Aunt Dimity's Christmas (3 page)

We maintained a silent vigil in the living room. Willis, Sr., stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out of the bow windows toward the lilac bushes, while Bill and I sat in armchairs, facing each other across the cold hearth.

The twins had gone through their morning routine with unaccustomed docility, as though sensing the gravity of
the situation. Rob had spent the past half hour in Bill's lap, chewing diligently on Reginald's left ear, while Will curled contentedly in my arms.

The sofa, where we'd placed the tramp, was still damp from a drizzle of snowmelt. I would have to have it cleaned, I thought, and spray it with disinfectant before I let my sons anywhere near it.

“I wonder what he was doing here,” Bill mused aloud.

“What difference does it make?” I asked. “He's in good hands. We don't have to worry about him anymore.”

“But don't you think it's strange that he should come here?” Bill went on. “We're not on a main thoroughfare.” Aunt Dimity's cottage was, in fact, tucked away on a narrow lane that scarcely merited a mention on most road maps.

“Perhaps he was hitchhiking,” Willis, Sr., proposed, “and the driver dropped him short of his destination.”

“I doubt it,” said Bill. “Only locals use our lane, and none of our neighbors would dump a sick man in a snowdrift.”

Willis, Sr., pursed his lips. “Are you suggesting that the gentleman came here intentionally, to see one of you?”

“That's ridiculous,” I said. “Bill and I don't know any derelicts.”

“That's true,” said Bill, “but he might have come here to see—” He broke off and cocked an ear toward the window. “Does anyone else hear bells?”

A smile wreathed Willis, Sr.'s face as he leaned forward to peer out of the bay window. “I believe Lady Eleanor has come to call.”

Lady Eleanor, commonly known as Nell Harris, lived up the road in a fourteenth-century manor house with her father and stepmother, Derek and Emma Harris. Nell was thirteen years old, tall, willowy, brilliant, and ethereally
beautiful. She frightened the life out of most adults, but Willis, Sr., thought she walked on water.

I carried Will to the window to watch Nell arrive with her usual panache, emerging from the bridle path in a one-horse open sleigh, with two passengers in the backseat and Bertie, her chocolate-brown teddy bear, by her side.

Nell's passengers were immediately recognizable because they were a matched set. Ruth and Louise Pym were identical twin sisters old enough to remember the boys marching off to the blood-soaked fields of Flanders. They were astonishingly spry, a tiny bit vague, and always identically dressed.

Today they looked as though they'd stepped out of a Currier and Ives print. They wore high-waisted coats of fine black wool with puffed shoulders trimmed in black braid. Their dainty hands were protected by white rabbit muffs, their heads by feathered bonnets, and their shoes, incongruously, by ungainly rubber boots.

While Nell stabled her horse in the shed her father had built at the end of the bridle path, the Pyms fluttered up the snow-covered flagstone walk. I handed Will to his grandfather and hastened to the front door to welcome them.

“We're sorry to be so long in coming,” Ruth began, as I ushered them into the hallway. “Dear sweet Nell was kind enough to transport us …”

“… in her sleigh,” Louise continued. The Pyms' alternating speech pattern was as distinctive as their antiquated clothing. “Our motor, as you know, requires a great deal of coaxing …”

“… to start in such weather,” Ruth went on. Since the Pyms' “motor” had been built shortly after the horse-and-buggy era, it was a miracle that it started in any weather.
“Otherwise, we would have been here much sooner. Except that the snow might have …”

“… impeded our progress,” explained Louise. “The lane is blocked from here to Finch, and Mr. Barlow hasn't yet plowed.”

I felt a familiar sense of confusion settle over me as I took their coats and helped them step out of their boots. I had no idea why the Pyms were apologizing for their late arrival, since I'd never expected them in the first place.

“Did we have plans for this morning?” I asked.

“We certainly did,” said Ruth. “Louise and I are woefully behind in our crochet work, and unless we get started soon …”

“… we shall not be able to deliver our Christmas presents on time,” said Louise worriedly. “However, such plans are of no consequence when compared with the urgent business at hand.”

“Right,” I said, knowing that all would be made clear eventually. “Please, come in. Bill? Will you see to our guests?”

While my husband looked after the Pyms, I went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I'd just carried the tea tray into the living room when Nell knocked at the front door. I placed the tray on the coffee table and hastened to let her in.

Nell Harris swept into the cottage with Bertie in the crook of her arm. Bertie looked like a fuzzy elf in his forest-green sweater and red-and-green-striped scarf, but Nell looked like a snow queen. Her hooded velvet cloak was nearly as blue as her eyes, and her golden curls gleamed like a crown in the bright morning light.

“Please, tell us he isn't dead,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion.

“Who?” I asked.

“Reginald,” she replied, as if the answer were self-evident. “Bertie's been frantic ever since he saw the rescue helicopter flying toward the cottage. Has an accident befallen Reginald?”

Nell's myriad eccentricities had long since ceased to amaze me. If she wanted to believe that her teddy bear was worried sick about my pink flannel rabbit, who was I to criticize? I was simply thankful that she hadn't dyed her golden hair black or defiled her fair skin with tattoos.

“Reginald's fine,” I said, taking her cape, “apart from a little baby drool in the ear.”

“Thank heavens,” Nell said fervently. She paused, then asked in a puzzled voice, “Are Ruth and Louise right, then? Did you really call out the RAF to rescue a tramp?”

I stared at her. “How did Ruth and Louise know about him?”

Nell shrugged. “I have no idea. They flagged me down as I was riding past their house and asked me to take them here directly, because they were worried about a tramp. Did you really call out the RAF—”

“Yes, Nell,” I said. “In fact, William called out the RAF to rescue a tramp. Is that so hard to believe?”

Nell's blue eyes became thoughtful. “I suppose not. I've just never heard of anyone doing it before.”

“Come on,” I said. “I want to find out what the Pyms know about my uninvited guest.”

Nell exchanged greetings with Bill and Willis, Sr., and bestowed a kiss apiece on Rob and Will, neatly dodging Will's attempts to grab a handful of enticing golden curls. She coaxed Rob into trading Reginald for a purple plush dinosaur and placed my pink rabbit on the window seat with Bertie before perching on an ottoman beside Willis, Sr.'s chair.

I sat on the couch, bracketed by the Pyms, and began to
serve the tea, wondering how long it would take the loquacious sisters to come to the point of their visit. They surprised me by coming to it at once.

“We knew the moment we heard the helicopter that something terrible had happened,” said Ruth. “Such a pity. If only the poor gentleman …”

“… had come into our house, as we asked him to.” Louise shook her head sadly. “But he wouldn't stop.”

I looked from one sister to the other. “Did you speak with the tramp last night?”

“We heard him coughing on the bridle path,” Ruth replied, “a terrible, racking cough. Louise called to him, and I offered him hot soup …”

“… but he wouldn't stop.” Louise's bright bird's eyes widened as she added, “It was rather eerie, to be honest. He reminded us so strongly …”

“… of poor Robert Anscombe, who died so long ago,” said Ruth. “He lost an arm in the trenches in 1917, and his face was so sadly disfigured that he couldn't bear to be with other people …”

“… so he always took the bridle path, to avoid being seen,” Louise finished.

I saw Nell nod. The Harrises had lived in Anscombe Manor for the past eight years. The house had been a wreck when they'd moved into it, and the grounds had been sorely neglected. The Anscombe family, once Finch's local gentry, had faded from the scene some thirty years earlier. Now there was little to remember them by but a pair of effigies and assorted marble plaques in Saint George's Church.

“We urged him to come in out of the storm,” said Ruth, “but he said he would be stopping soon enough.”

“Where?” said Bill.

“At Dimity Westwood's cottage,” said Louise.

Of course, I thought. If the tramp had come to the cottage to see anyone, it had to have been Dimity Westwood. The woman from whom I'd inherited the cottage had known a wide range of people during her lifetime, including those at the lowest end of the social scale.

Willis, Sr., shifted Will from his shoulder to his lap before stating the obvious. “The gentleman must be ignorant of the fact that Miss Westwood is dead.”

The sisters nodded in tandem.

“We tried to tell him,” Ruth said. “But he couldn't hear us …”

“… over the wind,” said Louise, “and the coughing.”

“Did he say anything else about Dimity?” Bill asked.

“Nothing,” said Ruth. “He simply waved …”

“… and went on his way,” said Louise. “We've been terribly concerned about him. How is the poor gentleman?”

Bill caught my eye and jutted his chin toward the hallway. While he launched into a detailed description of the morning's activities, I excused myself and headed for the study. It was clear that my husband wanted me to speak with Aunt Dimity.

D
imity Westwood was not, in an official sense, my aunt. Nor was she, technically speaking, alive. The former was far easier to explain than the latter.

Dimity Westwood had been my late mother's closest friend. They'd met in London during the Second World War and maintained a steady correspondence long after the war was over. I grew up hearing about Aunt Dimity, but only as a fictional character in a series of bedtime stories. I didn't learn about the real Dimity Westwood until after her death, when she bequeathed to me a considerable fortune, a honey-colored cottage in the Cotswolds, and a blue leather–bound journal with blank pages, which I kept on a shelf in the study.

It was through the blue journal that I came to know my benefactress. Dimity Westwood was not the sort of person who'd let a little thing like death interrupt the habits of a lifetime, so she continued her correspondence long after her mortal remains had dwindled into dust.

When I opened the blue journal, Aunt Dimity's handwriting
appeared, an elegant copperplate taught in the village school at a time when high-buttoned shoes were still in vogue. I had no idea how Dimity managed to bridge the gap between earth and eternity, and I kept the blue journal a closely held secret, but I cherished her presence in the cottage and hoped she would never leave.

“Dimity?” I sat in one of the pair of tall leather armchairs that flanked the hearth, with the journal open in my lap. I glanced at the closed door and kept my voice low, understandably reluctant to have my guests hear me addressing a dead woman. “Dimity?” I repeated, and felt a thrill course though me as the familiar, gracefully curving lines of royal-blue ink began to loop and curl across the page.

Good morning, my dear, and what a beautiful morning it is. You must be so very pleased. The snow came, just as you hoped it would.

“Let's not talk about snow right now,” I said shortly. “We have something else to discuss.”

And what might that be
?

“An old guy nearly froze to death in the drive last night,” I said.

How dreadful
.

“Apparently, he was coming here to see you,” I told her. “The Pym sisters spoke with him as he passed their house. He told them he was going to Dimity Westwood's cottage. I thought you might know him, because of your work with the trust.”

Dimity Westwood had been filthy rich, but she hadn't left her capital to gather dust. She'd used a good-sized chunk of it to found the Westwood Trust, an umbrella organization for a number of different charities, of which I was now the titular head.

“You met all sorts of people back then, didn't you?” I asked. “Poor people, I mean.”

My work with the trust introduced me to a great number of people I wouldn't otherwise have had the privilege to meet. It certainly broadened my horizons
.

Dimity's unspoken reprimand stung, but only slightly. I didn't want to see homeless people on my horizons. When panhandlers came toward me, I ran the other way. And since this particular vagrant had intruded on the first day of my Christmas celebration, I was feeling even less charitable than usual.