Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Good Deed

Nell broke the silence. “Then why did Gerald leave the firm?”

I closed my eyes, wishing that she’d given us a few more minutes to recover from the effects of her first bombshell before dropping another, but Anthea took the question in stride.

“God knows,” she said. “If Gerald can lie to himself about his love for my daughter, he can lie to anyone about anything.”

“Anthea’s an expert on liars,” Swann put in.

“I should be,” she said, smiling ruefully. “I was married to one.” She leaned into Swann’s side and gazed at the fire meditatively. “I must admit that there’s an odd similarity between my late husband and Gerald.”

“It must be extremely odd,” Swann commented. “Gerald’s a decent bloke, whereas Douglas was a swine.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t always like that,” said Anthea. “Douglas was basically a decent bloke until he got involved with that doctor....”

“Sally the Slut,” said Swann, with a reminiscent smile. “The ferret-faced physician with the bottomless pill bottle.”

“Dreadful woman.” Anthea shook her head and spoke to me. “She had a husband of her own at one time, but he fled in horror when he realized what he’d married.”

Swann gave an approving nod. “Clever fellow.”

“Sally was a monster,” Anthea agreed matter-of-factly. She turned toward me with a bemused gleam in her eyes. “She actually tried to blackmail me once. Claimed to have compromising photographs of Douglas. I told her to publish and be damned. Never heard from her again, of course.”

“Only way to deal with such vermin.” Swann gave his wife’s knee an encouraging pat. “All I can say is that Sally must’ve learnt some clever party tricks at her anatomy lectures. From what you’ve told me, she couldn’t have got by on looks alone.” He waggled his eyebrows at Anthea, then raised her hand to his lips. “But we shall not allow Sally the Slut to spoil our evening. I hereby declare the moratorium at an end. You may discuss the dragon to your heart’s content, my darling. I’ll go up and have a word with Lucy.”

“Thanks, old boy,” Anthea said, and as he left the room she added, “He’s much better than I at bucking Lucy up. She won’t let me come within ten yards of what’s really bothering her.” She raised her palms toward the ceiling, concluding with a bittersweet smile, “A mother’s lot is sometimes not a happy one. Now, then ...” she continued, rising gracefully from the couch, “Lucy said you might enjoy seeing the documents she’s collected concerning Julia Louise. If you’ll come over to my work area ...”

For the next hour, Anthea, Nell and I played a game of historical show-and-tell, with Anthea keeping up a running commentary as she displayed her treasure trove of family papers. There were letters, legal notices, and calling cards, bills from dressmakers, hatmakers, jewelers, and scent shops—a fascinating blend of professional and personal details that would lend Anthea’s biography a sense of immediacy.

“Julia Louise was a widow from Bath who took London by storm,” Anthea explained proudly. “I hope that today’s young women will regard her as a role model.”

As I examined yet another authentic-looking deed to number three, Anne Elizabeth Court—this one in Sir Williston’s name—Toby Treadwell’s admonition came back to me: “They made fakes back then, too, you know.”

They also destroyed documents, I told myself. I looked up at the portrait, at Julia Louise’s high forehead and steady brown eyes, and noticed for the first time a certain hardness in the way her mouth was set. Julia Louise, I thought, had done a number of unpleasant things to promote her family’s interests. Had she stolen her ward’s property as well?

She’d been gung-ho to move the firm to London. A building located near the Inns of Court would have proved a sore temptation. Had Julia Louise succumbed? Had she buried Sybella’s deed in the firm’s vast files and replaced it with a made-to-order copy?

I felt my heart begin to race, and quickly gave myself a mental shake. I was arguing way ahead of the facts. Anthea hadn’t mentioned Sybella’s name, and none of papers suggested that Julia Louise had ever been anyone’s legal guardian. I pulled my gaze away from the portrait and reminded myself firmly that Nell’s belief in Sybella Markham was based on nothing more substantial than a hunch.

Anthea shared Lucy’s low opinion of Julia Louise’s younger son. “Lord William, like my late husband, was a sneak. The moment his mother’s back was turned, he was off seducing the chambermaids.” She paused, as though she felt the need to clarify the point. “You see, it wasn’t the sex that appealed to Douglas so much as the sneaking around. I sometimes think he fancied himself a secret agent. It kept him from having to grow up, I suppose.”

“Did Lord William seduce Sybella Markham?” Nell asked.

I caught my breath. It was a frontal assault so bold that only Nell would have dared it.

“Sybella Markham is a figment of poor Williston’s imagination,” Anthea said. “Although we all believe she’s based on his pretty, young wife.” That, too, seemed to remind her of her late husband, because she went on talking about him, as though she wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. “The thing that made Douglas’s affair with Sally the Slut so pathetic was that she was neither young nor pretty. A tomato on sticks, I promise you. And those eyes ...” She gave a theatrical shudder. “I’d always thought of brown eyes as warm, but hers were cold as ice and hard as flint.”

I laid the deed aside, feeling as though I’d been yanked unceremoniously out of the past and thrust into the present. I’d heard those words before, and recently, too. “A hard-eyed hag?” I said slowly. “A little round dumpling of a woman?”

“Oh, I like that.” Anthea smiled appreciatively. “Yes, perhaps ‘dumpling’ is more accurate than ’tomato.‘ After all, she used a dark-brown rinse to conceal her gray hair, not a ginger one.”

Peg legs, no waist, dyed hair ... That was how Arthur had described the woman Gerald took to lunch at the Flamborough. Not in the first bloom of youth, Arthur had said, which she wouldn’t be if she already had gray hair when she’d been involved with Douglas. But why in God’s name would Gerald be keeping assignations with his late uncle’s old mistress?

Anthea began to put the documents back into the box. “The great difference between Gerald and Douglas,” she said sadly, harking back to the discussion she’d begun with Swann, “is that Gerald’s lies have brought him no pleasure at all. I wish I knew why he felt they were necessary.” With a sigh, she closed the box. “Is there anything else I can show you?”

“Thank you, no,” said Nell. “I think Bertie and I will go up now. It’s been a very full day.”

“Lori?” said Anthea.

I stood. “I’d like to get a breath of fresh air before I turn in, if that’s okay with you.”

“A good idea,” Anthea said. “After that long nap, you may have some difficulty getting to sleep. But a breath of Yorkshire air is as good as a sleeping pill, they say. Would you like company?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “You go on up with Nell. I’ll just take a turn around the courtyard.”

Five minutes later, I was in the front hall, clad in one of Anthea’s warm wool jackets and carrying a long-handled black flashlight that was heavy enough to use as a club. I bid Anthea, Nell, and Bertie good night, opened the door, and welcomed the slap of the cold wind across my face. I hoped it would slow my spinning mind.

24.

It was ten o‘clock at night and preposterously dark outside. Not a gleam leaked from the house’s heavily draped windows, and no security lamp flooded the courtyard with reassuring illumination. The moon and stars had been extinguished by clouds blown in on the wind sweeping down from the high moors, and the surrounding hills cut off what glow there might have been from neighboring farms or the village. My flashlight beam sliced through the darkness neatly, leaving oceans of inky blackness on either side.