Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity Digs In

She stood at the oak table, facing the window, as though rejecting the opportunity to survey her sister’s home. I closed the front door quietly and stayed beside it, pretending to be invisible, but Adrian went to Francesca’s side and gestured toward the horsehair sofa.

“I’ll stand,” she said.

I got the distinct impression that she’d have stood barefoot on broken glass before she’d sit in her sister’s house.

A moment later, Burt returned with his wife. My vision blurred as Annie Hodge merged with Annunzia Sciaparelli. The woman I’d met at the vicarage had been a cleaning lady—an anonymous archetype clad in head scarf, rubber gloves, and loose-fitting duster. The woman who followed Burt into the sparely furnished front room was unmistakably Francesca’s sister.

She had the same auburn hair, full lips, and olive skin, but she was built along more delicate, less voluptuous lines. She was also pregnant. She stood with both hands braced against the small of her back and gazed at Francesca tiredly.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Francesca spoke without turning to look at her sister. “You were at the vicarage last Sunday.”

“What of it?” said Annie. “I always go there on Sunday, to pick up my pay packet.”

“You overheard the vicar and his wife talking about the Gladwell pamphlet,” Francesca continued.

“I might have heard something,” Annie allowed. “What business is it of yours?”

Francesca turned slowly and fixed her sister with a piercing stare. “You know the Buntings’ habits. You know what time they go to bed and what doors they’re likely to leave unlocked.”

“What if I do?” Annie demanded.

“Look here—” Burt began, but he fell silent when Francesca turned toward him.

“Farm in trouble, Burt?” she asked. “Drought drying up your crops? Must be worrying, with a new baby on the way.”

“We’ll manage,” Annie said.

“You always manage, don’t you, Annunzia?” Francesca’s lip curled. “You managed to marry my fiancé. You managed to change your name so no one would remember who’s daughter you are. I know how you’ll manage to pay the bills if there’s a bad harvest.” Francesca stepped forward. “You stole the vicar’s pamphlet. You wanted Dr. Culver to stay. You thought you could make money off him. You were planning to sell Papa’s soul for forty pieces of silver.”

Annie shook her head in denial. “I never—”

“You’re lying. I know you were there, on the library steps. You left something behind.” Francesca thrust her fist toward her sister and slowly uncurled her fingers. The phalera glinted dully in the palm of her hand.

Annie opened her mouth to speak, but stopped short as the sound of car tires skidding on gravel mingled with Caesar’s sudden, raucous barking.

I yelped and skittered sideways as a weighty fist pounded on the door. Burt reached for the latch, but before he touched it, Peggy Kitchen burst into the room, followed by a remonstrating Jasper Taxman.

“You mustn’t,” he said, tugging ineffectually at Peggy’s arm while keeping a fearful eye on Caesar’s slavering jaws.

Peggy tossed Mr. Taxman aside with a flick of her elbow, slammed the door in Caesar’s face, and gazed triumphantly from Annie to Francesca.

“You!” she thundered. “You’re the ones who robbed the vicarage. I should’ve seen it coming. Everyone knows you’re no better than your father.”

Annie looked quickly at Francesca. “Get out of my house,” she said to Peggy, the words more a warning than a command. “Leave here—now.”

“I will not,” Peggy roared. “I’ll say my piece and then I’ll have the law on you. They never should’ve let your father stay here, not after all the suffering he caused. They should’ve locked him up or sent him back or—”

“ Let him stay?” Francesca’s voice was low and as cold as steel. “Let him?”

“No, Francesca,” pleaded Annie. “Don’t—” Annie stiffened as Francesca turned her head, and Peggy fell back a step.

“I know what Papa taught us, Annunzia.” Francesca’s voice trembled with suppressed rage. “Forget the past, live now and for the future. But the past isn’t easy to forget when it’s held to your throat like a knife.”

“It was your father held the knife,” Peggy retorted. “He was a bloody murderer.”

“He was a soldier,” Francesca snapped. “He was a foolish boy.”

“A boy? ” Peggy repeated, outraged. “Piero Sciaparelli was—”

“—older than the oldest man in Finch long before you got round to tormenting him.” Francesca tossed her head contemptuously. “That’s what war does to boys, Mrs. Kitchen. It turns them into old men before their time. If you’d ever bothered to ask I’d’ve told you that my father was fifteen when he ran off to join the army. He was eighteen when he came to work for Mr. Hodge. When Italy surrendered, he was twenty. I can prove it to you now, if you like. Do you want to see his papers, Mrs. Kitchen?”

“Eighteen?” said Peggy faintly. “Your father was eighteen?”

“Annunzia,” Francesca ordered, “fetch Papa’s papers!”

Peggy waved her hand. “No, please, I . . . I believe you.”

“You?” Francesca said. “You believe what everyone knows. But everyone knows nothing. ” Her expression remained calm, but her dark eyes burned like smoldering coals. “No one let my father stay here, Mrs. Kitchen. He stayed because he had nowhere else to go.” She turned to face the window. “Papa did go home, once. When the war was over, he went back. But there was nothing to go back to. His village had been bombed to rubble by the Allies.” Francesca paused and I saw tears reflected in the windowpane. “No one had the courage to rebuild. They said the place was haunted, that at night you could hear the screaming of the little ones who’d died. But it wasn’t just the children Papa heard. He heard his family, his friends—everyone he’d ever known. He heard all the voices of home, screaming in the rubble with the children.”

Francesca glanced over her shoulder. “I’m sorry as can be that you lost your father, Mrs. Kitchen, but people die in war. That’s just the way it is, the way it’s always been. Those who survive can go on being bitter, or they can choose to forget the past, to live now and for the . . .” Her voice quavered, then broke. She stumbled blindly past Peggy Kitchen, threw open the door, and fled the house. Adrian went after her.

Peggy Kitchen touched a finger to her pointy glasses and looked self-consciously around the room. “I don’t know what you’re all staring at.”

“We’re staring at a bloody foreigner.” Burt Hodge stepped forward and put an arm around his wife.

Peggy recoiled. “A—A foreigner!”

“You’re a bad-tempered old cow from Birmingham,” said Burt, “which makes you more foreign here than Piero ever was. Why don’t you go back where you belong?”

Annie lifted her chin. “I was born and raised here, Mrs. Kitchen. I know what the villagers think of you.You’re not wanted in Finch. Go back to Birmingham.”

The words buffeted Peggy like an icy wind. Her eyes widened with shock; then, astonishingly, her chin trembled. She quickly mastered her emotions but for a brief moment she’d seemed as vulnerable as a bullied child.

“I . . . I won’t stay here and be insulted,” she mumbled, backing toward the door. “Come, Jasper.”

“One more thing.” Burt clomped forward in his heavy boots. “I don’t want to hear any talk about Annie or Francesca breaking the law. If I do, I’ll sue you for slander before you can say spit. Understand?”

Peggy opened her mouth but couldn’t seem to find the right reply. When Jasper Taxman took her arm, she allowed herself to be led from the farmhouse. A car engine roared briefly, then faded into the distance.