Aunt Dimity and the Widow's Curse Page 2

  Mrs. Craven never missed a village affairs committee meeting, and I tried very hard to miss as few as possible. Peggy Taxman, who ran the post office, the general store, the greengrocer’s shop, and every committee meeting that had ever been held in Finch, had a nasty habit of “volunteering” absentees for duties that invariably required the use of a broom and a small fleet of rubbish bins. Needless to say, her meetings were always well attended.

  Though Mrs. Craven had a spotless attendance record, she contributed nothing to the proceedings. In stark contrast to the rest of the villagers, who could discuss the pros and cons of purchasing a new tea urn for months on end, Mrs. Craven was content to sit in silence while vital decisions were made—usually by Peggy Taxman—about the harvest festival, the church fete, and the other events that filled the village calendar.

  I suspected that Mrs. Craven’s reticence stemmed from her humility. She was willing to share her opinions with me over a cup of tea in her snug little kitchen, but I couldn’t convince her to express them to a wider audience. The limelight possessed no allure for her, and while she seemed to enjoy watching her neighbors engage in lively debates, she was too diffident to add her voice to theirs.

  Silence was an alien concept to the voluble villagers, but they respected Mrs. Craven’s right to maintain hers. She was such a willing worker that Peggy Taxman didn’t feel the need to volunteer her for any task, and no one demanded that she take a stand on a hotly contested issue. In a schoolhouse filled to the rafters with chatter, some of it quite acrimonious, Mrs. Craven was notable only for her reluctance to speak up.

  Which was why my jaw dropped—along with everyone else’s—when Mrs. Craven got to her feet at the end of the meeting, smiled cordially at Peggy Taxman, and for the first time in living memory, made her voice heard.

  Two

  “Madam Chairwoman,” said Mrs. Craven, “I would like to address the assembly.”

  A hush fell over the schoolhouse. Every face was alive with polite curiosity. James and Felicity Hobson, who’d been halfway to the door, retraced their steps and sank soundlessly onto their folding chairs. Mr. Barlow unfolded the chair he’d just folded and sat on it. Grant Tavistock resumed his seat somewhat awkwardly, having already threaded one arm through the sleeve of his rain jacket.

  Bree Pym, who was crawling after Bess with a menacing growl, ceased growling instantly and sat back on her heels, looking for all the world like a startled meerkat. Unable to arrest her forward momentum, Bess toddled unsteadily into Mr. Barlow’s knees. He picked her up, placed her on his lap, and gave her his key ring to play with. The jangling noise sounded unnaturally loud in the suddenly silent schoolhouse.

  Peggy Taxman stared at Mrs. Craven wordlessly, which was in itself a rare event. Peggy was seldom at a loss for words, and her comments were usually delivered at a decibel level that could shatter granite.

  “Please forgive me, Madam Chairwoman,” Mrs. Craven added. “I intended to introduce my proposal under ‘other business’ but I’m afraid you brought the gavel down before I could speak.”

  “As usual,” said Dick Peacock in a carrying undertone.

  “It’s quite all right, Mrs. Craven,” Peggy boomed, ignoring Dick. If anyone else had attempted to extend a meeting Peggy had adjourned, she would have ignored them as well, but even she had a soft spot for Mrs. Craven. She gave the gavel an authoritative bang and bellowed, “The meeting has been reconvened so that Mrs. Craven can tell us about her, er, proposal.”

  “You’re very kind.” Mrs. Craven inclined her head respectfully to the chairwoman, then turned to face the room. “My dear friends and neighbors,” she began, “a project has been languishing in my attic ever since I moved into Bluebell Cottage. I doubt that I shall live long enough to complete it by myself.”

  Cries of “Don’t be silly!” and “Chin up, old girl!” rang out until Peggy brought her gavel down again.

  “What sort of project is it?” Peggy roared.

  “It’s a quilt,” Mrs. Craven replied. “A rather large quilt.”

  A murmur of comprehension rippled through the schoolhouse. None of us could conceive of Mrs. Craven having anything other than a quilt in her attic.

  “I pieced the top together many years ago,” Mrs. Craven explained. “I have the backing fabric and the batting material, but I need help to do the actual quilting.”

  “A quilting bee!” Elspeth Binney exclaimed delightedly. “You’re proposing a quilting bee!”

  “I am,” said Mrs. Craven, smiling. “In the past, quilting bees were a way for rural women to socialize while performing a useful task. While they sewed, they shared joys and sorrows, exchanged news and recipes, and supported one another in times of trouble.”

  “You’re not in trouble, are you, Mrs. Craven?” asked Mr. Barlow.

  “If I am, it’s the universal trouble of having too much to do and too few hours in the day to do it,” Mrs. Craven replied. “I would dearly love to finish my quilt before I run out of time.”

  “I think it’s a lovely idea,” said Selena Buxton. “I can’t imagine why we haven’t done it before.”

  “I’ve given some of you private quilting lessons,” said Mrs. Craven, nodding to the Handmaidens, “so you can get started straightaway.”

  “What about the rest of us?” asked Felicity Hobson.

  “If you know how to do a running stitch,” Mrs. Craven told her, “you won’t have any trouble learning how to quilt. And if you don’t know how to do a running stitch, I can teach you.”

  “I can do a running stitch,” Christine Peacock allowed, “but my stitches aren’t as neat as yours.”

  “No matter,” said Mrs. Craven. “We don’t want our quilt to look machine made, do we? Uneven stitches give a quilt character. They prove that it was made by a human being.”

  “Then you must be a robot, Mrs. Craven,” said Charles Bellingham, “because I’ve never seen an uneven stitch in your quilts.”

  Mrs. Craven waved away the compliment. “I’ve had a lot of practice, Charles, but I’m still capable of producing some very crooked lines indeed. If I unpicked every wobbly stitch I sewed, I’d still be working on my first quilt!”

  “What a loss that would be,” said Grant Tavistock.

  The villagers added their praise to his until Peggy silenced them with her gavel.

  “You won’t have to bring anything but yourselves,” Mrs. Craven went on. “I’ll provide the quilt, the quilt frame, and all the supplies we need.”

  “Will we have to thread our own needles?” Sally Cook asked doubtfully. “I seem to spend more time threading my needle than sewing with it.”

  “So do I,” said Christine Peacock.

  “I’ll thread your needle for you, Sally,” said Bree, “and yours, too, Chris. I’ll thread any needle that needs threading.”

  Mrs. Craven beamed at her. “Cooperation is the key to a pleasant and productive quilting bee. With many hands making light work, we may be able to finish the quilt in one day.”

  “What’ll happen to it afterwards?” Bree asked.

  “I thought we might use it as a raffle prize at the church fete,” Mrs. Craven answered. “But I’m open to other ideas.”

  “I like the raffle idea,” said Opal Taylor, and the rest of the Handmaidens nodded their agreement. “Will you hold the quilting bee in your cottage, Mrs. Craven?”

  “Don’t be daft,” said Mr. Barlow. “We’ll hold it right here, in the schoolhouse. Only place for it.”

  He was right, of course. The villagers used the old schoolhouse for all sorts of communal activities—bottling jams, pickling vegetables, making sandwiches to sell at various events—because it was big enough, and it had enough empty floor space, to allow them to bustle about without bashing into one another.

  “The schoolhouse would be ideal,” said Mrs. Craven. “If you would assist me, Mr. Barlow—”<
br />
  “At your service, ma’am,” Mr. Barlow piped up readily.

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Craven, nodding at him. “With your help, I’ll have everything ready to go when the quilters arrive.”

  “The quilters,” Elspeth Binney echoed happily. “It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  “We’ll work in shifts and we’ll take as many breaks as we need,” Mrs. Craven promised. “Otherwise we’ll end up with stiff necks and sore fingers.” She peered hesitantly at Peggy as she added, “If we might use the tea urn—”

  “You leave the food and drink to us, dear,” called Sally Cook. “We’ll make sure there’s plenty of both.”

  “When do you plan to hold this quilting bee of yours?” Peggy thundered.

  Mrs. Craven took a deep breath and clasped her capable hands together tightly, as though bracing herself to deliver the most difficult part of her presentation.

  “I thought we might hold it on Saturday,” she said.

  “On Saturday,” Peggy repeated, looking confused. “Do you mean the day after tomorrow?”

  “It’s frightfully short notice, I know,” said Mrs. Craven, “but I checked the schedule and Saturday is the only day the schoolhouse will be free until October.”

  There was a long pause. Brows furrowed, feet shuffled, and the energy that had filled the room began to dissipate. Mrs. Craven gave a soft sigh. I could almost hear her pet project sliding gently down the drain.

  “Count me in,” I declared, jumping to my feet. “Bess and I had planned to visit the stables on Saturday, but we can go there anytime. Your quilting bee will be really special, Mrs. Craven, a historic event I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Every time I think of the quilt, I’ll know I had a hand in creating a unique and beautiful heirloom that will be passed down from one generation to the next. I wouldn’t miss your quilting bee for the world, Mrs. Craven. I’ll be there!”

  “Me, too,” Bree said staunchly.

  “And me,” said Sally Cook. She tilted her head toward her husband. “I can leave Henry in charge of the tearoom.”

  “And I can leave Dick to run the pub,” said Christine Peacock.

  “I may pop in from time to time,” bellowed Peggy Taxman, “but I won’t be able to leave the Emporium for an entire day.” She looked from Sally to Christine as she added haughtily, “Jasper and I work as a team.”

  Sally and Christine let the barbed comment bounce off of them, while the rest of us tried, with varying degrees of success, to conceal our elation. Although our esteemed chairwoman was good at giving orders, she wasn’t very good at taking them, especially when they came from someone as modest and soft-spoken as Mrs. Craven. With the possible exception of Jasper Taxman, everyone in the schoolhouse agreed, albeit silently, that the less time Peggy spent at the quilting bee, the more enjoyable it would be.

  “You’ll be most welcome whenever you can join us,” Mrs. Craven said to Peggy. “I might add that no one need stay for the entire day. You can drop in when you like and leave when you like.”

  “I’ll be there for the duration,” said Charles Bellingham. “It’ll be like taking a master class in needlework.”

  “We’ll be there, too,” said Elspeth Binney, speaking on behalf of the Handmaidens. “We can go to the Saturday sales in Upper Deeping next week.”

  As the chorus of volunteers continued to swell, Mrs. Craven’s gray eyes began to glisten. She lifted her clasped hands to her bosom and smiled tremulously, but she was clearly too moved to speak.

  Peggy Taxman had no such trouble.

  “Order!” she shouted, and when the hubbub subsided, she continued, “A quilting bee will be held in the schoolhouse on Saturday, starting at . . .” She paused to gaze inquisitively at Mrs. Craven.

  “N-nine o’clock?” Mrs. Craven stammered, as if she couldn’t quite believe that the tide had turned so overwhelmingly in her favor.

  “Starting at nine o’clock in the morning,” Peggy boomed. She pulled a blank sheet of paper from her official chairwoman’s clipboard—which she also used for stocktaking at the Emporium—and scribbled a heading on it, then waved it in the air. “If you intend to participate in Mrs. Craven’s quilting bee, add your name to the sign-up sheet.” She dropped the sheet of paper on the long table and, with another stupendous bang of the gavel, adjourned the village affairs committee meeting for a second time.

  While the others rushed forward to sign Peggy’s improvised sign-up sheet, Mr. Barlow returned Bess to me and strolled over to confer with Mrs. Craven. Bree stood to avoid being trampled, then sat on the folding chair next to mine.

  “Great speech, Lori,” she said. “You saved the day.”

  “I had to,” I said. “Your great-grandaunts would have come back to haunt me if I’d let Mrs. Craven down.”

  “They would have haunted all of us if we’d let her down,” said Bree. “And we would have deserved it.” She gazed at Mrs. Craven and mused aloud, “I wonder what kind of quilt it will be?”

  “Knowing Finch as I do,” I said, “it’ll probably be a crazy quilt.”

  Bree laughed and I laughed along with her, little knowing that the quilt we would finish on Saturday would be Mrs. Craven’s last gift to the village.

  Three

  Saturday dawned fair and clear, with a slight nip in the air to remind me that it was still early April. As I rolled out of bed, I hoped Bill and the boys were enjoying similarly benign conditions, but a glance at the weather report suggested otherwise.

  Although Bill had called several times to update me on his father-and-sons camping adventure, the cell phone connection had been so weak and wavering that I’d barely understood a word he’d said. I was fairly sure that he and the boys had spotted an osprey, but it was equally possible that he’d forgotten to bring the bug spray. Either way, he’d left me with the general impression that a good time was being had by all.

  After an early breakfast, I placed Bess in her playpen and left her to entertain herself while I loaded our canary-yellow Range Rover with everything we’d need for our big day out: diaper bag, toy bag, insulated food bag, portable playpen to keep her from impaling herself on stray pins and needles while I worked on Mrs. Craven’s quilt, and a plastic storage container filled with the butterscotch brownies I’d baked the night before. I knew that my plain-Jane brownies wouldn’t hold a candle to the elaborate pastries my neighbors would bring to the quilting bee, but I also knew that Mr. Barlow was partial to them and I thought he deserved a reward for giving Mrs. Craven a helping hand.

  At half past eight, I fetched Bess from the playpen, zipped her into a warm jacket, and gave her a purple plush stegosaurus to play with while I fastened the harness in her car seat. Job done, I climbed into the driver’s seat, backed the Rover out of our graveled drive, and headed for the village.

  I didn’t need a calendar to tell me that spring had arrived in my little corner of the Cotswolds. All I had to do was to look around. A froth of may blossoms brightened the hedgerows that lined the narrow, winding lane, and primroses graced the verges. Lambs gamboled beside their grazing mothers in the hill pastures, and nesting birds flew hither and yon, long grasses trailing from their beaks.

  We cruised past the mouth of the curving drive that led to Anscombe Manor, where my best friend, Emma Harris, lived and where my sons’ ponies, Thunder and Storm, were stabled. Emma ran a riding school, and since her Saturday classes were always booked solid, she’d been forced to decline her invitation to the quilting bee.

  “Which is a pity,” I said to Bess, “because Auntie Emma loves handicrafts almost as much as she loves horses.”

  “Horse!” Bess exclaimed.

  I glanced fleetingly at Bree Pym’s driveway as I negotiated the sharp curve in front of her mellow redbrick house. The absence of her secondhand sedan suggested that she’d left home early to assist Mr. Barlow as he implemented Mrs. Craven’
s plans.

  Bess crowed with delight as we passed the wrought-iron gates that guarded the entrance to her grandfather’s estate. She adored Willis, Sr., who regarded it as his sworn duty to indulge his only granddaughter’s every whim. Though Grandpa William would spend the day reading, napping, and tending his orchids at Fairworth House, Grandma Amelia would be at the bee, sketchbook in hand, to record the historic event for posterity.

  When we reached the top of the humpbacked bridge that crossed the Little Deeping River, I paused, as I always did, to savor the view. It was a view that never failed to warm my heart. The village lay before me, its golden buildings aglow in the morning light. Dew glistened on the elongated oval of tussocky grass that formed the village green, and the worn stones in the cobbled lane gleamed as if they’d been polished. St. George’s stumpy bell tower peered shyly at me through the boughs of the churchyard’s towering cedars, and the river rushed below me, rendered livelier than usual by spring rains.

  A line of cars parked along the green indicated that word of the quilting bee had spread beyond the village to the farms that dotted the surrounding countryside. I was pleased to see the familiar vehicles because, while Finch was devoid of children, the farm families had plenty of them.

  “The Hodges, the Malverns, and the Sciaparellis are here,” I said to Bess. “It looks as though you’ll have playmates your own age to keep you occupied while Mummy is otherwise engaged.”

  “Go!” Bess commanded.

  I couldn’t blame her for wanting to move on. Since she was facing backward, her view wasn’t as appealing as mine.

  Smiling, I left the bridge, bumped across the cobbles, and parked in front of the tearoom. Henry Cook waved to me through the tearoom’s wide front window, then hurried out to take the diaper bag, the toy bag, the insulated food bag, and the box of butterscotch brownies from me. When I reached for the portable playpen, however, he stopped me.

  “You won’t need it,” he said. “Bree rigged up a baby jail—her word, not mine—to keep the little ones out of trouble. It already has a few inmates, but there’s room for more.”