Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch Read online

  I froze, with my jar of tea halfway to my lips.

  “I rinsed them thoroughly,” Mrs. Thistle said, taking note of my startled reaction. “And the paints I use are nontoxic.”

  “Do you paint?” I asked offhandedly, as if the thought of her wielding a paintbrush was new to me.

  “I dabble,” she replied, and before I could press her for details about her “dabbling,” she was off and running again, taking the conversation in an entirely different direction.

  “You’re an American,” she observed. “Your accent gave you away, as did your use of the word cookies. An Englishwoman would have said biscuits. Your informality betrayed you as well. An Englishwoman wouldn’t have urged me to ‘dig in.’ She would have insisted on searching high and low for a proper plate. Americans are, as a rule, much more easygoing about such matters, especially in an emergency, and I can promise you, it was an emergency.” She lifted her chin and gave me a searching look. “You’ve known what it is to be hungry.”

  I froze again, this time in surprise. It was true that I’d gone through some lean years after my mother’s death, but Amelia Thistle couldn’t have known it. If she was Mae Bowen, however, and could see into a crocus’s heart, perhaps the human heart was open to her as well.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve known what it’s like to be hungry. It’s the kind of thing a person doesn’t forget.”

  “You’d be surprised by the number of people who do.” She opened one of the food storage boxes I’d filled with cookies, bent over it, and inhaled deeply. “Heavenly. What kind of, er, cookies are they?”

  “Oatmeal,” I said. “My mother made them for me when I was little.”

  “And now it’s your turn to make them,” she said. “My mother taught me to make brown bread. It’s my most special recipe. Perhaps I’ll bake a loaf for you after I’ve tamed my kitchen. Let’s enjoy your lovely oatmeal cookies in comfort, shall we?”

  She stood, crossed to rummage through the cardboard box again, and came up with a Victorian silver salver engraved with an intricate floral motif.

  “I can’t imagine why I put the tea tray in with the cutlery,” she said, shaking her head, “but it’s just as well I did. If I’d put it in with the crockery, we’d have to dig through who-knows-how-many boxes to find it.” She handed the salver to me and retrieved a broom and a handful of trash bags from a corner cupboard. “If you’ll bring the tea and the oatmeal cookies, I’ll put the parlor to rights and build a fire. I found some dry logs in the shed last night, before the rain set in. I should be able to coax a friendly flame or two out of them. Heaven knows I have enough tinder.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I put the salver on the table and took the broom and the bags out of her hands. “I’ll see to the parlor and the fire. You’ll sit down and relax. You’ve had a rough night, Mrs. Thistle. You’ve earned a breather.”

  “Not Mrs. Thistle, dear,” she said, and my ears pricked alertly until she added, “Amelia, please. Guardian angels are allowed to use first names.”

  “I’m no angel,” I said, “but if I’m to call you Amelia, you must call me Lori. Everyone does. Have a seat and a cookie, Amelia. Leave the parlor to me.”

  I was a bit disappointed in myself for failing to nail down Mrs. Thistle’s true identity within the first thirty minutes of my arrival at Pussywillows, but my disappointment was replaced by a tingle of excitement as I entered the front room. Although I would have lent a helping hand to anyone in Mrs. Thistle’s situation, I couldn’t deny the special pleasure it gave me to see up close what Bill and my neighbors had seen only from a distance.

  I quickly cleared the room of packing debris, pushed the half-emptied boxes into a neat row along one wall, and lit a fire in the hearth. I piled the bulging trash bags near the front door for later delivery to the recycling bin, then paused to take in the scene my cleanup work had revealed.

  I saw what Bill had seen: a pleasing mix of the old and the new. Burgundy silk taffeta drapes hung at the windows and a colorful Turkish rug warmed the polished plank floor. A secretaire bookcase made of lustrous cherrywood served as a focal point for the interior wall—an efficient use of space on Mrs. Thistle’s part, since the secretaire combined the virtues of a small desk with those of a display cabinet.

  A brass floor lamp with a vellum shade cast a soft glow over a plump love seat and a pair of armchairs grouped around a low rosewood table before the hearth. The love seat was covered in a reddish-brown tweed and the armchairs were upholstered in a glorious brown, gold, and burgundy paisley. The dark furnishings looked well against the room’s whitewashed walls and complemented the smoke-blackened oak beam that had been set into the chimney breast to serve as a mantel.

  Mrs. Thistle’s pots and pans might still be among the missing, but a selection of smaller, less practical items had clearly been found. The secretaire’s shelves were filled with pretty and possibly revealing ornaments—porcelain posies, blown-glass blossoms, bone-china bouquets—and a charming, enameled carriage clock sat upon the mantel. A pair of photographs flanked the clock, silver-framed color portraits of two different men, both smiling, one blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and balding, the other sporting horn-rimmed glasses, a dark beard, and long, dark hair. I wondered who the men were, realized that Mrs. Thistle could probably tell me, and returned to the kitchen with the broom resting on my shoulder.

  I could tell upon entering the room that my quiche—and a handful of oatmeal cookies—had revived Mrs. Thistle. She’d pinned her hair more securely in place, the color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes had lost their mildly desperate gleam.

  “Have you finished already?” she said, brushing crumbs from her fingertips.

  “As the mother of two little boys,” I said, “I’ve learned how to deal with messes. Not that your room was a mess—”

  “It was,” she interrupted amiably as she pushed herself to her feet. “Let’s take our tea to the parlor and see what you’ve accomplished.”

  I could almost hear a Victorian silversmith rotate in his grave as Mrs. Thistle used his splendid creation to convey a chubby red teapot, two jam jars, and a plastic box filled with oatmeal cookies to the front room. Smiling, I put the broom back in the cupboard and followed her.

  She deposited the tray on the low table, clasped her hands to her bosom, and turned in a circle to survey a room she hadn’t yet seen decluttered.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Lori,” she said finally. “It would have taken me a whole day to do what you did in twenty minutes.” She sat in one of the armchairs and motioned for me to take the other. “Please, dear, you must tell me all about your little boys.”

  It wasn’t easy to refuse an open invitation to brag about my sons, but I managed. I was ready to get down to business.

  “I’ll introduce you to Rob and Will whenever you wish,” I said. “Right now I’d like to ask you a question.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Are you Mae Bowen, the famous artist?” I slid back in my chair and gripped the armrests, braced to withstand roars, rants, and recriminations, but none of Aunt Dimity’s dire predictions came true. Though Mrs. Thistle’s face fell, she seemed to be more vexed with herself than with me.

  “Drat,” she said quietly. “I knew I’d be found out eventually, but to be unmasked by my very first visitor is extremely discouraging.” She shrugged helplessly. “I’m simply not cut out for this sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing?” I asked.

  “Subterfuge,” she answered. “I’ve no head for it. My late husband used to say that I was as guileless as a kitten, but he was wrong. A kitten would have concealed herself better than I have.”

  “You invented a new name,” I said encouragingly.

  “No, I didn’t,” she retorted glumly. “You’d think that an artist would have the imagination to create a proper pseudonym, but I couldn’t even do that. I was so flustered by the house sale and the auction and packing up my bits and pieces that I simply couldn’t
concentrate on anything else.”

  “If you didn’t come up with a pseudonym,” I said slowly, “whose decision was it to call you Amelia Thistle?”

  “It was my decision,” she replied, “but I didn’t invent Amelia Thistle. I am Amelia Thistle.”

  “I thought you were Mae Bowen,” I said, in some confusion.

  “I’m Mae Bowen as well,” she said. “I’m Mae Bowen and Amelia Thistle.” She took a deep breath and went on, “I was christened Amelia Bowen, but my family called me Mae, so I’ve always signed my paintings as Mae Bowen. Years later, when I married, I took my husband’s last name and became Amelia Thistle, but I continued to use the name Mae Bowen professionally because my paintings had become rather well known by then and I would have created a muddle if I’d begun signing them with a name hardly anyone associated with me.”

  “I see,” I said, though my head was spinning slightly. “Amelia Thistle is your married name and Mae Bowen is your professional name.”

  “I prefer to think of Amelia Thistle as my private name and Mae Bowen as my public name,” she said. “I hoped using my private name would give me more privacy, but it was a foolish hope. Both names are a matter of public record, so anyone can look them up and connect them to me. Honestly,” she said with a wistful sigh, “a half-witted badger could see through my ruse. As I said, I have no head for subterfuge.”

  She seemed so depressed by her lack of guile that I felt compelled to comfort her.

  “It’s hardly surprising that someone who paints the way you do would find it difficult to lie,” I said. “How did Keats put it? ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.’”

  “Beauty? Truth?” she exclaimed. “Oh, dear.” She turned her head to gaze dispiritedly into the fire. “I hoped we would become fast friends, Lori, but if you insist on throwing Keats at me before ten o’clock in the morning, it can mean only one thing: You must be one of them.”

  “One of—” I broke off as the penny dropped. “Are you accusing me of being a Bowenist?”

  “I could be mistaken,” she said timidly.

  “You are spectacularly mistaken,” I declared. “I am not a Bowenist. I’d never even heard of you until yesterday, when my friends told me about you. Charles Bellingham and Grant Tavistock live in Crabtree Cottage, right here in Finch, and they’re much more knowledgeable about the art world than I am. They recognized you when you showed up with the moving truck.”

  “Are they…?” She glanced anxiously toward the windows, as though she expected to see two sets of eyes peering at her through the gap in the draperies.

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “I can assure you that Grant and Charles would like nothing better than to see all Bowenists take a running leap into a bottomless bog. Please believe me when I tell you that my friends and I want to protect you from the Bowenists.”

  “Protect me?” she said faintly.

  “As best we can,” I said. “We don’t want your followers to infest Finch and we don’t want them to hound you, so we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to keep your secret from reaching their ears.”

  “You came here this morning to protect me?” she said, her face softening.

  “I came here to find out if Grant and Charles were right about you,” I said. “Now that I know who you really are, well, yes, I’d like to do what I can to protect you, if you’ll let me.” I leaned forward. “I’d advise you to take me up on my offer, Mrs. Thistle. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’m great at subterfuge.”

  “So are my followers.” She folded her hands in her lap and gazed steadily at me. “If you’re fibbing, Lori…”

  I stuck out my arm and held my palm over the plastic box. “I swear on my mother’s oatmeal cookies that I’m telling you the truth, Mrs. Thistle.”

  She hesitated for a brief moment, then reached out to take my hand in hers.

  “Amelia,” she said, smiling. “Please call me Amelia.”

  Seven

  “You can have no idea,” said Amelia, “what my life has been like for the past ten years. I’ve been constantly pecked, poked, and prodded in public by people who are, as far as I can tell, mentally unhinged. Me? A great spiritual guide?” She gave a short, unhappy laugh. “I can’t even find my teacups!”

  “You will,” I soothed, topping up her jam jar. “What happened ten years ago? Is that when the Bowenist movement started?”

  “It kicked into high gear ten years ago,” she informed me. “It was founded a few years earlier by a well-to-do crackpot named Myron Brocklehurst. When Mr. Brocklehurst began to upend my dustbins in his search for sacred relics, Walter decided to buy Highburn Park, up near the Scottish border.” She gazed tenderly at the silver-framed photograph of the clean-shaven, balding man. “Walter Thistle was my dear husband. He passed away four years ago, believing he’d created a safe haven for me. I had two hundred wild acres in which to wander,” she added, with a reminiscent smile. “I knew every inch of it by heart, yet it never failed to surprise me. Each season brought an endless succession of fresh delights.”

  It was pleasant to sit indoors on a wet Tuesday morning and listen to Amelia reminisce, but I couldn’t help wondering why she’d chosen to leave a place that had clearly meant so much to her.

  “You must have been lonely after your husband died,” I ventured, kneeling to stir the fire. “Living all by yourself on such a large estate—”

  “Oh, but I didn’t live there by myself.” She gestured to the second photograph, the portrait of the bespectacled, bearded man. “My brother Alfred lived at Highburn with me until he passed away, nearly a year ago.”

  “First your husband, then your brother…” I shook my head sadly as I returned to the armchair and picked up my jar of tea. “The past few years haven’t been easy for you, Amelia.”

  “No, they haven’t,” she agreed, “and the Bowenists haven’t made them any easier. You may find it hard to believe, Lori, but a gang of them had the unmitigated gall to invite themselves to Walter’s funeral! A nice constable shooed them away, but I’d learned my lesson. I held Alfie’s memorial service at Highburn, behind locked gates.”

  “If you’d learned your lesson,” I said, mystified, “why did you leave Highburn? Why did you trade your safe haven for Pussywillows?”

  “I thought I’d be safe here, too,” she admitted sheepishly. “It was naive of me, I suppose, but…Are you familiar with Homer’s tale about Odysseus and the oar?”

  I nodded. “After many tumultuous years at sea, Odysseus wandered inland, carrying an oar, until he found a place where no one knew what an oar was. He took it as a sign that his seafaring days were over and settled down to the peaceful life of a gentleman farmer.”

  “An excellent summary,” said Amelia. “I visited Finch several months ago in much the same spirit. I spent time in the pub, the tearoom, the Emporium, and the greengrocer’s, and I didn’t hear anyone mention the word art, apart from four women who were taking painting lessons from a Mr. Shuttleworth in Upper Deeping, and they were far more concerned with the local art show than they were with the London art scene.” She grimaced ruefully. “Your knowledgeable friends must have been out of town.”

  “Grant and Charles are rather fond of the London art scene,” I told her.

  “I couldn’t have known,” Amelia said resignedly. “I came away from Finch with the impression that, to the villagers, the professional art world was as distant as the moon. Better still, not once did I hear anyone mention a television program, a film, a pop song, or a so-called celebrity. Instead, I heard about Mr. Barlow’s broken furnace, the new curtains Mrs. Peacock had made for the pub, which, I might add, most people thought were rather garish—”

  “They are,” I put in.

  “—and the joke Henry Cook had told about the chicken, the juggler, and the man in the top hat,” she went on. “It was as if the world beyond Finch didn’t exist, not because the villagers were backward or isolated, but bec
ause they were so caught up in real life that they had no time to spare for fantasies concocted by the media. I found it immensely refreshing to be among such well-grounded, sensible people.”

  A snort of laughter escaped me when I heard Amelia’s generous—and generally erroneous—description of my neighbors, but I turned it into a cough. I didn’t want to be the one to disillusion her.

  “I thought I’d be safe here,” she reiterated, “which was a great relief, because I had to come here, regardless of my safety.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Amelia’s gaze drifted toward her brother’s photograph. “I have to complete a task Alfie was unable to complete.”

  “What task?” I asked, sitting forward and listening closely.

  Still gazing at her brother’s smiling, bearded face, she answered: “I need to find a witch.”