Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well

by Nancy Atherton

  “Good grief,” I said, letting my gaze travel over the gold numbers stamped on each black-leather spine.

  “He wrote about his neighbors’ habits, their passions, their pet peeves,” Jack went on. “He wrote miles of dialogue to capture their speech patterns. He studied the buildings, too, and he found out what he could about their histories.”

  “You told us he wrote about nature,” I said reproachfully.

  “He did,” said Jack. “Almost every page contains an observation about Finch’s ecosystem. You’re never in doubt about the season because he wove his knowledge of nature into the ongoing narrative. He took photographs as well. You’ve seen a small portion of them in the other room.”

  “When did your uncle take the photographs?” I asked. “I don’t recall ever seeing him with a camera.”

  Jack folded his arms and asked quietly, “How often did you see him at all?”

  I dropped my gaze.

  “Not often,” I admitted. “Not even when he was right in front of me. Your uncle didn’t stand out in a crowd, Jack. He didn’t even stand out on his own.” I thought of Bill’s description of Mr. Huggins as a wallpaper man, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words aloud.

  “You don’t have to be the life of the party to have a good time,” said Jack. “My uncle was too reserved to jump onto the dance floor, but he admired those who were brave enough to throw themselves into the dance.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

  “Uncle Hector was afraid that Finch would one day change beyond all recognition,” said Jack. “He saw it happening all over England—real communities becoming pseudo-villages for holiday makers or, worse, disappearing into the maw of bloody awful housing estates. He wanted to capture a world he loved before it vanished. He was almost relieved when he found out that the village would outlive him.”

  “Was he . . . ill?” I asked softly.

  “A year ago, Uncle Hector was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor,” Jack replied. “No one could tell him how long he had to live, so he got going straightaway on two new projects.” Jack tapped the manuscript. “He distilled his life’s work into one volume and he began to create a very special going-away gift for his neighbors. He asked me to complete both projects if he died before they were done. I promised him I would.” He stood. “Let’s go back to the other room, Lori.”

  We returned to the room with the cork-lined walls and I sat once again on the office chair, turning it to follow Jack as he crossed to the window to look down on the back garden.

  “The well sparked his big idea,” he said. “It had always been there, but Uncle Hector made the plaque that turned an ordinary well into a wishing well.”

  “Speak and your wish will be granted,” I said, then listened intently while Jack described the rest of his uncle’s preparations.

  Mr. Huggins had used his in-depth knowledge of the villagers to make highly educated guesses about the wishes they would make, but he’d installed the listening device as a backup, in case one or two of his neighbors surprised him. He’d also installed a video camera in the well’s shingled roof.

  “Uncle Hector added the camera for my benefit,” said Jack. “I might not recognize voices, especially if people spoke in whispers, but he was fairly sure I’d be able to put names to faces.” He nodded toward the wall of photos.

  “I understand the mechanics,” I said, “but I don’t understand how your uncle made so many wishes come true.”

  “He turned to his clients,” said Jack, “and he asked them for a few favors.”

  “What clients?” I asked.

  “My uncle was a senior partner in an accounting firm,” Jack informed me.

  “The accounting firm in Upper Deeping,” I said as comprehension dawned, “whose clients lived or had lived in or in the vicinity of Upper Deeping.”

  “That’s right.” Jack returned to his spot on the floor and sat with his back to the wall. “Uncle Hector’s clients trusted him, relied on him, were grateful to him. Dabney Holdstrom, Gilbert Hartley, Tim Coneyham, Arty Barnes, and Beverley St. John were more than happy to repay him for his years of faithful service, especially after they learned that he was dying.”

  I put a hand to my forehead as Jack reeled off the by now familiar names, then motioned for him to go on.

  “When someone made a wish,” he said, “I’d contact the appropriate client and he’d follow the instructions Uncle Hector had left for him.”

  Dabney Holdstrom had taken time off from his job at Cozy Cookery magazine, loosened the exhaust pipe on his Jaguar E-Type, and driven to Finch, where he’d “discovered” Mr. Barlow, Sally Pyne, and Opal Taylor. As president and owner of Market Town Books, Gilbert Hartley had hired Jemma Renshawe to photograph the villagers for a forthcoming book. Tim Coneyham had slipped the insert into The Coneyham Express, Arty Barnes had offered Henry Cook a one-night stand at the comedy club, and Beverley St. John, who’d kept Hector Huggins apprised of Peter and Cassie’s employment situation, had written to Peter to inform him of Emma’s plight.

  “When Dabney Holdstrom came here,” I said suddenly, “he didn’t come to make a wish in the wishing well. He came to meet you.”

  “He shouldn’t have,” said Jack. “But I’m glad he did. It was a pleasure to meet one of Uncle Hector’s friends. Bree and I met Tim Coneyham, too, when we were looking for birdbaths in Upper Deeping. Uncle Hector paid him what the antique locomotive was worth, of course, so Tim could offer it to George Wetherhead at a knockdown price. As for Gilbert Hartley . . .”

  Hector Huggins had paid Gilbert Hartley in advance to publish his memoir and to illustrate it with the photos Mr. Huggins had taken of Finch’s environs as well as the photos Jemma Renshawe would take of the villagers.

  “My uncle wasn’t happy with the snaps he’d taken of his neighbors,” Jack explained. “He could photograph the churchyard, the river, or the bridge at his leisure, but he had to grab his portraits on the fly. He hoped a professional photographer would do a better job.”

  “Have you seen Jemma’s photographs?” I asked doubtfully.

  “No, but Gilbert Hartley has,” said Jack. “Apparently, Elspeth Binney rang him this afternoon to ask if her niece had understood the assignment correctly. Gilbert had a little chat with Jemma and she agreed to provide him with a set of portraits that were less, um, experimental.”

  “Thank heavens,” I said. “Elspeth would have had to leave Finch if Jemma’s original shots had been published.” I paused to review what Jack had told me so far and realized that he still had some explaining to do. “What about the Asazuki? I assume you put it in Charles and Grant’s shed after Charles made the wish your uncle predicted he would make, but where did the painting come from?”

  “It was one of Uncle Hector’s most prized possessions,” said Jack. “He bought it from a gallery in Upper Deeping years ago. The owner was one of his clients.”

  “Old Mr. Selwyn,” I said, “of Selwyn’s gallery on Summer Street.”

  Jack’s eyebrows rose.

  “Charles gets the credit, not me,” I said quickly. “He tracked the painting to Selwyn’s gallery. He’s an art dealer. It’s what he does.”

  “Uncle Hector knew Charles and Grant would appreciate the Asazuki,” said Jack. “It used to hang above the fireplace downstairs. Uncle Hector said it captured the spirit of the carp.”

  “A painting only a fisherman could love,” I murmured. I’d missed the connection between Mr. Huggins’s avocation and his taste in art, but Aunt Dimity hadn’t. “What about Peggy’s wish? Did you make the fake real estate flyer?”

  “Uncle Hector made the flyer,” said Jack, “but I made sure it reached Peggy.”

  “Did your uncle invent the Troy real estate agency, too?” I asked.

  “It was his little joke,” said Jack. “Hector, the warrior prince in Greek mythology, was from Troy.”

  “Koi, Troy,” I said under my breath. Aunt Dimity hadn’t only connected th
e fisherman to the fish painting, she’d linked Mr. Huggins to the birthplace of his Trojan namesake as well. I suddenly felt dumber than a doorstop, which may explain why I spoke sharply to Jack. “It was a rotten trick to play on Peggy. Your uncle pretended to grant her wish when he knew all along it wouldn’t come true.”

  “My uncle wasn’t attempting to grant Peggy’s wish,” said Jack. “He wanted to grant Jasper’s.”

  “I don’t see how you’re going to make that happen,” I said. “Jasper hasn’t made a wish.”

  “Jasper Taxman may not have spoken his wish to the wishing well,” said Jack, “but he muttered it many times at the Emporium, when Peggy was out of earshot. Uncle Hector heard him.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said slowly, as something Jasper had said returned to me. “I may have heard him, too. Jasper told me that, if he had made a wish, it would have been for his wife to be content with what she has.”

  “You and Uncle Hector heard the same thing,” said Jack. “Uncle Hector decided that the only way to grant Jasper’s wish was to give Peggy the tearoom so she could see for herself that it was too much for her.” Jack grinned. “I have to hand it to my uncle. He knew exactly what would happen. He knew Sally’s success would ruffle Peggy’s feathers, just as he knew that Peggy’s domineering personality would cloud her judgment.”

  “Peggy saw what she wanted to see on the flyer,” I put in, “and Sally was too angry to double-check Peggy’s so-called facts. If Sally had taken the time to make one phone call to her landlord, she would have realized that her building wasn’t for sale.”

  “Instead, Sally stomped off in a huff, giving Peggy the chance to make a shambles of her brief tenure as a pastry chef,” said Jack. “Jasper’s wish has come true, by the way. I overheard him chatting with Bill tonight. Peggy has given up her expansionist dreams and will henceforth focus her energy on improving the Emporium, the greengrocer’s shop, and the post office.”

  “Lucky old post office,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But what about Sally? Has she spoken with the landlord?”

  “She has,” said Jack. “More importantly, she’s spoken with Henry.”

  “And?” I said impatiently.

  “And she will begin baking her fantastic pastries again as soon as the new oven is installed,” said Jack. “Once Henry finishes cleaning up the mess Peggy left behind, he’ll return to his role as the chap who tells funny stories in the tearoom.”

  “No wonder Bill sounded so happy when he called me from the party,” I said. “He knows where his next jelly doughnut is coming from. Did Sally or Henry mention their wedding? Is the church wedding back on?”

  “It is,” said Jack. “I can’t guarantee fine weather or control the guests’ behavior, but after everything that’s happened, I think Selena Buxton will regard a wedding at St. George’s as a wish granted.”

  I smiled and we sat in silence until another gap in the puzzle occurred to me.

  “What about Millicent’s back tooth?” I said. “And my rant against the rain? Your uncle’s encyclopedic knowledge of Finch wouldn’t have made it possible for him to grant those wishes.”

  “They were the most magnificent strokes of luck,” said Jack, “not least because of their timing. Your wish-come-true got the ball rolling and Millicent’s helped to speed it along. No one, not even Uncle Hector, could have orchestrated it. It was luck, pure luck.”

  “You call it luck,” I said glumly. “I call it a waste of a wish. I should have wished for . . . for . . .” My voice faded as a jolt of childish superstition overwhelmed my common sense. Since I couldn’t say my real wish aloud for fear of jinxing it, I invented another one on the spot. “I should have wished for the ability to aim a hammer accurately.”

  I spoke lightheartedly, but Jack began to apologize all over again, so I changed the subject.

  “Some villagers haven’t visited the wishing well yet,” I pointed out, thinking of Christine and Dick Peacock, among others.

  “I know,” said Jack. “Why do you think I asked you and Bree to examine the stonework so minutely? Why do you think I welcomed Emma’s master plan for the gardens? I was buying time. I wanted to give everyone a chance to make a wish. If we’d finished the gardens, I would have found something wrong with the cottage. I would have stayed until the last wish was granted, because that’s what Uncle Hector asked me to do.” He sighed. “But I don’t reckon I’ll get to see his plan through to the end.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You said it yourself when I drove you home from Uncle Hector’s funeral luncheon,” he replied. “There are no secrets in Finch. Now that you and Bree know the truth, you won’t be able to keep it to yourselves. One of you will come out with it accidentally and it’ll be all over the village before you can blink. Uncle Hector warned me about the village grapevine. He described it as the most efficient mode of communication known to humankind.” Jack shook his head sadly. “No, Lori, I reckon my wish-granting days are over.”

  “How close are you to finishing your work on the memoir?” I asked.

  “Pretty close,” he said.

  “If I were you, I’d spin it out for as long as I could,” I said. “Courtships take time, especially if a bloke is courting a girl as complicated as Bree.”

  Jack’s mouth fell open, then curled into a sheepish grin.

  “Noticed, did you?” he asked.

  “I’m not blind,” I retorted. “You’ve been courting her from day one, though I can’t imagine why. I haven’t forgotten the first time Bree and I came to lunch at Ivy Cottage. You laughed off her snotty comments and put up with her rudeness and turned the other cheek every time she gave you a verbal smack in the chops, despite the fact that you didn’t know her well enough to see through her tough-girl act. Why were you so nice to her when she was so mean to you?”

  Jack studied his hands for a moment, then gazed at me steadily.

  “You’re wrong when you say I didn’t know Bree,” he said quietly. “I’ve known her almost as long as you have. Uncle Hector told me about her in his letters. He told me about her drunken father and the misery he caused her. He told me how you found her in Queenstown and coaxed her into coming to England to meet her great-grandaunts before they died. He told me what it meant to her to lose them. He told me how fond she is of Mr. Barlow and how she teases Peggy Taxman and how she helped some little kids from Upper Deeping until they moved up north with their mum. Uncle Hector told me how much Bree depends on your friendship and how lonely, how very lonely she is in that big redbrick house.”

  I closed my eyes and smiled as the full impact of his words came home to me. “You loved Bree before you ever met her.”

  “It sounds crazy, I know,” he began, “but—”

  “It doesn’t sound crazy to me,” I interrupted, leaning toward him and returning his steady gaze. “I know from personal experience that it can happen. Ask Bill about it sometime. Ask him to tell you how he fell in love with me.”

  “I will,” said Jack, looking puzzled but willing to play along.

  “Did Uncle Hector tell you what wish Bree would make?” I asked. “Because if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say she’d wish to fall deeply in love with a man who loved her deeply. Simple as that. Complicated as that. Just that.”

  “She’s bloody annoyed with me at the moment,” Jack reminded me.

  “It’ll pass,” I said. “You know as well as I do that Bree can’t stay mad at you, and you know why. Take a lesson from your uncle, Jack. Reel her in slowly.”

  “Come to think of it,” said Jack, “I’m not as far along with the memoir as I thought I was and it looks as though the roof may need some major repairs.” He smiled. “I may be here for quite some time.”

  “Good man.” I gave him an approving nod and stood. “It’s time we were on our way, my friend.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked, getting to his feet.

  “To the party at Anscombe Manor,” I answered. “You’re going to tell everyone th
ere what you’ve told me here. Except the part about Bree. That’s between you and me.”

  “Do you think the villagers will be brassed off?” Jack asked.

  “Some of them might be, at first,” I said, “but in the long run they’ll be proud and pleased and grateful to you and your uncle.” I nodded toward the familiar faces gracing the cork-lined walls. “It’s not every village that has its own biographer.”

  Epilogue

  My Village by Hector Huggins was published in September, to general acclaim. The acclaim could be general because instead of publishing one copy, Market Town Books published a copy for every villager mentioned in it. Jack paid for the extra volumes out of the money his uncle left him, which turned out to be quite a tidy sum.

  Jemma Renshawe’s photographs had improved markedly when she’d stopped ambushing her subjects and started asking them how they wished to be portrayed. Sally and Henry had posed in front of the tearoom; Mr. Barlow, in front of his garage; Peggy and Jasper, halfway between the freshly painted Emporium and the greengrocer’s shop; the vicar and Lilian Bunting, on the steps of St. George’s Church.

  Charles and Grant had posed in front of their garden shed, with the Asazuki painting held between them, and the antique brass locomotive featured prominently in George Wetherhead’s portrait. Bree had chosen to be photographed standing behind her great-grandaunts’ headstone, smiling broadly, as if Ruth and Louise were standing beside her.

  No one looked demented.

  Much to Elspeth Binney’s relief, Jemma returned to Yorkshire as soon as she completed her assignment. Elspeth spent three days restoring order to her cottage, then resumed hosting the Handmaidens’ biweekly bridge nights. Though she still takes painting classes from Mr. Shuttleworth in Upper Deeping, she no longer yearns for the dubious privilege of living with an artist.