Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity Digs In

Peggy Kitchen and Jasper Taxman were the last to leave. A handful of villagers lingered in the churchyard, but the prudent majority had hastened down the lane. Bill and I pushed the strollers within earshot of the west porch and awaited the empress’s reaction to the vicar’s reprimand.

“God bless you, Mrs. Kitchen,” said the vicar before she had a chance to speak. “Thank you so much for coming to this morning’s service.”

Peggy clasped her hands across her stomach and threw her shoulders back. “I suppose you know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, yes, I assure you, Mrs. Kitchen,” said the vicar, with a merry laugh, “it’s quite irrefutable. I’m sure you’re as pleased as I am to learn the truth behind the scurrilous gossip that’s been plaguing our community.”

“Yes.” Peggy nodded. “Very pleased indeed.” Her eyes narrowed knowingly behind her pointy glasses as she leaned toward the vicar. “But what’s all this about a burglary at the vicarage? More scurrilous gossip?”

“Ah.” The vicar’s smile wavered as he strained to formulate an honest, noninflammatory answer.

Lilian came swiftly to his rescue. “Something is missing from the vicarage,” she stated firmly, “but we can’t say positively that it was stolen. It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that the item was misplaced. Teddy’s so dreadfully absentminded.”

The vicar winced at his wife’s unorthodox interpretation of the truth and quickly changed the subject. “Will we see you at Rainey’s birthday party?”

Peggy drew herself up. “You will,” she said. “And it had better be something special, or Sally Pyne’ll have her work cut out explaining why she missed church on a Sunday. You leave it to me, Vicar. I’ll straighten her out. Come along, Jasper.”

As Peggy sailed toward the lane, with Jasper trailing meekly in her wake, Bill and I pushed the strollers to the church’s doorstep. Lilian bent to greet the twins, but the vicar gazed mournfully skyward.

“Dear Lord,” he murmured, “I beseech Thee to keep Mrs. Kitchen’s temper in check until little Rainey’s birthday party is over and the grand reopening of Mrs. Pyne’s tea shop is complete.”

A handful of villagers, peeping out from behind tombs, chorused, “Amen.”

Before heading to the cottage, Bill and I paused at Briar Cottage, to have a word with Miranda Morrow, and at the pub, to speak with the Peacocks. Miranda roared with laughter when she heard what Sally and Katrina had been up to in the meadow, but she could add nothing more to her description of the mysterious hooded figure she’d dubbed Brother Florin.

“I can only tell you that he hasn’t been back,” she said. “Mr. Wetherhead would have been over here like a shot if he’d spotted the ghost a second time.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously as she added, “Am I to assume that Brother Florin moonlights as a burglar?”

“You’ve heard about the burglary?” I said, surprised.

“I’ll wager the entire county’s heard by now,” she said. “The woman who runs the tearoom was delivering the news door-to-door this morning—as a public service, to alert us to the danger in our midst.” She touched my arm. “Don’t worry, darling, I didn’t breathe a word about our ghost, but I’ll ring you if he shows up again.”

The Peacocks, too, had heard about the burglary but not about Sally’s antics in the meadow. Though I broke it to them gently, it still came as a blow.

“Torches and track shoes?” Christine repeated dully. “No aliens at all?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Anyone could have made the same mistake, with the fog and the noise of the river confusing things.”

“In many ways,” Bill said consolingly, “I find it easier to believe your story than to imagine Sally Pyne running in place.”

Dick put a beefy hand on Christine’s shoulder. “It’s better to find out now, Chris. What a pair of chumps we’d’ve looked if we’d found out after we’d put up the new sign.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Christine gazed wistfully from Rob’s face to Will’s, then turned and went back into the pub.

“Never mind,” said Dick, stepping away from the door. “Once Chris remembers Martin’s promise to come home for the Harvest Festival, she’ll perk right up.” He glanced cautiously over his shoulder before adding, “I don’t mind telling you that I’ll be glad to chop that new sign into kindling. Never did like the dratted thing.”

A banging noise coming from the tearoom reminded me of Jasper Taxman’s platform and my near escape from dodging rotten eggs. The platform was still standing, though denuded of its bunting and its purpose. The tearoom, by contrast, was a beehive of activity. Its windows remained shrouded in obscurity, but shouts issuing from the open doorway indicated that preparations for the day’s festivities were under way.

“ Two hours to go,” said Bill. “Home?”

“Home,” I replied.

We headed back to the cottage to have a light lunch, wrap the tiger in striped paper, and change from our Sunday best into lighter clothing. The weather was muggier than ever. Rain, as Adrian had predicted, was in the offing. I hoped it would stay dry until after the party.

While we dressed the boys in their birthday finery, I told Francesca about the mythical Culver Institute. She received the news with outward calm but betrayed her inner turmoil by putting Will’s socks on inside out.

“So there’s to be no museum in Finch,” she murmured.

“There never was,” I said. “Adrian was telling the truth all along.”

“And he’ll be gone in two weeks?” she said, fumbling with the snaps on Rob’s romper suit.

“Lock, stock, and barrel,” I confirmed. “Just as he promised from the beginning.”

When we were ready to go, I took charge of loading the boys into their car seats and left the less breakable baggage to Francesca. She sat in the back, between the twins, staring abstractedly out of the window, but when we pulled into the square she snapped to attention.

“Holy mother of God,” she murmured faintly.

“Good grief,” muttered Bill, killing the engine.

I, for once, was speechless. In the past two hours the square had been transformed into a cross between a circus and the Colosseum. Sally’s familiar collection of wobbly tables and mismatched chairs had been marbelized, gilded, and placed among a half-dozen balloon-covered pillars intended, I surmised, to represent the Forum. Katrina, Simon, and assorted other guests crowned with papier-mâché Roman helmets brandished cardboard-and-foil swords beneath a fluttering flock of pennants strung from the balloon pillars to the war memorial.

A pair of cylindrical concrete pillars, painted blue and garlanded with plastic-looking greenery, flanked the tearoom’s doorstep and supported a freshly painted sign.

“The Empire Tearoom SPQF,” I read aloud. “SPQ . . . F?” I looked at Bill. “For the Senate and People of . . . Finch?”

Francesca began to quake with suppressed laughter. “Mama bloody mia,” she managed, gasping, “if only Papa had lived long enough to see this . . .”

She’d scarcely finished speaking when Rainey passed us, bouncing precariously across the cobbles in a gilded, goat-drawn chariot. The birthday girl was dressed in a snow-white toga, with a wreath of laurel leaves upon her head, a pair of gold-colored armlets clasped about her upper arms, and, incongruously, her usual grubby sneakers on her feet.

Sally had started her fitness program too late to alter the way she filled her toga, but she didn’t seem a bit self-conscious as she carried a tray of pastries from guest to guest. Like Rainey, she was adorned with laurel wreath and armlets, but instead of sneakers she wore a pair of thin-soled gold sandals with crisscrossed straps that climbed almost to her knees.