Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince (18 page)

“Al’s their boss,” said Bree. “They believe him when he tells them his grandfather’s
unwell and they obey him when he orders them to steer clear of the sickroom.”

“And Al goes on his merry way,” I concluded disgustedly, “selling Mikhail’s treasures
to the highest bidder and pocketing the profits.”

“An admirable summary of my own suspicions,” said Lady Barbara. “The only question
that remains is . . .” She looked from Bree’s face to mine. “What are we going to
do about it?”

“You’re not doing anything,” I said firmly.

“Leave it to us,” said Bree. “Lori and I will go to Mirfield and—”

“You’ll never get past the gates,” Lady Barbara interrupted. “You can’t expect to
waltz up the drive and find Al waiting for you with open arms. If he’s doing dirty
deeds, he won’t be at home to strangers.”

“If he bars the door to us,” I said, “we’ll call the police.”

“And tell them what?” Lady Barbara demanded. “I’d like to see their faces when you
explain to them how you came by the troika and why you didn’t turn it in after you
found it. I doubt they’ll be as receptive as I’ve been to a child’s story about a
Russian prince.”

I frowned at her, perplexed. “I don’t know what else we can—”

“I do,” Lady Barbara broke in. “Al spends weekends in London with one of his many
lady friends, and—”

“Al leaves his ailing grandfather alone in the house
every weekend
?” I interjected. Blood thundered in my veins as I sprang to my feet. “Come on, Bree.
We’re going to Mirfield. We’ll battle an army of temps if we have to, but we won’t
leave until we’ve found Mikhail.”

“Won’t we be trespassing?” Bree asked, her eyes dancing. “Won’t we be breaking and
entering?”

I drew myself up to my not-terribly-impressive height and proclaimed, “If a house
is on fire, one is allowed—nay, one is
compelled
—to break down the door to rescue the people within.”

“You won’t have to battle any temps,” said Lady Barbara, “and you won’t have to break
down any doors. As I was about to say, before I was so heroically interrupted, the
temps take off at five o’clock on the dot. Once they’ve legged it, you’ll have the
place to yourselves.”

“How will we get into the house?” asked Bree.

“Easily.” Lady Barbara pointed to a dusty enameled box that sat beside the teddy bear
on the mantel. “You’ll find what you need in there.”

I opened the box and withdrew from it an ornate brass skeleton key.

“A prime example of my liberating influence on Mikhail,” said Lady Barbara. “I persuaded
him to steal a spare master key from the butler’s pantry. He was much too meek to
hold on to it, so I took custody of it. It opens every door in Mirfield.”

“What if Al’s changed the locks?” I asked.

“I have it on good authority that he hasn’t,” said Lady Barbara. “Mikhail was bright
enough to install an alarm system, but it went haywire last year and Al’s been too
busy fending off his creditors to have it repaired.”

“More insider knowledge from Al’s ex-cook?” I inquired, raising an eyebrow.

“Mrs. Harper was a bit miffed with Al after he sacked her,” said Lady Barbara. “She
spent a long afternoon here, enumerating his shortcomings to my cook. My cook felt
it would be an unkindness to stop her.”

“Two more women who’d fit in, in Finch,” I muttered.

“It sounds as though you live in a very interesting village,” Lady Barbara observed.

“Oh, we do,” I said with feeling. “We most certainly do.”

“So it’s a go, then?” Bree asked eagerly. “Mirfield? It’s a go?”

“It’s a definite go,” I replied.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Bree pulled from her day pack the pair of flashlights
Will and Rob had bestowed upon her the previous evening. “Let’s play spies!”

W
hile I shared Bree’s sense of urgency, blood was no longer thundering in my veins.
The thought of doing battle with a mop-wielding mob of burly cleaning women had lost
its appeal, and besides, I was hungry. After a brief discussion, Bree and I agreed
that the most sensible thing to do would be to postpone the Mirfield invasion until
after the temps had gone home for the day.

The morning’s whirlwind of revelations had finally taken its toll on Lady Barbara.
She directed us to the kitchen, then allowed a muscular young man named Eric to place
her and her oxygen tank in a wheelchair and trundle her to her antiseptic bedchamber
for a simple meal and a nap. Bree and I, meanwhile, were given sandwiches, tea, and
a Finch-worthy helping of local gossip by Tappan Hall’s splendidly chatty cook, Mrs.
Elkins.

Revived by the sandwiches—and the gossip—I telephoned Emma and asked her to keep Will
and Rob at Anscombe Manor overnight. She was willing and we both knew the boys would
be thrilled. Her hardest task, she conceded, would be to keep them from sneaking out
of the manor to sleep in the stables with Thunder and Storm. I told her to throw a
pile of blankets on the hay bales and let the cards fall where they may. A night spent
in a nice, warm stable wouldn’t do the boys any harm, and a nod to the inevitable
would enable Emma to get a good night’s sleep.

Lord Ronald, inured to his great-aunt’s habit of collecting waifs and strays, didn’t
bat an eye when he discovered Bree and me in the kitchen, hobnobbing with his cook.
He greeted us vaguely, gathered up a plateful of sandwiches, and returned to the library,
leaving us to demolish a significant portion of Mrs. Elkins’s excellent raspberry
sponge cake.

Mrs. Elkins was flattered when I asked to see Tappan Hall’s receipt book and I was
unsurprised when I saw that it contained recipes for rugelach, piroshki, and vatrushkas
as well as Russian tea cakes, all of them written in a by-now familiar hand and dated
1925. The tea cakes were, Mrs. Elkins informed us, Lady Barbara’s favorites, the one
nibble that would revive Her Ladyship’s appetite when all else had failed.

My appetite was well and truly sated by the time Lady Barbara rose from her nap. She
sent Eric to escort us to her overheated lair and we spent the rest of the afternoon
there, planning our campaign.

Our first decision—to dispense with the Rover and to approach the house on foot—was
made when Lady Barbara warned us that her skeleton key wouldn’t open Mirfield’s electronically
controlled front gates.

“No problem,” said Bree. “It’s good tactics to infiltrate enemy territory via an overland
route.”

“You,” I said, “have been spending too much time with Will and Rob.”

Lady Barbara’s golden summer with Mikhail stood us in good stead. She filled my notebook
with detailed maps of the house, the grounds, and the footpath that would take us
from Tappan Hall to Mirfield.

“Ronald’s not much of a walker,” she told us, “so the path may be a bit overgrown,
and if the bridge is down, you’ll have to hop the brook, and you’ll have to climb
the boundary wall when you reach it, but you’re both young and fit, so you shouldn’t
encounter any real difficulties.”

I was tempted to tell Lady Barbara that she might be overestimating my athletic abilities,
but I was so pleased to be considered young and fit that I held my tongue.

“Make a bit of a racket while you’re searching the house,” Lady Barbara advised. “Try
not to sound like burglars, but don’t sneak up on Mikhail, either, or you may, literally,
scare him to death.” She thumped the oxygen tank resentfully. “Oh, how I wish I could
come with you!”

“You’ll be with us in spirit,” Bree assured her. “And we’ll ring you as soon as we
find Mikhail.” She peered uncertainly at the book-laden tables. “You do have a phone
in here, don’t you?”

“I’m not a cavewoman,” Lady Barbara said scathingly, and pulled a mobile phone from
her dressing gown’s pocket.

A clock somewhere in the room chimed five times.

“Five o’clock,” I said. “We’d better get going.”

Bree and I donned our jackets, took up our respective bags, said our good-byes, and
headed for the French doors. My hand was on the lever when Bree spun around, ran back
to Lady Barbara, and planted a kiss on her withered cheek.

“Wish us luck,” she said.

“Good luck,” Lady Barbara said gruffly and as we let ourselves out though the French
doors, she called, “Tell Misha, Basha sent you!”

•   •   •

The footpath was hopelessly overgrown, the bridge was a pile of rotting timbers, and
the boundary wall was at least a thousand feet tall—to my eyes, at any rate—but I
managed to keep up with Bree as she scrambled through thickets of brush, hopped the
brook, and clambered over the wall like an overcaffeinated mountain goat. The last
glimmer of twilight faded as we dropped down from the wall and the moon had not yet
risen, so we followed our flashlights’ beams to Mirfield.

The house was nothing more than a black shape against a starry sky, but its faint
outlines suggested that it had more in common with Hayewood House than with Tappan
Hall. Our flashlights picked out Cotswold stone, tall windows, and a modest half-moon
porch sheltering the front door.

“Here goes,” I whispered as we tiptoed onto the porch.

I pulled the skeleton key from my pocket, inserted it into the keyhole, and held my
breath. If Lady Barbara’s information on the alarm system was faulty, the Mirfield
invasion would end before it started.

When I turned the key, however, the only sound to reach my ears was a satisfying
click
. I breathed again, pushed the door open, and darted inside, with Bree following hot
upon my heels. Neither one of us could locate a light switch, so we trained our flashlights
on my notebook.

“I start at the top, you start at the bottom, and we meet in the middle,” Bree whispered,
flipping through Lady Barbara’s maps. “That’s the plan, right?”

“Right,” I whispered. “Because Al would want to keep Mikhail in an out-of-the-way
place, like an attic or a cellar.”

“Or a dungeon,” Bree whispered

“I’m not sure we should be whispering,” I whispered.

“I’m not, either,” whispered Bree, “but I don’t know how to make a racket without
sounding like a burglar.”

I pondered the thorny problem, then threw back my head and bellowed, “Mikhail? Don’t
be afraid! We’ve come to rescue you! That should do it,” I continued in a normal tone
of voice. “A burglar wouldn’t announce—”

“Quiet,” Bree interrupted, putting a finger to my lips. “Listen.”

I stood stock-still, straining to hear what Bree had already heard.

“Is that . . . a handbell?” I said doubtfully.

“It’s Mikhail!” Bree cried, gripping my arm. “It
has
to be him. He’s the only one here. Follow me, Lori! Follow the sound!”

Lady Barbara couldn’t accuse us of sneaking up on Mikhail. We sprinted from room to
room, bumping into tables, knocking over chairs, emitting a few colorful expressions
we would never use in front of Will or Rob, and stopping twice to listen for the sound
that drew us onward. The ringing became increasingly louder and more distinct until
we reached a tall, white door in the northeast corner of the house. Then it stopped.

The silence was deafening.

“The exertion has killed him,” said Bree.

“If it has, Lady Barbara will kill us,” I said.

I shoved the skeleton key into the lock, turned it, and tried to open the door. It
wouldn’t budge.

“I think you locked it,” said Bree.

“Yes, thank you,” I said dampingly. “I’d worked that one out myself.”

I turned the skeleton key the other way, opened the door, and stepped into a scene
straight out of Lady Barbara’s childhood.

The room was a swirl of color. The baroque brocade drapes, the silk damask wallpaper,
and the lush, floral carpet should have been overwhelming but the rich hues and the
sinuous patterns worked together to create an air of sumptuous harmony.

A wood fire burned in the hearth and lamps with fringed shades added their soft glow
to the fire’s. A clock framed in silver gilt and translucent blue enamel sat on the
carved stone mantel, flanked by small enameled boxes set with seed pearls, tiny diamonds,
rubies, and emeralds. Each table was a minuet of marquetry, each chair, divan, and
sofa, a satin symphony.

And everywhere, there was silver. The figures Lady Barbara remembered were there—the
birds, horses, flowers, and bears, the ladies in ball gowns, the gentlemen in powdered
wigs—as were the icons, the jewel-like portraits of mournful saints Lady Barbara had
described. A golden samovar bubbled softly on a table to our right and a tall glass
in a filigreed holder rested on a table near the crackling fire, between a leather-bound
book and an old, wooden-handled brass handbell.

A man in a motorized wheelchair sat within arm’s reach of the bell, his folded hands
resting calmly on the plaid blanket spread neatly over his lap. He wore a thick, oatmeal-colored
cardigan buttoned up over a soft cotton shirt. The toes of his brown wingtip shoes
and the cuffs of his tweed trousers peeked out from beneath the edge of the plaid
blanket. He had a long nose, a bushy white mustache, and limpid brown eyes. His white
hair stood out from his head in a disheveled cloud.

“Albert Einstein,” Bree breathed.

The old man chuckled.

“The resemblance is only skin-deep, I’m afraid,” he said with the merest hint of a
Russian accent. “I haven’t Einstein’s brains or his fame.” He made a small bow. “I
am your humble servant, Mikhail Markov. You have, I believe, come to rescue me?”

“Um,” I said.

“Er,” said Bree.

It wasn’t the climactic moment I’d envisaged.

“When I’m at a loss for words,” said Mikhail, “I try to say nothing until I’ve found
the right ones. Please, take off your coats, help yourselves to some tea, and come
sit by the fire until the right words present themselves to you.”

Bree and I exchanged mystified glances, then piled our jackets on a striped footstool,
filled two tall glasses from the golden samovar, and sat side by side on a slender-legged
antique sofa near the fire. With a touch of a joystick, Mikhail pivoted his wheelchair
to face us.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” he responded gently.

“Our names,” I said at once, coloring to my roots. “We haven’t introduced ourselves.
I’m Lori Shepherd.”

“And I’m Bree Pym,” said Bree.

“And we’re very confused,” I said. “Are you the Mikhail Markov who came to England
with your parents more than eighty years ago?”

“And are you a prince?” Bree added.

“There are no Russian princes,” said Mikhail, with a bemused smile. “And though my
father’s workshop catered to the nobility, he wasn’t himself an aristocrat.”

“Is that why he left Russia?” Bree asked. “Because he served the nobility?”

“So you wish to discuss my family’s history,” Mikhail said, as though it made perfect
sense for a pair of wild-eyed women to break into his house and grill him about his
background. “Forgive me, I did not understand. I do, however, know where to begin.”

He tented his fingers over the plaid blanket and commenced, “My father was a silversmith
in St. Petersburg. When the Bolsheviks came to power, he feared that the leaders of
the new regime would not regard him as an artist or as a skilled craftsman, but as
a lackey of the imperialist oppressors. Papa also feared that his client base would
vanish once private ownership was abolished. His fears led him to make a bold decision.”

“He came to England,” said Bree.

“He and my mother went to Poland first,” Mikhail informed her, “then to France, but
neither of those countries proved satisfactory, so they came to England. I was born
five months after they arrived.”

“It must have been difficult for your parents to start over,” I said, “with a brand-new
baby to feed.”

“An immigrant’s life is never easy,” said Mikhail, “but my father was a clever man.
He made the best of the situation life had handed him. He sold a few of the small
treasures he’d brought with him from St. Petersburg. He used the money to re-create
his workshop and he found a ready market for his wares. His silver was purchased not
only by the English, but by fellow émigrés who wished to be reminded of the lives
they’d left behind.”

“How old were you when your father bought Mirfield?” I asked.

“I was nine,” said Mikhail, “and the house he bought was not called Mirfield. My mother
chose the name to celebrate our deliverance from strife.
Mir
, you see, is the Russian word for ‘peace.’”

“Of course,” Bree said, clapping a hand to her forehead. “Like the Mir space station.”

“Exactly like the Mir space station,” Mikhail confirmed. “And like the cosmonauts
in the space station, we were surrounded by a hostile environment. We were foreigners
and we were in trade, two sins our new neighbors found hard to forgive. Only one family
welcomed us when we came to Mirfield, but my mother, like my father, made the best
of things. She’d always felt more comfortable in kitchens than in drawing rooms, so
she became friendly with our neighbors’ cooks.”

“And she shared recipes with them,” I said as another piece of the puzzle fell into
place.

Mikhail regarded me with an air of mild surprise, but did not disagree with me.

“It amused Mama to think of her dishes finding favor with those who’d spurned us,”
he said. “Unfortunately, her kitchen friendships were short-lived.” He spread his
arms wide to indicate his wheelchair. “I was stricken by polio during our first summer
at Mirfield and my mother devoted herself full time to my care. Eventually, I regained
the use of my legs.”

“And now?” Bree asked, glancing delicately at his chair.

“A minor attack of post-polio syndrome,” he assured her, with a careless wave of his
hand. “When I’m alone in the house, it’s safer for me to use the chair than to totter
about on unreliable limbs. Please excuse me.” He turned his chair in a tight circle
and rolled toward the table next to the door. “I crave a fresh glass of tea. The one
I poured earlier has gone cold and all this talking has left me feeling rather parched.”