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.