A Rather Remarkable Homecoming (4 page)

Harriet spoke now, still in a calm voice, but sad. “Penny, if the Mosley brothers get their way, there won’t be a single brick or blade of grass you’d recognize from your grandmother,” she explained. “Meanwhile, many of our villages are becoming ghost towns. Where will we have our babies? Where will our old people go if our local doctors desert us and our public health centers close down?”

This was all too much for me now. “What price is the town asking for the whole place—the house and the extra land?” I asked, ready to elbow out all comers.

Harriet named a sum which, I am sorry to say, would have taken our entire inheritance . . . and then a whole lot more. Sufficiently humbled, I turned to Jeremy pleadingly. “There must be some way to protect Grandma’s house and the surrounding property, like, maybe put it into a
permanent
trust this time.”

Harriet took the cue, leaning forward on the sofa and looking at me with a lively gleam in her eye. “Well . . . we
do
have an idea,” she said feistily. “And our, er, ‘esteemed friend’ thinks it’s ‘right up your street’. You see, if your grandmother’s house should prove to have some important historical value, well then, it might qualify for Landmark Status or something like that, which would put pay, once and for all, to the Mosleys’ dreadful plans. And such a discovery might also open many more doors for us to qualify for donations and financial aid, so we can hold on to it all.”

Colin was nodding vigorously throughout this. “You guys have done stuff like this before, right?” he said challengingly. “You dig through history to find evidence that some old thing is worth a lot more than it first seemed.”

“Do you have reason to believe that the house has such hidden value?” Jeremy asked cautiously.

“Perhaps,” Harriet said with a mischievous smile. “A member of our Legacy Society—Trevor Branwhistle—thinks he’s found something that he’d like to tell you about personally. Of course, he’ll need
you
to find better evidence to back up his theory. Now if
anybody
could uncover the true historical value of a place,” Harriet suggested, “it’s the famous firm of Nichols & Laidley. Why, your reputation precedes you! Our royal friend has been following your exploits in the newspaper and he is
most
impressed. So we all think you two are the right team for this noble task.”

Now, the English will joke about practically anything, and they are highly suspicious of flattery. But all you have to do is tell them that their King or country needs them, and, well, they get this sober look on their faces as if they’re ready to mount a horse, grab a sword and shield, and ride out to battle in the service of King Arthur.

Jeremy had just that look on his face right now. In fact, I think he even gulped at the mere thought of Prince Charles reading all about our latest cases while munching his royal breakfast scones.

Meanwhile, having put the hook in our mouths, Harriet rose as if to leave. Colin, realizing that they were on their way out, quickly reached for a ham sandwich and wolfed it.

But as Harriet paused to shake hands again, she said urgently, “Even if you don’t want to take on this case, if you would only be gracious enough to just come out and have a look at the house again, why, whatever advice you care to give would be most deeply appreciated. But do keep in mind,” she added, “that we are running out of time.”

Colin now nodded shyly to me as they walked out. But when Jeremy shook hands with him, Colin said with a cheeky grin, “Never thought I’d ask the help of an Englishman, but I hear you’re one of the better ones.”

When the door closed behind them, I said, “What was that all about? Isn’t Colin an Englishman, too?”

“Nope,” Jeremy explained, “he considers himself Cornish. You know, from the Celts. To him, the English are merely the Anglo-Saxon invaders who forced his ancestors to stop speaking Cornish and to pay taxes to the British crown.”

Jeremy now gave me a meaningful look as we carried the plates and cups into the kitchen.

“Don’t even say it,” I said. “Don’t even tell me to butt out.”

“I already know that I haven’t a hope in hell of convincing you of any such thing,” he answered. “I only advise caution. To tell you the truth, I’m pretty curious myself about seeing the old place again.”

“Where do you suppose Harriet and Colin are going tonight?” I asked mischievously. “A hotel room—or will the Prince let them crash at Buckingham Palace?”

“Who can say?” Jeremy replied, shaking his head. “But it’s not a bad thing to be friends-with-the-friends of the Duke of Cornwall.”

“Oh, right, the Prince is a Duke, too,” I said. “So a king has a ‘kingdom’, and a duke has a ‘duchy’. That means the ‘Duchy of Cornwall’ is of very special interest to Prince Charles.” Then I said teasingly, “So if we don’t take this case, will he chop off our heads?”

“Penny, dear,” Jeremy said calmly. “I am more inclined to wonder what will happen if we
do
take the case but we
don’t
succeed.”

“Who, us?” I said recklessly. “Fail? Pshaw! Never happen.”

But that night, I actually had a dream in which strange tribal armies were fighting to the death with clanging swords and shields on the high cliffs of Cornwall. One army was dressed in animal skins; the other side wore clanking, indestructible metallic armor. Below them, the ocean was churning perilously. Above them, the wind was battering the clouds across the night sky as if they were ships at sea about to crash upon the jagged coastal rocks.

I woke with a start, panting rapidly, before the dream had ended. And the thing is, I have no idea which side won.

T
he next day my mother telephoned to report that she and my father had arrived at the villa in Antibes that Great-Aunt Penelope had bequeathed to Jeremy and me. This gave me a chance to tell Mom all about what was going on with Grandmother Beryl’s old house. My mother was fascinated by the “H.R.H.” connection to the case, but, with her usual English skepticism, she warned me not to be too hopeful.

“Everybody thinks their grandmother’s house deserves landmark status,” Mom said in her droll way. “I don’t recall my mum ever indicating that there’s anything particularly special about that house. But if you want to pursue it, then do give it a go, darling. I know you like this sort of thing,” she added vaguely, still a bit unable to believe that my career is really a serious occupation.

“Everything okay at the villa?” I inquired.

“It’s raining cats and dogs and tigers in the entire Riviera,” my mother replied, almost accusingly, as if I’d deliberately lent her the villa now because I somehow was prescient enough to know that there would be freak storms this summer.

“Rain never lasts long on the Côte d’Azur,” I consoled her. I am an optimist by nature, but I certainly didn’t inherit that quality from my mother. My French father lays claim to that, and he popped onto the extension right now.

“Hallo, Penn-ee dear,” he said warmly. “Don’t listen to your mother. It’s paradise here and she knows it. The air is sweet, the season has barely begun, but ze market is already bursting with ze first peaches and roses.”

I could not only picture it, I could almost smell it. “Mmm,” I said. “Have a wonderful time. We’ll catch up with you in August.”

“Hey,” Jeremy shouted from the kitchen, “tell your father I’m making his pot roast recipe.”

My father, who is a retired professional chef, heard this and chuckled. “Tell him not to forget the
roux
,” he admonished. “That and the
bouquet garni
make all the difference.”

“Okay, Dad,” I said, “see you soon.”

“Happy eating,” he said affectionately, as if he could imagine the meal already.

“What’s a
roux
?” I asked Jeremy when I got off the phone. “Dad said not to forget it.”

Jeremy was already busily browning the onions. “It’s the flour and butter mixture,” he said. “Makes that smooth sauce you love.”

“And
bouquet garni
,” I said, “that’s the herbs, right, pal?”

“Of course. Think you’re dealing with a total amateur here?” Jeremy inquired. “But as long as you’re sniffing around the kitchen, make yourself useful. Hand me the pepper mill.”

 

So that afternoon, once the pot roast was slow-cooking, Jeremy and I packed our bags for our visit to Cornwall.

“Now remember,” Jeremy warned, “we’re just going to look around, and listen to what Harriet’s group wants to say. But none of this indicates a commitment on our part. Even if it’s a worthy case, we still might not be the right team for this.”

“Here’s your socks,” I said. “And if it’s a worthy case, there’s nobody better than us to take it on.”

“Did you pack your Wellies?” Jeremy said.

“My whats?” I asked. Jeremy went to the closet to fetch them, then held them up. “Oh, galoshes,” I corrected. “Rubber boots. Why can’t you English speak English?” I teased him.

“The weather out there is wildly unpredictable,” Jeremy warned. “Better bring a warm jacket. Remember, summer doesn’t really start till July.”

“That pot roast is starting to smell really good,” I said hungrily. “When’s it going to be ready?”

“Another hour,” Jeremy said cheerfully, and I groaned.

 

A short while later, someone rapped the knocker on the front door so vigorously that it seemed to shake the very bones of the house.

“Yoo-hoo!” came a voice through the mail slot, as our visitor tried to peer inside.

“It’s Rollo. No use ducking him,” Jeremy said resignedly. “He’s surely seen the lights on through the windows.”

Rollo was standing on the doorstep with a broad grin. “Welcome back to London!” he said, clapping me a bit too heartily on the shoulder as he gave my cheek a peck of a kiss. “Am I interrupting dinner?” he asked with undisguised hopefulness.

“Cocktails first,” I said. “Come on in.”

He brightened so enthusiastically that I had to smile. Rollo is my mother’s cousin, and her family always considered him the black sheep, but he used to be a lot more trouble in the days before I met him. Compared to his past exploits (drugs, scary gambling debts, and the kinds of legal problems where you have to pay somebody off to keep them from killing him or getting him arrested) his antics of late are pretty tame.

Nowadays Rollo’s shady skills are chiefly employed in “borrowing” the occasional antique in your house if he fancies it (he’s actually a very knowledgeable collector); or timing his unannounced visits to whenever he figures he can mooch a meal or a drink—not because he’s cheap (he is) and not because he’s a drinker (definitely), but because his mother, my Great-Aunt Dorothy, is a cold fish who can’t bear to dine with her own son. Even when she’s trying to be nice (which is once in a blue moon), she can’t help insulting you. Dorothy is the only other American who married into the Laidley family, but that’s about as far as my kinship with her goes.

“Mum sent me over to see if you two are still in love,” Rollo said bluntly as he accepted the whisky that Jeremy already started pouring for him.

Good old Dorothy, I thought to myself. Sitting there in her London mausoleum, just like a spider in a web, spinning her ill will against all comers. Some things never change.

“Every morning at breakfast she
will
keep reciting the divorce statistics to me,” Rollo said obliviously as he settled into Jeremy’s leather chair, careful not to spill his drink. “Dreadfully boring; but then she turns round and tells me I ought to be married by now. Can’t see the logic in that, can you?”

“Well, I hate to disappoint her, but we’re still married,” I said, as Jeremy handed me a glass of sherry and poured one for himself.

Rollo beamed with genuine pleasure. “So glad to hear it,” he said. “You’re both looking well,” he observed, gazing keenly first at me, then Jeremy.

I glanced back at Rollo, trying to size up what condition he was in since I’d last seen him nearly a year ago. Not too bad this time, actually. He’s the sort of man whose clothes telegraph what’s going on in his life. When he’s in trouble, he dresses like an arms-dealer in a shiny sharkskin suit; and when he’s on an upswing he appears like a well-rested man of leisure, as he did today in his pale cream-colored flannel trousers and navy-blue blazer, quite dignified for a man in his mid-sixties.

With a trace of maternal concern, however, I noted that his grey hair was a bit shaggy and needed a cut; and the pouches under his eyes indicated that he wasn’t getting enough sleep, which probably meant he was still hanging out late at nightclubs picking up girls. These days, women are more dangerous to Rollo than loan sharks, because when Rollo starts buying rounds of drinks, he attracts the kind of gold-digger on the prowl for an easy mark.

“What’s for dinner?” Rollo asked, sniffing appreciatively.

“
Pot-au-feu
,” Jeremy said proudly, “and it’s ready right now.”

Rollo rose happily and followed us into the dining room. He paused to notice the suitcases we’d packed, which were standing in the hallway waiting to be loaded into the car tomorrow morning.

“Going on a trip again so soon?” he asked casually. “Heading for the villa in Antibes, perhaps?”

“Not till August,” Jeremy said as he passed me the plates. “Penny’s folks are staying there through the month of July.”

Rollo could not hide his disappointment. “Ah, too bad,” he said. “I was rather looking forward to catching up with you—and perhaps being a houseguest this summer, seeing as I’ve got some business to conduct in Monte Carlo. How about the yacht? Is that available?” he asked hopefully.

“Honorine and her family got it for July,” I said apologetically, referring to my French cousins.

Rollo looked crestfallen, and as we sat down to eat I worried about this Monte Carlo business. Of course, it could simply be that he was sheltering his money in Monaco as a tax dodge. Rollo has lived most of his life receiving a monthly “allowance” from his father’s estate, which is tightly controlled by his mum, and she won’t give him a penny more. So, Rollo tends to “supplement” this income with gambling. Sometimes he wins, which is fine. Sometimes he loses, big, and this usually results in a hasty departure in the dead of night from his Monte Carlo hotel.