I couldn’t believe that I’d been so blind. The truth had been laid out before me as clearly as a wiring diagram, but I’d been too distracted by Jamie’s charm to see it.
“Was that your job?” I asked him, tears of humiliation pricking my eyes. “Is that why you spent so much time with me today? Were you supposed to keep me busy while Wendy ransacked the abbey? Is that why you’ve been so nice to me?”
Jamie dropped his gaze.
“He didn’t want to do it,” Wendy put in, “any more than I wanted to be rude to you. But we had to think of a way to—”
“Why?” I rounded on her. “Why would you have to think of anything when I was so incredibly cooperative? Jamie was the perfect baby-sitter. He took me in completely. If I wasn’t with him, I was off at Catchpole’s or up in my room.” I swiped angrily at a tear that had trickled down my cheek. “I gave you buckets of time to poke around the house with that pry bar of yours, Wendy. I gave you more time than you needed to steal the diamonds. I found the bloody floor plans for you. Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“Lori . . .” Wendy said gently as she started to approach me.
“Don’t you come near me,” I snapped, stiffening. “My husband knows I’m here and he knows what I think of you. If anything happens to me, he’ll come down on you like the wrath of God.”
Wendy stopped dead in her tracks, stared at me for a moment, then flung her hands into the air.
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said. “I can’t deal with this drama queen, Jamie. You try talking sense to her.” She whipped off the head lamp, tossed it on the bed, and strode over to open the doors of Jamie’s wardrobe.
I gaped at her in disbelief. “You’re disgruntled? You take complete advantage of me, and you’re disgruntled?”
“I’m not disgruntled, I’m hungry,” Wendy replied, reaching into the wardrobe. “Lunch was ages ago, and I haven’t spent the evening sitting around and talking. I’ve worked up an appetite.”
I was about to ask how she could think of food at a time like this when my stomach betrayed me with a highly audible rumble. I blushed, then watched, nonplussed, as Wendy slid a silver tray from a shelf in the wardrobe and carried it to the walnut table.
The tray held two sets of silverware, a pair of tumblers, a large bottle of mineral water, and an assortment of tins, jars, and packets containing an array of expensive nibbles: beluga caviar, pâté de foie gras, herring fillets in mustard sauce, rolled anchovies with capers, smoked mussels, smoked baby clams, olives, gherkins, pickled pearl onions, cream crackers, cheesy biscuits, crunchy breadsticks—it was all I could do to keep from drooling as Wendy passed by.
“Don’t forget the bowl,” said Jamie. He retrieved a covered stoneware bowl from the wardrobe and set it on the hearth, close to the fire. “It’s Catchpole’s apricot compote. It should be warmed through by the time we finish the main course.”
While Wendy slid the ottoman to the opposite side of the table from the armchair and filled the tumblers with water, Jamie rummaged through his backpack until he found a small plastic cup and a set of camping cutlery, which he used to create a third place setting. He then moved the desk chair to the walnut table and swiveled it to face me.
“Please, Lori,” he said. “Won’t you join us?”
I was overcome by a sense of unreality. What kind of crooks were they? I was an eyewitness to their crime. I’d caught them red-handed. They knew that my husband was a lawyer, for heaven’s sake. Why were they offering me a midnight snack? The fact that no one had bothered to scoop up the diamonds or threaten me with grievous bodily harm was oddly reassuring, as was the curious tableau of tins and biscuits set against a backdrop of fabulous jewels, but still, I hesitated.
“Look, Lori.” Wendy sat on the ottoman and pointed ostentatiously at the silver tray. “The packets are sealed. You’re safe. No poison.”
“Wendy,” Jamie said repressively. He placed a hand on the back of the chair. “Please join us, Lori. Please give me a chance to apologize . . . and to explain.”
It wasn’t Jamie’s attitude of humble penitence or his evident desire to make a clean breast of things that ultimately persuaded me to accept his invitation. My stomach cast the deciding vote with a growl so filled with yearning that I was forced to take pity on it.
I swiveled the chair to face the table, sat, and stared straight at the fire, refusing to make eye contact with either of the co-conspirators.
“Thank you.” Jamie lowered himself into the tartan armchair and began opening tins.
“Catchpole will kill you when he finds out you’ve raided the pantry,” I muttered.
“I didn’t hear you complain at lunch.” Wendy reached for the cheesy biscuits. “I seem to recall three bowls of paella disappearing into your gullet.”
I’d intended to maintain an aloof silence during the meal, as a sign of my disapproval and a tribute to my grievously wounded pride, but as Emma Harris had reminded me not so very long ago, I wasn’t any good at maintaining silence, aloof or otherwise. I quickly decided that a few scathing comments would serve the same purpose with less strain.
“Now I know why you had no appetite yesterday,” I said. “At the time I thought you were afraid of Lucasta’s ghost, but of course, I know better now. You weren’t afraid of the ghost. You were afraid Catchpole might get in your way, might even keep you from stealing the parure.” I slathered a cream cracker with a generous helping of pâté. “No wonder you couldn’t clean your plates.”
Wendy’s gray eyes narrowed ominously. She opened her mouth to speak, but Jamie intervened, holding his arms out as if to separate two overzealous sparring partners.
“Let’s eat first, then talk,” he pleaded. “It’s impossible to think clearly on an empty stomach.”
Conversation ceased. My scathing comment had inadvertently enabled me to achieve my original goal of silence, but it didn’t last long. Many hours had passed since we’d eaten the paella, and the coconut ginger soup had been more of a snack than a meal, so our appetites were sharp. We vacuumed up every tasty morsel on the tray in record time and attacked the apricot compote like a trio of hyenas. Wendy had already placed the ravished tray and the empty stoneware bowl on the floor in the corridor and returned to the ottoman when the ebony clock began to chime midnight. When the last echoing note had faded, Jamie leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his fingers loosely interlaced.
“God knows, you have every right to be furious with me, Lori,” he said. “I’m furious with myself for . . . misleading you. If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t mere play-acting. I meant what I said in the library. I’ve enjoyed every moment of our time together. I like you very much.”
I gave a derisive snort. “If this is how you treat people you like, I’d hate to see how you treat those you dislike.”
“You’ve seen one short phrase in an epic tale,” said Jamie. “I’ll tell you the rest, if you’ll let me. You have no reason to believe a word I say, but I hope you’ll listen. I hope you’ll reserve your final judgment until after you’ve heard me out.”
Jamie had, unknowingly, hit upon the one strategy against which I had no defenses. I’d never been able to resist the lure of storytelling. My childhood had been filled with the sound of my mother’s voice recounting Aunt Dimity’s adventures, and I’d devoted a good chunk of my adult life to working with books. I had no doubt that Jamie was about to produce a work of fiction, but I wasn’t going anywhere, and I was curious to see how he’d twist and turn the plot to make himself the hero.
I folded my arms and said testily, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
He leaned back in the chair and gazed into the fire with a concentrated frown, as if trying to recall a complicated series of events.
“Imagine if you will,” he began, “two American soldiers. We’ll call them James and Walter.”
“Wally,” Wendy said stiffly. “Everyone called him Wally.”
I gave her a sharp glance and knew with a sudden certain
ty that she was speaking of her father. A moment’s reflection told me, with equal certainty, that Jamie had been named for James, his father. I looked from Wendy’s somber face to Jamie’s and felt for the first time that I was a stranger intruding on a shared and private grief. I wondered uncomfortably what it must be costing them to confide in me.
“We’ll call him Wally, then.” Jamie nodded gravely, then went on. “James, the older of the two, was a captain. Wally was his driver. James and Wally had fought side by side for three years. They’d spent D-day, like your father, storming Omaha Beach. They’d pushed through the Battle of the Bulge and nearly reached the outskirts of Berlin when a sniper stopped them.”
“They were very young when they were shot,” Wendy added, as though reminding Jamie of a significant detail. “James was only twenty-three and Wally had just turned twenty.”
“Wally was nearly twenty years younger than I am now,” Jamie said. He meditated in silence, then seemed to reach a decision. He stood. “Shall we take a walk? I find that a stroll after a meal aids digestion. Apart from that, there are a few things I’d like to show you, Lori, to illustrate the story, so to speak.”
I went along with his odd request, rising from the desk chair and motioning for him to lead the way. The meal and Jamie’s calm demeanor had soothed my much-abused nerves. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but I was no longer afraid that my companions would beat me to death with the pry bar and dump my body in the blanket chest.
Before we left the room, Wendy knelt to gather the jewels. She bundled them into the brown paper wrapping and tucked the parcel beneath a pile of blankets atop Jamie’s wardrobe.
“In case Catchpole decides to do a bed check,” she explained, and retrieved Jamie’s oil lamp from the desk.
We walked three abreast down the corridor, Wendy lighting the way with the oil lamp while Jamie spoke in a low-voiced murmur, as though unwilling to disturb the slumbering house.
“After James and Wally were wounded, they were evacuated to England. The medicos didn’t think they were strong enough to endure a transatlantic crossing, so the two friends were sent to a convalescent home in England, a place buried deep in the countryside, where no German bombs had fallen. A place called Ladythorne Abbey.”
He fell silent as we descended the main staircase and didn’t speak again until we’d reached the entrance hall.
“They’d never seen anything like it.” His deep voice echoed in the cavernous space. He extended a hand to one of the rosewood angels capping the newel posts, traced the graceful curve of a wing with a fingertip, then stepped toward the center of the hall and let his gaze wander from the beaten copper bowl on the console table to the armorial medallions dotting the coffered ceiling. “The great country houses they’d seen in France and Germany had been badly damaged during the war, but Ladythorne, hidden in its secret valley, was untouched, remote, romantic.”
He turned abruptly, took the oil lamp from Wendy, and crossed to a set of imposing double doors set in the wall to the right of the staircase. He pushed the doors open and stood to one side, motioning with his head for me to precede him. I hesitated, then stepped past him into a room that dwarfed the entrance hall, both in size and grandeur. Jamie followed on my heels and held the lamp high, but the increased illumination only made the room seem more fantastic.
Great darkened oak beams ribbed the white-plastered ceiling, each hung with a black wrought-iron wagon-wheel chandelier. A cavernous stone fireplace dominated the far wall, with a raised and painted coat of arms set into an elaborate oak overmantel crowned with fluted pinnacles that reached almost to the ceiling. An enormous Axminster carpet woven in rich blues and reds and golds ran the length of the room, anchoring islands of chintz-covered armchairs, hobnailed leather sofas, and tables that held silver-framed photographs, leather-bound books, bowls of fragrant potpourri, and a collection of small bronzes.
The outer wall was pierced by a dozen slender stained-glass windows resplendent with Gothic tracery, but my eyes turned toward the inner wall, which was nearly covered by three multicolored tapestries. In one, a falcon flew from the gloved fist of its handler; in another, a pack of hounds bayed at a treed fox while a pair of mounted huntsmen looked on. In the third, an archer drew his bow and aimed his arrow at a fleeing flock of doves. Although the colors had been dimmed and the needlework had worn in places over time, the images retained a sense of life and movement that took my breath away.
Behind me, Jamie murmured, “If the Great Hall’s rendered you speechless, Lori, imagine its effect on two weak and wide-eyed young men who’d spent three years in hell.”
Sixteen
The Great Hall didn’t look like this when they first saw it, of course.” Jamie walked toward the yawning fireplace at the far end of the room, gesturing as he went, as if to draw a picture in the air. “When James and Wally arrived at Ladythorne, the Great Hall was furnished with rows of hospital beds, with IV bottles on wheeled poles, with curtained frames that could be moved to shield a failing patient from prying eyes. It didn’t smell of potpourri, but of disinfectant and fear. Even so”—Jamie paused to gaze up at the plastered ceiling—“the oak beams were still in place, and the stained glass. And the men didn’t spend all of their time here. Wonder of wonders, they were allowed to roam freely throughout the house.”
He stopped, turned on his heel, and made for a door to my right, between the two nearest tapestries. Wendy and I hastened after him into a spacious oak-paneled room furnished with a carved and gilded billiards table, racks of inlaid cues and ivory balls, small tables set with cut-glass glasses and decanters, and an assortment of leather-covered chairs.
I ran my hand over the intricately carved phoenix whose widespread wings covered one end of the billiards table and experienced a strange sense of displacement, as if we’d shifted back in time to the years when Ladythorne had been a refuge from the storm of war. I could almost see the ghostly silhouettes of convalescent soldiers, some on crutches, bending over their cues, while others with their arms in slings sprawled lazily in the leather chairs, calling words of advice or ridicule to the players.
Jamie didn’t pause for commentary, but moved through the billiards room to the smoking room beyond. The humidors, bamboo newspaper racks, and ample armchairs gave the smoking room the relaxed and intimate air of a traditional gentlemen’s club. I suspected that the quieter soldiers had found their way here, the ones who preferred solitary reflection to billiards-room banter.
Jamie must have studied the floor plans minutely because he moved unerringly to a door concealed in the smoking room’s dark paneling. He silently beckoned to us to follow, and led the way through a short passage that delivered us to a place so magical I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. To a man who’d spent three years in combat, it would have looked like a preview of heaven.
A conservatory had been grafted onto the back of the house. Slender ribs of white-painted iron fanned out from a conical roof to connect in delicate loops with the glass walls’ lacy ironwork. Three-tiered slatted wooden shelves lined the walls, supported on wrought-iron legs that mimicked twining vines festooned with rosebuds. The floor wore a gleaming mosaic of spring blossoms, and the dainty wrought-iron table and chairs seemed cry out for teacups and lace-adorned ladies with parasols.
The conservatory would have been sweetly pretty, surrounded and filled by the soft greens of summer, but the blizzard had transformed it into a palace fit for an ice queen. The conical roof wore a towering crown of snow, fat flakes swirled and drifted in the darkness beyond, and every shimmering pane of glass was rimed with glittering feathers and flames and forests of frost. The air was so cold that I could see my breath, but I would have stood there until I, too, was covered in frost, if Jamie hadn’t taken my arm and guided me back into the house.
“We’ll return to my room,” he said. “You’ve seen enough, for now.”
Jamie’s lamp was running low on oil, so I fetched mine from my room before returning to his. I pla
ced the lamp on the walnut table, pulled the duvet from the bed and wrapped it around me, then curled up in the tartan armchair while Jamie worked on building up the fire.
When he’d finished, he settled in the desk chair, but Wendy chose to sit cross-legged on the floor, with her back against the ottoman, holding her hands out to the flames. After our sojourn through Ladythorne’s frigid corridors, even a rugged outdoorswoman like Wendy welcomed the chance to savor the fire’s warmth.
I needed the quiet moment to come back to earth. I knew myself well enough to realize that I was in danger of being swept off my feet by Ladythorne’s loveliness. I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by its charms any more than I could permit myself to fall prey once again to Jamie’s. I reminded myself sternly that I already knew the end of the story, and that however Jamie chose to justify his actions, a crime was still a crime.
The ebony clock chimed the quarter hour. Forty-five minutes had passed since we’d left the bedroom.
“I’m sure you’ve guessed the purpose of our tour, Lori,” Jamie said. “I wanted you to see what James and Wally saw. I wanted you to walk in their footsteps. Those two war-weary young men must have felt as if Ladythorne had been plucked from an Arthurian legend, with its bell tower, its cloister, and its pretty chatelaine.”
Wendy turned her head to look directly at me. “No one told James or Wally about Lucasta’s fiancé,” she stated firmly. “They didn’t know he’d died at Dunkirk, and they didn’t know that her father had been killed in the Blitz. Lucasta must have ordered the servants and staff not to mention her personal tragedies. If James and Wally had known . . .” She faltered, turned back to the fire, and fell silent.
“But they didn’t know,” Jamie reiterated. “As far as they could tell, Lucasta DeClerke was a vastly wealthy young heiress with a charitable streak, who hadn’t a care in the world.”
Aunt Dimity: Snowbound Page 14