A Curious Beginning

He was silent some minutes as he pondered, then began to fire questions at me. “How did your aunts live? If there was no money in the bank, where did they acquire the funds to run the household? Did they have other friends? Did they correspond with anyone? Did they have peculiar habits?”


I put up a hand. “One question at a time if we are to be rational about this. First, the money. I do not know from where it came. A sum was paid into the account every quarter. Aunt Nell was quite discreet upon the subject, but she did indicate it was a family legacy. And before you ask, no, I know nothing of her family save that she and Aunt Lucy were born and bred in London. Aunt Lucy did say once they two were the only ones left, so I presume the money was an annuity to be paid for the duration of their lives. As to friends and correspondence, I can tell you quite certainly they had none of either. They were perfectly content with their own society and went out very seldom. They attended church and occasionally served on committees, but they did not go out of their way to make friends. And once we left a village, they did not engage in correspondence with those we had left behind. What else?”

“Peculiar habits,” he commented. “Anything that struck you at the time as curious.”

“The only habit I can recall is that they insisted upon purchasing a newspaper every day and it had to be the Times. They liked to keep current on affairs of the world. Aunt Nell was quite serious, always preoccupied with needlework and the Bible. The only present she ever made me was a motto for my bedroom: ‘The Wages of Sin Is Death,’” I told him with a shudder.

“Christ,” he said.

“Exactly. But Aunt Lucy made up for it. She was lively and kind, a great gardener. She did not like my traveling, but she understood it. My first butterfly net was a present from her, and she gave me a compass to mark my first expedition,” I said, touching the little instrument pinned to my bodice. If I closed my eyes, I could still see her, with her cloud of fluffy white hair and her gentle hands, pressing it into my palm. “So you will always find your way home again, child,” she had said, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

Stoker had fallen into a reverie, but he roused himself then, like an opium dreamer slowly emerging from a fugue. “I think I have it,” he said. “Your aunts were hiding out after committing a crime.”

“Stoker, you astonish me. I cannot believe that your imagination could lead you so far astray as to suggest that those two harmless old women were criminals!”

“Think of it,” he insisted. “It is the only logical solution. They have money, enough to live comfortably, but they will not divulge its source. They do not encourage friendships or correspondence. They move from village to village. It makes perfect sense,” he finished, sitting back with an air of satisfaction.

“I can think of a dozen explanations just as likely, and none of them involving felonious old women,” I returned.

“You cannot name one.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it abruptly. “Very well,” I said after a moment. “I cannot think of one at present, but I have no doubt I could, and something just as outlandish as you propose. Tell me, Stoker, since you are so persuaded as to their guilt, what crime do you think they committed?”

My voice was sharp with sarcasm, but Stoker’s was triumphant. “Kidnapping.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think they stole you, Veronica. You did not belong to either of them. Where did you come from? They must have taken you. Perhaps your nursemaid was inattentive or your mother very young. You were left in a pram somewhere, no doubt in a park or on a village green, and in a moment of inattention, the Harbottle ladies snatched you up and carried you off.”

“Stoker, in spite of your protests to the contrary, I can only assume that your taste in literature tends towards the sensationalist and absurd. The Harbottle ladies did not carry me off. I was a foundling.”

“Ah, and where, precisely, were you found?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I cannot say! I never asked and they never told me. They were very close about their past. We did not speak of such things.”

“What did you talk about?”

I puffed out a sigh. “I told you—gardening with Aunt Lucy, needlework and sin with Aunt Nell. Those were their sole interests and comprised the bulk of their conversation. Aunt Nell also supervised the cooking; Aunt Lucy taught me the rudiments of nursing. I read aloud to them in the evenings. That is the whole of it.”

“It sounds a dreary life,” he said suddenly.

“Of course it was dreary, but it was all I knew, and that made it bearable—at least until I discovered butterflying and the freedom it provided. When I was eighteen, I left on my first expedition to Switzerland in search of Alpine varieties. I sold the specimens to collectors and made enough money to fund another expedition, this one further afield, and that is how matters progressed for the next several years. The aunts did not like it, but the money was my own, and so they could not prevent me. I traveled, I came home for visits, and I nursed Aunt Lucy and later Aunt Nell.”