Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Death

She shrugged. “Why should you be any different?” Ham approved of my oatmeal cookies, too, and wolfed down three of them before Emma called a halt. “Would you like to have a look round the place?” she offered.

By then I was glad of a chance to stretch my legs, and Ham was more than ready for a romp. He frisked at our heels as Emma took me from room to room. “The house was badly run-down when we bought it—a handyman’s dream, as we say in the States, and therefore an ideal home for Derek. We’ve battled dry rot and mildew, but our worst enemy has been our predecessors’ bad taste. Please don’t ask me to describe the wallpaper we found in the parlor. It took us a whole summer to get rid of it.”

The parlor walls were now plain whitewashed plaster, but the furnishings were eccentric, to put it mildly. The television sat atop an antique and worm-eaten altar, and the coffee table was an intricately carved wooden door overlaid with glass. A pair of elegant Louis XIV chairs faced a plain-as-dirt horsehair sofa, and a Chinese black-lacquered desk held a Victorian globe lamp, a brass pig, and a human skull. “Derek comes home with all sorts of things,” Emma explained, “and we thought that the family room should be furnished by the family.” She pointed to the television. “That’s Derek’s little joke, and the chairs were Nell’s idea. I don’t know who brought the skull in here, but Peter chose the desk.”

The parlor reflected an active family life. It was littered with books and magazines, a forgotten shoe peeked out from under the couch, and a bowl half-filled with cherry pits graced a marquetry chest beneath the windows. When I saw the chest, I realized that I had forgotten to ask Emma about the missing photo album. When I put the question to her, she nodded thoughtfully.

“Nell was working on a project for school last spring, something about the role of women in the Second World War. Dimity loaned her some pictures for it, but I thought she’d returned them.” She glanced toward the hall. “But let’s make sure.” With Ham galloping ahead, we went upstairs to what I thought was a second-floor bedroom. When I hesitated, Emma said reassuringly, “We’re not about to invade my daughter’s inner sanctum. This is the children’s study.”

In marked contrast to the parlor, the study was sparely furnished and orderly, with heavy-laden bookshelves, filing cabinets, and a pair of desks facing opposite walls. “I’m happy to say that the children take their schoolwork very seriously. They may make a shambles of the rest of the house, but they’re neat as a pin in here. Nell’s half is on the left.” Emma scanned the bookshelves on that side of the room while I went through the drawers in her daughter’s desk. Five minutes later, Emma came up trumps.

“Is this it?” She handed me a brown leather photograph album labeled 1939-1944.

Too excited to speak, I nodded, then opened the album on Nell’s desk and flipped rapidly through it. There were three or four pictures on each page, all of them affixed with black paste-on paper corners. Dimity had written brief captions beneath each of them: names, dates, places. I turned past pictures of Dimity posed alone or with groups of other women in military uniform, catching my breath when my mother’s young face appeared in the crowd, until I came to the end.

“Damn,” I muttered, “there’s nothing missing.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the photograph from Pouter’s Hill came from this album, there’d be an empty space somewhere. But there isn’t.”

“Oh, I see.” Emma half sat on the edge of the desk, her arms folded. “What a shame.”

“No, wait. Maybe I’m just jumping the gun again.” Sitting in Nell’s chair, I switched on her desk lamp, reopened the album, and began going through it slowly, spreading it flat at every page. “I used to work with rare books, and one of the things I had to check for was vandalism—theft, really. There’s a big market for old woodcuts and engravings.”

“Like those framed botanical illustrations you see in antique stores?” Emma asked.

“Right. Some come from books that are too far gone to salvage, but some…” I turned the fifth page, spread it flat, and stopped. “Some are razored out of perfectly sound volumes. Like this.” Emma bent low for a closer look as I thumbed a series of quarter-inch stubs, all that remained of twelve black pages.

“You don’t think—” I began, but Emma shook her head decisively.

“Not Nell. Not in a million years.”

I sighed, closed the album, and brought it back downstairs to the kitchen, where Reginald eyed me sympathetically and Emma looked once more at the photograph of the old oak tree.

“There’s still hope,” I said wistfully. “Maybe Bill’s father will find the missing pages.”

“I wonder who could have given this to your mother,” Emma mused. “The couple we bought this place from passed away several years ago, and I don’t know of any other… May I read your mother’s description?”

I had told her about it earlier. Now I dug out the letter and handed it to her. She read it intently.

“But this doesn’t say anything about a couple,” she murmured. “It only says ‘two of Dimity’s neighbors.’ ‘Elderly… not terribly coherent…’” Suddenly she looked up, her eyes sparkling. “I think I know who you’re looking for.”

17

“The Pym sisters?” I exclaimed. “The sock-knitting Pym sisters? Are they still alive?”

“And kicking,” Emma replied. “Decorously, of course.” She went on to say that Ruth and Louise Pym were the identical twin daughters of a country parson. No one knew how old they were, not even the vicar, but most guesses placed them over the century mark. They had never married and had spent all of their lives in Finch. “I think they know more about what goes on in the village than most people would like to believe,” Emma concluded. “I’m sure they’re the ones who gave the photograph to your mother, and if they didn’t, they’ll know who did.”

“How do I get to meet them?”

“Invite them to tea, of course. They’ll be dying to meet you. I’ll ask them for you, if you’d like.”

“Yes, please. And you’ll come, too, won’t you?”

“Why don’t I come early to help you set up?”

“That would be terrific.”

Emma accompanied me to the mudroom, where I donned my jacket and gave Ham a last few pats.

“You’ll have to come over when the sun is shining so I can show you the grounds.” Emma held Ham’s collar while I opened the door. “Be sure to let me know if you find out anything about those missing pages, and I’ll call as soon as I’ve set things up with Ruth and Louise.”

I unfurled my umbrella, then reached out to clasp Emma’s hand. “Thank you. I don’t know if you realize how much this means to me, but—”

“I think I do.” She smiled. “Derek and I loved Dimity, too.”

* * *

Bill was asleep in the study when I got back, his feet up on the ottoman, the date-filled notebook dangling from his fingertips. I woke him up by dropping Reginald in his lap, then sat on the ottoman and repeated everything Emma had told me that morning. I showed him the stubs in the photo album and he shared my disappointment, but agreed that Willis, Sr., might come through for us yet. He was delighted by the thought of meeting the Pym sisters, but the mention of tea made us both realize that we were ready for lunch. Greatly daring, I tried a spinach soufflé. It was flawless.

I couldn’t bring myself to face the correspondence after lunch. The things I had learned about my mother had spooked me and I shied away from learning any more. True to his word, Bill soldiered on in silence while I returned scattered archive boxes to their proper places on the shelves. I was sitting at the desk, paging through the photo album when he spoke up.