Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday (11 page)

“I . . . didn’t know what it was.” I cleared my throat. “I was looking for your stepmother when I—”

“Smelled the paraffin.” Nell continued to watch the fire. “The stench is unmistakable.”

“I noticed it last night,” I said, “when the turtledove was burning.”

Nell clucked her tongue but didn’t seem distressed. “Careless gardener,” she murmured. “Careless blacksmith.”

“So you think it was an accident?” I asked.

Nell turned to me, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “What else could it be?” She looked back at the fire. “Did Papa find his elephant?”

I blinked stupidly. “How did you know about Clumps?”

“I thought Papa might go up to the nursery,” said Nell, “after his meeting with Grandpapa.”

“But . . . how did you know that
I
went to the nursery?” I asked.

“A birdie told me.” Nell picked up the can of kerosene. “Mama is in the carpenter’s shop. If you’ll excuse me, I must change for lunch.”

Nell shouldered the pitchfork and headed for a collection of white-arched Victorian greenhouses that lay beyond the stables, the source, no doubt, of the earl’s delicious peaches—and the storage place for the kerosene.

I would have gone after her, but my mind was in a whirl, a not infrequent result of a conversation with Derek’s bewildering daughter.

Why had Nell mentioned “a birdie”? Had she been alluding to the death threat’s first line—
Watch the birdie
—and, by inference, to the burning turtledove?

I doubted that Simon had shown the nasty note to Nell, which meant that there were only two ways she could have known its contents. Either the poison pen had shown it to her or she’d pasted it together herself.

Her mention of Clumps made me particularly uneasy. Nell couldn’t have known about Derek’s floppy elephant unless she’d spent time in the nursery, near the children’s books—the likely source of the death threat’s whimsical lettering.

Had Nell been taunting me? Was she telling me that she knew who was harassing Simon? Or was she letting me know that she was both poison pen and arsonist and that, try as I might, I’d never prove it?

It wasn’t hard to guess how she knew of my alliance with Simon. Oliver had deduced an awful lot from observing his brother and me in the rose garden. Nell would be able to deduce even more. She knew me, knew of my involvement in solving a few modest puzzles that had cropped up in our village. If she’d seen Simon showing the note to me in the rose garden, my subsequent silence on the subject would have told her that I was working with him on the sly.

My head was swimming with conjecture. I wasn’t sure what to think, but if Nell had left the pitchfork behind, I’d’ve used it to fish out the burning bundle and confirm in my own mind that it was flea-ridden horse blankets rather than a set of clothes an arsonist would want to destroy—which, I told myself, could explain why she hadn’t left the pitchfork behind. Nell might be enigmatic, but she was nobody’s fool.

A gust of noxious smoke chased me back into the shelter of the courtyard, where I paused to shake the gravel from my shoes. As I straightened, I saw Emma standing in the doorway of the workshop nearest me. She was grinning from ear to ear.

“Come here, Lori,” she called. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

I followed her into a well-appointed carpenter’s workshop. The stone building was low-ceilinged but long, and it contained an amazing array of woodworking tools: saws of varying shapes and sizes, drills, planes, clamps, chisels, tins of nails, pots of glue, whatever might be needed to make or repair anything made of wood.

No one was using the tools at the moment. The band saw’s whine had ceased and the only person in sight was a wizened old man seated on a Windsor chair near a woodstove at the rear of the building. His bald head was as brown and mottled as a knob of burled walnut, and he wore a patched carpenter’s apron over a moth-eaten wool sweater and a pair of rough brown dungarees.

Emma’s eyes were dancing as we approached the old man, but it wasn’t until we stood before him that she spoke.

“Ms. Lori Shepherd,” she said with great ceremony, “please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to . . . Mr. Derek Harris.”

“Y-you’re . . . Derek Harris?” I stammered, gaping at the old man. “The
original
Derek Harris?”

“None other,” he replied, favoring me with a gap-toothed grin. “Pull up a chair. Emma and I were talking over old times.”

“I’ll bet you were.” I hauled a heavy oak chair closer to his and sat.

“Mr. Harris taught Derek everything he knows,” Emma prompted.

“There’s some things can’t be taught,” Mr. Harris allowed. “Derek, as you call him, had a God-given gift for working with wood, but I helped him make use of it, right enough. He tagged along after me like a puppy when he was home from school.” The old man pointed a gnarled finger toward the woodstove. “Found him sleeping on the floor there some mornings, wrapped up in a bit of old blanket. Some folk mistook him for my apprentice. Had no idea he was his lordship’s son and heir.”

While Mr. Harris enjoyed a reminiscent chuckle, I glanced toward the spot on the floor where the young Derek had slept. How he must have rejoiced, I thought, when he’d been mistaken for the old man’s apprentice. The process of distancing himself from his father had already begun.

“Mr. Harris still has apprentices,” said Emma. “People come from every corner of England to study under him. It’s the same in the other workshops.”

“It was his lordship’s idea,” Mr. Harris put in. “Youngsters champ at the bit to get here because they know his lordship’ll look after ’em while they’re here, same way he looks after me.”

“Lord Elstyn’s created a kind of college of craftsmanship,” Emma explained, “to keep traditional skills from dying out.”

“We’re dying out, though.” Mr. Harris nodded complacently. “Only a few of the old faces left. Saw one the other day I hadn’t seen in years. Took me right back. It happens from time to time, the old ones coming back. Derek never came back, though, not after university. Too angry with his father. Never understood it, his lordship being so kind and all, but there you are: fathers and sons.”

It was the second time in as many hours that I’d heard an employee praise the earl’s kindness. In the library, Jim Huang had made a point of telling me that Lord Elstyn treated his staff well, and Mr. Harris seemed to consider the earl the most generous of men. I found it difficult to reconcile their image of Lord Elstyn with that of the father who’d so heartlessly dismissed his son’s nanny.

“What was Derek like as a boy?” I asked.

“Serious,” said Mr. Harris. “Didn’t say much, but took everything to heart. No mischief from him, not ever.” His eyes nearly disappeared in a mass of wrinkles as he smiled at Emma. “Emma here was hoping for more, but there’s no tales to be told of young Derek. He was solemn as a preacher, like his son was before you came along, Emma.”

Emma nodded. “Peter had a difficult time of it, after his mother died. When I first met him, he was holding the household together while Derek grieved. It was a lot to ask of a ten-year-old boy.”

“He got over it, though, thanks to you.” Mr. Harris patted Emma’s knee. “Saw the change the first time young Peter came to visit, after you’d come into the family. Did my heart good to see the boy bouncing around, driving his granddad mad with mischief. Peter must be closing in on twenty-one by now. Where is the young rascal?”

“New Zealand,” said Emma. “Peter’s been all over the world, Mr. Harris, climbing volcanoes, studying whales, collecting medicinal plants in the Amazon basin.”

“Making up for lost time, I shouldn’t doubt,” said Mr. Harris.

I tilted my head to one side. “Have you ever left Hailesham, Mr. Harris?”

“Not since the war,” he said. “When you find a place you love, you stick there. No sense looking for what you already have.” He pulled a pocket watch out of his apron and consulted it. “It’s been a pleasure, ladies, but I must be off to my cottage. His lordship won’t let me work more than half-days. Says it’s too hard on my ticker.”

“Mr. Harris,” I said, “if you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

“Not as old as some, but older’n most.” The old man grunted as he got to his feet, but his eyes were merry. “I’m aiming for a century.”

Emma and I accompanied Mr. Harris through the workshop’s back door, where he climbed into a golf cart and drove toward the woods, waving.

Emma was beside herself with delight and chattered happily as we made our way back to the house.

“Can you believe it, Lori? The original Derek Harris. And Derek—my Derek—doesn’t know he’s here. I’m not going to tell him, either. I’m going to bring him to the workshop and stand back. I don’t know if I can wait until tomorrow morning to see his face. He’ll be so
pleased.
”

“Is Mr. Harris the good news you wanted to tell Derek?” I asked.

“What?” Emma looked at me blankly, then shook her head. “No, that’s something else entirely, though Derek will be glad to hear it. Did you manage to find him?”

I told her that Derek was waiting for her in their room and watched her fly upstairs to meet him. I thought it best to keep my concerns about Nell to myself until I had something concrete to offer. At the moment I had nothing but suspicion.

I wanted to return to the nursery, to examine the children’s books, but a glance at my watch told me that lunch would be served shortly, so I headed for the dining room instead. I opened the door and stopped dead on the threshold, astounded to see Bill there, on his own.

My husband stood with his arms folded, gazing out of the window. He was the only person I’d seen so far, apart from Giddings, who hadn’t dressed down for the day. Bill’s three-piece black suit and crisp white shirt reminded me that our visit to Hailesham Park was, for him, a working holiday.

I gazed at him in silence, admiring the snug fit of his waistcoat, the soft drape of his trousers, the pleasing contrast of the white shirt against his tanned skin. I could tell by the way he held his shoulders, though, that something was amiss, and when he finally turned around, I wasn’t surprised to see that his face was as stormy as a March morning.

“Oh, it’s you, Lori.” His eyes slid away from mine. “Sorry I’ve been so busy. You must be bored out of your skull.”

“Bored?” If there was one thing I hadn’t been since we’d arrived at Hailesham, it was bored. “No, I’ve managed to keep myself entertained. Where’s Gina?”

“Working.” He glanced at his watch. “I should get back.”

“You’re not staying for lunch?” I asked.

“Not hungry,” he replied.

“You’ve got to eat sometime,” I pressed.

“I’m not hungry,” he said sharply. He put a hand to his forehead, as though to calm himself. “You don’t understand, Lori. Gina and I . . . the past three months . . . I thought it would blow over, but it’s only gotten worse.”

I steeled myself for a confession I wasn’t quite prepared to hear. “What’s gotten worse, Bill?”

He hesitated before muttering, “Lord Elstyn.”

I blinked. It wasn’t the answer I’d expected.

“I wish Derek hadn’t told him about Nell and Kit,” Bill went on, speaking half to himself. “It’s made my job a thousand times more difficult.”

“Your
job
?” I echoed. “It’s your
job
that’s gotten worse?”

“It’s become much more . . . complicated.” He put his head down and strode past me. “I’ll be working late tonight,” he said over his shoulder. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“I won’t,” I said, but my words were drowned out by Claudia’s entrance.

I sank into a chair at the table, too distracted to respond to Claudia’s greeting or do more than nod when Oliver and Nell arrived. My first meeting with my husband in nearly twenty-four hours had left me feeling totally befuddled.

I’d never seen Bill in such a perturbed and unsettled state. Everything he’d said was open to interpretation. He’d been on the verge of telling me about the three months he’d spent working with Gina but had switched over at the last minute to expressing vague concerns about Lord Elstyn. Why had he stumbled from one subject to the other? Was he buckling under the pressure of work—or suffering the pangs of a guilty conscience?

“Would Madam care for oysters?”

I emerged from my tangled thoughts to find Giddings standing over me, offering a serving dish filled with shucked oysters on ice. Dimity’s etiquette lessons kicked in and I helped myself to the oysters, then made a game attempt to pay attention to the general conversation.

Claudia was holding forth on the irresponsibility of the gardeners, though she acknowledged the efficiency of their cleanup efforts.

“They’ve cut away the burnt bits,” she observed. “It’ll look frightfully gappy until the new shrubs are planted. Such a pity, but what can one expect of students?”

“Students?” I said.

“From the local agricultural college,” Oliver clarified. “They maintain the gardens under the supervision of Walter, the head gardener. It’s part of a work-study program.”

“Like the apprentices in the workshops,” I said.

Oliver nodded. “Uncle Edwin established the workshops years ago. He was ahead of his time in wanting to preserve traditional skills. Without them, of course, a place like Hailesham would be impossible to maintain.”

Claudia had evidently tired of the topic because she turned to ask Nell’s opinion of Simon’s new horse.

“Deacon’s an angel,” Nell replied airily.

“An angel?” Claudia gazed at Nell in disbelief. “It wasn’t too terribly angelic of him to refuse the fence this morning.”

“Deacon was startled,” Nell said. “He needs a strong hand to guide him.”

“No one has stronger hands than Simon,” Claudia pointed out. “In my opinion, Deacon’s a foul-tempered beast. I won’t be a bit surprised if Simon sends him back to the sale rooms.” She looked at Oliver. “Where is Simon, anyway?”