Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity Digs In

Mr. Taxman closed the ledger and pulled a clipboard from beneath the counter. “The petition,” he announced, placing the clipboard, and a pen, in the space between Rainey and the cash register.

The petition was, predictably, printed on harvest-gold paper. A paragraph at the top of the first page stated Peggy’s version of the case—with yet another biblical verse thrown in, excoriating “spiritual wickedness in high places”—and demanded that the bishop exert his moral, legal, and ecclesiastical authority in restoring control of the schoolhouse to local hands. The numbered lines below the paragraph were already filled with signatures, as were three-quarters of the lines on the following page.

My eyebrows rose when I saw Emma’s hasty scrawl near the top of the second page. “Rainey,” I said, “were you here when Mrs. Harris stopped by today?”

Mr. Taxman might be able to hold his peace, but Rainey was reliably irrepressible. “Mrs. Harris’s little girl is in France,” she replied, “and her little boy is in New Guinea, but she told me that’s not where guinea pigs come from so I asked her, if she wasn’t sending lettuce leaves to feed the pigs, what was in the package? And she said it was photographs Nell wanted her to post to Peter, her little boy.”

Smiling smugly, I picked up the pen, bent to add my name to the list, and caught sight of a signature that drove all thoughts of Emma’s surrender from my mind. “Is that . . .” I pointed to a bold, barely legible line of script halfway down the page. “Does that say Dr. Adrian Culver? ”

“Yes,” said Mr. Taxman, a muted note of triumph in his voice.

His effusiveness caught my attention.

“Odd, isn’t it?” I commented. “ That Dr. Culver should sign a piece of paper that could put him out of the schoolhouse?”

“Indeed,” Mr. Taxman replied.

A brick wall would have been easier to read. I scribbled my name on the page, wondering how Adrian Culver had managed to hold a pen with Peggy Kitchen twisting his arm.

“I’d like to make a copy of the petition before Mrs. Kitchen sends it to the bishop,” I said.

“We have no photocopier,” Mr. Taxman pointed out.

“My husband has one,” I told him. “It won’t take him more than a minute to make a copy. Please tell Mrs. Kitchen that a . . . a historic document like this should be preserved for posterity.”

“I will.” Mr. Taxman slid the clipboard beneath the counter.

Rainey’s foot began to jiggle and I turned my attention to her. She had no business sitting indoors on such a beautiful day. At her age, I’d spent the summer months climbing trees, hopping fences, and racing through alleys from dawn to dusk. But then, I’d had a gang of neighbor children to play with, whereas Rainey, according to Bill, had no one. On impulse, I said, “I’m going for a walk, Rainey. Want to come along?”

Rainey sprang from the counter in such a tangle of arms and legs that she would have broken a dozen bottles of vinegar, as well as her neck, if I hadn’t caught her in midair.

“Yes, please,” she piped as I set her firmly on her sneak ered feet.

“You’ll have to get your gran’s permis—” A cacophony of sleigh bells cut me off as Rainey tumbled headlong out of the shop.

Mr. Taxman gazed after her. “How kind of you to invite her to accompany you on your expedition,” he said softly. “Such a quiet little mouse. I’d half forgotten she was here.”

8.

Rainey Dawson didn’t walk. She bounced, skittered, twirled, and all but took to the air in flight as we made our way across the square. The oppressive heat had no effect on her, and her prodigal expenditure of energy contributed nothing to our progress.

She was infinitely distractable. She dropped onto the cobbles to pry a thumbtack from the sole of her left sneaker, ran to the war memorial to retrieve a willow wand, paused for a refreshing splash in the Peacocks’ puddles, and scampered over to Bill’s office to admire—and “accidentally” break off—a pendant of wysteria, which she presented to me as a token of affection.

It wore me out to watch her, but I made no move to check her. The boys wouldn’t require my presence in the churchyard for another twenty minutes, and Rainey clearly needed to blow off a little steam. I let her stretch her legs at random for a few minutes more before I finally lassoed her with a question.

“Did your grandmother send you over to the Emporium,” I asked, as she whizzed by, “so she could concentrate on the tearoom?”

“Sort of.” Rainey skidded to a halt, then launched into a word-flurry that would have taxed Peggy Kitchen’s well-developed lungs. “Gran and Mrs. Kitchen aren’t speaking to each other because Gran said Mrs. Kitchen’s petition should be used to line the cat’s box, and Mrs. Kitchen called Gran a greedy old cow, but Gran needed a pound of butter for the Pompeii puffs so she sent me to fetch it.”

“Pompeii puffs?” I said, with a twitch of foreboding. “Is that something new?”

“It’s cream puffs with a new name,” Rainey informed me, trotting beside me into Saint George’s Lane. “Gran and Katrina’ve made up all sorts of new names for Gran’s goodies. Chariot wheels is doughnuts, and Hadrian cakes are the ones with jam in the middle, but Gran won’t eat any because she’s slimming again. And Gran’s tearoom isn’t Gran’s tearoom, it’s the Empire tearoom, with a capital E and a helmet sort of thing next to it. Gran says Bath’s made a packet off the Romans, so why shouldn’t we?”

I quaked as my little oracle bubbled over with fresh portents of madness in Finch. We’d come abreast of the vicarage, and while Rainey put her willow wand to use, beheading thistles, I gazed worriedly at the overgrown shrubs.

The long-running feud Mr. Barlow had mentioned seemed to be heating up. Sally Pyne was clearly in open rebellion against Peggy Kitchen, and she was using Dr. Culver as a weapon. First, she’d taken his assistants in as lodgers. Then she’d refused to sign the petition demanding his departure. Now she was transforming the tearoom into a little corner of ancient Rome. She seemed bound and determined to get up Peggy’s nose in every way imaginable. It wasn’t difficult to conceive of her going one step further, and stealing the Gladwell pamphlet in pursuit of her vendetta.

When I informed Rainey that the twins were waiting for us in the churchyard, she flung her willow wand into the air—narrowly missing my eye—and rocketed up the lane to get a firsthand look at “WillanRob.”

I picked up my own pace, pausing at the Mercedes to exchange the bag of lemons for a bottle of My Milk from the ice chest. The sprig of wysteria I kept with me, to place on a headstone in the churchyard.

Because Saint George’s was the focal point of Finch’s tourist trickle, the churchyard was kept in better order than the vicarage garden. The lych-gate’s shingled roof didn’t leak, and the sword-shaped weather vane atop the church didn’t squeak. Weeds were not allowed to choke the roses twining on the low stone wall, nor were they permitted to stem the fall of ivy clinging to the moss-topped sundial. The headstones might be crooked and the tombs defaced by weathering, but they rose from a cool green pool of cropped lawn, among graveled walks that were raked smooth once a week.

A pair of graceful cedars of Lebanon grew within the churchyard walls; the taller sheltered a stone bench with a well-worn seat and backrest. The twins’ toy and diaper bags sat on either end of the bench, and a blanket covered the thick, soft bed of needles in front of it. Will and Rob lay on the blanket, and Rainey knelt between them, talking a mile a minute. I could tell by my sons’ vigorous kicks that they were doing their level best to keep up their end of the conversation.