Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Christmas

The cottage was besieged by a chattering mob of white-haired dears bearing bits of flannel (“to tuck about his poor weak chest”), bowls of blancmange (“so soothing to a scratchy throat”), embroidered sleeping caps, crocheted foot-warmers, and several months’ worth of casseroles. I felt as though I were holding a wake.

A wake might have been in order had I fed my ailing swain the curious nostrums offered by his aged groupies. Bottles filled with glutinous brown liquids and jars of hideous gray jellies were offered with exact directions for their use. I baked another batch of angel cookies to give as thank-you’s to each amateur physician but flushed their malodorous concoctions down the toilet.

The only home remedy I would countenance was the tea Emma Harris brought over from Anscombe Manor on Saturday afternoon. If Emma said that burdock-root tea would ease Willis, Sr.’s chest congestion, I believed her.

I invited Emma to stay for a cup of non-medicinal tea, and after looking in on my patient and putting the boys down for their naps, I joined her in the living room, where she was surveying my raftered ceiling and oak mantelpiece with a puzzled frown.

“Looks like the Christmas fairy’s passed you by,” she commented as she settled beside me on the couch. “What happened to all of the holly you gathered, and the evergreen boughs? Shouldn’t they be up by now?”

“Yep,” I acknowledged, filling her cup. “Bill and I were on the verge of decorating when he was called away to attend a funeral in Boston. I thought I might tackle the job with William’s help, but then he caught his cold.”

“So what have you been up to?” Emma raised her teacup to her lips and took a sip.

“I’ve been lusting after a comatose stranger and a Roman Catholic priest,” I tossed off nonchalantly. “You?”

Emma choked and sputtered, splashing tea down the front of her handknit heather-gray sweater. I quickly took the teacup from her hand and dabbed at her sweater with a calico napkin.

“F-forget about the sweater,” Emma managed, waving off my ministrations. “T-tell me about the priest!”

So I told her about Julian, about his self-doubt, dedication, and touching vulnerability, and I told her about Kit, who still lay unconscious in intensive care. By the time I finished, Emma’s sweater had dried and the tea had grown cold.

“Now I understand what Peggy Kitchen was grumbling about.” Emma kicked off her shoes, curled her legs beneath her, and turned to face me. “When I went into the Emporium this morning she muttered something about you flooding the village with undesirables. I thought she was talking about your Christmas Eve party, but she must have meant Kit.” Emma giggled wickedly. “Too bad Julian doesn’t wear his collar. That would really give Peggy something to talk about.”

“Papists and vagrants.” I clasped my hands over my heart. “My people. But seriously, Emma”—I put my feet on the coffee table and rested my head on the back of the couch—“I don’t know why I feel so strongly about these two men.”

“Well, you’ve teamed up with Julian, haven’t you? Being part of a team can make you feel very close to someone. As far as Kit’s concerned…” Emma reached for Reginald, who’d somehow ended up between the sofa cushions. “I think you want to mother him. It’s only natural. After all, he’s even more helpless than your babies.”

I pursed my lips, marveling at Emma’s ability to drain the passion from the most emotionally charged situations. “In other words,” I said dryly, “I’m seething with a combination of team spirit and maternal instinct?”

“I wouldn’t rule out lust,” Emma temporized. “You do have a weak spot for wounded princes.” She gave me a sly, sidelong glance. “I’d better tell Bill to walk with a limp when he gets home.”

“If he’s not home by Christmas Eve,” I growled, “I’ll give him a limp.”

“See?” said Emma. “You’re still in love with your husband.” She propped Reginald on the arm of the couch and folded her arms. “I ran a search on a random sample of names from Kit’s scroll yesterday. Three of the men were killed in action, flying bombers over Germany. One was a POW. The rest survived the war without a scratch.”

“The living and the dead,” I murmured pensively. “It’s not what I expected.”

“Kit squeezed in about six hundred names per page,” Emma explained. “That’s over a hundred thousand names. The man at the Imperial War Museum put the total number of men who served with Bomber Command at one hundred twenty-five thousand. It looks as if Kit listed them all.”

“I suppose the living need prayers as much as the dead,” I reasoned.

“Maybe more so,” said Emma. “May I have a look at those medals Kit was carrying?”

“Of course.” While I fetched the suede pouch from the master bedroom, Emma took a pen and notebook from her purse. When I returned, she made a complete inventory of the pouch’s contents, listing every badge, medal, ribbon, and bar.

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“It seems to me,” she said, tucking the notebook back into her purse, “that only a handful of men would have been so highly decorated during the war. If I put the list of medals out on the Internet, maybe someone will recognize it and tell us who they belong to. Assuming they all belong to one man.”

“It’s worth a try,” I said. Emma started to get up, but I put a hand on her arm to restrain her. “Emma, my best and dearest friend,” I said, in my most wheedling tones, “would you please do another favor for me?”

Emma eyed me suspiciously. “Depends on what it is.”

“I promised William that I’d stand in for him at tonight’s rehearsal,” I informed her. “And I was hoping you’d be an absolute angel and babysit for me. It’ll just be for a couple of hours, and I’ll have the boys bathed and in their pajamas by the time you get here.”

“You want me to look after the twins?” Emma gaped in disbelief. Emma’s stepchildren had come to her fully weaned and potty-trained. She claimed to have no discernible maternal instinct.

“Either that or spend the evening in Finch with Peggy Kitchen,” I said, fluttering my eyelashes.

“I’d love to look after the twins,” Emma declared. “If things get too desperate, Derek can always bail me out.”

I heaved a sigh of relief and gave her a hug. Emma’s husband knew all there was to know about babies. With Derek as backup, Emma would have a peaceful, trouble-free evening.

I somehow doubted that the same would hold true for me.

12

Finch sparkled like a cheap dime-store bracelet that evening. Each building on the square had been outlined in fairy lights, in imitation of the annual display at Harrods, and garish garlands had been wound around each tree. The pub’s plastic choirboys swayed drunkenly in the icy breeze and Sally Pyne’s Santa heads leered from the tearoom’s shadowy windows. The darkness softened the features of Peggy Kitchen’s mad-eyed, mechanical Father Christmas, however, and made him appear marginally less hostile.

Every business on the square seemed to be closed for the evening, but the schoolhouse had come alive. Light shone from the gothic windows, and smoke rose from the narrow chimney. The succession of frigid days following the blizzard had left a glaze of ice across the schoolyard, but the show was going on regardless, thanks to a thick layer of sand spread across the treacherous surface by Mr. Barlow. The retired mechanic stood in the doorway admiring his handiwork, and Buster, his yappy terrier, barked a greeting as I approached.

I bent to scratch Buster’s chin, then straightened and cocked an ear toward the sound of voices coming from within the schoolhouse. “I guess everyone’s shut up shop to come to the rehearsal, huh?”