Not the faintest tinkle. I was acquainted with a number of immigrant families, however, some of whom anglicized their surnames. A few anglicized their Christian names as well. My dear friend Donetello di Pietro, for example, became Don Peters.
The romantic in me snapped to attention.
“You had a dear friend named Donetello di Pietro?” I said, peering down at the journal with fresh interest.
Don sold fruit in Covent Garden. He always set aside the sweetest apples, pears, and plums for me.
“What a nice man,” I said, captivated by the image of Aunt Dimity and a dashing Italian fruiterer strolling hand in hand through Covent Garden’s cobbled lanes.
Don was a very nice man. His wife and six children adored him.
“Oh.” The romantic in me went back to sleep and I returned to the business at hand. “I can understand why immigrants would change their names. We all want to fit in. Except for Bree, of course,” I allowed, smiling. “She may have muted her appearance for the sake of our search, but I’ll bet my boots her nose ring will be back in place when we go to church on Sunday. She knows how much it annoys Peggy Taxman.”
I doubt that Bree’s red hair or her nose ring would have been a liability at Shangri-la. If the Thameses throw cocktail parties around their swimming pool, they won’t be put off by a colorful journalist. Bree didn’t change her hair color merely to blend in, however. She did it in order to befriend Tiffany Bell and, by extension, the Bell children.
“Yes, she did,” I said. “It was good of her, wasn’t it?”
It was good for her as well.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
What has Bree done with herself since she came to England, Lori? She’s taken a handful of university courses, pottered around in her great-grandaunts’ garden, helped Rainey Dawson to run the tea room in Sally Pyne’s absence, and learned a few carpentry skills from Mr. Barlow. It’s not much to show for an entire year.
“You can’t fault her for taking a breather,” I protested. “Her last few months in New Zealand weren’t exactly a barrel of laughs.”
I’m not criticizing Bree, Lori. I’m simply saying that she’s had no sense of purpose since she arrived in Finch, and a girl with a heart as big as Bree’s needs a sense of purpose. Her visit to Addington Terrace may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to her.
“In what way?” I asked.
Addington Terrace rattled Bree. It disturbed her. It reminded her of the worst years in her life. I don’t know if she saw herself in the Bell children, but they clearly touched a chord in her.
“She wants to rescue Coral and Ben and Tom, just as I wanted to rescue Daisy.” I gazed into the fire as memories from my own past drifted through my mind. “I guess those of us who’ve known hard times want to keep others from going through what we went through.”
I’d like to think so, but I suspect Lark Landing gave Bree the final push she needed to take the actions she took today. When I read it, I understood its underlying message to be: While it’s good to feel sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves, it’s better to extend a helping hand to them.
“Bree’s definitely extending a helping hand to the Bells,” I said. “Wouldn’t Ruth and Louise be pleased?”
They most certainly would. They would also be relieved to know that their best china will be safe from Ben and Tom! And on that note, I will bid you good night. You have another exciting day ahead of you, Lori, and you need your rest.
“If you insist,” I said.
I do. Good night, my dear. Sleep well.
“I believe I shall,” I said.
The curving lines of royal-blue ink slowly faded from the page. I closed the journal and returned it to its shelf, then touched a fingertip to Reginald’s snout.
“You done good today, little buddy,” I said. “I don’t know how you did it, but you done good.”
A sublime gleam shone from Reginald’s black button eyes, as if he were telling me we’d all done good that day. Smiling, I switched off the lights and went to bed.
Seventeen
Will and Rob woke me before dawn on Friday. It seemed earlier than it was because daylight hours in February, though lengthening, were still considerably shorter than they would be in June. I stumbled groggily out of bed and allowed the boys’ boundless energy to energize me. In next to no time we were dressed—they in their riding gear, I in dark trousers and a respectable but decidedly non-dismal rose-colored twin set—and seated around the kitchen table, gobbling porridge with unseemly haste.
I thought Bree deserved a lie-in after her exertions on Thursday, but she joined us for breakfast, dressed in the same “posh blouse and trousers” she’d worn to Hayewood House.
“Are you playing spies again?” Will inquired, surveying Bree’s attire.
“Is that why you made your hair brown?” Rob asked. “Is it a disguise?”
“Uh-huh,” Bree replied through a mouthful of porridge. She swallowed before adding more distinctly, “Spies aren’t supposed to stand out in a crowd.”
“If you need to send secret messages,” said Rob, “we’ll write them for you.”
“Invisibly,” Will added.
“Thanks, guys,” said Bree, “but you have more important things to do today than to write secret messages. Thunder and Storm are champing at the bits to see you!”
Once the twins heard their ponies’ names, there was no holding them back. They dumped their bowls in the sink, grabbed their riding helmets, and ran to the Rover. Bree and I scurried after them.
Emma was waiting in the stable yard when we arrived at Anscombe Manor. She was bundled in a black fleece pullover, a puffy down vest, insulated riding breeches, and earmuffs, and she was stamping her booted feet to keep the blood circulating in them. She sent Will and Rob into the stable to lead out Thunder and Storm, scrutinized their tack when they emerged, gave them each a leg up, and directed them to the large riding ring.
“No jumping,” she instructed them as she opened the gate. “You can take the ponies out for a cross-country hack during your lesson tomorrow, but this morning you stay in the ring. They’ve had a few days off, so warm them up thoroughly before you put them through their paces.”
Will and Rob might question my orders, Bill’s orders, and even—very occasionally—their grandfather’s orders, but they never questioned Emma’s. They followed her instructions to the letter while Bree, Emma, and I leaned against the fence to watch them. I wasn’t sure how the ponies felt about leaving their cozy stalls on such a brisk morning, but my sons had rarely looked more ecstatic.
“I could use some warming up myself,” said Emma, shivering. “Whose idea was it to open the stables at sunrise? Oh, yeah. Mine.”
“You’ve made two little boys very happy,” I assured her. “The stable yard looks fantastic, by the way. I can’t even tell where the pipes burst.”
“I’ll pass your praise on to Derek, if he ever gets out of bed.” Emma shoved her hands into her pockets and looked from Bree to me. “As long as I have you here, would you mind telling me what on earth the two of you have been up to? Peggy Taxman was spitting tacks yesterday, telling anyone who would listen about a nefarious plot to buy the Emporium out from under her.”
Bree erupted in a gale of laughter, leaving me to explain her prank. Emma responded with a smile for Bree, a sympathetic pat on the arm for me, and a look on her face that said quite plainly: I’m glad Bree’s staying at your house instead of mine.
It was a sensible thought from a sensible woman. Emma was by far the most sensible person I knew, which was why I didn’t tell her about Mikhail or the silver sleigh. I felt as though Bree and I were on the verge of a major breakthrough in our search for the lost prince. I didn’t want Emma to dampen our burgeoning optimism with a dreary dose of common sense, so I steered the conversation toward Bree’s fabulous cooking, Bill’s well-deserved sunburn, and Willis, Sr.’s steely determination to attend church on Sunday.
&n
bsp; I gave the boys an hour to reacquaint themselves with their steeds, then reined them in. Emma was kind enough to take charge of Thunder and Storm and after thanking her profusely we dashed back to the cottage, where Will and Rob changed out of their riding gear and into their school uniforms. The boys smelled like stablehands despite the change of clothes, but I didn’t bother to run baths for them. The teachers at Morningside were used to horsey fragrances wafting from my sons.
Bree and I dropped Will and Rob off at school, then chased away the morning chill with a large pot of tea at our favorite café. By half past nine we were on the road to Shangri-la, which, Bree informed me, was the country estate to the west of the Risingholme estate.
Bree shared two pieces of news with me as we drove to Shangri-la.
“I rang a friend in Oxford yesterday,” she said. “He designs websites for a living and he agreed to design one for Madeleine Sturgess. After I spoke with him, I rang Maddie. She was thrilled by the idea of working with a professional, so I gave her my friend’s number. She said she’d get in touch with him today.”
“Well done, you,” I said.
“I felt a bit guilty for laughing at her behind her back the other day,” Bree confessed. “As you said, she’s not stupid, just inexperienced. Helping her with her business seemed like the best way to make it up to her.”
“Guilt can be a great motivator,” I said.
“To be honest,” said Bree, “I felt guilty about misleading Maddie as well. I couldn’t stand the thought of her telling her friend Bunny about an article neither of them would ever see, so I wrote a piece about Hayewood House. I’ve already submitted it to three house-and-garden magazines, and I’ll keep submitting it until it’s published.”
“All this, and dinner, too?” I said, my eyebrows rising. “You did have a busy day.”
“Guilt,” said Bree with a shamefaced grin, “is a great motivator.”
I recalled Aunt Dimity’s comments about Lark Landing and wondered if the book’s underlying message had played an even greater role than guilt in inspiring Bree’s good-deed spree. I hoped the story would have a similar effect on me once I got around to reading it, though the thought of doing so many good deeds in a single day was slightly daunting.
“I don’t want our hunt for Mikhail to hurt innocent bystanders,” Bree said suddenly. “I’ll write an article about Shangri-la, too, if the Thameses are innocent, but I’d just as soon drop the Country House Monthly ruse and stick with being freelancers. That way, people won’t count on seeing their names in print.”
“Consider it done,” I said. “In the nick of time, too, because we have arrived at our destination.”
Shangri-la’s drive was guarded by a pair of white wrought-iron gates supported by white cement pillars. Each pillar was topped with a large white cement fish. Bree and I surveyed the fish and exchanged bemused glances, then jumped as a voice spoke to us from thin air.
“Good morning,” it boomed. “How may I help you?”
I lowered my window and searched for the source of the greeting, but Bree found it before I did.
“It’s the fish,” she whispered, giggling. “There’s a speaker in one and a camera in the other.”
I studied the decorative sculptures and saw that she was right. The fish on the left had turned to surveil us and the fish on the right had a speaker lodged behind its rudimentary gills.
“How may I help you?” the right-hand fish reiterated. “Please speak up.”
“We’re freelance journalists,” I said loudly. “We’d like to interview the gentleman or the lady of the house for an article we’re writing about Shangri-la.”
The fish remained silent for so long that I thought we were sunk, but when it spoke again, I knew that someone in the house had taken the bait.
“Welcome to Shangri-la,” it said.
The white gates swung open and we entered an estate that put Risingholme to shame. The asphalt drive was as smooth as burnished leather and lined by evenly spaced, precisely matched conical topiaries. The meadows beyond looked as though a team of gardeners trimmed them every day with embroidery scissors.
A few hundred feet down the drive, a sign on our right proclaimed:
PEACOCK CROSSING
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
We weren’t surprised, therefore, to see the flamboyant birds strutting across the broad circular lawn that divided the drive into two widely separated arcs. The three-tiered marble fountain in the center of the lawn came as a bit of a shocker, however, not only because it looked brand-new, but because it featured statuary that would have made Peggy Taxman blush. The white marble figures of frolicking youths and maidens were as naked as newborns and proved, upon closer inspection, to be anatomically correct in every particular.
Bree took one look at the fountain and burst out laughing.
“I think I’m going to like the Thameses,” she said.
“I think I know why the Boghwells don’t,” I said, averting my gaze from the figure of an extravagantly well-endowed youth.
I followed the drive as it curved around the lawn and parked the Rover in front of Shangri-la’s main entrance. The Thameses’ home was Georgian in style and about the same size as my father-in-law’s—not ostentatiously large, but large enough to be modestly impressive. It was made of a Cotswold stone so pale I could detect only a faint trace of yellow in it, and every inch of its woodwork had been painted a glossy white.
“It’s not bad,” Bree said, eyeing the building judiciously, “but it’s too . . . shiny.”
I knew what she meant. The windows gleamed, the painted surfaces glistened, and the stonework was unnaturally bright. Hayewood House was a fine example of a well-maintained historic home, but Shangri-la looked as though layers of history had been scoured from it.
“The strange thing is,” Bree went on, “I feel as if I’ve been here before.”
“Me, too,” I said, nodding slowly. “I can’t imagine why, but the house and the grounds seem familiar to me.”
“Maybe we lived here in a previous life,” Bree suggested.
“If so,” I said, “I was a better housekeeper then than I am now.”
We climbed out of the Rover and approached the front door, which was opened by a tiny woman wearing the frilly cap, starched apron, and crisp blue uniform of a made-for-television maid.
“Please, come in,” she said, and stood aside for us to enter.
I couldn’t identify the maid’s accent, but the woman who greeted us as we stepped into the entrance hall sounded as English as the Boghwells, though her Cockney twang indicated that she came from the opposite end of their social scale.
“Welcome to Shangri-la,” the woman said. “If you were looking for the lady of the house, you’ve found her. I’m Gracie Thames.”
Gracie Thames was tall, middle-aged, and generously proportioned. Her white jumpsuit clung like paint to her splendid curves and her blond hair fell down her back in a cascade of brassy curls. Though her makeup had been applied with a trowel, the look suited her, because everything about Gracie Thames was overdone: Her peep-toe stilettos were too high, her diamond rings were too big, her nails—finger as well as toe—were too red, her eyes were too blue, and her voice was too loud, but even so, there was something endearing about her. Here was a woman, I thought, who never tried to be anything other than what she was. I admired her for it.
“See to their coats, Divina, then run along,” she said to the maid. “I’ll ring if I need you. Divina’s from the Philippines,” she explained after the little maid had taken our coats and departed, “but she speaks English better than I do. Not much to brag about, I know,” she added with a self-deprecating laugh. “Divina tells me you’re journalists.”
“Freelance journalists,” Bree stated firmly. “My name is Bree Pym.”
“And I’m Lori Shepherd,” I said.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Gracie. “Come through to the drawing room. Kick your shoes off, if you like. We don’t
stand on ceremony here.”
Bree and I kept our shoes on, but followed Gracie into a room that immediately set my teeth on edge. The best that could be said for it was that its original architectural details had been preserved. The dentil molding, the ceiling medallions, the wall sconces, the chandelier, the fireplace, and the parquet flooring looked much as they would have looked in the eighteenth century, but the furnishings were excruciatingly modern.
A pair of enormous white leather sectional sofas faced each other across a lucite and chrome coffee table that rested on a fluffy white faux-fur rug. The walls were hung with large square paintings of oversized orange dahlias and the space above the mantelshelf was occupied by a gilt-framed, full-length oil portrait of a younger but no less voluptuous Gracie Thames clad in what appeared to be a white negligee trimmed with luminous pink ostrich feathers.
“That’s me in my salad days,” Gracie said proudly, following my gaze. “I thought it should go in the master bedroom, but hubby insisted on hanging it where everyone can see it.”
“Your husband must love you very much,” I said.
“We’re soul mates,” Gracie said simply. “We met when we were sixteen and that was that. We’ve been a couple ever since.”
“Is your husband at home?” I asked.
Gracie’s face fell slightly as she shook her head.
“He left this morning for a business meeting,” she said, “in Norway. He won’t be back until Monday. Mustn’t complain, though,” she went on, lifting her chin. “I can think of worse problems to have than a hardworking husband.”
Gracie’s lack of animosity toward her husband’s travels made me feel like an ungrateful wretch. I made a mental note to stock the medicine cabinet with sunburn gel before Bill’s return.
“Do you have children?” Bree asked.
“Four,” said Gracie. “Two of each, all grown and flown, but working for their dad. Tony Three’s at the London office, Davey runs the docks, Naomi manages the warehouse, and Talia’s training up to be our accountant.”
She motioned for each of us to take a seat. I chose the sofa facing away from Gracie’s portrait because I didn’t want to be distracted by the ostrich feathers, and Bree followed suit. We pulled out our notebooks and looked attentively at our hostess, but she wasn’t ready to get down to business just yet.
Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince Page 14