Chapter Four #2
“Well, since Mr. Fletcher-Ford isn’t himself a famous detective”—here, Arthur offered Fletcher-Ford a vaguely apologetic look, as though worried this would cause offense, but the man in question was too busy consuming an enormous piece of shortbread in methodical fashion to take any notice—“then I hardly think the police are likely to pay much attention to what you get up to. It’s not as though they’ve taken you very seriously in the past, after all. ”
This, annoyingly, was true—it was only Lexington who had listened to Georgie’s concerns about the plant in the bakers’ garden, and had insisted that it be dug up.
They might not have solved that case, had it not been for him—Detective Inspector Harriday had certainly not been very good-humored about the matter.
It had been incredibly irritating at the time, but why not take advantage of this now, to conduct an investigation without ruffling any feathers?
Though Mr. Fletcher-Ford was hardly the sort of ally she’d had in mind.
Fletcher-Ford, for his part, had polished off the shortbread and was surveying the plate before him, debating his next selection. “And if I’m to take you up on your invitation to stay at—Radcliffe Hall, was it?—then it will seem all the cozier.” He flashed a smile at her.
Georgie scowled. “The invitation was for Fitzgibbons,” she said.
“But,” Fletcher-Ford said sunnily, “I’m afraid I’m all you have, old bean.”
Georgie rolled her eyes heavenward, but unfortunately, he was correct.
However, while Papa and Abigail had seemed intrigued by the notion of a celebrity detective coming to visit, she wasn’t at all certain how they’d react to the stylish, almost impossibly handsome specimen that she’d be presenting to them instead.
“All right,” she said, her mind racing. “Er, I’ll need to head home this afternoon, to, um, prepare my father and sister. I don’t think you are… quite what they were expecting.”
“Just so,” Fletcher-Ford agreed cheerfully. “A sister, is it?” he added, looking intrigued. “Is she anything like you?”
Georgie glanced down at her serviceable clothing, worn shoes, and the barely controlled frizz of her dark hair, then thought of lovely, golden Abigail, with her pretty dresses, wide eyes, and romantic tendencies.
“Yes, she’s exactly like me,” she said definitively, despite knowing that this ruse would crumble the moment he actually met Abigail. Next to her, Arthur buried a smile in his teacup.
Instead of looking disinterested, however, Fletcher-Ford gave her a slow, lethal smile.
“I can’t tell you how delighted I am to hear it,” he said, and then leaned forward to pluck a ham sandwich off the platter before him, leaving Georgie so flustered that she attempted to add another lump of sugar to her already too-sweet tea.
“Perhaps, Miss Radcliffe,” Fletcher-Ford said, swallowing a mouthful of sandwich and leaning back in his seat, “you could speak to your family after lunch, and then you might see your way to giving me that tour this afternoon?” The way he said this, Georgie thought irately, made it quite clear that he could not imagine a world in which a woman would not jump at the opportunity to spend time with him.
She was sorely tempted to tell him that she could think of few things she’d less like to do, but—
Well, she needed him. So instead, she merely offered him her tightest, most awful smile and said, “Certainly.”
Radcliffe Hall was in a state of excited agitation upon her arrival half an hour later; Dr. Severin had evidently been summoned for Abigail, and he had somehow been induced to stay for lunch, which was just finishing when Georgie walked in, clutching a stack of letters she’d retrieved from the postbox at the end of the long, winding driveway that led to the house.
“Oh,” she said, startled, upon spotting Dr. Severin, who was deep in conversation with Papa as Mrs. Fawcett cleared away the plates.
Abigail was reclining elegantly in a chair directly opposite Dr. Severin, wearing the silk dressing gown Papa had bought her for her birthday earlier that spring.
(Georgie, naturally, had been the one to select the specific dressing gown from a catalogue and remind her father to make the purchase.) “I didn’t realize we had company. ”
“I was just leaving, actually,” Dr. Severin said, rising as she entered the room.
“But Mr. Radcliffe, I appreciate the invitation. And Miss Abigail”—here, he glanced across the table at Georgie’s sister, his expression softening in a way that caused warning bells to chime in Georgie’s mind—“don’t hesitate to phone me if you are still feeling unwell tomorrow.
Or if you need anything else.” He turned to Georgie and raised both eyebrows at whatever he saw in her face.
Georgie hastily schooled her expression into something more neutral—or at least less openly hostile.
“Miss Radcliffe.” He gave her an uncertain smile before departing.
No sooner had the front door closed behind him than Abigail rose from her chair, all previous signs of delicate convalescence mysteriously absent. “Georgie, you didn’t have to scowl at him!”
Georgie set the stack of letters down in front of Papa, who was still lingering over a final cup of tea, and crossed her arms as she faced her sister.
“Are you feeling better? I can’t help but notice you grow mysteriously healthier as soon as Dr. Severin leaves the room.
How astonishing! Some sort of medical miracle, no doubt? ”
Papa frowned, glancing up from his teacup. “Georgie, love, that’s not a kind thing to accuse your sister of.”
“Does it count as an accusation if it’s true?” Georgie gestured at her allegedly convalescent sister, who was standing with her hands on her hips, watching Georgie with narrowed eyes.
“I’ll have you know, Georgie, that I ran into Dr. Severin at the post office yesterday and mentioned that my hay fever has been particularly severe this year—” This, at least, was true; every spring, Abigail turned into a sniffling, wheezing mess for weeks on end.
“—and he volunteered to pay us a visit. He seemed very eager.” There was a trace of smugness to Abigail’s voice at this, and Georgie inhaled sharply in an attempt to keep her temper in check.
“Aunt Georgiana phoned the other day,” she said, and both Abigail and Papa blinked at this apparent non sequitur.
“She wants to know if you still wish to come stay in July.” Aunt Georgiana was their mother’s younger sister, who lived in an extremely elegant flat in Pimlico.
Now that Abigail, at nineteen, was out of school and more or less at loose ends, there had been discussion of sending her to London for an extended stay with her aunt.
Given recent developments with Dr. Severin, Georgie thought that this invitation could not come at a better time.
“I… don’t know,” Abigail said, worrying at the sleeve of her dressing gown. “I’d been speaking to Mrs. Chester about helping at the tearoom, actually.”
Georgie blinked. “Since when?”
Abigail met her gaze. “Since she tasted the treacle tart I brought to the fete last month.”
Abigail undoubtedly had a way with desserts.
Her mince pies were popular village-wide at Christmas, and she made a Victoria sponge for Georgie’s birthday each year that Georgie looked forward to for weeks in advance.
But still, to consider giving up a summer in London solely to…
prepare tea cakes for the villagers, and whatever tourists would descend upon them this year? It was absurd.
“I don’t think the Scrumptious Scone is going anywhere,” Georgie said shortly. “There’s no reason you can’t help Mrs. Chester once you come back.” By which point surely Abigail’s attention would have moved on from Dr. Severin.
“Aunt Georgiana isn’t going anywhere either,” Abigail tossed back, crossing her arms.
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” Georgie said. “What if she gets married again, to an Argentine polo player, and this is your only chance to stay with her before she abandons us for South America?” This was not, given their aunt’s romantic history, as unlikely a scenario as it might have seemed.
“Why don’t you go, then, Georgie, if it matters so much to you?”
Papa blinked up from his teacup. “Did you wish to go to London, love? If Abigail doesn’t want to go, there’s no reason you shouldn’t.”
“I can’t leave!” Georgie said indignantly. Did no one realize this house—this entire absurd village—would fall apart without her? “I have a murder to solve!”
Abigail gave an exasperated shake of her head. “If this is about that detective you invited to stay—”
“Well,” Georgie said, would-be casual. “It’s interesting you should mention that. Do you recall that I mentioned that Fitzgibbons was sending an associate instead?”
Abigail eyed her watchfully. “Yes.”
“Well.” Georgie cleared her throat. “This associate—his assistant, really—he is… not quite what I expected.”
“How so?” Abigail asked suspiciously.
“Well. He’s from London.”
“Obviously,” Abigail said. “If he works for a detective in London.”
“And, er,” Georgie hedged, “he’s somewhat… younger than Fitzgibbons.”
“How much younger?” Abigail demanded.
“A bit.” Georgie hesitated, then added. “Quite a bit, actually.”
“Well, how old is he?”
“I’m not any good at estimating those sorts of things,” Georgie said cagily.
“Take a wild guess.” Abigail’s tone was not the sort that would brook any refusal.
“Perhaps… thirty? A bit younger?”
Abigail looked mildly incredulous. “And yet I’m the one who’s at fault for asking Dr. Severin to treat my hay fever?”
“Well, I have no romantic designs on Mr. Fletcher-Ford,” Georgie shot back. “Which is more than I can say for you and Dr. Severin.”
“Fletcher-Ford, Fletcher-Ford,” Papa murmured. “Why does that sound familiar…?”
“He went to Cambridge,” Georgie said. “Perhaps you knew his father?”
“I wonder if he’s any relation to Alastair Fletcher-Ford,” Papa said thoughtfully. “He’s a classicist, and if I recall has an interest in radical politics. His wife was a suffragette.”
Georgie considered the man of the blinding smile and expensive knitwear she’d met earlier that day, and shook her head skeptically. “I’m not certain it’s the same family, Papa…”
“Ah, well, we’ll find out soon enough!” Papa said brightly. “If he’s a Cambridge man, then of course he must stay with us—it’s the only decent thing to do! I wonder which college?”
“I couldn’t say,” Georgie said a bit wearily.
“Nothing like a bit of masculine company to liven things up,” Papa said, reaching for the heavily thumbed paperback sitting next to him on the table.
“Unbelievable,” Abigail said, throwing her hands up. “A young man from London with a double-barrel surname is coming to stay at Georgie’s invitation, and that’s that? Does he drive a Rolls-Royce? Is he going to seduce the housemaids?”
“We don’t have any housemaids,” Georgie said, privately reflecting that, given Fletcher-Ford’s charms, that was rather a blessing.
“And you can meet him later this evening. Perhaps in the meantime you can consider Aunt Georgiana’s offer some more.
” Georgie did not like the stubborn set of her sister’s mouth, though, and suspected she might need to enlist reinforcements in this battle—not, she thought with an internal sigh, that she could expect much help from either Papa or Mrs. Fawcett, who both babied Abigail something dreadful, and would no doubt be appalled by the notion of her being away from home for any duration.
She’d need to look farther afield for allies.
“Where are you off to, love?” Papa asked, as Georgie made as if to leave the room. “You just got home.”
“I’m just here to fetch Egg,” Georgie called over her shoulder. “I’m giving Mr. Fletcher-Ford a tour of the village this afternoon.”
“How professional,” Abigail said sweetly, and Georgie shot her a venomous look. “I cannot wait to meet him, Georgie.”
“Neither can I, love,” Papa added, patting at his head, once again engaged in a futile search for his reading glasses.
And Georgie—who suddenly wanted nothing more than to delay that meeting for as long as humanly possible—decided that Mr. Fletcher-Ford was going to get the world’s most thorough tour.