Aunt Dimity Takes A Holiday Part 10

I helped him to remove his shoes, his socks, and his sweater, but left the rest of the undressing to him while I politely turned my back and dug the container of soup and a plastic spoon out of the cafe's takeaway bag. I waited until he'd crawled under the covers to bring the soup to him.

"I've never been less hungry in my life," he stated flatly.

"Eat anyway," I ordered. "You're not supposed to take your medication on an empty stomach."

I coaxed and wheedled and did everything but play the airplane-spoon game with him, and he eventually downed enough soup to satisfy me. I fetched a gla.s.s of water from the bathroom, tipped two tablets into my palm, and insisted that he swallow both.

"You remind me of my nanny," he grumbled irritably.

"You remind me of my three-year-olds," I retorted, and gently rearranged his pillows.

"Just my luck," he muttered. "I finally succeed in luring you to my bedroom only to have you turn it into a nursery."

"That's where I'm going next," I said, and settled on the edge of his bed.

He regarded me gravely. "I wish you wouldn't."

"I have to check out the children's books," I reminded him. "Maybe I'll find something that'll lead me to-"

"I wish you wouldn't," he repeated, though his speech was becoming slurred and his eyelids were drooping. "Our prankster's a malicious beast. I don't like the thought of you being up there alone at night, and I'm b.l.o.o.d.y useless at the moment."

"You'll feel better tomorrow," I soothed.

"Stay with me," he murmured drowsily.

"I'll stay with you until you fall asleep." I smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "Now close your eyes."

The pain pills saved me the trouble of singing a lullaby. Minutes later, Simon was so deeply asleep that he didn't stir when I bent to kiss his brow.

"Thank you," I said, knowing he couldn't hear. "You didn't have to tell me that Bill tried to cut the meeting short. You could have kept it to yourself."

It wasn't difficult to imagine Bill persisting in his protests until he sensed Simon's reluctance to acknowledge weakness. Only then, out of respect for Simon's unspoken wishes, would Bill have let the matter drop.

Simon had, perhaps unwittingly, given me a great gift. He'd reminded me that, while Bill and Gina might have a few superficial things in common, their souls were as different as night and day. Bill could never be attracted to a woman who prattled on about money while her husband sat suffering before her.

Bill had never placed profit above compa.s.sion. He'd find it frustrating to work with someone who did. The emotion I'd heard in his voice when he'd whispered Gina's name had more likely been exasperation than longing. I still wasn't sure what had happened between them over the past three months, but I was certain that such a woman could never touch Bill's heart.

"I wish your life were different, Simon," I whispered.

"You deserve better than Gina. And when I find out who's tormenting you, I'm going to hang him-or her-out to dry."

Thirteen.

I put in an appearance in the drawing room, to make my apologies to Lord Elstyn for missing dinner, but he wasn't there. He hadn't made it to the dining room, either. The earl and his trusty counselors had taken their meal on trays in the study. They were still there.

Nell, too, was absent. When I asked where she was, Derek laughed.

"She's in her room, writing an essay on the lays of Marie de France," he said. "She must be taking her year at the Sorbonne very seriously, to favor Marie de France over me and Emma."

"I don't mind," said Emma, with a meaningful look in my direction. "I'm glad she's absorbed in her schoolwork. It'll keep her from being . . . homesick."

I silently translated "homesick" to mean "lovesick for Kit Smith" and nodded my agreement. The longer Nell stayed away from home, the easier it would be for her to outgrow her infatuation with the Harrises' stable master.

"Simon's worn out, is he?" Claudia queried after hearing my explanation for his absence. "I would be, too, if I'd spent the morning closeted with Uncle Edwin. Uncle's been in a filthy mood ever since he spoke with you, Derek."

"My father's been in a filthy mood ever since-" Derek broke off when Emma touched his arm.

"Where did you and Simon have dinner?" Emma asked, steering the conversation in what she thought was a safer direction.

I hastily pulled up memories of the day Bill and I had spent in Salisbury, before the twins were born.

"The Shuttleworth Inn," I replied, hoping the restaurant still existed. "We needed a solid meal after climbing the stairs up to the spire and hiking around the Roman hill fort at Old Sarum. To tell you the truth, I'm pretty whacked. I think I'll follow Simon's example and turn in early."

"Aren't you going to wait for your husband?" Claudia inquired.

"Bill's working late," I told her.

"Poor lamb," Claudia cooed. "It must be dreadful for him to be locked away with Gina while you and Simon frolic."

"Bill came here to work," I said.

Claudia arched her eyebrows. "Is that all he came here to do?"

Both Derek and Oliver caught the sly insinuation in her tone and would have intervened, but I silenced them with a confident smile. Thanks to Simon, I was immune to Claudia's soph.o.m.oric baiting.

"Bill works for a living," I said brightly. "It's not a concept I'd expect you to understand, Claudia, but perhaps your husband will explain it to you one day, if he can get a word in edgewise. Good night, all."

I left the room before Claudia had time to collect the few thoughts that were at her disposal and went upstairs. I took a short detour to look in on Simon and was pleased to find him sleeping peacefully. I smoothed his blankets as tenderly as I would have smoothed my sons', grabbed the chicken sandwiches, and headed for the nursery.

The babble of voices in the drawing room grew fainter as I climbed higher and faded entirely when I reached the third-floor corridor. Enough light spilled down the hallway from the staircase for me to find my way to the nursery door, where I stopped to listen.

Was Nell in her room writing an essay? I asked myself. Or was she in the nursery, working on a more dramatic composition? I bent to peer through the keyhole. The room was dark and as silent as a tomb. Simon's malicious beast-whoever he was-had evidently chosen to spend the night elsewhere, so I let myself in, closed the curtains, and lit a wall lamp.

Since Simon and I hadn't enjoyed a bountiful repast at the dear old Shuttleworth Inn, I was hungry enough to chew the paint off the walls. I devoured the slightly soggy chicken sandwiches with gusto, disposed of the wrappers in the cafe's bag, and only then began my long-delayed search for clues. My first stop was the toy cupboard.

It didn't take long to strike gold. On the third shelf from the top, hidden behind a toy fire engine and a wooden box filled with tin soldiers, I found a stack of white paper, a pot of paste, and an old-fas.h.i.+oned straight razor with an ultrasharp blade-a useful tool for a maniac intent on dissecting books.

The paste was fresh, so I a.s.sumed it wasn't a remnant of Derek's prep-school days, and the paper matched the half-sheets in my pocket, but the razor was the biggest prize of all. As I lifted it from the shelf, I saw that its tortoisesh.e.l.l handle was worn and chipped and inlaid in silver with the Elstyn family crest.

I'd seen the crest on every piece of china in the dinner service. I couldn't be mistaken. The razor had to be a family heirloom, yet here it was, beside the paste and paper, a vital part of the poison pen's handy-dandy toolkit.

The razor seemed to point like an accusing finger at a member of the family, but which one? I contemplated hiding in the bathroom to lie in wait for the culprit but vetoed the plan as impractical. Bill would sound the alarm if he found my bed empty in the middle of the night or ask the kind of questions I couldn't answer without betraying Simon's confidence.

After a moment's thought, I slipped the razor into my pocket with the two nasty notes. I'd show it to Simon first thing in the morning, let him draw the obvious conclusions, and follow the trail wherever it might lead.

Heartened by what I considered to be a sensational discovery, I crossed the room, sat cross-legged on the floor, and scanned the bookcase's lower shelves. The books were as dated as the nursery itself, as if Lord Elstyn had read them as a child and pa.s.sed them on to Derek in the fullness of time. The first t.i.tle to catch my eye was one that would be familiar only to someone who, like me, had worked with obscure volumes.

"Edith Ann!" I exclaimed, delighted.

I felt as if I'd encountered an old friend. Edith Ann Malson's works had been out of print-and out of favor-for more than half a century, thanks to a slightly gruesome sense of humor that went down well with children but gave squeamish parents nightmares. A complete series of Malson's Romney Rat stories was worth a small fortune, and every t.i.tle was present on Derek's shelves. I could hardly wait to leaf through them but decided to be methodical and started with the first book on the topmost shelf.

For nearly two hours, I paged carefully through fairy tales, folktales, morality tales, Arthurian romances, nature guides, and simplified histories extolling the virtues of the British Empire. By the time I reached Edith Ann Malson's books, I was cross-eyed with fatigue.

I opened Romney's Rambles, the first book in the series, turned to the t.i.tle page, and bolted upright, gasping in dismay. Every colorful capital letter had been excised-the E, A, and M, along with both R's. Wide-awake now, I leafed through the rest of the book and found that words and letters had been harvested from nearly every page.

My hands were trembling by the time I closed the book, and my sense of outrage was greater even than Jim Huang's when he'd found the unshelved copy of Mansfield Park. To some, Romney's Rambles might be nothing more than an out-of-date waste of paper, but to me it was a rare and beautiful artifact. Its desecration made me see red.

I took a few slow breaths to steady myself before opening Romney Returns. The second volume in Malson's series wasn't as badly mangled as the first, but letters were missing throughout-too many letters, I realized with a start, to account for the two notes Simon had shown me.

I took the notes out of my pocket and placed them side by side on the floor.

The first referred to the fire: The second concerned Simon's fall from Deacon: The poison pen had used a total of ninety-nine individual characters to patch together both messages, yet more than one hundred were missing from the first two Romney Rat books alone. Stranger still, neither message contained the capital letters sliced from the first volume's t.i.tle page: E, A, M, or R.

Had the malicious beast set letters aside, to use in future notes? Or had Simon received threats he hadn't yet shared with me?

With grim determination, I opened the third volume in the series, Romney to the Rescue, and began counting. I'd just reached the part where Romney saves Monmouth Mouse from a voracious terrier when I caught sight of something that sent a s.h.i.+ver down my spine.

There, curled on the page, in the blank s.p.a.ce beneath the ill.u.s.tration, lay a single strand of hair that gleamed like liquid gold. I knew of only one person whose hair seemed to give off light even on the cloudiest of days. She was in her room, writing an essay on Marie de France.

"Nell," I whispered. "Nell, how could you?"

A host of vivid images flashed through my mind: Nell on the staircase, gazing intently at Simon; Nell throwing the cloth bundle onto the bonfire; Nell calling Deacon an angel . . . and my heart sank. There was a fine line between madness and eccentricity. Nell, spurred by the desire to protect her father, had clearly crossed it.

I laid the golden strand atop the poison-pen notes, folded the notes together, and put them in my pocket with the straight razor. I reshelved the books, turned off the light, and left the nursery. I didn't feel angry anymore. I felt sick.

Not a sound rose from the drawing room as I descended the staircase. The others had evidently gone to bed. I peered in at Simon and saw that he was still soundly asleep. I checked Bill's room, too, but he was nowhere in sight, so I trudged disconsolately to my own room and got ready for bed.

It wasn't until I turned on the bedside lamp that I found the long-stemmed red rose lying on the mound of pillows atop a note written in Bill's familiar hand: I'm sorry I was brusque with you this afternoon, love. When this blasted business is over, I'll make it up to you, I promise.

I felt tears sting my eyes even as I smiled. It seemed ludicrous, now, to think that my greathearted husband could even contemplate a fling with someone as heartless as Gina. Derek had been right. Bill preferred the warmer sort.

Bill's note was music to my ears, but my mind was still in turmoil. I had no idea how to confront Nell or break the news to Derek that his darling daughter was desperately in need of therapy. I pulled Reginald into my arms for comfort, then reached for the blue journal.

Fourteen.

Dimity?" I said. "You busy?"

A sense of calm washed over me when Dimity's old-fas.h.i.+oned copperplate began to curl across the page.

I'm never too busy for you, my dear, though you must have had an exceedingly busy day, to end it at such a late hour. I presume the hunt for the poison pen proceeds apace? Tell me all about it.

I looked at Reginald and raised my eyebrows, wondering where to begin. After weeding out Jim Huang, the original Derek Harris, his namesake's banished nanny, Emma's good news-about which I still knew nothing-and a number of other extraneous matters, I was still left with a huge stack of material to cover. I decided to start boldly at the end and work my way backward.

"It's Nell," I declared. "Nell's the poison pen. She's trying to keep Simon from replacing Derek as Lord Elstyn's heir."

The pause that followed was so prolonged that I started to wonder if Dimity had run out of ink. Finally, her response appeared, written crisply, without hesitation.

Was it a sunny day, my dear? Did you stay outside too long without your hat? Have you, in short, PARBOILED YOUR BRAIN? I've known you to leap to preposterous conclusions before, Lori, but you've outdone yourself this time. Nell would never stoop to threatening someone in such a mean and despicable manner. She's far too self-possessed.

"She wasn't very self-possessed when she sent those love letters to Kit," I pointed out.

Irrelevant. I've never known a woman to be entirely rational when in the early stages of first love, and Nell's long since regained her composure.

I shook my head sadly. "Sorry, but I think she's lost it again."

Then there's the small matter of primogeniture. The inheritance laws in this country are extremely strict. It would be no small matter for Simon to take Derek's place.

"Oliver thinks the fix is in," I said. "Don't forget, Dimity, Derek changed his name and stayed away for twenty years. Oliver thinks a good lawyer could make a case for disinheritance, and Gina's not only a good lawyer, she's married to Simon. She has a vested interest in showing Derek the door."

But Nell has no need to resort to such underhanded methods. Edwin has indulged her every whim ever since she was old enough to have whims. If Nell wished to influence her grandfather, she need only speak to him.

"Simon's been around longer than Nell," I said bluntly. "Besides, he's a man-a married man with a son. He's ready to step up to the plate here and now. I can understand why Nell sees him as a threat."

Conjecture isn't proof, my dear. Can you offer evidence to support your far-fetched accusation?

I leaned back against the mound of pillows and spelled out my chain of reasoning, for my own benefit as much as Dimity's.

I reminded Dimity that Nell had been late for dinner on the night of the fire and that she'd stared directly at Simon when the fire was mentioned. I told her about the bonfire, the cloth bundle, and the can of kerosene. I explained why Nell's reference to a "birdie" suggested familiarity with the first of the poison-pen notes.

I recounted how the death threat's unusual lettering had led me to the children's books in the nursery and a.s.serted that Nell's allusion to Derek's elephant proved that she'd been there before me.

I described Simon's accident, the second poison-pen note, and Nell's warm praise for the horse that had caused Simon such grievous bodily harm.

I told Dimity about my discovery of the pot of paste, the paper, the vandalized books, and the straight razor with the Elstyn family crest.

Finally, I took the curling strand of golden hair from the folded notes and held it in the lamplight, marveling at its l.u.s.ter-and told Dimity where I'd found it.

Dimity promptly dismantled my chain of reasoning, link by rusty link.

Your evidence is entirely circ.u.mstantial, Lori. If enigmatic comments were considered criminal, Nell would have been locked up the moment she learned to speak. I'd be more suspicious if she started babbling inanely about pop music.

"Maybe so," I allowed, "but you have to admit that the bonfire's pretty fishy."

I have to admit no such thing. It's only natural that Nell would know where the paraffin is stored-Hailesham's her second home. Have you asked anyone in the stable if the horse blankets were flea-ridden, as she claimed?

"Uh, no," I replied weakly. It had never occurred to me to corroborate Nell's story.