He smiled sweetly. “Thank you, Lori, for—”
“Don’t thank me,” I said abruptly. “Thank Nicholas. He was in the driver’s seat. I just went along for the ride.”
Kit arched an eyebrow.
“It’s true,” I insisted. “And I really do want you to thank him. Out loud and to his face. He needs to hear it.”
Kit heard the urgency in my voice. He regarded me solemnly and put a hand to his breast.
“I will thank Nicholas,” he promised. “Out loud and to his face.”
I averted my gaze, half-embarrassed by my earnestness, and saw Lucca striding across the paddock toward the gate. He greeted me warmly, asked after his sister, and requested Kit’s assistance in the ditch.
I left the men to their work and went in search of Emma. She and I had a lot of catching up to do. I hadn’t seen her since I’d returned from the States, and I wanted to thank her for taking such good care of Kit.
When I found her—in a closet, squatting beside a cardboard box—I scarcely recognized her. For as long as I could remember, Emma Harris had been short and generously built, with gray-blond hair hanging to her waist. Her hair scarcely touched her earlobes now, and while she was still short, her build was no longer quite so generous.
“Emma?” I said, gazing down at her. “Have you lost weight?”
“Thirty pounds,” she replied, looking up from the box. “I’m going to lose twenty more before I’m satisfied. Want a kitten?”
She moved aside, and I peered over her shoulder at Katisha, Nell’s calico cat, who was nursing five new additions to the family.
“The boys would love a kitten,” I said, “but I’d better check with Bill first.”
“Just say the word.” Emma came out of the closet, closed the door, and led the way to her large and pleasantly cluttered kitchen.
“I didn’t know you were trying to lose weight,” I said. “What inspired you?”
“My jodhpurs,” Emma replied. “I split the seam when I went riding on Christmas Day. I took it as a sign that it was time to take my weight seriously.”
She looked wonderful. As she put the kettle on and set a pair of earthenware mugs on the refectory table, I detected a fine glow to her skin, fresh energy in her step, and an unmistakable gleam of accomplishment in her blue-gray eyes.
“I like your hair,” I said.
“It dries faster.” Emma had a very practical turn of mind. “But enough about me. I want to know what you’ve been up to. I’ve been hearing all sorts of spicy rumors about you and the Buntings’ nephew. . . .”
With a groan that was part chuckle, I sank onto a chair and began at the beginning. I gave Emma an abbreviated version of Peggy Taxman’s tale, but by the time we’d finished analyzing everyone else’s pecadilloes, she’d filled the two mugs with peppermint tea and placed a pot of creamed honey within my reach. I waited until she was sitting down to explain about Nicholas.
There were things you could tell a best friend that you couldn’t tell a husband or an aunt, and I told them all to Emma. I knew she wouldn’t judge me or repeat my words to another living soul. She was the sort of friend Prunella Hooper had only pretended to be.
“Nicholas sounds intriguing,” Emma observed, when I’d finally fallen silent. “He wouldn’t appeal to you if he weren’t. You like complicated men.” She sipped her tea and gazed into the middle distance. “I wonder what brought on this morning’s meltdown? It seems to me that there could be more to it than a tender conscience.”
I drank my tea and considered Emma’s comment carefully. My friend was as insightful as she was trustworthy. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d picked up a cue I’d missed, and sure enough, as I reviewed the many conversations I’d had with Nicholas, a pattern began to emerge.
“Now that you mention it . . .” I tapped the rim of my mug with an index finger. “He’s been on the verge of telling me something a number of times, but he’s always stopped himself or been interrupted.”
“Maybe it has to do with his doctor’s appointment,” Emma suggested. “Maybe it’s been preying on his mind.”
“He said it was routine,” I reminded her.
“He might have been playing it down to keep you from fretting,” Emma reasoned. “He sounds like someone who’d do that sort of thing.”
It was exactly the sort of thing Nicholas would do. He was given to small acts of gallantry. He was the kind of man who opened doors for women, guided them around muddy puddles, wrapped blankets around them when they were chilled. I had no trouble believing that he would lie to keep me from worrying. I recalled the hesitation in his voice when he’d mentioned the appointment and felt my heart clench with dread.
“That’s it.” I looked at Emma in alarm. “He’s sick, and he doesn’t want me to know. Oh, Emma, what if he’s seriously ill? What if that’s why he came to see his aunt and uncle? One last visit before—”
“For heaven’s sake, Lori, simmer down.” Emma refilled my mug and shook her head at me, bemused. “He’s not in intensive care yet. I was tossing an idea in the air. I could be completely wrong.”
“What if you’re right, though?” My spoon rattled agitatedly against the mug as I scooped honey into my tea. “He should have told me.”
“There’s probably nothing to tell.” Emma rolled her eyes in exasperation. “It was just an idea, Lori. Don’t worry about it.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “What color kitten do you think the boys will like?”
It was easy for Emma to tell me not to worry about Nicholas. She was naturally calm, cool, and collected, whereas I was absolutely none of the above. I returned home with so many knots in my stomach that I felt as if I’d gulped a mugful of macramé.
I telephoned the vicarage, but Nicholas had already left for London, where, Lilian informed me, he planned to spend the night. I considered quizzing Lilian about the state of her nephew’s health but decided against it. If Nicholas had sworn her to secrecy, she wouldn’t confide in me, and if he’d decided gallantly to protect her from the truth, it would be unkind to alarm her.
I spent the rest of the day and a good part of the evening afflicting Nicholas with every disease under the sun. By the time I sat down in the study to speak with Aunt Dimity, I was a bit overwrought.
Dimity allowed me to gibber hysterically for a solid five minutes before writing a single word.
Lori?
I blinked down at the page. “Huh?”
If I might redirect your attention for a moment?
“To what?” I said.
To your husband. Bill cherishes your compassionate nature, my dear, but you might want to tone down your concern lest he misinterpret it. He may not understand why you’ve worked yourself into such a tizzy over someone who’s merely a passing acquaintance. I do, but he may not.
“You do?” I said.
I may have taken leave of this earth, Lori, but I haven’t taken leave of my senses. In our recent conversations, you’ve expressed more interest in Nicholas than in the murder.
“That’s because I care about Nicholas,” I said boldly, “and I don’t give a toss about Prunella Hooper. As far as I’m concerned, her death was a gift to Finch. Wait until you hear what she did to Peggy Taxman.”
I’ve been waiting. If handwriting could be ironic, Dimity’s was. I took the hint and unfolded Peggy’s story in all of its poignant detail for the second time that day.
Dimity didn’t respond at once. There was a long pause before her words began to scroll across the page, as if she’d needed time to reconcile her old image of Peggy the termagant with the new one of Peggy the brutalized victim.
Poor Mrs. Taxman. I knew there was more to her than met the eye, but I’d no idea how much more. I never would have guessed that we had so much in common. I sympathize with her more deeply than I’d ever thought possible.
I felt a pang of remorse as the real reason for Dimity’s prolonged silence dawned. She, too, had lost her first love to the war. She and Peggy were bound by
ties of loss and suffering I couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Her burden was far greater than mine, of course, for I was never forced to give up a child. How galling it must have been for her to live under Mrs. Hooper’s thumb, and how painful to have her past abused in such a way.
“I don’t know how Peggy stood it,” I said.
Nor do I. I find it extremely difficult to believe that a woman with her explosive temperament would submit to such a cruel form of blackmail for so long without striking out. If motive is all we have to go by, I fear that Mrs. Taxman is our most likely suspect.
“If it turns out that Peggy killed Mrs. Hooper, I’ll call it justifiable homicide,” I declared. “I’m reserving judgment, though, until we hear from Mr. Barlow.”
A wise decision. In the meantime, try not to lose too much sleep over Nicholas’s impending death. There could be other explanations for his moodiness.
“Name one,” I challenged.
He could be in love with you. Sleep well, my dear.
“Sleep well?” I squeaked. I watched in mute distress as the gracefully curving lines of royal-blue ink faded from the page, then closed the journal and buried my face in my hands.
Could it be true? I asked myself. Had Nicholas fallen in love with me? I knew that he was drawn to me—he’d told me so—but he’d done nothing to suggest that his emotions were involved. When he’d said he was “not beyond temptation,” I’d assumed he meant temptations of the flesh. Had I missed another cue? Had straightforward physical magnetism evolved into something deeper—something that touched his heart, disrupted his speech, filled him with melancholy?
Deeper feelings would prick at his conscience as well. He’d said only this morning that he hoped our “association” wouldn’t cause trouble for me after he’d gone. He’d told me in the vicar’s study that he didn’t want to complicate my life. It had never crossed my mind that I might be complicating his.
While Nicholas had treated me with kid gloves, I’d played silly games. I wanted to sink through the floor when I thought of the playful, public kiss I’d given him. It had seemed like a clever joke at the time, a way of baiting my nosy neighbors. I hadn’t stopped to consider its effect on Nicholas.
I felt like an unmitigated cad. When all was said and done, I could run home to my family, but Nicholas had no one to run home to—no wife, no fiancée, no girlfriend. Who would help him get over me? He didn’t even own a cat.
Unrequited love could prey on a man’s mind as morbidly as impending death. It suddenly occurred to me that Nicholas might have invented the doctor’s appointment as an excuse to put distance between himself and the unworthy object of his blighted affection.
I groaned miserably and dragged myself to bed, tormented by thoughts of love and death. Given a choice between Aunt Dimity’s explanation of Nicholas’s behavior and Emma’s, I almost preferred Emma’s. I could nurse Nicholas through the most dreadful of diseases, but I couldn’t mend a heart that I had broken.
Chapter 22
Bill telephoned bright and early Saturday morning to let me know that, due to the demands of a particularly difficult client, he wouldn’t be coming home until Sunday. I was disappointed but not surprised. Since most of Bill’s clients were difficult and since he’d been away from his practice for three months, a certain number of complications were only to be expected.
I spent the rest of the day obsessing about Nicholas. I reached for the telephone a dozen times but decided each time that a phone call would be cowardly. Though I dreaded finding out that he was either heartsick or just plain sick, I felt I owed it to him to do so face-to-face.
I left the cottage early in order to help Lilian Bunting prepare the schoolhouse for the meeting and, if the opportunity presented itself, to have a private word with her nephew.
The old schoolhouse had been used as an all-purpose meeting place since 1963, when a fire had destroyed Finch’s village hall. It had once held two classrooms, but the wall dividing the two rooms had been removed to create a large open space in which the villagers conducted meetings, staged plays, and judged exhibitions related to the year’s various fairs and festivals.
I’d attended many events in the schoolhouse, but none had seemed as momentous as the one that would start in less than an hour. As I parked the Rover beside the schoolyard wall, I had little doubt that the judgments passed by the select members of the Easter vigil committee would be remembered long after the winner of the Best-Flower-Arrangement-in-a-Gravy-Boat competition had been forgotten.
Work-booted butterflies romped in my stomach as I let myself in through the schoolhouse’s double doors, hung my jacket on a hook in the long, narrow cloakroom, and entered the schoolroom proper. I saw at once that Lilian had preparations well in hand.
A circle of ten folding chairs sat in the middle of the room, with the refreshments table centered on the north wall. A dozen serving dishes filled with an assortment of homemade pastries had been placed on the table, along with the cheap paper napkins and the virtually indestructible cups, saucers, and teaspoons used at all community gatherings. The muted sound of running water suggested that someone was at the sink in the ladies’ loo, filling the giant tea urn.
The circular seating arrangement was new to me. At every meeting I’d attended, the chairman had occupied a lofty position on the raised platform at the far end of the room, facing regimented rows of lowly committee members. I wondered if Lilian’s circle had been designed to promote a more democratic spirit—or to provoke a confrontation.
I’d brought with me the Pyms’ undelivered gingerbread, which I planned to distribute at the end of the meeting. I slid the boxes under the refreshments table and scanned the room, searching for some sign of Nicholas’s presence. I saw none, and when the door to the ladies’ bathroom opened, I hastened to give Lilian a hand lugging the heavy tea urn to the refreshments table.
“Thank you, Lori.” Lilian’s face was flushed from the exertion. “We keep meaning to purchase a rolling cart for this monster, but we always forget to include it in the annual budget.”
“Where’s the vicar?” I asked.
“I thought the meeting might be stressful for Teddy,” Lilian replied, “so I sent him to spend the night at my brother’s.”
“What about Nicholas?” I said.
“He hasn’t returned from London yet,” Lilian informed me. “I expect the poor boy’s trapped between lorries on the M40. The roads have become purgatorial since the government ruined the railways.”
“Have you spoken with him?” I asked, fishing for details. “Did his doctor give him a clean bill of health?”
“Nicky runs five miles every morning,” Lilian replied dryly. “His profession requires him to be in tiptop condition. He has nothing to fear from a routine medical examination, whereas you and I”—she paused to change her grip on the sloshing urn—“may need a chiropractor before the evening’s done. Now . . . lift!”
Once we’d maneuvered the urn onto the table, Lilian plugged it in, turned it on, and stood back to survey the table. It didn’t take long for her glance to fall on me.
“What a . . . striking costume,” she faltered, eyeing my outfit with poorly concealed dismay. “It’s so, um, homespun.”
I looked down self-consciously. I’d carefully selected the shapeless gray tunic and loose-fitting black trousers in an attempt to appear as sexless as possible, for Nicholas’s sake, but Lilian’s pained expression suggested that I might have gone a bit overboard.
“It’s comfortable,” I said lamely.
“Comfort is important,” Lilian agreed with a self-satisfied glance at her well-tailored tweeds.
Lilian asked me to retrieve a box of notepads and pencils from the small office at the rear of the schoolroom and to distribute one each per chair. As I scurried off to do her bidding, I congratulated myself on the subtle way in which I’d confirmed the reason for Nicholas’s trip to London. I wasn’t as sanguine about his health as his aunt was, but it was margin
ally reassuring to know that he hadn’t invented the doctor’s appointment as an excuse to get away from me.
I’d just finished working my way around the circle of chairs when the bells in the church tower began to chime seven o’clock. By the third bong, a commotion in the cloakroom signaled the arrival of the more punctual members of the Easter vigil committee.
“What in God’s name are you wearing, Lori?” Peggy Taxman sailed majestically into the room, with Jasper trailing docilely in her wake. “You’re not pregnant again, are you?”
I blushed crimson. “No, Peggy, I’m—”
“You’ve a lovely figure,” Sally Pyne interrupted, marching in behind Jasper. The round-figured little woman wore a pale peach pantsuit and carried a plastic container filled with jam doughnuts, which she plonked proudly on the refreshments table. “If I had a shape like yours, Lori, I wouldn’t hide it under a gray sack.”
“She wasn’t wearing a gray sack on the square yesterday.” Dick Peacock paused in the cloakroom doorway to straighten the black brocade vest he wore over his kelly-green shirt, then made a beeline for Sally’s doughnuts.
His wife, clad in corduroy trousers and a fisherman’s knit sweater, followed his example but managed to delay her first bite long enough to add, “She was wearing her brown cotton jacket, Dick, which is about as alluring as the gray sack.”
“All the same,” Dick went on, impervious, “she looked very pretty when we saw her kissing Nicholas.”
Lilian Bunting turned to me, shocked.
“Now, Dick,” I began, but Christine Peacock jumped to my defense.
“It was hardly a kiss,” she pointed out, frowning at her husband. “More of a peck, really. The sort of thing you’d give a cousin.”
“Too bad he’s not her cousin,” Dick said, waggling his eyebrows.
“He’s a good friend, eh, Lori?” Sally Pyne gave me a wink as she elbowed her way to the tea urn. “A very good friend.”
I didn’t know where to look. I’d expected the kiss to generate gossip, but I hadn’t expected it to spawn a public debate in my presence.
Aunt Dimity: Detective Page 15