Aunt Dimity Digs In ad-4

by Nancy Atherton

  “It’s plausible,” Bill allowed. “Katrina had already had one run-in with Peggy by the time she met Sally. She must have thought Peggy capable of anything.”

  “Katrina thought Peggy was crazy,” I stated firmly. “She told me so, the first time I met her.” I got to my feet. “I’m positive that Katrina Graham and Sally Pyne stole the Gladwell pamphlet. All we have to do is prove it.”

  “It’d be helpful to prove it before Sunday comes around,” Bill reminded me. “Sally’ll be less likely to throw eggs if she’s already got ’em all over her face.”

  Emma added a new and unwelcome wrinkle to my theory when she showed up on my doorstep an hour later, bearing a briefcase full of computer printouts.

  “Sally took my undergardener off to find a party dress,” she announced, “and since I promised Rainey I wouldn’t plant a seed without her, I’ve given myself a half holiday.”

  “Come on in,” I said.

  Emma was the only person I knew who didn’t demand to see the boys the minute she stepped into the cottage. I found it quite refreshing.

  “Rainey’s been a Trojan,” she told me, as we settled on the couch in the living room. “I wish I had her energy.”

  “Don’t we all,” I said.

  “She’s a trouper,” said Emma. “She carted flowerpots up and down the library steps all morning, without a single squawk—and she seems to thrive on dirt. She’s so different from Nell that it makes me wonder if they’re from the same planet.”

  I recalled Nell Harris’s sense of style, her air of sophistication, and nodded my agreement. “Night and day,” I said.

  “I’ve brought a present for Reginald,” Emma said. “Nell sent it from Paris, on Bertie’s behalf.”

  Bertie was a chocolate-brown teddy bear. Nell carried him with her everywhere, without apology or explanation. Bertie and Reginald were cousins, of a sort, both having sprung from Dimity’s sewing needle, and Bertie never failed to remember Reg during his travels abroad.

  Emma opened her briefcase and removed a box wrapped in gold foil. “Marrons glacés,” she said. “Straight from the Champs-Elysées.”

  I looked toward the playpen, where Rob and Will were chewing contentedly on their toes. “I don’t think Reg’ll mind if we open his present for him. I’m sure he’d want us to enjoy . . .” My words trailed off as I strolled over to scrounge through the stuffed menagerie that kept the boys company. “ That’s odd,” I said, straightening. “I could’ve sworn I put Reg in the playpen before I went into the village this morning. Francesca?” I called, heading for the kitchen. “Have you seen Reginald?”

  Francesca looked up from the bread dough she was kneading. “He’s in the playpen, isn’t he?”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I thought you might have moved him.”

  She gazed at me, perplexed. Then her dark eyes sparked with sudden illumination. “The sneak,” she whispered. Flour flew as she gave the dough an angry punch. “ The underhanded, conniving—” She caught my eye and clamped her mouth shut, then turned to the sink to rinse her hands. “Will it be all right if I slip out for a bit?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be home for the rest of the day.” I had a vague suspicion who the sneak might be, but I wasn’t going to be the first to mention his name.

  “May I use the Mini?” she asked, stripping off her apron.

  “ Take the Mercedes,” I said, following her to the front door. “You know where the keys are.”

  “Grazie. I won’t be long.” Francesca took the keys from the hall drawer. She paused before the mirror to brush a smudge of flour from her chin, then marched outside. The Mercedes’s engine roared and its tires spat gravel as Francesca spun out of the drive.

  “Brrr . . .” I said, shivering theatrically. “I wouldn’t want to be in Adrian’s shoes when Francesca catches up with him.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Emma.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted, returning to the couch, “but I suspect that Dr. Culver came a’courtin’ this morning, and left with Reginald in his rucksack.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Emma. “Why would he take Reginald?”

  “I didn’t say he took Reginald. Not on purpose, anyway. Not consciously.” I looked over at the playpen. “My guess is that Reg just sort of accidentally fell into Adrian’s rucksack.”

  Emma looked as though she thought I’d lost my mind.

  “Oh, come on, Emma,” I said. “You know what a sucker Dimity is when it comes to true love. I’ll bet she’s using Reg for a spot of matchmaking. She’s done it before.”

  Emma bit her lip and stared down at her briefcase. “I hate to say it, but I think Dimity may be backing the wrong horse this time.”

  My smile faded. “What do you mean?”

  “You remember the on-line search you asked me to do, regarding the Culver Institute?” Emma reached into her briefcase and produced a sheaf of computer printouts. “ This is what I found.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “I’m serious.” She shuffled through the printouts. “I was able to retrieve a set of E-mail follow-ups to surface-mail solicitations asking people to support the Culver Institute.” She looked up uncertainly. “You don’t seem very pleased.”

  “I’m not,” I said as a wave of disappointment washed through me. “Adrian seems like such a nice guy. You should have seen him the other night, when he showed up here with Reg. He was so cute, like a little kid spiffed up for a school dance. He behaved impeccably when Bill came home, drunk as a skunk, and he didn’t lose his temper when he found out that Peggy had tricked him into signing her petition.” I sighed. “He just laughed and said she’d make a great prime minister. And he’s such a goop when he’s around Francesca. I can’t help liking him, Emma.”

  “No one ever said nice guys can’t be ambitious,” Emma pointed out.

  “But nice guys don’t lie,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “And Adrian’s lied to everyone—to me, to the Buntings, to his staff, maybe even to the bishop. He’s got everyone believing that he has no long-range plans for Finch. But these”—I tapped the printouts—“prove otherwise. They confirm what Francesca told me about the cache of letters Sally found in Katrina’s room.”

  “In that case,” said Emma, “I guess we have to face facts. Adrian’s got more at stake in Finch than we realized.”

  “Which puts him at the top of my list of suspects,” I said, “because he’s got more to lose than anyone else. His museum will go down in flames if his backers find out about the Gladwell pamphlet.” I buried my face in my hands and groaned. “The arrogance! To foist a fake on his unsuspecting backers and think he can get away with it!”

  Emma listened sympathetically while I recounted my thrill-filled morning. If she smiled over Christine’s aliens or my role as Peggy’s poster child in the upcoming rally, she had the decency to do so when I wasn’t looking. She also pointed out, quite sensibly, that Adrian’s inclusion on the suspect list didn’t necessarily exclude Sally Pyne or Katrina Graham.

  “Adrian could have told Katrina and Sally about the pamphlet after he’d learned about it from the vicar,” Emma reasoned. “ They may have planned the burglary together, or he may have talked them into it, then sat back and watched while they did the dirty work. He should have known that others would be watching, too.”

  “Nothing goes unnoticed in a village,” I murmured, sick at heart.

  “I know what I’d like to do next,” Emma said. “I’d like to break into the schoolhouse to see if I can find a hooded raincoat, or copies of the solicitation letters, or, best of all, the missing pamphlet.”

  “You?” I said, thunderstruck. “When did the keyboard bandit turn into an action heroine? Rainey’s energy has rubbed off on you, my friend.”

  “Hey,” Emma protested, “Finch is my village, too. I don’t want to see this civil war get any bigger.”

  “Okay,” I said doubtfully, “but you’ll have to come up with another plan. Crime—ev
en a piddling little crime like the burglary—has too many unintended consequences.” I thought of the vicar, sitting in his darkened library, and of George Wetherhead’s futile enthusiasm. Most of all I thought of Christine Peacock, yearning for her son, hoping to coax him home with a scheme that wouldn’t have entered her mind but for a chance encounter with the burglars. I wondered if Adrian had ever stopped to consider the hidden costs of building a monument to his ego.

  “Then how about this?” Emma proposed. “I’ll talk Simon into giving Derek and me a tour of the schoolhouse tomorrow. A really thorough tour.”

  “What’ll I be doing while you’re ransacking the cupboards?” I asked dryly.

  Emma thought a moment. “You’ll be taking Dr. Culver up on his invitation to visit Scrag End field. And you’ll keep him and Katrina there until my tour is finished.”

  I looked over at the playpen and nodded. “Rob, Will, and I should be able to keep Katrina out of your hair for quite a while.” I turned my gaze to Emma’s briefcase and smiled grimly. “I’ll leave Adrian to Francesca.”

  18.

  Will and Rob watched from their bouncy chairs as I shut the study door and reached for the blue journal. Emma had departed and Francesca had not yet returned, so the boys and I had the cottage to ourselves. It seemed a good time to give Dimity some pointers on the delicate art of matchmaking. If I had to lose my nanny, I didn’t want to lose her to a two-faced, puffed-up popinjay like Adrian Culver.

  I gave the boys’ chairs a jiggle before I settled into an armchair, and they gurgled with unabashed delight. An hour with my bambinos did me more good than a whole week of Bill’s backrubs. I jiggled their chairs again, to show my gratitude, then sat back and opened the blue journal. Before I could say a word, Aunt Dimity’s looping scrawl began to fill the page.

  What an exciting time you’re having, Lori! Witches and ghosts and Martians, oh, my. I hardly know where to begin. And now there’s the rally, the birthday party, and the reopening of the tearoom, all on the same day.You’ve so much to look forward to!

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” I said, leaning my chin on my fist.

  I’ve got to hand it to you, my dear. Your timing is extraordinary. I’ve seen many confrontations between Peggy Kitchen and Sally Pyne, but you’ll witness what promises to be the climax of their feud. How I wish I could be there to see it.

  “If you can figure out a way to trade places with me, Dimity, I’ll be only too glad to . . .” I fell silent as the implications of Dimity’s comments filtered through. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Peggy and Sally didn’t move to Finch until after you . . . departed.” I winced at the euphemism but continued doggedly. “How did you manage to witness any of their confrontations?”

  Peggy and Sally came to Finch long before they settled here for good. I remember when they first arrived. Peggy and her mother were taken in by Mr. Harmer, the shopkeeper on the square. Sally lived with Miss Shuttleworth, who ran the tearoom. Little Billy Barlow followed a few weeks later—he stayed with Mr. Diston, the blacksmith—and the Farnhams took in Jasper Taxman. It wasn’t easy, what with ration books, food queues, and the blackout, but it was necessary. Birmingham, Bristol, and Plymouth were under the gun in those days.

  “In those days . . .” I repeated slowly. “Dimity, are you saying that Mrs. Pyne, Mr. Barlow, and Mr. Taxman were brought to Finch as children, because of the blitz? Were they evacuees, like Peggy Kitchen?”

  They were evacuees, but they weren’t a bit like Peggy. They hadn’t lost a father, so perhaps it was easier for them to be kind.

  “Kind to whom?” I asked.

  To Piero Sciaparelli, of course. Not everyone threw stones, you know. Sally Pyne loved Piero, and Peggy never forgave her for it.

  I closed my eyes, bruised by the sudden revelation. Peggy and Sally weren’t simply two strong-willed women angling for dominance in a small community. They were lifelong enemies. They’d hated each other for more than forty years, and now, the day after tomorrow, on the square in Finch, their long-running feud would come to a head. Would the rotten eggs turn into stones? I wondered. Would sly theft give way to open warfare?

  I looked down at the journal. “Did Jasper Taxman and Billy Barlow get involved?”

  Billy was too busy being a little boy to pay attention to a pair of bickering girls, but Jasper . . . Ah, poor Jasper. He allowed Peggy to lead him around by the nose, I’m afraid. A potent case of puppy love.

  “It didn’t get him anywhere,” I pointed out. “In the end, Peggy became Mrs. Kitchen, not Mrs. Taxman.”

  Widows have been known to remarry.

  My eyes widened. “Jasper moved back to Finch in hopes of marrying his childhood sweetheart? Golly. That’s potent puppy love, all right. I wonder why the others came back.”

  Who can tell? Perhaps they had fond memories of Finch. Perhaps they felt they owed something to the village that had given them shelter from the storm so many years ago. I expect they came back for many different reasons.

  “Peggy didn’t come back until after Piero Sciaparelli’s death,” I said. “I’ll bet she was majorly annoyed to find Sally here—and vice versa. From what Mr. Barlow told me, it sounds as though they picked up where they left off during the war—Finch’s longest long-running feud.”

  It’s such a pity. Piero sought nothing but peace in his adopted country, yet he found himself, time and again, at the center of conflict. He’d lost far more than Peggy Kitchen, yet he was as kind as summer. I wish you could have known him.

  “So do I,” I murmured.

  I’m sorry, Lori. I’ve let my recollections run away with me. I had another reason entirely for wishing to speak with you today.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pushing aside memories of a man I’d never known.

  I wanted to remind you that Rainey’s birthday is less than three days away. Have you gotten her a gift?

  I gave a weak laugh. At the moment, finding a birthday present for Rainey was the least of my worries. “Not yet. Emma found something for her in the back room at Kitchen’s Emporium, but I’d rather not go that route.”

  You needn’t rely on Peggy. All you have to do is look in the attic.

  “Which attic?” I said.

  The one above your head, my dear. Look for a trunk, a green trunk with brass hinges. I think you’ll find exactly what you need. There was a pause. I’m sorry, Lori, but I must fly. Thank you for letting me prattle on about Piero. And do let me know how Emma’s search of the schoolhouse turns out!

  “Dimity! Wait! I wanted to . . .” I watched as Dimity’s fine copperplate slowly faded from the page. “. . . ask you about Adrian,” I muttered, knowing that no one could hear me but Will and Rob. I closed the journal, returned it to the shelf, and faced the boys. “Well, troops, let’s see what’s waiting for us in the attic, shall we?”

  The attic wasn’t much more than a crawl space, a dim and dusty hollow beneath the eaves, where Dimity had stored old picture frames, worn quilts, ancient cameras—odds and ends she couldn’t use but couldn’t throw away.

  I peered down from the trapdoor to make sure the boys were okay. Francesca was, presumably, still tracking Adrian down in her pursuit of Reginald, and Bill was still at work. It was patently unsafe to cart the boys up the narrow pull-down ladder that gave access to the attic, so I’d left them down below, nestled in their bouncy chairs, where I could see them.

  I thought I knew the trunk Dimity had spoken of. I’d gone through it when I’d moved into the cottage, then returned it to its place under the eaves. It had been filled with elegant old clothes more suited to the Pym sisters than to a mud-pie princess like Rainey.

  I crawled over to sit cross-legged before the trunk. It was covered with forest-green leather and trimmed with brass metalwork; the latch plate bore Dimity’s initials. I raised the lid and removed a fitted tray filled with kid gloves, silk scarves, and linen handkerchiefs. Dust wafted gently into the musty air as I carefully placed the tray on the rough wooden f
loor, and a spider crept out on an overhead beam to see what was disturbing her cobweb. I mumbled an apology for the intrusion, peered into the trunk’s main compartment, and gasped.

  “Oh, my,” I whispered, lifting the stuffed tiger from his bed of beaded dresses. “Oh, Dimity . . .”

  I gazed into the tiger’s black button eyes and felt a flood of love flow through me. He was perfect. His brown stripes would conceal grubby handprints, and he was sturdy enough to withstand being dropped, trodden on, and tripped over by a little girl better known for vigor than for grace. He was happy-go-lucky, fearless, nigh on indestructible—and he’d need to be.

  I touched a finger to the tiger’s hand-stitched whiskers and wondered, for a moment, what his name was. Then I hugged him to me and murmured to the spider, “Rainey will know.”

  Bill found me grating carrots for our salad when he came home that evening. The rich aroma of rosemary chicken drew him to the kitchen doorway, where he stood, eyeing me speculatively.

  “You’re in a good mood,” he observed, with the air of a man who’d worked out a knotty problem. “Has the rally been canceled?”

  “Nope.” I laid the grater aside, gave the carrot stump to Rob, and tossed the salad.

  Bill snapped his fingers. “I know! You’ve booked a flight back to Boston.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I’ve got a speech to make on Sunday.”

  Bill came over to feel my forehead. “No sign of fever, but I suggest you lie down anyway and let Francesca finish preparing dinner. Where is she?”

  “I sent her to her room.” I shrugged at Bill’s sharp intake of breath. “It was either that or let her burn the cottage down. She’s been in an absolute daze since she got back from seeing Adrian.”

  Bill stumbled back against the sink in mock amazement. “Francesca went to see Adrian? Voluntarily? Has the world gone mad since lunchtime or have the two of you been at the cooking sherry?”

  “Go wash your hands,” I ordered. “I’ll tell you all about it over dinner.”