Anything Goes

told.”
    Jack, unaware that he was being observed, stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead, tried to tidy his springy blond hair with his hands and took a deep breath. The chain on the bicycle was making a strange noise and he decided to walk it the rest of the way. Honeysuckle Cottage, now that he had the leisure to notice, was abuzz with activity. Ladders, workers, piles of brush and—standing in the middle of it all, like the idle rich they were—the Brewsters. Of course, you didn’t have to be rich to be idle. Look at all the time his boss, Mr. Kessler, spent sitting around the office carving dumb little animals out of bits of wood instead of going out and looking for news.
    “Good morning, Mr. Summer,“ Lily called out as he approached them.
    He hated that they looked clean and cool while he was hot, sweaty and disheveled from his long uphill ride. “Good morning,“ he said, trying not to sound cranky. The one thing he’d learned about interviewing people was to get on their good side. It made them more talkative.
    Lily offered him some of the lemonade Mrs. Prinney had made and they went in to the library to talk. Robert dutifully pointed out the view of the river and Jack dutifully acknowledged that it was impressive. But he seemed more impressed by the lemonade. “How’d you get the lemons?“
    “Mrs. Prinney’s ways are mysterious,“ Robert said.
    “They’re awfully expensive, aren’t they?“ Jack said.
    Lily took offense. “Are they really?“ she asked coldly. “Is that what you came clear up here to ask?”
    Jack’s fair face flushed. This wasn’t a good start.
    “No, my editor assigned me to ask you about yourselves. A way of introducing you to the folks who read the paper.”
    Robert, who despised conflict and knew from the set of Lily’s jaw that there might be open war any moment, flung himself into a chair and said amiably, “Then ask away. Our lives are an open book. Well, except for the epilog.”
    Jack took out a small notebook and nub of a pencil from his back pocket and sat down across from Robert. “First, I guess, is how did you come to buy this place?“ He wasn’t willing to refer to it by name.
    “We didn’t buy it,“ Robert said before Lily could speak. “We inherited it from our Uncle Horatio.“
    “Great-uncle,“ Lily said.
    “Great-uncle,“ Robert said with a smile that he hoped she’d take to mean Don’t antagonize the press, however rural.
    Jack asked the requisite boring questions his editor demanded. How did they like the house? How long had they been here? What (he didn’t append ‘if any,’ though he was tempted) were their professions? Robert got in before Lily again. He’d once been brutally honest with a reporter about the poor sportsmanship of a fellow polo player and had lived to regret it when his personal views were printed in a society gossip column.
    “Right now,“ he said suavely, “we’ve put our work aside to give our whole attention to Grace and Favor. There’s a great deal that needs to be done, as you can see.“
    “But what did you do before you moved here?“ Jack persisted.
    “Oh, any number of things,“ Robert said, but didn’t bother to enumerate them. “More lemonade?”
    Mr. Brewster didn’t care to comment on his previous employment, Jack planned to say in the article. That would show what an idle, idiotic butterfly the newcomer was without being actionable.
    “Do you plan to live here full-time?“ Jack asked. “Oh, yes,“ Robert said, grinning at Lily, who smiled back at the private joke.
    Jack suddenly realized that Miss Brewster was really quite stunning when she smiled.
    When he’d completed his questions, Lily said, “Now we’d like to ask you a few things if you have the time. You see, we don’t know very much about the nature of our Great-uncle Horatio’s passing. I wonder if you could explain what happened.“
    “It was a boat accident,“ he said. “Mr. Brewster took a group of his friends on his yacht up to Bannerman’s Castle.“
    “Where’s that?“ Robert asked.
    “About twenty miles downriver. It’s not a real castle and it’s officially named Pollepel Island on the maps.“ Jack was well-informed about the island because he’d done a newspaper piece on it the previous spring. “It belongs to a Scottish family called Bannerman. They buy up war materiel when the wars are over. They started up after the Civil War and when the Spanish-American War was over, they acquired so