“Oh. Right.” Bill’s plan made perfect sense. I could trust him to ask the right questions, to discover all there was to discover. There was no need for me to accompany him. So why did my heart sink when he zipped the bag shut?
He left the bag on the bed and came over to where I was standing. “I’ll call as soon as I find anything out,” he said.
“I know,” I mumbled, looking at my shoes.
“I’ll call even if I don’t find anything out.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll give you the number at the Flamborough, Miss Kingsley’s private line, so you can reach me night or day.”
“Okay.”
He bent slightly at the knees and peered at me through narrowed eyes. “So what’s the problem?”
I couldn’t stand it any longer. Scowling furiously, I grabbed hold of his lapels and planted a kiss firmly on his lips. “There, all right? I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to be away from you. I’m packing my own bag and coming along and that’s final, end of discussion, no debate. Okay? Satisfied? Does that answer your question?”
He closed his eyes and stood very still for a moment. Then he released a long breath. “Yes, thank you.”
Looking somewhat dazed, he made his way back to the bed, bumped into the nightstand, knocked the lamp to the floor, picked it up, dropped it again, then left it where it was and came back to the doorway to pull me into his arms.
“I just want to be sure I understood you correctly,” he said. “You know how lawyers are….”
By the time we were both ready to leave, everything was clear enough to satisfy the Supreme Court.
20
We didn’t lose our heads entirely. I took the precaution of calling Willis, Sr., before we left. It was the middle of the night in Boston, so I left a message informing him that I was so far along in my reading that I had decided to spend a few days exploring the countryside, with Bill in tow to look after things. I added that we would telephone him the minute we got back to the cottage.
Bill phoned ahead and Miss Kingsley responded with characteristic efficiency. Our rooms were waiting for us when we arrived, and a late supper was ready in one of the Flamborough’s private dining rooms. At Bill?s invitation, Miss Kingsley joined us, and she lived up to her redoubtable reputation by remaining undaunted even by the vague nature of our quest.
“Robert MacLaren?” she said. “Well, the name certainly doesn’t ring any bells, but I’m a relative newcomer. I’ve only been at the Flamborough for fifteen years. I’m sure we’ll be able to find someone who can tell you something about the old days, though. Retired military gentlemen are our mainstay. I shall make some inquiries, and I should be very surprised if I have nothing to tell you by tomorrow evening.”
Miss Kingsley’s inquiries took a little longer than that—two days, to be precise—but the results were spectacular. Archy Gorman was worth a whole army of retired military gentlemen. He was a stout man with a magnificent head of wavy white hair and a drooping handlebar mustache, and before opening his own public house, he had spent seventeen years as the bartender at the Flamborough—including the war years. Archy had long since retired from bartending, but Paul had kept in touch with him, and Miss Kingsley had been able to reach him at his flat in Greenwich. Paul drove the limousine round to pick him up, and the two of them met us in the Flamborough lounge two hours before opening time. The polished dance floor shone in the light from the fluted, frosted-glass wall lamps as we gathered at one of the round wooden tables near the bar. Paul sat with us, but Archy immediately made his way to the taps and began pulling pints for the assembled group.
“Have to keep my hand in,” he explained, with a wink at Miss Kingsley, “and I never was a stick-in-the-mud about the licensing laws, was I, Paul?”
“No, you weren’t, Archy. And there’s many an airman who thanked you for it.”
“Here you are, now.” Bill got up to carry the tray of drinks to our table and Archy joined us there, puffing slightly with the effort. “To happier days,” he said, and raised his glass. I watched over the top of my own as he expertly avoided dipping his mustache into the foam.
“Now, you might be wondering why I was here at the Flamborough for the duration instead of out there doing my duty,” Archy began, folding his hands across his ample stomach. “The plain and simple fact is, they wouldn’t have me. Rheumatic fever and a heart murmur and no-thank-you-very-much said the board.” He thumped his chest. “But here I am, closing in on seventy and never a day’s bother with the old ticker. Never understood it, why they sent the healthy lads off and left the tailings at home, but there you are. You can’t expect common sense from the military, can you, Paul?”
“Not a bit of it, Archy.”
“What was it that Yank told us that one time? Snafu, he called it—you remember, Paul?”
“‘Situation Normal, All Fouled Up’,” Paul recited dutifully.