Aunt Dimity's Death ad-1

by Nancy Atherton

  I have followed the events of your life ever since and, though sorely tempted at times, I have never broken my promise to your mother to keep the identity of Aunt Dimity’s creator a secret.

  Even now, I am keeping my promise. Beth and I agreed many years ago that, without this chapter, the story would be incomplete—and nothing bothered us more than a story with gaps. We decided to fill those gaps by bequeathing to you our complete correspondence, from the first pair of letters to these, the last. With Beth’s approval, I engaged the firm of Willis & Willis to carry out our wishes.

  You will find the correspondence waiting for you in my cottage, near the village of Finch in England. I disposed of my other properties, but I could not bring myself to dispose of the cottage. I grew up there, you see, and returned to it occasionally even after the war. It has always held a special place in my heart.

  There is a small task I would like you to perform while you are there. William Willis will explain it to you at the appropriate time. It is a favor I can ask of no one but you, and I am confident that you will find it agreeable.

  Please give my best wishes to William and to young Bill. Your mother and I approved of them without reservation, and you may trust them to look after your affairs as though they were their own.

  I hope you are not too put out with Beth and me for keeping this from you for so long. I know that the idea of being watched over from afar will pinch at your independent spirit, but I assure you that it was done with great respect and even greater

  love,

  Dimity Westwood

  I looked up from the letter and stared blindly across the room as the words, and the images they evoked, settled over me like drifting snow. It was difficult to accept the fact that a woman I had never known had known so much about me, but I no longer doubted her existence. She knew too much to be a figment of anyone’s imagination.

  My mother had been in London during the war and she had ended up on Eisenhower’s staff. While there, she had been an indefatigable explorer of the wartime city: she had told me of seeing the Tate Gallery shrouded in blackout curtains, St. Paul’s Cathedral alight with incendiaries, the streets cratered by bombing. She had met my father during that time and she had often spoken of their first meeting. But she had never spoken of this other momentous meeting, nor of the forty-year friendship that had grown from it. As I turned it over in my mind, though, I remembered the family ritual known as Quiet Time.

  Quiet Time came just after supper, when my mother retired to her room, leaving Reginald and me engrossed in a storybook or some other peaceful activity. She emerged from her room looking so refreshed and invigorated that I had always assumed she used that time for a nap. Since I had been a fairly active—not to say rambunctious—child, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

  Now it seemed obvious that a renewal of spirit had been taking place behind her closed door. I placed Dimity’s letter beside me on the couch and took up the buff-colored one. Looking over the familiar scrawl, I pictured my mother at her writing desk, bending over these pages as she had bent over so many others, and after a few deep breaths, I opened the envelope.

  Something fell into my lap. It was a photograph, a very old photograph, stained in places, the corners creased, one missing altogether; a photograph of … nothing much, as far as I could tell: a gnarled old tree in the foreground of a grassy clearing, a valley beyond, some distant hills. It was no place I’d ever been, no place I recognized, and there was nothing else in it: no people, no animals, no buildings of any sort. Baffled, I set it aside and unfolded the pages of my mother’s letter.

  Sweetie,

  All right, Sarah Bernhardt, dry your eyes and blow your nose. Your big scene is over.

  I know what you’re thinking right now, just as surely as if I were sitting there looking at you. You’ve never been much good at hiding your feelings, not just from me, but from the world at large. It has always been one of your most endearing and exasperating traits. Your thoughts are on your face right now, and I can tell that they are U-N-H-A-P-P-Y.

  You feel as though Dimity and I have played a pretty mean trick on you and I can’t blame you, because in a sense we have. But look at it this way: if I’d told you about everything, you’d know it all already and I’d be dead and that would be that. As it is, I may be dead, but you still have a lot to learn about me—the story continues, so to speak. I like the idea. I think you will, too, after you finish moping and feeling sorry for yourself.

  You’re probably wondering about the photograph. I am, too. That’s why I’m giving it to you. This is serious, so I need your full attention. This is not something I can tell to Reginald.

  Dimity said that she would tell you how we first met, and I’m sure she has. I’m equally sure that she hasn’t told you the state she was in, that day at the zoo. Not to put too fine a point on it, she was a wreck. She looked as though she hadn’t eaten a solid meal or slept a good night’s sleep in a month. The reason she ran into me was because she was walking around in a daze, only half aware of her surroundings. I took her back to her flat, got some tea and dry toast into her, then stayed with her until she fell asleep. I talked myself hoarse that evening, and the next, and gradually, over the course of a few weeks, I managed to coax her out of her shell. She talked about a lot of things after that, but she never mentioned what it was that had knocked her for such a loop.

  After I got to know her better, I asked her about it. It was as though I’d slapped her. The color drained from her face, she said there were some things she couldn’t speak of, even to me, and she made me promise never to ask her about it again. You know how I am about promises. I never asked her again, but I never ceased to wonder.

  Dimity took me down to her cottage once, to show me the place where she’d grown up. While we were there, two of her neighbors pulled me aside. They were elderly and not very coherent, but I got the impression that Dimity had suffered some kind of nervous collapse the last time she’d been home. Apparently, they’d found her in the cottage one day, with photo albums strewn about her on the floor, mumbling to herself and clutching—you guessed it—this photograph.

  They were convinced it had something to do with her condition, so they took it from her, then didn’t know what to do with it. They were afraid to give it back to her, but they didn’t want to destroy it, either, so they decided to pass it on to me for safekeeping. They said I was “what Dimity needed” and seemed to think I’d know the right time to return the photograph to her. I tried to explain about my promise, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  So here I am, all these years later, still pondering the question of how an innocent-looking photograph could cause a woman like Dimity to fall apart. And why someone who opened her arms to the world kept one part of her life in darkness.

  I’d like you to find out for me. I don’t know how. I don’t know where the picture was taken or by whom. The neighbors who gave it to me are no doubt dead and gone by now, so they won’t be able to help you. It may even be that the answers died with Dimity, but if not, I know that my unstoppable baby girl will find them.

  Why is it so important to me? I’m not sure. It’s certainly too late to fix whatever it was that went wrong. But I can’t help feeling that, whatever it was, it needs to be brought into the light. It can’t hurt my friend now, and I’ll rest easier, knowing you’re looking for answers to questions I was never allowed to ask. You can tell me all about it the next time I see you.

  And that’s about all for now, except to tell you to scratch Reginald behind the ears for me. And to tell you that I love you very much. You will always be my favorite only child.

  Mom

  She almost tripped me up with that last paragraph—I guarantee that nothing turns on the waterworks faster than a dead parent telling you she loves you—and her mention of poor old Reginald nearly sent me running to the nearest tissue factory. But the story of the photograph put a halt to that. I picked it up and looked at it again, then looked d
own at the letters nestled together on the couch. All those years of friendship, and not one word about… it.

  What had happened in that clearing? I studied the tree, tried to imagine how it would look today, if it hadn’t been struck by lightning or chopped down or knocked over by the wind or… I stopped myself. That sort of thinking would get me nowhere.

  I would go to the cottage. I would take care of Dimity’s task, then turn the place inside out, if need be, looking for clues. I’d ask around the village, show everyone the photograph, and if that didn’t work, I’d… I’d think of something else.

  I would find out what had happened to Dimity, if I had to conduct a personal interview with every tree in the British Isles. I would find the answers to my mother’s questions.

  It was my last chance to do something right.

  6

  I used the phone on the end table to call Willis, Sr., and he asked me to meet him in his office in half an hour. Standing at the tall windows in the parlor, I watched the gardener repair the damage from last night’s unseasonable blizzard, kept an eye on the time, and tried to absorb what the letters had told me.

  I suppose, somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a certain sense of disappointment. Surrounded as I was by the luxurious House of Willis, it was only natural to hope that my mother’s wealthy friend had left me some small part of her estate. I certainly could have used it. Not that I was looking for a handout—Meg Thomson had tried to loan me money once and I had bitten her head off—but a small bequest for the daughter of a beloved friend? I could have accepted that.

  Such minor regrets were overshadowed, however, by thoughts of the correspondence. That was a treasure beyond price. Where I would find a safe place to store forty years’ worth of “long letters, short notes, and postal cards” from two voluble correspondents was a problem I’d solve when I got to it. For now, it was enough to know that, whatever else might happen, my mother’s words would belong to me.

  Sarah Bernhardt, indeed. My even-tempered mother had often teased me about being oversensitive and I was the first to admit that I sometimes let my emotions run away with me. So far, though, under what I thought were very challenging circumstances, I had kept them under control. I hoped she was proud of me for that, wherever she was.

  I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what kind of favor Dimity Westwood had in mind. A philanthropist had to be rich, after all, and if she could afford the long-term services of a firm like Willis & Willis, Dimity was surely rich enough to hire people to do whatever else needed doing. I had no special skills. I knew about old books, but there were all sorts of people who knew more about them than I did, especially in England. What could it be, then? Only time, and Willis, Sr., would tell.

  I also counted on him to tell me how I was going to get to the cottage. The last time I’d looked, there hadn’t been a huge selection of transatlantic bus routes, and the cost of flying over was more than my temp’s wages could handle. But Dimity wouldn’t have left me something I couldn’t get to.

  I wasn’t sure if I should tell Willis, Sr., about the photograph. He might object to anything that took time away from carrying out Dimity’s task. Then again, he might know something useful. I decided to wait and see. In the meantime, I’d wash my face and brush my hair and get myself ready for our meeting. I glanced down at my jeans and sighed—I was no doubt unique among Willis, Sr.’s well-heeled clientele. It was kind of him not to make me feel out of place.

  I headed for the bathroom, got as far as the dressing room, and stopped dead in my tracks. The low shelves, empty that morning, now held shoes, women’s shoes, five or six pairs of tasteful pumps and fashionable flats, and there were purses on the high shelves, tiny embroidered clutches, and shoulder bags in buttery leather. The racks were hung with dresses in dainty floral prints, silk blouses, pleated gabardine slacks, tweed blazers and skirts—all size eight.

  I stared at them, open-mouthed, as my blood pressure began to rise. I could almost hear it, like the faint whistle of a teakettle just coming to boil. So that was Bill’s game, was it? I understood it all now: the irises, the star show, his father’s books—the whole nine yards. Prince Charming bestows gifts on the wide-eyed beggar girl, dazzles her with his castle, then sweeps her off her feet with… Had he picked out new underwear, too?

  The pent-up emotions of the past twenty-four hours fueled my indignation. Who was he to tell me what to wear? Willis, Sr., might know a thing or two about tailoring, but Bill looked as though he slept in his clothes. I looked upon those lovely dresses and thought only of the audacity, the gall, the sheer, unmitigated… Did he expect me to be grateful? I had never been so embarrassed in my life, and I was seriously annoyed with him for causing my humiliation.

  A muffled knock sounded at the parlor door and when I opened it I found the object of my wrath standing there with frayed cuffs and bagged-out trousers, compounding his sins by looking extremely pleased with himself.

  “How dare you,” I snapped.

  The smug look vanished.

  “Come in,” I said, “and sit down. There are a few things we need to get straight.”

  Bill sat on the edge of the couch and watched as I paced the room. In a small voice, he ventured, “You don’t like the clothes?”

  “Oh, they’re beautiful,” I said. “Just beautiful. I’m all set for the Governor’s Ball.” I closed in on him. “Bill. I don’t go to the Governor’s Ball. Where am I supposed to wear that stuff? To the grocery?”

  “Well, I—” but he never had a chance. My wounded pride was on a rampage.

  “But you wouldn’t know about places like that,” I said. “You have servants. Well, let me fill you in. The grocery is the place where you go when you have enough money to buy maybe three cans of tomato soup, right? It’s the place where the express register is always just closing when you get there, so you and your tomato soup wind up in the regular checkout line, where you’re invariably stuck behind the illiterate lady with the coupons for things that are almost the same as the things she has in her cart. And you have to stand there juggling soup cans while she argues every ounce, pound, liter, and gram, and you don’t want to be rude, because she has blue hair and she’s probably living on dog food, but you also want to scream, because you’d think that just once she could manage to bring a coupon for the right brand of dog food. Heaven knows it’s important to wear the proper dress for moments like that. That blue silk number in the back should be just right.” When I paused to catch my breath, Bill made a brave attempt to rally.

  “Now, Lori, I just thought that, when you went out, you might—”

  “Go out? Like on dates? What makes you think I have time to go out on dates?” I took another deep breath and added, very evenly, “Thank you very much for your thoughtful gifts, but I’m afraid they don’t suit my life-style.” I strode to the door, then turned. “I’m going down to speak with your father. When I’ve gone, I’d be most grateful if you’d return everything to the shops. If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Willis, I’d prefer to select my own wardrobe.”

  * * *

  Willis, Sr., smiled at me from behind his desk as I entered the office, but his smile faded when he saw the look on my face.

  “My dear Miss Shepherd,” he said in alarm, “whatever is the matter?”

  I closed the doors and strode restlessly over to the billowing fern in the corner. I plucked a small brown frond and crumbled it absently between my fingers. Keeping my back to the desk, I asked, “Do I look awful, Mr. Willis?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do I look like… like a wreck?”

  “Miss Shepherd, I would never presume to—”

  “I know,” I said, holding perfectly still. “That’s why I’m asking you.”

  When he failed to respond, I snuck a peek over my shoulder, then looked quickly back at the fern. His pained expression made me want to sink through the floor, but his voice was gentle when he began to speak.

  “I would not put
it quite that way, Miss Shepherd,” he said. “I would say rather that you appear to have lived under a great deal of stress, and to have known too little joy as of late.”

  “That bad, huh?” Tears stung my eyes and I blinked them away.

  “You misunderstand me, Miss Shepherd,” said Willis, Sr. “Please allow me to make myself clear. My dear, to my eyes, you are lovely. Fatigued, yes, and under some strain, certainly, but quite charming nonetheless.” He rose from his chair. “Please, Miss Shepherd, come and sit down.” He gestured for me to join him on the couch, where he leaned back, tented his fingers, and stared silently at me for a few moments before going on. I kept my gaze fixed on his immaculate gray waistcoat.

  “Miss Shepherd, I realize how unusual this experience must be for you. You have had quite a lot thrown at you in a very short period of time. You are no doubt feeling slightly overwhelmed by it all.”

  “Slightly,” I agreed.

  “It is only natural that you should. I confess, I can do little to remedy this. I can, however, assure you that I will fulfill my role as your legal advisor to the best of my ability. And, if you will permit me, I can do one more thing. I can offer the hope that you will someday look upon me as your friend.”

  He lowered his eyes and added, “A somewhat antiquated friend, to be sure, but a friend with your interests at heart nonetheless.”

  I bit my lip to keep my chin from trembling. It had been a long time since I had let anyone say that to me, and a much longer time since I had let myself believe it. It was weak, it was childish, and it went against my better judgment, but I thought I might risk believing it now. I needed a friend. I needed someone I could talk to, someone I could trust in this… unusual situation.

  If Willis, Sr., noticed my distress, he had the decency to move smoothly on to other things. He gathered some papers from his desk and returned with them to the couch. “Here we are,” he said. “I trust you are prepared to proceed to the next step?”