“And in the letter, the cat is named Attila. In the story, he’s just called ‘the cat’.”
“Very good,” said Willis, Sr., but I got the feeling that I was still missing something. I put the letter down and tried to concentrate.
“In the story,” I said, “the cat is a monster. Honestly, he has no redeeming qualities. He’s played for laughs, but he’s—Just a moment, please, Mr. Willis. What?” This last was to Bill, who was waving wildly to get my attention. He had opened the manuscript of the stories and was now pointing urgently to a page.
“Wrong answer,” Bill whispered. “Look—right here.”
Still holding my hand over the phone, I bent down to skim the page. It was the conclusion of the Aunt Dimity’s Cottage
and as I read through it I realized that I had gotten it wrong. Confused, and a little shaken, I straightened and spoke once more to Willis, Sr.
“That is to say…” I cleared my throat. “What I meant to say is that the cat has no redeeming qualities at first, but then, when you get to the end of the story—and the letter—he turns out to be kind of a sweetie. I mean, he still does all sorts of awful things and he still makes Dimity lose her temper, but he also amuses her, and he… he keeps her feet warm in bed.”
“Thank you, Miss Shepherd,” said Willis, Sr. “If you have no further commissions for me, I shall ring off. I have no wish to impede your progress.”
“No, no further commissions. I’ll talk to you again soon.” I hung up the phone and looked down at the story. “I don’t understand this…. I thought I remembered every word.”
“Did Dimity change the ending?” Bill asked.
“No. That’s what’s so strange. As soon as I began reading it, the words came back to me, exactly as they’re written on the page.”
“So your memory slipped up a bit. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
But I was worried. I had been utterly convinced that I knew these stories inside out, but it seemed as though I had been wrong. I felt disoriented, bewildered. What else had I forgotten? I turned to the beginning of the manuscript and began reading.
18
We were fogbound for three days.
Emma swore she had never seen anything like it. She dropped by to let me know that Ruth and Louise Pym had accepted my invitation to come to tea on Saturday, and to reiterate her warning about Pouter’s Hill. “It may not be Mount Everest,” she said, “but it can be just as hazardous in weather like this.” I confounded Bill’s expectations by agreeing with her, and confounded them further by postponing the trip for another twenty-four hours after the sun finally appeared on the morning of the fourth day. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give the hill a chance to dry out—a path mired in mud would be no easier to climb than one covered in fog.
Our time wasn’t wasted, though. Bill finished a first read-through of the correspondence and handed me a complete index of letters that related in one way or another to the Aunt Dimity stories. I was amazed at the speed with which he had completed his reading, but he shrugged it off, saying that it was a breeze compared to reading contract law.
He failed to find so much as a hint about Dimity’s problem, but he set to work compiling a list of the people mentioned in her letters, everyone from Leslie Gordon of Starling House to Mrs. Farnham, the greengrocer’s wife. If Ruth and Louise Pym didn’t pan out, we would go down the list until we found someone who did.
While Bill was busy with the correspondence, I continued to pore over the manuscript, testing my memory against the written text. All too often, my memory fell short, and the ways in which it did were disturbing. I clearly remembered the very large man who had stepped on Aunt Dimity’s foot at Harrod’s, for example, but what happened next had somehow been edited from my recollection.
With profuse apologies, the very large man turned to Aunt Dimity and offered her his very large arm. “I am so very sorry, Madame,” he said, in his very large voice, “but the crush is quite impossible today. Won’t you take my arm? Perhaps we can make better progress if we face the crowds together.”
And Aunt Dimity did take his arm, and they did face the crowds together, and he escorted her to the train afterward and said a cheery farewell. And, although she left without the torch, the bright memory of the kind man lit the. way home.