Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well

by Nancy Atherton

  Thank you, Lori. While you’re waiting for darkness to fall, I suggest that you have a nice lie-down. You may not be at death’s door, but you’ve had a busy day and you’ll need your wits about you when you examine the well.

  I waited for the handwriting to fade from the page, then closed the journal and attempted to gather my thoughts. It was a pointless exercise because Aunt Dimity was right—I did need a nap. I put the journal back on its shelf, patted Reginald’s head, and went upstairs to stretch out on the bed for a half hour or so.

  “Leave it to me, Dimity,” I murmured as my head hit the pillow. “I’ll get to the bottom of the well.”

  Twenty-four

  I slept until sundown. I probably would have slept until daybreak if Stanley hadn’t jumped onto the bed to demand his supper. I stumbled out of the bedroom and down to the kitchen to fill his bowl, splashed cold water on my face to wake myself up, and nearly jumped out of my skin when the telephone shattered the silence. It was Bill again, calling to make sure I hadn’t concussed myself, imbibed a deadly poison, or lopped off an arm in his absence. He didn’t express such fears explicitly, of course, but I knew what he was thinking.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard above the hubbub of a party in full swing.

  “I just woke up,” I told him. “I’m still a bit groggy.”

  “Go back to sleep,” he shouted. “Emma made up a bed for Will and Rob in the hayloft, so I thought I’d stay on for a bit. Peter’s telling us about the year he and Cassie spent in the western isles of Scotland.”

  “Sounds riveting,” I said. “Stay as long as you like.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I’m positive,” I said. “Stay until midnight. It’s not every day that we have such a grand occasion to celebrate.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Bill. “All right, then . . . if you’re sure . . . I’ll see you later, possibly much later.”

  “Enjoy yourself,” I said, and put the receiver back into its cradle.

  Since I was about to embark on a search for truth, I was glad I hadn’t lied to my husband. I felt a tiny bit guilty for not telling him what I was about to do—I would have felt guiltier if he hadn’t been having such a good time—but I promised myself that I’d tell him the whole story as soon as I knew what the whole story was.

  I put a flashlight into my shoulder bag and as an afterthought added a multi-tool, in case I had to unscrew, scrape, or pry open some part of the well. It was a cool night with a light breeze, so I pulled a woolen sweater over my T-shirt and grabbed a Windbreaker from the coat rack in the hallway on my way out of the cottage. I climbed into Bill’s car, started it, and noticed for the first time how quiet the engine was. As I backed out of the driveway, I thanked Mr. Barlow silently for taking such good care of the ordinary, everyday cars his neighbors entrusted to him.

  Anscombe Manor glowed in the distance as I passed its long, curving drive, but the lights were out in Bree Pym’s redbrick house and Ivy Cottage was cloaked in darkness. I pulled into Jack’s driveway, taking care not to bump into the sawhorses and the building materials Mr. Barlow had left behind. I took the flashlight and the multi-tool from my bag, slipped the multi-tool into my pocket, turned the flashlight on, and got out of the car. I closed the door by nudging it with my knee.

  I thought I was familiar with the terrain around Ivy Cottage, but it had changed since I’d last been there. The implementation of Emma’s master plan made it much easier for me to navigate the property than it had been for Peggy Taxman, Charles Bellingham, and the rest of the well’s nocturnal visitors.

  Staked strings lined a grassy path from the driveway to the back garden’s tumbledown stone wall and colorful plastic ribbons tied to various plants and shrubs for identification purposes helped me to avoid low branches and grasping vines. The broken pergola had been removed altogether. I stepped cautiously through the gap in the stone wall where the pergola had been and followed another stake-and-string-lined path to the well.

  The wishing well loomed over me, looking faintly sinister in the darkness, like something out of a ghost story instead of a fairy tale. I wanted to scold it for causing so much trouble among my generally kind and helpful neighbors, but the thought of a live microphone silenced me.

  The garden wasn’t silent. Leaves rustled in the breeze, an owl hooted nearby, the well’s oak bucket creaked eerily as it swung from its jute rope, and a faint slithering sound in the undergrowth sent shivers down my spine. I told myself not to be a ninny, but I couldn’t help wondering what kind of wildlife might be lurking in the refuge Hector Huggins had created.

  I calmed my nerves by focusing on the well. I examined the wellhead’s smooth river stones, the shingled roof, the crank, the spindle, the lid, and the wooden posts, but nothing obvious presented itself. I removed the lid and bent over the well, as if I were making a wish, but though I shone my light up and down inside the well, I saw nothing that looked like a recording device.

  Stymied, I straightened impatiently, bashed my head on the oak bucket, and gritted my teeth to keep myself from saying words I didn’t wish to have recorded. I rubbed the rising bump on my head vigorously, then froze to stare, transfixed, as the flashlight’s wavering beam caught a black gleam coming from deep within a split that ran the length of the right-hand post. I steadied the flashlight, leaned closer to the post, and saw that a black-coated wire had been cunningly inserted into the split.

  I placed the flashlight on the lip of the well, pulled the multi-tool from my pocket, opened its longest blade, and working my way upward, used it to tease the wire from its hiding place. When I’d loosened as much of the wire as I could reach, I pulled the rest of it free from the post with a gentle tug and watched as a microphone tumbled from a notch at the top of the post to swing like a pendulum from the end of the wire. I could hardly believe my eyes.

  I left the microphone dangling and used the multi-tool’s blade to chip away the mortar at the base of the post. It took me less than a minute to lay bare a tiny transmitter. My sense of disbelief gave way to outrage as one thought seared across my mind.

  Jack MacBride was the puppeteer.

  Jack had led Bree and me to the back garden. Jack had pulled the curtain of ivy back to reveal the wishing well to us. Jack had “accidentally” told Peggy Taxman about my wish, knowing full well that she would spread the news throughout Finch. Jack had lured the villagers to the well, listened to them, laughed at them.

  I didn’t care why he’d done it. I didn’t care whether he’d felt an Australian’s need to take a dig at the old country or whether he’d wished to punish my neighbors and me for ignoring his uncle or whether it was simply a young man’s sick and twisted idea of a joke. His betrayal of our trust had been unconscionable.

  I yanked the wire out of the transmitter. No longer afraid to speak, I slipped the multi-tool into my pocket, picked up the flashlight, and turned to face Ivy Cottage.

  “Where there’s a transmitter,” I muttered, “there must be a receiver.”

  The back door was unlocked. I let myself into the kitchen and panned the flashlight slowly around the room. It struck me as an unlikely listening post. Sally Pyne, Miranda Morrow, Mr. Barlow, Emma Harris, Elspeth Binney, Opal Taylor, Millicent Scroggins, and Selena Buxton—each had stood in Jack’s kitchen at one time or another and Bree and I had spent hours there, washing up, taking tea breaks, chatting cozily with Jack and with each other. Too many people had passed through the kitchen. It was too public a space for the kind of covert operation Jack had conducted.

  The double parlor, too, was a public space, I thought as I stepped into it. It was the room one had to move through to reach the kitchen, the back door, and the wishing well. As such, it wouldn’t work well as a lair. I looked into the rooms opposite the double parlor and saw that they were empty, as if Mr. Huggins, the childless bachelor, had found no use for them.

  I went upstairs. I’d never before climbed the stairs
in Ivy Cottage. I doubted that anyone other than Jack had gone up there since his uncle’s death. The cottage’s upstairs rooms were private, off limits to visitors, and at least two of them overlooked the back garden.

  A narrow corridor lined with four doors, two on each side, bisected the second floor. I didn’t have a good reason to look into every room, but my dander was up and I was determined to leave no stone unturned.

  I opened the first door to the right and saw what amounted to a small and meticulously arranged freshwater fishing museum. The flashlight’s beam illuminated fishing poles in fan-shaped racks, waders, long-handled nets, wicker creels, tackle boxes, and a workbench set up for the fine art of fly-tying. I recalled the many hours Mr. Huggins had spent fishing from atop the humpbacked bridge and closed the door gently.

  The first door on the left opened into a sparely furnished bedroom. Jack’s backpack stood in one corner and Joey the baby kangaroo sat on the low table beside the single bed. It hurt my heart to see Joey, because the little guy reminded me of why I’d liked Jack so much. I found it difficult to believe that a man who cherished a bright-eyed, reddish-brown kangaroo—an Australian Reginald—could treat decent people with such contempt.

  “Your daddy’s been very naughty,” I said, “but I know that you, at least, will forgive him.”

  I gave Joey a wan smile and left the bedroom to continue my search. The room next door to the fishing museum appeared to be a library, though the books were strangely uniform in size and identically bound in black leather. Each volume had a different year stamped in gold on the spine. I assumed they were records of Mr. Huggins’s rod-and-reel adventures and closed the door.

  The second room on the left was the room I was looking for, though it turned out to hold more than I bargained for. I expected to find a radio receiver and I found one amid a jumble of electronic devices strewn across a long table beneath a window that overlooked the wishing well.

  I did not expect to find cork-lined walls upon which were pinned glossy real estate flyers, copies of The Coneyham Express and Cozy Cookery, menus from the tearoom and the pub, sale notices from the Emporium, St. George’s parish magazines, the roster for the flower arrangements in the church, and a multitude of flyers announcing the village fete, the flower show, the harvest festival, the sheep dog trials, and events at the Anscombe Riding Center.

  There were photographs as well, hundreds of photographs, taken from many angles and in every season, of the tearoom, the Emporium, the greengrocer’s shop, Mr. Barlow’s garage, Peacock’s pub, St. George’s church, Wysteria Lodge, the war memorial, the humpbacked bridge, the Little Deeping River, Anscombe Manor, Bree’s redbrick house, my father-in-law’s wrought-iron gates, my honey-colored cottage, and seemingly every dwelling place in Finch.

  Those photographs were vaguely unsettling, but they weren’t nearly as disturbing as the slightly blurred shots of people I recognized, people I saw nearly every day of my life, not only my friends and my neighbors but my husband, my sons, and myself. My hand trembled as I moved the flashlight’s beam from one shadowy image to the next and I felt a growing sense of unease that teetered perilously close to horror.

  “Hello, Lori.”

  I wheeled around and pointed my shaking flashlight at a face that had in recent weeks become very familiar.

  “Come to make another wish?” said Jack.

  Twenty-five

  Jack reached for a wall switch and turned on an overhead light. He was dressed in an open-necked white cotton shirt, his cargo trousers, and his hiking sandals. His golden hair was gorgeously tousled and his sky-blue eyes were amused.

  I tightened my grip on my flashlight and stepped back, my heart pounding.

  “I thought you were at the party,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “I was,” he said. He thrust his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Bree said she was sick of the sight of me, though, so I left.” He smiled. “If I’d known I’d be entertaining a guest—”

  “Why is Bree sick of the sight of you?” I broke in. I gestured angrily at the cork-lined walls. “Did she find out about this?”

  “No,” said Jack. “She found out about something else. It’s my own fault, really. I should’ve known I’d be recognized.”

  “Recognized?” I repeated. “What are you talking about?”

  I jumped sideways as he came toward me, but he did nothing more than grab a wheeled office chair from its place near the electronics-strewn table and roll it closer to me.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “This could take a while.”

  He sat on the floor, with his back against one of the few blank spots on the walls. With his legs crossed at the ankles and his hands folded loosely in his lap, he looked as threatening as a surfer waiting for a wave. I switched off my flashlight and sank onto the office chair.

  “Do you remember the first time you came to Ivy Cottage?” he asked. “I told you and Bree about Uluru and the conservation work I did there.”

  “You eradicated invasive plants,” I said. “I remember.”

  “Then you probably remember the rest of it,” he said, “the projects that took me to Mount Tongariro, Fox Glacier, the Waipoua Kauri Forest, and the Kaikoura coast in New Zealand.”

  “I haven’t forgotten any of it,” I said, “but I don’t see what it has to do with—”

  “It has to do with why Bree’s brassed off with me,” he interrupted. “I’m trying to explain.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks,” he said. He bent his legs, rested his wrists on his knees, and laced his fingers together. “It’s all true, what I told you, but I didn’t quite tell you everything. I didn’t simply work on the projects I mentioned. I designed them.” He ducked his head, as if he were embarrassed. “The fact is, Lori, I’m a bit of a prodigy. I could afford to leave home when Dad cut me off because I’d already received a full scholarship to university along with a generous living allowance and a research grant. By the time I was twenty, I’d earned a whole string of degrees. I’ve spent the past five years doing field work and making a name for myself as an eminent ecologist.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “You told Bree and me that you were broke. You told us you were too broke to visit your uncle. Ecologists get paid, don’t they?”

  “Most of my personal income is tied to grants,” he explained. “I can’t use it for private jaunts around the globe, and I plow what I earn from writing or appearance fees back into my projects. I’ve never been in it for the money, Lori.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re a child prodigy who became an eminent ecologist. Why didn’t you just say so?”

  “How?” he asked in return. “What was I supposed to say? How do you do, I’m Jack MacBride, the brightest bloke on the block?” He ducked his head again and this time he was actually blushing. “I reckoned if it came up, it came up, but until then, I’d just be Jack, the bloke from Oz.”

  “You sound like Henry Cook,” I said. “He just wants to be the chap in the tearoom who tells funny stories.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for maintaining a low profile,” said Jack. “People treat you differently when they find out you’re well known.”

  “Was it Peter or Cassie who recognized you?” I asked and when Jack looked up in surprise, I said, “It must have been one or the other. No one else at the party knows enough about your field to pick an eminent ecologist out of a crowd.”

  “They both recognized me,” he said. “They’d seen a documentary film I was in and they’d read articles I’d written for various academic journals. They read my blog as well.” He shook his head. “Emma told me they were involved in conservation work, but if I’d known they were such big fans, I wouldn’t have gone to the party.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “You’re not ashamed of what you do, are you?”

  “No,” he replied, “but I would have found another way to break it to Bree. I was working my way up to it, but something kept holding me back
.”

  “Natural diffidence,” I said. “It can be a major handicap.”

  “You’re telling me,” he said feelingly. “She didn’t like hearing about my achievements from someone else. She accused me of being dishonest, disingenuous, and deceitful, which mean the same thing but pack a punch when they’re strung together. That’s when I left the party.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “But Jack . . . If Bree’s upset with you for being too modest to tell her the truth about yourself, how do you think she’ll feel when she finds out about . . .” I swept an arm through the air to indicate the bizarre collage surrounding us.

  “No worries,” he said, brightening. “Bree knows all about Uncle Hector’s project. I showed it to her last week.”

  “Uncle Hector’s project?” I echoed uncomprehendingly.

  “That’s right,” he said and got to his feet. “Come with me.”

  I followed him across the corridor and into the room that resembled a library. He strode to the far end of the room and lit a lamp on a wooden desk. Apart from the lamp, the desk held a mug filled with pens and pencils, a laptop computer, the black box I’d last seen in the trunk of Jack’s rental car, and a stack of typing paper covered with neat, precise handwriting.

  “Uncle Hector’s memoir,” said Jack, placing a hand on the stack of paper. “I’m transcribing it. Market Town Books no longer accepts handwritten manuscripts.”

  “Market Town Books?” I said faintly.

  “Uncle Hector based his memoir on forty years’ worth of notes,” said Jack. He pulled one of the black-leather-bound books from a shelf, and riffled through it to show me page after page filled with the same precise handwriting.

  I looked from the volume in Jack’s hand to the rows of books lining the walls.

  “How could one man have so much to say about fishing?” I asked.

  “The memoir isn’t about fishing,” said Jack. “It’s about Finch.” He returned the book to the shelf and half sat on the edge of the desk. “My uncle loved this village. He spent forty years watching, listening, and learning about everyone who lived here. And he wrote everything down.” Jack nodded at the bookshelves. “In there you’ll find the winners of every competition held in Finch over the past four decades. Uncle Hector recorded the runners-up and the losers as well, but he also described each person’s reaction to triumph or failure and how those reactions rippled through the community and influenced relationships for months, sometimes years, on end.”