Aunt Dimity Digs In (13 page)

“She reminded me that people are complicated.” I wrinkled my nose. “I hate it when she does that.”

Emma stretched out next to me on the grass. “How complicated is Peggy Kitchen?”

I folded my hands behind my head, gazed up at the cloudless blue sky, and told Emma about Peggy Kitchen’s eighth birthday. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” I said. “Spending your childhood scanning the sky for German bombers?”

“It’s the part after the bombs drop that I find hard to imagine,” said Emma. “How would I react if my world was blown to bits?”

“You’d plant a victory garden in the craters,” I said, with great conviction.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Emma retorted. “I’d run for my life, just like Peggy and her mother.” She took off her glasses and rolled onto her stomach, pillowing her cheek on her hands. “I wonder if that’s why Peggy came back to Finch. She must have felt grateful to the people here for taking her in.”

“I doubt if the people who took her in live here anymore.” I brushed at a fly buzzing around Ham’s head. “I used to think we were the only outsiders in Finch, but it seems I was wrong. Everyone in the village seems to be from somewhere else.”

Emma closed her eyes and lay so still that for a moment I thought she’d drifted off to sleep. I scratched Ham’s damp chin, then let my hand fall to the ground. The sun felt deliciously warm after our icy plunge, and the baked earth gave off the heavy, sweet scent of high summer. I’d nearly succumbed to the brook’s soothing murmur when Emma spoke.

“I know where I’d go to look for witnesses,” she said.

“So do I.” I rubbed my eyes. “I should have thought of it yesterday. As soon as Bill’s fully recovered, I’m going to visit the Buntings’ neighbors.”

“Don’t bother with the cottages across the lane,” said Emma. “ They’re owned by weekenders. They’d be back in London by Sunday night.”

“More émigrés,” I muttered. “How about the people who live on either side of the vicarage?”

“ They’re your best bet, but . . .” Emma put her hand out and waggled it. “I’ve heard they’re very private. You may have trouble getting them to talk.”

“What if I tell them . . .” I thought for a moment, then sat up, proud of my ingenuity. “I’ll tell them I’m helping Lilian Bunting with her parish history. No one wants to be left out of history. And I’ll bake a batch of cookies to bring along as a—”

“Bribe?” Emma put in.

“As a thank-you,” I amended, “to anyone willing to answer a few simple questions.”

“Brilliant.” Emma snuggled deeper into the grass. “And once you’re inside . . . ?”

“I grill ’em till they squeal.” I screwed my face up horribly, but Ham ruined the moment by licking my nose. I pushed him aside and got to my feet. “Up, woman,” I commanded, “and pull on your boots.You have a jungle to conquer, and I have a batch of cookies to bake.”

11.

Since I had a bag of lemons on hand, I made lemon bars. When Francesca made a passing reference to the dozen or so blue ribbons Lilian Bunting’s lemon bars had won, I laughed lightheartedly and assured her that I was baking for the fun of it—which was the truth, if not precisely the whole truth.

Harris’s patented cure for hangovers—and twelve hours of uninterrupted slumber—got Bill back on his feet by the following morning, though he was reluctant to consume anything other than dry toast and Emma’s strawberry-leaf tea at breakfast. When I dropped him off at his office, he refused categorically to eat lunch at the pub.

I watched as he unlocked his office door, then craned my neck to survey the square. A large delivery van was parked near the tearoom, and two husky men in back-support belts were unloading a pair of long, heavy cylindrical objects covered with brown paper. Simon was lugging an armful of pointy trowels from the schoolhouse to the paneled van. I called a hello and Simon replied so cheerily that I knew without asking that Adrian had finally given him a shot at doing some hands-on work in Scrag End field.

Buoyed by the young man’s sunny smile, I drove up Saint George’s Lane and parked in front of the vicarage, intent on finding out more about Lilian’s parish history before I presented myself to her next-door neighbors as her representative.

I patted the supply of lemon bars stacked neatly on the passenger seat, took up the red spiral-bound notebook, and climbed out of the car, then stood for a moment, gazing over the low stone wall, astonished by the change that had taken place in one short day.

Emma had been hard at work. She’d slashed the shrubs ruthlessly, torn up the brambles, and freed the walls from a burdensome tangle of vines. The garden was still dotted with odd tufts and straggly bits, like a crew cut cropped with a blunt blade, but Emma had made it much harder for a sticky-fingered intruder to slip into the vicarage unobserved.

I heard voices coming from the back of the house and crept along the side to see who was speaking. I peered around the corner, then quickly drew back. Emma was sitting at the bottom of the library stairs, showing Rainey Dawson how to pull weeds up by the roots. Rainey wore a child-sized pair of gardening gloves—Nell’s castoffs, no doubt—and her braids were pinned like a flyaway halo around her head. She’d already acquired smudges of dirt on her nose, her knees, and her elbows, but they didn’t look out of place in a garden. Perhaps, I thought, Rainey had found her life’s work.

I didn’t want to distract the little whirlwind, so I made my way quietly to the front stairs and rang the bell. The door was opened by a woman I didn’t recognize. She held a broom in one rubber-gloved hand, however, and wore a flowing kerchief as well as a loose-fitting duster, so it seemed safe to asume that she was the Buntings’ cleaning lady.

“The missus is out,” she informed me. “Vicar’s on the telephone, but he shouldn’t be long.”

I nodded toward the garden. “Lilian must be happy about the new landscape.”

“Says it’s a fine thing not to snag her stockings when she goes down the front walk. Vicar claims he didn’t know there
was
a front walk.” The woman grinned slyly at the Buntings’ strained communion with nature, then introduced herself. “I’m Annie Hodge.”

The name rang a bell. “As in Hodge Farm?”

The woman nodded. “Hodge Farm belongs to my husband.”

“It’s right next to Scrag End field, isn’t it?” I said. “Have you gotten a chance to visit Dr. Culver’s dig?”

“There’s five acres of barley between us and Scrag End,” Annie informed me, “and we’ve too much work at hand to mind what this doctor chap’s up to.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Here’s the vicar.”

“Lori, my dear girl,” said the vicar, joining us on the doorstep, “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Pot of tea, Vicar?” Annie offered. “You don’t look at all well.”

“ Tea,” said the vicar absently. “Yes, by all means.” He heaved a forlorn sigh. “Bring it to us in the library, if you please.”

I gave Annie a friendly nod and followed the vicar up the hall. He looked as though he’d aged ten years since I’d last seen him.

“Will Lilian be home soon?” I asked as we entered the library.

“Lilian?” The vicar paused to consider. “I believe she promised to be back in time for lunch. She’s attending a lecture at the village hall in Stow.” He sat behind the desk and gestured vaguely at the green velvet couch. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

The room was suffocatingly hot and as dark as a tomb. The windows and the French doors were closed, the drapes closely drawn. The desk lamp was on, but its shade was tilted so that its meager circle of light illuminated only the black telephone and the vicar’s folded hands.

“Mr. Bunting,” I said, “would you like me to turn on a few lamps?”

“Hmmm?” The vicar looked up from a silent contemplation of his hands. “Lamps, did you say?” He peered across the room. “It is a bit gloomy in here, isn’t it. I’ve kept the drapes closed since I spoke with you about the, er, incident. Lilian thinks I’m overreacting.”

“You’ve had a shock,” I said, turning on the pole lamps at either end of the couch. “It would be strange if you didn’t have some sort of reaction.”

“It’s the invasion of privacy, you see.” The vicar glanced over his shoulder at the muted sound of Rainey’s chatter coming from the library stairs. “It’s rattled me. As has a phone call from the bishop. I’ve just finished speaking with him. He rang to tell me that he’d received Mrs. Kitchen’s petition. She presented it to him at seven o’clock this morning.”

I winced sympathetically.

“The bishop made it quite clear that he doesn’t want Mrs. Kitchen bothering his old chum Dr. Culver. He ordered me to . . . to
keep a lid
on Mrs. Kitchen.” The vicar held out his hand imploringly. “Is he mad?”

“I think he underestimates Peggy Kitchen,” I soothed. “He’s only met her once.”

“One would think once would be enough,” murmured the vicar. “But what am I to do? The wretched woman cornered me after morning services and told me that I hadn’t heard the last of her.” He shuddered gently.

“I called Stan,” I said, hoping to distract him from his woes. “Dr. Finderman, that is. He promised to do everything in his power to find another copy of the Gladwell pamphlet.”

“How kind of him.” The vicar made an effort to sound elated, but the prospect of keeping a lid on Peggy Kitchen was clearly weighing on his mind.

“While Stan’s working on that end,” I went on, “I thought I’d do some research of my own. Do you think Lilian would mind if I looked through her notes for the parish history?”

“She’d be flattered by your interest,” said the vicar. He motioned toward the long table at the end of the room. “Please, feel free to browse.”

I seated myself at the long table and rummaged through Lilian’s copious notes. Annie delivered the tea tray, but left it to the vicar to pour a cup and bring it over to me. I resisted the urge to sip. Annie’s tarry brew was strong enough to turn Will and Rob into lifelong insomniacs.

The vicar settled into his armchair with his cup of tea, and I paused occasionally to scribble a word or two in the red notebook. I soon realized that the vicar had spoken the truth: Finch’s history had been as dull as ditchwater. It took less than a half hour to travel from the Iron Age to “ The Village Today.”

“All done,” I said finally, tapping the papers back into a pile. “Thanks much. I’ll let you know if, er,
when
I hear from Stan.”

A rare smile lit the vicar’s face. “Lori, my dear, you are an angel.”

“And you,” I said, “are bound to be a saint.”

His face resumed its mournful contours. “A martyr, more likely.”

“Stop fretting, Vicar,” I urged. “God’s on our side, remember?”

“That’s what the French said at Agincourt,” the vicar murmured.

He retired, muttering gloomily, and I returned to the Mini to fetch a bag of lemon bars. Notebook, pen, and thank-you bribe in hand, I headed for the schoolmaster’s house, a modest, single-story cottage that deserved better care than its present owner was giving it. The limestone facade was filthy, paint flaked from the window frames, and missing slates gave the peaked roof a gap-toothed appearance.

The current owner—a man by the name of George Wetherhead, according to Lilian’s notes—had kept his garden under control, however. There were no shrubs, no flowers, scarcely any lawn, nothing to block his view of the lane, the vicarage, and the meadow. If Mr. Wetherhead had been looking out of a window on Sunday night, he might have seen something peculiar going on next door.

The man who answered the door was short and slightly built, with a round face and long wisps of gray hair combed across an otherwise hair-free scalp. His forehead was marked with a horizontal indentation, as though he’d just removed a tight-fitting hat or cap. He wore a white shirt with epaulets and a pair of dark-blue trousers, and leaned heavily on a three-pronged metal cane.

“Mr. Wetherhead?” I asked. “My name’s Lori Shepherd. Lilian Bunting’s asked me to help her gather information for her parish history. I wonder if you might—”

“I’m busy,” he said, reaching for the door.

I slid my foot over the threshold. “You don’t want to be left out of the parish history, do you?” I wheedled. “Your house is extremely, um, historic. There are all sorts of . . . of legends associated with it.”

“Legends?” Mr. Wetherhead’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of legends?”

“All sorts.” I took a half step forward and rested my palm on the open door, a marketing technique I’d learned while selling Girl Scout cookies in my youth. “I’d love to tell you about them, if you have the time.”

“No. I’m sorry, but—” He turned his head suddenly and stared back into the house.

“Is something wrong?” I asked. I was about to inch another half step forward when the little man seized my arm and hauled me inside. The heavy door had scarcely swung shut behind me when the air was torn by a piercing, high-pitched scream.

12.

You’d no right to push yourself into my cottage.” Mr. Wetherhead stood in the doorway, as though to block my only escape route. “No right to come poking and prying. I insist that you tell no one what you’ve seen here today. It’s no one’s business but my own.”

The windows in the raftered room were small and heavily curtained. A large trestle table, lit by a shaded ceiling lamp, rested on sheets of plywood laid over the scuffed pine floor. I circled the room slowly, my back to the wall, unable to tear my gaze from the table.

“Your neighbors haven’t noticed?” I murmured skepti cally.

He tightened his grip on the metal cane. “ The houses across the lane are used only on weekends, and the Buntings have never had cause to complain.” A note of desperation entered his voice. “If word gets out, I’ll be ridiculed, shamed in front of the entire village. Is that what you want?”

A shrill scream rent the air once more as the diminutive locomotive entered a tunnel at the base of the plaster mountain. It emerged a moment later, chugged past the dairy farm and through the Victorian village, crossed the iron bridge above the silvery trout stream, changed tracks, and began the slow ascent that would take it to the ski resort on the mountain’s upper reaches. The miniature landscape was a world unto itself and filled the entire trestle table.