Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince (3 page)

I crept a step closer and saw for myself why the sleigh held the child’s attention.
Although it was no more than four inches long, its creator had endowed it with a marvelous
wealth of details.

The sleigh was drawn by three high-stepping horses arrayed in an elaborate harness
hung with bells and ornamented with rosettes. The horses were exquisitely wrought
and superbly dynamic—their nostrils flared, their manes flew as if tossed by the wind,
and their tiny hooves seemed to dance along an unseen road.

The sleigh was unoccupied, but it was a tour de force of decorative invention. Every
inch of its exterior was embellished with minute tassels, rosettes, pinwheels, birds,
and stars. It had a high, scrolled back and its interior appeared to be upholstered
in the finest, most deeply cushioned leather. The exuberant patterns made the sleigh
glitter like a multifaceted jewel in the dim light. I could only imagine how brightly
it would sparkle in the sun.

I’d seldom seen a more enchanting example of the silversmith’s art. I gazed at it,
entranced, for many minutes, but when I chanced to look again at the girl, I was struck
by the contrast between her apparent poverty and the richness of the object that fascinated
her. I recalled the dented Ford Fiesta in the parking lot, wondered where her parents
were, and wished they hadn’t left her alone to peer longingly at a treasure that was
so far beyond her reach.

The girl must have felt my gaze, because she slowly turned her head to look up at
me.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

“You didn’t,” she said gravely.

“Good,” I said, though I was slightly disconcerted by her directness. “I don’t mean
to be nosy, but . . . where’s the rest of your family? I’m sure you didn’t come here
all by yourself.”

“Mummy brought me with her today,” she said, resuming her contemplation of the sleigh.
“It’s just me and Mummy now. Daddy left.”

Her simple answer seemed to explain a lot.
Daddy left
, l thought angrily, leaving Mummy to scrimp and save and struggle to make ends meet.
Was that why the girl was so thin, so ragged, so joyless? I wanted to scoop her up
and whisk her away to Upper Deeping for a hearty meal and a shopping spree, but instead
I just stood there, feeling useless.

“It’s a saltcellar,” she said softly.

“What is?” I asked.

She raised a slender finger and pointed at the sleigh.

“It’s a saltcellar,” she repeated, “a container for salt. It sat on a long polished
table draped in unblemished white linen. There were silver vases, too, filled with
white roses and trailing vines, and there were white candles in silver candelabra.
The ladies wore their hair piled high and their dresses cut low to display necklaces
worth a king’s ransom. The gentlemen wore diamond studs in their stiff collars and
gold links in their cuffs. They ate and drank late into the night while the world
outside grew darker and colder.”

The girl fell silent. I realized that my mouth was agape and closed it, but I continued
to stare at the child in amazement. It seemed impossible to me that the words she’d
uttered and the images she’d conjured were her own, yet she’d described the elegant
supper party with the quiet conviction of someone who’d witnessed it firsthand.

“Did Mr. Craven tell you about the . . . the saltcellar?” I stammered.

“No,” she replied with a dreamy smile. “Mr. Craven just pretends. The dinners were
real.”

A woman’s anxious voice sounded suddenly from the doorway.

“Daisy? What are you doing here? How many times have I told you not to wander off
while I’m working?”

A young woman strode into the room, looking flustered. She wore a beige coverall,
faded jeans, and down-at-the-heel loafers, and she carried a plastic bucket filled
with dust cloths. I thought she might be in her late twenties and I assumed she was
a cleaning woman, but one look at her green eyes and her copper-colored hair was enough
to convince me that she was Daisy’s mother.

“I’m sorry,” the young woman said to me. “My daughter is supposed to stay with me
while I work, but—”

“There’s no need to apologize,” I interrupted. “I have two children of my own. I know
how hard it is to keep track of them. Besides, I’ve been enjoying Daisy’s company.
I’m Lori Shepherd, by the way. I live in Finch.”

“I’m Amanda Pickering,” said the young woman, “and I’m afraid I have to get on with
my work. Daisy?” She extended her free hand to the girl. “Come along, love. I’ll make
a nice cup of cocoa for you and you can drink it in Mr. Craven’s office while I finish
up.”

“Nice to meet you, Daisy,” I called as the pair left the room hand in hand. “You,
too, Amanda.”

“Nice to meet you, Lori,” Amanda called from the corridor.

I listened to their footsteps fade into the distance, then turned to gaze once more
at the silver sleigh, wishing I’d been able to spend more time with Amanda Pickering’s
remarkable daughter.

W
e left Skeaping Manor at noon and treated ourselves to lunch at a café in Upper Deeping.
Bree, Will, and Rob spent much of the meal discussing the museum’s gruesome highlights,
but their conversation didn’t dampen my appetite as it might have some other time.
While they chatted cheerfully about blood, bones, bugs, and shriveled flesh, my mind
was far away, dwelling on Daisy Pickering.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl and her queer utterances, but since my lunch
companions wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise, I was obliged to keep my reflections
to myself. I wasn’t sure what I would have said to them, even if they’d given me the
chance. An incidental conversation with an unusual child would have seemed like very
small potatoes to someone who’d had a face-to-face encounter with a giant weta.

By the time we returned to the cottage, the sun had warmed the air considerably and
the wind had ceased altogether, so I gave in to the boys’ demands and sent them outside
to play. Bree, of course, went with them. I elected to remain indoors not only because
I needed to toss a basket of laundry into the washing machine, but because I was bursting
to speak with someone who would take an interest in my encounter with Daisy Pickering.

Fortunately, there was someone in the cottage who valued little girls above bloodstained
axes. Unfortunately, she wasn’t someone I could easily introduce to Bree. After peering
through the kitchen window to make sure the boys and their idol were fully engaged
in their snowy pursuits, I went to the study to speak with a friend Bree would never
meet.

The friend’s name was Dimity Westwood and she wasn’t, in the technical sense, alive.
She had, in fact, died a year before I’d first set foot in England, but though her
body reposed in the churchyard in Finch, her spirit remained in the cottage. It wasn’t
the sort of thing I could explain to myself, much less to a houseguest, though the
story behind it was easy to understand.

Dimity Westwood, an Englishwoman, had been my late mother’s closest friend. The two
women met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World
War and the bond of affection they forged in wartime lasted a lifetime.

After peace was declared in Europe and my mother sailed back to the States, she and
Dimity maintained their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across
the Atlantic. When my father died unexpectedly, the letters became my mother’s refuge,
a tranquil sanctuary that renewed and refreshed her after long days spent working
full-time as a teacher while raising a rambunctious daughter on her own.

My mother was very protective of her sanctuary. She told no one about it, including
me. I knew Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of a series
of bedtime stories my mother invented. I was unaware of the real Dimity Westwood’s
existence until both she and my mother were dead.

It was then that Dimity bequeathed to me a comfortable fortune, the honey-colored
cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious correspondence she’d shared with my
mother, and a curious blue-leather-bound book filled with blank pages.

It was through the blue journal that I finally met my benefactress. When I gazed at
the journal’s blank pages, Aunt Dimity’s handwriting would appear, a graceful copperplate
taught at the village school at a time when airplanes were still a rare and wondrous
sight. I nearly had kittens the first time it happened, but I quickly came to realize
that Aunt Dimity had nothing but my best interests at heart.

I didn’t understand how Aunt Dimity managed to bridge the gap between the living and
the not-quite-living, and she wasn’t too clear about it herself, but the
how
didn’t matter to me. The one thing I knew for certain was that Dimity Westwood was
as good a friend to me as she’d been to my mother. And that was enough.

The study was crisscrossed with shadows thrown by the desiccated strands of ivy that
clung to the diamond-paned windows above the old oak desk. I turned on the mantel
lamps, lit a fire in the hearth, and paused to greet another dear friend.

“Hi, Reg,” I said. “You’re the only kind of stuffed animal I ever want to see again.”

Reginald was a small, powder-pink flannel rabbit with hand-stitched whiskers, black-button
eyes, and a pale purple stain on his snout—a souvenir of the time I’d let him taste
my grape juice. Reginald had been my confidant and my companion in adventure for as
long as I could remember and though I no longer carried him with me everywhere I went,
I felt no need to consign him to the scrap heap of memory simply because I’d grown
up. Instead, he sat in a special niche on the bookshelves beside the fireplace, where
I could give him the love and attention an old friend deserves.

I reached out to touch Reginald’s snout, then took the blue journal from its place
on the bookshelves and sat with it in one of the tall leather armchairs before the
hearth. I glanced over my shoulder to make doubly sure I’d closed the study door,
then opened the journal.

“Dimity?” I said. “The strangest thing happened this morning.”

I smiled fondly as the familiar lines of royal-blue ink began to curl and loop gracefully
across the page.

Oh, goody. I love it when strange things happen. What sort of strange thing was it?

“It concerns a young girl who seems to be channeling a much older soul,” I said.

You have my undivided attention. Carry on.

I gave Aunt Dimity a succinct account of my encounter with Daisy Pickering, then leaned
back in my chair to await her reply. It came almost instantly.

Skeaping Manor? Ugh! I visited the ghastly place once, on a school trip, and had horrible
nightmares for weeks afterward. I’m afraid I share your aversion to the grotesque,
Lori. I’m glad Bree was there to spare you the worst of it.

“Me, too,” I said. “But what do you think of Daisy?”

I probably think what you think. The girl and her mother have had a rough time of
it since Mr. Pickering abandoned them, but Daisy seems to find solace in contemplating
beautiful objects.

“Yes, but what about the way she spoke?” I asked.

What about it?

“Don’t you think it was . . . peculiar?” I ventured.

Not especially peculiar, no.

I decided that my succinct account had failed to convey the full effect of Daisy Pickering’s
haunting monologue, and tried again.

“Her tone of voice was melancholy,” I said, “almost nostalgic, as if she were remembering
a scene she couldn’t possibly have seen. I mean, she knew that the silver sleigh was
a saltcellar. How many children her age know what a saltcellar is?
I
didn’t know what a saltcellar was until she told me.” I frowned in concentration
and tried to recall Daisy’s words exactly. “She said the gentlemen at the dinner party
wore diamond studs in their stiff collars, but I’m willing to bet she’s never seen
a diamond stud or a stiff collar in her life. She talked about white roses and trailing
vines and ladies wearing necklaces worth a king’s ransom and she described the linen
tablecloth as ‘unblemished.’ What kind of kid uses words like ‘unblemished’?”

An intelligent kid with a retentive memory? Let’s at least try to be rational about
this, Lori. If Amanda Pickering takes Daisy to work with her on a regular basis, then
Daisy will have spent a lot of time at Skeaping Manor. She’s probably heard dozens
if not hundreds of visitors discuss the silver sleigh. I suspect she was parroting
words she’d heard others utter and adding some imaginative embroidery of her own.

“I doubt she’s heard more than a handful of people comment on the silver sleigh,”
I retorted. “The curator told me that hardly anyone goes upstairs to look at the pretty
exhibits. According to him, most visitors concentrate on the icky stuff.”

Most, perhaps, but not all. You and I are living proof—more or less—that some people
prefer the pretty to the icky. It’s possible that a single, vivid discussion of the
silver sleigh made a strong impression on Daisy, one that stayed with her long after
she’d overheard it. And what makes you think she’s never seen a diamond stud or a
stiff collar? You told me yourself that the curator dresses in Edwardian clothes.
It seems likely to me that such a man would be perfectly happy to explain his attire
to a bright and inquisitive child.

“I think he would have explained it to me, if I’d shown the smallest sign of interest,”
I said with a wry smile. “He’s an enthusiast.”

There you are, then. You have a little girl who prowls the museum on her own, asking
the curator questions, listening in on other people’s conversations, and repeating
what she’s heard.

“Without supernatural intervention,” I said, shaking my head at my own foolishness.

Soul channeling isn’t as common an activity as so-called mediums would have you believe,
my dear. It is, in fact, an extremely rare occurrence, one which you yourself experienced
a few years ago. As I’m sure you’ll recall, the soul in question changed your entire
aspect. It altered your behavior as well as your voice. Daisy may have employed an
unusual vocabulary, but her voice and her manner didn’t change radically from one
moment to the next, did they?

“No,” I admitted.

In that case, I think we can safely rule out supernatural intervention.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “But honestly, Dimity, the way Daisy looked at the
silver sleigh and the way she talked about it . . . It just seemed very . . . odd . . .
at the time.”

You were under the influence of dim lighting and bizarre surroundings, Lori. Your
encounter with Daisy was bound to seem odd.

“I suppose so,” I conceded. “And I may have let my emotions get the best of me. I
felt so sorry for her, with her skinny legs and her ratty old parka. I wanted to reach
through the glass and give the silver sleigh to her. I wish . . .” My voice trailed
off into a forlorn, frustrated sigh, but Aunt Dimity seemed to read my mind.

You wish you could rescue her. The thing is, Lori, she doesn’t seem to need rescuing.
Her father may have failed her, but she has a hardworking mother who appears to care
very much for her. Daisy may not be as well fed or as well dressed as Will and Rob,
but she seems to be well loved. And love, as you know, can make up for deficiencies
in diet and dress.

“Even so—” I broke off as the sound of raucous voices came to me from the kitchen.
“Sorry, Dimity. Gotta run. The arctic adventurers are back and they’re howling for
hot chocolates.”

Go, my dear. And try not to worry about Daisy. I seem to remember another bright and
inquisitive little girl who was raised by a hardworking mother—and she turned out
quite well.

I smiled ruefully, closed the journal, returned it to its shelf, and gave Reginald’s
pink flannel ears a fond twiddle before heading for the kitchen. I tried to put all
thoughts of Daisy Pickering behind me as I left the study, but when I saw my rosy-cheeked
sons I couldn’t help remembering the girl’s pale face and the burning look in her
eyes as she gazed at the silver sleigh.