Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree
Read Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree Online
Authors: Nancy Atherton
Table of Contents
ALSO BY NANCY ATHERTON
Aunt Dimity’s Death
Aunt Dimity and the Duke
Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed
Aunt Dimity Digs In
Aunt Dimity’s Christmas
Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil
Aunt Dimity: Detective
Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday
Aunt Dimity: Snowbound
Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin
Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea
Aunt Dimity GoesWest
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon
Aunt Dimity Down Under
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First published in 2011 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Nancy T. Atherton, 2011
All rights reserved
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atherton, Nancy.
Aunt Dimity and the family tree / Nancy Atherton.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47572-0
1. Dimity, Aunt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—England—Fiction.
3. City and town life—England—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.T426A933 2011
813’.54—dc22
2010033598
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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For Wyn,
who invited me to tea
One
Fairworth House had good bones. Although it had been neglected for nearly fifty years by a succession of hapless owners, the basic fabric of the building had remained sound. I’d been mildly horrified when my father-in-law, William Willis, Sr., had informed me of his decision to purchase what appeared to be a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old fixer-upper, but the engineer’s report had proved that looks could be deceiving.
The slate roof required repair rather than replacement, the foundation retained its structural integrity, and the mellow limestone walls needed nothing more than patient pruning to rid them of the shaggy layers of ivy that had crept almost to the eaves. Though a handful of windows had been shattered by naughty children armed with slingshots, most were intact, and the splendid parquet floors had not fallen prey to dry rot, woodworm, or water damage.
The superior skills of those who’d built the house and the quality of the materials they’d used had protected Fairworth from the elements, thus insuring that it would not descend with undue speed into an irretrievable state of decay. Fairworth House had aged, to be sure, but it had aged gracefully.
Fairworth wasn’t palatial, but it would never be mistaken for a cottage. It was three stories tall, with no fewer than seven bedrooms, a conservatory, a billiards room, two reception rooms, a library, and a study. Any real estate agent worth his salt would have described it as “a pleasant country retreat for a gentleman of means.” If he were honest, he would have added, “Needs work.”
The chimneys were choked with soot, and the internal workings of the house were hopelessly out of date. After the purchase was completed, the plumbing, heating, and electrical systems received complete overhauls, as did the kitchen, the laundry facilities, and the bathrooms, and a small elevator was installed for the convenience of the staff as well as the new owner, whose knees weren’t quite as springy as they’d once been.
By far the most significant alteration made to the building, however, was the creation, in the attics, of a self-contained, furnished apartment for the live-in servants who would, once they were hired, be responsible for the smooth running of the household.
The grounds, too, required serious attention. A professional landscape architect drew up plans for the lawns and the gardens that would be the focal point of the ten-acre estate, and a well-known landscaping firm turned his designs into reality. Barring unforeseen disaster, the kitchen garden would in a year’s time be brimming with fruits and vegetables while the flower gardens flanking the house would produce enough blossoms to fill vases in every room.
With help from friends in the antiques trade, my father-in-law had, unbeknownst to me, started collecting eighteenth-century English furniture long before he had purchased Fairworth House. When the dust of renovation settled, he simply emptied his storage units into his new home. He worked closely with an interior designer to arrange each room’s furnishings according to floor plans of his own devising, and he supervised the selection of appropriate paints, wallpapers, window treatments, upholstery, and bedding. At my suggestion, he placed a few historically inaccurate but cozier pieces of furniture here and there throughout the house, to make it feel less like a museum and more like a home.
By happy chance, some of Fairworth’s original contents had been found stashed away in a dark corner of the old stables. A painting, a book, and a few pieces of bric-a-brac that had long kept company with spiders, mice, and bats were freed from their cobwebs and brought forth into the light of day.
The end result was spectacular, in an understated way. Fairworth House wasn’t a flashy showpiece embellished with turrets, towers, and florid ornamentation. It was a solid, respectable Georgian house—classical, restrained, and relatively modest in size. The place I’d once thought an irreparable ruin had, in fact, been a tarnished gem that had needed diligent polishing—and a hefty infusion of cold, hard cash—to make it gleam.
The house suited its new owner to a
T
. William Arthur Willis, Sr., was the patriarch of a venerable Boston Brahmin clan whose family law firm catered to the whims of the wealthy. He’d been born into money, had made a great deal more of it over the course of his career, and would never want for it, now that he’d retired from his position as head of the firm. Although he was accustomed to the finer things in life, he disdained ostentation. Like the house he’d recently purchased, Willis, Sr., was solid, respectable, and thoroughly elegant—in an understated way.
He was also a devoted family man. Despite having the means to buy a much grander and far less derelict estate, Willis, Sr., had chosen Fairworth because of its proximity to his only child, a son christened William Arthur Willis, Jr., but known universally as Bill.
Bill Willis happened to be my husband. He and I lived with our seven-year-old twin sons, Will and Rob, and our black cat, Stanley, in a honey-colored cottage nestled snugly amid the rolling hills and patchwork fields of the Cotswolds, a rural region in England’s West Midlands. Although Bill and I were Americans, we’d lived in England for nearly a decade. Our sons were more familiar with cricket than they were with baseball, and they celebrated Guy Fawkes Day with the same gusto as they did the Fourth of July.
Since Bill and I had no desire to uproot our happy family, Willis, Sr., had, upon his retirement, elected to entwine his roots with ours in England. Fairworth House was approximately two miles away from our cottage, a distance Will and Rob could traverse easily on their gray ponies, Thunder and Storm. To encourage their visits, Willis, Sr., had devoted the same care and attention to refurbishing his stable block as he had to restoring his house.
The nearest hub of civilization was Finch, a small village with no recognizable claim to fame. Local farmers patronized its shops and itinerant artists occasionally immortalized its buildings, but tourists seldom ventured down its narrow, twisting lanes, and historians ignored it altogether.
