Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity Digs In

Mr. Barlow eyed the tearoom reflectively. “It may be that Sally’s just trying to get up Peg Kitchen’s nose. Never been the best of friends, those two. Ancient history, of course, but they do say history has a way of catching us up.”

I glanced down at Buster, who’d returned, rubber ball clamped securely between his jaws. “Did Sally and Peggy know each other before they came to Finch?”

“No.” Mr. Barlow shook his head decisively. “Their quarrel started right here. No telling where it’ll end.” He squinted over his shoulder at Kitchen’s Emporium. “Planning to sign the petition?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve heard that the bishop’s not likely to pay attention to it.”

“Bishop doesn’t run the shop, does he?” said Mr. Farnham. “If Her Majesty wants us to sign the petition, I reckon we’d best sign the petition, eh, Mr. Barlow?”

Mr. Barlow nodded sagely, then bent to snap the leash on Buster’s collar.

“I’d better sign it, then,” I said, “before Her Majesty comes gunning for me. Here, Mr. Farnham, let me walk with you.”

I took Mr. Farnham by the arm and steered him back to his shop. Finch’s greengrocer was in his seventies and painfully thin—if he stumbled on the cobbles, he’d shatter. The day’s warmth inspired me to buy a bag of lemons at his shop, for lemonade, before heading for Kitchen’s Emporium.

Peggy’s shop sat unobtrusively in the center of the row of buildings that made up the west side of the square. Apart from the display in the window, it looked very much like its neighbors: a two-story building of Cotswolds stone, with a gabled roof and dormer windows above, a white-painted door, and a large white-framed window below.

The interior of Kitchen’s Emporium featured a long wooden counter running from front to back, with an ancient cash register at the end nearest the entrance. A grilled window at the far end denoted the post office. Rows of shelves and racks opposite the counter held the usual assortment of groceries.

Behind a small brown door at the rear of the shop, however, lay a realm so vast and wondrous that Bill had dubbed it Xanadu. Few travelers had roamed its byways and lived to tell the tale, but Peggy seemed to have a map tattooed upon her wrist. From its depths she’d extracted, on demand: sun hats, gumboots, strange elixirs to ward off colds, fishing poles, freckle cream, cricket bats, puce-colored thread, and the vicar’s favorite brand of tinned prawns. The merest glimpse of Xanadu’s shadowed aisles had convinced me that Peggy’s shop was very much like Peggy: a facade of normalcy concealing the unfathomable.

Sleigh bells jingled as the shop door opened and a straggle of villagers emerged, murmuring quietly among themselves. The empress of Finch was no doubt holding court behind the counter, extending credit to the favored, withholding mail from the damned.

I pushed the door open, silently cursed the sleigh bells, and paused in the doorway to scan the aisles. Peggy Kitchen was nowhere in sight. Instead, an oddly silent Rainey Dawson sat cross-legged on the counter, her elbows on her knees, her pointed chin cupped in her grubby palms, staring fixedly at a man who stood in Peggy’s place behind the cash register.

As I closed the door, Rainey’s eyes slewed toward me and she hissed, in a whisper that could be heard in twenty counties, “Say something to him.”

I smiled awkwardly at the man behind the counter. He was middle-aged, of middling height, with brown hair going gray at the temples. His brown tie matched a plain brown suit that in turn matched a pair of brown eyes peering out from behind brown-framed glasses. He was nondescript to the point of invisibility, but he held himself erect and seemed unflustered by Rainey’s penetrating whisper.

“Mr. Taxman?” I guessed. “I’m Lori Shepherd, Bill Willis’s wife. How do you do?”

“Very well, thank you,” said Mr. Taxman. “And you?”

“Fine, just fine,” I said, taking stock of Peggy Kitchen’s alleged boyfriend. “Are you looking after the shop for Mrs. Kitchen?”

“I am,” said Mr. Taxman.

“It’s a nice day to be out and about,” I commented. “A bit warm, of course.”

“It is,” Mr. Taxman agreed.

“Good window-washing weather, though,” I prompted.

Mr. Taxman nodded.

I put my sack of lemons on the counter and tried again. “The spring-cleaning bug seems to have bitten everyone lately. Sally Pyne, for instance . . .” I paused, but Mr. Taxman was evidently impervious to cues. “And the Peacocks,” I continued doggedly. “Must be a bit of a nuisance for you. Hard to avoid tripping over all of those buckets and rags and . . . and puddles,” I finished lamely.

The Great Stone Face registered no opinion.

Rainey leaned toward me to confide, in a stentorian murmur, “He hardly ever talks.”

“Rainey,” I scolded, “this isn’t a zoo and Mr. Taxman isn’t a caged animal, so stop treating him like one.”

Rainey fixed her eyes virtuously on the ceiling. “I’m sorry, Mr. Taxman,” she said. “I don’t think you’re one bit like a monkey or an elephant. They’re much noisier.”

A shy smile touched Mr. Taxman’s lips. “Apology accepted,” he said, then turned to me. “May I help you?”

“The petition,” I said. “I’d like to sign it.”

“Of course.” As Mr. Taxman reached below the counter, a jangle of sleigh bells announced the arrival of Adrian Culver’s young assistants.

Simon Blakely and Katrina Graham looked as bedraggled as Rainey. Their shorts were filthy, their T-shirts drenched in sweat. Simon was pulling bits of debris from his ponytail, and Katrina was massaging her biceps. Simon said hello to Rainey, then slumped against the counter, but Katrina used the counter as a barre, bending and flexing like a ballerina.

“Hard day at the dig?” I asked.

Simon gave a dispirited laugh. “We haven’t even been to the dig. Katrina, queen of the Amazons, brought ten tons of the wrong equipment, so we’ve spent the entire morning repacking the van.”

“Stop whining, Simon.” Katrina rose from a deep knee bend. “You wouldn’t be so tired if you took care of yourself.”

“If you think I’m working out with you tonight, after what you’ve put me through this morning, you’ve got another think coming.” Simon slouched over to grab a bottle of soda from a shelf. “You’re a fitness freak.”

“Dr. Culver expects us to be fit and healthy,” Katrina retorted. “And I thought he’d want to use the equipment I brought. I don’t know how we’re going to do a proper job of soil analysis, chromatography, or spectrographic scans without it.”

“This is a preliminary survey,” Simon reminded her, “not the dig at Herculaneum.” He unscrewed the cap on the bottle and gulped the soda noisily.

Katrina eyed the soda with disgust and selected a bottle of springwater from a shelf at Simon’s elbow. “We’ll take a case of these, if you have one, Mr. Taxman.”

“I’ll bring it over when Mrs. Kitchen returns. No need to pay now,” he added, waving off Katrina’s cash. “I’ll put it on your account.”

Simon choked on his soda. “Mrs. Kitchen extended credit to us? ” he sputtered.

“ To your project,” Mr. Taxman replied.

Katrina frowned. “Why would Mrs. Kitchen—”

Simon nudged her toward the front door. “Don’t argue,” he muttered. “See you at supper, Rainey.”

Katrina tried to stand her ground, but as Simon hustled her out into the square, her question remained unanswered.

Why would Peggy Kitchen extend credit to the very people she was trying to evict? I looked at Mr. Taxman, who was conscientiously recording the pair’s purchases in the shop’s ledger. If he knew what Peggy was up to—and I was sure that she was up to something—he would no doubt keep it to himself. I was beginning to get the hang of his courtship strategy.