“I’m sorry,” Binky said to Young Mr. Prendergast, “the shock has been too much for her.”

“I quite understand,” the old man said kindly. “It has been a shock to all of us. We at Prendergast, Prendergast, Prendergast, and Soapes have represented your family for the past two centuries. I would hate to see Castle Rannoch fall into the wrong hands. May I see the offending document?”

“This is just a copy. The bounder wouldn’t let the original out of his hands.” Binky handed it to him.

The old man clucked as he studied it. “Dear me. Dear me,” he said. “Of course, the first step will be to have a handwriting expert study the original to make sure it is not a forgery. We have your father’s handwritten will and signature on file here. Then I shall need to consult an expert on international law, but I rather fear that this will have to be contested in the French courts—an expensive and frustrating proposition.”

“Have we no other avenues open to us?” I asked. “No other options?”

“We could try to prove that your father was not of sound mind when he signed the document. That, I fear, would be our best hope. We would need to bring in character witnesses to prove that he had been acting strangely and irrationally, maybe a doctor to testify that insanity ran in the family—”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “I’m not having my father ridiculed in a court of law. And I’m not having any hints of insanity in the family either.”

Mr. Prendergast sighed. “It may come down to that or losing your home,” he said.

Binky and I emerged in deep gloom after an hour or so with the solicitor. De Mauxville had agreed to meet with a handwriting expert. He seemed so confident that I couldn’t help thinking that the document was indeed genuine and that Castle Rannoch was on its way to becoming a golfing hotel for rich Americans.

It was only when Binky was reading the Times in the cab on the way back to our house that I remembered my advertisement. I glanced at the front page and there it was. Now all I had to do was to await my first reply. In spite of the awful gravity of our situation, I couldn’t help feeling the teeniest bit excited.

I didn’t have to wait long. The first response arrived the next day. It was from a Mrs. Bantry-Bynge, who had a house on the crescent beside Regent’s Park. She had to come up to London unexpectedly for a dress fitting on Thursday, and finding my advertisement was a godsend, as her household staff were becoming frail and elderly and no longer traveled well. She would be traveling alone and dining with friends. All she needed was a place to lay her head that night.

Essentially she just wanted clean linens on the bed, everything given a good dusting, and a fire laid in the bedroom grate. It sounded easy enough. I went into a public telephone booth and dialed the number she had given me, confirming that I would have everything in perfect order before she arrived in the evening. She sounded delighted and told me that the key could be obtained from the housekeeper of the house next door. She asked me to return the following morning after her stay, bundle the sheets into a laundry bag, and deposit them with the same housekeeper when I returned the key. Then she asked me what my fee would be. I hadn’t really thought that one through.