Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea (3 page)

The fire crackled and snapped as I curled my legs beneath me in the armchair. I glanced at the diamond-paned window over the old oak desk, half expecting to see the king of the bottomless pit leering at me through the fluttering ivy, and opened the blue journal.

“Dimity?” I said, and felt a knot of tension ease when the familiar lines of royal-blue ink curled and looped reassuringly across the blank page.

“Well . . .” I pursed my lips judiciously. “If you leave out the part where Bill, the boys, and I are being chased from our home by a homicidal maniac who wants to erase our names from the book of life forever”—I took a breath—“it wasn’t too bad.”

“It’s true, Dimity,” I said. “Incredible, but true. Some looney’s been e-mailing death threats to Bill for the past few weeks. This morning he expanded the threat to include me and the boys, so Bill’s sending us into hiding while he stays in London to work with Chief Superintendent Wesley Yarborough of Scotland Yard.”

“A former client, we think,” I said. “He calls himself Abaddon.”

“It’s a first for Bill,” I acknowledged. “When his clients get mad, they get mad at each other, not at him. They may blame Uncle Hans for leaving ten thousand marks to a shelter for homeless dachshunds, but they don’t blame Bill for drawing up Uncle Hans’s will.”

“He’s going to help a team of detectives from Scotland Yard,” I said. “They plan to go through his work files, to see if they can identify a likely suspect. Bill’s not too keen on the idea—the files are highly confidential—but he can’t think of a better place to start. He still can’t believe that someone he knows—or knew—wants him dead.”

Poor man. I do sympathize.When my life was threatened, I found it extremely difficult to
—

“When was your life threatened?” I interrupted, startled.

“Yes,” I said. “You told me about them while we were staying at Hailesham House, when Simon Elstyn started getting those creepy anonymous notes. You said that a woman who worked for you, an assistant you trusted, was responsible. But you never mentioned death threats.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “It’s the kind of thing that happens to other people. If I didn’t have a pile of suitcases in the front hall to anchor me, I’d still doubt that it was happening to us. I’m not used to being hated. Okay,” I admitted, after a moment’s consideration, “Sally Pyne was annoyed with me when I said that her flower arrangement in the baptismal font at St. George’s looked top-heavy, but she didn’t
hate
me.”

“Nope,” I said. “I feel as if I have a bull’s-eye on my forehead, Dimity. It doesn’t get much more personal than that.”

“Tomorrow morning,” I replied.

“Presumably,” I said, and told her about Ivan Anton and his crew of security specialists. “And before you ask,” I continued, “I don’t know where we’re going. Bill won’t tell me, because he’s afraid I’ll slip up and tell someone else and then—Finch being the gossip capital of the world—our secret location won’t be a secret anymore.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” I said. “I should be tearing my hair out right about now, but I don’t have the energy. There’s been too much to do. On top of the packing, I’ve had to make at least a thousand phone calls to cancel this and reschedule that. I’ll tell you, Dimity, you never realize how complicated your life is until you’re forced to rearrange it.”

“I’ve penciled in a fit of hysteria for tomorrow evening, though,” I added. “I think I’ll owe it to myself by then, don’t you?”

“Bill told them that we’re going away because a bad man wants to hurt us.” I shook my head. “I didn’t want to tell them anything, but Bill convinced me that they’d be safer if they were aware of the danger.”

“Like five-year-olds,” I said with a wry smile. “They went into their twin mind-meld and came out with: ‘Don’t worry, Daddy, we’ll be careful. May we bring our cricket bats?’ ”

“No,” I replied. “It was a tough decision, and Annelise isn’t happy about it—she feels as if she’s abandoning us in our hour of need—but it’s the right thing to do. We don’t want to drag her any deeper into our troubles than she already is. Bill and I decided that her family’s farm would be the safest place for her until Abaddon’s locked up.”

“Stanley’s going into protective custody at Anscombe Manor,” I explained. Anscombe Manor was the sprawling home of our closest friends, Emma and Derek Harris, and of their stable master, Kit Smith. “Emma’s promised to keep an eye on Stanley, and Kit won’t let any harm come to the boys’ ponies.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” I said. “Kit’s a man of peace, except when it comes to people who hurt animals.”

“Yep.” I nodded.

“That’s right.”

“Thank you,” I said, with a little half bow.

I studied the question in silence, then lifted my gaze to look slowly around the room. I couldn’t count the number of hours I’d spent in the study since the cottage had become my home. I was intimately familiar with each floorboard’s creak, each shadowy corner, each whisper of wind in the chimney. As I ran my hand along the armchair’s smooth leather, I recalled that I’d been sitting in the same chair the first time I’d opened Aunt Dimity’s remarkable journal.

I closed my eyes and let my mind travel through the cottage’s other rooms, past the silver-framed family photographs, the piles of stuffed animals, the scrawled notes taped to the living room’s mantel shelf—reminders of events and appointments that had seemed important six hours ago but that had since become wholly irrelevant. I saw with my mind’s eye the ink-stained cushion on the window seat beneath the living room’s bow window, the scratches on the legs of the dining-room table, the overflowing coatrack in the front hall. I saw the twins asleep in their beds, nestled beneath quilts sewn by the village’s quilting club, and Bill standing over them, with cold fear in his eyes.

“What’s really going on inside my head?” I said softly, and looked into the fire’s quivering flames. “I’m being terrorized by someone who wants to kill my husband, my children, and me. I’m being forced to leave the place I love above all others on this earth, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back. I’m keeping calm for Bill’s sake and the boys’, Dimity, but if you want to know the truth about how I’m feeling, here it is: I want to camouflage my face and go out there in the dark with a machete and a machine gun and a flamethrower. I want to find this evil creep and shoot him and stab him and stomp on him and cut him into little pieces and burn him to ashes and send his ashes into space so they’d never pollute any air I might breathe.” I paused to let my thundering heart quieten. “I guess you could say that I’m having a slight problem with anger management.”

I astonished myself by laughing out loud. “Of course not, Dimity! I haven’t had the time. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with a flamethrower if I had one.”

“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” I said. “I also intend to bring you with me.”

Reginald was a small, pink flannel rabbit with black button eyes, beautifully hand-stitched whiskers, and the ghost of a grape juice stain on his snout. He’d been my constant companion from the earliest days of my childhood, and he remained a cherished chum.

When Dimity mentioned Reginald’s name, I looked up at the special niche in the bookshelves where he sat gazing down at me. His black button eyes seemed to dance with impatience in the flickering firelight, as if he were eager to hop into one of the suitcases in the front hall. I hadn’t told him yet that he’d be traveling in my carry-on bag, along with the blue journal.

“How could I leave Reginald behind?” I said. “I haven’t taken him to bed with me since I was ten years old, but with Bill in London . . . Who knows? I may start sucking my thumb again, too.”

“Dimity?” I said. “How did you cope?”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “Good night, Dimity. I’ll fill you in on our whereabouts as soon as we arrive.”

I waited until the graceful lines of royal-blue ink had faded from the page, then cast another furtive glance at the ivy-covered window. Dimity had given me sound advice, as always, but I didn’t think I could follow it to the letter. Chocolate I could handle—the vaster the quantities, the better—but I doubted that I’d be able to shut my eyes again, much less sleep, until the king of the bottomless pit was behind bars.

A
n ancient and massive brambly hedge to the south of the cottage separated our property from that of Mr. Malvern, the farmer next door. The hedge was a world unto itself, filled with rabbits, mice, interesting bugs, and a myriad of birds’ nests, and riddled with enticing, cavelike hollows that Rob and Will loved to explore on hot summer days.

The hedge was pierced by a sturdy wooden stile that gave us access to Mr. Malvern’s north field, a large expanse of tussocky grass usually occupied by his small herd of dairy cows. Daisy, Beulah, and the rest of the herd were grazing elsewhere on the morning of our departure, but the field wasn’t empty. Two members of Ivan Anton’s security team had, for reasons unknown to me, carried our suitcases over the stile and left them in a neat stack in the damp grass just beyond the hedge.When I asked Bill for an explanation, he said simply that I’d find out soon enough.

Bill and I had spent a restless night bravely reassuring each other that all would be well. We’d checked on Will and Rob at least a dozen times between dozes before rising at dawn to see Annelise off, prepare breakfast, and get the boys up, dressed, and fed.

At seven o’clock Ivan Anton took Stanley, Stanley’s bowls, Stanley’s toys, and a month’s supply of Stanley’s favorite gourmet cat food to Anscombe Manor. At a quarter to nine, Ivan’s assistants escorted Bill, the twins, and me into the back garden. The two men hopped over the stile, but the rest of us stopped dead in our tracks, transfixed by the astonishing sight of a helicopter landing in Mr. Malvern’s north field. When I glanced questioningly at Bill, he swept an arm in the direction of the wind-whipped hedge.

“Your chariot awaits,” he said above the noise of the rotors.

As Bill and I guided Will and Rob over the stile, I studied the machine that had come to fly us to safety. To my untrained eye, it looked like the latest model. Big, black, sleek, and shiny, it reminded me more of a cruising shark than a fluttering whirlybird. It seemed to me that only a multimillionaire could afford to own such a fancy plaything, and with that thought comprehension dawned.