Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well

The back door was unlocked. I let myself into the kitchen and panned the flashlight slowly around the room. It struck me as an unlikely listening post. Sally Pyne, Miranda Morrow, Mr. Barlow, Emma Harris, Elspeth Binney, Opal Taylor, Millicent Scroggins, and Selena Buxton—each had stood in Jack’s kitchen at one time or another and Bree and I had spent hours there, washing up, taking tea breaks, chatting cozily with Jack and with each other. Too many people had passed through the kitchen. It was too public a space for the kind of covert operation Jack had conducted.

 

The double parlor, too, was a public space, I thought as I stepped into it. It was the room one had to move through to reach the kitchen, the back door, and the wishing well. As such, it wouldn’t work well as a lair. I looked into the rooms opposite the double parlor and saw that they were empty, as if Mr. Huggins, the childless bachelor, had found no use for them.

 

I went upstairs. I’d never before climbed the stairs in Ivy Cottage. I doubted that anyone other than Jack had gone up there since his uncle’s death. The cottage’s upstairs rooms were private, off limits to visitors, and at least two of them overlooked the back garden.

 

A narrow corridor lined with four doors, two on each side, bisected the second floor. I didn’t have a good reason to look into every room, but my dander was up and I was determined to leave no stone unturned.

 

I opened the first door to the right and saw what amounted to a small and meticulously arranged freshwater fishing museum. The flashlight’s beam illuminated fishing poles in fan-shaped racks, waders, long-handled nets, wicker creels, tackle boxes, and a workbench set up for the fine art of fly-tying. I recalled the many hours Mr. Huggins had spent fishing from atop the humpbacked bridge and closed the door gently.

 

The first door on the left opened into a sparely furnished bedroom. Jack’s backpack stood in one corner and Joey the baby kangaroo sat on the low table beside the single bed. It hurt my heart to see Joey, because the little guy reminded me of why I’d liked Jack so much. I found it difficult to believe that a man who cherished a bright-eyed, reddish-brown kangaroo—an Australian Reginald—could treat decent people with such contempt.

 

“Your daddy’s been very naughty,” I said, “but I know that you, at least, will forgive him.”

 

I gave Joey a wan smile and left the bedroom to continue my search. The room next door to the fishing museum appeared to be a library, though the books were strangely uniform in size and identically bound in black leather. Each volume had a different year stamped in gold on the spine. I assumed they were records of Mr. Huggins’s rod-and-reel adventures and closed the door.

 

The second room on the left was the room I was looking for, though it turned out to hold more than I bargained for. I expected to find a radio receiver and I found one amid a jumble of electronic devices strewn across a long table beneath a window that overlooked the wishing well.

 

I did not expect to find cork-lined walls upon which were pinned glossy real estate flyers, copies of The Coneyham Express and Cozy Cookery, menus from the tearoom and the pub, sale notices from the Emporium, St. George’s parish magazines, the roster for the flower arrangements in the church, and a multitude of flyers announcing the village fete, the flower show, the harvest festival, the sheep dog trials, and events at the Anscombe Riding Center.

 

There were photographs as well, hundreds of photographs, taken from many angles and in every season, of the tearoom, the Emporium, the greengrocer’s shop, Mr. Barlow’s garage, Peacock’s pub, St. George’s church, Wysteria Lodge, the war memorial, the humpbacked bridge, the Little Deeping River, Anscombe Manor, Bree’s redbrick house, my father-in-law’s wrought-iron gates, my honey-colored cottage, and seemingly every dwelling place in Finch.

 

Those photographs were vaguely unsettling, but they weren’t nearly as disturbing as the slightly blurred shots of people I recognized, people I saw nearly every day of my life, not only my friends and my neighbors but my husband, my sons, and myself. My hand trembled as I moved the flashlight’s beam from one shadowy image to the next and I felt a growing sense of unease that teetered perilously close to horror.

 

“Hello, Lori.”

 

I wheeled around and pointed my shaking flashlight at a face that had in recent weeks become very familiar.

 

“Come to make another wish?” said Jack.

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-five

 

 

Jack reached for a wall switch and turned on an overhead light. He was dressed in an open-necked white cotton shirt, his cargo trousers, and his hiking sandals. His golden hair was gorgeously tousled and his sky-blue eyes were amused.

 

I tightened my grip on my flashlight and stepped back, my heart pounding.

 

“I thought you were at the party,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

 

“I was,” he said. He thrust his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Bree said she was sick of the sight of me, though, so I left.” He smiled. “If I’d known I’d be entertaining a guest—”

 

“Why is Bree sick of the sight of you?” I broke in. I gestured angrily at the cork-lined walls. “Did she find out about this?”

 

“No,” said Jack. “She found out about something else. It’s my own fault, really. I should’ve known I’d be recognized.”

 

Atherton, Nancy's books