Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea

by Nancy Atherton

  “What if Abaddon doesn’t come through the village?” Bill countered. “What if he comes over the hills or through the woods?”

  “How would he know where to find us?” I asked.

  “Lori,” Bill said softly, “he’s already found us.”

  Time seemed to stop. My mind went blank. Although Bill had spoken quietly, his words seemed to echo through the room. He reached once more into his briefcase and handed me a sheaf of papers. As I leafed through them, my hands began to tremble.

  They were photographs, electronically transmitted digital images of the apple tree in our back garden, the rose trellis framing our front door, the beech hedge flanking our graveled drive. That the pictures had been taken with some sort of telephoto lens afforded me no comfort at all. The images were far too personal. There was one of me, sitting on the bamboo chaise longue beneath the apple tree, and one of Annelise, standing in the doorway of the solarium, but the final image was the most terrifying of all.

  “The twins,” I whispered. “Will and Rob, on their ponies . . .”

  Bill moved from his chair to the ottoman and slid the photographs from my unresisting grasp. He dropped them onto the floor and took my hands in his.

  “The photographs came this morning, with the message you’ve just read,” he said. “As soon as they arrived, I sent a security team up from London, to keep an eye on you and the boys while I met with the chief superintendent.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone,” I said.

  “I told them to keep a low profile,” said Bill. “I wanted them to stay in the background until I had a chance to tell you what was happening. They’ve been patrolling the woods, the hills, the lane.They’ll live here, in the cottage, while we’re gone, to make sure nothing happens to it.”

  “‘All that you love will perish,’” I repeated numbly. “I suppose that includes the cottage.”

  “We can’t afford to interpret it in any other way,” said Bill.

  “Where do you want us to go?” I asked.

  “Boston,” he said promptly. “You can stay with my father.”

  “Boston?” I exclaimed, recoiling. “Are you crazy? You know how much I love your father, Bill, but I am not going to Boston. There’d be a whole ocean between us, and the Concorde’s not flying anymore. If something happened to you, it’d take me forever to get back.”

  Bill managed a weary smile. “It was worth a try. But I knew you’d hate the idea of going to Boston, so I’ve come up with another plan, one that’ll keep you on this side of the Atlantic.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” he replied, and when I opened my mouth to protest, he cut me off. “I’m sorry, Lori, but you’re a chatterbox. One slip of your tongue and the news would be all over Finch in five minutes. Our neighbors may be well intentioned, but they’re addicted to gossip. A casual conversation in the tearoom or the pub would lead Abaddon straight to you. The fewer people who know where you and the boys are, the safer you’ll be, so for now I’m keeping your destination to myself.You’ll have to trust me on this, love.”

  Bill gripped my hands more firmly, as if bracing himself for a wave of entirely justified wifely hysterics, but I didn’t feel hysterical. I felt cold and still and extremely focused. My husband had shouldered an unimaginably heavy burden. I had no intention of adding to it.

  “Right,” I said, and got to my feet.

  “Where are you going?” Bill asked.

  “To pack.”

  Two

  The rest of the afternoon flew by in a flurry of activity. Since it was impossible to select appropriate clothing for an unknown destination, Annelise and I crammed everything from snowsuits to bathing suits into suitcases. And since we didn’t know how long we’d be away, there were quite a few suitcases.

  The only thing I knew for certain about our secret hideaway was that it was child-friendly, and the only reason I knew that was because Bill assured Will and Rob that there was no need for them to pack every toy they owned, since there would be plenty of things for them to play with where they were going.

  At some point Bill called me downstairs to introduce me to Ivan Anton, the head of the security detail from London.The broad-shouldered young man declined my invitation to dinner, telling me that he and his team would be spending the night in the field, as well as on the hillsides and at strategically placed locations along the narrow lane.

  “We’ve set up a secure perimeter around the cottage,” Ivan informed me. “No one will get past us, Mrs. Willis.”

  “Shepherd,” I corrected automatically. It was a common mistake. I hadn’t changed my last name when I’d married Bill Willis. “I’m Lori Shepherd. But call me Lori. Everyone does.”

  Ivan nodded. “You can rely on me and my team, Lori. We’ll look after your home as if it were our own.” He touched his fingers to his brow in a casual salute and went back to patrolling his secure perimeter.

  I went back upstairs, to continue packing.

  Stanley—wisest of cats—decided to keep clear of our flying feet by curling up in Bill’s favorite armchair in the living room. He remained there until dinnertime, when he joined us in the dining room, where he did his utmost to persuade us that the veal-and-ham pie had been baked exclusively for him.

  After dinner we gathered around the kitchen table for a spirited game of Go Fish that lasted well past the twins’ normal bedtime. When the game ended, Annelise went upstairs to her room to pack her own bags, and Bill went up, too, to put the boys to bed. Stanley went with them—he was, for all intents and purposes, Bill’s cat—but I didn’t intrude. I knew I’d have the twins with me, wherever we went, but Bill didn’t know when he’d see them again. I wanted to give them as much father-and-sons time together as possible.

  I put the playing cards away, emptied the dishwasher, and taped notes to the kitchen cabinets, to help Ivan Anton and his team find whatever they might need to make their own meals. It was approaching ten o’clock when I returned to the study.

  The lights above the mantel shelf were still lit, but I put a match to the logs in the fireplace anyway. When the flames were leaping, I took from the bookshelves a blue-leather-bound book and settled with it in the armchair I’d occupied earlier, during my disquieting conversation with Bill.

  The blue book was a journal of sorts. I’d inherited it from my late mother’s closest friend, an Englishwoman named Dimity Westwood. My mother and Dimity had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War. Although they never saw each other again after my mother returned to the States at the conclusion of the war, they maintained their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across the Atlantic.

  My mother treasured her correspondence with Dimity. Her letters were her refuge, her favorite escape from the routines and responsibilities of everyday life, and she kept them a closely guarded secret. I knew nothing about the letters, or her friendship with Dimity, until after both she and Dimity were dead.

  Until then I’d known Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, a fairy-tale figure from my childhood, the main character in a series of bedtime stories invented by my mother. The truth about Aunt Dimity had come as quite a shock, as had the news that my fictional heroine had bequeathed to me a very real fortune along with the honey-colored cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious cache of letters, and a journal bound in blue leather.

  It had come as a far greater shock to discover that Dimity, though deceased, had not altogether departed the cottage. Despite having what some might consider a significant handicap, she continued to visit her old home. She was far too civilized to announce her presence by moaning in the chimneys or hovering in a spectral mist at the foot of my bed. Instead, she wrote to me, as she had written to my mother, continuing the correspondence not in letters, but in the blue journal.

  Whenever I opened the journal, Dimity’s handwriting appeared, an old-fashioned copperplate taught in the village school at a time
when indoor plumbing was an uncommon luxury. I had no idea how Dimity managed to bridge the gap between life and afterlife—she wasn’t too clear on the mechanics of it either—but the how had long since ceased to concern me. My friendship with Aunt Dimity may have been the most surprising of surprise presents, but it was a gift beyond price, and I accepted it gratefully.

  The fire crackled and snapped as I curled my legs beneath me in the armchair. I glanced at the diamond-paned window over the old oak desk, half expecting to see the king of the bottomless pit leering at me through the fluttering ivy, and opened the blue journal.

  “Dimity?” I said, and felt a knot of tension ease when the familiar lines of royal-blue ink curled and looped reassuringly across the blank page.

  Good evening, my dear. How was your day?

  “Well . . .” I pursed my lips judiciously. “If you leave out the part where Bill, the boys, and I are being chased from our home by a homicidal maniac who wants to erase our names from the book of life forever”—I took a breath—“it wasn’t too bad.”

  Excuse me?

  “It’s true, Dimity,” I said. “Incredible, but true. Some looney’s been e-mailing death threats to Bill for the past few weeks. This morning he expanded the threat to include me and the boys, so Bill’s sending us into hiding while he stays in London to work with Chief Superintendent Wesley Yarborough of Scotland Yard.”

  Good grief.Who on earth would wish to murder Bill?

  “A former client, we think,” I said. “He calls himself Abaddon.”

  Ah. The angel of the bottomless pit. The Book of Revelations, alas, provides a wealth of unsavory imagery for the unhinged imagination, and I think we can safely assume that Abaddon is unhinged. Dissatisfied clients don’t, as a rule, express their displeasure by threatening to kill one and one’s family.

  “It’s a first for Bill,” I acknowledged. “When his clients get mad, they get mad at each other, not at him. They may blame Uncle Hans for leaving ten thousand marks to a shelter for homeless dachshunds, but they don’t blame Bill for drawing up Uncle Hans’s will.”

  Abaddon’s evidently blaming Bill for something. It may be a case of shooting the messenger, if you’ll pardon the unfortunate turn of phrase.What does Bill intend to do in London?

  “He’s going to help a team of detectives from Scotland Yard,” I said. “They plan to go through his work files, to see if they can identify a likely suspect. Bill’s not too keen on the idea—the files are highly confidential—but he can’t think of a better place to start. He still can’t believe that someone he knows—or knew—wants him dead.”

  Poor man. I do sympathize.When my life was threatened, I found it extremely difficult to—

  “When was your life threatened?” I interrupted, startled.

  I believe I told you once of a series of poison-pen letters I received when I was working in London?

  “Yes,” I said. “You told me about them while we were staying at Hailesham House, when Simon Elstyn started getting those creepy anonymous notes. You said that a woman who worked for you, an assistant you trusted, was responsible. But you never mentioned death threats.”

  I didn’t want you to worry retroactively. After all, it happened a very long time ago. Nevertheless, I can remember without effort the overriding sense of disbelief I experienced when I realized that someone, some faceless monster, wished to end my life. Even after the culprit had been apprehended, the situation continued to seem . . . surreal.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “It’s the kind of thing that happens to other people. If I didn’t have a pile of suitcases in the front hall to anchor me, I’d still doubt that it was happening to us. I’m not used to being hated. Okay,” I admitted, after a moment’s consideration, “Sally Pyne was annoyed with me when I said that her flower arrangement in the baptismal font at St. George’s looked top-heavy, but she didn’t hate me.”

  Nor could anyone who knows you.Would it help you to think of Abaddon’s hatred as abstract rather than personal?

  “Nope,” I said. “I feel as if I have a bull’s-eye on my forehead, Dimity. It doesn’t get much more personal than that.”

  No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.When do you leave?

  “Tomorrow morning,” I replied.

  Will you be safe here tonight?

  “Presumably,” I said, and told her about Ivan Anton and his crew of security specialists. “And before you ask,” I continued, “I don’t know where we’re going. Bill won’t tell me, because he’s afraid I’ll slip up and tell someone else and then—Finch being the gossip capital of the world—our secret location won’t be a secret anymore.”

  Your openness is one of your most endearing qualities, Lori, but it’s a bit of a liability when it comes to the keeping of secrets. I must say that you’re responding to the situation with remarkable tranquillity.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” I said. “I should be tearing my hair out right about now, but I don’t have the energy. There’s been too much to do. On top of the packing, I’ve had to make at least a thousand phone calls to cancel this and reschedule that. I’ll tell you, Dimity, you never realize how complicated your life is until you’re forced to rearrange it.”

  Very true.

  “I’ve penciled in a fit of hysteria for tomorrow evening, though,” I added. “I think I’ll owe it to myself by then, don’t you?”

  Absolutely. I’m sure it will be most cathartic. Have you told Rob and Will about Abaddon?

  “Bill told them that we’re going away because a bad man wants to hurt us.” I shook my head. “I didn’t want to tell them anything, but Bill convinced me that they’d be safer if they were aware of the danger.”

  How did they react?

  “Like five-year-olds,” I said with a wry smile. “They went into their twin mind-meld and came out with: ‘Don’t worry, Daddy, we’ll be careful. May we bring our cricket bats?’ ”

  Splendid. They clearly have complete confidence in your ability to protect them, which is as it should be.Will Annelise accompany you?

  “No,” I replied. “It was a tough decision, and Annelise isn’t happy about it—she feels as if she’s abandoning us in our hour of need—but it’s the right thing to do. We don’t want to drag her any deeper into our troubles than she already is. Bill and I decided that her family’s farm would be the safest place for her until Abaddon’s locked up.”

  I agree.The Sciaparelli clan knows how to look after its own. At times like this, it’s extremely useful for a young woman to have seven muscular and highly protective brothers nearby.What about Stanley? The cats I’ve known haven’t been terribly fond of travel. Are you going to bring him with you? Or will Mr. Anton take care of him?

  “Stanley’s going into protective custody at Anscombe Manor,” I explained. Anscombe Manor was the sprawling home of our closest friends, Emma and Derek Harris, and of their stable master, Kit Smith. “Emma’s promised to keep an eye on Stanley, and Kit won’t let any harm come to the boys’ ponies.”

  I suspect that Kit will sleep in the stalls, armed with a pitchfork, until the danger passes.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” I said. “Kit’s a man of peace, except when it comes to people who hurt animals.”

  Well.You seem to have everything in hand.

  “Yep.” I nodded.

  You’ve rearranged your affairs with great composure.

  “That’s right.”

  The packing is finished, the telephone calls have been made, and everything else has been properly seen to.You’ve been energetic and sensible and, most important, well organized. I applaud you.

  “Thank you,” I said, with a little half bow.

  Now, my dear child, don’t you think it’s time for you to tell me what’s really going on inside that head of yours?

  I studied the question in silence, then lifted my gaze to look slowly around the room. I couldn’t count the number of hours I’d spent in the study since the cottage had become my home. I was intimately f
amiliar with each floorboard’s creak, each shadowy corner, each whisper of wind in the chimney. As I ran my hand along the armchair’s smooth leather, I recalled that I’d been sitting in the same chair the first time I’d opened Aunt Dimity’s remarkable journal.

  I closed my eyes and let my mind travel through the cottage’s other rooms, past the silver-framed family photographs, the piles of stuffed animals, the scrawled notes taped to the living room’s mantel shelf—reminders of events and appointments that had seemed important six hours ago but that had since become wholly irrelevant. I saw with my mind’s eye the ink-stained cushion on the window seat beneath the living room’s bow window, the scratches on the legs of the dining-room table, the overflowing coatrack in the front hall. I saw the twins asleep in their beds, nestled beneath quilts sewn by the village’s quilting club, and Bill standing over them, with cold fear in his eyes.

  “What’s really going on inside my head?” I said softly, and looked into the fire’s quivering flames. “I’m being terrorized by someone who wants to kill my husband, my children, and me. I’m being forced to leave the place I love above all others on this earth, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back. I’m keeping calm for Bill’s sake and the boys’, Dimity, but if you want to know the truth about how I’m feeling, here it is: I want to camouflage my face and go out there in the dark with a machete and a machine gun and a flamethrower. I want to find this evil creep and shoot him and stab him and stomp on him and cut him into little pieces and burn him to ashes and send his ashes into space so they’d never pollute any air I might breathe.” I paused to let my thundering heart quieten. “I guess you could say that I’m having a slight problem with anger management.”

  To the contrary, my dear, I would say that you’re managing your anger exceptionally well.You haven’t by any chance acquired a flamethrower, have you?

  I astonished myself by laughing out loud. “Of course not, Dimity! I haven’t had the time. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with a flamethrower if I had one.”