Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince

by Nancy Atherton

  “I see,” I said, struggling to keep a straight face. Frankness, it seemed, was a Booker family trait.

  “Carly’s working toward a degree in information science,” Lady Barbara explained. “She came here to create a digital catalogue of the library.”

  “Aren’t we in the library?” Bree asked, looking around the book-filled room.

  “These are my books,” Lady Barbara said with an air of immense satisfaction. “The family’s collection is in the west wing. It belongs to Ronald now. Tappan Hall and its contents are his, you see, but he lets me park my carcass here when I’m not off gallivanting.”

  The notion of a woman in her nineties gallivanting with an oxygen tank in tow was utterly enthralling. I could only dream of having half as much gumption as Lady Barbara, and I was less than half her age.

  “Gracie told us you grew up here,” Bree was saying.

  “I did,” said Lady Barbara, “but we’re an old-fashioned family. When it comes to inheriting property, only male heirs need apply.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” Bree asked.

  “I never give it a second thought,” Lady Barbara replied. “It was the way of the world when I was young. I was amply provided for by my father, and even if I’d wanted to dispute the inheritance, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see the end of the fight.” She patted the oxygen tank. “Chronic asthma. Been cursed with it since I was a teenager, yet I’ve somehow managed to outlive them all—brothers, uncles, cousins. The lawyers had to dig up a great-nephew to meet the entail’s requirements.”

  “Yours may be an old-fashioned family,” Bree observed, “but Tappan Hall isn’t as old-fashioned as I expected it to be.”

  “Well-spotted, that girl,” said Lady Barbara, beaming at Bree. “The ancestral heap burned to the ground in 1905. My rascally grandfather scandalized the family by hiring an Arts and Crafts architect to design the new hall. Farsighted man, my grandfather. The upkeep on the old Palladian barracks was ruinous. The new place is easier on the family coffers.” Lady Barbara pointed to a woolen blanket lying in a heap near her slipper-clad feet. “Give us a hand, will you? I shoved it aside when I heard your car pull up.”

  Since I was fighting the urge to strip down to my skivvies in the overheated room, I didn’t understand her request. Bree, however, caught on immediately, jumped to her feet, and spread the heavy blanket over Lady Barbara’s lap. She began to tuck it in around Lady Barbara’s legs as well, but old woman waved her off.

  “Thanks, but I can manage,” she said brusquely as Bree returned to her chair. “I may be an invalid, but I’m not incapacitated. Not yet, at any rate.” She gave a cackling laugh, then slid her blue-veined hands under the blanket. “But enough about me. Tell me about you.” She looked directly at Bree. “Unless I’ve lost my ear for accents, you’re a Kiwi and you”—she turned her gaze on me—“are a Yank.”

  “Your ear for accents is as acute as ever,” I assured her. “Bree’s from New Zealand and I’m an American, but we both live near a small village on the other side of Upper Deeping.”

  “I believe we have two other friends in common, Barbara,” Bree piped up. “Apart from Gracie Thames, I mean. Do you know Amanda Pickering and her daughter?”

  “Of course I know them,” said Lady Barbara. “I’ve always been partial to ginger-haired children, having been one myself, but I was particularly fond of Daisy. Her mother, I’m told, has found greener pastures. Have you any idea where those pastures might be?”

  “None,” Bree replied.

  “Nor does Ronald,” said Lady Barbara. “Vanished without a trace, he tells me.”

  “It’s true,” said Bree. “Amanda left her flat, but she didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised.” Lady Barbara squinted reflectively at the fire. “Amanda liked to hold her cards close to her chest. I could never tell what she was thinking, but I always had the impression that she was hatching a marvelous scheme. I hope for her sake she’s found another husband. The world can be a difficult place for a single woman raising a child, especially when the child’s sick more often than not.”

  I’d heard Daisy described as a sickly child before. Her frequent illnesses had been mentioned in passing by Frances Wylton, Shanice, and Gracie Thames, while Madeleine Sturgess had ascribed her poor health to unspecified respiratory problems. Mrs. MacTavish, too, had portrayed Daisy as a little girl with a weak chest, and I’d thought her painfully thin.

  Daisy’s porcelain-pale face seemed to rise before me in the firelight. I glanced at Lady Barbara’s oxygen tank and jumped to the obvious conclusion.

  “Does Daisy have asthma?” I asked.

  “Certainly not,” Lady Barbara replied, tossing her head at the suggestion. “I’m the world’s leading authority on asthma and I can tell you categorically that Daisy Pickering isn’t afflicted with it.”

  “Then why did she miss school so often?” asked Bree.

  “Because she was miserable,” Lady Barbara replied. “She’s been pining for that no-good father of hers ever since he abandoned her. It’s common knowledge that unhappy children become ill more often than happy ones. Depression weakens the immune system.”

  “Was Daisy depressed?” Bree said skeptically. “The stories she invented didn’t seem gloomy to me.”

  “Fantasy provided the child with a temporary escape from her depression,” Lady Barbara said in a voice that brooked no contradiction. “Though Daisy’s stories weren’t pure fantasies.” The roguish gleam returned to her pale blue eyes. “I recognized each of the main characters.”

  “Including the big round woman in the turban?” I asked.

  “Shanice Clarke,” said Lady Barbara without missing a beat. “Works for the boorish Boghwells. Shanice Clarke happens to be one of my cook’s closest friends.”

  “I’m glad to know she has a friend,” I said, though I was ashamed of myself for failing to learn Shanice’s last name.

  “Shanice knows every servant within fifty miles of Risingholme,” Lady Barbara informed me. “And she visits them as often as she pleases, much to the Boghwells’ chagrin. They can’t afford to sack her, though. No one else will put up with them for more than five minutes.”

  “About Daisy’s stories . . .” Bree put in.

  “I enjoyed them more than you can possibly imagine,” said Lady Barbara, smiling reminiscently. “To see my neighbors through Daisy’s eyes was immensely entertaining.” She sighed reedily. “I won’t miss Amanda because I didn’t really know her, but I will miss hearing Daisy’s stories.”

  I glanced fleetingly at Bree, saw that she was sitting on the edge of her seat, and felt a wave of nervous anticipation surge through me. The next few minutes, I told myself, could determine the outcome of our quest.

  “There’s one story you haven’t heard,” I said to Lady Barbara.

  “I thought I’d heard them all,” she said, frowning.

  “You couldn’t have heard this one,” I said, “because Daisy started telling it just a few weeks ago, while you were in the hospital.”

  “Oh, I hope it’s about the Boghwells,” Lady Barbara said enthusiastically. “I’d give my left lung to hear Daisy’s take on that pair of pimples.”

  Bree managed a shaky giggle, but I was too tense to be diverted.

  “Daisy’s new story isn’t about the Boghwells,” I said. “It’s about a man named Mikhail.”

  An arrested expression crossed Lady Barbara’s face. Her cheeks turned cherry red and her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she gave a strangled gasp and went limp.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed, horrified. “I’ve killed her!”

  I flung myself from my chair to kneel beside hers and nearly wept with relief when I saw that she was still breathing. While Bree scurried over to check the oxygen tank’s gauge, I fished a bony hand from beneath the blanket and chafed it gently.

  “Barbara?” I said. “Barb? Can you hear me?”

  “Should I
fetch Ronald?” Bree asked frantically. “Or the doctor?”

  Lady Barbara slowly opened her eyes and fixed Bree with a withering look.

  “Do you want me to die?” she wheezed. “Sit. Go nowhere. Give me . . . a minute.”

  Bree fell weakly into her chair, but I remained by Lady Barbara’s side until her breathing became more regular and her flushed cheeks regained their former pallor. I would have stayed there longer, but she had other ideas.

  “Brandy,” she said, pointing to a cut-glass decanter half hidden by a pile of books. “Now.”

  I splashed a generous tot into a balloon snifter I found near the decanter and held it to her lips while she took several small sips.

  “All better,” she said finally. She took the snifter from me, cupped it in her hands, and shook her head. “Good Lord, Lori, you certainly know how to rattle an old lady’s cage.”

  I was reluctant to mention the lost prince’s name again, lest it trigger another attack, but Bree evidently had more confidence than I in Lady Barbara’s ability to bounce back.

  “Do you know Mikhail?” Bree asked.

  My pulse raced as I sank onto my chair and awaited Lady Barbara’s reply.

  “Many years ago,” she said, gazing dreamily into the fire, “I knew a young boy named Mikhail. . . .”

  Twenty-two

  I didn’t have to wave the silver sleigh under Lady Barbara’s nose to prompt her to recall Mikhail. Her memories of him, once triggered, flowed as freely as a stream dancing downhill.

  “His full name was Mikhail Alekseiovich Markov,” she said, “and for a brief time, he was my best friend.”

  Her panting lessened as she spoke, as if she were no longer tethered to an oxygen tank, but breathing the fresher air of childhood.

  “One summer, one golden summer, nearly eighty years ago,” she began, “a new family bought the property adjoining ours. Wideacres, it was called, but the new family rechristened it Mirfield. The reactionary morons among us—the Boghwells and their set—ostracized the newcomers, but my father was an open-minded man. He took me with him the first time he called upon the Markovs.”

  I pictured a freckle-faced girl with copper curls, bouncing in her father’s wake as he sallied forth from Tappan Hall to introduce himself to his new neighbors.

  “The day I first set foot in Mirfield is as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday,” Lady Barbara continued. “I felt as though I’d stepped into a fairy tale. Mr. Markov was a big bear of a man with a mustache and bushy black beard. Mrs. Markov’s corsets could scarcely contain her magnificent bosom. They spoke a kind of English I’d never heard before—broken, heavily accented—but I didn’t need to understand their words to understand how welcome I was at Mirfield.”

  Lady Barbara took another small sip of brandy, then looked down at the snifter and chuckled.

  “Mama Markov—as I came to know her—made sure Father and I were properly fed and watered,” she told us. “We drank tea poured from a golden samovar into tall glasses cradled in filigreed glass holders. We ate exotic pastries—rugelach, piroshki, vatrushkas, and little round hazelnut biscuits covered in icing sugar. Father kept a close eye on me to make sure the icing sugar didn’t end up on the carpet instead of in my mouth, but I was too absorbed in my surroundings to make too much of a mess.”

  The freckled-faced girl seemed to peer out at us from behind Lady Barbara’s faded blue eyes as she recalled her first impressions of Mirfield’s splendors.

  “The house was a swirl of color—figured fabrics, lush carpets, inlaid tables, enameled clocks,” she murmured. “Strange and beautiful pictures hung on the wall, portraits of mournful saints painted like jewels against a gold field. And everywhere there were the most magical silver creations. Not your everyday punch bowls and salvers, but true works of art—birds, horses, flowers, bears, delicate ladies in ball gowns, gentlemen in powdered wigs, none of them more than six inches tall and each one a masterpiece.”

  She paused for a moment, then smiled.

  “Best of all, there was the boy. He was my age—a little younger than Daisy—and his dark, straight hair framed his face like a helmet. He was wearing a sailor suit and old-fashioned buckled shoes and his eyes were a velvety brown. We stared at each other like a couple of mutes until Mama Markov sent us up to the nursery to play. The rocking horses! The train sets! The hoops and the teddy bears and the clockwork toys! I thought Mikhail must be one of a dozen children, but he made it clear that he was an only child.”

  “Did he speak English?” Bree asked.

  “He was bilingual,” said Lady Barbara. “I had to teach him how to curse in English, naturally, but otherwise he spoke the language as fluently as I did, though he never quite lost his Russian accent.

  “We spent almost every day of that golden summer together,” she went on, “flying kites, climbing trees, playing pirates and knights, though I refused point blank to be a damsel in any sort of distress. I’m afraid I bullied Mikhail terribly, but I believe our friendship was the only thing that kept him from turning into a self-satisfied prat. His parents adored him, treated him like a little prince, but I kept his feet on the ground.”

  She paused and her face crumpled slightly. She gestured for Bree to throw another log onto the fire, as though she’d felt a sudden chill, and she didn’t speak again until the log was blazing.

  “Our golden summer ended quite cruelly,” she said.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Polio,” she said softly. “No one knows how the virus came to Mirfield, but it found Mikhail. I was banned from the premises, and when I tried to return Misha—”

  “Misha?” said Bree.

  Lady Barbara looked toward the far end of the mantel. I followed her gaze and saw a small, cream-colored teddy bear dressed in a red Cossack shirt. The bear had lost most of the mohair on the top of his head, but he had a winning expression that warmed my heart.

  “Misha was Mikhail’s nickname as well as his bear’s name,” said Lady Barbara, “and you rarely saw one Misha without the other. Mikhail left his bear here by accident the day before he fell ill and when I tried to bring it to him, my father went spare. Polio was highly contagious, there was no vaccine, and the consequences of my innocent visit could have been catastrophic. After Father gave me a well-earned hiding, he promised solemnly to keep me informed of Mikhail’s progress, but he made me promise in turn to stay away from Mirfield.

  “We both kept our promises,” she said. “I learned from my father that Mikhail had the best doctors, the best treatments, the best care, and that he was making a good recovery. But I never saw him again.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Boarding school, finishing school, and a life lived abroad,” Lady Barbara replied.

  “Finishing school?” Bree said doubtfully.

  “It didn’t take,” Lady Barbara said with a wry smile. “But the time I spent at Madame LeFleurier’s academy in Switzerland whetted my appetite for travel. I decided to see as much of the world as I could before I checked out of it. Snippets of news about Mikhail reached me from time to time. He married a nice Russian émigré girl, they had a son, the son married, the son died, the wife died, and so on, but I was always too far away—in China or Fiji or Ecuador—to hear about weddings or funerals until long after they’d taken place.”

  “You must have looked in on Mikhail when you returned to Tappan Hall,” I said.

  “There comes a point when it’s too late to renew an old acquaintance,” said Lady Barbara. “Besides, I was told that Mikhail was too ill to receive visitors.”

  “He’s very old,” I reminded her.

  “So am I,” snapped Lady Barbara. “I’m not in perfect health, either, as you may have noticed, but I’m never too ill to receive visitors. Polio, though . . .” Her gaze turned inward and her voice lost its sharp edge. “Polio is an insidious enemy. In some cases, the virus lies dormant for years, then strikes again, more virulently than it did before. It’s called pos
t-polio syndrome and it’s a bugger.”

  “I’ve heard of post-polio syndrome,” said Bree. “It’s not usually fatal, but it zaps the joints as well as the muscles and it causes extreme, sometimes debilitating, fatigue.”

  “As I said, it’s a bugger,” said Lady Barbara. “I was told that Mikhail had been laid low by post-polio syndrome a few years ago, that he’d become too weak to raise his head, let alone speak. I was told that no one apart from his quack was allowed to enter his room. But . . .” She nailed me with a piercing look. “If Mikhail’s been living in strict isolation for the past few years, Daisy Pickering couldn’t have met him, because her mother didn’t begin to work at Mirfield until a year ago.”

  I nodded, but said nothing. I didn’t have to. Lady Barbara was clearly up to the task of unraveling the puzzle on her own.

  “And if Daisy never met Mikhail,” she said, still gazing intently at me, “she wouldn’t have invented a story about him, because her characters are based on tangible, recognizable people.”

  I nodded again and Lady Barbara straightened in her chair.

  “I think, perhaps,” she said, “you should tell me what Daisy told you about the character she called Mikhail.”

  I repeated the story Coral Bell had related to me and to Bree over the cinder block wall in Addington Terrace. Where I faltered, Bree filled in, and between us we gave Lady Barbara the most complete version of Daisy’s tale we could give her. We spoke of a prince, a lost kingdom, and a dangerous journey to the safety of a foreign shore. We spoke of an evil man’s treachery and of stolen treasures, and as we spoke, Daisy’s absurd fantasy became real to me in ways it never had before.

  I lapsed into a momentary silence after Bree and I finished the tale, but Bree carried on without pausing.

  “Daisy’s story tallies with yours,” she said to Lady Barbara. “The Markovs were Russian, they were well-to-do, and they came to England nearly eighty years ago—within a decade of the Russian Revolution. It’s possible that they were, to paraphrase Daisy, driven from their kingdom by a band of wicked men.”