Temporal Exploring 101 - Cultural Immersion

II.22 Good cop, bad cop

Nancy had invited Natty and me to spend the weekend with her at her family's place. Late on Friday afternoon, Lord Kerrington's chauffeur James picked us up to drive us to Kerrington Manor in a big limousine.

On Saturday morning, over breakfast, Nancy asked her mother if we could 'borrow' James to take a trip around the countryside, as she put it. Lady Kerrington readily agreed, under one condition. We were to take along Nancy's little sister Lizzy.

Since we were unable to provide a logical reason why we could not do so, we were stuck with her. Which kind of put a damper on our plans to investigate one of the contacts listed in the pyrtar's address book.

Or perhaps it did not. "We just need to explain it to Lizzy properly," Nancy declared.

"Explain what to me?"

Nancy's sister had the uncanny knack of appearing where you least expected her. Like, right behind your back while you were talking about her.

"See, Lizzy. The thing is, during that trip we were also planning to do some stuff Mom and Dad do not need to know about."

"You know me. I shall be silent as a grave," Liz promised.

She ignored the dubious look her sister cast her.

"So, what is this all about?" she inquired.

"Well, actually we shall be doing a bit of detective work," Nancy elaborated. "You could say we are conducting an investigation of sorts, to determine who set fire to a part of our school's gym."

"So we are going to be detectives? Like the Famous Five?" Predictably, Lizzy was all excited.

Nancy laughed. "That's precisely what I told Nat and Cathy. Except that the Five were much younger than us."

"I think some of them were twelve years old in the first book," Natty observed. "But somehow they never seemed to get older in the course of the series. No boyfriend or girlfriend stuff, no snogging, no making out, ever. It always struck me as kind of odd."

"Yes, and also there's only three of us," Nancy added.

"Four, if you count me," Lizzy corrected her sister. "Five, even, if we count Sneakers."

Sneakers was Lizzy's pet white mouse, an adorable little creature with amazing red eyes, a pink nose and impressive whiskers.

"I don't know if it would be such a good idea to take Sneakers along on our trip," Nancy began, but her sister would have none of that.

"It's either Sneakers coming with us, or we are not going at all," she threatened.

Thus it was decided.

"Miss Catherine, Miss Natalie, Miss Nancy, Miss Elisabeth."

Lord Kerrington's chauffeur held the door of the car open for us as we got in. Rather than the big limousine, we were going to take a smaller sports car that day. I did not recognize the brand, but then I knew next to nothing about the different types of 20th century cars.

We arrived at London early in the afternoon. After dropping James off at the Museum of Natural History, Nancy, Lizzy, Natty and I proceeded with the first point on our agenda, which happened to be a serious shopping spree, constrained by our very limited funds, with a heavy emphasis on clothes, books and music.

Only when we felt that we were up to date again with the latest fads in fashion, literature and popular music, we turned to the second major point on our agenda: the investigation of a certain name and address listed in the notebook of one of the three pyrtar who had tried to do away with Natty and me.