“We know,” said Dick, “but you didn’t open your mouth once, and you didn’t stay for tea and buns afterwards.”
I was pathetically grateful to Dick for confirming that I had been at the meeting, but I was reluctant to explain why I’d bailed on the tea and buns. I would have ignited a firestorm of speculation that would have burned for several decades if I’d told them that I’d had to run home to talk to Will and Rob about the vampire they’d seen on Emma’s Hill, so I said instead that I’d simply wanted to spend the evening with my husband before he left for London.
“You’d think the two of you were still on your honeymoon,”
Chris cooed, with a romantic sigh.
“Speaking of honeymoons,” said Dick, leaning on the bar. “Have you seen the new crew at Anscombe Manor? Kit had better get a move on, or one of the new boys will carry Nell off.”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“Work harder,” Chris urged. “We want our Nell to marry Kit.
We don’t want to lose her to some foreigner who has more money than sense.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised, and after assuring them yet again that Will and Rob were doing wonderfully well at school, I left the pub.
I didn’t have the stomach to enter the Emporium and ask Peggy Taxman about Leo, and I didn’t really think it was necessary. Sally Pyne, Miranda Morrow, George Wetherhead, Lilian Bunting, and the Peacocks were more useful than a host of spy satellites when it
162 Nancy Atherton
came to observing the goings-on in Finch. If they hadn’t seen Leo ride his bicycle into Finch, then he hadn’t ridden his bicycle into Finch. Period.
Where had he ridden it? I asked myself as I climbed into the Mini. Where had Leo spent the day?
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and pondered what to do next. My trip to the village had been a waste of time. The only good thing to come out of it was the strangely satisfying realization that I, a foreigner and the newest newcomer to Finch, knew more than any of my neighbors about the DuCarals of Aldercot Hall. The only person who knew more about the DuCarals than I did was Lizzie Black, and she’d lived in the area longer than anyone except— “Ruth and Louise,” I said, and thumped a fist on the steering wheel. “Of course!”
I backed the Mini away from the tearoom and turned it toward the humpbacked bridge. I couldn’t believe that I’d left two such obvious stones unturned. Ruth and Louise Pym had lived in or near Finch for just over a hundred years. They couldn’t have lived so close to Aldercot Hall for so long without picking up a few tidbits about the DuCaral family.
I wouldn’t be able to ask them about vampires—Aunt Dimity had warned me against mentioning such an unsavory subject to the churchgoing sisters—but I was bound and determined to find out what they knew about Leo.
And churchgoers were always eager to discuss black sheep.
Seventeen
R uth and Louise Pym lived a half mile outside of Finch, in a thatched house made of mellow orange-red brick. Their
house was an architectural oddity in a region where most buildings were made of locally quarried limestone and roofed with slate, but I loved it nonetheless. The shaggy thatch and the weathered bricks made the house seem warm and inviting even on the dreariest of days.
I parked the Mini on the grassy verge in front of the house and let myself through the wrought-iron gate between the short hedges that separated the front garden from the lane. The Pyms’ front garden was a thing of beauty in the spring and summer, but the recent rains had left it looking decidedly bedraggled.
The soggy, windblown plants reminded me of my own disheveled state, so I paused on the doorstep to brush the dried mud from my trousers before turning the handle on the old-fashioned bell.
The sisters opened the door together, but it was beyond my poor powers of observation to figure out which one was Ruth and which one was Louise. As the mother of identical twins, I’d grown accustomed to the idea of two people looking alike, but Ruth and Louise Pym looked so exactly alike that it was impossible for a mere mortal to tell them apart.
They were, as always, dressed identically, in matching dove-gray gowns with long sleeves, lace collars, and pearl-shaped buttons that ran in two rows from their tiny waists to the matching gray-andcream cameos pinned at their throats. Their interchangeable black shoes were profoundly sensible, and their white hair was wound into identical buns on the backs of their identical heads. It wasn’t until they greeted me that I could identify them as individuals.
164 Nancy Atherton
Louise’s voice was softer than Ruth’s, and Ruth invariably spoke fi rst.
“Lori!” she exclaimed. “What a . . .”
“. . . delightful surprise,” continued Louise. “It’s been an age and an age since we . . .”
“. . . last saw you,” Ruth went on. “Do come in!”
Listening to the Pyms was not unlike watching a tennis match.