Aunt Dimity's Good Deed

by Nancy Atherton

  They also destroyed documents, I told myself. I looked up at the portrait, at Julia Louise’s high forehead and steady brown eyes, and noticed for the first time a certain hardness in the way her mouth was set. Julia Louise, I thought, had done a number of unpleasant things to promote her family’s interests. Had she stolen her ward’s property as well?

  She’d been gung-ho to move the firm to London. A building located near the Inns of Court would have proved a sore temptation. Had Julia Louise succumbed? Had she buried Sybella’s deed in the firm’s vast files and replaced it with a made-to-order copy?

  I felt my heart begin to race, and quickly gave myself a mental shake. I was arguing way ahead of the facts. Anthea hadn’t mentioned Sybella’s name, and none of papers suggested that Julia Louise had ever been anyone’s legal guardian. I pulled my gaze away from the portrait and reminded myself firmly that Nell’s belief in Sybella Markham was based on nothing more substantial than a hunch.

  Anthea shared Lucy’s low opinion of Julia Louise’s younger son. “Lord William, like my late husband, was a sneak. The moment his mother’s back was turned, he was off seducing the chambermaids.” She paused, as though she felt the need to clarify the point. “You see, it wasn’t the sex that appealed to Douglas so much as the sneaking around. I sometimes think he fancied himself a secret agent. It kept him from having to grow up, I suppose.”

  “Did Lord William seduce Sybella Markham?” Nell asked.

  I caught my breath. It was a frontal assault so bold that only Nell would have dared it.

  “Sybella Markham is a figment of poor Williston’s imagination,” Anthea said. “Although we all believe she’s based on his pretty, young wife.” That, too, seemed to remind her of her late husband, because she went on talking about him, as though she wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. “The thing that made Douglas’s affair with Sally the Slut so pathetic was that she was neither young nor pretty. A tomato on sticks, I promise you. And those eyes ...” She gave a theatrical shudder. “I’d always thought of brown eyes as warm, but hers were cold as ice and hard as flint.”

  I laid the deed aside, feeling as though I’d been yanked unceremoniously out of the past and thrust into the present. I’d heard those words before, and recently, too. “A hard-eyed hag?” I said slowly. “A little round dumpling of a woman?”

  “Oh, I like that.” Anthea smiled appreciatively. “Yes, perhaps ‘dumpling’ is more accurate than ’tomato.‘ After all, she used a dark-brown rinse to conceal her gray hair, not a ginger one.”

  Peg legs, no waist, dyed hair ... That was how Arthur had described the woman Gerald took to lunch at the Flamborough. Not in the first bloom of youth, Arthur had said, which she wouldn’t be if she already had gray hair when she’d been involved with Douglas. But why in God’s name would Gerald be keeping assignations with his late uncle’s old mistress?

  Anthea began to put the documents back into the box. “The great difference between Gerald and Douglas,” she said sadly, harking back to the discussion she’d begun with Swann, “is that Gerald’s lies have brought him no pleasure at all. I wish I knew why he felt they were necessary.” With a sigh, she closed the box. “Is there anything else I can show you?”

  “Thank you, no,” said Nell. “I think Bertie and I will go up now. It’s been a very full day.”

  “Lori?” said Anthea.

  I stood. “I’d like to get a breath of fresh air before I turn in, if that’s okay with you.”

  “A good idea,” Anthea said. “After that long nap, you may have some difficulty getting to sleep. But a breath of Yorkshire air is as good as a sleeping pill, they say. Would you like company?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “You go on up with Nell. I’ll just take a turn around the courtyard.”

  Five minutes later, I was in the front hall, clad in one of Anthea’s warm wool jackets and carrying a long-handled black flashlight that was heavy enough to use as a club. I bid Anthea, Nell, and Bertie good night, opened the door, and welcomed the slap of the cold wind across my face. I hoped it would slow my spinning mind.

  24.

  It was ten o‘clock at night and preposterously dark outside. Not a gleam leaked from the house’s heavily draped windows, and no security lamp flooded the courtyard with reassuring illumination. The moon and stars had been extinguished by clouds blown in on the wind sweeping down from the high moors, and the surrounding hills cut off what glow there might have been from neighboring farms or the village. My flashlight beam sliced through the darkness neatly, leaving oceans of inky blackness on either side.

  It was a noisy sort of darkness. Apart from the usual chorus of insects and the distant rustle of leaves on the forested hillsides, the wind whistled and moaned around the stone buildings, the horses snuffled and stamped, and the stable’s wide wooden door, left partly open, creaked on its hinges. The rhythmic squeak would drive me mad, I decided, and the draft couldn’t be doing the chestnut foal much good. With a groan, I put my head down, pulled my collar up, and crunched across the graveled courtyard to close the stable door.

  Wisps of hay sailing through the flashlight’s steady beam reminded me to keep it trained on the ground, lest I should encounter other, less pleasant reminders that horses had passed this way. I was within an arm’s length of the stable, and trying to picture Nell with a pitchfork in her soft, long-fingered hands, when the bay gelding’s braying whinny sent a sliver of ice down my spine and redoubled my determination to see to it that Anthea’s remaining darlings were securely shut up for the night.

  As I reached over to tug on the door handle, something darted between my legs, and I shrieked, dancing back into the courtyard. A sharp gust banged the door, snatched the scream from my lips, and whipped a plaintive mew past my ears. The beam from my flashlight bounced along the ground until it landed on a pair of green eyes glowing weirdly in a dainty, fuzzy, black-and-white face.

  “You fiend.” I clutched the front of my jacket and gulped for air as I watched the cat circle around me. “You nearly gave me a stroke,” I muttered, and was on the verge of laughing at my own taut nerves when the door rattled behind me and a hand clamped like a vise upon my shoulder.

  My mind went blank with terror, but my body went on autopilot. I’d been raised by a single mother on the west side of Chicago, and she’d drilled her precious daughter in self-defense. Nothing elegant or Asian, just your basic down-and-dirty street technique.

  I jammed my elbow backward and the handle of the flashlight went back with it. I heard an oomph, the vise released, and I sprinted, spraying gravel, for the house. I was two yards from the doorstep when my brain came back on-line and informed me that it knew who’d made that oomph.

  I skidded to a halt, and slowly turned. The adrenaline haze subsided as I cautiously retraced my steps across the courtyard to the spot where a hulking figure crouched, bent double, just outside the creaking door. As I approached, a palm went up to block the flashlight’s glare.

  “Would you point that damned thing somewhere else, please? You’ve already broken my ribs. There’s no need to blind me.”

  “Bill?” I said, in a tone of voice I’d been saving for a face-to-face encounter with Amelia Earhart.

  “No,” he wheezed. “It’s Jack the Ripper. Lucky thing you put me out of action. Who taught you to do that, anyway ? The nuns at your grammar school?”

  “Bill?” I repeated, swaying slight on my feet.

  He straightened very slowly, groaning softly as he did. “Yes, Lori. It’s me.”

  “How ... ? When... ? Oh, Bill,” I cried, “did I really break your ribs?”

  My husband’s arms opened wide. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

  I took a half-step toward him, then stopped abruptly. “What happened to your beard?”

  “I singed it when the stove blew up. It didn’t seem worth keeping after that.” Bill raised a hand to touch his clean-shaven chin, and I gasped.

  “What happened to your arm?�
�� I demanded, coming another half-step closer.

  Bill lowered his left hand, which was partially encased in a plaster cast. “When the stove blew up, I fell into the woodpile,” he explained. “It’s only a sprain, but they wanted to keep it immobile for a while. And before you ask about my glasses, yes, they’re new. I lost the old ones when the emergency evacuation team was loading me into the seaplane. Now, would you please stop devouring me with your eyes and give me a kiss? I’ve come an awfully long way to find you.”

  Bill had come by seaplane, commuter plane, Concorde, helicopter, and rental car all the way from the blighted shores of Little Moose Lake to the stableyard of Cobb Farm in two days flat.

  “I couldn’t get back to sleep after that phone call of yours,” he told me, “and I couldn’t concentrate on anything once I’d gotten up. That’s why the stove exploded. I think I did something wrong with the kerosene.”

  I filled a bowl with reheated vegetable soup, and put it on the table in front of him. After enveloping him in a hug that had proved the soundness of his ribs, I’d pulled my battered husband into the house and straight back to the kitchen. No one had descended to check up on us. I assumed that their afternoon jaunts had put them all into fresh-air-induced comas.

  “As I lay there in the woodpile,” Bill went on, “with half of my beard burnt off and my arm pinned underneath me, watching the staff rush around with fire extinguishers while Reeves and Randi and the rest of the bloody Biddifords stood back so as not to soil their lily-white hands, I said to myself, ‘Bill, what the hell are you doing here?’ ”

  He paused to spoon up more soup, and I checked on the leftovers from dinner, which were warming in the oven. I kept glancing over my shoulder at my husband, not only because it was hard to believe that he was sitting in the same room with me, but because it was hard to believe that he was my husband. He looked like someone I’d never met before.

  “ ‘Lori sounds like she’s in trouble,’ ” Bill continued, still recounting his interior dialogue. “ ‘Why the hell aren’t you there to help her out?’ ” Bill shrugged. “So I told the Biddifords to get stuffed, and radioed for the evac plane to take me out. God knows I was a medical emergency by then. Any more of that warm milk?”

  I brought the saucepan to the table and refilled Bill’s mug, then piled a plate with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I cut the meat for him, because his left arm was basically useless-he’d managed to sprain the wrist attached to the hand that held the thumb he’d pierced with the fishhook. Poor old thumb, I thought, gazing tenderly at the lumpy white gauze wrapping protruding at an awkward angle from the cast.

  I put the plate at Bill’s elbow, kissed the top of his head, and took a chair across the table from him. I couldn’t stop devouring him with my eyes. A combination of windburn and sunburn had brought a ruddy glow to his normally pallid complexion, and his smooth jaw was every bit as strong as Uncle Williston’s. The slim tortoiseshell frames of his new glasses didn’t overwhelm his brown eyes the way his old black frames had, and he’d topped a familiar pair of brown corduroy trousers with a bulky cable-knit fisherman’s sweater that I liked very much but had never seen before.

  “The evac team took care of my arm and helped me to shave, so they could see if I’d burnt my face as well as my beard, then dropped me off in Bangor, where I caught a commuter flight for Logan. We got out just ahead of a terrific storm. I hope it blew the Biddifords to ... blazes.”

  “But how did you get your new glasses?” I asked.

  “Miss Kingsley. I called her from the Concorde and she had them waiting for me at Heathrow.” He touched a finger to the tortoiseshell frames and glanced at me bashfully. “Like ‘em?”

  “I love them,” I said, and made a mental note to treat Miss Kingsley to champagne and caviar the next time I was in London.

  Bill plucked at the sleeve of his sweater. “Miss Kingsley bought this for me, too, since I couldn’t bring my luggage on the evac plane. She also arranged for a helicopter to fly me to York and a rental car to get me from there to here. Paul’s been keeping her up-to-date on your travels.”

  “Where’s the car?” I asked.

  “Parked in a field up the road,” he replied. “I hadn’t planned to announce my arrival until tomorrow morning, but I got curious and decided to look the place over tonight.” He put down his fork and rubbed his side. “I did call your name, you know, but not loudly enough, apparently, to be heard over that confounded wind.”

  “I’m so sorry, Bill,” I said, feeling a sympathetic twinge in my own ribs.

  “Don’t be,” he told me, picking up his fork. “It’s no more than I deserve. I’ve been a complete idiot, Lori. Do you know why the Biddifords have refused to settle Quentin Biddiford’s will for all these years? They’ve been fighting over a fishing pole. They’ve kept the firm tied up in knots for thirty years because of an antique bamboo Japanese goddamned fishing pole.” He jabbed his fork savagely into a chunk of roast beef.

  “That’s absurd,” I said, giving myself strict orders not to laugh.

  “If I’d talked to Father, I‘d’ve been forewarned,” Bill went on bitterly. “But, no, I couldn’t possibly ask for his advice. What a stiff-necked, pompous fathead I’ve been.”

  “I suppose Miss Kingsley told you about your father,” I said.

  “What about my father?” Bill looked up from his plate. “Isn’t he here with you?”

  I cleared my throat. “Not exactly....”

  Bill pushed his plate aside and listened intently while I recounted what had happened from the moment I’d left Emma’s vegetable garden to the moment I’d crossed the courtyard to close the stable door. It took more than an hour to tell him everything. Well, almost everything.

  When I’d finished, Bill was silent for a long time. Then he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m too tired to sort this out tonight,” he said. “Let’s sleep on it, see what we come up with in the morning.” He pushed his chair back and took his dishes to the sink. He ran water on the dishes, turned the water off, then remained standing, with his back to me. His light-colored sweater stood out against the darkened windows, his left arm hung limply at his side, and his right hand gripped the lip of the sink, as though it were the only thing keeping him upright.

  “Lori,” he said, “I know it’s not only Father I’ve treated carelessly. Maybe it took an exploding stove to clear my mind, but I figured out a few things while I was lying on top of that woodpile.”

  I crossed the room to wrap my arms around him and pressed my forehead to his back. “Not now,” I said.

  “Yes, now.” Bill turned to face me. “I never meant to abandon you, Lori, but when you started talking about having children, I felt... He shrugged helplessly, searching for the right words. ”As though I had to do something impressive every minute of the day to be worthy of them. Can you understand that?“

  I took a deep breath. “Bill,” I said, “I did not fall in love with, or marry, an unimpressive man.”

  “You’re sure? Because I couldn’t help noticing ...” He reached for my left hand, from which my wedding ring was conspicuously absent.

  I gazed up at my husband and saw a clean-shaven jaw set with pain, a sunburned face lined with exhaustion, and a pair of beautiful brown eyes shadowed by the fear that perhaps he’s taken too long to figure things out.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” I told him with absolute conviction.

  Bill enfolded me in his arms. I was aware of the plaster cast across my lower back, and the soft expanse of his broad shoulder. I nestled my face into the crook of his neck, closed my eyes, and inhaled the oiled-wool scent of his new sweater, the spicy fragrance of his shampoo, the rich aromas that lingered in the kitchen, and, underneath it all, his own scent, unmistakable, indescribable, and I felt in my bones how much I’d longed to breathe him in.

  “Ah, Lori,” he murmured, “how I’ve missed you.” He kissed my forehead and my eyelids, then took me by the
hand. “Come, love. It’s time for bed.”

  Upstairs, beneath the patchwork coverlet, we held each other close and talked for hours. But sometime in the stillness before dawn, when the wind had faded and the birds had not yet wakened, the talking stopped, the wedding ring was slipped back on my finger, and our second honeymoon began at last.

  25.

  When I saw the look of consternation on Lucy Willis’s face as she entered my bedroom the following morning, I nearly woke Bill up by laughing.

  “I-I’m so sorry,” she whispered, averting her eyes. “I-I‘ll—”

  “Hush,” I said. I wriggled carefully out of bed, slipped into my nightie, robe, and slippers, pulled Lucy into the hallway, and closed the door.

  “Lori, I didn’t mean to—” she began, but I cut her off.

  “Don’t worry, Lucy. That’s my husband, Bill. He showed up unexpectedly, late last night, and he’s pretty beat, so I’d like to let him sleep in.”

  Lucy seemed immensely relieved, though there was a bruised look to her eyes, as though her night had not been a restful one. “He won’t be disturbed,” she assured me. “Mother and Swann have taken Nell out for a gallop, and your man Paul is reading in the sitting room.”

  I linked my arm through Lucy’s. “We’ll have the kitchen to ourselves, then. Let’s go down and make a pot of tea.”

  “The kettle’s already boiling,” Lucy said.

  I gave her a brief account of Bill’s adventures as we made our way to the kitchen, and Lucy toasted muffins and put out pots of preserves and marmalade while the tea steeped. By the time we sat down at the table, I’d reached the point where she burst in on Bill and me.

  “I shouldn’t have come in without knocking,” she acknowledged. “But I wanted so much to apologize for making a scene last night. I don’t know what came over me. I’m not usually so—”