Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch (20 page)

“How many pages are there?” Will asked.

“Nobody knows,” I said.

“We could help you look for them,” Rob offered.

“Thanks,” I said, “but you wouldn’t want to keep Thunder and Storm waiting while you hunted for secret hiding places, would you?”

“No,” the boys chorused instantly.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Mrs. Thistle has lots of helpers. I’m sure we’ll find the missing pages before too long.”

“When you do,” said Will, “you can read the story to us.”

“We’ll see,” I said, but whether I would read Gamaliel’s memoir aloud to my sons or not depended very much upon its ending.

Anscombe Manor had the mongrel appearance of a building that had been altered by succeeding generations of owners over the course of several centuries. The crenelated tower gave it a medieval
air, the stables were pure Georgian, and everything in between was…in between.

The property had been more or less derelict when Emma and Derek Harris had purchased it, but they’d labored long and hard to turn it into a wonderfully eccentric and eminently comfortable home. Once they’d finished their work on the house, Emma had opened a riding school. She wasn’t the sort of woman who liked having time on her hands.

Derek was away from home, restoring a hammerbeam roof in Shropshire, when I dropped the boys off in the stable yard, but Emma was there to greet us. She was dressed in her everyday work clothes—turtleneck, quilted vest, breeches, and boots—and bits of straw clung to her graying, dishwater blond hair. She gave Rob and Will each a friendly pat on the back, then sent them inside to groom and to tack up their ponies. Emma didn’t accept students who relied on stablehands to do their chores for them. She believed in teaching responsibility as well as riding.

She was usually too busy with her own responsibilities to keep up with local gossip, so I parked the Rover in front of the house and sauntered back to the stable yard to deliver her weekly quota of village news. I expected to dazzle her with an extravagant array of bulletins, but Emma, as it turned out, had already read the headlines.

“Is Amelia Thistle really Mae Bowen?” she asked avidly. “And is William in love with her?”

I did a double take, then stared hard at her. “When did you hook into the village grapevine?”

“Word gets around,” she said with a shrug. “I can’t help it if I hear things. Is it true, then? All of it?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said, looking over her shoulder. I’d spotted Kit Smith, Emma’s stable master and son-in-law, walking toward us with Nell, his young wife, by his side. “Otherwise, I’ll have to repeat myself.”

Kit and Nell Smith were the most beautiful couple I’d ever seen, not because they dressed well—they had no use for high fashion—but because they were wholly unconscious of their extraordinary natural beauty. Kit was long and lean, with a short crop of prematurely gray hair and delicately chiseled features. His exquisite violet eyes, which had for many years been shadowed by suffering, now shone with the soft glow of complete contentment.

Nell’s midnight-blue eyes were as dark and deep as a moonlit well, and her flawless oval face was framed by a tumble of golden curls. Tall and willowy, she crossed the cobbled yard as gracefully as a swan gliding on a still pond. A few eyebrows had been raised when she’d married a man twice her age, but those of us who knew Kit and Nell best knew that they’d been born to love each other.

Nell smiled tranquilly as she approached, but I could detect a flicker of curiosity in Kit’s eyes.

“Is it true?” he asked. “Has William fallen in love with Mae Bowen?”

“Of course it’s true,” Nell said serenely. “He wasn’t looking for her and that’s why he found her. She doesn’t know it yet, but he’s her knight in shining armor.” She gave a satisfied sigh as she entwined her fingers with Kit’s. “Together, they’ll defeat dragons.”

Nell often gave the impression that she was from another planet, but her fey manner cloaked a penetrating mind. I believed she possessed a highly refined sense of intuition that allowed her to predict human behavior with eerie accuracy, while Bill maintained that she
was
from another planet. Whatever the case, there was no denying that Nell understood people better than I did.

“William and Amelia had better sharpen their swords, then,” I warned, “because dragons are thick on the ground.” I went on to describe the Handmaiden threat, the Bowenist menace, the far-from-finished search for the memoir, and Amelia’s adamant refusal
to consider a second marriage. “It’s not a fairy tale, Nell,” I concluded. “It’s a lot more complicated.”

“Fairy tales are always complicated,” Nell said imperturbably, “yet they always have happy endings. William and Amelia will, too. You’ll see.”

“As for the memoir,” said Emma, bringing the conversation back down to earth, “Derek and I didn’t find any parchment pages while we were working on the manor, and we scoured every nook and cranny.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I was hoping you’d have a page taped to your refrigerator door.”

“No such luck,” said Emma with a wry smile.

“Mistress Meg rings a bell, though,” said Kit, running a hand through his gray hair. “My stepfather used to tell me grisly stories about a witch named Mad Maggie who would creep through our woods and chop up unsuspecting children with her axe. I thought his nanny had invented her, but I suppose she could have been based on Mistress Meg.”

“And your stepfather grew up here, at Anscombe Manor,” I said, gazing up at him excitedly.

“So did Kit,” Emma reminded me. “The Anscombes owned the manor for a few hundred years before Derek and I bought it.”

“Was your stepfather’s nanny a local, too?” I asked Kit.

“I believe so,” he replied. “Why? Is it important?”

“Mad Maggie is an extremely local legend,” I told him. “The only people who know about her are people who were born and raised within the bounds of St. George’s parish.”

“You were born and raised in Chicago, Lori,” Emma pointed out. “How did you learn about Mad Maggie?”

“Aunt Dimity,” I replied without the slightest hesitation, because I was speaking with three of the scant handful of people who knew about the blue journal.

“Dimity was certainly a local,” Kit acknowledged.

“She still is,” said Nell.

“So we have two witches,” said Emma, returning to the subject at hand, “one fictional, one real, both inhabiting nearby woods.”

“Mad Maggie
must
be a distorted version of Mistress Meg,” I said, adding pensively, “At least, I hope she’s distorted. I’ll be severely disappointed if the memoir’s next page tells how Mistress Meg went berserk with an axe one day and made mincemeat of the village children.” I turned to Kit. “Can you remember anything else your stepfather told you about Mad Maggie?”

“If I remember correctly, she had goat’s horns growing out of her head,” he replied. “To tell you the truth, I’ve done my best to forget those stories. They gave me nightmares!”

The sound of horses and ponies clip-clopping across the cobbles recalled Emma, Kit, and Nell to their duties. The Anscombe Riding Center was a family affair and the trio had students to teach, so they went their separate ways, leaving me to lean on a fence and watch while Will and Rob put Thunder and Storm through their paces.

Though my sons’ prowess in the riding ring delighted me, I couldn’t keep myself from gazing past them and into the woods that bordered the estate’s pastures. Mistress Meg might have built her house in those woods, I mused. She might have raised her goats there. I hoped she’d been allowed to die in peace there, but I feared she’d been dragged from her home to die a ghastly death in a hangman’s noose.

Thankfully, my cell phone put an end to my increasingly morbid thoughts. I scurried away from the riding ring to answer it, fully expecting to hear Charles Bellingham’s voice informing me that Elspeth Binney had caught an early train back from London. Instead, I heard Elspeth Binney herself.

“Lori?” she said.

“Elspeth?” I said, astonished. “How did you get my cell phone number?”

“William gave it to me,” she replied, magnifying my confusion. “He explained
everything
to me, Lori, and I’m
thrilled
. I wish he could join us—as does he, of course—but I promised him we’d soldier on without him. Honestly, Lori, I never dreamt that my humble abode might play a vital role in village history. I wish I were there right now.”

“W-where are you?” I stammered.

“I’m at Paddington Station,” she replied, “but William wanted me to let you know that I’ll be home by ten o’clock at the very latest. I’ll need a few minutes to unpack and to freshen up, but I’ll expect you and dear Amelia and the rest of the gang by, shall we say, half past ten?”

“Half past ten is perfect,” I responded automatically.

“Wonderful,”
gushed Elspeth, and rang off.

I stood with the phone to my ear and my mouth agape, unable to believe what I’d just heard. Had my father-in-law really telephoned a Handmaiden? Had he actually given her my cell phone number? Had she said
dear Amelia
? None of it made any kind of sense to me until I remembered Willis, Sr.’s, words, spoken brusquely but with great determination as he fiddled with the file on his desk:
I will rectify my errors, Lori. I shall see to it that Mrs. Thistle will not have to pay for my mistakes.

“He’s rectifying his errors,” I murmured. “He’s made sure that Elspeth will cooperate with us, despite his absence. He’s cleared a path for Amelia.” I glanced at Nell, who sat astride her chestnut mare as regally as a fairy queen. “The knight has slain his first dragon….”

I paused to wipe away a sentimental tear, then telephoned Charles.

Eighteen

D 
ove Cottage was the northernmost of three cottages that sat in a row at the very edge of the village, facing St. George’s Church. The three cottages were virtually identical. Each was a small, rectangular, one-and-a-half-story stone house, with a pair of dormer windows above, a pair of large diamond-paned windows below, a chimney at either end of the steeply pitched roof, and a front door shielded by a shallow porch.

Since I didn’t play bridge or paint pictures or qualify as one of Elspeth Binney’s bosom chums, I’d never set foot inside Dove Cottage. The image I had of its interior was entirely imaginary, but crystal clear nonetheless. I envisioned it crammed to the rafters with gaudy knickknacks, spindly furniture, and sloshy watercolors signed:
E. B.

I felt slightly abashed, therefore, when Elspeth ushered me into a small but sunny parlor furnished with a carefully edited selection of simple, well-made antiques and decorated with a superb collection of black-and-white landscape photographs. Clearly, the woman had better taste than I’d given her credit for.

The parlor was overcrowded when I arrived, because Charles, Grant, Amelia, Lilian, and Bree had gotten there before me. Amelia sat in a Windsor armchair near the hearth, with her carpet bag at her feet, but the others were milling around restlessly, as if they were already sizing up possible hidey-holes.

“Did you take the photos, Elspeth?” I asked, peering closely at a spare, expansive study of moor and sky.

“Oh, no,” she replied. “They were taken by my niece, the one in Yorkshire. She’s an amateur photographer, of course, but I think she’s rather good.”

“She’s very good,” Amelia stated firmly. “Your niece is an artist, Elspeth. If she ever decides to sell her work to the public, please feel free to tell her to get in touch with me. I’m fairly well connected in the art world.”

The understatement won sycophantic chuckles from Charles and Grant, but Elspeth blushed with pleasure and thanked Amelia effusively. Elspeth’s warm and welcoming demeanor seemed to indicate that she no longer regarded Amelia as a rival. The combined effects of Willis, Sr.’s, mysterious telephone call and Amelia’s public renunciation of marriage had evidently put the Handmaiden’s suspicious mind at rest.

“We should be expressing our gratitude to you,” Amelia told her. “Thank you for allowing us to invade your home.”

“Not at all,” said Elspeth, beaming. “When I was a schoolteacher, history was my favorite subject. I confess I felt a twinge of envy when William told me that the first page of the memoir had been found in Opal Taylor’s chimney all those many years ago, but it vanished the moment he explained that the third page might be concealed in
my
house.” She turned to me. “Dearest Amelia has shown me what you’re looking for, but I’m afraid you won’t find any pieces of parchment in my chimneys. I have them swept twice a year, you see. Anything that might have been hidden in them would have fallen out long ago.”

The moment Elspeth stopped speaking, everyone else began offering their own ideas as to where the third page might be be found. I endured the cacophony for less than half a second, then stepped forward and raised my hands for silence. Amazingly, it worked.

“Thank you,” I said, doing my best to imitate Lilian Bunting at her most authoritative. “Before we start running in circles and duplicating each other’s work, let’s ask ourselves a few questions, shall we? Gamaliel Gowland hid the pages of his memoir sometime
between 1649, when he became the rector of St. George’s, and 1653, when he left St. George’s for a post at Exeter Cathedral.”

“Correct,” said Lilian.

“First question,” I said. “What parts of Dove Cottage existed before 1653? There’s no point in searching later additions, is there?”

“None,” said Lilian, with an approving nod.

“Elspeth?” I said. “Can you enlighten us?”

“As it happens, I can,” she said. “Dove Cottage was built in 1587. Its various owners have made numerous cosmetic changes since then, but the house’s basic structure has remained the same.”

“It’s expensive to alter a stone building,” Lilian observed.

“It is,” Elspeth agreed. “Only three features have been added to Dove Cottage since the early seventeenth century: the porch, the scullery, and the little sunroom Mr. Barlow built for me five years ago.”