Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold

by Nancy Atherton

  “Not before we give them three cheers,” said Charles.

  Will, Rob, and Bess led the rest of us in the rousing chorus of “hip, hip, hoorahs” that brought the party to its delayed conclusion. I lifted Bess from the high chair, wiped her down, and carried her to the cloakroom. Bill herded the boys in the same direction, and in less than twenty minutes, we were on our way home.

  While Will and Rob entertained us with a detailed account of their night in the stables, which involved sweeping stalls, cleaning curry combs, and spying a rat among the hay bales after the barn cat had forsaken his duties and curled up in Rob’s sleeping bag, I took in the beauty the storm had left in its wake. Tiny icicles hung from the hedgerows, the pastures gleamed like frozen ponds, and our cottage, with Stanley peering at us through the lacy frost on the living room’s bay window, would not have looked out of place on a Christmas card.

  Bill topped up Stanley’s water bowls as soon as we reached the kitchen, and I deposited an entire can of tuna in his food bowl to make amends for our prolonged absence. We showered him with affection as well, but he was much more interested in the tuna.

  Since I’d already dressed Bess in the spare clothes I’d brought with me to Anscombe Manor, she didn’t look as ratty as the rest of us. I sent the boys upstairs to change into jeans and flannel shirts that weren’t covered with wisps of hay, while Bill and I took turns putting on fresh clothing and keeping an eye on our dangerously mobile daughter.

  Bill would have gladly settled down for a nap in his favorite armchair, but the boys corralled him into taking a walk through the oak grove that stretched from our cottage all the way to Anscombe Manor. Bess, who’d gotten a lot more sleep than we had, was eager to join the expedition, so Bill bundled her up and pulled her behind him on a sled. I waved them off from the back garden, then retreated hurriedly to the cottage.

  I wasn’t sure how much time I would have before my loved ones returned, demanding hot chocolate and the oatmeal cookies I’d baked earlier in the week, but I intended to put every minute of it to good use. While Bill, Bess, and the boys explored the frozen forest, I’d be in the study, sharing a bumper crop of gossip with Aunt Dimity.

  Eight

  Hardly a day went by when I didn’t speak with Aunt Dimity. I seldom spoke of her, however, because she and I had a somewhat unusual relationship. For one thing, Aunt Dimity wasn’t my aunt. For another, she wasn’t, strictly speaking, alive. The former was easier to explain than the latter.

  Dimity Westwood, an Englishwoman born and bred, had been my late mother’s closest friend. The pair had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War. The hardships they shared during those dark and dangerous years forged a bond of affection between them that was never broken.

  When the war in Europe ended and my mother sailed back to the States, she and Dimity maintained their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across the Atlantic. After my father’s sudden death, those letters became my mother’s refuge, a tranquil haven in which she could find respite from the everyday challenges of teaching full time while raising a rambunctious daughter on her own.

  My mother was fiercely protective of her refuge. She told no one about it, not even her only child. When I was growing up, I knew Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of a series of bedtime stories invented by my mother. I had no idea that my favorite fictional character was a real woman until after both she and my mother had died.

  It was then that Dimity Westwood bequeathed to me a comfortable fortune, the honey-colored cottage that had been her childhood home, the precious postwar correspondence she’d exchanged with my mother, and a curious book filled with blank pages and bound in blue leather. It was through the blue journal that I finally came to know my benefactress.

  Whenever I opened the journal, Aunt Dimity’s handwriting would appear, an old-fashioned copperplate taught in the village school at a time when a computer was a person who used pen and paper to perform complex calculations. I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time it happened, but I quickly realized that Aunt Dimity’s intentions were wholly benevolent.

  I couldn’t explain how Aunt Dimity managed to bridge the gap between life and afterlife—and she wasn’t too clear about it either—but I didn’t require a technical explanation. The important bit, the only bit that mattered to me, was that she was as good a friend to me as she’d been to my mother.

  The study was still, silent, and nearly as dark as a cave when I entered it. Frozen droplets dangled like earrings from the strands of ivy that crisscrossed the diamond-paned windows above the old oak desk, but they did little to dispel the gloom of yet another overcast day. I hastened to switch on the mantel shelf lamps, then knelt to light a fire in the hearth. As soon as the flames began to dance, I stood to greet my oldest friend in the world.

  “Hi, Reginald,” I said. “Did you miss us?”

  Reginald was a small, powder-pink flannel rabbit with black button eyes and beautifully hand-sewn whiskers. My mother had placed him in my bassinet shortly after my birth, and he’d been by my side ever since. A sensible woman would have put him away when she put away childish things, but I wasn’t a sensible woman. My pink bunny sat in a special niche in the study’s tall bookshelves, where I could see him and chat with him and let him know that he was not forgotten.

  “We were waylaid by an ice storm,” I told him. “You’ll hear all about it if you listen in.”

  The gleam in Reginald’s black button eyes told me that he would, of course, eavesdrop on my conversation with Aunt Dimity. He was as interested in local news as I was.

  I gave his pink ears an affectionate twiddle, then took the blue journal from its shelf and carried it with me to one of the tall leather armchairs facing the hearth. While the fire crackled and snapped, I curled up in the armchair, cradled the journal in one hand, and opened it.

  “Dimity?” I said. “I’ve got so much to tell you that I hardly know where to begin.”

  I sat back, propped my feet on the ottoman, and smiled as the familiar handwriting began to curl and loop gracefully across the blank page.

  Good morning, Lori. You sound very excited. Did something thrilling happen at Emma’s party?

  “Quite a few thrilling things happened,” I replied. “I would have told you about them last night, but we were stranded at Anscombe Manor by an ice storm.”

  Marooned by disagreeable weather again, my dear? I hope you didn’t have to sleep in an attic this time.

  “I didn’t,” I assured her. “Bill, Bess, and I shared a comfortable bedroom on the ground floor.”

  I’m glad to hear it. Attics have their uses, but as you discovered when the flood stranded you in East Sussex, they tend to be rather cluttered and extremely dusty. Would I be correct in assuming that Will and Rob slept in the stables?

  “Where else?” I said, grinning. “Believe it or not, the ice storm wasn’t the biggest news of the night.”

  What was?

  “It’s tough to choose,” I said, “but I’d have to go with Bree’s shocking announcement.”

  Shocking announcements usually top the list of thrilling events at a party.

  “Bree’s definitely comes in at number one,” I confirmed. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Dimity, but the engagement’s off.”

  Oh, dear. Has Bree fallen out of love with Jack MacBride?

  “Other way round,” I said. “Jack’s fallen out of love with Bree. He called her from Stockholm yesterday morning to end their engagement.”

  He broke up with her over the telephone?

  “Pretty cowardly, huh?” I said.

  Jack never struck me as cowardly. Perhaps he was stranded in Stockholm by the same weather system that stranded you. Since he couldn’t fly to England to speak with Bree face-to-face, and since he felt compelled to be honest with her, he had no
choice but to deliver the sad tidings over the telephone.

  “You’re much kinder than I am,” I said. “Your scenario may even be true, but it hardly matters because the message is the same either way: Jack broke up with Bree because he’s fallen for a Swedish microbiologist who likes to travel.”

  Perhaps it’s for the best. Bree has become something of a homebody since she inherited her great-grandaunts’ house, and Jack’s conservation work takes him all over the world. He may be better off with a partner who enjoys living out of a suitcase.

  “And Bree may be better off with someone other than Jack,” I said, “but right now she looks crushed.”

  Few things in life are more melancholy than a broken heart at Christmastime. I hope you’ll do your best to help her to bounce back from the blow.

  “You know I will,” I said. “We all will. Charles and Grant are going to throw a pity party for her after the holidays, and Mr. Barlow asked her to work on Tilly’s car with him.”

  Charles and Grant throw splendid parties, but I suspect that Mr. Barlow’s cure will be more efficacious in the long run.

  “So do I,” I said. “It’ll keep her from sitting at home, feeling sorry for herself.”

  True, but there’s more to it than that. Mr. Barlow is exactly the sort of company Bree needs at the moment. He won’t tiptoe around her or pummel her with questions about her feelings.

  “As I would?” I said ruefully.

  Not just you, my dear. Most of her friends will be too solicitous or too intrusive. Either response will serve only to make Bree more self-conscious than she already is.

  “I can guarantee that Mr. Barlow won’t ask her to share her feelings,” I said decisively. “He’d sooner dance naked on the village green.”

  Either activity would be anathema to him. Instead of prying into Bree’s personal life, Mr. Barlow will simply get on with the job at hand and he’ll rely upon her to get on with it, too. By doing so, he’ll remind her of her capabilities rather than her loss. Bree enjoys being useful, and doing something for someone else is the surest way to recover from a setback. By repairing the car, Bree will be helping Mr. Barlow as well as Tilly. Which leads me to my next line of inquiry: Who, may I ask, is Tilly? And what happened to her car?

  “Tilly is Matilda Trout—Miss Matilda Trout—a middle-aged woman who lives in Oxford,” I explained. “She was on her way to a hotel in Tewkesbury when she got lost in the fog. When she saw the manor lit up like a Christmas tree, she turned into the drive to ask for directions, slid on the ice, and crashed into a drainage ditch.”

  Good heavens! Is she all right?

  “She’s fine,” I said, “but she won’t be able to drive her car until Mr. Barlow and Bree fix it. Emma’s made it crystal clear to her that she’s welcome to stay at the manor while her car is under repair.”

  I’m sure Emma means well, but if I were Tilly, I’d prefer to be driven home by a friend or a family member.

  “I don’t think Tilly has a friend or a family member,” I said. “She was driving to Tewkesbury by herself, Dimity, and when Emma offered to call someone for her after the accident, she said there was no one to call.”

  It sounds as though she intended to spend Christmas on her own at the hotel in Tewkesbury.

  “It does,” I said, “but Lilian Bunting and I doubt that Tilly’s alone by choice.”

  What do you mean?

  “Tilly dresses almost entirely in black, as if she’s in mourning,” I said. “She even wears a jet mourning brooch. Lilian and I think someone close to her died recently.”

  If so, the poor woman’s head must be spinning. To have her holiday plans overthrown by an accident while she’s still in the midst of grieving for a lost loved one—she must feel overwhelmed by misfortune. Could her employer, perhaps, come and fetch her?

  “She didn’t mention having an employer or a job,” I said. “I don’t know what Tilly does for a living, Dimity, but she seems to have a working knowledge of car mechanics and a thorough knowledge of the persecution of Roman Catholics in sixteenth-century England. And before you ask, she denied being a historian or a librarian.”

  I can understand why the subject of motor mechanics would come up in the course of the evening—it stands to reason that Tilly would be concerned about her car—but how on earth did she work Anglo-Catholic persecution into the conversation?

  “Blame it on Emma,” I said. “She asked us to look at a peculiar room in the manor. None of us could figure out why it had been built or what purpose it served, but Tilly knew what it was five minutes after she walked into it. She wasn’t reacting to a gut feeling, either. She interpreted physical evidence we’d overlooked, even though it was right in front of our faces.”

  Will you tell me what the room is, or would you like me to guess?

  “I’ll tell you,” I said, and continued hastily. “Tilly identified the room as a clandestine chapel where Roman Catholics worshiped in secret to avoid persecution. Were you aware of the manor’s secret chapel?”

  I was not. To my knowledge, the Anscombes have always been practicing Anglicans.

  “But the Anscombes haven’t always owned the manor,” I pointed out. “In Tudor times, it was owned by the Mandeville family. The part of the house containing the chapel was built during their tenure.”

  I begin to follow Tilly’s argument. “Mandeville” could very well be a Norman name. If the Mandevilles were an old Norman family, they might not have accepted Henry VIII’s religious reforms.

  “Emma can’t find records to confirm it,” I said, “but Tilly believes the Mandevilles created the chapel for their own personal use. She also thinks the Crown may have confiscated Anscombe Manor from the Roman Catholic Mandevilles and sold it to the Protestant Anscombes.”

  If the Anscombes realized that the room was a Roman Catholic chapel, they wouldn’t have broadcast its presence in their home.

  “They didn’t even label the room as a chapel on the house plans Emma found,” I said. “On the plans, it’s just a room.”

  I never fail to be amazed by the layers of history hidden within very old buildings. Emma and Derek must be grateful to Tilly for unveiling one of the manor’s best-kept secrets. Is there a priest hole in the chapel?

  “A what?” I said.

  A priest hole. Surely Tilly searched for a priest hole. Its presence would confirm her claim beyond all reasonable doubt.

  “She didn’t say anything about a priest hole,” I said. “What’s a priest hole?

  A priest hole, sometimes called a priest closet, was a hiding place for priests as well as for the paraphernalia associated with the Roman Catholic mass—vestments or a crucifix, for example. During Elizabeth I’s reign, priests were looked upon as heretics and spies. If a priest was discovered celebrating the sacraments anywhere in England, he could be found guilty of high treason and executed, sometimes after a prolonged period of gruesome torture. It was essential, therefore, to conceal priests from the prying eyes of the Crown’s pursuivants, or priest hunters. Hence, the construction of priest holes.

  “You seem to know an awful lot about priest holes,” I said.

  I became interested in them after I visited Scotney Castle in Kent. In Elizabethan times, a Jesuit priest named Richard Blount managed to live undetected at Scotney Castle for seven years, thanks to a priest hole hidden in a wall cupboard in a back staircase. He didn’t live in the priest hole, of course, but it was there when he needed it.

  “What does a priest hole look like?” I asked. “Are they always hidden in wall cupboards?”

  They could be hidden almost anywhere. The usual procedure was to create a concealed cavity beneath floorboards, under a stairway, or within a wall. The cavity would then be fitted with a disguised door or hatch that could be swiftly opened and shut. If a priest hunter approached the house, the priest could slip into the priest hole with the
telltale paraphernalia and hide there until the coast was clear, or until he was discovered and dragged from his hiding place to his doom.

  “The good old days, eh?” I said with a derisive snort.

  Let us learn from them the value of religious tolerance. I wonder . . .

  “What do you wonder?” I asked.

  I wonder if Tilly is, or was, a nun. It would explain her plain attire, her solitude, and her in-depth knowledge of Anglo-Catholic history. It would not, however, explain her failure to search the chapel for a priest hole.

  “It was very late, Dimity,” I said, “and, as you pointed out, her head must have been spinning. I’ll ask her about priest holes the next time I see her—if there is a next time. I really hope Emma persuades her to stay at the manor. Whether Tilly’s a runaway nun or not, she’s someone I’d like to know better.”

  She also appears to be someone who is in dire need of friends.

  “In which case, she’d be a fool to turn down Emma’s invitation,” I said. “She’ll find nothing but friends at Anscombe Manor.”

  So she will. My goodness, Lori, you did have a memorable evening, though I imagine Emma would have preferred it to be memorable for reasons other than a broken engagement and an automobile accident. On a much lighter note: Were your tartlets a success?

  “They were,” I replied proudly. “The only snacks more popular than my tartlets were some Indian sweets Emma made, and even then it was neck and neck. I could have made twice as many tartlets and they would have disappeared in a twinkling, though I wouldn’t have been able to transport them because I don’t have enough—” I interrupted myself with a groan.

  What’s wrong?

  “I’m such an idiot, Dimity,” I said, shaking my head. “I left my storage containers in Emma’s kitchen.”

  Look upon it as an opportunity, my dear. When you pick them up, you can mount a search for the priest hole in the chapel. Do I hear shouting in the distance?

  “You do,” I said, cocking an ear toward the study door. “Gotta go, Dimity. The arctic explorers are demanding hot chocolate.”