Aunt Dimity: Detective

by Nancy Atherton

  A throaty chuckle sounded from the cloakroom as Miranda Morrow joined the fray. Her fingers glittered with silver rings, and her flowing purple gown was covered with arcane signs embroidered in black silk.

  “Scandalizing the village, Lori?” Miranda beamed at me. “I thought that was our job. Come along, George.”

  If George Wetherhead was abashed by Miranda’s outspokenness, he didn’t show it. He walked with his head held high, as if challenging his neighbors to say to his face what they’d been saying behind his back. None rose to the bait. They were too busy dissecting me.

  “It’s my considered opinion,” ventured Jasper Taxman in his pedantic, retired-accountant’s drone, “that Lori’s display of affection was meant as a prank.”

  “She was having a bit of fun,” George Wetherhead concurred. “Pulling our noses to get a rise out of us.”

  “ ’ Course she was.” Christine dabbed whipped cream from the corner of her mouth. “If they were up to no good, they’d’ve been off snogging in the bushes, not out in the open, where everyone could see.”

  “Mrs. Peacock,” Lilian said severely, “I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. My nephew would never dream of—”

  “No need to hide in the bushes,” Peggy broke in, “when they can use Wysteria Lodge, though what kind of woman would use her husband’s office as a trysting place, I wouldn’t like to say. Where is the young rascal, anyway?”

  “I’m here.”

  All heads turned, and my heart skipped a beat, as Nicholas stepped into the schoolroom. The timing of his entrance was so contrived that I couldn’t help wondering if he’d waited outside, hidden from view, until the last of our suspects had arrived.

  He wore a nubby brown sweater beneath his tweed blazer and carried his trench coat over one arm. He seemed calm, but his face was very pale, and the lines around his eyes were etched more deeply than they’d been the day before. I wanted to take him aside and ask about the medical exam, but he’d already moved on to other things.

  He nailed each of my tormentors with a penetrating glance. “Your suspicions about the nature of my friendship with Lori are unfounded,” he said. “I wish I could say the same for your suspicions about one another.”

  No one spoke, and no one looked away. When Nicholas pointed to the circle of chairs, the villagers left their treats and teacups on the table and moved as if mesmerized, each taking a seat until only two places remained. Eight pairs of eyes followed Nicholas as he walked with deliberate speed to me, offered his arm, and seated me in one of the empty chairs. He elected to stand behind the other.

  He draped his coat over the back of the chair, stood erect, and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “You have been brought here under false pretenses,” he announced without raising his voice. “There is no Easter vigil committee.”

  Peggy snorted, and the others relaxed, as if the familiar sound had released them from Nicholas’s spell.

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Peggy huffed. “Easter’s only a week off. Your aunt may be scatty, but she wouldn’t wait till the last minute to plan a vigil.”

  Miranda eyed Lilian coyly. “I somehow doubt that Mrs. Bunting would ask me to attend such a meeting, unless, of course, she needs help elucidating Easter’s pagan origins.”

  “We’ll have none of your pagan nonsense here, thank you very much,” scolded Sally Pyne. “Easter’s for good, decent, Christian folk.”

  Miranda’s nostrils flared dangerously, but Sally went on regardless.

  “All I know,” she said, “is that Mrs. Bunting wouldn’t have invited me without having her husband apologize to me first.” She shook a finger at Lilian. “If the vicar thinks I’m going to forget—”

  “No one thinks you’re going to forget,” George Wetherhead muttered, clutching his head. “We’ll be hearing about those dratted flowers from now until doomsday.”

  “Ladies, gentlemen, please.” Lilian tapped her notepad with her pencil. “My husband will be away from home until tomorrow morning, but I’m sure that, when he returns, he will offer an apology to Mrs. Pyne. He truly regrets his decision regarding the Easter flowers. Now, if we might come to order?”

  “How can we come to order with the chairs in a circle?” Peggy objected. “There’s no way of telling who’s chairwoman.”

  “I’m chairwoman,” Lilian said crisply. “And I’m giving my nephew the floor. Nicky?”

  Nicholas rested his hands on the back of the empty chair and looked from one face to the next around the circle. Christine Peacock sat beside Lilian, with Dick to her right. After Dick came Peggy Taxman, Jasper Taxman, Sally Pyne, George Wetherhead, and Miranda Morrow. Nicholas stood between Miranda and me.

  “Gossip is an inevitable fact of community life,” he began. “Wherever two or more are gathered, someone will talk behind someone else’s back.”

  “True enough,” said Dick, stroking his goatee complacently.

  “Nothing wrong with a bit of tittle-tattle,” Sally commented.

  “I’d agree with you, Mrs. Pyne, under normal circumstances,” said Nicholas, “but circumstances in Finch are far from normal. A murder has taken place. Destructive rumors abound. Law-abiding citizens refuse to help the police.”

  “There’s no need to involve the police,” Sally declared. “Finch takes care of its own.”

  “Does it?” Nicholas saw the opening and darted through it. “Were you taking care of Mr. Peacock when you told me he’d been on the square at the time of Mrs. Hooper’s death?”

  Dick’s hand froze midstroke, and his eyes slid toward Sally Pyne. “Telling tales out of school, are we, Sally?”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Dick,” Peggy Taxman chided. She looked askance at Nicholas. “We know what Dick’s doing on the square every Thursday morning, and it isn’t smacking women in the head.”

  “That’s right,” Sally said, fiddling nervously with her pencil. “Mr. Peacock’s a businessman, same as the rest of us, and if he needs to cut corners to make ends meet, we’re not going to turn him in.”

  “What the inland revenue don’t know won’t hurt it,” George Wetherhead pronounced.

  Dick tore his hostile gaze away from Sally and looked at George in confusion. “Inland revenue? What’s the inland revenue got to do with it?”

  Mr. Wetherhead seemed flustered by the question, so Miranda took over for him.

  “Come now, Mr. Peacock,” she said smoothly. “You’re among friends. If you choose to deal in duty-free goods—”

  “Smuggled booze,” Sally corrected.

  “—it’s no one’s business but yours,” Miranda concluded.

  Nicholas eased himself into his chair and let the conversation flow unchecked. He’d gotten the ball rolling and seemed content to wait and see where it would stop.

  “I’m afraid that’s not quite true, Miranda,” Lilian was saying. “Tax evasion is a criminal offense, and I, for one, cannot condone it. Breaking the law—”

  “We haven’t broken any law,” Dick protested. “I’ve never sold a drop of smuggled liquor.”

  Peggy’s eyes narrowed. “You can lie to the police, Dick, but don’t lie to us.”

  “I’m not lying,” Dick insisted.

  “What’s the van man dropping off, then?” Sally demanded. “Easter eggs?”

  “Duty-free Easter eggs?” Miranda purred.

  “We’ve all seen him, Dick,” Peggy said sternly, “so you may as well—”

  “For heaven’s sake, leave Dick alone!” Christine flung her arm across her husband as if to protect him from the onslaught. “It’s sausages, alright? Sausages!”

  The inquisition came to a screeching halt as we looked blankly at Dick’s wife.

  “Pardon?” said Lilian.

  “It’s sausages,” Christine repeated sullenly. She dropped her arm, stared down at her notepad, and colored to her roots. “Everyone thinks I make my own, but the sight of blood makes me dizzy, so I buy them from
a pig farmer near Eve-sham. Dick arranged to have them delivered on the sly so no one would know they’re not homemade.”

  A deflated silence followed Christine’s revelation.

  “Not an old family recipe?” Sally inquired.

  “No,” Christine admitted, shamefaced. “Not from my family, at any rate.”

  “They’re awfully good sausages,” I offered.

  “I wouldn’t use ’em if they weren’t,” Christine snapped. “I do have standards, you know.”

  “A pity they don’t include telling the truth,” Miranda said under her breath, but the circle was too small to allow any comment to go unremarked.

  Dick’s chair creaked alarmingly as he sat bolt upright, his eyes flashing. “If it’s truth you want, Ms. Morrow, you might try telling it yourself. You’re among friends,” he sneered, “so I’m sure you won’t mind telling us what kind of rumpty-tumpty you and George have been getting up to.”

  An even more deflated silence followed Miranda’s blithe and clinical description of George Wetherhead’s ongoing program of physical therapy. Although murmurs of “Good for you, George” went round the circle, they sounded halfhearted at best. The villagers patently preferred the romantic fables they’d concocted to the mundane truth. Sausages and therapeutic massages couldn’t hold a candle to smuggled booze and illicit rumpty-tumpty.

  “Seems a silly way to go about it,” Sally grumbled, voicing the unspoken consensus. “Leave it to a witch to go all secretive when there’s no need. They call it being mysterious, but I’d call it sneaky.”

  I held my breath, anticipating an explosion. It was the second time in less than twenty minutes that Sally had insulted Miranda Morrow’s way of life. I half-expected Sally to vanish in a puff of peach-colored smoke.

  “Witches aren’t the only ones who like to keep secrets, though, are they, Mrs. Pyne?” Miranda Morrow smiled, but her eyes were like chips of ice. “How did you know where Dick was on the morning of Mrs. Hooper’s death? Up early, were you? Out and about?”

  Sally flushed. “I . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do, Mrs. Pyne, but I won’t give you away. You know how good we witches are at keeping secrets.” Miranda stretched her arms out and gazed languorously at the silver rings adorning her fingers. “I’ll never tell a soul that I saw you that morning, coming out of Crabtree Cottage.”

  Chapter 23

  A collective gasp should have gone up from the group, but the only ones to gasp were Lilian and me. Nicholas sat motionless, staring at the floor, while the others shuffled their feet and looked everywhere but at Sally.

  Sally looked daggers at Miranda. “Who’s going to believe you?”

  Miranda batted her eyelashes. “You needn’t take a pagan’s word for it,” she said. “George is a good, decent Christian, and he saw you, too.”

  “Miranda was leaving my place,” the little man piped up loyally, “when Sally came tiptoeing out of Crabtree Cottage. We both stepped back inside so she wouldn’t see us.”

  “It was nearly six o’clock,” Miranda added. “The sun was hidden by clouds, but there was enough light for us to recognize Mrs. Pyne.” She twirled a lock of strawberry-blond hair around her finger. “Why so tense, Mrs. Pyne? I’m sure it was merely a social call. To discuss the fine art of flower arranging, perhaps?”

  Sally’s pencil snapped in two.

  “You’ve made your point, Ms. Morrow.” Nicholas’s soft voice intervened. “There’s no need to be unkind.” He raised his head to gaze levelly at Sally Pyne. One by one, the others followed suit.

  Sally placed the broken pencil and her notepad on the floor, planted her fists on her thighs, and declared, “I want to make one thing plain: Pruneface was dead when I got there.”

  “Y-yes, Mrs. Pyne,” Lilian faltered. The vicar’s wife was clearly rattled. “Of course she was. And I’m sure you can offer us a perfectly reasonable explanation for failing to notify the police when you found her, um, body.”

  “Everyone knew that I held a grudge against Pruneface on account of the baptismal font,” Sally said. “I thought it would look suspicious if it was me who found her.”

  “So you left it to me,” Peggy growled.

  “It was a rotten thing to do, Peggy,” Sally said humbly, “but I knew you’d be along to collect the rent, and I didn’t think it’d matter so much if you found her. You were her chum. No one would suspect you of doing her in.”

  Peggy glanced furtively at Nicholas and clamped her mouth shut.

  “Why did you go there in the first place?” asked Christine.

  “Believe it or not,” Sally replied, “I went to discuss flower arranging. . . .”

  Sally had spent a restless night fretting about the Easter display. She knew that Pruneface had snatched the project from her out of spite, and she feared that Pruneface might make a hash of it.

  “I was afraid she might try to foist some god-awful modern nonsense on us,” Sally explained. “You know the sort of thing—a bare branch and a pile of pebbles to symbolize God alone knows what.”

  “Teddy wouldn’t have allowed it,” Lilian protested indignantly.

  Sally gave her a jaundiced look. “That’s as may be,” she allowed with exaggerated politeness, “but I couldn’t risk it. The font’s always been my responsibility, so I thought I’d have a chat with Pruneface, to let her know that Finch isn’t the sort of place that takes kindly to experiments. . . .”

  Sally had risen at five o’clock to make herself a cup of tea and thus had witnessed the bustle of activity on the square. She’d seen Dick unloading the gray van, Peggy rearranging the Emporium’s display window, and Mr. Barlow walking Buster. She’d taken particular note of Pruneface spying on Dick Peacock from the front window of Crabtree Cottage.

  “I knew she was awake,” Sally said, “so I told myself, No time like the present. After I got dressed and had a bite to eat, I nipped across the square.”

  “What time was it when you reached her house?” I asked.

  “A quarter to six,” Sally replied. “The church bells were ringing the quarter hour when I knocked.”

  I jotted 5-5:45 on my notepad.

  “I knocked several times, good and loud,” Sally continued, “and when Pruneface didn’t come to the door, I got upset. I thought she was snubbing me again, so I pushed the door open and invited myself in.”

  The schoolroom was so quiet that I could hear the tap dripping in the ladies’ bathroom. Nicholas sat very still, but it was the stillness of self-absorption rather than watchfulness. He seemed distant and withdrawn, detached not only from me but from the group at large, as if preoccupied by something far more troubling than the murder we’d spent all week investigating.

  “I called her name,” Sally went on, “and when she didn’t answer, I thought she might have fallen ill or hurt herself.” Sally regarded us pugnaciously. “I didn’t care for the woman, but I know what it’s like to live alone, and I couldn’t leave without making sure she was alright.”

  George Wetherhead nodded, and there was no trace of mockery in Miranda’s somber expression. Like Sally, they knew the hazards of living alone.

  “I went into the front parlor,” said Sally, “and there she was, stretched out beneath those red geraniums . . . dead. I thought she’d had a stroke”—Sally took a shaky breath—“till I saw the blood. It gave me a queer turn, I can tell you.”

  Her eyes glazed briefly, and the rest of us shuddered, as if we’d each glimpsed those red geraniums reflected in Mrs. Hooper’s blood.

  Sally ran a hand through her hair. “That’s when I realized how suspicious it would look for me to be there. So I made sure the coast was clear and nipped back to the tearoom.”

  “You could have rung the police anonymously,” said Lilian.

  “And have my number recorded? I might as well have turned myself in.” Sally lifted her chin determinedly. “I don’t imagine any of you will believe me, but it’s the God’s truth. Pruneface Hooper
was dead when I found her.”

  I waited for Nicholas to speak, but he remained lost in his own thoughts.

  “You said you saw Mr. Barlow walking Buster,” I ventured. “Did you see him enter Crabtree Cottage?”

  Sally shook her head. “He walked Buster to the war memorial and tossed that silly rubber ball a few times. He let out a big laugh once, like he does when Buster makes a good catch; then he went home. Ten minutes later, he and Buster hopped into the car and took off. I didn’t see him go into the cottage.”

  I referred to my scanty notes. If Sally was telling the truth, Mrs. Hooper had been killed between five and five forty-five in the morning, when nearly everyone present had been awake, dressed, and smarting under Mrs. Hooper’s lash.

  “Sally,” I said, “did you see anyone enter or leave Crabtree Cottage before you went there?”

  “I wasn’t watching the whole time,” Sally answered. “I suppose someone could’ve gone in without my noticing, but it would’ve taken some pretty fancy footwork for them to get out again.”

  “Miranda and I didn’t see anyone but Sally,” George offered.

  Lilian sat forward. “Did any of you see anyone other than Mrs. Pyne enter or leave Crabtree Cottage on the morning in question?”

  The villagers quailed under her stern, schoolmarmish gaze, and after a moment’s discomfited silence, Dick spoke up.

  “I saw Sally,” he said reluctantly. “I was scrubbing glasses in the pub when she made her dash back to the tearoom.”

  “Dick told me he’d seen her,” Christine admitted.

  “Christine passed it on to me,” Peggy informed us.

  “My wife confided in me, of course,” Jasper added.

  “You all knew, yet not one of you saw fit to share this very pertinent information with the authorities?” Lilian clucked her tongue in disapproval.

  “It was nothing to do with them, Mrs. Bunting,” said Dick. “None of us thought Sally would kill someone over the ruddy baptismal font. Even if she had, I wouldn’t’ve blamed her overmuch. Mrs. Hooper was a small-minded, interfering old crow who caused nothing but misery. She deserved a clout in the head.”