Aunt Dimity: Detective

Table of Contents

 

 

 

A PENGUIN MYSTERY AUNT DIMITY: DETECTIVE

Nancy Atherton is the author of
Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday
and six other Aunt Dimity novels, all available from Penguin. She lives next door to a cornfield in central Illinois.

Aunt Dimity's Death
Aunt Dimity and the Duke
Aunt Dimity's Good Deed
Aunt Dimity Digs In
Aunt Dimity's Christmas
Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 2001
Published in Penguin Books 2003

Copyright © Nancy T. Atherton, 2001

eISBN : 978-0-142-00154-7

 

For
the people of Bellflower,
good neighbors all

Chapter 1

M
y family and I were three thousand miles away when the murder took place in Finch. We had what my lawyer husband called “a
nearly
airtight alibi.” The fact that our twin sons weren't quite two years old made their involvement unlikely, but since I was—according to Bill—capable of arranging anything, anywhere, regardless of time and space, he was forced to consider me a suspect. I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or appalled by his boundless faith in me.

Bill and I were Americans, though we lived in England now, in a honey-colored cottage in the Cotswolds, near the small village of Finch. Finch was a somnolent hive of inactivity, a rural backwater awash with retirees and seasonal tides of vacationing city-dwellers. It was a quiet place where people led quiet lives, and it suited us to a T. Bill ran the European branch of his family's venerable law firm from an office on the square, while I stayed at home with Will and Rob and a reliable English nanny-in-residence. We simply couldn't imagine a better life.

We had family obligations on the far side of the Atlantic, however, and the first three months of the New Year had been spent fulfilling them. We stayed with Bill's father at the family mansion in Boston, where Bill's snooty aunts subjected us to a head-spinning whirl of social calls intended to introduce the twins to every stuffed shirt in the Boston Brahmin directory. I adored my father-in-law, but social whirling wasn't my cup of tea. By the end of the three months I was more than happy to return to the life I'd left behind in Finch.

I was standing in the living room the day after our return, enjoying the sight of an April shower bathing the hawthorne hedge, when the vicar's wife pulled into our graveled drive. I was pleased, as always, to see her. Lilian Bunting was a slender, scholarly woman, middle-aged, mild-mannered, and as shrewdly observant as a case-hardened cop. If anyone could fill me in on three months' worth of Finchocentric gossip, it would be Lilian.

I met her at the front door, took her umbrella, and offered to take her raincoat, but she resisted.

“I can't stay, Lori,” she informed me. “I really must get back to Teddy.”

“Is the vicar sick?” I asked, with some concern.

“No, but he soon will be if this business isn't cleared up expeditiously.” Lilian clasped her hands together worriedly. “That's why I'm here. I have a favor to ask of you. I would have asked it of Emma Harris, but she and Derek are spending a few days in Devon.”

“So that's where they are.” Emma Harris was my nearest neighbor and closest friend in England. I'd found a message from her on my answering machine when I'd come home, but when I'd tried to return her call, no one had answered.

“I didn't like to ask for such a favor over the telephone,” Lilian was saying. “I wouldn't ask at all if it weren't for Teddy.”

My concern increased. Lilian Bunting was a stickler for social niceties, yet she hadn't welcomed me home after my long absence or made the requisite inquiries about Bill and the boys. Her hair was mussed, her face drawn, and she seemed distracted, almost fretful.

I leaned forward. “What's wrong, Lilian?”

“It's Nicky,” she said. “Nicholas Fox, my nephew. Nicky's a darling boy, but he's staying with us for a fortnight, and I don't know what to do with him. There's no one his age in the village, and as Teddy and I will be fully engaged tomorrow afternoon, I was wondering if I might . . .” She looked at me imploringly.

“Bring Nicky here,” I said promptly. “The boys and I will find a way to keep him busy.” As a mother of twins, I was accustomed to coping with a fair amount of chaos. The prospect of adding one more child to the mix didn't faze me in the least.

Lilian grasped my hand. “Thank you, Lori. I know how exhausted you must be after your long journey.”

“I'm fit as a fiddle,” I countered. “We took the Concorde, so jet lag isn't an issue. Bill felt so peppy that he decided to stay in London until Saturday, to catch up on paperwork.”

“Excellent.” Lilian smoothed her hair. “It will relieve my mind to leave Nicky with you while Teddy and I attend the inquest.”

“Inquest?” I repeated.

“A waste of time,” Lilian said firmly. “We already know when, where, and how the poor woman was murdered.”

“Murdered?” I echoed, beginning to feel like a slightly addled parrot.

Lilian eyed me closely. “Good heavens,” she said. “You haven't heard.”

“What haven't I heard?” I asked.

“There's been a murder,” said Lilian, “in Finch.”

I was certain I'd misunderstood her. The words “murder” and “Finch” didn't belong in the same sentence unless “never happens” came in between. Finch was a rural haven, not an urban jungle. The last crime committed in the village had been the theft of a series of obscure pamphlets from the vicar's study. On a crime-spree scale from one to ten, pamphlet-pilfering didn't even register. Murder, on the other hand, was a calamity of seismic proportions.

“M-murder?” I faltered, adding inanely, “Are you sure?”

Lilian shrugged. “As sure as one can be. The police seem to think—”

“Who?” I interrupted. Familiar faces were flickering past my mind's eye with gut-wrenching speed. “Who was murdered?”

“Mrs. Hooper,” Lilian answered.

“Pruneface?”
I cried, then ducked my head to avoid Lilian's disapproving glare. “Sorry. That's what Mr. Barlow called her when he pointed her out to me on the square. He didn't seem particularly fond of her.”

“Prunella Hooper may not have been universally admired,” Lilian said stiffly, “but she was enormously helpful to Saint George's. Her flower arrangements were second to none, and she was always eager to volunteer for the most menial of tasks. Teddy and I found her a welcome addition to the parish.”

I nodded, suitably chastened. Prunella Hooper had moved to Finch just before Christmas, which explained why I knew so little about her. She'd rented Crabtree Cottage from Peggy Taxman, Finch's postmistress and the owner of the Emporium, the village's general store. Mrs. Hooper and I had never been formally introduced, but we'd exchanged pleasantries in passing. I remembered her as a short, plump woman in late middle age who wore too much makeup and curled her tinted hair in an out-of-date bouffant style.

“How was she killed?” I asked.

“She was hit on the head with the proverbial blunt instrument,” Lilian answered. “It happened ten days ago, in her cottage. Peggy Taxman found her shortly after nine in the morning, lying in a pool of blood near the front-parlor window, where she keeps—
kept
—all of those flowers.”

“The geraniums,” I said, and wondered briefly who would tend the hanging plants that crowded every window in Crabtree Cottage.

Lilian's brow furrowed as the hall clock struck the hour. “I'm sorry, Lori, but I must run. Mrs. Hooper's death has upset Teddy terribly. He's in no condition to entertain my nephew.”

“Well, I am,” I told her. “I'm looking forward to meeting Nicky, and the twins will enjoy having a new playmate.”

Lilian pressed my hand gratefully, took up her umbrella, and plunged back into the pouring rain. I waited until her car had disappeared between the hedgerows, then headed for the solarium.

It was a blustery April day, windy, wet, and colder than it had any right to be, exactly the sort of day that made me thankful for the glass-paneled room that stretched across the back of the cottage, where my sons could enjoy a reasonable facsimile of fresh air without the attendant risk of pneumonia. Will and Rob were there now, under their nanny's watchful gaze, wholly absorbed in dismantling the fleet of toy trucks bestowed upon them in Boston by their adoring grandfather.

“Annelise,” I said from the doorway, “do you have a minute?” When the young woman had joined me, I asked quietly if she knew that a murder had taken place in Finch.

“Of course I do,” she replied. “Mum told me about it the day after it happened.” Annelise had come with us to Boston but had kept in close touch with her family by telephone.

“Why didn't you tell me and Bill?” I asked.

“Mum said it'd put a damper on your holiday, and besides, old Pruneface was no great loss. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish, ' Mum says.”

I stared at her, openmouthed. Annelise was one of the most compassionate young women on earth, and her mother was kindness itself. They were the last people I'd expect to speak so extremely ill of the dead.

“Aren't you being a little harsh?” I said.

“Not nearly so harsh as she deserved,” Annelise retorted. “No one was sad to see her go except for the Buntings and Mrs. Taxman, and they didn't know the half of it.”

“The half of what?” I asked.

“The mischief she got up to.” Annelise folded her arms. “I'm sorry, but I can't say more. Mum ordered us not to dignify that woman's wicked rumors by repeating them.”

It was an exercise in futility to countermand an order issued by the matriarch of the Scaiparelli clan, so I turned my attention to the less daunting task of preparing lunch.