Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Epilogue
Donna’s Anzac Biscuits
ALSO BY NANCY ATHERTON
Aunt Dimity’s Death
Aunt Dimity and the Duke
Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed
Aunt Dimity Digs In
Aunt Dimity’s Christmas
Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil
Aunt Dimity: Detective
Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday
Aunt Dimity: Snowbound
Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin
Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea
Aunt Dimity Goes West
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon
VIKING
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First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin,
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Copyright © Nancy T. Atherton, 2010
All rights reserved
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atherton, Nancy.
Aunt Dimity down under / Nancy Atherton.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-18993-1
1. Dimity, Aunt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—England—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.T426A93443 2010
813’.54—dc22 2009040139
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For Vic and Raewyn James,
who took me there and back again
One
I didn’t see it coming. As I bustled around my kitchen, making dinner for the men I loved, I didn’t see death hovering in the wings. When life is tumbling merrily along, we seldom stop to think about it ending. We ignore the shadow lurking just offstage. Nothing can prepare us for its entrance.
There wasn’t a shadow in sight on that golden afternoon in late September. The autumn sun shone benevolently on my dark-haired husband and our equally dark-haired sons as they flew a kite in the back meadow, and a balmy breeze ruffled the snowy locks of my newly retired father-in-law, who sat beneath the apple tree, reading the Sunday Times. Life, I thought, as I stirred the pumpkin soup and peeked at the ham baking in the oven, couldn’t get much better than this.
My husband, Bill, was tall, good-looking, and as kind as he was wise. Our six-year-old twins, Will and Rob, were happy, healthy, and as bright as buttons. We lived in a honey-colored stone cottage amid the rolling hills and patchwork fields of the Cotswolds, a rural region in England’s West Midlands. Although we were Americans, we’d lived in the Cotswolds for nearly a decade. The twins had never known another home.
Bill ran the European branch of his family’s venerable Boston law firm from a high-tech office in Finch, the nearest village. When Will and Rob weren’t pretending to be dinosaurs or galloping their gray ponies over hill and dale, they attended Morningside School in the nearby market town of Upper Deeping. I looked after my family, helped my neighbors, participated in a plethora of volunteer activities, and ran a charitable foundation called the Westwood Trust.
My father-in-law, William Willis, Sr., had until recently served as the head of Willis & Willis, the family firm. Although he still acted as the firm’s chief adviser, the passage of time and a desire to spend more of it with his grandsons had persuaded him to hand the reins of power over to Bill’s cousin Timothy Willis. Willis, Sr., would have preferred to pass the reins to his son, but Bill had no interest in power and no intention of uprooting his family for the sake of a prestigious title. Willis, Sr., recognizing that his only child was happier in England than he’d ever be in Boston, had let the matter drop without a word of reproach.
Bill, the twins, and I were actively engaged in a campaign to convince Willis, Sr., to move in with us permanently. We’d transformed our former nanny’s room into a cozy but luxurious grandfather’s room and we’d tried every trick in the book—including pleading, guilt-tripping, and reasoning—to force him into the bosom of our family.
Our crusade was supported wholeheartedly by a phalanx of plump ladies in Finch, who considered an immaculately tailored, unfailingly polite, and undeniably wealthy widower in his early seventies to be quite a catch. Whether my father-in-law would trade his massive mansion in Boston for a modest cottage in Finch, however, remained to be seen.
Willis, Sr., had arrived at the cottage three days earlier not simply to visit his grandsons, but to attend an event that would take place in Finch on the following Saturday. My bustling came to an abrupt halt as I caught sight of the kitchen calendar and felt my heart swell with anticipatory joy.
In less than a week, the long-awaited fairy-tale wedding of the century—as I’d dubbed it—would take place in St. George’s Church. Kit Smith would marry Nell Harris and open a new chapter in the sweetest and most suspense-filled romance I’d ever witnessed. There had been many times over the past seven years when I’d had reason to doubt that the pair would wed, but love had conquered all in the end, as I’d hoped and prayed it would.
I took a special interest in the couple’s happiness because Kit Smith was one of my dearest fri
ends and Nell was the stepdaughter of my best friend, Emma Harris, but I wasn’t alone in wishing them well. No one with a functioning heart could be untouched by their unique radiance. The good people of Finch understood that the joining of two perfect soul mates was a rare and precious cause for celebration, and proceeded accordingly.
The women rolled up their sleeves and gave the church a hundred-year cleaning. Its leaded windows gleamed, its candlesticks glittered, its altar cloths glowed, and not a speck of dust could be seen on its polished flagstone floor or its splendidly carved wooden pews. The men mowed the churchyard surrounding St. George’s, raked its gravel paths, and planted fresh fall flowers on every grave. Mr. Barlow, the local handyman, had taken it upon himself to re-shingle the lych-gate’s leaky roof and to give its aging hinges a generous dose of oil, to prevent unseemly squeaking on the big day.
My neighbors had bestowed the same loving care on their own dwelling places and businesses, which had gone from slightly scruffy to sublime. In Bill’s words, Finch now looked as if it were posing for the centerfold of a Prettiest Villages calendar.
There’d been a flurry of shopping trips to Upper Deeping as villagers bought or rented their wedding-day finery. After consulting with Nell’s father, Derek Harris, Bill and Willis, Sr., had decided to wear their best Savile Row suits. My dress—an emerald-green silk with long sleeves and a sweetheart neckline—had been made in the village by Sally Pyne, the local tea shop owner and seamstress, but I’d bought my hat at a swanky boutique in London. Over the years I’d learned that hats were de rigueur for women attending English weddings. I wouldn’t have dreamed of entering St. George’s without one.
Finch was, of course, awash in wedding gossip, to which I contributed freely. My neighbors and I chattered endlessly about the flowers, the cake, the music, the ceremony, and the reception, but our most intense speculation was focused squarely on Nell’s wedding gown. What would she wear, we wondered? Silk? Satin? Lace? Taffeta? Would the style be classic or modern? What dress, however glorious, could possibly do justice to such an ethereal beauty? Opinions varied, but since Emma Harris was keeping the gown a closely held secret—even from me, her best friend—the rest of us could do nothing but wait and see.
Luckily, Emma couldn’t conceal the plans for the reception from me because my sons would be taking part in it. Emma ran the Anscombe Riding Center from the stables of her sprawling home, Anscombe Manor. Kit was the ARC’s stable master as well as my sons’ riding instructor, and Nell was in charge of the ARC’s dressage classes. Since the happy couple’s world revolved around horses, it stood to reason that horses would play a central role in their wedding.
Rob and Will, along with other members of the ARC’s gymkhana teams, would form a mounted honor guard to accompany the newlyweds’ open carriage from St. George’s church to the reception at Anscombe Manor. Because each member of the honor guard would be attired in formal riding gear, Emma had been forced to discuss her plans with the participants’ parents. Needless to say, I gleefully relayed the insider information to my neighbors as soon as Emma passed it on to me.
The names on the guest list had been broadcast at regular intervals by Peggy Taxman, who, as Finch’s postmistress, had personally handled each of the invitations. The guest list had aroused much interest in the village because it included a duke, an earl, several knights, and a retired London police detective as well as a handful of French counts. Friends past and present would walk, ride, fly, drive, and, in once case, pilot a private helicopter to Finch to take part in the joyous occasion.
Emma and Derek Harris had gone to great lengths to prepare Anscombe Manor for the reception. They’d cleaned the great hall from top to bottom, engaged a caterer, hired musicians, brought in professional gardeners to tidy the grounds, and purchased enough champagne to float a battleship. On the morning of the wedding, Derek would rope off a parking area, Emma would put the horses in the pasture farthest from the manor house, and they would both run a brand-new flag up the family’s flagpole.
I could hardly wait to see it wave.
The costumes were ready, the stage was set, and the cast was assembling. In less than a week, I told myself, staring dreamily at the cluster of hearts I’d drawn on the kitchen calendar, Kit Smith would finally—finally!—marry Nell Harris. My eyes welled with happy tears.
Sighing rapturously, I dried my eyes and turned off the oven. I was about to call my menfolk in to wash up before dinner when the telephone rang. I quickly wiped my hands on my apron and answered it, hoping that another delicious tidbit of gossip would soon be in my keeping.
“Lori? ” said Emma Harris.
“Emma!” I replied cheerfully. “How’s it going? Have you and Derek finished scrubbing the rhododendrons and vacuuming the lawn? I’ve been keeping an eagle eye on the weather forecast for Saturday and it looks as though a shower of rose petals will be falling—”
“Lori,” Emma interrupted, and it occurred to me that she sounded a bit strained.
“You poor thing,” I commiserated. “You must be exhausted. If you need help with anything, and I do mean anything, I can be over in two shakes of a pony’s tail. Just say the word and I’ll—”
“Lori! ” Emma exclaimed. “Will you please shut up?”
I stared at the telephone in amazement. Emma was a cool, calm, and collected sort of woman. She had never before raised her voice to me and I’d never heard her tell anyone to shut up. The pressure of planning the wedding of the century had clearly gotten to her.
“No problem,” I said meekly. “What’s up? ”
“I don’t know how to break it to you gently, so I’ll just go ahead and say it,” Emma replied tersely. “The wedding’s off.”
“Good one,” I said, chuckling. “You almost sound convincing. Now stop joking around and—”
“I’m not joking,” she said heavily. “The wedding has been called off. Nell and Kit have postponed it indefinitely.”
“They’ve . . . they’ve what?” I hunched over the phone, unable to believe my ears. “Are you serious? Why in heaven’s name would they postpone the wedding? ”
“It’s Ruth and Louise Pym.” Emma took a shaky breath. “They’re dying.”
A shadow seemed to pass over the sun.
Two
I felt as though I’d been kicked in the chest. I stumbled across the room and sank, weak-kneed, onto a chair at the kitchen table. Emma’s heart-wrenching news shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but it had shaken me to the core.
Ruth and Louise Pym were the utterly identical twin daughters of a man who had for many years been the parson at St. George’s Church in Finch. The sisters had never married and had spent all of their industrious lives together in their father’s thatched, redbrick house on the outskirts of the village. No one knew how old they were, but they were by far the oldest members of our community—most guesses placed them well over the century mark. Although the sisters appeared to be as frail as lace, their energy had always been boundless, their work ethic, awe inspiring. They routinely accomplished more in one day than most women half their age could accomplish in a week.
When Bill and I had moved into the cottage, the Pym sisters had been among the first to welcome us. They’d attended our wedding, embroidered our sons’ christening gowns, invited us to countless tea parties, and shared with us their vast store of local lore. Ruth and Louise were keen gardeners, skilled needlewomen, superb cooks, faithful churchgoers, the best of good neighbors, and the only other pair of identical twins Will and Rob had ever met. They were, in short, irreplaceable.
“Ruth and Louise are dying?” I said, half-hoping I’d misunderstood Emma’s words. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Emma.
“How did you find out? ” I asked.
“Ruth called me around two o’clock this afternoon to let me know that she and Louise had finished making Nell’s veil,” Emma said. “The veil was their wedding gift to Nell. They’ve always been very fond of h
er.” Emma’s voice seemed to catch in her throat, but after a short pause she carried on. “To save them the trouble of dropping it off, I drove over to their house to pick it up. When they didn’t answer the door, I let myself in.”
I nodded. Locked doors were a rarity in Finch. My neighbors considered it perfectly acceptable to enter a house uninvited to do a favor for an absent friend.
“I found the finished veil neatly folded in a cardboard box on the dining room table,” Emma went on, “but Ruth and Louise were upstairs in bed. They told me they’d had a funny turn and insisted that there was no need to make a fuss, but I didn’t like their color or the way they were breathing, so I telephoned Dr. Finisterre. He came as quickly as he could and it didn’t take him long to make a diagnosis. Apparently he’s known about their condition for some time.”
“What condition?” I asked.
“It’s their hearts,” said Emma. “They’re . . . worn out.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, clutching the telephone with both hands. “They took a train trip to the seaside a couple of weeks ago. How could they make a journey like that if their hearts were weak? ”
“Dr. Finisterre advised them not to go,” Emma informed me, “but they were convinced that the sea air would do them good, so they went anyway. The doctor believes that the stress of travel brought on the current crisis.”
“I would have driven them, if they’d asked,” I said softly.
“We all would have,” said Emma, “but they didn’t ask. They have their pride, I suppose. They’re accustomed to looking after themselves.”
“It’s hard to break the habits of a lifetime,” I acknowledged, “especially such a long lifetime. Has the doctor taken them to the hospital? ”
“No, they’re still at home,” Emma said. “They wouldn’t let me or Dr. Finisterre call an ambulance for them. They refuse to go to the hospital and I can’t say that I blame them. I certainly don’t want to end my days hooked up to feeding tubes and monitors.”
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