The Negotiator

I hoped not only that I was bearding Hal in his lair sufficiently to keep him from declaring I hadn’t been invited and sending me off in embarrassment but also that the house had sufficient bedrooms to make it believable that I had been invited. From the size of the edifice that I could see, though, that wasn’t likely to be a problem. It could as well be a country hotel as a country house.

At the bottom of the briefcase I was carrying up to the front door of the small castle were the photographs Hal hadn’t taken with him when he left me in his office the previous evening—but that I had had the presence of mind to snarf up. Those photographs could be used both ways, especially now that I knew that Hal had a wife and children just as I had.

“Jolly good,” Eddie said. “Daddy is off on a shoot with that Frenchie he dragged home for the weekend. Won’t he be surprised when he finds you already settled in when he gets back?”

“I haven’t the slightest doubt about that,” I answered.

“You’re just in time for tea,” Vicki said. “Eddie can show you to a bedroom and then you two can join Mam and me in the conservatory.”