Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree (2 page)

Thanks to its backwater status, Finch had defied modern trends and remained a tight-knit community in which everyone took a lively—some might say an obsessive—interest in everyone else’s business. My husband, who ran the European branch of his family’s law firm from a high-tech office on the village green, had learned early on to close his windows before making sensitive telephone calls because, in Finch, someone was
always
listening.

My father-in-law had provided enough grist to keep Finch’s gossip mill churning merrily for months on end. Fairworth’s graveled drive skirted the southern edge of the village, giving the locals an excellent vantage point from which to view the parade of heavy vehicles that had rumbled to and from the site during the renovation. Some of the villagers derided Willis, Sr., for throwing good money away on a decrepit dump. Others saluted him for restoring a historic home to its former glory.

Still others—a small but powerful minority composed principally of widows and spinsters of mature years—believed passionately that Willis, Sr., had made the best decision that had ever been made in the entire history of civilization. Hearts that had long lain dormant fluttered wildly at the prospect of welcoming a well-off, white-haired widower to the neighborhood.

My husband referred to these worthy ladies as “Father’s Handmaidens,” and it was they who were, in large part, responsible for the fantastic speed with which Fairworth House was made habitable. Age and experience had given the Handmaidens an air of authority they did not hesitate to use. Every morning, rain or shine, they crossed the humpbacked bridge at the edge of town and marched determinedly up Willis, Sr.’s tree-lined drive to hover near the work site like a flock of demanding grannies.

Workers who arrived on time, took short breaks, and avoided visits to the pub were rewarded with fresh-baked cookies, home-cooked lunches, and the blissful silence that ensues when harpies cease to screech. Slackers were given lukewarm tea, icy stares, and, if necessary, a good talking-to.

The poor workmen were so eager to return to a world in which they could enjoy an evening’s pint in peace that they accomplished in three months what should have taken them six. By mid-August, Fairworth House was fit for occupation. The library required fine-tuning, as did the billiards room and the conservatory, but the principal chambers were finished and furnished. Willis, Sr., would move in on Thursday, the twelfth of August, and I would throw a gala housewarming party for him on the evening of Saturday the fourteenth.

The only fly in the ointment was the absence of a live-in staff. Although Willis, Sr., had, with my assistance, interviewed a host of candidates sent to him by a reputable London employment agency, none had proven satisfactory. My father-in-law’s preference for a mature, married couple had made the search ten times more difficult than it might otherwise have been.

Predictably, the Handmaidens had volunteered to do his cooking, his housekeeping, his gardening, and much more, but he’d politely refused their overtures, knowing full well that to choose one strong-minded woman over another would be to trigger a turf war whose reverberations would be felt throughout the village for years to come. To have all of them in the house at once, competing ardently—perhaps violently—for his attention, would be equally intolerable, so he set his sights on a competent couple who had no ties whatsoever to Finch. So far, no such couple had surfaced.

My father-in-law was discovering, as many had discovered before him, that good help was hard to find.

A good daughter-in-law, on the other hand, lived only a couple of miles away. It soon became apparent to me that, if reliable servants failed to materialize, I would be saddled with the difficult task of running two households simultaneously.

Cooking wouldn’t be a problem—I could throw together healthy meals fairly quickly—and I could rely on my best friend, Emma Harris, to keep the gardens from dying an early death, but the mere thought of keeping up with two extremely active little boys while at the same time chasing dust bunnies from one end of Fairworth House to the other made me want to lie down in a dark room with a cold compress on my forehead.

I pleaded with the agency to find applicants who weren’t too old, too young, too haughty, too flighty, too lazy, too rude, or simply too stupid to fill the well-paid posts, but as the fourteenth of August drew near with no likely candidates in sight, I began to lose hope.

On the day of the party, I rose with the sun, drove Will and Rob to nearby Anscombe Manor for their riding lessons, stopped at Fairworth House to make breakfast for Willis, Sr., and returned to the cottage to find Bill devouring a pile of toast he’d made for himself. I waved off the buttery slice he offered to me and headed straight for the old oak desk in the study to review my last-minute to-do list. The months I’d spent dealing with stationers, caterers, florists, and musicians were about to pay off.

At eight o’clock, two hundred guests would arrive at a flower-bedecked Fairworth House to savor an array of delectable nibbles and to drink champagne toasts to my darling father-in-law while a chamber orchestra played discreetly in the background. I might not be able to install plumbing fixtures or to pleach apple trees, but I know how to throw a good party. Thanks to my meticulous planning, Willis, Sr.’s housewarming was bound to be the most scintillating social event of the summer.

I was halfway through my checklist when Davina Trent, my contact at the employment agency, telephoned to inform me that a suitable married couple would arrive at Fairworth House before nightfall. The timing wasn’t optimal, but beggars, I’d learned, couldn’t be choosers.

“How suitable is the couple?” I asked suspiciously.

“Quite suitable,” came the prim reply. “I will fax the particulars to you immediately, Ms. Shepherd.”

Mrs. Trent earned bonus points for calling me “Ms. Shepherd.” People who didn’t know me well tended to forget that, while my sons and my husband were Willises, I’d retained my own last name when I’d married Bill.

“I give you my personal assurance,” Mrs. Trent went on, “that your father-in-law will be delighted with the Donovans.”

“We’ll see.” I sighed wistfully, thanked her, and hung up. I could squeeze an interview into the day’s busy schedule somehow, but I wasn’t expecting much. I’d been disappointed too often to believe that the delightful Donovans would live up to their billing.

As I stretched a hand toward the fax machine, the telephone rang again. This time, the caller delivered news that sent chills up my spine. I stared at the phone for a moment in dumbfounded disbelief, then threw back my head and howled,
“No!”

The receiver dropped from my numb fingers and I slumped forward onto the desk as Bill came tearing into the study.

“Lori?” he said, rushing over to me. “What is it? Has something happened to the boys? Is it Father?”

“It’s not William or the twins.” I groaned. “It’s the
caterers
.”

Bill heaved a sigh of relief, restored the telephone to its cradle, and put a comforting hand on my back.

“What’s wrong with the caterers?” he asked.

“Food poisoning,”
I replied tragically. “The entire waitstaff is sick, the kitchens have to be professionally sanitized before they can be used again, and every bite of food has been
thrown out
.” I buried my face in my hands and moaned dolorously. “My canapés, my
beautiful
canapés, all of those finger sandwiches, the caviar, the lobster, the smoked salmon, the petits fours, the itty-bitty eclairs, even the
crudités
. . . gone, all g-gone.” My voice broke and I couldn’t continue.

“Well,” Bill said reasonably, “we wouldn’t want to poison our guests, would we?”

“No,” I whimpered.

“Can the caterers deliver the champagne?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said limply. “They can bring the ice as well, but how ...
how
are we going to
feed
everyone?”

“Easy,” said Bill, with a nonchalant shrug. “Put out an S.O.S. to Father’s Handmaidens.”

I straightened slowly and felt the color return to my face.

“The Handmaidens?” I said, peering dazedly at the diamond-paned windows above the desk. “Of course. Why didn’t
I
think of them?”

“You were in shock. I’m sure you would have thought of them eventually.” Bill glanced at his watch. “I’ll be in the office until noon, love. After that, I’m yours to command.”

I jumped to my feet and kissed him soundly, then pushed him firmly out of the study.

“Go,” I said. “I have to marshal my troops.”

“Good luck,
mon capitaine
!” he threw over his shoulder.

I picked up the phone and began dialing, confident that the village’s cadre of unmarried ladies would rally to my cause and produce a nontoxic feast for two hundred guests on time and under budget, if for no other reason than to impress the man of their dreams. I honestly believed that my greatest challenge would be to prevent food fights from breaking out among them as the evening wore on.

I hadn’t the slightest inkling that, before the day was through, I would become embroiled in the greatest act of deception ever perpetrated on the good people of Finch.

Life in an English village is never dull.

Two

News of the catering crisis spread through Finch faster than fleas in a kennel. Before long, offers of help were pouring in from all of my neighbors, regardless of age, sex, or marital status. The speed and urgency of their response didn’t surprise me. The villagers were generous souls, always willing to lend a hand in an emergency, but a force more powerful than generosity drove them to salvage the housewarming party. As Lilian Bunting, the vicar’s wife, put it: “They’re quite simply
agog
to see what William’s done with Fairworth House!”

I shared Lilian’s belief that most of my neighbors regarded the party as a golden opportunity to sidle furtively from room to room, critiquing carpets, draperies, wall colors, and furniture arrangements while debating how much every painting, book, and bauble had cost. I was fully prepared, therefore, to handle the flurry of phone calls that came in from volunteers eager to roll up their sleeves and do whatever they could to ensure that the long-awaited show would go on.

I carefully doled out assignments, to avoid having too many pâtés and not enough profiteroles, then let the villagers take it from there. Those who could cook retreated to their kitchens. Those who didn’t know one end of a piping bag from the other made themselves useful by fetching supplies from the village shops or from the big grocery store in the nearby market town of Upper Deeping.

Almost everyone gathered fresh herbs and vegetables from their own gardens, and a pair of local farmers drove from cottage to cottage, delivering eggs, poultry, bacon, milk, cream, butter, and cheese to those in need. By noon, Finch smelled so deliciously sweet and savory that I could have eaten the air.

Once the ball was rolling, I arranged for Will and Rob to spend the entire day at their riding school—the twins’ idea of heaven—and moved my command post from the cottage to Fairworth House. After a brief search, I found my father-in-law settled comfortably in a leather armchair in his study, a light and airy room appended to the library.

Willis, Sr., was perusing an old and dusty volume embossed with the thrilling title:
Notes on Sheep
. I recognized it as the book we’d unearthed in the ruins of the old stables, along with a painting that was in dire need of cleaning. Willis, Sr., kept
Notes on Sheep
on his desk, but the painting leaned against the wall near the Sheraton sideboard, awaiting the ministrations of our local art restorer.

The painting wasn’t merely soiled, it was hazardous—I’d nearly sliced my hand open on a shard of broken glass protruding from the frame’s inner edge. God alone knew what it depicted, because no human eye could penetrate the layers of grime that obscured the image. Its filthiness struck a discordant note in an otherwise spotless room.

A refreshing breeze wafted in from the garden through the open French doors, and the tall windows gleamed in the sunlight. Willis, Sr., inspired, perhaps, by the glorious summer day, was dressed as casually as I’d ever seen him, in a white flannel suit, a pale blue shirt, a yellow silk tie, white socks, and tasseled loafers. A silver tray on his walnut desk held a cut-glass pitcher filled with iced lemonade, and a glass of lemonade sat on the small satinwood table at his elbow. Although the weather was ideal for long walks across open meadows, my father-in-law clearly planned to spend the rest of the day indoors.

He closed his book and set it aside as I entered the room.

“I am considering the acquisition of a small flock of sheep,” he announced.

“Sheep?” I said, caught off guard.

“Cotswold Sheep, to be precise,” he said, “also known as Cotswold Lions, an ancient and threatened domestic breed endowed with a magnificent fleece. It would be a worthy endeavor to aid in the breed’s preservation.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed, and moved on to more pressing matters. When I began a breathless account of the sudden change in plans, however, Willis, Sr., raised a well-manicured hand to silence me.

“There is no need to explain,” he said. “Bill came to see me on his way to the office. He informed me of the food-poisoning incident. It is a most distressing turn of events, to be sure, but I have no doubt that you will rise like a phoenix from the ashes and soar triumphantly over the hurdles that have been placed so inconsiderately in your path.” He sighed contentedly as his gaze traveled around the sunlit room. “As you can see, I have chosen to follow my son’s advice to, ahem, ‘lie low until Hurricane Lori passes.’”

“Clever boy, that son of yours,” I said with a rueful chuckle. “Why didn’t you abandon ship and seek sanctuary in Bill’s office?”

“I wished to be near at hand in the unlikely event that you should ask for my advice,” said Willis, Sr. “Your manner suggests, however, that you have already solved the catering dilemma.”