“What? Speak up, Lori. I missed that last bit.”
“I was just saying that Lucy’s under a lot of pressure,” I replied quickly. “It’s a shame Gerald had to leave. She could use his help.”
Nell reminded me to ask Emma to look for information on Sybella Markham, and her reminder prompted me to describe our visit to Uncle Williston. Emma was stunned to hear that Douglas and Sibyl were dead.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “Nobody said a word about it to me.” She paused before adding thoughtfully, “Maybe it’s because they died in Canada. Nobody here pays much attention to what goes on there.”
“Under the circumstances, I’m sure the family kept the whole thing as quiet as they could,” I told her.
“Oh, Lori ...” Emma sighed. “If I wasn’t totally committed to my runner beans today, I’d hop in the car and race you to Aunt Anthea’s. I only get to hear about these people. You get to meet them.”
“I’ll invite them all to a family reunion at the cottage,” I promised, and I was only half joking. I’d be interested to see how my levelheaded friend reacted to Arthur, Lucy, Uncle Williston, and perhaps most of all, to Gerald.
21.
I tried reaching Bill again, to no avail. We passed Don-caster, Pontefract, and Leeds, turned east for York, then northeast for Pickering. By two o‘clock, the open fields of golden grain had been replaced by solid walls of broad, steep hills that cut off the horizon. Patches of woodland shaded roads nestled into narrow valleys, and crooked streams ran fast and cold beneath medieval gray stone bridges. We’d reached the southern edge of the North York Moors.
Six miles beyond Pickering lay the village of Lastingham. It was a pretty place, a collection of gray stone houses tucked into a shadowy pocket of trees at the head of a small river. The parish church, according to Paul’s atlas, had been founded in the seventh century by Saint Cedd, a Northumbrian bishop and missionary, who was buried beneath its crypt. Saint Mary’s was a place of pilgrimage, and it drew me like a magnet, but as soon as Paul had parked the limo in the widest part of the village street, Nell pulled me toward the Blacksmith’s Arms.
“Lunch and information,” she murmured, “are more important than sightseeing.”
She was right, of course. Aunt Dimity had conveyed Anthea’s address with her usual carefree disregard for details. The village pub would no doubt be the place to get them—and lunch.
Much to my surprise, Paul joined us on the pub’s doorstep. For a brief, delightful moment I thought he’d finally thrown decorum to the wind, but, alas, his decision was motivated by strict propriety. It wouldn’t do, he told us, for ladies such as ourselves to go chatting up a pack of strangers. If we’d kindly stand aside, he’d undertake the onerous task of interviewing the landlord himself.
Nell and I were in the midst of giving our separate but strikingly similar responses to Paul’s offer—the phrase “perfectly capable of looking after ourselves” formed a chorus—when we both pulled up short, distracted by sounds that seemed to come from another age.
A clatter of hooves and a braying whinny were followed by the thump of riding boots hitting the asphalt as a tall woman dismounted from a fifteen-hand bay gelding not twenty feet away from us. The woman appeared to be on the far side of middle age, but she moved with the muscular grace of a natural athlete and cut an imposing figure in trim fawn jodhpurs, a fitted black riding coat, shiny black boots, and a black velvet riding helmet. Her hair was gray and her face weathered, but her full lips, high forehead, and dark-brown eyes marked her as a descendant of the infamous Julia Louise.
“Is that your bus?” she demanded, waving her riding crop in the direction of the limousine.
I watched open-mouthed with admiration as Paul strode forward and planted his slight figure directly in front of the woman’s imposing one.
“Yes, ma‘am,” he declared. “And I’m very sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you in any way.”
“You haven’t inconvenienced me yet,” the woman informed Paul, in a less strident tone of voice, “but I’m expecting a caravan through at any moment, and it’ll never clear your bumpers. Kindly move them.”
“Very good, ma‘am,” Paul said. “I’ll see to it immediately.” He put a finger to his forehead, since his cap was in his hand, and made a beeline for the limousine.
Satisfied, the woman leapt back into the saddle, calmed her skittish steed, and trotted grandly out of the village on the road we’d taken in. Nell and I exchanged incredulous glances, then sprinted over to the limo and tumbled hastily into the backseat.
“Paul!” I cried. “Follow that horse!”
The widest part of Lastingham’s main street wasn’t very wide, but with the consummate skill of a London-trained cabbie, Paul pulled off a fifteen-point turn without losing a flake of paint and got the limo pointed in the right direction. The engine surged, the limo lunged forward, and a stream of curious onlookers spilled out of the Blacksmith’s Arms to watch us fly up the steep road leading out of town. As we crested the hill, Nell spotted horse and rider only a quarter of a mile ahead, taking a drystone wall in a single, breathtaking bound.
“She’s gone cross-country,” Nell exclaimed. “The roof, Paul! Open the roof!”
Paul pressed a button, the roof slid back, and the wind whipped Nell’s golden curls as she thrust her head and shoulders through the opening. I wrapped my arms around her knees to keep her from losing her balance while she stood on tiptoe, craning her neck to see over the walls and hedges.
“She’s riding parallel to us,” Nell shouted from on high. “Keep going, Paul, but not too fast. We don’t want to overtake her.”
Paul slowed accordingly, then slowed some more, despite Nell’s exhortations, until the limo’s leonine roar had become a domestic purr and we were barely crawling.
“What are you doing?” Nell scolded, lowering herself into the limo. “She’s miles ahead of us! We’ll never catch her up now.”
“No need to, my lady,” Paul commented, glancing into the rearview mirror. He executed a smooth right-hand turn, drove between a pair of square stone pillars, and came to a halt in a graveled courtyard. Turning to Nell, he said, “There was a millstone back a ways, half sunk in the ground, with ‘Cobb Farm’ carved into it as clear as day. Being up top the way you was, my lady, you must have overlooked it.” While Paul chuckled heartily at his own joke, Nell and I got out of the limo.
Nell gazed at the courtyard and the surrounding countryside. “I think we’ve found the place where good horses go when they die.”
I knew what she meant. Cobb Farm was surrounded by rolling green hills and lush meadows that would have seemed incomplete without a grazing horse or two. A pyramid of cylindrical hay bales was stacked in a field behind us, across the road; ahead of us, on the far side of the graveled courtyard, a hay wagon and a high-perch black buggy had been drawn up before a sturdy stone barn.
To our right was a long stone building with a red-clay tile roof that looked and smelled very much like a stable. The wide wooden doors had been left open, revealing a series of well-kept box stalls, the floors littered with fresh straw, the posts neatly hung with buckets and brushes, bridles and bits. The only sign of life, however, was a dainty black-and-white cat who was busily cleaning her whiskers in a straw-covered patch of sunlight.
Facing the stable, across the courtyard, stood a large two-story house. It was perfectly square, with four massive chimney stacks rising from its mossy roof, and a white-painted door and fanlight set into its shallow porch. Before the house lay a small formal garden, a simple arrangement of statuary, clipped hedges, and square flower-beds flanking a paved walkway that led to the front door.