The bag Nell had packed was about five times larger than the usual overnight case, so perhaps she sensed what I sensed. Something told me that our search for Willis, Sr., wouldn’t end after a brief visit with Cousin Gerald. When Aunt Dimity got involved, things almost always turned out to be more complicated than they seemed.
6.
Nell proved to be an ideal traveling companion. She got me from Finch to Oxford without a hitch, and I couldn’t fault the route she’d laid out after that. The multilane M40 wasn’t a shortcut to Haslemere, but it was relatively wide, generally straight, and as boring as porridge.
Nell was a good passenger, too. She didn’t cling to the armrest or gasp in horror, at any rate, the way Bill did when I drove in England, and her occasional reminders to stay in the center of the lane weren’t prefaced with a semi-hysterical “For God’s sake, Lori ... ”
She didn’t make wisecracks about my car, either. Granted, the Mini wasn’t much bigger than a skateboard, but that was fine with me. Any car that made me feel like the smallest target on the road was fine with me. As far as I was concerned, the Mini’s only drawback was a lack of luggage space, but that didn’t seem to bother Nell. She was content to hold Bertie in her lap, and if she had any objections to stacking her large suitcase on the backseat atop the even larger case she’d insisted on packing for me, she kept them to herself.
I was pleasantly surprised. I’d never spent much time alone with Nell, in part because the opportunity seldom arose, and in part because I found her a bit daunting. She seemed so cool and distant, so self-contained, more mature at twelve than I’d been at twice her age. She dressed beautifully, spoke fluent French, and knew better than to mention birthing stalls in polite company. She didn’t talk much at all, in fact, and I was curious to know what was going on beneath that mop of golden curls. I’d have a twelve-year-old of my own to deal with one day, God willing.
Nell was looking somewhat pensive as we hit the M40, staring down at Bertie, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“Worried about William?” I asked.
“No,” she said distractedly. “I’m worried that Bertie might be sick. He looks a bit peaky, don’t you think?”
Bang goes the myth of Nell’s maturity, I thought, with an inward smile. “Hold him up so he can see out of the window. It might help take his mind off of his tummy.”
Nell lifted the chocolate-brown bear from her lap and turned him to face the passing scenery. A quarter-mile later, she nodded. “Much better. Thank you, Lori. I expect you’ve had the same trouble with Reginald.”
“Not really,” I told her. “Reg is a good little traveler, though I don’t think he’ll enjoy being carted around in William’s briefcase.”
“He’ll be fine,” Nell said serenely. “William will, too, as long as Aunt Dimity’s there to look after them.”
“A disembodied bodyguard?” I smiled again, outwardly this time, not because Nell’s words were funny, but because they could well be true. In the past, Dimity had shown herself to be a less-than-blithe spirit toward those people she deemed objectionable. She’d haunt Cousin Gerald’s hide off if he so much as thought about harming Willis, Sr. “I suppose you’re right,” I admitted, “but all the same, I’m not too happy about the way William left the cottage. It’s not like him to rush off without telling anyone.”
“Oh, but, Lori, it is,” Nell said earnestly. “It’s exactly like him. If he’d told us he was going, we’d have wanted to go along, and he couldn’t allow that.”
“Why not?” I asked, intrigued.
“Because there might be trouble,” Nell replied, with a soft but nonetheless rapturous sigh. “He doesn’t mind facing it on his own, but he’d mind very much if you or I were dragged into it.”
“You think he’s being chivalrous?” I said thoughtfully. A shadowy corner of my mind had been busily manufacturing nightmares about senile dementia, but Nell’s astute observation cast a new light on the situation. My father-in-law was a classic gentleman—in his book, women and children always came first. If he’d wanted to leave the cottage on some dangerous mission, his only choice would have been to wait until he was alone, then make a run for it, leaving no tracks for us to follow. “I have to hand it to you, Nell. I do believe you’ve hit the nail on the head again. I don’t suppose you’ve given any thought to why he’s gone to see Cousin Gerald.”
“I have, but ...” Nell gave me a hesitant, sidelong glance. “I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“Break it to me gently, then,” I coaxed.
“William’s told me once or twice that he hasn’t enough work to do back in Boston.” Nell stopped to look at me again.
“Has he?” I said uneasily.
“Yes. He said that Bill was doing everything and that he felt ... sort of ... useless,” Nell explained. “I think he may have gone to talk to Cousin Gerald about—”
“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.