Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday

by Nancy Atherton

  I looked from the sailboat to the rocking horse and wondered how old he’d been when he’d been sent away.

  “My mother didn’t spend much time at Hailesham,” he said, still gazing at the sailboat. “She preferred the London house. Or so I’m told. I was only seven when she died—too young to really know her. That’ll never happen with your boys.”

  He sank onto the window seat and rested the sailboat on his knees. I left the rocking horse behind and sat beside him.

  “You’ve never been away from Will and Rob for more than ten days at a time,” he said. “Annelise is an extra pair of hands for you, not a substitute mother for your children.”

  “Your mother’s life was very different from mine,” I reminded him.

  Derek’s jaw tightened. “To say that it’s a custom doesn’t reconcile me to its evil.”

  “No,” I said, and waited.

  “I had Winnie,” he said, after a time. “Miss Charlotte Winfield. She was quite young when she came to Hailesham, not much older than Nell is now, though she wasn’t half as sophisticated as my daughter.”

  I smiled inwardly. I’d yet to meet anyone as sophisticated as Nell. “Was she your nanny?”

  “Winnie was my everything.” Derek blew softly and the boat’s white sail fluttered. “We held grand regattas on the pond and took long walks through the woods. She bandaged my knees when I scraped them and washed behind my ears despite my howls. She told me stories about pirates and bandits and ghosts, and she sang me to sleep. She sat beside me at my mother’s funeral and held my hand as I stood over my mother’s grave.”

  He laid the sailboat aside. I looked at the seashells, the birds’ nests, the pinecones littering the bookshelves and seemed to hear the distant sound of a child’s lighthearted chatter twined with a young woman’s kindly replies.

  “Winnie used to sneak down to the kitchen on Cook’s day off to make special treats for me.” Derek ran a hand through his graying curls. “Do you remember what we had for pudding last night?”

  I’d lived in England long enough to know that “pudding” meant dessert and I recalled exactly what we’d had because I’d described it to Aunt Dimity the night before. “Treacle tart.”

  “It was Winnie’s recipe,” said Derek. “Father must have ordered Cook to dig it up. I don’t know why. Perhaps he thought it would disarm me.” Derek closed his eyes. “When I tasted it, it was as if Winnie were sitting across from me, beaming, because she knew it would give me so much pleasure.”

  I shifted my gaze to the wooden table and chairs, where a curly-haired boy had once smiled sticky smiles at his beaming, girlish nanny.

  Beside me, Derek sighed. “Winnie promised to look after Clumps for me when I went off to prep school.”

  “Clumps?” I asked.

  “My elephant,” said Derek. “He was rather like your Reginald, only much the worse for wear. Clumps and I climbed Kilimanjaro together. We fought beside Hannibal in the Alps and crossed the mighty Mississippi. Clumps and I were inseparable until it came time for me to go away to school.” His voice grew softer. “But I knew Winnie would look after him. I knew they’d both be waiting for me when I came home again. I had so many things to tell her when I came home, so many things. . . .” Derek stared, unseeing, into the middle distance. “But when I came home, she was gone.”

  “She . . . died?” I whispered.

  “She’d been sacked.” Derek’s mouth twisted bitterly. “My father had decided that since I would be away at school for most of the year, her services would no longer be required. I never saw or heard from her again. I was eight years old.”

  I thought of myself at eight, running home after school to my mother, as certain that she would be there as I was of my own name, and tried to imagine the shock of finding her gone—not dead, but alive and beyond my reach. I wondered how many crowds Derek had scanned, looking for Winnie, before he’d finally given up the search. Had I been Derek, I told myself, I’d be searching for her still.

  “That’s when I understood,” Derek said abruptly. “My mother spent the last year of her life in London because my father was a heartless swine. I vowed then and there that I would never be like him.”

  “You’re not,” I said fiercely. “The only way you could be less like him would be to have a sex-change operation.” I would have gone on to enumerate the myriad ways in which Derek didn’t resemble his father, but he forestalled me with a wholly unexpected snort of laughter.

  “I must admit that a sex-change operation never occurred to me.” Derek struggled for sobriety, but a second snort forced its way out. “Emma would have been terribly disappointed if it had. Might’ve been worth it, though, just to see the look on Father’s face. I’d’ve made a formidable viscountess.”

  “You’d be stunning in a tiara,” I agreed, and with that we both gave way to a fit of giggles.

  “Poor Blackie,” Derek said when he’d regained his composure. “It’s been too long since he’s heard the sound of laughter.”

  “Didn’t Nell or Peter or Simon’s son stay here when they were little?” I asked.

  “They’ve had suites of their own in the south wing since before they could walk,” Derek told me. “Father’s always been more indulgent with his grandchildren than he was with me.”

  “It’s awfully tidy for a place that’s never used.” I ran my finger along the windowsill, then held it up for Derek’s inspection. “Look. No dust.”

  “Father would never let something as plebian as dust alight on Hailesham.” Derek looked around the room and shook his head. “No, Lori, this place is full of ghosts. You should bring Rob and Will to play here. They’d fill it with life again.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance. “There’s one ghost you might be happy to see.”

  When he looked at me questioningly, I told him to visit the night nursery. He disappeared through the doorway, but I stayed behind. Some reunions were meant to be private.

  He was gone for perhaps ten minutes and when he returned his face was such a cauldron of emotions that I didn’t know which one would bubble over first. The elephant he cradled in his arms, however, was already looking less forlorn.

  “I’m taking him to Nell,” Derek stated firmly, making it clear that, as a grown man, he could not be expected to display affection for a stuffed animal, however dear.

  “I’m sure Bertie will welcome a new companion,” I said, thinking of Nell’s unabashed devotion to her chocolate-brown teddy.

  Derek stroked Clumps’s trunk absently. “If you see Emma, will you tell her that I’ve decided to take lunch in our room? I need to be alone for a while.”

  “I’ll tell her,” I said.

  “One more thing . . .” Derek’s weathered face grew solemn. “Promise me that you won’t ever send your children away against their will.”

  “Derek,” I said, “I don’t even make my boys eat lima beans against their will.”

  He smiled and turned to go.

  “Derek, wait a minute, will you?” I hesitated, then went on. “You spent the morning with Bill and Gina. Tell me, do they seem to . . . to get along?”

  “Hard to say.” Derek shifted Clumps to one arm and scratched his head. “They’re cordial to each other, but they’re both so thoroughly professional that it’s difficult to tell what they’re thinking, let alone what they’re feeling. And I have to confess that I was paying rather more attention to my father than to them.” He peered at me intently. “Why? You’re not . . . worried about them, are you, Lori?”

  “Worried? Me?” I tried to toss off a carefree laugh but couldn’t squeeze it past the lump in my throat. I ducked my head. “Maybe I am. A little. They’ve known each other for a while now, and Gina’s awfully attractive.”

  “Do you think so?” Derek seemed to give the matter serious consideration. “She’s too cold and calculating for my taste, not at all the sort of woman Bill would find attractive.” He reached over to raise my chin. “He prefers the warmer sort.”
/>   “Maybe he needs a change of climate,” I mumbled.

  “I doubt it,” said Derek. “I doubt it very much.”

  “Okay.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “And if you mention a word of this to Emma, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Come here, you ridiculous woman.” Derek pulled me to my feet for a reassuring hug, then held me at arm’s length. “It’s between you and me and Clumps, and Clumps can be trusted implicitly. Coming down?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “My red nose will give me away.”

  “Bill’s mad about you, Lori. Always has been. Always will be.” Derek tapped the tip of my nose. “Red nose and all.”

  I watched him go, then took a few calming breaths and repeated the words cordial and professional to myself. The exercise would have been more comforting if Bill had whispered Gina’s name the night before in a cordially professional way, but he hadn’t. He’d said it pleadingly, as if he’d been longing for her.

  I couldn’t blame him. He and Gina were both lawyers. They spoke the same language, moved in the same circles, shared a world I neither knew nor cared about. Gina was, as Derek had pointed out, cool and calculating. She’d make a refreshing change of pace from hotheaded, impulsive me. And after the many times I’d strayed, Bill probably felt entitled to enjoy a little fling of his own. It wasn’t reasonable of me to expect absolute fidelity from my husband.

  I was, however, famously unreasonable.

  I shook off the waves of doubt that threatened to engulf me and got to my feet. I had no time to waste on Bill and Gina at the moment, and the poison-pen investigation would have to wait. Derek needed Emma now. I had to head her off before she reached the dining room.

  Eleven

  Giddings was in the dining room overseeing a pair of uniformed maids who were setting the table for lunch. He guided me to a back door that gave access to the graveled courtyard I’d seen from my bedroom’s balcony. The workshops, he told me, occupied the row of low stone buildings opposite the stables.

  I could have found the workshops by sound alone. The moment I strode into the courtyard I heard a cacophony of telltale noises: the clank of a blacksmith’s hammer, the tink-tink of a stonemason’s chisel, and the high-pitched whine of a band saw. I also smelled the telltale stink of kerosene.

  In an instant I forgot all about Emma and raced toward the pillar of black smoke that rose beyond the last low building. I skidded to a halt at the end of the row and peered furtively around the corner just in time to see Nell toss a cloth bundle onto a bonfire.

  Nell had exchanged her riding gear for work clothes similar to Derek’s, but her long limbs and natural grace made old jeans and Wellington boots seem the height of fashion. She wore a quilted vest over a cornflower-blue cotton shirt, and her golden curls tumbled loosely beneath a tweed cap. She stood with a pitchfork in one hand. A can of kerosene sat a few yards away, at a safe distance from the roaring fire.

  “Hi, Nell,” I said, coming up behind her. “We hardly had a chance to say hello last night.”

  “You were captivated by Simon,” she said. “Isn’t he lovely?”

  “He’s, er, very nice,” I agreed, and hastily changed the subject. “How’s life at the Sorbonne?”

  “C’est merveilleuse,” she replied. “Bertie and I have invited Mama, Papa, and Peter to spend Christmas with us in Paris.”

  I stared at her, nonplussed. “You’re not coming home for Christmas?”

  “No,” she replied. “I’m afraid the vicar will have to find another Virgin for the village play this year.” She stepped forward to poke at the burning cloth with her pitchfork.

  “That’s quite a blaze you’ve got going,” I commented. “What’re you burning?”

  “Rubbish,” she said.

  I gazed at the bundle as the flames consumed it. “Looks like old clothes to me.”

  “Fleas in the horse blankets,” she said serenely. “It happens even in the best-kept stables.” She stepped back and rested her pitchfork on the ground. “Did you think it might be old clothes?”

  “I . . . didn’t know what it was.” I cleared my throat. “I was looking for your stepmother when I—”

  “Smelled the paraffin.” Nell continued to watch the fire. “The stench is unmistakable.”

  “I noticed it last night,” I said, “when the turtledove was burning.”

  Nell clucked her tongue but didn’t seem distressed. “Careless gardener,” she murmured. “Careless blacksmith.”

  “So you think it was an accident?” I asked.

  Nell turned to me, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “What else could it be?” She looked back at the fire. “Did Papa find his elephant?”

  I blinked stupidly. “How did you know about Clumps?”

  “I thought Papa might go up to the nursery,” said Nell, “after his meeting with Grandpapa.”

  “But . . . how did you know that I went to the nursery?” I asked.

  “A birdie told me.” Nell picked up the can of kerosene. “Mama is in the carpenter’s shop. If you’ll excuse me, I must change for lunch.”

  Nell shouldered the pitchfork and headed for a collection of white-arched Victorian greenhouses that lay beyond the stables, the source, no doubt, of the earl’s delicious peaches—and the storage place for the kerosene.

  I would have gone after her, but my mind was in a whirl, a not infrequent result of a conversation with Derek’s bewildering daughter.

  Why had Nell mentioned “a birdie”? Had she been alluding to the death threat’s first line—Watch the birdie—and, by inference, to the burning turtledove?

  I doubted that Simon had shown the nasty note to Nell, which meant that there were only two ways she could have known its contents. Either the poison pen had shown it to her or she’d pasted it together herself.

  Her mention of Clumps made me particularly uneasy. Nell couldn’t have known about Derek’s floppy elephant unless she’d spent time in the nursery, near the children’s books—the likely source of the death threat’s whimsical lettering.

  Had Nell been taunting me? Was she telling me that she knew who was harassing Simon? Or was she letting me know that she was both poison pen and arsonist and that, try as I might, I’d never prove it?

  It wasn’t hard to guess how she knew of my alliance with Simon. Oliver had deduced an awful lot from observing his brother and me in the rose garden. Nell would be able to deduce even more. She knew me, knew of my involvement in solving a few modest puzzles that had cropped up in our village. If she’d seen Simon showing the note to me in the rose garden, my subsequent silence on the subject would have told her that I was working with him on the sly.

  My head was swimming with conjecture. I wasn’t sure what to think, but if Nell had left the pitchfork behind, I’d’ve used it to fish out the burning bundle and confirm in my own mind that it was flea-ridden horse blankets rather than a set of clothes an arsonist would want to destroy—which, I told myself, could explain why she hadn’t left the pitchfork behind. Nell might be enigmatic, but she was nobody’s fool.

  A gust of noxious smoke chased me back into the shelter of the courtyard, where I paused to shake the gravel from my shoes. As I straightened, I saw Emma standing in the doorway of the workshop nearest me. She was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Come here, Lori,” she called. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  I followed her into a well-appointed carpenter’s workshop. The stone building was low-ceilinged but long, and it contained an amazing array of woodworking tools: saws of varying shapes and sizes, drills, planes, clamps, chisels, tins of nails, pots of glue, whatever might be needed to make or repair anything made of wood.

  No one was using the tools at the moment. The band saw’s whine had ceased and the only person in sight was a wizened old man seated on a Windsor chair near a woodstove at the rear of the building. His bald head was as brown and mottled as a knob of burled walnut, and he wore a patched carpenter’s apron over a moth-e
aten wool sweater and a pair of rough brown dungarees.

  Emma’s eyes were dancing as we approached the old man, but it wasn’t until we stood before him that she spoke.

  “Ms. Lori Shepherd,” she said with great ceremony, “please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to . . . Mr. Derek Harris.”

  “Y-you’re . . . Derek Harris?” I stammered, gaping at the old man. “The original Derek Harris?”

  “None other,” he replied, favoring me with a gap-toothed grin. “Pull up a chair. Emma and I were talking over old times.”

  “I’ll bet you were.” I hauled a heavy oak chair closer to his and sat.

  “Mr. Harris taught Derek everything he knows,” Emma prompted.

  “There’s some things can’t be taught,” Mr. Harris allowed. “Derek, as you call him, had a God-given gift for working with wood, but I helped him make use of it, right enough. He tagged along after me like a puppy when he was home from school.” The old man pointed a gnarled finger toward the woodstove. “Found him sleeping on the floor there some mornings, wrapped up in a bit of old blanket. Some folk mistook him for my apprentice. Had no idea he was his lordship’s son and heir.”

  While Mr. Harris enjoyed a reminiscent chuckle, I glanced toward the spot on the floor where the young Derek had slept. How he must have rejoiced, I thought, when he’d been mistaken for the old man’s apprentice. The process of distancing himself from his father had already begun.

  “Mr. Harris still has apprentices,” said Emma. “People come from every corner of England to study under him. It’s the same in the other workshops.”

  “It was his lordship’s idea,” Mr. Harris put in. “Youngsters champ at the bit to get here because they know his lordship’ll look after ’em while they’re here, same way he looks after me.”

  “Lord Elstyn’s created a kind of college of craftsmanship,” Emma explained, “to keep traditional skills from dying out.”

  “We’re dying out, though.” Mr. Harris nodded complacently. “Only a few of the old faces left. Saw one the other day I hadn’t seen in years. Took me right back. It happens from time to time, the old ones coming back. Derek never came back, though, not after university. Too angry with his father. Never understood it, his lordship being so kind and all, but there you are: fathers and sons.”