Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold

by Nancy Atherton

  “It may sound silly to you,” I retorted, “but I’ll bet you a gallon of eggnog that Sally turns out to be right on both scores.”

  “I guess I’d better buy a new suit,” Bill said, snickering. “How was your day at the Dispatch?”

  “Dirty but rewarding,” I replied. “I’d give you a rundown of everything we learned, but you’d doze off before I was halfway through. We’re heading out again tomorrow to continue our quest. If good fortune smiles upon us, we may finish it. Will you be able to survive another day without me?”

  “I’ll not only survive,” said Bill, “I’ll flourish. Our agenda includes a tour of the miniature village in Bourton-on-the-Water.”

  I sighed wistfully. “Wish I was coming with you. Bourton is gorgeous at Christmas.”

  “I wish you could come, too,” he said, “but you can’t abandon your quest at this late stage. Emma would court-martial you for dereliction of duty.”

  “She’d put me away for life,” I agreed ruefully. “She took our research so seriously that I couldn’t even tell her about Spring-heeled Jack.”

  “Who or what is Spring-heeled Jack?” Bill asked.

  “He was a Victorian bogeyman who breathed blue and white flames,” I said. “He jumped out at carriages and leaped onto rooftops and terrified people with his glowing red eyes and clawed hands.” I heaved another sigh. “It was such a juicy story.”

  “You can tell it to the boys on Christmas Eve,” Bill suggested. “Telling spooky tales at Christmastime is a time-honored English tradition.”

  “Great idea,” I said. “I’ll tell the boys about Spring-heeled Jack, and you can deal with Peggy Taxman when they start jumping out at her.”

  “On second thought,” Bill said quickly, “maybe we should stick with A Christmas Carol.” He was overcome by a massive yawn. “I know it’s only half past nine, love, but I’m hitting the sack.”

  “I’ll be up soon,” I told him.

  “I’ll be asleep,” Bill mumbled through another gargantuan yawn.

  After a thorough and thoroughly enjoyable good-night kiss, Bill headed upstairs and I headed for the study. Having breathed stale air and gotten next to no exercise all day, I wasn’t the least bit tired.

  “Hi, Reg,” I said as I turned on the mantel lamps. “I promise never to take you to the Dispatch’s archives. You’d turn from pink to gray in about five minutes.”

  My pink flannel bunny seemed content to stay where he was. I paused to light a fire in the hearth, then curled up in one of the tall leather armchairs with the blue journal in my lap.

  “Dimity?” I said as I opened the journal. “I’ve met Mr. Barlow’s nephew.”

  Good evening, Lori. Well?

  “He’s a gentle giant,” I said. “He must be six four and he’s built like a blacksmith, but he speaks with the voice of an angel, and he smiles like one, too. He’s good-looking, though his hair is way too short for my taste. I hope Bree convinces him to grow it out.”

  Will he allow her to convince him?

  “I’m pretty sure he will,” I said. “He doesn’t seem to mind taking orders from her.”

  A most propitious sign.

  “He referred to her as ‘the boss’ when she shouted at him,” I said, “and he grinned when he told me she keeps him on his toes.”

  He’s beginning to sound ideal.

  “He’s also familiar with Finch,” I went on. “According to Lilian, he spent his summers here when he was a boy.”

  Why hasn’t he visited lately?

  “He joined the army when he was eighteen,” I explained. “He served in Afghanistan until he lost the lower part of his left leg to a roadside bomb that killed four of his fellow soldiers. He sustained head injuries, too. Lilian reckons he spent a long time in rehab.”

  I hope he received the best possible care.

  “He looked incredibly healthy to me,” I said. “He walks with a slight limp, but if Mr. Barlow hadn’t told me about his leg, I wouldn’t have guessed that it was a prosthesis.”

  The head injuries worry me more than his missing leg, Lori. They can affect a man for the rest of his life. He may have flashbacks, nightmares, violent mood swings . . . I’ve seen it all before. Some of the men who came home from the Second World War never recovered from their head wounds.

  “Bree is like a daughter to Mr. Barlow,” I reminded her. “He wouldn’t set her up with a guy who was unstable.”

  You’re quite right. He wouldn’t. I’m reassured, though I wish Tommy had returned to Finch sooner. I can think of no better place in which to recover from the visible and the invisible wounds of war. Nature’s balm can work wonders, as can a sense of belonging, When the villagers find out what Tommy’s endured, they’ll wrap their arms around him.

  “I’m kind of hoping Bree will, too,” I said.

  Fingers crossed! Any news about Mr. Barlow’s pursuit of Tilly Trout?

  “It’s only a matter of time before their budding romance bursts into bloom,” I said confidently. “After showing her around St. George’s, he showed her around the churchyard. Then he took her out for tea and scones at Sally’s tearoom, and he insisted on paying.” I kissed my fingertips, like a chef passing judgment on a tasty dish. “It was a flawlessly executed first date.”

  Do you think Tilly regarded it as a date?

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But she called Mr. Barlow a true gentleman and said she had a most pleasant afternoon in his company.”

  I wonder if she felt comfortable enough with him to chat about herself? I hate to sound like Mr. Barlow’s mother, but I wouldn’t mind knowing a little more about his intended’s background.

  “If she did open up to him, he didn’t tell me,” I said. “Mr. Barlow and I didn’t have a proper conversation, Dimity. I had ten minutes to kill while Lilian was on the phone with Opal Taylor, so I ran over to the workshop to meet Tommy. I wasn’t even thinking about Tilly.”

  You spent the rest of the day with her. Surely you must have asked her some leading questions.

  “I intended to drag her life story out of her on the way to Upper Deeping,” I said, “but Lilian, Emma, and I started talking about Tommy Prescott, and one thing led to another, and before I knew it we were filling Tilly in on Bree’s life story.”

  It’s an interesting story.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Tilly’s not secretive, and she’s certainly not standoffish. If you ask me, she simply can’t imagine why we’d want to know more about her. She seems to believe that everyone else is more interesting than she is.”

  Which, of course, makes her quite interesting. I trust you learned more about Cecilia Pargetter than you did about Tilly Trout.

  “We did,” I said. “The Dispatch was a gold mine of information about the Pargetters. There were quite a few of them, and they wanted the world to know about everything they did.” I quickly recounted Cecilia’s biography, from her birth to her untimely death. “You were right about checking the obituaries, Dimity. Cecilia died before the banns of marriage between her and Albert Anscombe could be read for a third time.”

  How sad. She must have been very young.

  “She was only nineteen,” I said. “She packed an awful lot into those nineteen years, though.”

  She did indeed. Finishing school, a scintillating London season, a dazzling engagement, a voyage to India . . . Had she lived, she would have wielded great power.

  “What kind of power?” I asked.

  Albert Anscombe was only a second son, but he was the second son of a titled squire. As such, he outranked the young men Cecilia would have met had she remained on the family farm. If she’d lived long enough to marry Albert, she would have been in a position to introduce her family to her husband’s social circle.

  “I guess that’s what Emma meant when she described Cecilia’s parents as aspirational,” I sai
d thoughtfully.

  They prepared their oldest daughter to enter a world they couldn’t enter, and she succeeded. Her marriage would have elevated the Pargetters’ social standing both within their small community and beyond.

  “It’s a lot of pressure to put on a teenager,” I said.

  Perhaps she enjoyed the pressure. Some girls do. It’s a pity that the newspaper is the only record we have of Cecilia’s life. The Dispatch is an excellent source of public information, but it can tell us nothing about Cecilia’s private thoughts and experiences. It can’t tell us who M. was, or why he entwined his initial with hers on the golden heart. I’m afraid we’ve learned all we can learn about her.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “There’s a remote—a very remote—possibility that other records exist, records that might reveal her private thoughts and experiences.”

  What can you mean, my dear?

  “I mean that Cecilia’s descendants still live at Leyburn Farm,” I said. “Her childhood home has been passed down through the generations.”

  I imagine the farm has changed significantly since Cecilia lived there.

  “The family hasn’t,” I said. “The current patriarch is named George, just like Cecilia’s father, and he’s kept up the family tradition of growing prize-winning vegetables. It’s not much to go on, but I think the current crop of Pargetters could be the kind of people who maintain a strong connection to their past.”

  I wouldn’t rule it out.

  “Cecilia must have written letters to her parents while she was in India,” I said. “She probably kept a diary as well.

  It’s the sort of thing a nineteen-year-old would do.

  “I think her family would have treasured her letters and her diary, especially since she died young,” I went on. “Reading them would have been like hearing her voice again. They were too precious to throw away. Like the farm, they could have been passed down through the generations. They may still exist, Dimity.”

  They may, but her letters won’t tell you who M. is. Cecilia wouldn’t have disappointed her parents by informing them that she’d fallen in love with a young man other than Albert. The stakes were too high.

  “She would have confided in her diary,” I said. “It’s the sort of thing a lovesick nineteen-year-old would do. Her diary might tell us who M. is.”

  Unless her parents read it after her death, were alarmed or embarrassed by its contents, and destroyed it to protect her reputation.

  “We won’t know until we ask,” I said.

  Do you intend to contact the Pargetters?

  “We’re going to Leyburn Farm tomorrow,” I said. “Lilian thinks it’s a bad idea to show up on their doorstep a few days before Christmas, but Emma thinks they may need a holiday stress break.”

  They’ll probably assume that you’re carol singers.

  “If they want us to sing, we’ll sing,” I said. “After they give us our figgy pudding, we’ll ask if we can look at Cecilia’s diary.”

  It’s an unusual request to make at Christmastime, but I agree with Emma. The Pargetters may welcome a diversion from cooking, cleaning, decorating, gift wrapping, and the usual holiday squabbles. They may even be flattered by your attention.

  “Fingers crossed,” I said.

  I wish you the best of luck, my dear. You’re embarking on a ridiculous enterprise, but if you’re incredibly lucky—and extremely polite—you just may pull it off.

  “I’ll let you know what happens,” I said.

  I look forward to your report. Good night, my dear. Sleep well.

  I bade Aunt Dimity good night, returned the blue journal to its shelf, touched a fingertip to Reginald’s hand-stitched whiskers, and stood for a moment, gazing silently into the fire. I had the strangest feeling that Cecilia was nearby, urging me to bring M. out of the shadows. I closed my eyes and promised her that I would do my best.

  Nineteen

  Nothing delayed our departure from Finch the following morning. The sky was heavily overcast and the temperature had dropped, but there wasn’t a wisp of fog in the air or a scrap of ice on the lane. Emma and Tilly were waiting for me on the graveled apron when I pulled up to the manor house, and Lilian waved to us from her front garden as we crossed the humpbacked bridge.

  “Teddy’s on the phone with Millicent Scroggins,” Lilian informed us as she climbed into the Mercedes’s backseat. “I fled before he could pass the receiver to me.”

  “Well done,” I said.

  “I’m not sure Teddy would agree with you,” said Lilian.

  Tilly was the only one among us wearing a skirt, but no one was wearing blue jeans. Emma and I had paired impeccable black wool coats with unexceptionable wool trousers, and Lilian wore her usual tailored tweeds. It was as if we’d agreed to dress respectably in order to make a good impression on the Pargetters. I thought it a sensible, if unspoken, agreement, as it increased our chances of being regarded as levelheaded historians rather than nosy nutcases.

  “Did you bring the heart, Emma?” Lilian inquired.

  “It’s the bulge in my shoulder bag,” Emma told her, patting the bulge.

  “Before we go much farther,” Lilian said as I pulled away from the vicarage, “I think we should appoint a spokeswoman. We won’t do ourselves any favors if we all talk at once.”

  “I nominate Lori,” Emma said.

  “Why me?” I asked, caught off guard.

  “You’re the one who came up with this harebrained scheme,” Emma answered, “and you’re the one who persuaded me to go along with it. If anyone can get her foot in the door at Leyburn Farm, it’s you.”

  “You do have a way with words, Lori,” Lilian chimed in. “I may have jumped on the bandwagon later than Emma and Tilly, but you pulled me aboard with your tale of Cecilia’s lost love. You painted such a vivid picture of the diary and the bundle of letters in the old steamer trunk that I almost believed I’d seen them.”

  “I dreamed about them last night,” Tilly admitted.

  “You persuaded me, you changed Lilian’s mind, and you infiltrated Tilly’s dreams,” said Emma. “Decision made. You’re our spokeswoman.”

  “I’d say it was an honor,” I said glumly, “if I didn’t feel as though I’m standing at the end of a plank with three swords at my back.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Emma said, laughing. “You’re a great swimmer.”

  It was the first time I’d heard my friend laugh since the night of her party, and even though she was laughing at my expense, it was better than hearing her growl.

  We were held up by traffic in Upper Deeping, but once we left the market town behind, it was smooth sailing. I knew the way to Skeaping village, and Emma had figured out how to get from there to Leyburn Farm. Memories rippled through my mind as we passed the Skeaping Manor museum. I recalled the grotesque exhibits that had delighted my sons as well as the moment I’d first laid eyes on an exquisitely wrought piece of silver and a young girl with auburn hair.

  “Turn left, Lori!” Emma shouted. “Left!”

  I snapped out of my reverie and turned left before Emma could seize the steering wheel. The route she’d devised took us past a vineyard that stretched from the lane to a distant shelterbelt of trees. Row upon row of gnarled vines followed the land’s rolling contours, looking somewhat forlorn beneath the cloudy sky. I couldn’t remember seeing any vineyards when I’d first moved to England, but in recent years I’d encountered quite a few. If the vineyard belonged to the Pargetters, I thought, they’d moved with the times.

  The vineyard gave way to an apple orchard, which in turn gave way to pastures dotted with sheep and bordered by low, tangled hedgerows interwoven with wire fences. Emma was the first to spot a tasteful wooden sign elegantly carved with the words LEYBURN FARM at the mouth of a wide, blacktopped drive. I didn’t need her to prompt me to turn at the sign, but she prompted me anyway.<
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  We crossed a rushing stream on a sturdy stone bridge and passed clusters of modern, steel-framed agricultural buildings before we began to climb gradually toward a farmhouse that crowned the crest of a modest hill. Though modest, the hill was the highest point for miles around. Since the blacktopped drive was well maintained and as straight as an arrow, I allowed myself to glance away from it every now and then to enjoy the sweeping views of the countryside.

  The farmhouse was neither modern nor steel-framed. Clad in overlapping dark-brown weatherboards and topped with a sloping red-tiled roof pierced by chimneys and small dormer windows, it looked as if it had settled comfortably into the hill, like a sleepy old dog on a sofa. The central and largest section was three stories tall, with a two-story extension on one side, a one-story wing on the other, and a jumble of wooden outbuildings behind it.

  The Christmas decorations would have been a touch too gaudy for my taste if assorted bicycles, skateboards, and soccer balls hadn’t argued for the presence of children in the house. A miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer had been affixed to the highest roof at an appropriately dramatic angle, while on the ground a cordon of giant candy canes encircled a glowing, life-sized plastic Santa. A sparkly white wreath inset with blinking stars hung on the front door, and strings of multicolored lights outlined each window and every inch of the irregular roofline. I imagined the farmhouse would stand out like a cheerful beacon at night.

  “More proof that the Pargetters respect tradition, Lori,” Lilian observed. “They haven’t torn down their lovely old farmhouse and replaced it with a contemporary monstrosity.”

  “They’ve chosen preservation over ostentation,” Tilly said approvingly.

  “They may be rich, but they’re not show-offs,” said Emma. “I like them already.”

  “Let’s hope they like us,” I said under my breath.

  Smoke curling from the redbrick chimneys indicated that someone was at home, though the row of vehicles parked in front of the house also served as a fairly reliable indicator that the place wasn’t deserted. I counted five sedans, two pickup trucks, and three SUVs.