Aunt Dimity's Good Deed (3 page)

“If there are,” Emma commented dryly, “then I’m willing to bet Aunt Dimity’s rewriting them.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but shut it again without saying a word. Emma had a point. Nothing about my relationship with Aunt Dimity had ever been remotely conventional. For starters, we weren’t related by blood or marriage but by a bond of friendship. Dimity Westwood had been my mother’s closest friend. They’d met in London during the war and kept up a flourishing correspondence long after my mother had returned to the States. When I was born, Dimity became my honorary aunt, and when my father died shortly thereafter, she did what she could to help my mother bear the twin burdens of a broken heart and a bawling baby.

Dimity was always helping someone. She worked with war widows and orphans and parlayed a small inheritance into a considerable fortune, which she used to found the Westwood Trust, a philanthropic enterprise that was still going strong. Dimity had made a name for herself in the financial markets at a time when women didn’t do that sort of thing, and although she’d made enough money to kick back and swig champagne with the smart set, she’d chosen instead to live a reclusive life, going quietly about the business of doing good.

Dimity Westwood hadn’t been a conventional woman, aunt, or millionaire, so why should she have a conventional afterlife? She’d already exploded the myth that hauntings had to be spooky. No moaning in the chimney for her, no materializing in an eerie green haze or rattling chains in the dead of night. When Aunt Dimity wanted to communicate with me across the Great Divide, her messages appeared on the pages of the blue journal, an unobtrusive little book bound in dark-blue leather.

I still took the blue journal down from its shelf in the study every time I arrived at the cottage, still hoped to see Aunt Dimity’s fine copperplate curl and loop across the page, but my hopes had begun to fade. I’d told myself that it was foolish to expect to hear from Aunt Dimity again, because the problems that had bound her spirit to the cottage had been solved—or so I’d thought.

Why would she return now? What kind of “new business” would induce her to go anywhere with Willis, Sr.? Was he in some sort of trouble? What kind of trouble could a respectable, sixty-five-year-old attorney get into, sitting quietly in an armchair, reading a book?

I’d asked myself so many questions that I felt a little dizzy. I didn’t know what to expect. But the first thing I noticed when we turned into my drive was that Willis, Sr.’s car was missing.

I kept two cars in England: a secondhand black Morris Mini for my own use, and a shiny silver-gray Mercedes for my guests. When I was away, I garaged both cars in Finch with Mr. Barlow, the retired mechanic who’d come to depend on the income he earned banging out the dents and retouching the scratches I tended to accumulate whenever I drove in England. Mr. Barlow had ferried both cars from Finch to my graveled drive that morning, but only the Mini was there now.

“William’s car is gone,” Emma noted, pulling in beside the black Mini and shutting off her engine.

“Maybe he’s driven to Bath to see the bookseller Stan told him about.” A devoted armchair traveler, my father-in-law had assembled a splendid collection of books on Arctic exploration. He was always on the lookout for new finds, so he might very well have taken my old boss’s advice and gone to see a man in Bath about a book.

Emma maintained a wait-and-see attitude, but I got out of the car and walked back along the driveway to the edge of the road, studying the tire marks in the gravel. Each set curved out of the driveway in the direction of Finch except one, which turned in the opposite direction.

“See that?” I said triumphantly, pointing to the gravel. “William turned south, in the direction of Bath. I’m sure that’s where he is.”

“Uh-huh,” Emma replied noncommittally.

Apart from the missing car, the cottage looked as it had when I’d left it earlier that morning. The stone walls were the color of sunlight on honey, the slate roof was a patchwork of lichen and moss, and a cascade of roses framed the weathered front door. Even in winter’s thin gray light, with the rosebushes bare and a dusting of snow on the rooftop, the cottage looked warm and inviting. Now, in early August, with the mosses baked golden by the high summer sun, and the scent of new-mown hay from a neighboring field lingering sweetly in the air, Aunt Dimity’s cottage was, to my eyes, the prettiest place on earth.

All the same, I examined it carefully as I followed Emma up the flagstone path to the front door. I was convinced that the cottage would glimmer or gleam or do
something
to herald Aunt Dimity’s return, but it didn’t. The house martins flitted to and from their little round nests under the eaves, and a plump rabbit eyed us from the safe refuge of the lilac bushes, but if Dimity had come back, the cottage wasn’t telling.

Nell was waiting for us in the living room, where she and Willis, Sr., had set up the green-lacquered gaming table for their competition. Nell and Willis, Sr., were fairly evenly matched as chess players—their duels lasted for weeks, sometimes months, depending on how often Willis, Sr., came to visit. They were good friends, too, and though it gave my heart a pang when Willis, Sr., referred to Nell as his adopted granddaughter, I couldn’t resent it. Nell Harris was an exceptional child.

Nell was twelve years old, but she seemed to have bypassed the awkward preteen pupa stage and gone straight into being a butterfly. She was tall, slender, and exquisite, a Botticelli angel with a flawless oval face, a rosebud mouth, and her father’s dark-blue eyes. In the light from the bow windows, Nell’s blond curls gleamed like a halo of spun gold, and she moved with an inborn grace that made her seem regal even when dressed, as she was now, in khaki shorts, scuffed hiking boots, and a pale-blue T-shirt.

Bertie, Nell’s chocolate-brown teddy bear, was sitting on a pile of cushions in what should have been Willis, Sr.’s chair, perusing the chessboard with unwavering intensity, but Ham, Nell’s black Labrador retriever, clearly overcome by the excitement of the match, lay sprawled across the cushioned window seat, half asleep. Ham’s tail thumped twice to alert his mistress to our entrance, but her attention was, like Bertie‘s, focused on the board—as Ham’s tail rose for a third thump, Nell slid a white bishop three squares and smiled benignly.

“That should do it,” she murmured before turning to greet us. “Hello, Lori. Hello ...
Mama!”
she exclaimed. “You’re still wearing your wellies. I thought you loathed driving in them.”

“I do,” Emma replied, stepping out of her soiled black boots, “but I was in a hurry. What’s all this about William disappearing?”

“He wasn’t here when I arrived for our chess game,” Nell replied. “And you know William—he
always
keeps his appointments.”

That much was true. Anything written in Willis, Sr.‘r engagement book was written in stone, and he wrote
everything
in that book. A game of chess with Nell would be recorded as meticulously as a luncheon date with a client, and treated with equal respect.

“I rang the bell and knocked,” Nell went on, “and when there was no answer, Bertie and I let ourselves in.” Whereas most twelve-year-olds would rather shave their heads than admit to a lingering affection for childhood toys, Nell was unabashedly devoted to her teddy bear. She took Bertie with her everywhere, consulted with him regularly, and referred to him un-self-consciously, whether she was in the privacy of her own home or in the company of strangers. Mindful of a certain pink flannel bunny with whom I’d developed a special, if less publicly acknowledged, relationship, I applauded Nell’s chutzpah. “We had a look round,” she concluded, “found the note, and called you.”

“There’s a note?” I asked sharply.

Nell nodded. “It’s on the desk in the study. It’s addressed to you, Lori. Bertie thinks—”

“Not now, Nell.” I waved her to silence, left the living room, and hastened up the hallway to the study, feeling a vast sense of relief. Willis, Sr., had left a note.
Of course
he’d left a note. The story about him disappearing with Aunt Dimity had been just that—a product of Nell’s over-fertile imagination. I should have guessed. Nell had a flare for the dramatic, and I knew better than anyone how readily flights of fancy took wing at the cottage.

The study was dim and silent, the hearth cold, the lamps unlit. Layers of ivy filtered the sunlight that fell through the windows onto the large wooden desk and cast murky shadows on the book-lined shelves and the pair of leather armchairs facing the fireplace.

I went straight to the desk, turned on the lamp, and saw a cream-colored envelope lying square in the middle of the blotter. I reached for it, hesitated, then turned back to face the hearth, vaguely disturbed. Willis, Sr.’s armchair was empty; his morning cup of tea sat, apparently untasted, on the low table where I’d placed it for him that morning; and the book he’d been reading was lying face-down and open on the ottoman.

It was the book that bothered me. The first edition of F. W. Beechey’s Arctic memoirs had been a birthday present from Stan and a welcome addition to Willis, Sr.’s collection. He valued it highly, yet there it lay, carelessly abandoned, treated as though it were a cheap airport paperback. Emma noticed it, too, when she followed Ham into the study with Nell and Bertie. She gave me a puzzled glance, picked up the volume, closed it, and placed it on the low table beside Willis, Sr.’s now frigid cup of tea.

I turned back to open the cream-colored envelope, rapidly scanned the message it contained, then read it again, aloud:

I pursed my lips. “I think we’re the victims of a pair of merry pranksters,” I said, looking at Emma. “This note is a fake.”

Emma turned to Nell, her eyebrows raised.

“It’s certainly not like William to be so uninformative,” Nell agreed, fondling Ham’s ears.

I stared hard at Nell for a moment, then let myself relax. “Okay, Nell. It was a good joke while it lasted, but I’ve caught on.”

“Joke?” said Nell. “What joke?”

“This
joke.” I tapped the envelope impatiently. “This note is preposterous. Not in a million years would William write something like this. He doesn’t say where he’s going or why or for how long ... and then he tells me not to worry?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. And I don’t see what any of this has to do with Aunt Dimity.”

Nell’s only response was to point wordlessly at the seat of the tall leather chair opposite Willis, Sr.‘s, where a folded sheet of paper lay, half hidden in shadow. When Emma turned on the mantelshelf lamps, I saw that the sheet of paper was white and unlined, with a ragged tear along one edge, as though it had been torn from—

My gaze darted to the place on the bookshelf where I kept Aunt Dimity’s blue journal.

“It’s not there,” Nell informed me.
“That’s
what made me think Aunt Dimity had gone with him.”

I nodded absently and looked swiftly past the narrow gap on the bookshelf to the far end of the same shelf. A spidery tingle crept down my spine when I saw another, larger gap.

“Good grief,” I said in a hushed voice. “He’s taken Reginald with him, too.”

“Do you mean to tell me that my father-in-law has run off with Aunt Dimity and my pink flannel rabbit?” I demanded, swinging around to face Nell.

For the first time since our arrival, a slight frown creased Nell’s smooth brow as she looked up at the space on the bookshelf where my powder-pink rabbit should have been—but wasn’t.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps Aunt Dimity will tell you.”

“Right.” I crossed to the chair and peered suspiciously down at the page—for page it was, torn from the blue journal, folded in half, and placed carefully in the center of the seat cushion—then picked it up, unfolded it brusquely, and caught my breath, dumbfounded.

It was Aunt Dimity’s handwriting. There was no mistaking it. The fine copperplate in the royal-blue ink had shaped words of consolation to my mother and stories that had brightened my childhood. I’d pored over that hand for hours, memorized each loop and spiral—no forgery could fool me.

“It’s from Aunt Dimity,” I murmured, lowering myself carefully onto the chair.

Nell nodded, “Bertie thought it would be.”

“What does she say?” Emma sat across from me while Nell sat on the ottoman, with Ham curled at her feet.

“It’s about William,” I replied. “Listen:

I looked at Emma.

“Go on,” she urged.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s all she wrote. It ends there, in midsentence.” While I studied the journal page, and Emma stared at the empty hearth, Nell picked up the book Willis, Sr., had been reading and thumbed through it randomly. For a moment the only sounds were the fluttering of yellowed pages and the ticking of the mantelpiece clock.