Aunt Dimity's Death (17 page)

“I don’t think I could have explained,” said Bill. “And even if I had, there was no reason for you to believe me.”

I caught my breath and blinked at him through my tears.

“Well, I
might
have tried rigging the cottage,” he said. “In fact, I kind of wish I had. It might have been fun. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have been your prime suspect.”

“Because you promised,” I said bluntly, twisting his handkerchief into a knot. “When we were at Meg’s. You promised that you wouldn’t … step over the line again.”

“You have a point. And yes, it would have been nice if you’d remembered it sooner. Consider yourself castigated. But I refuse to stalk out of here in a huff, because if I do I won’t get to hear what else happened this morning to convince you of my innocence. So let’s skip over the recriminations and the apologies and go straight to the good stuff.” Bill leaned closer and whispered, “Did she … manifest herself to you?”

“She
wrote
to me,” I said with a sniff and a quavery laugh. I held up the journal. “A new form of correspondence. All the pages but one were blank when I opened it. Now look at it.” I showed him the first page. “It’s her handwriting, Bill. I’m sure of it.”

“Does that mean it wasn’t ghostwritten?” he murmured. He studied the page, then said, with great reluctance, “I know you don’t want to hear this, Lori, but I have to confess that I—”

“You can’t see it?” I took the journal from him. The sentences were still there, plain as day. I fought down a sudden surge of panic.

Bill took hold of my shoulders. “Calm down, Lori, and think about this. She’s writing to you, not to me. I doubt if anyone else can see what you’re seeing.”

“But—”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t believe you,” Bill stated firmly. “That doesn’t make it less real. It doesn’t make it less anything, except, well … less visible. Who knows? Maybe it’s some sort of security system. A private line, open only to you. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose… .”

“Well, all right, then.” Bill released his grip on my shoulders, took the journal from my hands, and opened it. “Please, Lori. Calmly and clearly and in the correct order, tell me what Dimity—” He glanced down at the journal and his eyes remained on the page, moving from left to right, as a ruddy glow rose from his neck to his hairline. He blinked suddenly, then snapped the book shut.

“What?” I said eagerly. “What did she write?”

“Nothing important,” he said.

“Then why are you blushing?”

“You couldn’t see it?” he asked.

“Private line,” I replied.

“She was …” He averted his eyes. “She was complimenting me on my appearance.”

I looked at him doubtfully.

“She
was
,” he insisted. “She said that my teeth are nice and straight, as she always knew they would be.”

“And what else?”

He looked away again and said, with studied nonchalance, “And that she was right in telling Father not to worry about my thumb-sucking.”

“You were still sucking your thumb at
twelve?
”

“No,” said Bill, “I
started
sucking my thumb at twelve. It’s a common reaction to bereavement.”

“Oh.” The room grew very still. Bill watched the fire and I watched his profile until he turned in my direction.

“I don’t anymore, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“What I was wondering,” I said softly, “was why I didn’t try it. A little thumb-sucking might have helped.”

“It helped me.”

“And your teeth are very straight,” I added.

“Thank you.”

“Bill,” I said, “you know about Reginald, and I know about your thumb. I think that makes us even.”

Some of the starch went out of his spine. “It’s a start.” Tapping the journal, he returned to the subject at hand. “She thinks of everything, doesn’t she? It’s a strange effect, though—how the words … appear. What did she say to you?”

I read through Dimity’s half of the dialogue and supplied my side of it as best I could remember. When I finished, he let out a low whistle.

“Deep waters,” he said.

“It’s a metaphysical swamp, if you ask me. I don’t even want to think about what her return address might be.”

“What was all that about forgiveness?” Bill asked. “Forgiveness for what?”

“I don’t know. That’s when you came in.”

“Why don’t you try asking her again?”

“You mean just … ask?” With a self-conscious glance at Bill, I opened the journal once more. “Uh, hello?” I said. “Dimity? Are you there?” I touched Bill’s arm as a new sentence appeared on the page.

Yes, of course, my dear.

“Good,” I said, “because I want to ask you about what you said before, about needing to be—”

Do you like the cottage?

“Like it? I love it, Dimity. Derek did a fantastic job.”

There are few craftsmen as gifted as Derek. I was fortunate to find him. Have you see the back garden yet?

“Only from the deck.”

Oh, but it’s no good gazing down on a garden. You must stroll through it in order to see it properly.

“I’ll do that,” I promised, “as soon as it stops pouring. But, to get back to what I was saying before, could you explain what you meant when you said—”

It’s nothing for you to concern yourself with, Lori.

“But I am concerned, Dimity. I mean, it’s great to have a chance to talk with you like this, but—”

There’s nothing you can do, you see. I want you to enjoy your time here. I want you to read the correspondence.

“I will, Dimity, as soon as—”

You must read the letters. Read them carefully. But please, take the time to make a batch of cookies for young Bill. You could find no better way to make amends. Oh, dear, it seems I must go now. Once more, Lori, I welcome you with all my heart.

I tried a few more questions, but when nothing else appeared, I closed the journal and leaned on the arm of the chair, lost in thought.

“She’s stonewalling,” I murmured.

“She’s what?”

“She’s shutting me out, just like she shut out my mother.”

“What has this got to do with your mother?” I handed the journal to Bill and got to my feet. “You stay right here,” I said. “I have something to show you.”

*
**

“… So Dimity bottled something up all these years and now it’s blocking her way to heaven?” Bill took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “The things they don’t teach you in law school …”

He was sitting at the desk in the study, with the manuscript, the topographic map, the letters from Dimity and my mother, the tattered old photograph, and the journal arrayed before him. Reginald sat beside the journal, watching the proceedings with an air of benign detachment, while I paced the room, filled with nervous energy. I stopped at the desk and pointed to the photograph.

“And it must have happened here, in this clearing. The photograph reminded Dimity of it and that’s why she keeled over. That’s my working hypothesis, anyway. There’s this, too.” I pulled the locket from the neck of my sweater and showed it to Bill. “I found it upstairs this morning, in a box marked with the letter
W
—for Westwood. It’s empty. See? No pictures. Where are they, Bill?”

“Maybe she never put any pictures in it.”

“Not just
these
pictures.” I perched on the edge of the desk. “Don’t you remember? My mom said Dimity was looking at photo albums when the neighbors found her. I snooped around while you were in here reading the letters and—” I hopped off the desk. “Come upstairs and see what I found.”

Bill put on his glasses and followed me up to the master bedroom. I moved Meg’s blanket from the old wooden chest to the bed, then opened the lid of the chest. A row of photo albums bound in brown leather had been packed inside it, their spines facing upward. Like the archive boxes in the study, they had been labeled with dates.

“Neat little ducks, all in a row,” I said, then pointed to a gap in the sequence. “Except that one has flown the coop, the one covering the years just before Dimity met my mom.” I let the lid fall back into place. “So
what did she do with it? And don’t try to tell me that she stopped taking pictures all of a sudden, because—”

“Wait, Lori, back up a step.” Bill sat on the chest. “What do you think happened in that clearing? What could be so terrible that it would follow Dimity into the afterlife? Are we talking about murder? Suicide? Are we going to find a body buried under that tree?”

“Don’t say things like that,” I said, suppressing a shudder.

“You’ve been thinking them, haven’t you? I don’t mean to sound ghoulish, but it has to have been something fairly drastic to cause Dimity this much grief. If we’re going to go digging into the past, we should be prepared to uncover some unpleasant things.”

“But … murder?” I shook my head. “No. I can’t believe that. It’s got to be something else—and don’t ask me what, because I don’t know I’m going to call the Harrises again.” I started for the telephone on the bedside table, but Bill blocked my way.

“You’ve already left four messages on their machine,” he reminded me.

“But where can they
be?
”

“Still bailing out the vicarage is my guess. The storm hasn’t let up.” Bill patted the space next to him on the wooden chest. “Come here and sit down. The Harrises will call when they call, and not one minute sooner. You can’t help Dimity by running in circles.” He waited until I was seated, then went on. “We have no idea where the missing photo album might be. For all we know, Dimity might have burned it.”

“A depressing possibility,” I conceded.

“On the other hand, she may have kept it somewhere else—a bank vault, a safe-deposit box—somewhere special. Maybe it got mixed up with the rest of her papers. I’m sure that Father would be—”

“Your father!” I clapped my hand to my mouth. “Oh, my gosh, Bill. I was talking with him when I saw Reginald. I slammed the phone down on him. He must be worried sick.” I rose halfway to my feet, then sat down again. “But he’ll want to know why I hung up on him. What am I going to say?”

“That’s easy,” said Bill. “Tell him that you were distracted by another one of my stunningly clever stunts.”

I shook my head. “No way. When I told him you were haunting the cottage, he threatened to recall you and fly over himself.”

“I hope you talked him out of it,” Bill said quickly.

“I did, but I don’t want to risk stirring him up again.”

“Definitely not. Tell him … tell him that you were distracted by one of my stunts, but that you’ve had it out with me. You’ve taught me the
error of my ways and I’ve promised never, ever to do anything so childish again.” He looked at me brightly. “How’s that?”

“Will he believe it?”

“It’s what he wants to hear.”

“That always helps.” I went over to dial the number on the bedside phone and Bill stood beside me, listening in. Willis, Sr., answered on the first ring.

“Ah, Miss Shepherd,” he said. “So good of you to call back. I was beginning to become concerned. Was there an emergency of some sort?”

“No, no, Mr. Willis,” I replied airily, “no emergency. Just another one of Bill’s silly jokes. The last one, as a matter of fact. I’ve given him a … a stern lecture and he’s promised to behave himself from now on.” Bill signaled that I was doing fine, but I felt sure Willis, Sr., would hear the deception and guilt in my voice.

But he began to chuckle. “Well, well, Miss Shepherd, if my son has stubbed his toe on your temper, I’ve no doubt he’ll watch his step in future.”

I put my hand over the receiver and whispered, “Is he saying I’m bad-tempered?” but Bill waved the question away and hurried to the foot of the bed to point at the wooden chest. He mouthed the word “Photos.”

“Uh, Mr. Willis?” I continued. “While I have you on the line, do you think you could answer a couple of questions for me?”

“I am at your service, Miss Shepherd.”

“It’s just that I found some old photo albums here in the cottage and one seems to be missing. I was wondering what could have happened to it. Did you come across anything like that when you were going through Dimity’s papers? It’s an old album, from around 1939….” I listened to Willis, Sr.’s reply, said a polite good-bye, and hung up.

“Well?” said Bill.

“He doesn’t think so. He’ll check, though, and get back to me.”

Bill nodded, but his mind was somewhere else. “Let’s go back to the study,” he said. “It just occurred to me that the answers we’re looking for might be right under our noses.”

I trailed after him. “If you’re thinking of the correspondence, Bill, you’re way off base. My mother had her antennae out. If Dimity had dropped the slightest hint, she would have told me.”

Bill entered the study and approached the shelves. “True, but what if Dimity didn’t mail all the letters she wrote to your mother? What if she couldn’t bring herself to send some of them?”

I hadn’t thought of that. Scanning the crowded shelves, I felt a flicker of hope. If Bill and I worked together, we could read through the letters in
a matter of hours. If there were any clues to be found—to Dimity’s past, or to the origins of the stories—we would find them. With Bill’s help, I might be able to keep everyone happy. Still, I hesitated.

“Bill,” I pressed, “have you thought this through? Looking for answers to my mother’s questions could take a lot of time, more time than I have. I may not be able to write Dimity’s introduction. Bill …” I tugged on his sleeve and he looked down at me. “Your father has gone to a lot of trouble to see to it that Dimity’s wishes are obeyed. Won’t he be furious with you for helping me disobey them?”

“He’d be dismayed, certainly. But I’m not helping you.”

“You’re not?” I blinked up at him, confused.

“No.” He reached for the first box of letters. “I’m helping Dimity.”