Aunt Dimity and the King's Ransom

by Nancy Atherton

  Jemima held Captain Pigg in hers. I’d returned the brave Gloucester Old Spot to her with my heartfelt thanks, and she’d accepted him without hesitation, knowing that no dead ladies would trouble me in the attic, even without his protection.

  The stirring notes of the processional played on a portable keyboard by a sturdy gray-haired woman brought the congregation to order. The choir raised their voices in heavenly song and the service commenced. When it came time for the lesson, the animal-loving rector didn’t read about the ark and the flood. Instead, he chose verses from St. Paul’s epistle to the Philippians.

  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,” he read, “but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

  He built on the verses by stressing cooperation and a selfless concern for others as the qualities that would enable a community to weather any crisis, and he went on to cite the myriad of ways in which his community had exhibited those qualities since the cyclone had engulfed Shepney. He concluded by thanking God for giving his congregation the wisdom to face adversity together. He was about to give the blessing when an excited young boy dashed into the dining hall and whispered something in his ear.

  “Glad tidings!” the rector announced, raising his arms in an all-encompassing gesture of joy. “Connie Fordyce has given birth to a healthy baby boy! And she’s named him Noah!”

  “That’s my granddaughter!” Mrs. Fordyce bellowed.

  “And your great-grandson, you old fool!” hollered Mr. Bakewell.

  “Be still, the both of you,” Rebecca Hanson roared. “The service isn’t over!”

  Phillip Lawson was wise enough to bring the service to a speedy conclusion, at which point refreshments were served. Those who could stay stayed, and those who had to return to businesses, families, or volunteer activities dispersed. No one left, however, until everyone had raised a teacup to toast little Noah.

  Christopher and I stayed. We chatted and mingled, sipped tea and helped ourselves to the seemingly endless supply of cookies that poured forth from the kitchen. While we sipped and nibbled, a team of volunteers unfolded the folding tables, rearranged the chairs, and readied a table for the lunch buffet. Despite the festive atmosphere, Shepney remained in a state of emergency.

  “If the river continues to recede at its present rate,” Phillip informed us, “the roads should be dry in two more days.”

  “It’ll take two more to clear ’em,” said Joe Turner.

  “Let’s hope for sunny weather,” I said.

  “There’s no rain in the forecast,” said Rebecca Hanson.

  We all looked up as we heard the whup whup sound of a helicopter flying low over the village.

  “Must be the BBC,” said Tessa. “The Beeb loves to get aerial shots of Shepney during floods.”

  “Who can blame them?” I said. “It’s one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen.”

  “I hope they don’t spook the livestock,” Phillip said worriedly, but when he took a step toward the door, his wife restrained him.

  “The animals are being well looked after,” she said. “Your human flock needs you right now.”

  “The service was wonderful,” I said, and the others chimed in with comments and compliments that distracted the rector, at least for the moment, from his other responsibilities.

  As the rich aromas of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding began to spill into the dining room, talk turned to Sunday lunch. Rebecca Hanson invited Christopher and me to dine at the village hall, with the assurance that we wouldn’t have to share a table with “the old rascals.” I was on the verge of accepting when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to find my long-lost husband smiling down at me.

  “Bill!” I cried, and threw myself into his arms.

  “Hello, love,” he said, lifting me from my feet in a hug that went on for quite some time.

  “How did you get here?” I demanded, when I hit solid ground again.

  “Sir Roger’s chopper,” he said. “The man may be a dead bore, but he’s very kind. When I told him that I absolutely, positively couldn’t live without you for another minute, he put in a call to his pilot and off I went.”

  “The cows—” Phillip began, but Bill raised a hand to calm him.

  “We saw them,” he said, “and we avoided them. The pilot landed at the bottom of the hill and I walked up the road.” He smiled down at me. “Otherwise, I would have been here sooner.”

  “I’m glad you’re here now,” I said, returning his smile with interest. “Everyone? Meet my husband.”

  I spent the next several minutes introducing Bill to the assembled throng, but I waited until the others slipped away to introduce Christopher.

  “Bill,” I said, “meet my guardian angel.”

  “Bishop Wyndham, I presume,” said Bill, shaking Christopher’s hand.

  “Christopher, please,” said Christopher.

  “I can’t thank you enough for taking my wife under your wing,” said Bill.

  “I could hardly turn my back on her,” said Christopher. “We share an interest in ecclesiastical needlework.”

  When I started laughing, Bill smiled uncertainly. He wasn’t familiar with Christopher’s sense of humor, but I was. I was also familiar with my friend’s thoughtfulness, so I wasn’t surprised when he excused himself to give us a moment alone.

  It was then that the things I hadn’t told Bill began to topple through my mind like dominoes. My husband didn’t know about the attic or the dead lady or the ghostly noises or Steve’s prison record or the plot I’d hatched to expose a drug-dealing blackmailer by descending to the depths of the earth in a three-hundred-year-old tunnel built to help cutthroat villains escape the long arm of the law. While I was wondering whether there would ever be a right time to reveal all, he was making things worse by apologizing to me.

  “Forgive me for not noticing how badly you needed a break, Lori,” he said. “I’m sorry we didn’t make it to Rye, but Shepney has clearly done you a world of good. Your eyes are bright, your cheeks are rosy. . . . Whatever you’ve been doing, it’s recharged your batteries.”

  “Well,” I said, “I haven’t been bored.”

  Epilogue

  I waited until Bill was staring in dismay at my bed in The King’s Ransom to make a clean breast of everything. By then, it was too late to avoid telling him that the only way I could have spent my first night in Shepney closer to the cyclone’s ravaging winds would have been to climb out onto the roof to catch a few z’s. He took it as well as could be expected, accepting that the attic, while not an optimal storm shelter, had offered me more protection than his car.

  Once I told him about the attic, the rest of it came spilling out in a surprisingly orderly narrative that he didn’t take quite as well. To say that he questioned my judgment would be to put it mildly, and while he eventually acknowledged my argument’s famous internal logic, it wasn’t enough to keep him from being furious with me for risking my neck.

  Rabid bats were mentioned, as were steep drop-offs, gaping holes, poisonous gases, knives, guns, cave-ins, and blunt instruments. Though I didn’t dare ask, I assumed that the poisonous gases would have killed me by accumulating in the tunnel, because they didn’t strike me as a practical murder weapon.

  Thankfully, my husband was nothing if not resilient. After he vented his anger, he began to see the humor in my imaginative interpretation of events. I endured his laughter stoically, knowing that it, too, would fade in time, though it might be several years before he let me forget my miscue regarding the truffles.

  As Phillip Lawson and Joe Turner had jointly predicted, it took four days to restore the roads around Shepney to their preflood conditions. Christopher and I spent those four days taking Bill on a grand tour that included St. Alfege’s—where he f
inally got Christopher’s joke about ecclesiastical needlework, and I finally got to see the French coastline from the bell tower—as well as Best Books, the livestock enclosures, and Kenneth’s cave. Since the Hancocks had already declared the smugglers’ tunnel off limits, Kenneth retained the distinction of being the last human being to enter it.

  On our final day in Shepney, while Bill was hauling my luggage down from the attic, Steve caught up with me in the foyer. The gentle giant gave me his parsnip soup recipe as well as the bittersweet news that the vixen and her kits had moved on. Their freedom, I thought, would bring a particular kind of joy to a man who knew what it was to be imprisoned, but I could tell by his tone of voice that he would miss them. For him, as for everyone else in Shepney, service had been a privilege, not a sacrifice.

  Christopher called to us to join him at the dining room’s window wall, where Tessa, Jean, and Gavin had gathered with assorted guests and staff members to watch a phalanx of grim-faced French tourists escort Monsieur Renault to the tour bus. A cheer went up in the dining room as the bus pulled out of the parking lot, but I doubted that it was as heartfelt as the cheer that must have gone up among the French tourists.

  Even with Jemima and Nicholas back in school—their proper school—Jean and Gavin didn’t have time to spare for a prolonged good-bye, but they urged Bill and me to come back soon, promising to provide us with their finest room, which turned out to be the one favored by the dashing rogues who engaged in sword fights when the mood struck them. It would, we decided, make for a lively stay, if not a restful one.

  While Bill fetched the Mercedes, I said a fond farewell to Christopher. I hadn’t expected to find a friend when I’d staggered into St. Alfege’s, but I’d found one, and while our mystery-solving days appeared to be over, I would always cherish the time I’d spent in his congenial company.

  Fittingly, his was the last face I saw as we drove away from The King’s Ransom, though I caught a glimpse of Trevor Lawson coming out of the candy shop when he should have been in school. To my relief, he was followed by the rector, who was carrying two very full shopping bags. Trevor’s classmates, it seemed, were in for a treat. I suspected that his teachers would regard his reformation in the same light.

  As it turned out, I saw Christopher again in mid-November. Bill’s regret at missing the symptoms of my dolorous doldrums led him to plan a second getaway close upon the first. It wasn’t an adjunct to a business trip, but a long weekend dedicated to the principle that every parent deserves time off for good behavior.

  We went to Winchester, where Christopher gave us a guided tour of the cathedral, showed us the town’s manifold highlights, and finagled permission for Kenneth to join us for a thoroughly enjoyable lunch. Our next getaway, so I’m told, will take us to Rye and to Winchelsea, but only as day-trippers. We’ll spend our evenings at The King’s Ransom. It wasn’t as famous as The Mermaid Inn, but we had friends in Shepney, and in our book, friendship beat fame every time.

  I was at home one evening, shortly after our return from Winchester. Too restless to sleep, I sat in the study, with the blue journal open in my lap, while the rest of my family slumbered.

  Memories of Shepney drifted through my mind as a fire crackled comfortably in the hearth and a cold wind ruffled the strands of ivy that crisscrossed the diamond-paned windows above the old oak desk. When Aunt Dimity’s fine copperplate began to loop and curl across the page, I saw that she, too, was thinking of Shepney.

  I’ve been meaning to ask, my dear: Did you ever find out why Steve went to prison?

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t try to find out, because it’s none of my business. Whoever he was then isn’t who he is now, and who he is now is a stand-up guy.”

  Wonderful things can happen when a man is given the support he needs to make the most of a second chance.

  “Christopher would agree with you,” I said.

  It sounds as though you had a delightful time in Winchester.

  “We did,” I said. “Everything went according to plan.”

  Quite a contrast to your previous getaway.

  “Yes, but . . .” I sighed. “I don’t mean to be perverse, Dimity, but if it hadn’t been for the cyclone, I wouldn’t have met Christopher. I wouldn’t have seen the floodwaters stretching out beyond the ridge, or the expression on Steve’s face when he looked at the vixen. I wouldn’t have heard a choir sing for a congregation of one. I wouldn’t have learned about smuggling in East Sussex, and I wouldn’t have watched a village come together to do things that mattered, whether it was tending someone else’s geese, or making sure the old folks had hot meals, or providing a bed for a stranger like me.”

  On the other hand, you wouldn’t have slept in a dusty attic without heating, plumbing, or electrical outlets.

  “A small price to pay,” I said. “The cyclone taught me a valuable lesson, Dimity.”

  Did it teach you to check the weather forecast before you leave home?

  “Definitely!” I said, laughing. “But it also taught me to embrace the unexpected.”

  Some of life’s greatest adventures happen by accident.

  “One of mine did,” I said, “and I wouldn’t trade my accidental adventure for a king’s ransom.”

  Steve’s Apple Crumble

  Serves four

  Ingredients

  For the crumble:

  10½ ounces all-purpose flour, sieved with a pinch of salt

  6 ounces brown sugar, packed

  7 ounces unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature

  more butter for greasing pan

  For the filling:

  1 pound Granny Smith apples, cored and chopped into half-inch pieces

  2 ounces brown sugar, packed

  1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon (or to taste)

  Directions

  Preheat oven to 350° F.

  Place flour (with salt) and brown sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Rub a few cubes of butter at a time into the flour mixture. Keep rubbing until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.

  Place the chopped apples in a large bowl and sprinkle with the brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Stir well.

  Butter a 9-inch square baking pan. Spoon the apple mixture into the pan, then sprinkle the crumble mixture on top.

  Bake for 40–45 minutes, or until the crumble is brown and the apple mixture is bubbling.

  Serve with custard or heavy cream.

  About the Author

  Nancy Atherton is the bestselling author of twenty-three Aunt Dimity Mysteries. The first book in the series, Aunt Dimity's Death, was voted "One of the Century's 100 Favorite Mysteries" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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