Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince

by Nancy Atherton

  “Their journey must have been a difficult one,” I pointed out. “They may have been forced to cross frozen rivers and to creep through frozen woods. They certainly had to sail over an ocean to reach England. It could have taken them almost a decade to make their way to a safer shore, then to Mirfield.”

  “Many years later,” said Bree, “someone betrayed Mikhail. Whether it was an evil man or an evil woman, we don’t know, and we’re not at all sure about the dungeon, but we believe someone took something precious from him. When Daisy found out what was happening, she tried to rescue Mikhail, but he was too weak to go with her—because of post-polio syndrome, perhaps?”

  “Daisy told just about every adult in her life about Mikhail,” I said, “but none of them believed her.”

  “I would have believed her,” Lady Barbara said grimly. “But I don’t understand why you did.”

  “I didn’t, at first,” I admitted. “Then I made an extraordinary discovery. . . .”

  I described my brief encounter with Daisy at Skeaping Manor and the unsettling effect her haunting monologue had had on me. I told Lady Barbara about the charity shop and the bedraggled pink parka I’d found at the bottom of the bag filled with girl’s clothing.

  “Daisy’s parka,” she murmured, nodding. “I remember it well.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” I said, “because in one of its pockets, I found . . .”

  I removed the silver sleigh from my shoulder bag, placed it in the palm of my hand, and held it out to Lady Barbara. It seemed to catch fire in the firelight, but the sparks it threw off were nothing compared to the sparks flying from Lady Barbara’s eyes.

  “I knew it!” she exclaimed. “I knew the shifty-eyed little scrounger was up to no good!”

  Her cheeks reddened and she began to breathe in short, sharp gasps.

  “Please don’t get overexcited,” I begged, shoving the saltcellar back into my bag, “or you’ll make me wish I’d never shown you the silver sleigh.”

  Lady Barbara tossed back a slug of brandy and made a visible effort to compose herself. Though she was still simmering with anger when she regained her voice, she’d pulled herself back from a rolling boil.

  “It’s a troika,” she said.

  “We know the silver sleigh is a troika,” Bree said with more patience than I could have mustered, “but we don’t know who the shifty-eyed scrounger is.”

  “He’s the grandson, of course,” snarled Lady Barbara. “Al Markham. He’s the scheming rat who’s taken over at Mirfield.”

  “Al Markham?” I said alertly. “Did he change his name?”

  “Sharp as a tack, you are,” Lady Barbara said sardonically. “Al was christened Alexei Mikhailovich Markov, but he didn’t think the name would go down well with the punters, so he changed it to Alec Michael Markham.”

  “What punters?” asked Bree.

  “Al calls himself an independent financial adviser,” Lady Barbara explained with an air of thinly veiled contempt, “which is another way of saying he gambles with other people’s money while working from home. He tried to rope Ronald into one of his bogus investment deals a few months ago, but I tore up the contract before my gormless great-nephew could sign it.”

  “Why did you think the deal was bogus?” I asked.

  “Insider knowledge,” Lady Barbara replied. “Al Markham has all the trappings of a high-flyer—the bespoke suits, the sports cars, the posh flat in London—but his ex-cook told Shanice Clarke, who told my cook, who told me that Al came a cropper two years ago and racked up some ruinous debts.”

  “Barbara,” I marveled, “you’d fit right in, in our village.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said, “but if we might focus on Al . . . ?”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, blushing. “Carry on.”

  “Just over a year ago,” she said, “Al replaced his entire live-in staff with dailies he found through a temp agency.”

  “Hence, the ex-cook,” I said, nodding. “And later, Amanda Pickering.”

  “Suddenly, Al was in clover again,” said Lady Barbara. “I assumed his cost-cutting measures were taking effect, but I now see his abrupt change in fortune in a more sinister light.”

  “Here’s how I see it,” Bree piped up. She hunched forward in her chair, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Al needs an infusion of cash to pay off his debts, so he decides to sell some family heirlooms. Only, they’re not his to sell. They’re Mikhail’s.”

  “Mikhail refuses to go along with the scheme,” I chimed in, “so Al makes him disappear. He uses post-polio syndrome as an excuse to isolate Mikhail from the outside world.”

  “Mikhail’s an old man,” said Bree, “and he might actually be ill. If he does have post-polio syndrome, he’d be virtually helpless. It wouldn’t be difficult to shove him in a room and leave him there.”

  “But Al can’t shove Mikhail anywhere until he gets rid of the family’s longtime servants,” I said. “He fires the old retainers who’d speak up on Mikhail’s behalf, maybe even report Al to the authorities, and he brings in a cadre of temps who don’t know anything about Mirfield or the Markovs.”

  “Al’s their boss,” said Bree. “They believe him when he tells them his grandfather’s unwell and they obey him when he orders them to steer clear of the sickroom.”

  “And Al goes on his merry way,” I concluded disgustedly, “selling Mikhail’s treasures to the highest bidder and pocketing the profits.”

  “An admirable summary of my own suspicions,” said Lady Barbara. “The only question that remains is . . .” She looked from Bree’s face to mine. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “You’re not doing anything,” I said firmly.

  “Leave it to us,” said Bree. “Lori and I will go to Mirfield and—”

  “You’ll never get past the gates,” Lady Barbara interrupted. “You can’t expect to waltz up the drive and find Al waiting for you with open arms. If he’s doing dirty deeds, he won’t be at home to strangers.”

  “If he bars the door to us,” I said, “we’ll call the police.”

  “And tell them what?” Lady Barbara demanded. “I’d like to see their faces when you explain to them how you came by the troika and why you didn’t turn it in after you found it. I doubt they’ll be as receptive as I’ve been to a child’s story about a Russian prince.”

  I frowned at her, perplexed. “I don’t know what else we can—”

  “I do,” Lady Barbara broke in. “Al spends weekends in London with one of his many lady friends, and—”

  “Al leaves his ailing grandfather alone in the house every weekend?” I interjected. Blood thundered in my veins as I sprang to my feet. “Come on, Bree. We’re going to Mirfield. We’ll battle an army of temps if we have to, but we won’t leave until we’ve found Mikhail.”

  “Won’t we be trespassing?” Bree asked, her eyes dancing. “Won’t we be breaking and entering?”

  I drew myself up to my not-terribly-impressive height and proclaimed, “If a house is on fire, one is allowed—nay, one is compelled—to break down the door to rescue the people within.”

  “You won’t have to battle any temps,” said Lady Barbara, “and you won’t have to break down any doors. As I was about to say, before I was so heroically interrupted, the temps take off at five o’clock on the dot. Once they’ve legged it, you’ll have the place to yourselves.”

  “How will we get into the house?” asked Bree.

  “Easily.” Lady Barbara pointed to a dusty enameled box that sat beside the teddy bear on the mantel. “You’ll find what you need in there.”

  I opened the box and withdrew from it an ornate brass skeleton key.

  “A prime example of my liberating influence on Mikhail,” said Lady Barbara. “I persuaded him to steal a spare master key from the butler’s pantry. He was much too meek to hold on to it, so I took custody of it. It opens every door in Mirfield.”

  “What if Al’s changed the locks?” I ask
ed.

  “I have it on good authority that he hasn’t,” said Lady Barbara. “Mikhail was bright enough to install an alarm system, but it went haywire last year and Al’s been too busy fending off his creditors to have it repaired.”

  “More insider knowledge from Al’s ex-cook?” I inquired, raising an eyebrow.

  “Mrs. Harper was a bit miffed with Al after he sacked her,” said Lady Barbara. “She spent a long afternoon here, enumerating his shortcomings to my cook. My cook felt it would be an unkindness to stop her.”

  “Two more women who’d fit in, in Finch,” I muttered.

  “It sounds as though you live in a very interesting village,” Lady Barbara observed.

  “Oh, we do,” I said with feeling. “We most certainly do.”

  “So it’s a go, then?” Bree asked eagerly. “Mirfield? It’s a go?”

  “It’s a definite go,” I replied.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Bree pulled from her day pack the pair of flashlights Will and Rob had bestowed upon her the previous evening. “Let’s play spies!”

  Twenty-three

  While I shared Bree’s sense of urgency, blood was no longer thundering in my veins. The thought of doing battle with a mop-wielding mob of burly cleaning women had lost its appeal, and besides, I was hungry. After a brief discussion, Bree and I agreed that the most sensible thing to do would be to postpone the Mirfield invasion until after the temps had gone home for the day.

  The morning’s whirlwind of revelations had finally taken its toll on Lady Barbara. She directed us to the kitchen, then allowed a muscular young man named Eric to place her and her oxygen tank in a wheelchair and trundle her to her antiseptic bedchamber for a simple meal and a nap. Bree and I, meanwhile, were given sandwiches, tea, and a Finch-worthy helping of local gossip by Tappan Hall’s splendidly chatty cook, Mrs. Elkins.

  Revived by the sandwiches—and the gossip—I telephoned Emma and asked her to keep Will and Rob at Anscombe Manor overnight. She was willing and we both knew the boys would be thrilled. Her hardest task, she conceded, would be to keep them from sneaking out of the manor to sleep in the stables with Thunder and Storm. I told her to throw a pile of blankets on the hay bales and let the cards fall where they may. A night spent in a nice, warm stable wouldn’t do the boys any harm, and a nod to the inevitable would enable Emma to get a good night’s sleep.

  Lord Ronald, inured to his great-aunt’s habit of collecting waifs and strays, didn’t bat an eye when he discovered Bree and me in the kitchen, hobnobbing with his cook. He greeted us vaguely, gathered up a plateful of sandwiches, and returned to the library, leaving us to demolish a significant portion of Mrs. Elkins’s excellent raspberry sponge cake.

  Mrs. Elkins was flattered when I asked to see Tappan Hall’s receipt book and I was unsurprised when I saw that it contained recipes for rugelach, piroshki, and vatrushkas as well as Russian tea cakes, all of them written in a by-now familiar hand and dated 1925. The tea cakes were, Mrs. Elkins informed us, Lady Barbara’s favorites, the one nibble that would revive Her Ladyship’s appetite when all else had failed.

  My appetite was well and truly sated by the time Lady Barbara rose from her nap. She sent Eric to escort us to her overheated lair and we spent the rest of the afternoon there, planning our campaign.

  Our first decision—to dispense with the Rover and to approach the house on foot—was made when Lady Barbara warned us that her skeleton key wouldn’t open Mirfield’s electronically controlled front gates.

  “No problem,” said Bree. “It’s good tactics to infiltrate enemy territory via an overland route.”

  “You,” I said, “have been spending too much time with Will and Rob.”

  Lady Barbara’s golden summer with Mikhail stood us in good stead. She filled my notebook with detailed maps of the house, the grounds, and the footpath that would take us from Tappan Hall to Mirfield.

  “Ronald’s not much of a walker,” she told us, “so the path may be a bit overgrown, and if the bridge is down, you’ll have to hop the brook, and you’ll have to climb the boundary wall when you reach it, but you’re both young and fit, so you shouldn’t encounter any real difficulties.”

  I was tempted to tell Lady Barbara that she might be overestimating my athletic abilities, but I was so pleased to be considered young and fit that I held my tongue.

  “Make a bit of a racket while you’re searching the house,” Lady Barbara advised. “Try not to sound like burglars, but don’t sneak up on Mikhail, either, or you may, literally, scare him to death.” She thumped the oxygen tank resentfully. “Oh, how I wish I could come with you!”

  “You’ll be with us in spirit,” Bree assured her. “And we’ll ring you as soon as we find Mikhail.” She peered uncertainly at the book-laden tables. “You do have a phone in here, don’t you?”

  “I’m not a cavewoman,” Lady Barbara said scathingly, and pulled a mobile phone from her dressing gown’s pocket.

  A clock somewhere in the room chimed five times.

  “Five o’clock,” I said. “We’d better get going.”

  Bree and I donned our jackets, took up our respective bags, said our good-byes, and headed for the French doors. My hand was on the lever when Bree spun around, ran back to Lady Barbara, and planted a kiss on her withered cheek.

  “Wish us luck,” she said.

  “Good luck,” Lady Barbara said gruffly and as we let ourselves out though the French doors, she called, “Tell Misha, Basha sent you!”

  • • •

  The footpath was hopelessly overgrown, the bridge was a pile of rotting timbers, and the boundary wall was at least a thousand feet tall—to my eyes, at any rate—but I managed to keep up with Bree as she scrambled through thickets of brush, hopped the brook, and clambered over the wall like an overcaffeinated mountain goat. The last glimmer of twilight faded as we dropped down from the wall and the moon had not yet risen, so we followed our flashlights’ beams to Mirfield.

  The house was nothing more than a black shape against a starry sky, but its faint outlines suggested that it had more in common with Hayewood House than with Tappan Hall. Our flashlights picked out Cotswold stone, tall windows, and a modest half-moon porch sheltering the front door.

  “Here goes,” I whispered as we tiptoed onto the porch.

  I pulled the skeleton key from my pocket, inserted it into the keyhole, and held my breath. If Lady Barbara’s information on the alarm system was faulty, the Mirfield invasion would end before it started.

  When I turned the key, however, the only sound to reach my ears was a satisfying click. I breathed again, pushed the door open, and darted inside, with Bree following hot upon my heels. Neither one of us could locate a light switch, so we trained our flashlights on my notebook.

  “I start at the top, you start at the bottom, and we meet in the middle,” Bree whispered, flipping through Lady Barbara’s maps. “That’s the plan, right?”

  “Right,” I whispered. “Because Al would want to keep Mikhail in an out-of-the-way place, like an attic or a cellar.”

  “Or a dungeon,” Bree whispered

  “I’m not sure we should be whispering,” I whispered.

  “I’m not, either,” whispered Bree, “but I don’t know how to make a racket without sounding like a burglar.”

  I pondered the thorny problem, then threw back my head and bellowed, “Mikhail? Don’t be afraid! We’ve come to rescue you! That should do it,” I continued in a normal tone of voice. “A burglar wouldn’t announce—”

  “Quiet,” Bree interrupted, putting a finger to my lips. “Listen.”

  I stood stock-still, straining to hear what Bree had already heard.

  “Is that . . . a handbell?” I said doubtfully.

  “It’s Mikhail!” Bree cried, gripping my arm. “It has to be him. He’s the only one here. Follow me, Lori! Follow the sound!”

  Lady Barbara couldn’t accuse us of sneaking up on Mikhail. We sprinted from room to room, bumping into tables
, knocking over chairs, emitting a few colorful expressions we would never use in front of Will or Rob, and stopping twice to listen for the sound that drew us onward. The ringing became increasingly louder and more distinct until we reached a tall, white door in the northeast corner of the house. Then it stopped.

  The silence was deafening.

  “The exertion has killed him,” said Bree.

  “If it has, Lady Barbara will kill us,” I said.

  I shoved the skeleton key into the lock, turned it, and tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge.

  “I think you locked it,” said Bree.

  “Yes, thank you,” I said dampingly. “I’d worked that one out myself.”

  I turned the skeleton key the other way, opened the door, and stepped into a scene straight out of Lady Barbara’s childhood.

  The room was a swirl of color. The baroque brocade drapes, the silk damask wallpaper, and the lush, floral carpet should have been overwhelming but the rich hues and the sinuous patterns worked together to create an air of sumptuous harmony.

  A wood fire burned in the hearth and lamps with fringed shades added their soft glow to the fire’s. A clock framed in silver gilt and translucent blue enamel sat on the carved stone mantel, flanked by small enameled boxes set with seed pearls, tiny diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Each table was a minuet of marquetry, each chair, divan, and sofa, a satin symphony.

  And everywhere, there was silver. The figures Lady Barbara remembered were there—the birds, horses, flowers, and bears, the ladies in ball gowns, the gentlemen in powdered wigs—as were the icons, the jewel-like portraits of mournful saints Lady Barbara had described. A golden samovar bubbled softly on a table to our right and a tall glass in a filigreed holder rested on a table near the crackling fire, between a leather-bound book and an old, wooden-handled brass handbell.