Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince (13 page)

“Shanice feels sorry for them,” I said, shaking my head at the thought of anyone feeling
the smallest degree of pity for the boorish Boghwells.

Shanice is a generous soul. It was kind of her to make Daisy’s days at Risingholme
such fun. Most cooks would object vociferously to having a child underfoot in the
kitchen.

“Daisy’s a special child,” I said. “The sort of child who’d take an old man’s troubles
to heart and try to help him. Frances Wylton and Shanice thought Daisy was telling
taradiddles when she rattled on about Mikhail. I believed her from the start and the
Russian tea cakes added weight to my conviction. She’s been telling the truth all
along, Dimity. A highly colored version of the truth, maybe, but the truth.”

The tea cake recipe is merely one piece of the puzzle you were clever enough to assemble
today. If the Tereschchenkos were driven from their homeland by the 1917 revolution,
they could have arrived in England in the early 1920s. The new government would have
seized their Russian assets, but foreign investments might have enabled them to purchase
Whiting Hall.

“If Mikhail was a young man in the early 1920s,” I said, “I doubt he’d still be alive
today.”

Perhaps he was an infant, brought to safety by his parents. His mother and father
could have brought family treasures with them as well. Small but valuable heirlooms—like
the silver sleigh—were frequently smuggled into the country to supplement an immigrant
family’s income. Mikhail could have inherited what was left.

“And his inheritance could have been stolen from him by someone he trusted,” I said
darkly. “A brother who’d made a mess of his own finances, for example, could have
plundered Mikhail’s treasures and sold them under the counter to unsuspecting dupes
like Miles Craven. If Miles Craven
is
an unsuspecting dupe.”

Mikhail’s heirlooms might very well have been taken from him and sold without his
consent. Sadly, it’s the sort of thing that happens to vulnerable, isolated people,
and immigrants tend to be both vulnerable and isolated.

“If he threatened to report the theft to the police,” I said, “his brother—or some
other rotten relative—would have wanted to shut him up.”

I doubt he would have gone to the police, Lori, but he might have threatened to take
his grievance to other members of the Russian émigré community who could protect him
from further exploitation.

“Either way,” I said, “the thief would have wanted to keep him quiet. Mikhail would
have been a sick old man by then, and unable to put up a fight. Instead of killing
him, the brother—or whoever—just made sure he never left Whiting Hall.”

The tea cake trail does seem to lead to Whiting Hall. By 1925, the Tereschchenkos
might have felt secure enough in their new surroundings to share a family recipe with
their neighbors at Risingholme and Hayewood House.

“Whiting Hall must have seemed like paradise after everything they’d been through,”
I said. “No wonder they renamed it Shangri-la.”

The Tereschchenkos changed their surname as well, a not uncommon practice among naturalized
citizens. Thames is quintessentially English and much easier for their new neighbors
to pronounce than Tereschchenko.

“Does either name ring a bell with you?” I asked.

Not the faintest tinkle. I was acquainted with a number of immigrant families, however,
some of whom anglicized their surnames. A few anglicized their Christian names as
well. My dear friend Donetello di Pietro, for example, became Don Peters.

The romantic in me snapped to attention.

“You had a dear friend named Donetello di Pietro?” I said, peering down at the journal
with fresh interest.

Don sold fruit in Covent Garden. He always set aside the sweetest apples, pears, and
plums for me.

“What a nice man,” I said, captivated by the image of Aunt Dimity and a dashing Italian
fruiterer strolling hand in hand through Covent Garden’s cobbled lanes.

Don was a very nice man. His wife and six children adored him.

“Oh.” The romantic in me went back to sleep and I returned to the business at hand.
“I can understand why immigrants would change their names. We all want to fit in.
Except for Bree, of course,” I allowed, smiling. “She may have muted her appearance
for the sake of our search, but I’ll bet my boots her nose ring will be back in place
when we go to church on Sunday. She knows how much it annoys Peggy Taxman.”

I doubt that Bree’s red hair or her nose ring would have been a liability at Shangri-la.
If the Thameses throw cocktail parties around their swimming pool, they won’t be put
off by a colorful journalist. Bree didn’t change her hair color merely to blend in,
however. She did it in order to befriend Tiffany Bell and, by extension, the Bell
children.

“Yes, she did,” I said. “It was good of her, wasn’t it?”

It was good for her as well.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

What has Bree done with herself since she came to England, Lori? She’s taken a handful
of university courses, pottered around in her great-grandaunts’ garden, helped Rainey
Dawson to run the tea room in Sally Pyne’s absence, and learned a few carpentry skills
from Mr. Barlow. It’s not much to show for an entire year.

“You can’t fault her for taking a breather,” I protested. “Her last few months in
New Zealand weren’t exactly a barrel of laughs.”

I’m not criticizing Bree, Lori. I’m simply saying that she’s had no sense of purpose
since she arrived in Finch, and a girl with a heart as big as Bree’s needs a sense
of purpose. Her visit to Addington Terrace may turn out to be the best thing that
could have happened to her.

“In what way?” I asked.

Addington Terrace rattled Bree. It disturbed her. It reminded her of the worst years
in her life. I don’t know if she saw herself in the Bell children, but they clearly
touched a chord in her.

“She wants to rescue Coral and Ben and Tom, just as I wanted to rescue Daisy.” I gazed
into the fire as memories from my own past drifted through my mind. “I guess those
of us who’ve known hard times want to keep others from going through what we went
through.”

I’d like to think so, but I suspect
Lark Landing
gave Bree the final push she needed to take the actions she took today. When I read
it, I understood its underlying message to be: While it’s good to feel sympathy for
those less fortunate than ourselves, it’s better to extend a helping hand to them.

“Bree’s definitely extending a helping hand to the Bells,” I said. “Wouldn’t Ruth
and Louise be pleased?”

They most certainly would. They would also be relieved to know that their best china
will be safe from Ben and Tom! And on that note, I will bid you good night. You have
another exciting day ahead of you, Lori, and you need your rest.

“If you insist,” I said.

I do. Good night, my dear. Sleep well.

“I believe I shall,” I said.

The curving lines of royal-blue ink slowly faded from the page. I closed the journal
and returned it to its shelf, then touched a fingertip to Reginald’s snout.

“You done good today, little buddy,” I said. “I don’t know how you did it, but you
done good.”

A sublime gleam shone from Reginald’s black button eyes, as if he were telling me
we’d all done good that day. Smiling, I switched off the lights and went to bed.

W
ill and Rob woke me before dawn on Friday. It seemed earlier than it was because daylight
hours in February, though lengthening, were still considerably shorter than they would
be in June. I stumbled groggily out of bed and allowed the boys’ boundless energy
to energize me. In next to no time we were dressed—they in their riding gear, I in
dark trousers and a respectable but decidedly non-dismal rose-colored twin set—and
seated around the kitchen table, gobbling porridge with unseemly haste.

I thought Bree deserved a lie-in after her exertions on Thursday, but she joined us
for breakfast, dressed in the same “posh blouse and trousers” she’d worn to Hayewood
House.

“Are you playing spies again?” Will inquired, surveying Bree’s attire.

“Is that why you made your hair brown?” Rob asked. “Is it a disguise?”

“Uh-huh,” Bree replied through a mouthful of porridge. She swallowed before adding
more distinctly, “Spies aren’t supposed to stand out in a crowd.”

“If you need to send secret messages,” said Rob, “we’ll write them for you.”

“Invisibly,” Will added.

“Thanks, guys,” said Bree, “but you have more important things to do today than to
write secret messages. Thunder and Storm are champing at the bits to see you!”

Once the twins heard their ponies’ names, there was no holding them back. They dumped
their bowls in the sink, grabbed their riding helmets, and ran to the Rover. Bree
and I scurried after them.

Emma was waiting in the stable yard when we arrived at Anscombe Manor. She was bundled
in a black fleece pullover, a puffy down vest, insulated riding breeches, and earmuffs,
and she was stamping her booted feet to keep the blood circulating in them. She sent
Will and Rob into the stable to lead out Thunder and Storm, scrutinized their tack
when they emerged, gave them each a leg up, and directed them to the large riding
ring.

“No jumping,” she instructed them as she opened the gate. “You can take the ponies
out for a cross-country hack during your lesson tomorrow, but this morning you stay
in the ring. They’ve had a few days off, so warm them up thoroughly before you put
them through their paces.”

Will and Rob might question my orders, Bill’s orders, and even—very occasionally—their
grandfather’s orders, but they
never
questioned Emma’s. They followed her instructions to the letter while Bree, Emma,
and I leaned against the fence to watch them. I wasn’t sure how the ponies felt about
leaving their cozy stalls on such a brisk morning, but my sons had rarely looked more
ecstatic.

“I could use some warming up myself,” said Emma, shivering. “Whose idea was it to
open the stables at sunrise? Oh, yeah. Mine.”

“You’ve made two little boys very happy,” I assured her. “The stable yard looks fantastic,
by the way. I can’t even tell where the pipes burst.”

“I’ll pass your praise on to Derek, if he ever gets out of bed.” Emma shoved her hands
into her pockets and looked from Bree to me. “As long as I have you here, would you
mind telling me what on earth the two of you have been up to? Peggy Taxman was spitting
tacks yesterday, telling anyone who would listen about a nefarious plot to buy the
Emporium out from under her.”

Bree erupted in a gale of laughter, leaving me to explain her prank. Emma responded
with a smile for Bree, a sympathetic pat on the arm for me, and a look on her face
that said quite plainly:
I’m glad Bree’s staying at your house instead of mine.

It was a sensible thought from a sensible woman. Emma was by far the most sensible
person I knew, which was why I didn’t tell her about Mikhail or the silver sleigh.
I felt as though Bree and I were on the verge of a major breakthrough in our search
for the lost prince. I didn’t want Emma to dampen our burgeoning optimism with a dreary
dose of common sense, so I steered the conversation toward Bree’s fabulous cooking,
Bill’s well-deserved sunburn, and Willis, Sr.’s steely determination to attend church
on Sunday.

I gave the boys an hour to reacquaint themselves with their steeds, then reined them
in. Emma was kind enough to take charge of Thunder and Storm and after thanking her
profusely we dashed back to the cottage, where Will and Rob changed out of their riding
gear and into their school uniforms. The boys smelled like stablehands despite the
change of clothes, but I didn’t bother to run baths for them. The teachers at Morningside
were used to horsey fragrances wafting from my sons.

Bree and I dropped Will and Rob off at school, then chased away the morning chill
with a large pot of tea at our favorite café. By half past nine we were on the road
to Shangri-la, which, Bree informed me, was the country estate to the west of the
Risingholme estate.

Bree shared two pieces of news with me as we drove to Shangri-la.

“I rang a friend in Oxford yesterday,” she said. “He designs websites for a living
and he agreed to design one for Madeleine Sturgess. After I spoke with him, I rang
Maddie. She was thrilled by the idea of working with a professional, so I gave her
my friend’s number. She said she’d get in touch with him today.”

“Well done, you,” I said.

“I felt a bit guilty for laughing at her behind her back the other day,” Bree confessed.
“As you said, she’s not stupid, just inexperienced. Helping her with her business
seemed like the best way to make it up to her.”

“Guilt can be a great motivator,” I said.

“To be honest,” said Bree, “I felt guilty about misleading Maddie as well. I couldn’t
stand the thought of her telling her friend Bunny about an article neither of them
would ever see, so I wrote a piece about Hayewood House. I’ve already submitted it
to three house-and-garden magazines, and I’ll keep submitting it until it’s published.”

“All this, and dinner, too?” I said, my eyebrows rising. “You did have a busy day.”

“Guilt,” said Bree with a shamefaced grin, “is a great motivator.”

I recalled Aunt Dimity’s comments about
Lark Landing
and wondered if the book’s underlying message had played an even greater role than
guilt in inspiring Bree’s good-deed spree. I hoped the story would have a similar
effect on me once I got around to reading it, though the thought of doing so many
good deeds in a single day was slightly daunting.

“I don’t want our hunt for Mikhail to hurt innocent bystanders,” Bree said suddenly.
“I’ll write an article about Shangri-la, too, if the Thameses are innocent, but I’d
just as soon drop the
Country House Monthly
ruse and stick with being freelancers. That way, people won’t count on seeing their
names in print.”

“Consider it done,” I said. “In the nick of time, too, because we have arrived at
our destination.”

Shangri-la’s drive was guarded by a pair of white wrought-iron gates supported by
white cement pillars. Each pillar was topped with a large white cement fish. Bree
and I surveyed the fish and exchanged bemused glances, then jumped as a voice spoke
to us from thin air.

“Good morning,” it boomed. “How may I help you?”

I lowered my window and searched for the source of the greeting, but Bree found it
before I did.

“It’s the fish,” she whispered, giggling. “There’s a speaker in one and a camera in
the other.”

I studied the decorative sculptures and saw that she was right. The fish on the left
had turned to surveil us and the fish on the right had a speaker lodged behind its
rudimentary gills.

“How may I help you?” the right-hand fish reiterated. “Please speak up.”

“We’re freelance journalists,” I said loudly. “We’d like to interview the gentleman
or the lady of the house for an article we’re writing about Shangri-la.”

The fish remained silent for so long that I thought we were sunk, but when it spoke
again, I knew that someone in the house had taken the bait.

“Welcome to Shangri-la,” it said.

The white gates swung open and we entered an estate that put Risingholme to shame.
The asphalt drive was as smooth as burnished leather and lined by evenly spaced, precisely
matched conical topiaries. The meadows beyond looked as though a team of gardeners
trimmed them every day with embroidery scissors.

A few hundred feet down the drive, a sign on our right proclaimed:

PEACOCK CROSSING
PROCEED WITH CAUTION

We weren’t surprised, therefore, to see the flamboyant birds strutting across the
broad circular lawn that divided the drive into two widely separated arcs. The three-tiered
marble fountain in the center of the lawn came as a bit of a shocker, however, not
only because it looked brand-new, but because it featured statuary that would have
made Peggy Taxman blush. The white marble figures of frolicking youths and maidens
were as naked as newborns and proved, upon closer inspection, to be anatomically correct
in every particular.

Bree took one look at the fountain and burst out laughing.

“I think I’m going to like the Thameses,” she said.

“I think I know why the Boghwells don’t,” I said, averting my gaze from the figure
of an extravagantly well-endowed youth.

I followed the drive as it curved around the lawn and parked the Rover in front of
Shangri-la’s main entrance. The Thameses’ home was Georgian in style and about the
same size as my father-in-law’s—not ostentatiously large, but large enough to be modestly
impressive. It was made of a Cotswold stone so pale I could detect only a faint trace
of yellow in it, and every inch of its woodwork had been painted a glossy white.

“It’s not bad,” Bree said, eyeing the building judiciously, “but it’s too . . . shiny.”

I knew what she meant. The windows gleamed, the painted surfaces glistened, and the
stonework was unnaturally bright. Hayewood House was a fine example of a well-maintained
historic home, but Shangri-la looked as though layers of history had been scoured
from it.

“The strange thing is,” Bree went on, “I feel as if I’ve been here before.”

“Me, too,” I said, nodding slowly. “I can’t imagine why, but the house and the grounds
seem familiar to me.”

“Maybe we lived here in a previous life,” Bree suggested.

“If so,” I said, “I was a better housekeeper then than I am now.”

We climbed out of the Rover and approached the front door, which was opened by a tiny
woman wearing the frilly cap, starched apron, and crisp blue uniform of a made-for-television
maid.

“Please, come in,” she said, and stood aside for us to enter.

I couldn’t identify the maid’s accent, but the woman who greeted us as we stepped
into the entrance hall sounded as English as the Boghwells, though her Cockney twang
indicated that she came from the opposite end of their social scale.

“Welcome to Shangri-la,” the woman said. “If you were looking for the lady of the
house, you’ve found her. I’m Gracie Thames.”

Gracie Thames was tall, middle-aged, and generously proportioned. Her white jumpsuit
clung like paint to her splendid curves and her blond hair fell down her back in a
cascade of brassy curls. Though her makeup had been applied with a trowel, the look
suited her, because everything about Gracie Thames was overdone: Her peep-toe stilettos
were too high, her diamond rings were too big, her nails—finger as well as toe—were
too red, her eyes were too blue, and her voice was too loud, but even so, there was
something endearing about her. Here was a woman, I thought, who never tried to be
anything other than what she was. I admired her for it.

“See to their coats, Divina, then run along,” she said to the maid. “I’ll ring if
I need you. Divina’s from the Philippines,” she explained after the little maid had
taken our coats and departed, “but she speaks English better than I do. Not much to
brag about, I know,” she added with a self-deprecating laugh. “Divina tells me you’re
journalists.”

“Freelance journalists,” Bree stated firmly. “My name is Bree Pym.”

“And I’m Lori Shepherd,” I said.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Gracie. “Come through to the drawing room. Kick your shoes
off, if you like. We don’t stand on ceremony here.”

Bree and I kept our shoes on, but followed Gracie into a room that immediately set
my teeth on edge. The best that could be said for it was that its original architectural
details had been preserved. The dentil molding, the ceiling medallions, the wall sconces,
the chandelier, the fireplace, and the parquet flooring looked much as they would
have looked in the eighteenth century, but the furnishings were excruciatingly modern.

A pair of enormous white leather sectional sofas faced each other across a lucite
and chrome coffee table that rested on a fluffy white faux-fur rug. The walls were
hung with large square paintings of oversized orange dahlias and the space above the
mantelshelf was occupied by a gilt-framed, full-length oil portrait of a younger but
no less voluptuous Gracie Thames clad in what appeared to be a white negligee trimmed
with luminous pink ostrich feathers.

“That’s me in my salad days,” Gracie said proudly, following my gaze. “I thought it
should go in the master bedroom, but hubby insisted on hanging it where everyone can
see it.”

“Your husband must love you very much,” I said.

“We’re soul mates,” Gracie said simply. “We met when we were sixteen and that was
that. We’ve been a couple ever since.”

“Is your husband at home?” I asked.

Gracie’s face fell slightly as she shook her head.

“He left this morning for a business meeting,” she said, “in Norway. He won’t be back
until Monday. Mustn’t complain, though,” she went on, lifting her chin. “I can think
of worse problems to have than a hardworking husband.”

Gracie’s lack of animosity toward her husband’s travels made me feel like an ungrateful
wretch. I made a mental note to stock the medicine cabinet with sunburn gel before
Bill’s return.

“Do you have children?” Bree asked.

“Four,” said Gracie. “Two of each, all grown and flown, but working for their dad.
Tony Three’s at the London office, Davey runs the docks, Naomi manages the warehouse,
and Talia’s training up to be our accountant.”