Aunt Dimity Digs In (25 page)

Lilian fetched the bottle and I raised my glass with the others. But even as I toasted our collective deliverance, I couldn’t shake the notion that Brother Florin was still out there somewhere, with the Gladwell pamphlet securely in his possession, laughing at me.

23.

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power.” The vicar looked down from his pulpit at the record-breaking crowd that filled Saint George’s pews and spilled through the open doors into the churchyard. “Those words may sound familiar to some of you. They were printed on a flyer advertising a rally scheduled to take place in our village today. They can also be found in the second epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy—chapter one, verse seven, to be precise.” He lifted a harvest-gold sheet of paper from the lectern and gazed at it sadly. “I regret to say that whoever used Saint Paul’s words on the flyer was far from precise.” He held the sheet of paper at arm’s length, then slowly and deliberately tore it in half.

A shocked murmur rumbled through the congregation, followed by a handful of isolated snickers as all heads turned toward the front row, where Peggy Kitchen sat, dwarfing Jasper Taxman, who huddled beside her. Peggy’s nostrils flared at the sound of tearing paper, and her posture became noticeably more erect, but her pointy glasses never swerved from the pulpit.

“ To understand Saint Paul’s words, we must read them as they are written.” The vicar placed the torn sheet on the lectern, raised a heavy Bible in one hand, and declaimed, with dramatic emphasis, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of
love,
and of a
sound mind.
” He returned the heavy Bible to the lectern. “ The author of the flyer had distorted Saint Paul’s meaning by emphasizing power at the expense of love and wisdom.Yet we all know that power alone is an abomination. Power must be tempered by love, and by intelligent thought, if it is to be used in the service of God and of mankind.”

Peggy Kitchen didn’t flinch as an approving growl surged through the church, but Jasper Taxman’s shoulders drooped an inch or two. I glanced over to see Bill’s reaction, but he was gazing at the vicar speculatively, as though wondering where the sermon would go next.

“Precision is vital,” the vicar continued, “whether one is quoting sacred texts or speaking to one’s neighbor. A lack of precision can lead to grave misunderstandings, which can lead in turn to dissension and discord.”

“Ah,” Bill said under his breath. “Here it comes.”

“I stand before you today,” the vicar intoned, “hoping to clear up one such misunderstanding. . . .”

Not one sneeze, cough, or hesitantly cleared throat interrupted the vicar’s progress as he guided his flock through the confusion caused by Sally’s misreading of Katrina’s dummy grant proposal. He mentioned no names. He made no direct accusations. But he made it radiantly clear that, contrary to popular belief, Adrian Culver would be out of the schoolhouse in two weeks’ time.

“ There is not, nor has there ever been, a single valid reason to believe that our beloved festival might be canceled,” he concluded. “ The Harvest Festival, during which we will celebrate the glorious bounty our Lord had bestowed upon us, will proceed
on schedule, as planned, without fail.
I urge all of you to participate
wisely
and in the spirit of
love.
In the name of the Father . . .” Throughout the blessing, the vicar kept his gaze fixed on the wall painting of Saint George, as though communing with a fellow dragon-slayer.

Bill bent his head close to mine. “Let’s stick around to offer our support after the service.”

I nodded but suspected that the vicar would do just fine without us. I’d never seen him look so carefree, or so sure of himself. He conducted the rest of the service with an unaccustomed bounce in his step and beamed on his parishioners as they streamed out of the church in a chattering, boisterous swarm.

Peggy Kitchen and Jasper Taxman were the last to leave. A handful of villagers lingered in the churchyard, but the prudent majority had hastened down the lane. Bill and I pushed the strollers within earshot of the west porch and awaited the empress’s reaction to the vicar’s reprimand.

“God bless you, Mrs. Kitchen,” said the vicar before she had a chance to speak. “Thank you so much for coming to this morning’s service.”

Peggy clasped her hands across her stomach and threw her shoulders back. “I suppose you know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, yes, I assure you, Mrs. Kitchen,” said the vicar, with a merry laugh, “it’s quite irrefutable. I’m sure you’re as pleased as I am to learn the truth behind the scurrilous gossip that’s been plaguing our community.”

“Yes.” Peggy nodded. “Very pleased indeed.” Her eyes narrowed knowingly behind her pointy glasses as she leaned toward the vicar. “But what’s all this about a burglary at the vicarage? More scurrilous gossip?”

“Ah.” The vicar’s smile wavered as he strained to formulate an honest, noninflammatory answer.

Lilian came swiftly to his rescue. “Something is missing from the vicarage,” she stated firmly, “but we can’t say positively that it was stolen. It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that the item was misplaced. Teddy’s so dreadfully absentminded.”

The vicar winced at his wife’s unorthodox interpretation of the truth and quickly changed the subject. “Will we see you at Rainey’s birthday party?”

Peggy drew herself up. “You will,” she said. “And it had better be something special, or Sally Pyne’ll have her work cut out explaining why she missed church on a Sunday. You leave it to me, Vicar. I’ll straighten her out. Come along, Jasper.”

As Peggy sailed toward the lane, with Jasper trailing meekly in her wake, Bill and I pushed the strollers to the church’s doorstep. Lilian bent to greet the twins, but the vicar gazed mournfully skyward.

“Dear Lord,” he murmured, “I beseech Thee to keep Mrs. Kitchen’s temper in check until little Rainey’s birthday party is over and the grand reopening of Mrs. Pyne’s tea shop is complete.”

A handful of villagers, peeping out from behind tombs, chorused, “Amen.”

 

Before heading to the cottage, Bill and I paused at Briar Cottage, to have a word with Miranda Morrow, and at the pub, to speak with the Peacocks. Miranda roared with laughter when she heard what Sally and Katrina had been up to in the meadow, but she could add nothing more to her description of the mysterious hooded figure she’d dubbed Brother Florin.

“I can only tell you that he hasn’t been back,” she said. “Mr. Wetherhead would have been over here like a shot if he’d spotted the ghost a second time.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously as she added, “Am I to assume that Brother Florin moonlights as a burglar?”

“You’ve heard about the burglary?” I said, surprised.

“I’ll wager the entire county’s heard by now,” she said. “The woman who runs the tearoom was delivering the news door-to-door this morning—as a public service, to alert us to the danger in our midst.” She touched my arm. “Don’t worry, darling, I didn’t breathe a word about our ghost, but I’ll ring you if he shows up again.”

The Peacocks, too, had heard about the burglary but not about Sally’s antics in the meadow. Though I broke it to them gently, it still came as a blow.

“Torches and track shoes?” Christine repeated dully. “No aliens at all?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Anyone could have made the same mistake, with the fog and the noise of the river confusing things.”

“In many ways,” Bill said consolingly, “I find it easier to believe your story than to imagine Sally Pyne running in place.”

Dick put a beefy hand on Christine’s shoulder. “It’s better to find out now, Chris. What a pair of chumps we’d’ve looked if we’d found out
after
we’d put up the new sign.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Christine gazed wistfully from Rob’s face to Will’s, then turned and went back into the pub.

“Never mind,” said Dick, stepping away from the door. “Once Chris remembers Martin’s promise to come home for the Harvest Festival, she’ll perk right up.” He glanced cautiously over his shoulder before adding, “I don’t mind telling you that I’ll be glad to chop that new sign into kindling. Never did like the dratted thing.”

A banging noise coming from the tearoom reminded me of Jasper Taxman’s platform and my near escape from dodging rotten eggs. The platform was still standing, though denuded of its bunting and its purpose. The tearoom, by contrast, was a beehive of activity. Its windows remained shrouded in obscurity, but shouts issuing from the open doorway indicated that preparations for the day’s festivities were under way.

“ Two hours to go,” said Bill. “Home?”

“Home,” I replied.

We headed back to the cottage to have a light lunch, wrap the tiger in striped paper, and change from our Sunday best into lighter clothing. The weather was muggier than ever. Rain, as Adrian had predicted, was in the offing. I hoped it would stay dry until after the party.

While we dressed the boys in their birthday finery, I told Francesca about the mythical Culver Institute. She received the news with outward calm but betrayed her inner turmoil by putting Will’s socks on inside out.

“So there’s to be no museum in Finch,” she murmured.

“There never was,” I said. “Adrian was telling the truth all along.”

“And he’ll be gone in two weeks?” she said, fumbling with the snaps on Rob’s romper suit.

“Lock, stock, and barrel,” I confirmed. “Just as he promised from the beginning.”

When we were ready to go, I took charge of loading the boys into their car seats and left the less breakable baggage to Francesca. She sat in the back, between the twins, staring abstractedly out of the window, but when we pulled into the square she snapped to attention.

“Holy mother of God,” she murmured faintly.

“Good grief,” muttered Bill, killing the engine.

I, for once, was speechless. In the past two hours the square had been transformed into a cross between a circus and the Colosseum. Sally’s familiar collection of wobbly tables and mismatched chairs had been marbelized, gilded, and placed among a half-dozen balloon-covered pillars intended, I surmised, to represent the Forum. Katrina, Simon, and assorted other guests crowned with papier-mâché Roman helmets brandished cardboard-and-foil swords beneath a fluttering flock of pennants strung from the balloon pillars to the war memorial.

A pair of cylindrical concrete pillars, painted blue and garlanded with plastic-looking greenery, flanked the tearoom’s doorstep and supported a freshly painted sign.

“The Empire Tearoom SPQF,” I read aloud. “SPQ . . . F?” I looked at Bill. “For the Senate and People of . . . Finch?”

Francesca began to quake with suppressed laughter. “Mama bloody mia,” she managed, gasping, “if only Papa had lived long enough to see this . . .”

She’d scarcely finished speaking when Rainey passed us, bouncing precariously across the cobbles in a gilded, goat-drawn chariot. The birthday girl was dressed in a snow-white toga, with a wreath of laurel leaves upon her head, a pair of gold-colored armlets clasped about her upper arms, and, incongruously, her usual grubby sneakers on her feet.

Sally had started her fitness program too late to alter the way she filled her toga, but she didn’t seem a bit self-conscious as she carried a tray of pastries from guest to guest. Like Rainey, she was adorned with laurel wreath and armlets, but instead of sneakers she wore a pair of thin-soled gold sandals with crisscrossed straps that climbed almost to her knees.

Bill rubbed his chin. “It’s the right costume for this weather,” he allowed.

I reached for the door handle. “Come on. Let’s wish Rainey a happy birthday. If we can catch her.”

 

No one had a better time at Rainey’s birthday party than Rainey. When she was finally persuaded to give the goat a rest, she flew from table to table, introducing all and sundry to her tired-looking parents and her placid, brand-new baby brother, Jack. She urged the Pym sisters to tuck into her gran’s Hadrian cakes and recommended the Pompeii puffs to the Peacocks, but she slyly snatched all of the Constantine creams for herself. Sticky-fingered and chattering gleefully, she “accidentally” tore the paper from her tiger before the candles on her stunning, two-tiered birthday cake had been lit.

If I had any lingering doubts about the possibility of love at first sight, they were laid to rest by the look on Rainey’s face when the tiger emerged from his wrappings. Her chattering stopped midstream, and she sank slowly to the ground, as though her knees had gone too weak to support her. A hush fell over the square as people gathered to see what had tamed the tornado.

Rainey stared down at the tiger for what seemed the longest time. Then she looked up, smiling brilliantly, and gazed directly at me.

“Edmund Terrance,” she said, as though answering a question. “His name is Edmund Terrance.”

After that, the afternoon became a blur of birthday games, which Rainey won; birthday cake, which Rainey gorged on; and birthday presents, none of which, I noted complacently, held a candle to Edmund Terrance. The party was beginning to wind down when Peggy Kitchen brought it back to life by mounting Jasper Taxman’s platform and calling for everyone to gather round. I left Bill with the boys, at Rainey’s table, and sidled over to Lilian Bunting, who surveyed Peggy’s performance anxiously.

“My friends,” Peggy boomed, when the crowd had quieted, “it has come to my attention that a valuable historic brochure sort of thing, belonging to the vicar, was stolen from the vicarage last Sunday night.”

Lilian closed her eyes. “Drat Sally Pyne,” she muttered. “I’d like to point out,” Peggy thundered, “that it was the theft, and not my flyer, that caused the trouble that’s been plaguing our village all week.”

Lilian’s mouth fell open. “What
can
she mean?”

“She doesn’t want to take the blame for stirring everyone up,” I murmured, “so she’s found a conveniently anonymous scapegoat.”