Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch

by Nancy Atherton

  “Certainly,” said Charles. “I was about to explain to Lori why Mae Bowen’s behavior seems so particularly peculiar.” He cupped his hands around his snifter and leaned back in his chair. “You see, Lori, Mae Bowen has become something of a cult figure. Her acolytes have developed a philosophy of life based on her art.”

  “They call themselves Bowenists,” Grant elaborated, “and their philosophy is based on the direct perception of the universe. They regard Bowen as a sort of guru whose paintings demonstrate the correct way to view nature.”

  “They’re a great nuisance,” said Charles, with a disparaging sniff. “They show up at every exhibition and stand for hours before each painting, meditating. One has to elbow them aside in order to view the painting oneself.”

  “Bowen has never done anything to encourage them,” said Grant, “but in a strange way, her lack of encouragement has strengthened their faith in her. They see her reticence as a form of integrity.”

  “The filthy hypocrites,” Charles said disgustedly. “They say that they respect her need for privacy, yet they follow her everywhere, pelting her with questions and requests. She has to have a security escort whenever she makes a public appearance.”

  “Do her acolytes follow her home?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid they do,” said Grant. “Before she moved here, she evaded them by living on a gated estate similar to your father-in-law’s.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Mae Bowen gave up a gated estate for Pussywillows? I mean, it’s a sweet little cottage, but it’s no Fairworth House. Why would she make such a radical change?”

  “Peculiar, eh?” Charles clucked his tongue sadly. “Pussywillows offers her no protection whatsoever from her worshipers. She’s made herself a sitting duck.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. I was proud of my village, but I was also aware of its limitations. “Finch isn’t exactly the center of the art world. Finch isn’t the center of any world, except ours. She may feel safer here than she did on her estate.”

  “If so, she’s deluding herself,” said Grant. “Finch may be a backwater, but it doesn’t have a moat. Once word gets out that Mae Bowen is here, the Bowenists will flock to Finch.”

  “They’re not dangerous, are they?” I asked.

  “No,” Charles said. “They may be nutters, but they’re law-abiding nutters.”

  “They wouldn’t harm her physically,” Grant agreed. “But emotionally? Psychologically? Spiritually? They could destroy her. And they could do a great deal of harm to Finch.”

  “How could they harm Finch?” I asked, suddenly alert.

  “By changing it out of all recognition,” Grant replied. “Finch could become a center for New Age pilgrims.”

  “Hippies camping on the green?” I suggested tentatively. “Rainbow-colored RVs parked along the lanes?”

  “Worse than that,” Grant said grimly. “The Bowenists aren’t all penniless vagabonds, Lori. Some of them are wealthy enough to buy property. A millionaire chap named Myron Brocklehurst bought a small farm across the road from Bowen’s estate and turned it into a Mother Earth–worshiping Bowenist commune.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Are you telling me that Mae Bowen’s followers might move to Finch permanently, just to be near her?”

  “It’s a possibility,” said Grant. “She’s removed the walls that used to stand in their way. They’ll want to take advantage of her accessibility.”

  “If the Bowenists drive up housing prices,” said Charles, “they could drive out the locals.”

  “And the village we know and love,” Grant concluded, “would cease to exist.”

  We lapsed into a prolonged and heavy silence. The men sipped their drinks, the dogs rested from their exertions, and I stared into the middle distance, contemplating a future without Finch.

  “You’re overreacting,” I said at last.

  “Perhaps,” Grant acknowledged. “But what if we’re not? What if the scenario plays out exactly as we’ve described it?”

  “I don’t see what we can do to stop it,” said Charles. “It’s a free country. We can’t prevent loonies like Myron Brocklehurst from coming here.”

  “They won’t come if they don’t know she’s here,” I said slowly. I thought for a moment, then sat forward in my chair. “I’ll bet you just about anything that we’re the only people in Finch who know who Amelia Thistle is. If we keep our mouths shut, no one else will find out about Mae Bowen.”

  “This is Finch,” Grant reminded me, “the Olympic training center for the sport of nosey parkering. The truth is bound to come out sooner or later. Bowen herself will slip up or a piece of forwarded mail will arrive, with her real name on it. Something will give her away.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said decisively. “In the meantime, we button our lips, for her sake as much as our own. We don’t refer to her as Mae Bowen, even among ourselves. We don’t hang out near Pussywillows, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, and we don’t grin like Cheshire cats every time we see her.”

  “We’re not Bowenists, Lori,” Grant said loftily. “Charles and I know how to maintain our composure in the presence of greatness.”

  “We’ve been given the opportunity to protect a national treasure,” Charles declared. “I, for one, will not shirk my responsibility.”

  “I’ll have to tell Bill,” I said.

  “Understood.” Grant inclined his head graciously. “There should be no secrets between husband and wife. Apart from that, Bill’s legal expertise may prove useful.”

  “Very useful indeed,” Charles concurred. “If there are laws to prevent rampaging hordes of Bowenists from trampling Finch into the dust, Bill will know how to enforce them.”

  “I suggest you consult with him immediately, Lori,” Grant advised. “It’s best to be prepared.”

  “I’ll go straight from here to Bill’s office,” I promised. I pointed to the brochures on the desk. “May I borrow these? They’ll help me to explain the situation to him.”

  “Be my guest,” said Charles.

  I slipped the brochures into my jacket pocket, bent to give Matisse and Goya farewell pats, then straightened and looked puzzledly from Charles to Grant.

  “One more thing before I go,” I said. “Why did you let me catch up with you? Why didn’t you slam the door in my face and keep Mae—er, I mean, Mrs. Thistle’s secret all to yourselves?”

  The two men exchanged amused glances.

  “If we’d slammed the door in your face,” said Grant, “you would have knocked it off its hinges. Our other neighbors may be pests when it comes to gossip gathering, but you, my friend, are a veritable pit bull.”

  I grinned sheepishly, but accepted the remark as a compliment. Like a pit bull, I was tenacious, and I could be fiercely territorial, something the Bowenists would find out if they were foolish enough to invade my village.

  Three

  My departure from Crabtree Cottage coincided with the moving truck’s departure from Pussywillows. By the time it lumbered past me on its way out of the village, the tearoom had emptied and small knots of chattering villagers had formed on the green. I knew for a fact that my neighbors were discussing Mrs. Thistle’s furnishings, and though I longed to hear every delicious detail, I resisted the urge to join them and scurried across the green to my husband’s place of business, Wysteria Lodge.

  Bill had transformed Wysteria Lodge into a thoroughly modern law office. He’d retained the undulating flagstone floors, the rough stone walls, the mullioned windows, and the gnarled vine that gave the lodge its rustic charm, but he’d filled the rooms with the tools of his trade—tons of legal tomes, mountains of paperwork, and the multitude of electronic devices that allowed him to serve his wealthy, international clientele from a modest building in a tiny English village.

  Since Bill’s profession frequently took him away from home, it was a treat to pay him an impromptu visit in the middle of a workday. I found him behind his desk with a ha
lf-eaten apple in one hand, poring over a sheaf of densely printed legal papers. He dropped the apple when he saw me and came around the desk to envelop me in a hug.

  My husband was a fine figure of a man, quite literally tall, dark, and handsome. He’d had a scraggly beard and a paunch when I’d first met him, but he’d gotten rid of both within a few years of our marriage, and replaced his heavy, horn-rimmed glasses with contact lenses. I’d loved Bill before his transformation and I would have gone on loving him if he hadn’t changed at all, but I had no strong desire to turn back the clock.

  “What’s the verdict?” he asked, sitting on the edge of his desk. “Did Mrs. Thistle pass muster? In my estimation,” he continued before I could answer, “she acquitted herself admirably in the furniture department: a tasteful collection of simple, solid antiques as well as a few custom-made pieces. What she didn’t inherit, she purchased from reputable craftsmen. Either way, I think it’s safe to assume that our new neighbor isn’t poor, which should make the vicar happy. If Mrs. Thistle is a churchgoer, she should be able to make a hefty donation to the church roof fund.”

  I scrutinized him carefully. My husband had never displayed the tiniest crumb of curiosity about Mrs. Thistle. He had, in fact, teased me mercilessly for being overtly interested in her, yet here he was, delivering a learned dissertation on all things Thistle. I couldn’t imagine what had come over him.

  “You didn’t watch them unload the moving truck, did you?” I asked.

  “From start to finish,” he said with gusto. “First the rugs, then the furniture, and finally, the boxes.” He heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Boxes are cruelly tantalizing. Do they contain songbooks, ferrets, clown shoes? It’s impossible to tell. Our new neighbor prolonged the agony by bringing with her quite a few boxes—far too many for a small place like Pussywillows—which led me to my first deduction.”

  “Which is?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Thistle is downsizing from a much larger home, but hasn’t yet realized what downsizing means,” Bill replied. “Which leads, in turn, to my second deduction.”

  “Out with it, Sherlock,” I said with a bemused smile.

  “The next few bring-and-buy sales will enjoy an infusion of new wares as Mrs. Thistle gradually unloads the items she can’t squeeze into the cottage. They should be quality items, too, if the furniture’s anything to go by, which will make for a nice change from the chipped teacups, the stained ashtrays, and the hideous lamps offered at the last few sales.” He cocked his head to one side and eyed me expectantly. “Well? How did I do? Will I be able to hold my own in the pub?”

  I laughed delightedly and gave him a kiss.

  “You could go toe-to-toe with Peggy Taxman,” I assured him, “and she’s the busiest busybody in Finch.”

  Peggy Taxman ran the Emporium, the greengrocer’s shop, and nearly every village event. Since she also ran the post office and had unlimited access to postcards, semi-translucent envelopes, and return addresses, she knew a lot more about her neighbors’ private affairs than she should have and maintained an air of omniscience the rest of us both envied and despised.

  “I’m no Peggy Taxman,” Bill said humbly, “but I try.”

  He left his perch on the desk and drew me over to sit beside him on a button-backed leather sofa he used occasionally for client consultations but more often for post-lunch power naps.

  “When did you develop an interest in Mrs. Thistle?” I asked.

  “When I realized that she would be the main topic of conversation in Finch for the next few weeks,” Bill said. “I didn’t wish to seem ill informed. But you must have seen more than I did.” He gestured toward his windows. “The view from here isn’t nearly as good as the view from the tearoom.”

  “How did you know I was in the tearoom?” I asked.

  “Where else would you be on moving day?” he retorted. “I also saw you sprint across the green after you dumped the groceries in the Rover.”

  “I didn’t sprint,” I protested.

  “You sprinted like a manic gazelle,” Bill said imperturbably, “which leads me to believe that you landed a window seat. So? What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  Bill’s eyes narrowed. “What happened? Concussion? Narcolepsy? Hysterical blindness? Or did the Handmaidens wrestle you to the floor because you were blocking their view?”

  “None of the above,” I replied, smiling. “I didn’t see anything because I left the tearoom before the movers opened the truck.”

  “Impossible,” said Bill. “I’d have noticed if you’d…” His voice trailed off and he frowned in concentration. “I had to leave the window for a few minutes to take a call from Gerard Delacroix. He rang as the movers pulled up to Pussywillows.”

  “That’s when I left the tearoom,” I confirmed. “Grant and Charles reacted oddly when they spotted Mrs. Thistle, so when they took off for Crabtree Cottage, I took off after them. I knew in my bones that they had some sort of inside knowledge about her and I wanted to know what it was.”

  “Did your hunch pay off?” Bill asked.

  “I hit the jackpot.” I swung around on the sofa to face him. “Have you ever heard of an English artist named Mae Bowen?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I’ve never met the woman and I don’t know much about her, but Father owns one of her paintings.”

  “Does he?” I said, very much surprised. “Have I seen it?”

  “I doubt it,” said Bill. “Father keeps it upstairs, in his private sitting room. It’s a pretty thing. No, I take it back. It’s more than pretty. It’s…” He caught his breath and left the sentence hanging, as if he, like Grant, couldn’t find the right words to describe Bowen’s work. “Why are you asking me about Mae Bowen?”

  “Brace yourself for a major news flash,” I warned him. “According to Grant and Charles, Amelia Thistle is Mae Bowen.”

  Bill’s eyebrows shot up. “Are they sure?”

  “They’re positive,” I said. “They’ve seen her in person several times. Here…” I pulled the exhibition brochures from my pocket and handed them to Bill. “Take a look at the photos and tell me what you think.”

  Bill studied the black-and-white photographs in silence, then stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  “I can’t argue with Grant or Charles,” he said. “I’ve spent the past two hours ogling Mrs. Thistle. She does seem to be a dead ringer for Mae Bowen.” He passed the brochures back to me and peered speculatively toward the windows. “How strange. Why would Mae Bowen pretend to be someone she isn’t?”

  “To preserve her privacy. Charles and Grant explained it all to me,” I said and went on in a rush, “Through no fault of her own, Bowen has attracted a cult following, a rabid pack of New Age crazies who call themselves Bowenists and pester her, like a gang of spiritual paparazzi. One of them bought a farm across from her gated estate—”

  “So I was right,” Bill interrupted. “She is downsizing.”

  “In a major way,” I said, nodding. “According to Grant, her old house was the size of Fairworth. The gates ensured her privacy, but one of her followers bought a farm nearby to make it easier for the rest of the gang to camp out on her doorstep. Now that she’s here, Grant and Charles are afraid her acolytes will overrun Finch and turn it into a crazies commune.”

  “We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” Bill said. “The woman moved here under an assumed name. How will her fans find her?”

  “Fan is short for fanatic,” I reminded him, “and fanatics don’t rest until they track down the object of their obsession. I think we can count on their showing up in Finch at some point and I dread to think of what will happen when they do.” I gripped his arm. “Remember what it was like during the Renaissance Fair, when the tourists trashed the green? The Bowenists will be a hundred times worse because they won’t be passing through—they’ll want to stay. Are there any legal maneuvers we can use to keep Mae Bowen’s fans from ruining Finch?”

  �
�We could erect barricades, issue village passports, and hire security guards to man checkpoints,” Bill suggested.

  “Are you serious?” I said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “Of course I’m not serious,” he said, with an exasperated chuckle. “We can’t build a wall around Finch and we wouldn’t want to.”

  “Wouldn’t we?” I said, releasing his arm.

  “No, we wouldn’t,” he said. “There are laws against trespassing, harassment, loitering, littering, and so forth, but if the Bowenists behave themselves, our hands will be tied. We can’t ask the police to arrest a group of peaceful visitors.”

  “What if they try to buy property near here?” I asked.