Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil (Aunt Dimity Mystery) (14 page)

“I’ll have men posted on the ground,” he told me, “with orders to keep well out of sight of the hall. I’d like to post men inside Wyrdhurst, but Mr. Hollander wouldn’t permit it.”

I hesitated briefly before asking, “Won’t your men wonder why you’re taking such an interest in Wyrdhurst Hall?”

“I’m investigating the misuse of a military road,” Guy replied. “Your accident gave me all the cause I need to take an interest in Wyrdhurst Hall.”

I smiled thinly. “Glad to oblige.”

As we drew up beneath the porte cochere, Guy said, “I have no right to ask for your help in this matter, Lori. I know that you have your own work to do.”

“My work isn’t important,” I assured him. “Nicole’s peace of mind is. I can always extend my stay.”

Bill would understand, I told myself. And Adam would be delighted.

T
he brown-paper-wrapped parcel was still waiting for me when I went up to the red room, but now Reginald sat beside it, as if insisting that I give it my full attention.

I hung my jacket in the wardrobe, kicked off my damp boots, and climbed onto the bed, knocking Reginald to the floor in the process. Instead of picking him up, I reached for Teddy and placed him on the bed beside me.

“It’s either a big cell phone,” I told the bear, as I tore into the brown paper, “or a small phone in a big package. Either way it’s—” I broke off, my jaw dropping, as the last of the paper fell away.

Bill hadn’t sent a cell phone. He’d sent a blank-paged journal bound in a dark-blue leather.

“Aunt Dimity?” I blinked for a moment, too stunned to speak, then threw back my head and laughed out loud. “Well, Teddy,” I said, “now Wyrdhurst Hall is truly haunted.”

Dimity Westwood had been my late mother’s closest friend and my greatest benefactress. She’d bestowed a considerable fortune upon me as well as the honey-colored cottage I now called home. She’d been dead for just over half a decade, but her death hadn’t kept her from taking an interest in me.

Long after her mortal remains had dwindled into dust, Aunt Dimity kept in touch. When I opened the blue journal, her handwriting appeared, filling the blank pages with sound advice, pithy observations and treasured words of wisdom. It was because of Dimity that I had no fear of otherworldly
spirits. She was the most benign of entities, rarely intruding without invitation, seeking only to help.

I felt a pleasant thrill of anticipation as I sat cross-legged on the bed, with the blue journal open on my knees.

“Dimity?” I said. “What brings you to Wyrdhurst?”

The blank page came alive with the familiar curving lines of royal-blue ink, curling and looping in an elegant copperplate that put Edward’s undisciplined scrawl to shame.

Lori, you must leave this place at once.

“Don’t be silly,” I said, pulling Teddy closer. “I like it here. And I’ve got a job to do. Two jobs, really. First, there’s the evaluation of the—”

I don’t care if you have two dozen jobs to do. You must leave immediately.

I stared at Dimity’s words, taken aback by her vehemence. She didn’t usually order me about.

You don’t seem to realize the effect the hall is having on you.
The handwriting paused.
When did you last speak with Bill?

I thought for a moment. “Yesterday,” I said finally. “Just after I arrived.”

There you are. You’ve been here all day today and you haven’t once rung your husband.

“He knows where I am,” I reminded her.

That’s not the point.

“What is the point?” I said, a bit heatedly.

You aren’t yourself. You’re being influenced by the hall’s occupant to behave shamefully.

“Shamefully?” I was shocked by the accusation. “I haven’t done anything shameful.”

You will if you don’t depart promptly. I should have known this would happen. I blame myself.

“Dimity,” I said, “you have nothing to blame yourself for. And you certainly have no reason to blame me. I haven’t done anything except forget to call Bill.”

But why have you forgotten to call him? I suspect it’s because you’ve had someone else on your mind. Another man, perhaps? A very young man with dark eyes and dark hair, who

“He’s not all that young,” I interrupted. “I’d say he’s closing in on forty—a very
fit
forty.”

Ah.

There was a faint buzzing in my ears and my head began to swim.

You must do as I say, Lori. I’m here to help you. I won’t let anything hurt you.

Aunt Dimity’s handwriting seemed to waver, then float from the page, smudging the air in a drift of faded blue streamers. I dropped the journal and pressed my hands to my temples. The room was intolerably stuffy, the air so stale I could scarcely breathe. Dazed, I stumbled to the windows and threw one open.

The drapes billowed around me and the bed curtains
flapped, but the sharp breeze cleared my head as quickly as a bucket of ice water. I clutched the bars briefly, to steady myself, then turned to gaze resentfully at the journal.

Aunt Dimity was spouting nonsense. She seemed to think that Nicole, the “hall’s occupant,” had pushed me into Adam’s arms, but nothing could be further from the truth. My hostess had tried her best to steer me away from Adam. Everyone—Nicole, Guy, and now Dimity—was trying to steer me away from Adam. Even Reginald seemed to look at me with a faint air of reproach.

I was sick of being bullied. I wasn’t a child. No one had a right to tell me who could or couldn’t be my friend.

I scooped up the blue journal and Reginald and shut them both in the wardrobe, kissed the tip of Teddy’s nose, and returned him to the bedside table. In my haste, I managed to knock over the framed photograph of my family. I barely noticed as it clattered to the floor.

The library doors opened so easily that I nearly fell into the room. Hatch, I presumed, had finally brought his oilcan to bear on the sticky hinges.

I made a beeline for the oak table, but stopped short, frowning. Before leaving to have lunch with Captain Manning, I’d placed the gray ledger on top of Edward’s notes. Now it lay to one side, next to the inscribed copy of
Shuttleworth’s Birds.

I sat in the wooden armchair and looked through the notes. They, too, had been rearranged. When I’d left, the
message mentioning Edith Ann had been buried deep in the pile. Now it sat atop the stack.

I doubted that the Hatches had interfered with my work. They’d been given strict orders to leave the library alone. Nicole, on the other hand, had free rein to examine anything she pleased. It seemed likely that she’d filled the afternoon’s empty hours by reading Edward’s words.

I wondered what she made of them. She seemed to know little and care less about her great-aunt. Claire was to her a dim and distant figure who’d died without accomplishing much. I hoped the notes had changed her mind, had touched her as deeply as they’d touched me. To me, Claire was a living, breathing girl who’d loved a boy despite her father’s disapproval. A life filled with such passion, however brief, could not be meaningless.

I made a mental note to ask Nicole if she’d spent the afternoon at the oak table, switched on the reading lamps, and opened the gray ledger.

The first entry was dated July 21, 1914, when, presumably, Josiah had received his first shipment of books. The last entry was dated September 4, 1917. The cataloguer had been thorough, conscientiously recording pertinent details about each book, but he hadn’t been Edward. The anonymous librarian’s handwriting was precise, meticulous, neither cramped nor sprawling, and highly legible—nothing like Edward’s unruly scribbles.

I closed the ledger, set it aside, and began the laborious task of repacking the wooden crate. I could have left the chore to Hatch, but I wanted to touch the books again before they were returned to their dusty outpost in the east tower.

As I slid each volume into place, I felt a lingering sense of dissatisfaction. It was as if an important fact had passed before my eyes unseen and now lurked in a dim corner of my brain, awaiting recognition. The harder I chased after it, the more elusive the fact became.

My mind soon rebelled against the strain and began to wander. My first three days in Northumberland had been nothing if not eventful. I’d had a close brush with death, awakened in the arms of a beautiful stranger, unearthed a compelling love story, and been recruited by the army to help in its inquiries. If my speculations held water, I’d also been ambushed by an evil man bent on driving his young wife insane.

I wondered how Aubrey Shuttleworth would have illustrated such a remarkable chain of events. Smiling, I took up
Shuttleworth’s Birds
and leafed through it, pausing to admire the illustrations and reread the verse. I’d just reached a splendid portrait of a stooping kestrel when the library doors swung open and Nicole pranced into the room. She seemed very pleased with herself.

“You look like the cat who got the cream,” I observed. “What have you been up to?”

“I drove to Alnwick.” Her voice had a defiant ring to it, as if she’d intentionally broken one of her husband’s many rules. “Have you been to Alnwick Castle? It’s like something out of a fairy tale. They call it the Windsor of the north, you know, and I can see why. The red drawing room is an absolute jewel, and the library…” She dragged a chair over and sat with her elbows on the table. “The library’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen. You really must have a peep at it before
you leave Northumberland. The guides are absolute angels.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” I was glad that Nicole hadn’t let Guy’s defection spoil her day. “Were you in Alnwick all afternoon?”

“I left after lunch,” she said. “Jared won’t be pleased—he doesn’t like me driving on my own—but I don’t care. I simply had to get away from Wyrdhurst.”

“Why?” I asked quickly. “Did something happen?”

Nicole’s laughter rang like a tinkling bell. “Boredom happened, that’s all. I suppose I should be grateful. It’s a pleasant change of pace from abject terror.”

If Nicole had spent the afternoon at Alnwick Castle, she couldn’t have moved the ledger or examined Edward’s notes. I was about to ask if Mrs. Hatch had been in to dust the library when Nicole sent me veering in an entirely different direction.

“What’ve you got there?” she said, looking down at the stooping kestrel. “A children’s book?”

It was as if a flare had gone off in the room. The elusive fact I’d been chasing suddenly flashed across my mind in neon letters. I looked from the kestrel to the books in the wooden crate and whispered, “Edith Ann…”

“Pardon?” said Nicole.

I was too blinded by insight to respond. Why hadn’t I seen it sooner?

Shuttleworth’s Birds
was a children’s book. Claire must have had dozens like it. Fairy tales, fables, and Arthurian romances had been all the rage during her Edwardian childhood.

And one of the best-loved children’s writers of the period was a slightly crack-brained woman named Edith Ann Malson.

Malson’s books had long been out of fashion, but Stan Finderman had acquired a few copies for the juvenilia section of the university’s rare-book department. I remembered the day he’d shown them to me.

“Malson was a nutcase,” he acknowledged, pulling a volume from a high shelf. “But kids loved her. Kids always love sick jokes. See here? Monmouth Mouse and Romney Rat go to a natural history museum in Sussex. Monmouth thinks he recognizes a cousin in one of the displays. Turns out that his cousin
is
one of the displays.”

I could see the illustration as clearly as if the book were open before me: the stuffed cousin, Monmouth’s horrified recoil, Romney’s solicitous paw on Monmouth’s shoulder. The story ended happily—they smuggle the cousin out of the museum and give him a decent burial—but Malson’s gruesome sense of humor, though endearing to children, had
proved unpopular with modern parents. Successive generations scarcely knew her name.

I groaned softly, chagrined that it had taken me so long to put two and two together. Edward had assured Claire that “Edith Ann” would carry his letters to her while he was gone. I was willing to bet that he’d arranged to have his letters smuggled into Wyrdhurst, hidden in seemingly innocuous copies of Edith Ann Malson’s works. Claire, for her part, would have shelved Malson’s books unobtrusively with the rest of the juvenilia in the hall.

I glanced at the hollowed-out copy of
Ivanhoe
in which Claire had hidden Edward’s notes. If I could locate the children’s books in Wyrdhurst Hall, I felt certain that Malson’s works—and possibly Edward’s letters—would be with them.

I silently blessed Edith Ann Malson’s name. She’d given me the perfect excuse to search Wyrdhurst Hall. If I happened to find evidence of human intruders in the process, so much the better.

“Nicole,” I said, turning to my young friend, “could I interest you in a treasure hunt?”