Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold

by Nancy Atherton

  Emma must have been watching for my arrival, because she and Tilly were halfway down the broad stone staircase before I switched off the engine. They, too, had chosen to wear blue jeans for our dusty day in the archives, but the rolled cuffs on Tilly’s indicated that she’d borrowed hers from Emma. Emma wasn’t a towering Amazon by any means, but even she was taller than Tilly. Emma had thrown on an old barn jacket, but Tilly had chosen to wear her own black coat. A wintry sunbeam picked out the mourning brooch pinned to the collar.

  When Tilly insisted on riding in the backseat, Emma didn’t argue. The look on her face told me that she’d abandoned her stalwart attempts to bolster Tilly’s sense of self-worth.

  “What do you think of our church?” I asked Tilly.

  “It’s wonderful,” she replied, “and Mr. Barlow’s knowledge of it is quite profound. He pointed out architectural features I wouldn’t have noticed, and he knew the stories behind every monument in the churchyard.”

  Clever old Mr. Barlow, I thought, giving him a mental pat on the back. Aloud I said, “What did you do after you left St. George’s?”

  “We had tea and crumpets at the tearoom,” she said. I could almost feel her blush as she added, “He insisted on paying our bill. He’s a true gentleman, and I had a most pleasant afternoon in his company.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I said, grinning from ear to ear.

  The sunnier weather allowed Emma and me to point out local landmarks to our guest as we drove to the village, and I paused at the top of the humpbacked bridge to allow her to take in the view.

  While Tilly feasted her eyes on Finch, my gaze was drawn inexorably to the unfamiliar car parked in front of Mr. Barlow’s workshop. I was so absorbed in debating whether or not the unassuming sedan might belong to Tommy Prescott that Emma had to remind me to drive on.

  When we reached the vicarage, Emma and Tilly elected to stay in the car while I ran through the front garden and knocked on the door. The vicar opened it, looking vaguely worried.

  “I’m afraid my wife may be a few minutes late,” he said. “She’s on the telephone with Opal Taylor. Apparently, there’s been some confusion regarding a bill Lilian may have forgotten to post.”

  Since Opal Taylor was a champion talker, I decided to make the most of Lilian’s misfortune.

  “Not to worry,” I assured him. “Tell Lilian to take her time. We’re in no hurry.” My words did not suit my actions, however, as I spun on my heel and dashed back to the car to explain the situation to Emma.

  “Opal Taylor?” she said with a groan. “She’ll talk Lilian’s ear off. We won’t get away until noon.”

  “I’m sure Lilian will try to cut the call short,” I said. “In the meantime, sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

  Before Emma could ask where I was going—or order me to stay—I loped across the squelchy green to knock on the door of Mr. Barlow’s workshop. Happily, he answered it within seconds.

  “Been running, Lori?” he asked as I tried to catch my breath. “The Mercedes hasn’t broken down, has it? Miss Trout told me you were taking her and Emma and Mrs. Bunting to Upper Deeping this morning.”

  “I am,” I said. “The car’s fine, but Lilian’s on the phone with Opal Taylor—”

  Mr. Barlow rolled his eyes.

  “—so I thought I’d put the delay to good use.” I gestured toward the unfamiliar, small sedan. “Tommy’s?”

  “Yep,” said Mr. Barlow. “Got in last night. Hold on a tick. I’ll give him a shout. He’s gapping the plugs from Mrs. Bunting’s car.” Mr. Barlow turned his head and bellowed into the workshop, “Tommy? Come here, lad! There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  A moment later Mr. Barlow stepped outside to make room for his nephew, who seemed to fill the doorway. Tommy Prescott was a strapping lad. He was so tall that he had to duck to avoid banging his head on the lintel, and I doubted that there was an ounce of fat on his majestic body.

  There were scars on it, though—a long, ragged one on his left cheek, and a smaller, neater one above his left eye. His dark hair was shaved so close to his scalp that I could make out a third scar that ran from his left temple to a spot just above his left ear. I wondered if he’d gone through the windshield in a car accident and thought again of how fortunate Tilly had been to escape her crash unscathed.

  Tommy’s chiseled features would have been severe if they hadn’t been softened by a pair of kindly brown eyes and a mouth that curved easily into a slow, sweet smile. The state of his clothes suggested that his uncle had put him to work bright and early. His sweatshirt and blue jeans were stained with axle grease, and his sneakers bore traces of motor oil.

  “Tommy,” said Mr. Barlow, “this is Lori Shepherd.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” said Tommy. His deep voice washed over me like melted chocolate. “I’d shake your hand, but I don’t think you’ll want to shake mine.” He displayed his grease-streaked palms.

  “Maybe next time,” I said, smiling. “And please, call me Lori.”

  “I will,” he said amiably. “Uncle Bill has told me a lot about you, including the fact that you go by your first name so you won’t have to explain why you didn’t take your husband’s last name.”

  His detailed knowledge of my personal life came as no surprise to me. The village grapevine had a long reach.

  “He hasn’t told me very much about you,” I said. “How long do you plan to stay in Finch?”

  “Through New Year’s,” Tommy replied. “Longer, if Uncle Bill will have me.”

  “Don’t be stupid, lad,” said Mr. Barlow. “You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

  Bree’s voice blared suddenly from within the workshop. “Tom! Where did you put the crosshead screwdriver?”

  “In my pocket!” Tommy hollered back. He pulled the screwdriver from his back pocket and grinned. “I’d best bring the crosshead to the boss before she loses her temper. She has a short fuse, that one. Keeps me on my toes. Great to meet you, Lori.”

  “And you, Tommy,” I said.

  As he stepped back through the doorway, I noticed that he walked with a slightly uneven gait. Mr. Barlow must have followed my gaze, because he answered the question I was too polite to ask.

  “Tommy joined the army when he was eighteen,” he said as soon as his nephew was out of earshot. “Served in Afghanistan. One of those roadside bombs you hear about on the news exploded not ten yards away from him. Lost his left leg below the knee. Banged his head up pretty good, too.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” said Mr. Barlow. “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve died. The explosion killed four of his mates.”

  Words failed me. I reached out to grasp Mr. Barlow’s hand, then jumped as someone—meaning Emma—leaned on the Mercedes’s horn.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said reluctantly. “Does everyone else in Finch know what happened to Tommy?”

  “No,” said Mr. Barlow. “The lad asked me to keep it to myself, so I did.”

  “Am I allowed to talk about it?” I asked.

  “Tell whoever you like,” he said. “I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t expect every living soul in the village to hear about it before nightfall. I’m hoping to spare Tommy the trouble of answering a load of damn-fool questions.”

  The horn sounded again. I gave Mr. Barlow’s hand a quick squeeze and jogged back to the Mercedes, wondering if Lilian, Tilly, or the vicar would mind if I left Emma at the vicarage.

  * * *

  —

  I DIDN’T TELL the others about Tommy Prescott straightaway. I had to wait for Emma to stop scolding me for wasting time, and for Lilian to stop scolding herself for taking Opal Taylor’s call.

  “I should have known better than to pick up the phone when I had an appointment to keep,” Lilian said from the backseat. “I could
have kicked myself when I heard Opal’s voice.”

  “A common reaction,” I said, but my quip went unnoticed.

  “Sick people can be fretful, “ Lilian allowed, “and she’s still very weak, but to accuse me of forgetting to post her water bill is the outside of enough. I’ve never forgotten to post a bill in my life.”

  Emma and I made a concerted effort to soothe her injured pride, and eventually she stopped seething.

  “Subject closed,” she said sheepishly. “My apologies for foisting my indignation on you. Let’s move on to a more pleasant topic, shall we? Who, for example, is the handsome young man you were chatting with, Lori? I don’t recall seeing him before.”

  “He’s Mr. Barlow’s nephew,” I said. “His name is Tommy Pres—”

  “Not little Tommy?” Lilian interrupted incredulously.

  “He’s not little anymore,” said Emma.

  “No, indeed,” said Lilian, “but I’ve known Tommy since he was a boy. He used to visit his uncle every summer. The last time I saw him, he was a gangly teenager.”

  “He’s filled out,” said Emma. “If he wants to ride, I’ll have to borrow a horse from another stable, because none of mine are big enough for him.”

  “I don’t think he’ll want to ride,” I said. “He’s been through a lot since he was a gangly teenager. . . .” When I finished telling them about Tommy Prescott’s military service and his injuries, I heard Lilian release a mournful sigh.

  “I understand now why it took him so long to return to Finch,” she said. “First an overseas posting, then a brain injury and a shattered leg . . . Rehabilitation can take years if it’s done properly, and all too often it’s not. We’ll have to do our best to make him feel welcome in our village.”

  “How do we keep our less tactful neighbors from staring at his artificial leg?” Emma asked.

  “They won’t stop staring at his prosthetic until it loses its novelty value,” Lilian replied wisely. “I hope he stays with his uncle long enough for everyone to grow accustomed to it.”

  “If Mr. Barlow has his way,” I said, “Tommy will stay in Finch for the rest of his life.”

  “What do you mean?” Lilian asked.

  “Bree,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Lilian, drawing the simple syllable out to twice its normal length. “So that’s the plan, is it? It’s a very good one.”

  “Let’s hope Bree agrees,” said Emma.

  “Only time will tell,” I said, “but if I were Bree, I’d—” I broke off before I could scandalize Tilly. “I’d be happy to make a new friend.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Emma sarcastically, giving me a sidelong look.

  “Forgive me for asking,” said Tilly, “but is Bree the dark-haired young woman who assists Mr. Barlow?”

  “That’s Bree,” I said.

  Lilian, Emma, and I whiled away the rest of the trip by filling Tilly in on Bree’s troubled past, the tragedy that brought her from New Zealand to Finch, and her recently broken engagement, thus proving that gossip, like Cupid, was alive and well in Finch.

  Seventeen

  Upper Deeping exuded Christmas cheer. Evergreen garlands topped with shiny red bows adorned the lamp posts, strings of twinkling snowflakes hung high above the streets, and holiday displays filled the shop windows. A beautifully decorated tree stood in the main square, where a choir dressed in Victorian garb serenaded passersby and an open-air Christmas market tempted them with food, drink, and a glittering array of festive trinkets.

  Emma grumbled about the heavy traffic and the shoals of harried shoppers, but I thought they added just the right touch of madness to the week before Christmas. After driving in stop-and-go circles for twenty minutes, I pulled into a parking space three blocks away from our destination.

  The offices of the Upper Deeping Dispatch were located in a building just off the main square. Had I been on my own, I would have treated myself to a bag of roasted chestnuts from the open-air market, but I didn’t wish to be accused of wasting more time, so I postponed my treat.

  Lilian’s set of keys enabled us to enter the building through a back door. From there, she led us down a steep staircase to the cellar, where the archives were housed. She used a second key to open the cellar door and drew our attention to a small, slightly dingy powder room that had escaped my notice on my previous trip to the Dispatch.

  The cellar hadn’t changed much, if at all, since I’d last seen it. It had a high ceiling and finished walls, a tiled floor, and ample lighting, which Lilian turned on with the flick of a switch near the door. The walls were lined with utilitarian metal shelves that held cheaply bound back issues of the newspaper. A large metal desk filled most of the floor space in the center of the room. A molded plastic chair faced the aged computer that sat on the desk, and three folded folding chairs leaned against a set of shelves.

  “My friend must have provided the extra chairs,” said Lilian. “I rang her last night to let her know that we’d be working in the archives today.”

  We unfolded the extra chairs and arranged them around the desk, then hung our coats on the backs of the chairs because there was nowhere else to hang them. I noticed that Tilly was wearing a hand-knitted heathery-gray pullover Emma had made for herself before my sons were born. The sweater was too big for her, but the color was well suited to a dusty environment.

  Lilian commandeered the plastic chair and cleared the desk by setting the aged computer on the floor.

  “Is it broken?” Emma asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Lilian replied. “It won’t help us, though. They’ve digitized the past decade of the Dispatch, but those records won’t tell us about Albert Anscombe or Cecilia Pargetter. We need to go much further back than ten years.” She pulled four pens and four spiral-bound notebooks from her purse and laid them on the desk. “Before we begin, however, I’d like to propose a methodology.”

  “I’m glad someone has a plan,” I said, hanging my shoulder bag on my chair.

  “Let’s hear it,” said Emma.

  “We’ll start by looking at newspapers from 1837, the year Albert Anscombe was born,” said Lilian, “and work our way forward to 1865, the year the banns were read for Albert and Cecilia.”

  “Do we have to go that far back?” Emma asked.

  “We don’t have to,” Lilian replied, “but I think we should.”

  “So do I,” I said. “We might find an 1837 society column that places the Pargetter family at Albert Anscombe’s christening. If we do, we’ll know that the two families were friendly. If they were friendly, we can assume that Cecilia Pargetter spent time at Anscombe Manor.”

  “And if she was a regular visitor,” said Emma, “she could have found out about the priest hole from a servant or a family member, or she could have discovered it herself.” She nodded. “Okay. We’ll start at the beginning.”

  “If we divide the years within our time span by four,” said Lilian, “it leaves each of us with roughly seven years’ worth of newspapers. To avoid working at cross-purposes, Lori will take the first seven volumes, Tilly will take the next seven, I’ll take the next, and Emma the next. We’ll work simultaneously, each on our own volumes. When we finish, each of us will report our findings to the others, in order, from the earliest volumes”—she pointed at me—“to the latest.” She pointed at Emma, then at the spiral notebooks. “Please feel free to take notes. Any questions? No? Good. Let us retrieve the appropriate volumes.”

  Lilian was clearly at home in the archives. Without a moment’s hesitation, she led us to a cobwebby row of shelves in a cramped and dimly lit chamber beyond the main room. The gently decaying black leather–bound volumes that grouped the Dispatch’s back issues by year were much fancier than the more recently bound volumes. They were stacked neatly on their sides, with the gold numbers stamped on their spines facing outward.

  “My early volumes
are skinnier than your later ones,” I said to Emma.

  “They would be,” said Tilly. “The earlier issues were printed before the government repealed the stamp and paper taxes that made printing lengthy newspapers prohibitively expensive. For the same reason, the type will be very small and the columns quite dense. Since there were fewer pages, the typesetters had to cram a lot into them.”

  Emma and I had become so accustomed to hearing Tilly’s lectures that we didn’t even look twice at her. Lilian, on the other hand, stared at her for a moment before moving on.

  “You’ll take an extra year, Lori, to even things out,” she instructed.

  I took all eight of my volumes from the shelf, but the others took only two apiece. We carried them back to the metal desk and began leafing through the old newspapers, searching for notices or news stories that would give us a better understanding of the link between the Anscombes and the Pargetters.

  I was in hog heaven. I could have spent hours perusing the articles in the 1837 volume alone. Try as I might to narrow my focus, I couldn’t help skimming through pieces on postal reform, the grand opening of London’s Euston Station, William IV’s death, Princess Victoria’s accession to the throne, and the nightmarish specter known as Spring-heeled Jack, an alarming individual with glowing red eyes and clawed hands who breathed blue and white flames while leaping improbable distances to ensnare his victims. I was bursting to tell the others about Spring-heeled Jack, but Emma was working so diligently that I kept him to myself.

  Needless to say, it took me a while to strike pay dirt. I was reading a situation-wanted ad written by a governess whose areas of expertise included geography, history, painting, needlepoint, elocution, dancing, music, and modern French when I heard Emma utter a rapturous “Yes!” and realized that I was falling behind. I gave myself a mental shake and started over.

  An hour passed, then two, the silence broken only by the rustle of turning pages and the shuffle of shoes as my companions retrieved fresh volumes from the distant, dusty shelves. Though sensational stories continued to catch my eye, I forced myself to concentrate on stories about local births, deaths, marriages, accidents, arrests, court cases, competitions, and celebrations.