Aunt Dimity Digs In (26 page)

“I’ll do whatever it takes to bring the miscreant to justice,” Peggy proclaimed. “If anyone has useful information, you can leave it with me or Mr. Taxman at the Emporium. Thank you.”

There was a moment of silence, broken by the sound of a scuffle in the vicinity of Rainey’s table. I turned just in time to see the birthday girl pin young Paolo Sciaparelli, one of Francesca’s numerous nephews, to the ground.

“You give it back,” she cried. “It’s meant for Dr. Culver.”

“You’re a liar!” Paolo roared. “You stole it from my aunt!”

Rainey shook the boy until his teeth rattled, then pounced on a small object that dropped from his splayed fist. She sprang to her feet and ran over to stand, panting, before Adrian and Francesca.

“I didn’t steal it,” the little girl insisted. “I found it when I was helping Emma, and I was going to give it to you, Dr. Culver, to put in your museum, only I wanted to keep it for luck in the chariot races.”

“Show me what you’ve found, Rainey,” said Adrian.

Rainey held her hand out flat and I saw that she was holding a bronze medallion identical to the one hanging from the thong around Francesca’s neck.

Francesca snatched the
phalera
from Rainey’s hand. “Where did you find this?”

Rainey backed away, cowed by Francesca’s grim expression. “On the vicar’s back steps,” she said, “when I was helping Emma carry flowerpots.”

Francesca stared down at the
phalera,
then whispered, loudly enough for me to overhear,
“Annunzia.”
She looked up at Adrian. “I must go to Hodge Farm.”

I leaned toward Lilian. “Who’s Annunzia?”

“Annie Hodge, our daily,” Lilian replied. “Her maiden name was Annunziazione Sciaparelli. She’s Francesca’s youngest sister. Annunzia is short for—”

I gripped her arm. “Your cleaning lady is Francesca’s
sister?
”

Lilian nodded. “ They’ve been at daggers drawn ever since Burt married Annie.”

I felt the world tilt slightly on its axis. “Francesca’s
sister
married Burt Hodge?”

“I thought you knew,” said Lilian.

“How could I know? No one ever tells me anything.” I scrambled after Francesca, who was already climbing into the Mercedes. “Wait! You’re not going to Hodge Farm without me! Bill,” I called, as I dashed past Rainey’s table, “look after the boys!”

24.

Hodge Farm sprawled across its hilltop as though washed ashore by the sea of waving grain. Slate-roofed stone barns and graineries mingled with fiberglass machine sheds and rusting outbuildings fabricated from corrugated iron. Hodge Farm, like Finch, was not an artist’s dream of rural beauty. It was a working farm, concerned with substance rather than appearance.

The long drive to the main house was wide and straight, to accommodate the spreading wings of combine harvesters, and broad wagons piled high with baled hay. It ascended the hill, hemmed in by rustling walls of sun-parched barley and ended at a dusty yard littered with farm implements. The farmhouse might have been another barn—no effort had been made to prettify it.

“Why have we come here, Francesca?” Adrian asked, as we pulled into the farmyard. He’d clambered into the Mercedes after me and wedged himself between the boys’ car seats in the back. Francesca hadn’t challenged his right to come along, and I’d been glad of his company. I found her fierce silence unnerving.

Francesca glanced at the
phalera
in her hand. “My sister may know something about the theft at the vicarage.” She shut off the ignition and turned to me. “Now tell me all about this stolen pamphlet. Be quick about it.”

I had to raise my voice to be heard above the savage barking of a gigantic crossbred dog whose job, apparently, was to hunt down and kill uninvited guests. His huge paws thumped against my window and his howls rang in my ear as I rattled off all I knew about the Gladwell pamphlet. When I’d finished, Francesca nodded grimly, then got out of the car to confront the hound from hell.

“Hush, Caesar,” she muttered.

Caesar hushed.

“Lie down,” she said.

Caesar dropped to the ground.

“Good boy,” she added, striding toward the farmhouse.

Caesar wagged his stubby tail as Adrian and I edged gingerly past him to join our fearless leader on the doorstep.

A man stood in the doorway. He was short and stocky, with curly brown hair, leathery skin, and mild, blue-gray eyes. He wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt and, despite the close weather, a pair of heavy corduroy trousers and work boots. He greeted Francesca warily.

“Afternoon, Francesca.” His blue-gray eyes scanned my face. “Who’re your friends?”

“I’ve not come to see you, Burt,” Francesca said. “My business is with Annunzia.”

“Annie’s resting,” said Burt. “Can’t you come back another time?”

“My business won’t wait.” Francesca brushed the sturdy farmer aside and crossed the threshold. “You tell her to show herself in five minutes, or I’m going after her.”

Burt rubbed the back of his head, then motioned for Adrian and me to follow him into a simply furnished front room. A framed print of the Sacred Heart was the only decoration, and the mantelpiece held nothing but a carriage clock. A pair of Windsor chairs sat on either side of the sagging horsehair sofa that faced the hearth, and a time-darkened table of English oak rested beneath the deep-set window. Francesca looked as out of place in the stark setting as a bird of paradise in a monastic cell.

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.

Burt and Annie moved together to the window, as if to make sure that their unwelcome guest had departed, then stood in silence, with their backs toward me. I wanted nothing more than to leave them in peace, but there were too many questions still to be answered.

I cleared my throat. “Annie,” I said, “I don’t know what’s going on between you and your sister, but I promised the vicar that I’d try to find out who stole the pamphlet from his library.”

“I didn’t take it,” Annie said.

“But your bronze medallion was found on the library steps,” I pointed out.

“The thong broke a couple of weeks ago. I showed it to Mrs. Bunting at the time. I expect the
phalera
fell off when I was sweeping out the library.” Annie turned to face me. “I never wanted Dr. Culver to stay. Francesca’s wrong about that.”