Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree (26 page)

I caught Kit’s eye and shrugged, mystified. Though I sensed that Willis, Sr., was leading the witness, I had no idea where he was taking her.

“Would you like to tell us, Augusta?” said Willis, Sr. “Would you like to tell us what you did with your mama’s shiny silver sheep and your papa’s pretty snuffboxes?”

“I hid them,” Aunt Augusta said proudly. “I hid them with Grandpapa’s book and Papa’s compass and the family tree Mama painted.” Her expression clouded over. “There was talk of selling Fairworth, of auctioning its contents to pay death duties—what utter nonsense!—so I hid my treasures in the stables.” She sighed. “I meant to come back for them, but I never did. Life moves so fast, so very fast, and we’re swept along like dried leaves in the wind.”

Silence fell, save for the snap and crackle of the burning logs. Kit reached up to pull the duvet more closely around Aunt Augusta’s spare shoulders. Deirdre refilled everyone’s cups. Declan went to stir the fire. Willis, Sr., contemplated his tented fingers. Sally looked thoughtful and a slight frown creased Henrique’s forehead.

“We’re very sorry, sir,” Deirdre murmured, resuming her seat.

“You apologized at the beginning of your remarkable testimony,” Willis, Sr., observed. “Does your second apology signal its conclusion? If so, I feel compelled to point out that your confession is woefully incomplete. You, Mr. Donovan, have failed to answer an indisputably significant question.”

“What question would that be, sir?” said Declan.

“Why,” Willis, Sr., said calmly, “did you break into Crabtree Cottage and steal the Fairworthy family tree?”

Twenty-One

I jumped as if scalded.

“How did you find out about the robbery?” I demanded, rounding on Willis, Sr.

He gave me a look that was almost pitying. “Need you ask? You have told me on countless occasions that secrets do not remain secret for very long in Finch. You of all people should have known better than to try to keep one from me.”

“Grant spilled the beans, didn’t he?” I said, my eyes narrowing.

“Mr. Tavistock is in a fragile emotional state,” Willis, Sr., acknowledged. “When I telephoned him after dinner to ask for a progress report, he lost his composure completely and insisted on giving me an unexpurgated account of the unfortunate events that transpired at Crabtree Cottage while he and Mr. Bellingham were in London.”

“I wonder how many gin-and-tonics he’d tossed back before you called,” I grumbled.

“In vino veritas,” Willis, Sr., said loftily, and turned his attention to the Donovans. “I note that you do not deny embarking on a sordid life of crime. Am I to assume, therefore, that you are guilty as charged?”

“Please excuse me, sir,” Deirdre said abruptly. “I have something to show you. I’ll be right back.”

She stood and left the room, her brown robe swirling behind her. A moment later I heard the distant hum of the elevator.

“The break-in, Mr. Donovan?” prompted Willis, Sr.

“It . . . it wasn’t a break-in,” Declan temporized. “It was more of a walk-in. Doesn’t anyone lock their doors around here?”

“No,” Sally and I said simultaneously.

“I do,” said Willis, Sr.

“The exception that proves the rule,” I pronounced, and Sally nodded her agreement.

“I didn’t damage anything,” Declan went on. “I wanted to delay a full-on police investigation, so I made it look as though Mr. Tavistock’s studio had been properly turned over. I figured that, if the studio was in disarray, it’d take him longer to figure out what had gone missing. But I didn’t break so much as a pencil point.”

“Your respect for Mr. Tavistock’s property will no doubt count in your favor,” Willis, Sr., said dryly, “but there is still the small matter of the theft.”

“What a nightmare.” Declan leaned his head in his hands. “I thought it’d be a doddle to sneak through the village at two o’clock in the morning, but the entire place was crawling with women. I had to wade the river to avoid the short, skinny one marching back and forth on the bridge, and after that it was like being inside a pinball machine. Every time I turned around, there was another woman creeping from pillar to post. It was all I could do to avoid bumping into them!” He raised his head and looked around the room imploringly. “Is it like that every night?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Sally Pyne cut me off.

“Depends on the weather,” she said knowledgeably. “On a fine summer night, you’ll usually find someone out taking the air. Village folk aren’t afraid to wander about after dark, the way city folk are. We, er”—she glanced self-consciously at Henrique—“I mean to say,
they
take an interest in things, too. The villagers know what Finch sounds like and if they hear something out of the ordinary, they get up to investigate.”

“Interfering pack of busybodies,” Aunt Augusta said with a contemptuous sniff. “Can’t adjust one’s garter without it making the rounds.”

Kit raised a hand to his mouth to cover his smile.

“I did take the family tree, Mr. Willis,” said Declan, “because—”

“He took it because I panicked,” Deirdre stated firmly. She stood framed by the doorway for a moment, then marched into the room, carrying the grubby masterpiece that had once soiled Willis, Sr.’s pristine study. “I asked Declan to steal the family tree, sir. I believe you’ll understand why after you’ve seen it.”

I winced when she placed the painting on the white marble mantel shelf, but realized at once that my fears were groundless. The worst of the soot had been removed, as had the broken glass. The gilt frame was far from immaculate, but I could detect a muted gleam of gold through the residual grime, and the calligraphy as well as the painted images could be seen as if through a fine layer of darkened lacquer.

The Fairworthy family tree wasn’t a conventional chart recording the names and relationships of succeeding generations in minute detail. It was a true work of art. An ancient oak tree in full leaf stood tall against a pale sky, with the tops of lesser trees just visible on the horizon. Miniature portraits labeled in flowing calligraphy hung like glimmering oval ornaments along the oak’s twisted branches or stood solidly among its gnarled roots.

Deirdre backed away from the hearth, but Willis, Sr., and I rose as one and approached it, drawn to the extraordinary artifact like moths to a flame. The names Augusta and Frederick were repeated in every generation, but I was less interested in the names than in the faces. There weren’t enough portraits to account for the entire Fairworthy family. The artist had chosen instead to commemorate a select group of men and women who had, I imagined, made the most meaningful contributions to the family’s good fortune.

“Our rise in the world began in the fourteenth century, during the reign of Edward the Third,” Aunt Augusta informed us. “Sheep made us. We raised them, sheared them, and spun the finest wool from their fleeces. We built mills and exported fabrics to more countries than I can name. We didn’t sit on our backsides like the lazy, grab-all aristocracy. We were the hardworking merchants who made England a force to be reckoned with.”

“Marvelous,” Willis, Sr., murmured, peering closely at a miniature identified as “Frederick Frances Fairworthy, Author of
Notes on Sheep
.”

I stood on tiptoe to drink in the wealth of details in the women’s portraits. The artist had taken great pains to depict the fashions of each period accurately. The elaborate head wrappings, bejeweled hairnets, seed pearl headdresses, and powdered wigs adorning early generations of Fairworthy women stood in stark contrast to the severe and sober hairstyle worn by the Victorian matron whose image hung from the tree’s tallest branch.

Though the women’s fashions reflected different eras, their features were strikingly similar. The artist had elected to paint all the faces from the same angle, as if to underscore the resemblance. Each woman had high cheekbones, a strong, straight nose, shapely lips, and almond-shaped eyes, and each had a prominent mole near the corner of her right eye.

“Mama painted it,” Aunt Augusta said, gazing affectionately at the family tree. “She wrote the names as well. It was the sort of thing women did in those days—needlework and painting and calligraphy. Busy hands are happy hands, she used to say.”

“Your mother was a gifted artist,” said Willis, Sr., with heartfelt sincerity.

“Papa used to tease her,” said Aunt Augusta. “He scolded her for putting her own face into every portrait. But Fairworthy women have always looked alike. It’s what comes of inbreeding.” She chuckled heartily and looked from image to image, as if she were reacquainting herself with old friends.

I studied her upturned face in the firelight. Though her skin had lost its luster, her bone structure all but shouted her allegiance to the Fairworthy clan, and when she tilted her head to one side, I discerned a faded mole half hidden in the wrinkles near her right eye.

Deirdre crossed to stand beside Willis, Sr.

“I know from old family photographs Aunt Augusta brought with her that I look almost exactly as she did when she was my age,” she said. “When Aunt Augusta told me that the faces in the family tree looked like hers, I panicked, because it meant that those faces would also look like mine.”

“Deirdre was afraid,” said Declan, leaving his chair to put a protective arm around his wife. “She was afraid that, when you saw the resemblance, you’d realize that she was a Fairworthy.”

“Once you made the connection,” said Deirdre, “you’d be bound to wonder why I’d returned to Fairworth without declaring my true identity, and you’d suspect me of having ulterior motives.”

“Which you had,” Willis, Sr., pointed out.

Deirdre clasped her hands together pleadingly. “Yes, but we never meant—”

“Please forgive the intrusion,” Henrique broke in. His slight frown deepened to a scowl as he got to his feet and strode over to plant himself, arms akimbo, before Deirdre and Declan. “I am a guest in this house and I do not wish to interfere, but I can no longer hold my tongue. I must ask you: Why do you speak only to Señor Willis? Why do you make no apology to Lady Sarah? It is she who employs you, no? It is her trust you have betrayed.”

“Never mind, Henrique,” Sally said lightly. “I leave all of my staffing problems to Cousin William.”

She darted over and began to tug her gallant defender back with her to the chaise longue, but she’d taken no more than a step when she looked up, gave a horrified squeal, and spun in a queer little pirouette that left her huddling behind Henrique.

I scanned the room to see what had frightened her and beheld a vision that made my blood run cold.

Peggy Taxman and the four Handmaidens stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their arms folded and their faces like thunder, peering beadily through the window at Sally Pyne.

“Oh, dear,” said Willis, Sr. “The jig, it seems, is up.”

Twenty-Two

“Good God, what’s gotten into the woman?” Aunt Augusta turned her head to leer saucily at Henrique. “Pinch her bottom, did you, Señor?”

Henrique looked affronted. “Señora, I would never—”

“Shall I answer the door, sir?” asked Deirdre.

“No, thank you, Mrs. Donovan. I shall attend to it. Mr. Donovan? Christopher?” Willis, Sr., always used Kit’s given name rather than his nickname. “Please bring five chairs from the dining room and arrange them in a row at a right angle to my daughter-in-law’s chair. Mrs. Donovan? I believe we shall need a larger pot of tea. Please, Mrs. Pyne, have a seat and attempt to control your emotions. Lori, close your mouth. I shall return in due course.”

He flicked an index finger at the apparitions in the window to indicate that he would meet them at the front door, then left the room. Kit and Declan went in search of chairs and Deirdre went to the kitchen. Henrique coaxed Sally to return with him to the chaise longue. I closed my mouth and stumbled dejectedly to my chair.

It’s over, I thought numbly. The fantasy world we’d constructed to safeguard Sally’s reputation was about to be reduced to rubble. The web of lies we’d woven would be ripped to shreds, Sally would be exposed as a fraud, and Henrique would realize that the woman he loved had deceived him. Sally’s heart would be broken beyond repair. She would leave Finch in disgrace, taking her jam doughnuts and her delightful granddaughter with her. One more day, I told myself, and we would have been home-free. Aunt Dimity’s absurd and glorious scheme, the greatest act of deception ever perpetrated on the good people of Finch, had come painfully close to succeeding, but it had in the end crashed and burned.

I was only distantly aware of movement as Kit and Declan arranged the five dining room chairs as per Willis, Sr.’s instructions, then resumed their seats. Some time later, Deirdre returned, pushing a tea trolley laden with an ornate silver tea urn and five additional cups and saucers. For a while, no one spoke. Then Aunt Augusta shifted restlessly in her chair and craned her neck to search the room.

“Where’s Ernest?” she asked querulously. “Gone to bed, has he? Party pooper.”

I, too, began to wonder what was keeping Willis, Sr., but before I could voice my concerns, the door to the entrance hall opened and the four Handmaidens shuffled in, followed by Peggy Taxman. Bringing up the rear, like a shepherd chivying a flock of recalcitrant ewes, was Willis, Sr. He gestured wordlessly for the newcomers to be seated in the dining room chairs, then crossed to stand with his back to the fireplace, facing them. His night attire did nothing to diminish his air of authority.

Though they eyed Frederick, the family tree, Henrique, and Aunt Augusta with undisguised curiosity, Elspeth, Opal, Selena, and Millicent seemed strangely subdued, almost cowed, and Peggy’s lips were clenched so tightly that she might have had lockjaw. They accepted their cups of tea with soft words of thanks, then subsided into what was, to my knowledge, a wholly unprecedented silence.

Willis, Sr.’s gaze never wavered from their faces as he began, “Most of you are familiar with Mrs. Hodge of Hodge Farm.”

Kit and I exchanged puzzled glances. Like him, I couldn’t imagine what Annie Hodge had to do with anything.