“Come in,” I said unsteadily. I put Reg on the hall table and ushered Adrian into the living room. “Francesca, look who’s here.”
“Evening, Dr. Culver.” Francesca picked up her sewing basket and got to her feet. “It’s late. I think I’ll go up.”
Adrian wilted visibly as Francesca strode past us, but perked up again when she stopped short.
“You’ve a button missing,” she said to him. She made it sound like an accusation.
“Have I?” Adrian peered down at his shirt, dismayed.
Francesca was not the sort of woman who could let an empty buttonhole stay empty. She heaved an exasperated sigh and began to rummage through her sewing basket. She retrieved a threaded needle and a white button, then turned to Adrian. The reproachful look she gave him was exactly what she’d use on Rob or Will in the future, if they ever returned home from the playground without their sneakers. “Hold still,” she ordered.
I’m convinced that Adrian Culver held his breath, though his heart must have been thundering. With a twist of her wrist, Francesca slipped the fingers of her left hand inside his shirt to hold the button in place while her right hand plied the needle back and forth. Her movements were brisk and businesslike, but her head was bent low, her coil of dark hair mere inches from Adrian’s lips.
Adrian peered down at her woozily. “I can’t help but admire your . . . medallion,” he said. “It’s a miniature phalera, isn’t it?”
“Never mind about my phalera.” Francesca snipped the thread short. “You just keep track of your buttons.”
“ Th-thank you, Miss Sciaparelli.” Adrian fumbled with his shirtfront as she gathered up her basket and stalked out of the room.
I waited for the fumes of unrequited passion to dissipate, then gently guided Adrian to the couch. I poured a cup of tea and wrapped his hands around it, but the warmth failed to recall him from the land of the lovesick. He was, in my judgment, ripe for interrogation.
“It was kind of you to return Reg to me this evening,” I began, “especially when you have so much else on your mind—organizing the schoolhouse, excavating Scrag End field, planning your museum . . .”
“Yes,” he agreed, nodding vaguely. “ There’s quite a lot to do, but—” He straightened abruptly. “Museum? What museum?”
“The Culver Institute,” I said helpfully.
“ The . . . the Culver Institute?” Incomprehension gave way to sudden laughter. “Oh, dear,” he said, placing his teacup on the end table, “how flattering. I presume you’ve been speaking with Rainey’s grandmother.”
“Indirectly,” I said. “She seems to have gotten the impression that you’re planning to build a museum in Finch.”
“I may have mentioned it in passing,” Adrian admitted candidly, “as a very long-range, very remote possibility—a dream, if you like. As I told you this afternoon, however, it’s far too soon to plan anything of that magnitude. We’ve scarcely begun to explore Scrag End. Apart from that, I’d never name a museum after—” He broke off as another set of headlights flared across the bow windows. “Is that a car?”
I was already halfway to the door. I flung it open just in time to see Derek Harris, all six foot four of him, trying to keep my husband from toppling into the lilac bushes.
“Evening, Lori,” Derek called, leaning Bill against the door of his pickup truck.
Bill’s head rose slowly from his chest. He smiled sweetly. “ ’Lo, love,” he said.
“What on earth—” I began.
“ Think we’d best get him inside,” Derek suggested.
Adrian Culver stepped past me. “May I be of assistance?”
Bill favored Adrian with a toothy grin. “ ’Lo, love,” he repeated.
I stood aside as Derek and Adrian maneuvered my husband into the hallway, where they propped him against the wall. He seemed content to lean there, humming quietly to himself.
Adrian’s gray eyes had filled with compassion, and I suddenly remembered that he hadn’t been paying attention when I’d told him that the “expat Yank barrister” he’d met in the pub was my husband.
“I’ll be off,” Adrian said.
I shook my head. “No, wait, I can explain—”
“No need, Lori.” Adrian gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze and departed.
I closed the door and rounded on Derek. “What have you done to my husband?”
Bill cleared his throat. “Pegger . . . Peggry . . . Peg gle . . .”
“Peggy Kitchen,” Derek translated, “brought her petition round to the pub this evening. She spotted Bill and me having supper, came over to ask if Bill’d worked out the legal solution you’d promised her.”
I winced. I’d forgotten to warn Bill about the lies I’d spun to keep Peggy away from the schoolhouse.
“Never fear,” Derek went on. “Bill’s a lawyer. Knows how to improvise. Told Peggy that in order to have enough time to explore the appropriate legal avenues he’d be forced to give up morris dancing.”
“No . . . more . . . danshing,” Bill stated, fairly firmly.
“Quite right, Bill, no more dancing.” Derek patted Bill’s shoulder. “That’s why Peggy assigned you to the mead-tasting committee for the Harvest Festival. Said it’d take up less of your valuable time.”
“Mead.” Bill giggled softly.
“Bill doesn’t know the first thing about mead,” I said, bewildered.
Bill tried again. “I tol’, tol’, tol’ . . .”
“ That’s what he told Peggy,” Derek interjected. “And that’s why Peggy took it upon herself to educate your husband’s palate. Had him sample all twelve jugs of Dick Peacock’s finest mead.”
Bill made a complicated attempt to hold up twelve fingers.
I groaned.
“Chris called me away to help her fit the new pub sign with hooks,” said Derek. “By the time I got back, Bill was blotto. Took some time to persuade him that his bed would be more comfy than the floor. Took even longer to pry him off of that blasted bicycle. And there’s something else. . . .” Derek put an arm out to keep Bill from sliding down the wall. “Peggy pulled me aside and told me some crackbrained story about Francesca and that Culver chap getting up to no good in the churchyard.”
I gaped at him, bereft of speech.
“Told her not to be a damned fool,” Derek assured me. “Why on earth would Francesca use the churchyard when she has a perfectly comfortable—”
“Derek!” I exclaimed indignantly.
“ Thought that would bring you round.” Derek grinned briefly. “In point of fact, I told Peggy that if she went about talking nonsense about my friends, she’d have to find another handyman. And since I’m the only man in the kingdom who understands her drains, I doubt we’ll hear any more out of her.” He nodded toward Bill. “Upstairs?”
“Please.” As I stood there watching Derek cart my drunken husband off to bed, my indignation gave way to a simmering rage. “ That woman,” I growled. “ That woman must be stopped.”
10.
If a hundred Gladwell pamphlets had slithered through my mail slot the following morning, I’d have tossed them on the hearth and set them blazing. I was no longer interested in closing down Adrian’s dig. I wanted him to occupy the schoolhouse forever. I was a little out of charity with Peggy Kitchen. And so was Bill.
“May I kill her, Lori? Please? Just this once?”
I wiped his greenish face with a cool washcloth. “Only if you get to her before I do, my darling.”
Bill smiled serenely, pushed himself up on his elbows, and was violently sick in the bedside bucket thoughtfully provided by Francesca.
I cleaned him up, got him settled, and went downstairs. As I reached the bottom of the staircase, I noticed Francesca standing in the doorway to the study, a rag in one hand, a jar of furniture polish in the other. She seemed oddly flustered.
“Lori? Would you come in here, please?”
I felt a tiny flutter of alarm as I followed her into the study.
The room showed signs of a recent cleaning. The hearth had been swept, the ivy-covered windows were spotless, and the tall leather armchairs gleamed dully in the light from the mantelshelf lamps. Will and Rob observed our entrance solemnly from their bouncy chairs on the far side of the room.
When she reached the wooden desk beneath the windows, Francesca pointed to a bookshelf on her right. “A book fell from that shelf as you were coming down the stairs. It nearly hit me in the head.”
“Oh, dear.” I didn’t have to pretend to be dismayed as I walked over to lay a hand along the blue journal’s spine. I did, however, have to keep myself from screeching when the book nudged my palm. “I . . . I should have warned you.”
“Warned me about what?” Francesca asked.
I leaned my full weight on the book. “It’s an old cottage,” I babbled. “The walls are crooked. The floors are uneven. Sometimes . . . when someone comes down the stairs . . . books fall off the shelves.”
“But that’s dangerous,” Francesca scolded. “What if the book had hit one of the boys?”
“She’d never . . .” I cleared my throat. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s take the boys to the living room, just to be on the safe side.”
Francesca complied, but as we were leaving the study, carrying one baby-filled bouncy chair apiece, she gave me a sidelong look. “How did you know it was the blue book that fell?” she asked.
“You . . . um . . . pointed to it,” I said, avoiding her eyes. We transferred the boys from their bouncy chairs to the playpen, and I backed toward the hallway. “I’ve got some phone calls to make,” I said. “I’ll be in the study, if you need me.”
“All right,” said Francesca, observing me closely.
I darted up the hallway, praying that she’d blame my jumpiness on hormonal fluctuations. I slipped into the study, paused to take a calming breath, and gently closed the door. Then I grabbed the blue journal from the shelf and banged it open on the desk.
“Dimity, what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. “Do you want Francesca to think I’m nuts?”
I wanted to get your attention. If handwriting could appear petulant, Dimity’s did.
“You’ve got it,” I said, “but I wish you’d come up with a more discreet way of attracting it.”
Your anger was filling the cottage.
“Why shouldn’t I be angry?” It wasn’t easy, venting my spleen in an undertone, but I managed. “Peggy Kitchen’s got the town in an uproar. She’s making the vicar’s life hell, she tricked Adrian Culver into signing her stupid petition, and she got Bill plastered last night because he tried to quit morris dancing. If that weren’t enough, she’s spreading filthy rumors about Francesca and Adrian.” I thumped my fist on the desk. “You bet I’m angry.”
I wanted to remind you of something before you let your anger carry you away.
“What?” I said impatiently. “What did you want to remind me of?”
Your eighth birthday.
“My . . .” I stared at the words on the page, then straightened slowly and touched a hand to my forehead. “My eighth birthday?”
Do you remember what your mother gave you for your eighth birthday?
“Of course I remember.” I looked from the journal to the archival boxes that held the letters my mother had written to Dimity over a span of some forty years. I didn’t have to refer to them to remember the most glorious birthday gift my mother had ever given me.
“My bicycle.” I lowered myself onto the desk chair, rested my elbows on either side of the journal, and stared at the sunlight flickering through the ivy. “My first bicycle. Mom got it secondhand, but I thought it was the most beautiful bike I’d ever seen. It was blue with white hand-grips and a white seat.”
It had a silver bell on the left handlebar.You rang it with your thumb.
I glanced down at Dimity’s words and smiled. “Mom came out and watched me ride it up and down the block all afternoon. I felt like I was flying. I’ll never forget it.”
Nor will Peggy Kitchen ever forget her eighth birthday. The sirens sounded as her mother placed her cake on the kitchen table. By the time the raid was over, the cake was gone. As were the table, the kitchen, the house. Peggy spent her eighth birthday huddled in the basement of a church while Birmingham was pulverized by the Luftwaffe.
I turned my face away. I didn’t want to know more. I fought to hold on to my anger, but I could feel it slipping from my grasp. She’d been no older than Rainey. . . . I felt my chest tighten and forced myself to look back at the journal, where the loops and curves of Dimity’s fine copperplate were scrolling inexorably across the page.
Peggy Kitchen came to Finch to escape the blitz in Birmingham. When she and her mother arrived, they possessed nothing but the clothing they wore and a photograph of Peggy’s father in his Tank Corps uniform.They were here when they got word that he’d been killed. He was burnt to death when his tank was shelled during an encounter with Italian troops in North Africa.Three months later, Piero Sciaparelli arrived, a prisoner of war, to work for old Mr. Hodge.
“Francesca’s father . . .” I murmured.
The first time Peggy met Piero, she threw stones at him. Some of the villagers, I’m sorry to say, rallied around her. Piero Sciaparelli spent the rest of his life, as many soldiers do, trying to put the horrors of war behind him, but Peggy Kitchen never stopped throwing stones. From what you’ve told me, she’s throwing them still.
“I wish she’d stop,” I said softly. “ The war’s been over for a long, long time.”
Perhaps we can help her.
“I think it’s a little late for that,” I said.
Lori, my dear, haven’t you learned by now that it’s never
The writing stopped. I heard a scrabble of claws and a strange snuffling noise in the hallway, slid the journal back into place on the bookshelf, and turned to face the hall.
“Emma?” I called.
The door opened and Ham trotted in, nearly tripping Emma in his eagerness to greet me. Ham—short for Hamlet—was Nell Harris’s black Labrador retriever. Like Rocinante, he’d been left in Emma’s charge while Nell was in Paris.
“We’ve come to view the corpse,” Emma intoned while Ham frisked about my knees.
“I don’t recommend it. Bill’s not a pretty sight.” I bent to fondle Ham’s ears. “He should’ve known better than to spend an evening drinking Dick Peacock’s mead.”
Emma’s eyebrows rose as she sank into one of the tall leather armchairs near the hearth. She was wearing black Wellington boots, baggy cotton trousers, and a gardening smock over a violet tank top. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “You’re blaming Bill’s condition on Bill?”
I ducked my head. “No, I’ve just been talking with—” I looked at the open door, then jutted my chin toward the blue journal. “How about a walk in the garden?”
Emma got the message. “Ham needs a run,” she said, getting to her feet. “Poor pup’s been stuck in the car with me all morning. I’ve brought first aid for your stricken husband,” she added as we left the study. She reached into the pockets of her smock and pulled out a ceramic honey pot and a brown paper packet. “Homemade thyme honey and strawberry leaf tea. Harris’s patented cure for hangovers.”
“Bless you,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust anything Peggy Kitchen dug out of Xanadu.”
“Peggy did help me find an awfully nice birthday present for Rainey in that back room of hers,” Emma countered.
“Was that before or after she forced you to sign the petition?” I asked.
“After,” Emma admitted sheepishly. “But she didn’t so much force as encourage.”
“With a two-by-four,” I muttered. “Horrible old cow.” Emma patted my shoulder. “You’re beginning to sound more like yourself again, Lori.”
Francesca seemed to think that a walk in the garden would do wonders for my unsettled nerves. “Take your time,” she urged, shooing us out. “I’ll look after the boys—all three of ’em.
”
Ham bounded ahead of us, through the solarium, across the sunken terrace, over the low retaining wall, and into the wildflower meadow that ran down to the brook. Emma and I took a slightly more conservative route, going through a gap in the stone wall instead of jumping over it, and strolled across the meadow at a leisurely pace.
It was too hot to go any faster. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the air was perfectly still, and a deafening chorus of insects sang in the rustling grasses. Emma slipped out of her gardening smock, and I wished I’d worn shorts instead of jeans. As the sun baked our foolishly unprotected heads, I made a point of praising each flower we passed. I managed to misidentify every single blossom, but Emma seemed to appreciate the effort.
“I’d like to do the same sort of thing with the meadow behind the vicarage.” She raised a hand to shade her eyes as she surveyed her handiwork. “ The vicar’s field runs down to the river instead of a brook, but I could give it a similar treatment—sprinkle it with drifts of bluebells and daffodils. If this dry spell keeps up, though, I’ll have to consider using desert plants.”
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Burt Hodge is beginning to worry about his crops,” Emma replied, “and if you didn’t have a stream running through your property, you wouldn’t have any flowers at all.” Emma pointed to her boot-clad feet. “I plan to start on the Buntings’ garden as soon as I leave here.”
“ Thanks,” I said. “Any luck on the computer search for the Gladwell pamphlet?”
Emma shook her head. “Nothing so far. I’ll keep looking, but most libraries don’t list that sort of thing in their on-line catalogs.”
“We’ll just have to hope that Stan’s word-of-mouth search succeeds.” I walked on a few steps before I realized that Emma hadn’t moved.
“Why are you walking like that?” she asked, staring at me.
“Like what?” I said.
“Like this.” She strode past me with her head down and her shoulders hunched.
I contemplated her performance in puzzled silence. Then the penny dropped. “Diaper bag,” I said, hunching one shoulder. “ Toy bag,” I went on, hunching the other. “Rations and medicine kit.” I bowed my arms as though imitating a fat man, held the pose, then flung my arms over my head and spun a circle in the grass. “Look at me! I’m weightless! Race you to the bridge. . . .”
Aunt Dimity Digs In Page 9
