Aunt Dimity and the King's Ransom

by Nancy Atherton

  “Bravo,” said the man, sounding equally impressed. “You’ve brought order out of chaos. Where would you like your suitcase?”

  “On top of the chest of drawers, please,” I said, stepping forward to take the camping lantern from him. “Sorry it’s so heavy.”

  “Not a problem.” The man lifted the bag as effortlessly as my sons lifted their saddle blankets and laid it flat on the chest of drawers. “It’s that time of year, isn’t it? You have to be prepared for anything.”

  “You do,” I said earnestly, wishing Bill were there to hear him.

  “I’m Gavin Hancock, by the way,” he said, “Jean’s husband.”

  “I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Hancock,” I said, shaking his proffered hand.

  “Gavin, please,” he said.

  “And Jean,” Mrs. Hancock added. “The bishop is more particular about formal titles than we are.”

  I set the lantern on the octagonal table. I would have made the bed as well, but Jean beat me to it. While she tucked a perfectly creased hospital corner under the thin mattress, Gavin drew me aside.

  “You can use the lantern to light your way to bed after you turn out the overhead light,” he said. “We’ve left towels for you in the powder room, and we’ll send a thermos of hot cocoa up with you after dinner. It’s the closest we can come to providing you with central heating.”

  “As long as I can’t see my breath, I’ll be okay,” I said, “but I never say no to hot cocoa. Where should I charge my cell phone?”

  “Use one of the power strips in the office,” Gavin advised. “Avoid the wall outlets, unless you want to fry your mobile. There’ll be a power surge when the generator kicks in.”

  I nodded, then gazed pensively at my suitcase. “If I’m going to be here for a few days, I guess I should unpack.”

  “I would if I were you,” he said. He nodded at the pine chest of drawers. “Is there room in the dresser for your things?”

  “There is now,” I told him. “I had to empty it before I could move it.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, nodding. “The seashell collection.”

  “Done,” said Jean, crossing to stand beside her husband.

  I swung around to admire her handiwork and felt a somewhat embarrassing flood of emotion. The piled pillows and the plump duvet made my sad little nook look almost homey.

  “You’ve been so kind,” I said, blinking rapidly. “I . . . I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “No tears,” Jean said with mock severity. “They’ll turn the dust on your face into mud.”

  “If you want to thank us—” Gavin began.

  Jean cut him off with a wifely frown, muttering, “Hasn’t she done enough?”

  “No, she hasn’t,” I insisted, stiffening my upper lip. “Please, tell me what I can do.”

  “The truth is, Lori, we could use some help in the kitchen tonight,” said Gavin. “We’re shorthanded because we sent most of our crew to the village hall to set up the community kitchen. Every guest we’ve approached has turned us down for one reason or another. We wouldn’t expect you to prepare meals, but if you could chop a few onions, you’d lighten our chef’s workload.”

  “I love chopping onions,” I said staunchly. “After I call my husband, I’ll report for kitchen duty.”

  “You’re a star,” said Gavin, beaming at me.

  “Don’t forget your dinner date with the bishop,” said Jean. “He’ll be expecting you in”—she consulted her wristwatch—“two hours. And don’t bother to dress for dinner. No one else will.”

  They departed, thudding swiftly down the worn wooden steps and closing the creaking oak door behind them.

  Since my phone call to Bill was long overdue, I left the unpacking for later. I pulled my cell phone from my shoulder bag and sat in the Windsor armchair while I debated what sort of update to give my husband. It seemed unwise to give him an accurate one. The thought of his wife sleeping on the top floor of an ancient multistory building during a storm that could rip roofs to shreds would only torture him. To keep him from swimming to my rescue, I decided to describe my makeshift lodgings in general terms and to save the dusty details for a sunnier day.

  I’d scarcely finished pressing speed dial when he answered.

  “Where are you, Lori?” he asked, his voice taut with anxiety. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m still fine and I’m still in Shepney,” I responded. “I found a room at an inn called The King’s Ransom.”

  “Thank heavens,” he said. “I’ll let Father and Amelia know you’re safe.”

  “Have you spoken with them?” I asked.

  “Several times,” he replied. “All is well at Fairworth House. It’s been windy in Finch, but they haven’t seen a drop of rain.”

  “I wish I could say the same for Shepney,” I said. “It looks as though I may be here for a few days, Bill. The roads around Shepney are either flooded or on the verge of flooding.”

  “The roads around Blayne Hall are flooded, too,” he said, “so we’re both marooned.”

  You’re marooned in considerably more comfortable circumstances than I am, I thought enviously, but aloud I said, “What will you do for clothes? Your overnight bag is in the Mercedes.”

  “Sir Roger’s valet loaned me some of his,” said Bill. “Quentin’s suits reek of mothballs, but we’re about the same size, so they don’t fit too badly. Quentin will do my laundry as well, and he stocked my bathroom with everything from scented bath salts to fresh razor blades.”

  I pictured my bare-bones powder room and could not repress a moan.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked alertly.

  “I miss you,” I said, which was true in general terms. “It’s lonely being here without you.”

  “Look in the outside pocket on your suitcase,” he said. “The large pocket.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” he replied.

  I rose from the armchair, unzipped the large outside pocket on my suitcase, and withdrew from it a book bound in blue leather.

  “Oh, Bill,” I said, feeling a lump rise in my throat.

  “I smuggled it into your suitcase when you weren’t looking,” he said. “I thought you might like to chat with a friend while you waited for me in Rye.”

  His remark would have baffled a stranger, but I understood it.

  “You’ve won the Best Husband of the Year award yet again,” I said. “I’ll call you in the morning with the latest news from The King’s Ransom.”

  “Sleep well, love,” he said.

  “You, too,” I told him, and rang off.

  I returned the phone to my shoulder bag and sank onto the Windsor armchair with the blue book cradled in my hands. The onions could wait, I told myself. I needed a quiet moment to chat with a friend.

  Seven

  I’d often smiled over a book. Depending on the story, I’d also wept, gasped, giggled, or fallen asleep. The only book that had ever made me want to sit down for a cozy chat, however, was the one Bill had smuggled into my suitcase. It had once belonged to an Englishwoman named Dimity Westwood, and it was as unique as she was.

  Dimity Westwood had been my late mother’s closest friend. The two women had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War. They’d been very young, very brave, and very frightened, but the dangers, the hardships, and the pots of tea they’d shared had created a bond of affection between them that was never broken.

  After the war in Europe ended and my mother sailed back to the States, she and Dimity strengthened their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across the Atlantic. When my father’s sudden death left her bereft, my mother found solace in those letters. They became a refuge for her, a retreat from the sometimes daunting challenges of teaching full time while raising a rambunctious da
ughter on her own.

  My mother was extremely protective of her refuge. She told no one about it, not even me. As a child, I knew Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, the fictional heroine of a series of bedtime stories invented by my mother. I didn’t learn about the real Dimity Westwood until after both she and my mother had died.

  It was then that my fictional heroine became a real heroine. At the lowest point in my life, Dimity Westwood bequeathed to me a comfortable fortune, a honey-colored cottage in the Cotswolds, the precious correspondence she’d exchanged with my mother, and a blue leather–bound journal filled with blank pages.

  It was through the blue journal that I finally came to know my benefactress. Whenever I opened it, Aunt Dimity’s handwriting would appear, an old-fashioned copperplate taught in the village school at a time when smithies still outnumbered petrol stations. I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time it happened, but I quickly discovered that I had nothing to fear from Aunt Dimity. Her sole desire was to be as good a friend to me as she’d been to my mother.

  Neither she nor I could explain how she managed to bridge the gap between the earthly and the ethereal, but as sheets of rain lashed the windows and gusting winds buffeted the roof, I knew one thing for certain: If I couldn’t share my attic with Bill, there was no one I’d rather share it with than Aunt Dimity.

  I opened the journal and said, “Dimity? I can’t talk for long, but I wanted to touch base with you before I reported for kitchen duty.”

  The sight of Aunt Dimity’s fine copperplate curling gracefully across the page made me yearn to be in the study at home, curled in one of the tall leather armchairs, with a fire dancing in the hearth, a cup of tea at my elbow, and the blue journal resting in my lap.

  Good evening, Lori. Why must you report for kitchen duty? Have you joined the army?

  “No,” I said wistfully. “I ran away from home and into the arms of an extratropical cyclone.” I gave Aunt Dimity a speedy synopsis of my travels and travails, then sat back, confident that she would respond with soothing words of consolation. It instantly became apparent that my confidence was misplaced.

  How lucky you’ve been, my dear!

  “Lucky?” I echoed in disbelief.

  The cyclone didn’t kill you, the bishop befriended you, and the Hancocks went out of their way to house you. I’d call that lucky, wouldn’t you?

  “I suppose so,” I said doubtfully, “but—”

  I hope you weren’t expecting me to commiserate with you over your less-than-luxurious sleeping arrangements, my dear. I regret that your romantic getaway was so rudely interrupted, but I must confess that I feel sorrier for Bill than I do for you.

  “I don’t feel sorry for him,” I grumbled, thinking of the scented bath salts.

  You should. While you’re making new friends in a lively village, he’s sequestered in a remote country house with a recluse who merely tolerates him.

  “On the other hand—” I began, but Aunt Dimity cut me off again.

  What is more, you have the comfort of wearing your own clothes, whereas your poor husband is condemned to wearing borrowed suits that stink of mothballs.

  “Well,” I said grudgingly, “when you put it like that . . .”

  I do put it like that. Oh, yes, Lori, you’ve been very lucky indeed, as I’m sure you’ll realize after you’ve had time to think about it. Now, run along and make yourself useful. There’s no better cure for self-pity than to lend a hand to those in need. I’ll be here to keep you company when you get back.

  After Aunt Dimity’s handwriting had faded from the page, I shook off my melancholy mood and got to my feet. I placed the journal on the octagonal table, dug my toiletry bag out of my suitcase, grabbed my shoulder bag, and headed downstairs to make myself useful. There was nothing quite like a scolding from the Great Beyond to stiffen one’s backbone.

  I paused in the powder room to pull cobwebs from my hair, beat small clouds of dust from my cashmere sweater, and wash my grubby face and hands. When I was as presentable as I could be without access to a shower or a bathtub or a valet who would do my laundry for me, I parked my toiletry bag on top of the cistern and set out in search of the kitchen.

  A glance at my watch told me that I’d already used twenty minutes of the two-hour countdown to my dinner date with the bishop. Having forgotten the lesson I should have learned from my recent experience with shortcuts, I decided to shorten my journey through the inn by taking the staff staircase. It seemed like a good idea at first. Instead of zigging and zagging all over the place, the staff staircase took me straight down to the ground floor. As Jean Hancock had foretold, however, I had trouble finding my way around once I got there.

  Nothing was familiar. The corridor at the bottom of the staff staircase was well lit but as plain as porridge. The utilitarian carpet and the bare plaster walls suggested that I was even further behind the scenes than I’d been in the office. The door at the end of the corridor was clearly an exit, so I didn’t touch it. A second door led to a laundry room, a third to a vast linen closet, and a fourth was locked.

  I detected delectable aromas outside the fifth door, but I also heard a heated argument taking place on the other side of it. I could tell that two men were involved, but since they were speaking rapid-fire French, I wasn’t sure why they were arguing. The man with the gravelly voice had a dreadful accent, while the man with the silky voice spoke French as if it were his mother tongue. The Finch-trained snoop in me caught the words le prix, un escroc, and non, non, non! before I ordered myself to stop eavesdropping.

  I hadn’t taken more than two backward steps when a fat little man with dark wavy hair and a pencil mustache flung the door wide and swept past me, hastily tucking a white packet inside his blue blazer. I shrank back another two steps as a man in a black short-sleeved chef’s coat filled the doorway. He seemed to be seven feet tall and built of granite. Though he, too, had a dark mustache, his was connected by two rivulets of facial hair to a scruffy goatee. He wore a red bandana on his shaved head, pirate style, and every visible inch of skin below his jawline was covered in tattoos.

  I fully expected him to bellow “Be off, ye landlubber!” and to threaten me with a hook, but he merely folded his muscular arms and growled, “Lost?”

  “I’m looking for the k-kitchen,” I stammered, fighting the urge to run for my life. “Gavin Hancock told me that the kitchen crew was shorthanded, so I volunteered mine.” I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers in a weak attempt at humor, but the tattooed man remained stone-faced.

  “To do what?” he asked.

  “Prep work?” I said, grasping at a phrase I’d heard but never used. “Chopping onions, peeling potatoes, whatever needs doing.”

  His lip curled disdainfully, as if it pained him to deal with amateurs. He must have felt compelled to go along with his boss’s wishes, however, because he turned his brawny back on me and muttered, “This way.”

  I followed him through a large storeroom to a second door that opened into a hot, humid, and tormentingly fragrant professional kitchen. Steam rose from an array of stockpots and saucepans while a skeleton crew of two weedy young men toiled over sauté pans, cutting boards, and mixing bowls. They raised their heads briefly at my entrance, then quickly lowered them again.

  Silently, the tattooed man showed me where to stow my shoulder bag, led me to a stainless-steel sink, and motioned for me to wash my hands. I didn’t feel the need to inform him that I’d already washed them. He then led me to a stainless-steel counter, dumped a pile of parsnips in front of me, and handed me a vegetable peeler.

  “Peels here, parsnips there,” he explained succinctly, plopping a plastic bucket and an empty stockpot on either side of the parsnip pile. “I’m Steve.”

  “I’m Lori,” I said, but Steve had already walked away.

  Steve? I thought wonderingly as I got to work with the peeler. I was certai
n that Jean Hancock had credited her children’s apple crumble to someone called Steve. The thought of the tattooed man preparing a special treat for Jemima and Nicholas made him seem slightly less scary, but only slightly.

  Apart from Steve barking commands at the weedy young men, the only voices I heard for the next ninety minutes belonged to the waitstaff calling out orders. Steve evidently discouraged casual chitchat in his kitchen. I wasn’t surprised. There was so much to do that the only thing I found surprising was that Steve had abandoned his post to argue with the fat little Frenchman.

  Not even Aunt Dimity could have described my stint in the kitchen as “making friends in a lively village.” When I finished peeling the parsnips, Steve gave me carrots to peel. When I finished peeling the carrots, he gave me beets and a pair of latex gloves to keep the beet juice from staining my hands while I wielded the peeler. As the minutes crept by, I began to feel as if I had joined the army. I could have danced for joy when Gavin Hancock appeared at my side to escort me to the bishop’s table.

  “Is it eight o’clock already?” I said, feigning shock.

  “On the dot,” he replied.

  I left the latex gloves on the counter, retrieved my bag, and fled the kitchen, throwing a relieved “Bye, Steve!” over my shoulder as I left. He did not respond.

  “I didn’t see your mobile in the office,” Gavin said as he led me through a pair of swinging doors and down another corridor.

  “I couldn’t find the office,” I told him.

  “Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll charge it and return it to you after you finish your meal. The bishop’s been asking for you.”

  “Bless him,” I said, handing over my cell phone.

  “Bless you,” he countered. “You’re the only guest who answered our call for help, and we’re very grateful. Don’t even try to pay for your meals while you’re here, Lori. They’re on the house. Consider it a small recompense for services rendered.”

  “I can’t accept free meals,” I protested. “You’ve already given me a place to stay.”

  “We put you in the attic,” he said, giving me a sidelong look. “You owe us nothing.”