B ill dropped his faux-Transylvanian accent before he left the bedroom the following morning, but he picked it up
again as soon as Annelise had taken Will and Rob to Anscombe Manor for their riding lessons. After they’d gone, I spent a gruesome hour in the kitchen, listening to Bill deliver such gems as, “I vant to drink your . . . tea” and “I vill have my bacon . . . rare”
before fl eeing back upstairs to dress.
I was afraid Count Bill would never go away, but my husband knew better than to push a joke too far. He slipped into his suave, international-lawyer persona the minute we got into his Mercedes and didn’t utter a single “vill” or “vant” all the way to Upper Deeping, the busy market town in which Morningside School was located.
The rain had tapered off during the night, but a chill mist clung to Upper Deeping’s sidewalks, and the sky was as gray and leaden as my mood. My husband’s apparent willingness to take the situation seriously should have heartened me, but I was beyond heartening.
I’d spent half the night imagining the myriad ways in which a pair of energetic and intelligent five-year-olds could aggravate a humorless headmistress. By the time Bill parked the car in the school’s small parking lot, I was a nervous wreck.
“Cheer up,” he said as we got out of the car. “It’s not as if you’re going to the dentist’s.”
“The dentist is looking real good to me right now,” I muttered dismally.
We made our way to the school’s front entrance, where Ted, the security guard, checked our IDs before handing us off to Mrs. Findle, Miss Archer’s stout, gray-haired personal assistant. Mrs. Findle never
12 Nancy Atherton
discussed her boss’s business with a parent, so she and Bill exchanged innocuous remarks about the weather while she relieved us of our raincoats and escorted us down the long, echoing corridor to the forbidding double doors at the far end.
I was too jittery to join in the conversation. Although I’d dressed with particular care—in cashmere, Harris tweed, and classic pearls— the closer we got to those double doors, the more I felt like a guiltridden eleven-year-old with scraggly braids, scabby knees, and dirty elbows. Half of my brain remembered that I was a responsible adult, but the other half was wishing that I hadn’t blown all those spitballs at Corky Campbell in the fifth grade. My legs were actually shaking when Mrs. Findle opened the double doors and ushered us into Miss Archer’s office.
As far as I was concerned, Miss Archer’s office was as creepy as she was. Whereas the rest of Morningside was decorated in gay primary colors, the headmistress’s inner sanctum reflected the somber taste of the school’s Victorian founder. In my opinion, the funereal furnishings and heavy drapes served only to accentuate the unhealthy pallor of the present headmistress’s complexion and the unnatural glossiness of her tightly bound cherry-red hair.
After greeting us perfunctorily and motioning us to a pair of disturbingly familiar hard wooden chairs, Miss Archer resumed her seat behind her mahogany desk, smoothed her gray wool skirt, and began leafing through the pages in a file folder that lay open before her.
While she leafed, Bill sat back in his chair, relaxed and politely attentive. I, on the other hand, perched rigidly on the edge of mine, braced for a scolding. Old habits die hard.
An eternity seemed to pass before Miss Archer closed the folder, placed her hands on top of it, and fixed us with a penetrating stare over her black-framed half-glasses.
“I apologize for asking you to see me at such short notice, and on a workday,” she began, “but a situation has arisen that requires Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
13
your immediate attention.” She removed her glasses, laid them on the desk, and folded her hands. “I believe you are acquainted with Louisa Lawrence.”
Bill nodded. “We met Mrs. Lawrence and her husband last month, at parents’ day. Their little girl, Matilda, is in our sons’ class.”
“Indeed, she is,” Miss Archer said gravely.
I shrank back in my chair, wondering what on earth the twins had done to little Matilda Lawrence.
“I received a rather disturbing telephone call from Mrs. Lawrence yesterday,” Miss Archer continued. “She informed me that Matilda has been having nightmares ever since she started school. It wasn’t until the small hours of Tuesday morning that Mrs. Lawrence was able to ascertain the cause of Matilda’s most recent nightmare.”
“And the cause is . . . ?” Bill prompted.
“Your sons,” Miss Archer replied succinctly.
“Will and Rob have been giving a little girl nightmares?” I said, aghast. “How?”