Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Christmas

“Where are they?” I asked.

“In the nursery,” Willis, Sr., replied, leading the way down the hall. “I closed the door, fearing that you and Bill might be awakened by the commotion.”

As Willis, Sr., opened the nursery door, I heard a babble of baby voices loud enough to wake the dead. Will and Rob, still dressed in their pajamas, their dark hair tousled and their cheeks pink with excitement, were standing in their cribs, bouncing up and down and chattering wildly.

“You see?” said Willis, Sr.

“Mama,” cried Will. “Wedge, wedge, wedge.”

“Wedge!” added Rob, in case I’d missed the point.

“What’s going on?” Bill appeared in the doorway, rubbing sleep from his eyes, wearing a hastily donned Harvard sweatshirt and gray sweatpants.

“I think they’re trying to tell us something,” I murmured, scanning the room.

“Spoken like a doting mother,” Bill said, with a tolerant smile. “You know the boys are too young to—”

I nudged him with my elbow and pointed toward the window seat. “Wedge,” I said triumphantly.

If Bill had remembered to put on his glasses, he’d’ve cracked the code as quickly as I had. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that “wedge” meant Reginald, the pink flannel rabbit bestowed upon me at birth by Aunt Dimity.

“What’s Reginald doing on the window seat?” Bill pulled his glasses from the pocket of his sweatshirt and put them on. “I dropped him in Rob’s crib last night.”

“Rob must have tossed him out,” I said.

“All the way to the window seat?” Bill frowned. “That’s a heck of a toss for a little guy. Besides, Reginald’s standing upright, facing the window. How did he land like that? Father, did you—”

“I did not move Reginald,” said Willis, Sr., crossing to look out of the window. “He was sitting on the window seat when I awoke this morning. I thought one of you had placed him there.”

A quiver of uneasiness passed through me. The boys had fallen silent and were watching me expectantly. I nodded to them and joined Willis, Sr., at the window, squinting against the glare of bright sunlight on snow.

Not a whisper of wind stirred the silent world beyond the windowpane. The sky was a cloudless dome of blue, and the drab autumnal landscape was now gowned in classic white. The hedgerows sported clusters of sparkling pompoms, and the front lawn wore a sinuous, shimmering gown that flowed unbroken from the flagstone walk to the foot of the lilac bushes lining the graveled drive.

“What’s that?” Bill asked, coming up behind me.

“What’s what?” I replied.

Willis, Sr., leaned forward. “I believe I see something beneath the lilac bushes.”

Bill stiffened suddenly. “Something… or someone.”

For half a heartbeat, no one moved. Then Reginald tumbled from the window seat to the floor, stirring all of us into action. Willis, Sr., remained with the boys while Bill and I pelted down the stairs, leaving the gates open in our haste. We paused briefly at the front door to jam our bare feet into boots, then raced outside, not bothering with jackets.

A man lay on his side beneath the bare-branched lilac bushes, his arms crossed over his chest and his knees half-bent, as though conserving a last remnant of body heat. Shoulder-length gray hair fell across his face, and his shaggy beard was rimed with frost. The man was dressed like a tramp, in ragged trousers, fingerless gloves, and a worn woolen overcoat bound at the waist with a length of rope. A drift of snow had settled over him, intricately patterned with whorls and curves.

Bill dropped to his knees and pressed his fingers to the man’s neck. “Still with us,” he muttered. “Just barely. Grab his legs, Lori.”

I looked at the man’s ragged trousers, suppressed a shudder of revulsion, then reached for his legs and lifted.

Willis, Sr., was slight of build and had a delicate constitution, but when he took charge in an emergency he had the command capability of a five-star general. While Bill and I were out in the snow, he got on the telephone.

In less than an hour, an RAF rescue helicopter appeared in my back meadow and whisked the tramp off to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where he was treated by a team of specialists—commandeered by my well-connected father-in-law—for pneumonia complicated by hypothermia and malnutrition.

Dr. Pritchard, the attending physician, kept us informed of his patient’s progress throughout the morning. At nine-fifteen the doctor reported that the man was in critical condition, still unconscious and still without a name. The police had been unable to identify him, and the medical staff had found no trace of identification on his person.

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.