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and that the new arrival had his attorney with him.
    “Oh, gosh,” said Sarah, that having been the strongest oath she’d been allowed to utter during her carefully guarded childhood. “Maybe I’d better call up the troops, myself.”
    She ran over her short list of possibles. Uncle Jem would come like a shot, but he’d be of no use in a situation like this. He and old George would get off in a corner with her only bottle of whiskey and swap reminiscences of bears and bares while the battle raged about them as it was shaping up to do.
    She might get somebody from her own lawyer’s office, although she’d have a problem persuading any of the Messrs. Redfern to drop his writs and rush over here at a moment’s notice. She’d also get stuck for a fee and her financial position was sticky enough already. It would have to be Dolph. Her cousin might be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, but when it came to a case of bellow and bluster, she’d back him against any Quiffen alive. Sarah leaped to the phone and sounded the alarm.
    After delivering himself of the anticipated remarks about having told her from the first that this scheme of hers was totally insane and did she have to keep dragging the family name into the papers, Dolph said he’d be right over and was. He even took a taxi. Altogether it was quite an assemblage that greeted George Protheroe when he arrived, blinking like the dormouse that had been dragged out of the teapot, and being bullied along by his wife. Sarah took Anora off to meet her household staff, leaving the men to fight it out among them with Dolph yelling louder than all the rest as she’d been proudly confident he could.
    Anora and Mariposa were buddies from the moment they met. The three women were drinking tea and holding a strategy session on household matters at the kitchen table when Charles came in to inform them that the gentlemen, which his tone implied was rather a loose term for some of them though it wasn’t his place to say so flat out, had taken an inventory of the possessions in the late Mr. Quiffen’s room. Charles had taken it upon himself to point out that several of the inventoried articles belonged in fact to Mrs. Kelling and Mr. Adolphus Kelling had personally deleted those items from the inventory list.
    It had been ascertained from Mr. Quiffen’s files that his will was in the hands of either Mr. Snodgrass, Mr. Winkle, Mr. Tupper, or Ms. Pickwick of the firm bearing that name in Devonshire Street and the gentlemen were about to hie themselves thither. Mr. Protheroe was desirous of ascertaining the whereabouts of Mrs. Protheroe since he assumed she would wish to accompany the party, and what message should be conveyed to him? “My God,” said Anora, “is he always like this?”
    “You better believe he isn’t,” giggled Mariposa. Anora said she was too old not to believe anything, gave them all her blessing, and waddled after her husband. Sarah went back upstairs and cleaned another bathroom. Now, please God, they’d have a little peace around here.

Chapter 5
    S ARAH WAS SCRUBBING POTATOES for dinner and wondering how soon she could decently let Mr. Hartler know she had the vacancy he was waiting for when Charles came into the kitchen.
    “A person wishes to see you, madam,” he announced.
    “A person?” Sarah put down the potato she was washing and dried her hands on a dish towel. “What kind of person? Male or female?”
    “I am unable to state, madam. The person is wearing a great many concealing garments and also carrying two decrepit paper shopping bags stuffed with trash.”
    “What for?”
    “I have no idea, madam. I have instructed the person to wait in the vestibule while I ascertain whether you are at home.”
    “Why not in the front hall or the library?”
    “This does not appear to be the sort of person one would wish to admit inside the house, madam.”
    “Oh, come off it, Charles! Neither was that last lot of Quiffens. Are you trying to