Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea (7 page)

I twitched as a knock sounded on the parlor’s double doors, and two people came into the room, a bespectacled young man and a young blond woman. Both were dressed in business attire and carrying PDAs.

“Sorry to disturb you, Sir Percy,” said the woman, “but the call’s come in from Beijing, and we’ve had another offer on the Sydney property.”

“And Stockholm’s waiting for a reply,” added the man.

“Lori,” said Sir Percy, bounding to his feet, “let me introduce you to my personal assistants: Kate Halston and Elliot Southmore. Flew in yesterday to set up my office. You won’t see much of them, I’m afraid.Their boss is a tyrant.” He clapped Damian on the shoulder. “Must dash, old bean. Profit waits for no man.”

“I’ll show Lori to her suite,” said Damian.

“Excellent,” said Sir Percy. “We’ll take the grand tour of Dundrillin after lunch. And now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” My host swept his young assistants through the double doors and out of sight.

I got to my feet, grabbed my carry-on bag, and followed Damian into the murky corridor. We walked in silence until we reached the curved wall at the end of the passage, where a battered wooden door concealed, of all things unexpected, a modern elevator. I laughed out loud when I saw it.

Damian looked at me inquiringly.

“Whoever heard of a castle with an elevator?” I said as we stepped aboard.

“Sir Percy altered the castle a great deal after he purchased it.” Damian pushed the third button in a row of five, and the elevator began its smooth ascent. “It’s difficult to find employees who are qualified to provide the kind of maid service his guests require. It’s impossible to find maids willing to climb hundreds of stairs several times a day.” The elevator stopped, and his tone became instructive. “There are five levels in the northwest tower. Your suite is on the third. It’s known as the Cornflower Suite. The nursery is one floor up, on the fourth level.”

The metal doors slid apart to reveal a white-painted foyer with a terra-cotta-tiled floor and a frosted light fixture in the ceiling. The foyer had no windows, but it did have some unusual furnishings.

A pole lamp and a leather armchair sat to the right of the elevator, and a folding cot had been erected against the wall on my left, beside a small table equipped with a reading lamp and a battery-powered alarm clock. The cot was furnished with blankets and a pillow, and a well-worn canvas duffel bag had been stowed beneath it.

I turned to Damian. “Your bedroom?”

He nodded. “When you’re in your suite, I’ll be here.”

I formulated my next question carefully before asking, “What about . . . um, bathroom facilities?”

“A powder room is connected to the foyer,” he replied, gesturing to a door in the right-hand wall.

I eyed the door doubtfully. “Does it have a shower or a bath?”

“It’s sufficient for my needs,” Damian said shortly. “Shall we move on?”

He opened a door opposite the elevator and ushered me into one of the most extraordinary rooms I’d ever seen.

The Cornflower Suite was, essentially, one large round chamber. A massive fireplace built of smooth river stones stood in the center of the room, rising from the floor to the plastered ceiling. The ceiling’s exposed beams radiated from the chimney to the tower’s exterior walls like spokes in a wheel.

The huge fireplace divided the room into two distinct spaces: a sitting room and a bedroom. We’d entered the sitting room, which was as light and airy as the entrance hall had been oppressive. The floor was covered with a thick, cornflower-blue carpet, the walls were papered with a pretty blue-on-white floral print, and the furniture was white French Provincial. A writing table sat beneath a pair of narrow windows set deep in the tower’s external wall, and a heavy-duty glass door opened onto a half-moon balcony. The glass door and the decor’s pale shades gave brightness to a room that would otherwise have been as dark as a dungeon.

The blue carpet and flowery wallpaper continued in the bedroom, which was furnished in the same style as the sitting room. A drift of muslin hung in a half canopy over a king-size bed dressed with blue-and-white sprigged bedclothes and banked with lacy pillows, and a comfy armchair with a cushioned hassock sat before the fire. A full-length, gilt-framed mirror hung on the wall near the entrance to the bathroom, reflecting the light from windows that overlooked the sea.

My clothes had been put away in the bedroom’s wardrobe and chests of drawers, and my suitcases had been stashed on top of the wardrobe, presumably by Mrs. Gammidge’s minions. I hung my jacket in the wardrobe and placed my carry-on bag on the bed before I continued exploring.

The curved wall that would have stood at the bed’s head had been squared off to form a compact but well-equipped modern bathroom with a deep tub and a separate, glass-walled shower stall. A small mahogany bureau had been retrofitted with a basin and taps to serve as the sink, and the toilet was in its own half-walled space beside it. My toiletries had been stowed in the bureau.

I emerged from the bathroom to find my bodyguard waiting for me in the bedroom.

“It’s lovely . . .” I began, but my maternal autopilot had clicked into gear. “But what if there’s a fire? We won’t be able to use the elevator, will we?”

“Sir Percy left the tower’s original staircase in place.” Damian laid his hand on the ornate gold frame of the full-length mirror. “The mirror’s hinged, like a door. Pull it away from the wall and you’ll see the staircase.You’ll find the same arrangement in the nursery.The staircase leads to a ground-floor exit. If you open the door, you’ll set off alarms throughout the castle, so please use it only when necessary.”

I ran a hand along the mirror’s frame. “Does the alarm go off if someone tries to open the door from the staircase?”

“Of course,” said Damian. “The entire castle’s wired.”

“Why?” I said, taken aback. “Doesn’t Percy trust the islanders?”

“He trusts them as much as he trusts anyone,” said Damian. “Sir Percy believes, as I do, that human nature is frail and that it’s far easier to prevent a crime than to solve one.”

I surveyed the bedroom, then looked back at Damian, smiling sheepishly. “I feel kind of guilty, enjoying so much comfort while you’re camped out on a cot.”

“You needn’t,” he said. “I’ve had to make do with far less. I’ll leave you to freshen up, shall I?” He nodded briefly and retreated to the sitting room.

When he was out of sight, I took Aunt Dimity’s journal from my carry-on bag, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.

“Dimity?” I said in an undertone. “You’re not going to
believe
where we are.”

The Tower of London?
The fine, old-fashioned copperplate looped and curled sedately across the journal’s blank page.
I’ve heard that it has a fairly competent security system.

“Close but no cigar,” I said. “Sir Percy Pelham’s flown us to a castle on an island forty miles off the west coast of Scotland. Pretty cool, huh?”

“My bodyguard’s in the next room,” I whispered.

“Security is our watchword,” I said, echoing Mrs. Gammidge. “I can’t talk now, because I have to see the nursery, go down to lunch, and tour the castle, but I’ll bring you up to date this evening.”

I closed the journal and, after some deliberation, deposited it in the drawer in my bedside table. Then I pulled Reginald from the carry-on bag, smoothed his somewhat rumpled pink flannel ears, and placed him atop the lacy pillows.

“Nice digs, huh, Reg?” I murmured, and his black button eyes seemed to twinkle with approval. After a quick wash and brush-up, I hastened into the sitting room, but Damian had elected to wait for me on the balcony. I pulled open the heavy glass door and raised my voice, to be heard over the rush of the wind.

“I’m shocked, Damian,” I said. “I thought the balcony door would be welded shut.”

“There’s no need,” he said. “Come and see.”

D
amian beckoned to me to join him. I crossed to the waist-high stone parapet that served as a balustrade, peered downward, and felt my legs turn to jelly.

There was nothing between me and a sandy beach riddled with vicious rocks but a few hundred feet of thin air and six inches of balcony floor. My head swam, my vision blurred, and my knees wobbled, but I gripped the parapet firmly and eventually got a grip on myself as well.

I refused to swoon. If Damian Hunter was testing my mettle, I intended to pass with flying colors. Instead of drawing back, I leaned farther out over the parapet to examine the tower’s smooth stonework.

“Abaddon would have to be a fly to scale the wall,” I observed, with a nod of approval. “And I’m in no position to play Rapunzel.” I ran a hand through my short crop of dark curls and gave Damian a playful, sidelong smile. “Even if my hair were blond, there wouldn’t be enough to make a golden stair.”

He glanced briefly at my hair, then looked back out to sea. “I’d like to think that you wouldn’t help Abaddon climb the wall, no matter what the circumstances.”

“Right,” I said, and lapsed into silence. If Sir Percy was paying Damian to be solemn, he was getting his money’s worth. The man seemed incapable of banter. I gave a tiny, exasperated sigh, lifted my gaze, and caught sight of a small islet protruding from the waves a half mile beyond the sandy shore. “What’s that little island out there? Does it have a name?”

“It’s known as Cieran’s Chapel,” Damian told me. “It’s a well-known landmark in these parts. According to local legend, an eighth-century monk named Brother Cieran used to row out there from Erinskil’s monastery in order to meditate in solitude.”

I cocked my head to one side. “Yes, I can see how the hurly-burly of eighth-century monastic life could get a man down. All those loudmouthed monks rattling their rosaries and chanting at all hours . . .”

“I imagine it could be very distracting.” Damian looked at his watch. “We should be going, Lori. Lunch will be served soon, and we still have to visit the nursery.”

“Lead on,” I said, and as I followed Damian into the sitting room, I wondered if reclusive Brother Cieran had been as impervious to humor as my bodyguard seemed to be.

By the time Will and Rob finished showing me the nursery, I was convinced that they’d never want to leave Dundrillin Castle. The fourth-floor suite was, under normal circumstances, known as the Rose Suite, and pale rose-petal pink was the dominating color. Its floor plan was exactly the same as the Cornflower Suite’s, but safety bars had been affixed to the windows, the balcony door had been bolted shut, and a fender had been placed around the huge fireplace.The sleeping area held twin beds as well as Andrew’s folding cot, and the sitting room had been transformed into a child’s wonderland.

Brightly painted cupboards spilled over with games, puzzles, building blocks, sticks of modeling clay, stuffed animals, and a mad assortment of toys. Bookcases groaned under the weight of storybooks, easels held sketch pads of varying sizes, and an entire table was devoted to watercolor paints, finger paints, colored pencils, and crayons. My favorite feature in the room was a pair of rocking horses that bore a striking resemblance to the boys’ gray ponies, Thunder and Storm. I had no idea how Sir Percy had produced such plenty on such short notice, but my gratitude to him rose to new heights.

While Will and Rob introduced Damian to a collection of small knights in armor, Andrew Ross pulled me to one side.

“Your sons have offered to read bedtime stories to me,” he said. “Are they having me on?”

“No,” I said. “They can read.We’re not sure when they learned, but we first noticed it last June.” I lowered my voice. “There was an embarrassing incident at the general store in our village, involving the twins, a tabloid headline, and a visiting bishop. They’re keeping the newspapers under the counter now.”

Andrew roared with laughter. He was a much easier audience than Damian.

“I see you’re bunking in together,” I said, nodding toward the sleeping area.

“We’ll take most of our meals up here, too,” he said, “with your permission, of course.”

“I don’t mind if the boys don’t,” I said, and turned to the twins. “Rob? Will? Do you want to come downstairs with me?”

“Do we
have
to?” the twins chorused. “We’re having fish fingers for lunch!”

It was transparently obvious that a lifetime of maternal love was as nothing when compared to the joys of fish fingers for lunch. I left the twins in the nursery without the slightest twinge of conscience.