Aunt Dimity's Good Deed (13 page)

“You’re still Miss Shepherd, and I’m still Nicolette,” Nell whispered as she hurriedly took her seat again.

“Huh?” I said, distracted, but Nell didn’t have time to repeat her orders because the dark-haired woman had returned and was beckoning to us from the doorway.

“My name is Lucy Willis,” she informed us. “I’m afraid there’s been a slight misunderstanding. Won’t you come with me?”

As Nell and I followed Lucy Willis to her office at the rear of the building, I caught a glimpse of Arthur standing at the top of the stairs, chatting with two women who might, in very dim light, have been mistaken for Nell and me. One was blond, at any rate, and the other was brunette, and the brunette was dressed in black from head to toe. But the fact that the blonde was at least twice my age—the brunette had to be pushing eighty—probably should have tipped Arthur off to his mistake.

“I’m sorry for the confusion,” Lucy murmured. “My sisters have both taken maternity leave, so we’re rather pressed at the moment. My cousin has been working long hours. He sometimes ...” She left the sentence hanging, shrugged apologetically, and continued down the hallway.

Lucy, I thought, was being kind. I was willing to bet that the mess in Arthur’s office was the rule rather than the exception, and his readiness to fork over clients’ funds to a pair of vaguely familiar strangers suggested that the state of his bookshelves was an accurate reflection of the way he conducted business. Nevertheless, I admired Lucy’s loyal attempt to cover for him.

Lucy Willis appeared to be a year or two older than Arthur, in her early thirties. She was as tall as her cousin, and her primrose skirt and blazer clothed a trim figure.

Lucy carried herself with an air of competence and quiet authority, but her face was pale and drawn, as though she’d gone a long time between vacations. I suspected that she, rather than scatterbrained Arthur, shouldered the burden of running the firm. She must have been seriously disturbed by Gerald’s errors in judgment to let him go, knowing that she’d be left to soldier on with such inadequate troops at her disposal.

Lucy’s office was as orderly as Arthur’s was chaotic. The walls were powder-blue, an Aubusson carpet covered the floor, and tidy glass-enclosed bookshelves lined the wall behind an absolutely spotless burled-walnut desk—there wasn’t a pile of papers or a misplaced document box in sight. The ornamental ceiling mirrored that in Arthur’s office, but here the arabesques glittered with gilt, and the tall windows that lined the rear wall were covered with long, gauzy white drapes.

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.

Lucy hesitated, as though thrown off balance, then nodded. “There are many Willistons on our family tree, but Sir Williston was the first. He was a devoted and dutiful young man. When Julia Louise acquired this building, he promised her that it would remain in the family for as long as the family existed. As you can see, he kept his promise. We’ve been here for nearly three hundred years.”

I gazed in awe at Julia Louise’s portrait and wondered if I’d ever have any sons to inspire. “What about her other boys?”

“She had only one other child,” Lucy replied. “Lord William, Sir Williston’s twin. He was a sore disappointment to her, I’m afraid. He drank, gambled, took up with unsuitable women. In the end, she was forced to ship him off to the colonies.”

I blinked. “You mean ...
he
founded the American branch of the family?” Despite my respect for Willis, Sr., I nearly whooped with laughter. Lord William, whose name had been passed down through seven generations of American Willises, whose portrait was treated like a religious icon back in Boston, had been nothing more than a wastrel packed off to the colonies by a mother who would no longer tolerate his shameful behavior. The staid and respectable Willis family in Boston had been founded by an Evil Twin. I couldn’t wait to break the news to Honoria and Charlotte. “Is that why the two branches have been incommunicado for so long?” I asked, fascinated. “Because Lord William was banished?”

“That’s part of it,” Lucy informed me. “Lord William made some terrible accusations against his mother and his brother. He claimed that this building and everything in it belonged to him, and that—”

“Lucy?” Nell piped up. “You said that Sir Williston was the elder‘son. If the boys were twins, then how ... ?”

“Sir Williston preceded his brother into the world by seven minutes,” Lucy explained, “and thanks to Julia Louise, we can prove it. We have the sworn testimony of the midwife and two other attendants. Julia Louise wanted there to be no doubt about who was first in line to inherit.”

“Just think,” I said, looking around the room, “if Lord William had been born seven minutes sooner, all of this would have been ours.”

“Alas ...” Lucy turned at the sound of the hall door opening. “Ah, thank you, George.”

Tea had arrived. I watched attentively as George wheeled the trolley to where Lucy was sitting, and was relieved to observe plates of petits fours and crustless sandwiches between the silver tea service and the Wedgwood cups. The burst of energy provided by my sugary breakfast had begun to wane.

“I don’t understand why there should be any question about who owns this building,” I said after George had left the room. “There must be a deed somewhere.”

Lucy reached for the teapot. “There is. Unfortunately, it’s with some other research material I sent to my mother just last week. My mother ...” Lucy’s hand trembled, and a splash of steaming tea landed on the tablecloth. “My mother has retired to our farm up in Yorkshire,” she finished in a rush. “She’s writing Julia Louise’s biography.”

I accepted the cup Lucy passed to me and asked, “Do you think William might have gone to see her?”

Lucy put the teapot down, looking thoroughly exasperated with herself. “Of course he has. Why didn’t I think of that sooner? I don’t know where my mind is these days.”

I was about to tell her that she was in no way responsible for keeping tabs on my peripatetic father-in-law, but there was a subdued knock at the door, and I turned to see Arthur enter, with his hands in his trouser pockets and an injured expression on his face.

“Lucy,” he said gruffly. “Sorry to break in, but d‘you think you could have a word with Lady Rutherford?”

Lucy’s eyes clouded with dismay. “Oh, Arthur, what have you done now?”

“Gave her our condolences,” Arthur replied belliger ently. “How was I to know she loathed her old goat of a husband? Thought wives loved their husbands once they had ‘em in the ground.”