too, I realized with a queer jolt of recognition, had my brown-eyed and formerly brown-haired husband. More unsettling still was the thought that, if Arthur ever tamed his hair and trimmed his beard, he might be taken for Bill’s younger, plumper brother. Number three, Anne Elizabeth Court, was beginning to feel like a Willis-filled hall of mirrors.
“Gerald mentioned Julia Louise,” I said, “but he acted as though he knew nothing about her.”
Lucy’s lips tightened. “My cousin has felt the need to distance himself from the rest of us recently, but I can assure you that he knows all about Julia Louise. I’ve seen to it that everyone in the family knows of her contributions to the firm. William was particularly interested in Julia Louise,” she went on, in a less peevish tone of voice. “And who wouldn’t be? She was a brilliant, powerful woman. After her husband died, she moved the firm from Bath to Anne Elizabeth Court, confident that her sons would outshine every other solicitor in London.”
“Did they?” Nell asked.
“One of them did,” Lucy answered. “The elder son, Sir Williston Willis—”
“That’s your uncle’s name, isn’t it?” I said, choking back the imbecilic urge to add, The crazy one.