Aunt Dimity and the Widow's Curse

by Nancy Atherton

  “Thanks, Francesco,” I said, directing Bess’s steps away from the doorway. “I’m pretty sure she could find her way back to our suite on her own by now, but I’d rather not risk it.”

  A dark-haired young man appeared at Francesco’s elbow, carrying a watering can. He hesitated when he saw Bree and me, but a nod from Francesco freed him to make his way around the library, watering the potted plants that added a homey touch to the book-lined room. Bess had a fine time chasing after him.

  “Your suite is satisfactory, madam?” Francesco inquired, turning his attention to me. “You have everything you need?”

  “We have more than we need,” I assured him.

  “The weather is not what I would wish for you,” he said dolefully.

  “The rain made our suite seem even cozier,” I said, hoping to cheer him up.

  “We don’t expect you to control the weather,” Bree chimed in. “You’re good, Francesco, but no one’s that good.”

  He smiled appreciatively, but I detected a note of apprehension in his voice when he asked, “Did you enjoy your brunch at the Willows Café?”

  “Brunch was lovely,” I said, “but Mr. Nash wasn’t very helpful.”

  “Our waitress was, though,” said Bree. “She sent us across the street to speak with Hayley Calthorp.”

  “Hayley was brilliant,” I said. “She filled me in on Zach Trotter’s disappearance.”

  “And the widow’s curse that struck down poor Ted Fletcher,” Bree interjected.

  “She also told us where our friend Annabelle lived when she was married to Zach Trotter,” I continued.

  “We’re going to the terraces tomorrow morning,” Bree said brightly. “We hope to have a chat with Minnie Jessop.”

  “Mrs. Jessop will have much to say,” Francesco observed with a mournful sigh. “She will no doubt tell you about the others.”

  Bree and I exchanged puzzled glances.

  “The others?” I said. “What others?”

  “I . . . I made a slip of the tongue, madam,” Francesco stammered, blushing. “I beg you to ignore it.” He snapped his fingers and the silent young man with the watering can left the room. “If I can be of assistance . . .” His voice trailed off as he turned on his heel and fled.

  “What’s up with him?” Bree asked, looking bewildered. “Who are ‘the others’?”

  “Not a clue and no idea,” I replied. “I’ll add ‘Who are the others?’ to my list of questions for Minnie Jessop.”

  Bree had found Pride and Prejudice and Bess had run out of steam, so we headed back to the suite to order dinner. Lazlo showed up almost instantly to set the table in the dining nook and Eric followed him a short time later with a sumptuous repast. I felt like the Queen of the May until Bess brought me back down to earth with a remarkably well aimed blob of mashed potatoes.

  I kept to Bess’s normal routine of dinnertime, bath time, story time, bedtime. Less than a paragraph of Wuthering Heights put her out like a light. I moved Moo from the crib to the dresser, then joined Bree, who was seated on the sofa, studying Francesco’s map of Old Cowerton.

  “We shouldn’t have much trouble finding our way around the terraces,” she announced. “There are only three rows of row houses. They’re set one behind the other, like dominoes.”

  “Show me,” I said, sitting beside her.

  “Longview Lane acts as an access road,” she explained. She drew a fingertip across the pertinent section of the map as she continued, “Bellevue Terrace, Parkview Terrace, and Greenview Terrace feed into Longview Lane, and Longview Lane leads to the main road.” Her finger came to rest on the last house in the last row of row houses. “There’s Dovecote.”

  “I wonder who lives there now?” I mused aloud. “I wonder if they’re aware of Dovecote’s creepy past?”

  “With Minnie Jessop living next door?” said Bree, her eyebrows rising. “How could they not know?”

  One thing was certain, I thought, scanning the pastureland beyond Dovecote. We wouldn’t have to scour the terraces to find someone to corroborate or to dispute Minnie’s version of events, as Aunt Dimity had advised. The map made it clear that no one other than Minnie Jessop could have witnessed suspicious activity in the Trotters’ back garden because hers was the only house that overlooked it.

  “The turnoff is just over a mile from the hotel,” Bree was saying. “We could walk there easily.”

  “We could,” I allowed, “but I’d rather drive.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “The terraces are solidly residential,” I replied. “There aren’t any businesses. If the weather turns ugly again—which it probably will—we won’t be able to duck into a shop or a café.”

  “Got it,” Bree said. “If all else fails, we can duck into the Rover.”

  “Or,” I said, drawing the word out for emphasis, “we can try very hard to duck into Minnie Jessop’s house.” I repeated Aunt Dimity’s comments about row houses as if they were my own. I didn’t have to explain why it would be useful to see an interior similar to Dovecote’s. Bree caught on right away.

  “We’ll break into Minnie’s house, if we have to,” she declared as she refolded the map and stuffed it into her day pack. “We can’t pass up a chance to see a duplicate scene of the possible crime-next-door.”

  Plans made, we called it a night. I thought my sleep would be disrupted by nightmares about slurry pits, rosebushes, and Francesco’s mysterious “others,” but Wuthering Heights did the trick for me, too. I slept without stirring until Bess woke me in the morning.

  —

  The storm left nothing but clear skies and muddy puddles in its wake. The wind was calm, the air was deliciously warm, and the dew-bedecked flowers in the walled garden sparkled like jewels in the morning sun.

  After an early room-service breakfast, followed by a midmorning snack for Bess, we were ready to go. I loaded Moo, the food bag, the diaper bag, and my freshly diapered daughter into the all-terrain pram and followed Bree through the garden to the cobbled yard where Eric and Lazlo had left the Range Rover. While Bree swung Bess into her car seat, I folded the pram and slid it into the cargo compartment.

  I didn’t mention the role the pram might play in our investigation because I was afraid of putting ideas into Bree’s head. If Aunt Dimity could imagine me dragging my young friend through Minnie Jessop’s house on a rug, so could Bree. Bree was game enough to demand that I use her as a crash-test dummy, but I had no intention of staging such a grotesque reenactment. To avoid an argument, I kept Aunt Dimity’s suggestion to myself.

  I wanted to shout for joy after I drove the Rover through the narrow alleyway without losing a wing mirror, but I maintained my composure. After turning cautiously onto the high street, I retraced the route we’d taken into Old Cowerton. When the terraces came into view, Bree, who was acting as navigator, directed me to make a right turn onto Longview Lane.

  As the map had indicated, Old Cowerton had erected three rows of six-unit row houses for its heroes. The swath of open parkland donated by the local farmer sloped upward to form a green and pleasant backdrop to the dull brown buildings. I cruised slowly past Parkview Terrace and Greenview Terrace, then turned right on Bellevue Terrace, drinking in the details of a place that had once been as familiar to Annabelle Craven as Finch was to me.

  The row houses weren’t ugly, but they were joyless in their uniformity. Each was two stories tall and flat roofed, with a bay window on the ground floor and a shallow porch framing the front door. There were no front gardens. Instead, a narrow strip of lawn ran the length of each street, divided only by front walks that were, predictably, made of dull brown brick.

  Though the back gardens were separated by dull brown-brick walls, they were as diverse as the buildings were uniform. If the residents of Bellevue Terrace chanced to look across the street into their neighbors’ back gardens
, they would be treated to the colorful sight of vegetable patches, flower beds, trellises, birdbaths, bird feeders, wind chimes, bicycles, abandoned toys, outdoor grills, an assortment of lawn furniture, two flagpoles, and one garishly painted totem pole.

  “But no garages,” I muttered, unsurprised.

  I parked the Rover at the far end of Bellevue Terrace, in front of the row house Hayley Calthorp had identified as Annabelle’s. It was a lonely spot, the last outpost of the terraces, beyond which there was nothing but overgrown grass and a tangle of wind-twisted trees. I saw no trace of the sign Annabelle had made when she’d christened her home Dovecote, but a wooden sign hanging above Minnie Jessop’s front door told me that she’d dubbed her house Sunnyside.

  “Sunnyside?” Bree said with a disparaging snort. “It should be called Gossipbottom.”

  A boxy blue sedan was parked in front of Sunnyside. It was one of the few cars I’d seen in the terraces. The absence of cars in such a remote location puzzled me until I remembered that it was Monday. The residents who had jobs had, of necessity, driven to them.

  “Can you believe it, Lori?” Bree asked in awestruck tones. “We’re here. We’re actually here, at the scene of the crime.”

  “The alleged crime,” I murmured, though I was equally awestruck.

  “It doesn’t look as though anyone’s at home,” Bree whispered. “No car out front. No lights in the windows.”

  “We’re not breaking into Dovecote, Bree,” I stated firmly.

  “If they forgot to lock the front door, we wouldn’t have to break in,” she reasoned. “It wouldn’t hurt to jiggle the doorknob, would it?”

  “We’re not sneaking into Dovecote, either,” I said adamantly. “It’s too late for sneaking. Once you’ve parked a canary-yellow Range Rover next door to Old Cowerton’s gabbiest gossip, sneaking is no longer an option.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Bree said with a regretful sigh.

  “We’ll walk casually around the side of the house and look into the back garden, as planned. Bess?” I said over my shoulder. “You ready to rumble?”

  “Go!” she replied.

  “You heard her,” I said, releasing my seat belt. “Let’s go! I’m not leaving before I see the rosebushes.”

  “Nor am I,” said Bree, perking up.

  The net curtains in Sunnyside’s bay window twitched as we climbed out of the Rover. I was certain that Minnie Jessop was keeping an eye on us as I unfolded the pram and lowered Bess into it. Though I felt as if I had a pair of high-powered binoculars trained on me, I calmly fastened Bess’s harness and moved on. I was too familiar with Finch’s twitching curtains to let Minnie’s rattle me.

  “What a gloomy place to start married life,” Bree commented, eyeing Annabelle’s former home with distaste.

  “Nonsense,” I said, wheeling the pram into the long grass beside Dovecote. “It seems gloomy to you because you associate it with a gloomy tale. Annabelle probably felt like the luckiest girl in the world when she moved out of her parents’ house and into her own.”

  “It has no character,” Bree protested. “It looks as though it rolled off an assembly line.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I told her. “Love makes the mundane magical.”

  “It would take more than love to make the terraces magical,” Bree retorted, unconvinced. “A herd of unicorns might help, but I doubt it.” She forged ahead of Bess and me to the rear of the house, where a brown brick wall enclosed Dovecote’s back garden.

  “Do not climb over the wall,” I called to her.

  “No breaking and entering, no trespassing,” Bree grumbled. “You’re no fun at all.” She softened her words with a grin, stood on tiptoe to look over the garden wall, and gasped. “They’re there, Lori! The rosebushes! They’re at the end of the garden, just as Mrs. Craven said they would be, and they’re enormous!”

  My fearless daughter chortled gleefully as I pushed the pram swiftly through a bumpy stretch of grass to catch up with Bree. When I reached her, I grasped the top of the wall with both hands and pulled myself onto my tiptoes to peer over it.

  Compared to the terraces’ other back gardens, Dovecote’s was exceptionally tidy. A wrought-iron table and two wrought-iron chairs sat on a small brown-brick patio, facing a patch of lawn edged on two sides by long, narrow flower beds. The view from the patio would be spectacular in the summer, I thought, because the entire rear wall was covered from top to bottom by what Hayley Calthorp had described as the healthiest rosebushes in Old Cowerton.

  It was too early in the year for blossoms, but I could easily envision what the bushes would look like in June. Their glossy leaves and their sturdy canes would have delighted the eye of the most exacting gardener, but my gaze was drawn inexorably to the dark, loamy soil covering their roots.

  What else did the soil cover? I asked myself with an involuntary shiver. Were we gazing upon Zach Trotter’s unmarked grave? I was about to hoist myself a little higher when a third question was asked, but not by me.

  “May I help you?” said a voice.

  Twelve

  Bree and I exchanged guilty glances, stepped away from the garden wall, and turned to face a woman standing knee deep in the grass near the front of the house, peering at us.

  The woman wasn’t old enough to be Minnie Jessop. Her graying hair suggested middle age, but her pageboy hairstyle and her slender build gave her a youthful air. She was dressed in a handsome tweed blazer, a button-down shirt, and pleated wool trousers. Though her arms were folded, she seemed to be amused rather than irate, as if she’d grown accustomed to catching strangers in the act of ogling Dovecote’s notorious rosebushes.

  “The house isn’t for sale,” she informed us.

  “We’re not house hunters,” I told her. “We’re, uh—”

  “What Lori means,” Bree interrupted, “is that we’re, er—”

  The woman silenced our babbling with a wave of her hand.

  “There’s no need to explain,” she said. “I know who you are.” She gave us an appraising look, then wagged a beckoning finger at us. “Come along. My mother has been expecting you.”

  I gaped stupidly at her until Bree seized the pram’s handles and treated Bess to another bouncy jaunt through the long grass. Bess’s gurgling laughter brought me to my senses and I scrambled after them. The woman waited for me to complete our merry band, then introduced herself.

  “I’m Susan Jessop,” she said. “Unless I’ve been misinformed, you’re Lori Shepherd and Bree Pym.”

  “And Bess Willis,” I said, nodding at the pram. “My daughter.”

  “How do you do, Bess?” said Susan.

  Bess mooed at her.

  “Who told you about us?” I asked.

  “I’ll let Mother enlighten you,” Susan said, with a glance at her wristwatch. “If I don’t leave soon, I’ll be late for work. I teach at the local agricultural college. My hours are flexible, but I try to set a good example for my students by getting to class on time.”

  She turned on her heel and strode across Dovecote’s lawn toward Sunnyside’s front door. Bree looked as confused as I felt as we scurried after her.

  “What do you teach?” Bree asked.

  “Countryside management,” Susan replied. “It involves—”

  “Looking at how the countryside works,” Bree broke in, “and how it can be managed to maximize benefits to wildlife, habitats, farmers, and recreational users.” Noting Susan’s perplexed gaze, she added, “My boyfriend is a conservationist. He talks a lot about countryside management.”

  “Good for him,” said Susan, sounding impressed. “It’s an important field of study in our crowded little island.”

  I felt a quiver of ghoulish anticipation as she walked ahead of us to open Sunnyside’s front door. If Aunt Dimity was correct—and she usually was—Sunnyside’s floor plan would be identic
al to Dovecote’s. Once we stepped into Minnie Jessop’s house, we would know if Annabelle Craven’s story was plausible or if it was beyond the realm of possibility.

  “May I bring Bess’s pram inside?” I asked. “I’d rather not leave it outdoors, unattended.”

  “Feel free,” Susan said. “If you like, you can wheel it through the house to the back garden. Follow me.”

  I could scarcely believe my ears. It was as if Susan Jessop wanted me to reenact Zach Trotter’s murder. I didn’t know who or what awaited us in the back garden, but I knew a golden opportunity when I saw one. I thanked Susan and pushed the pram into a modest foyer, where I paused to examine my surroundings.

  The wall to my right held a row of hooks from which dangled coats, hats, scarves, net shopping bags, and a lidless fishing creel that appeared to be a repository for mail. To my left, I could see the last few steps of an enclosed staircase that led, presumably, to the second floor. Ahead of me, a hallway led directly from the foyer to a room at the rear of the house.

  “Straight shot,” Bree said, just loud enough for me to know that her thoughts ran parallel to mine.

  They were sickening thoughts, but I couldn’t keep myself from thinking them. If Zach Trotter had tumbled down a similar staircase and landed in a similar foyer, it would have been child’s play for Annabelle to drag his battered body through a similar hallway to the room closest to the back garden.

  Feeling a little queasy, I pushed the pram to the end of the hallway and into a surprisingly large and modern kitchen. Susan, who hadn’t stopped to survey her own foyer, was already in the kitchen, holding the back door open for me.

  “This way,” she prompted.

  I wheeled the pram toward her, all the while imagining how easy it would be to maneuver a fresh corpse around the kitchen table and over the door’s low threshold to its final resting place. I was so absorbed in my macabre visions that it took a moment for me to register the strange tableau that met my eyes as I stepped into Sunnyside’s sun-drenched garden.