Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch Page 7

  My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Do you mean Miranda Morrow? For pity’s sake, Amelia, you didn’t have to buy a cottage in Finch to meet Miranda. Her phone number’s in the book. She’ll be in Spain for the next two weeks—the vicar’s wife is cat sitting for her and taking care of her indoor plants—but I’ll be happy to introduce you to her when she gets back. She lives two doors down from Grant and Charles, in Briar Cottage. It’s a five-second stroll from here.”

  “Who,” Amelia asked, “is Miranda Morrow?”

  “She’s a witch,” I replied, as if the answer were obvious, “though you wouldn’t know it to look at her. I mean, who expects a freckle-faced strawberry blonde to be a witch?” Before Amelia could respond, I continued, “Miranda does most of her work over the telephone and on the computer—horoscopes, psychic readings, spell castings, that sort of thing—but she won’t mind meeting with you in person.”

  “I don’t wish to meet with her,” Amelia protested, “not unless she knows something about Gamaliel Gowland.”

  “Gamaliel…who?” I said, brought up short.

  “Gamaliel Gowland,” she repeated. “He’s the man who wrote the secret memoir.”

  “What secret memoir?” I asked. I was beginning to feel a familiar spinning sensation in my head.

  “The secret memoir that tells the story of Mistress Meg,” said Amelia.

  “And Mistress Meg is…?” I said.

  “She’s Gamaliel’s witch, of course,” said Amelia, sounding mildly exasperated. “Mistress Meg was also known as Margaret Redfearn. Do either of the names mean anything to you?”

  “No,” I said, eager to hear more.

  “Oh, well,” she said with a soft sigh. “I didn’t expect to find her on my first full day in Finch.”

  She refilled her jar of tea and sipped from it placidly, as if she intended to move on to other subjects, but I refused to budge. As a member in good standing of the Finch Busybody Society, I couldn’t bear the thought of a newcomer knowing more about my village than I did.

  “Did Mistress Meg live in Finch?” I pressed. “Why did Gamaliel Gowland write a secret memoir about her? Who, for that matter, is Gamaliel Gowland?”

  Instead of answering my queries directly, Amelia deposited her jar on the tray, stood, and crossed to the cherrywood secretaire. She reached into the top drawer beneath the slanted desk lid and returned to her chair carrying a gaudily decorated biscuit tin commemorating Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.

  She placed the biscuit tin on the low table, prized it open, and withdrew from it what appeared to be a handwritten note encased in a protective envelope of transparent plastic. Without saying a word, she passed the mysterious document to me.

  I gazed down at the small sheet of parchment—no more than four inches by six inches—covered with a densely written Latin text. The text was punctuated by a curious symbol, a black cross within a shield-shaped lozenge.

  “If you’re familiar with Keats and Homer,” Amelia said, “you must be a well-educated woman. What can you tell me about the writing you see before you?”

  “I can’t translate it,” I admitted readily, “because I don’t read Latin. And I don’t know what the glyph at the end of the text means because I’ve never seen anything like it before.” I studied the script more closely. “I can tell you that the writer used a quill—most likely a goose quill—and iron gall ink, made from oak galls and a few other components. At a rough guess, I’d say that whoever wrote it lived sometime in the mid-seventeenth century. Handwriting styles are difficult to date precisely because old styles continue to be used long after new styles come into fashion.”

  “I’m impressed,” Amelia admitted.

  “I used to work with rare books and manuscripts,” I explained, handing the piece of parchment back to her. “Do you know what it says?”

  “Yes, I do, thanks to Alfie. He studied and translated the…” Her words trailed off and she peered at me diffidently. “I don’t wish to bore you, Lori. You will tell me when I’ve droned on too long, won’t you?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, waving off her concern. “Some people like comic books and some like paperback thrillers. I like the old, dusty stuff.” I pointed to the parchment. “This is my idea of pizza and a movie.”

  “Very well, then.” Amelia returned the document to the biscuit tin, moistened her throat with a sip of tea, and began, “My brother Alfred never married and he had no children. As his only sibling, I inherited all of his possessions. I discovered the parchment after his death, when I was sorting through his things.” She touched the biscuit tin. “He kept it in the tin, under his bed, along with a notebook containing his English translation of the text and all the information he’d been able to gather about it.”

  “How did he come by it?” I asked.

  “He found it among the papers of one of our great-grandfathers,” said Amelia, “an eccentric antiquarian named John Jacob Bowen. John Jacob was an interesting character—a typical Victorian magpie. He collected all sorts of curiosities, simply for the pleasure of having them about. He purchased the parchment from a cobbler who claimed that it had fallen out of his chimney.”

  “A strange place to store parchment,” I commented.

  “Is it?” Amelia smiled enigmatically, then continued, “John Jacob examined the parchment before he bought it, of course. I believe it interested him because the man who wrote the text identified himself as Gamaliel Gowland. Gowland is a family name, you see. John Jacob may have believed that Gamaliel Gowland was a distant relation.”

  “Was he?” I asked.

  “As it turns out, yes,” said Amelia, with a satisfied air. “John Jacob was too busy accumulating oddities to give the parchment the attention it deserved, but Alfie wasn’t. He discovered that the memoir’s author, Gamaliel Gowland, was a many-times-great-granduncle of ours who served as the rector of St. George’s Church from 1649 to 1653.” She gave me an approving nod. “Your guess wasn’t so rough after all, Lori. The memoir was indeed written in the mid-seventeenth century.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Let’s back up a step. Are you telling me that your many-times-great-granduncle Gamaliel was a rector at St. George’s Church in Finch?”

  “Yes, I am,” said Amelia.

  “Wow,” I marveled, almost spilling my tea in my excitement. “I’d give my eyeteeth to read his memoir—and I’m terrified of the dentist. It’d be worth it, though, to read a firsthand account of everyday life in seventeenth-century Finch. The vicar and his wife will go bananas when they find out what you have. Where’s the rest of it?” I shrank back in my chair as a dreadful possibility occurred to me. “Please don’t tell me it was lost or destroyed, Amelia. I don’t think I could stand it.”

  “I can assure you that it wasn’t lost or destroyed. Here.” Amelia took an ordinary, spiral-bound notebook from the biscuit tin, opened it to a specific page, and passed it to me. “It will save time if you read Alfie’s translation for yourself.”

  I took the notebook from her and read her brother’s spiky, cramped scrawl silently.

  I, Gamaliel Gowland, rector of St. George’s Church in Finch, writing alone at night in my private study, record in a secret memoir that which is too dangerous to speak. I tell the forbidden tale of Mistress Meg, known to some as Margaret Redfearn, a fearsome and most potent witch. To write the witch’s tale is to risk calamity for me and for my congregation. I will, therefore, divide and hide my memoir in hopes that it will be found by one who does not fear retribution, long after I and those I serve are with Our Lord. If you would seek the truth, follow the signs (clues?).

  Alfred’s English translation ended with a faithfully copied rendition of the glyph I’d observed at the end of Gamaliel’s Latin text: a cross within a shield-shaped lozenge.

  I handed the notebook back to Amelia and she laid it in her lap.

  “The memoir wasn’t lost or destroyed,” she said. “It was hidden. Gamaliel hid it because it contained a tale that mig
ht spell trouble for him and his congregation, namely, the story of Mistress Meg.”

  I nodded sagaciously. “Witchcraft was a pretty touchy subject in the seventeenth century.”

  “Witchcraft was regarded as a crime punishable by death,” Amelia stated firmly. “To praise it would be to risk dire punishment by church or civil authorities—sometimes both. To condemn it would be to risk a witch’s retribution. It’s not clear whether Gamaliel was afraid of the authorities or of Mistress Meg. All I know for certain is that he separated the pages of his forbidden tale and concealed them in various hiding places.”

  “Such as a cobbler’s chimney,” I said, as comprehension dawned. “Did the cobbler live in Finch, too?”

  “He lived directly across the lane from St. George’s,” Amelia informed me, “in Plover Cottage.”

  “Gamaliel hid the first page of his memoir in Plover Cottage?” I said, astonished. “Opal Taylor lives there now. She’ll be gobsmacked when she hears what was stuffed up her chimney.”

  “As rector, Gamaliel would have had ready access to Plover Cottage,” Amelia went on. “It would have been a simple matter for him to place the parchment in the chimney.” She glanced at her brother’s photograph. “Alfie believed that Gamaliel hid all of the pages in and around Finch. He was convinced that they’re still in their hiding places, waiting to be found.”

  “It’d be a tall order to find them now,” I said. “You’d have to poke your arm up an awful lot of chimneys.”

  “Not necessarily.” Amelia tapped her finger on the spiral notebook. “Gamaliel states explicitly that he left behind a series of clues that would lead a truth seeker to the rest of the memoir.” She held up the notebook and pointed to the curious symbol at the end of the text. “Alfie believed that the glyph, as you called it, was the first of Gamaliel’s clues. Unfortunately, he was unable to decipher it.”

  “Did your brother ever come to Finch?” I asked. “He might have understood the glyph better if he’d seen the village with his own eyes.”

  “Alfie was unable to visit Finch,” said Amelia. “My brother was severely handicapped, Lori. He used his computer and the Royal Mail to carry out his research because travel was all but impossible for him. It was the fondest dream of his heart to read Mistress Meg’s story, but illness prevented him from completing his life’s work.” She turned her head to gaze up at her brother’s smiling face. “I intend to complete it for him.”

  I sat in silence, touched by the bond that seemed still to exist between Amelia and Alfred, a bond that I, as an only child, had never known. I was humbled by her willingness to share her home with him, despite his disabilities, and I admired her determination to carry out what appeared to be a fairly daunting task. I was about to ask her where she planned to start when a knock sounded on the front door.

  “I’ll answer it,” I said promptly.

  I placed my jam jar on the silver tray and hastened to the door, wondering if the infamous Myron Brocklehurst had already solved the riddle of Amelia Thistle. I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw Sally Pyne and Henry Cook peering at me through the rain, holding an oversized wicker hamper between them.

  “Good morning, Lori,” Sally said brightly. “Henry was convinced he’d seen you here earlier. I told him he must have been mistaken, because you of all people would know better than to bother a new neighbor on her first day in the village, but I can see now that he was right.”

  It required very little effort on my part to translate Sally’s words into Finch-speak. If you can break a village tradition, she was saying, so can I. I suspected that a good many others would feel the same way.

  “Is Mrs. Thistle at home?” Sally asked.

  “Yes,” said Amelia, appearing at my elbow. “Won’t you come in?”

  Sally accepted the invitation with alacrity and let Henry make the introductions while her head swiveled this way and that, taking in every detail of the front room. Henry had to nudge her with his elbow to get her to stop gawking long enough to offer the hamper to Amelia.

  “Henry and I made up some sandwiches and a few other tidbits to tide you over until you’ve stocked your pantry,” she explained. “And Henry’s taken the rest of the day off.”

  “I’m under orders from my Sally to get you settled in.” Henry patted his broad chest. “If you need help with the heavy lifting, I’m your man.”

  “You’re on,” I said, clapping Henry on the shoulder.

  “Is he?” said Amelia.

  “Of course he is.” I turned to Sally and Henry. “Why don’t you bring the hamper through to the kitchen? Amelia and I will join you in a minute.”

  I expected Sally and Henry to leap at the chance to inspect Amelia’s kitchen and they didn’t disappoint me. They sped down the narrow passageway as if they were on rocket-propelled roller skates, leaving me and my hostess alone in the front room.

  “Amelia,” I said quietly. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, you’re about to get an influx of visitors.”

  “N-not…,” she faltered.

  “No, not Bowenists,” I said hastily. “Just your normal, everyday neighbors. Don’t mention Mistress Meg or Uncle Gamaliel to them just yet. They might think you’re a little crazy. But use them,” I urged. “Send Sally to the Emporium with a shopping list. Let her stock your pantry. Put everyone else to work unpacking your boxes and organizing your new home. I promise you, they’ll be willing to oblige.”

  “Such a friendly village,” she said with a contented sigh. “One question, though: Why must we do everything at once?”

  “Because you won’t be able to think straight until you tame your cottage,” I said. “And you’ll need to think straight while we’re searching for Uncle Gamaliel’s forbidden memoir.”

  “We?” she said hopefully. “You mean, you’ll help me?”

  “Try stopping me,” I said, grinning. “Put your house in order today, Amelia. Tomorrow you and I launch a witch hunt!”

  Eight

  While Sally and Henry exchanged views on the kitchen’s decor, Amelia and I exchanged telephone numbers. I promised to call her as soon as I’d devised a plan of action, left her to make the most of her volunteer work force, and headed for home.

  As I drove over the humpbacked bridge, I spotted Millicent Scroggins, Opal Taylor, Elspeth Binney, and Selena Buxton in my rearview mirror, bobbing along under a cluster of black umbrellas, toting a covered casserole dish apiece. I didn’t have to be clairvoyant to figure out where those casserole dishes would end up. Having watched Sally Pyne, Henry Cook, and me enter Pussywillows, the ladies had plainly decided that it was their turn to shatter a time-honored village tradition by paying a premature call on their newest neighbor.

  “Reinforcements are on their way, Amelia,” I muttered. “Let them find your pots and pans!”

  I had no doubt whatsoever that the Handmaidens would regard pawing through Amelia’s possessions as a golden opportunity to gauge her chances in the Willis, Sr., marriage sweepstakes. In return for allowing them to gather vital information about her furnishings, finances, and fashion sense, Amelia would gain four energetic helpers and a week’s worth of nutritious nosh. It seemed like a fair trade to me.

  I would have turned back to give Amelia a few pointers on how to handle the Handmaidens, but I had other fish to fry. I wanted to squeeze in an hour or so of historical research before I sat down to lunch. Fortunately, I knew exactly where to find an expert on local history.

  Rain was streaming from the slate roof when I reached the cottage. Rivulets raced down the graveled drive, the flagstone path was strewn with soggy leaves, and fat drops dripped from the rose trellis onto my head as I opened the front door. It was such a great day for playing in puddles that I made a mental note to bring a few bath towels with me when I went to pick up the boys.

  I shed my wet parka and sneakers in the front hall, said hello to Stanley, who was keeping Bill’s armchair warm in the living room, and padded damply up the hallway to the study. My cold feet co
mpelled me to stoke a blazing fire in the hearth before sharing the morning’s headlines with Reginald.

  “Miranda Morrow isn’t the first witch to live in Finch,” I told my pink bunny. “Her predecessor was called Mistress Meg, but whether Mistress Meg was a good witch or a bad witch remains to be seen.”

  I could tell by the glimmer in Reginald’s eyes that he was riveted. Smiling, I touched a fingertip to his snout, reached for the blue journal, and sat with it in one of the tall leather armchairs near the hearth.

  “Dimity?” I said. “I have met Amelia Thistle!”

  The fluid lines of royal-blue ink began to scroll across the page, but they didn’t get very far.

  And?

  “And I asked her if she was Mae Bowen,” I said.

  And?

  “No shouting, no slapping, no demands for my departure,” I replied.