Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince

by Nancy Atherton

  “You’re very kind,” I said, and reached into my shoulder bag again. “How much do I owe you for the guidebook?”

  “It shall be my gift to you,” he said, placing the annotated booklet in my hands. “Please accept it as a small token of my gratitude.”

  “Gratitude?” I said, puzzled.

  “The vast majority of our visitors focus on the museum’s grislier aspects,” he explained, smiling. “It’s refreshing to meet one who appreciates the finer things in life.”

  • • •

  I’m sure Miles Craven did his best, but there was no avoiding the grisly in Skeaping Manor. The dark, labyrinthine corridors opened without warning into rooms lined with dimly lit glass cases displaying barbaric surgical instruments or deformed human skulls or the mounted corpses of long-deceased beasts whose unblinking eyes seemed to follow me reproachfully as I swept past them to touch base with Bree.

  I didn’t see another living soul as I scurried along, which was just as well. A random visitor might have been annoyed by the boys’—and Bree’s—unrestrained chatter, but I used the noise as a tracking device and quickly found the explorers clustered around a particularly distressing display of spiny, long-legged insects skewered on pins. I had no idea what kind of insects they were, but they were bigger and nastier looking than any I’d ever encountered.

  “Giant weta,” said Bree, pointing proudly to the display. “They’re New Zealand natives, like me. Never thought I’d see weta here in England.”

  “Some weta get to be as big as sparrows,” Rob informed me importantly.

  “They can bite and hiss and scratch,” said Will with relish.

  “Only when threatened,” Bree interjected. “Weta are harmless vegetarians who like the dark. They’d rather hide than fight.”

  “Charming,” I said, averting my gaze from the loathsome bugs. “Would you mind looking after Will and Rob while I run upstairs?” I asked Bree. “I’d like to take a peek at the porcelain.”

  Bree smiled knowingly, as though she could sense my skin crawling, but assured me that she and the boys would survive without me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll check in with you in an hour.”

  “No hurry,” said Bree. “We haven’t even gotten to the best bits yet.”

  The mere thought of “the best bits” made me shudder, so I planted hasty kisses on the twins’ heads and retraced my steps to a stone staircase Miles Craven had flagged in the guidebook. If my sons had been present, I would have walked upstairs at a sedate pace, but since they were too far away to be influenced by my bad behavior, I took the stairs two at a time and heaved a sigh of relief when I reached the first floor.

  The lighting upstairs was just as murky as it had been downstairs, but to my delight the glass cases held objects that stimulated my sense of beauty rather than my gag reflex. The jade room was a joy, the porcelain room a pleasure, the woodcuts were wonderful, and the musical instruments were nothing short of magnificent.

  I drifted blissfully from one collection to the next, enjoying the brief respite from a week of high-octane mothering, and feeling a powerful sense of gratitude to Sir Waverly Jephcott for planting an oasis of loveliness above his little shop of horrors. I was convinced that I had the oasis to myself until I stepped into the silver room and saw that someone else had gotten there before me.

  A girl not much older than Will and Rob stood motionless in the center of the room. Her hair was the color of burnished copper, her eyes were emerald green, and her fine-featured face was as pale as a porcelain doll’s. She was an exceptionally beautiful child, but compared to my robust boys, she seemed painfully thin.

  Though her hair was neatly styled in a sweet, face-framing bob, she appeared to be wearing secondhand clothes—droopy black woolen tights, scruffy brown ankle boots, a too-short purple skirt, and a pale pink winter parka that was far too big for her. The parka was a sad little jacket, worn and faded, its pink hood trimmed with a matted strip of gray polyester fur, but I was glad she had it on; she looked like a child who would always feel cold.

  She seemed unaware of my presence. Her expression was somber, as if she were lost in thought, and though the room contained a gleaming hoard of platters, centerpieces, goblets, vases, and jewel boxes, her gaze was fixed unwaveringly on one small but beautiful object: a horse-drawn sleigh made entirely of silver.

  I crept a step closer and saw for myself why the sleigh held the child’s attention. Although it was no more than four inches long, its creator had endowed it with a marvelous wealth of details.

  The sleigh was drawn by three high-stepping horses arrayed in an elaborate harness hung with bells and ornamented with rosettes. The horses were exquisitely wrought and superbly dynamic—their nostrils flared, their manes flew as if tossed by the wind, and their tiny hooves seemed to dance along an unseen road.

  The sleigh was unoccupied, but it was a tour de force of decorative invention. Every inch of its exterior was embellished with minute tassels, rosettes, pinwheels, birds, and stars. It had a high, scrolled back and its interior appeared to be upholstered in the finest, most deeply cushioned leather. The exuberant patterns made the sleigh glitter like a multifaceted jewel in the dim light. I could only imagine how brightly it would sparkle in the sun.

  I’d seldom seen a more enchanting example of the silversmith’s art. I gazed at it, entranced, for many minutes, but when I chanced to look again at the girl, I was struck by the contrast between her apparent poverty and the richness of the object that fascinated her. I recalled the dented Ford Fiesta in the parking lot, wondered where her parents were, and wished they hadn’t left her alone to peer longingly at a treasure that was so far beyond her reach.

  The girl must have felt my gaze, because she slowly turned her head to look up at me.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

  “You didn’t,” she said gravely.

  “Good,” I said, though I was slightly disconcerted by her directness. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but . . . where’s the rest of your family? I’m sure you didn’t come here all by yourself.”

  “Mummy brought me with her today,” she said, resuming her contemplation of the sleigh. “It’s just me and Mummy now. Daddy left.”

  Her simple answer seemed to explain a lot. Daddy left, l thought angrily, leaving Mummy to scrimp and save and struggle to make ends meet. Was that why the girl was so thin, so ragged, so joyless? I wanted to scoop her up and whisk her away to Upper Deeping for a hearty meal and a shopping spree, but instead I just stood there, feeling useless.

  “It’s a saltcellar,” she said softly.

  “What is?” I asked.

  She raised a slender finger and pointed at the sleigh.

  “It’s a saltcellar,” she repeated, “a container for salt. It sat on a long polished table draped in unblemished white linen. There were silver vases, too, filled with white roses and trailing vines, and there were white candles in silver candelabra. The ladies wore their hair piled high and their dresses cut low to display necklaces worth a king’s ransom. The gentlemen wore diamond studs in their stiff collars and gold links in their cuffs. They ate and drank late into the night while the world outside grew darker and colder.”

  The girl fell silent. I realized that my mouth was agape and closed it, but I continued to stare at the child in amazement. It seemed impossible to me that the words she’d uttered and the images she’d conjured were her own, yet she’d described the elegant supper party with the quiet conviction of someone who’d witnessed it firsthand.

  “Did Mr. Craven tell you about the . . . the saltcellar?” I stammered.

  “No,” she replied with a dreamy smile. “Mr. Craven just pretends. The dinners were real.”

  A woman’s anxious voice sounded suddenly from the doorway.

  “Daisy? What are you doing here? How many times have I told you not to wander off while I’m working?”

  A young woman strode into the room, looking flustered. She
wore a beige coverall, faded jeans, and down-at-the-heel loafers, and she carried a plastic bucket filled with dust cloths. I thought she might be in her late twenties and I assumed she was a cleaning woman, but one look at her green eyes and her copper-colored hair was enough to convince me that she was Daisy’s mother.

  “I’m sorry,” the young woman said to me. “My daughter is supposed to stay with me while I work, but—”

  “There’s no need to apologize,” I interrupted. “I have two children of my own. I know how hard it is to keep track of them. Besides, I’ve been enjoying Daisy’s company. I’m Lori Shepherd, by the way. I live in Finch.”

  “I’m Amanda Pickering,” said the young woman, “and I’m afraid I have to get on with my work. Daisy?” She extended her free hand to the girl. “Come along, love. I’ll make a nice cup of cocoa for you and you can drink it in Mr. Craven’s office while I finish up.”

  “Nice to meet you, Daisy,” I called as the pair left the room hand in hand. “You, too, Amanda.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lori,” Amanda called from the corridor.

  I listened to their footsteps fade into the distance, then turned to gaze once more at the silver sleigh, wishing I’d been able to spend more time with Amanda Pickering’s remarkable daughter.

  Four

  We left Skeaping Manor at noon and treated ourselves to lunch at a café in Upper Deeping. Bree, Will, and Rob spent much of the meal discussing the museum’s gruesome highlights, but their conversation didn’t dampen my appetite as it might have some other time. While they chatted cheerfully about blood, bones, bugs, and shriveled flesh, my mind was far away, dwelling on Daisy Pickering.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl and her queer utterances, but since my lunch companions wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise, I was obliged to keep my reflections to myself. I wasn’t sure what I would have said to them, even if they’d given me the chance. An incidental conversation with an unusual child would have seemed like very small potatoes to someone who’d had a face-to-face encounter with a giant weta.

  By the time we returned to the cottage, the sun had warmed the air considerably and the wind had ceased altogether, so I gave in to the boys’ demands and sent them outside to play. Bree, of course, went with them. I elected to remain indoors not only because I needed to toss a basket of laundry into the washing machine, but because I was bursting to speak with someone who would take an interest in my encounter with Daisy Pickering.

  Fortunately, there was someone in the cottage who valued little girls above bloodstained axes. Unfortunately, she wasn’t someone I could easily introduce to Bree. After peering through the kitchen window to make sure the boys and their idol were fully engaged in their snowy pursuits, I went to the study to speak with a friend Bree would never meet.

  The friend’s name was Dimity Westwood and she wasn’t, in the technical sense, alive. She had, in fact, died a year before I’d first set foot in England, but though her body reposed in the churchyard in Finch, her spirit remained in the cottage. It wasn’t the sort of thing I could explain to myself, much less to a houseguest, though the story behind it was easy to understand.

  Dimity Westwood, an Englishwoman, had been my late mother’s closest friend. The two women met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War and the bond of affection they forged in wartime lasted a lifetime.

  After peace was declared in Europe and my mother sailed back to the States, she and Dimity maintained their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across the Atlantic. When my father died unexpectedly, the letters became my mother’s refuge, a tranquil sanctuary that renewed and refreshed her after long days spent working full-time as a teacher while raising a rambunctious daughter on her own.

  My mother was very protective of her sanctuary. She told no one about it, including me. I knew Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of a series of bedtime stories my mother invented. I was unaware of the real Dimity Westwood’s existence until both she and my mother were dead.

  It was then that Dimity bequeathed to me a comfortable fortune, the honey-colored cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious correspondence she’d shared with my mother, and a curious blue-leather-bound book filled with blank pages.

  It was through the blue journal that I finally met my benefactress. When I gazed at the journal’s blank pages, Aunt Dimity’s handwriting would appear, a graceful copperplate taught at the village school at a time when airplanes were still a rare and wondrous sight. I nearly had kittens the first time it happened, but I quickly came to realize that Aunt Dimity had nothing but my best interests at heart.

  I didn’t understand how Aunt Dimity managed to bridge the gap between the living and the not-quite-living, and she wasn’t too clear about it herself, but the how didn’t matter to me. The one thing I knew for certain was that Dimity Westwood was as good a friend to me as she’d been to my mother. And that was enough.

  The study was crisscrossed with shadows thrown by the desiccated strands of ivy that clung to the diamond-paned windows above the old oak desk. I turned on the mantel lamps, lit a fire in the hearth, and paused to greet another dear friend.

  “Hi, Reg,” I said. “You’re the only kind of stuffed animal I ever want to see again.”

  Reginald was a small, powder-pink flannel rabbit with hand-stitched whiskers, black-button eyes, and a pale purple stain on his snout—a souvenir of the time I’d let him taste my grape juice. Reginald had been my confidant and my companion in adventure for as long as I could remember and though I no longer carried him with me everywhere I went, I felt no need to consign him to the scrap heap of memory simply because I’d grown up. Instead, he sat in a special niche on the bookshelves beside the fireplace, where I could give him the love and attention an old friend deserves.

  I reached out to touch Reginald’s snout, then took the blue journal from its place on the bookshelves and sat with it in one of the tall leather armchairs before the hearth. I glanced over my shoulder to make doubly sure I’d closed the study door, then opened the journal.

  “Dimity?” I said. “The strangest thing happened this morning.”

  I smiled fondly as the familiar lines of royal-blue ink began to curl and loop gracefully across the page.

  Oh, goody. I love it when strange things happen. What sort of strange thing was it?

  “It concerns a young girl who seems to be channeling a much older soul,” I said.

  You have my undivided attention. Carry on.

  I gave Aunt Dimity a succinct account of my encounter with Daisy Pickering, then leaned back in my chair to await her reply. It came almost instantly.

  Skeaping Manor? Ugh! I visited the ghastly place once, on a school trip, and had horrible nightmares for weeks afterward. I’m afraid I share your aversion to the grotesque, Lori. I’m glad Bree was there to spare you the worst of it.

  “Me, too,” I said. “But what do you think of Daisy?”

  I probably think what you think. The girl and her mother have had a rough time of it since Mr. Pickering abandoned them, but Daisy seems to find solace in contemplating beautiful objects.

  “Yes, but what about the way she spoke?” I asked.

  What about it?

  “Don’t you think it was . . . peculiar?” I ventured.

  Not especially peculiar, no.

  I decided that my succinct account had failed to convey the full effect of Daisy Pickering’s haunting monologue, and tried again.

  “Her tone of voice was melancholy,” I said, “almost nostalgic, as if she were remembering a scene she couldn’t possibly have seen. I mean, she knew that the silver sleigh was a saltcellar. How many children her age know what a saltcellar is? I didn’t know what a saltcellar was until she told me.” I frowned in concentration and tried to recall Daisy’s words exactly. “She said the gentlemen at the dinner party wore diamond studs in their stiff collars, but I’m willing to bet she’s never seen a di
amond stud or a stiff collar in her life. She talked about white roses and trailing vines and ladies wearing necklaces worth a king’s ransom and she described the linen tablecloth as ‘unblemished.’ What kind of kid uses words like ‘unblemished’?”

  An intelligent kid with a retentive memory? Let’s at least try to be rational about this, Lori. If Amanda Pickering takes Daisy to work with her on a regular basis, then Daisy will have spent a lot of time at Skeaping Manor. She’s probably heard dozens if not hundreds of visitors discuss the silver sleigh. I suspect she was parroting words she’d heard others utter and adding some imaginative embroidery of her own.

  “I doubt she’s heard more than a handful of people comment on the silver sleigh,” I retorted. “The curator told me that hardly anyone goes upstairs to look at the pretty exhibits. According to him, most visitors concentrate on the icky stuff.”

  Most, perhaps, but not all. You and I are living proof—more or less—that some people prefer the pretty to the icky. It’s possible that a single, vivid discussion of the silver sleigh made a strong impression on Daisy, one that stayed with her long after she’d overheard it. And what makes you think she’s never seen a diamond stud or a stiff collar? You told me yourself that the curator dresses in Edwardian clothes. It seems likely to me that such a man would be perfectly happy to explain his attire to a bright and inquisitive child.

  “I think he would have explained it to me, if I’d shown the smallest sign of interest,” I said with a wry smile. “He’s an enthusiast.”

  There you are, then. You have a little girl who prowls the museum on her own, asking the curator questions, listening in on other people’s conversations, and repeating what she’s heard.

  “Without supernatural intervention,” I said, shaking my head at my own foolishness.

  Soul channeling isn’t as common an activity as so-called mediums would have you believe, my dear. It is, in fact, an extremely rare occurrence, one which you yourself experienced a few years ago. As I’m sure you’ll recall, the soul in question changed your entire aspect. It altered your behavior as well as your voice. Daisy may have employed an unusual vocabulary, but her voice and her manner didn’t change radically from one moment to the next, did they?