Aunt Dimity and the Summer King (20 page)

She picked up the receiver, listened intently, said, “Thank you, Mrs. Dinsdale,” and returned the receiver to its cradle.

“I'm sorry, Lori,” she said, “but you'll have to excuse me. I'm showing a house in Tillcote in”—she glanced at her watch—“thirty minutes. If I don't leave now, I'll be late and I don't like to keep my clients waiting.”

Bess made a noise she'd never made before, a pathetic mewl I didn't associate with any of her usual needs. I bent over her, but I could discover nothing wrong. She wasn't clamoring for a feed or complaining about anything in particular. Her diaper was dry, her clothes weren't bunched up, the pram's safety harness was fastened correctly, and there were no red marks to indicate that she'd whacked herself in the head with the rattle.

I was about to pick her up for an all-purpose cuddle when Marigold spoke.

“Poor thing,” Marigold cooed. “Is she hungry?”

I gazed into Bess's deep, dark eyes and thought fast.

“Yes,” I lied. “She's used to having a meal about now.” I sat up and grimaced apologetically at Marigold. “Would you mind if we . . .” I let my voice trail off in an unspoken appeal.

“Of course I wouldn't mind,” she said. “We mums must stick together.” She took a file from a desk drawer, placed it in a briefcase she'd retrieved from beneath the desk, and stood. “It was a pleasure to meet you and your daughter, Lori. If you ever decide to sell your home or to purchase another, I hope you'll think of me.” She beamed at us and strode to the door, saying, “Take all the time you need. I'll make sure Mrs. Dinsdale doesn't disturb you.”

“Thank you,” I said, lifting Bess from the pram.

“Not at all,” said Marigold.

She left the office, closing the door quietly behind her. I waited until the tap-tap-tap of her heels had faded into the distance, then kissed Bess all over her face, returned her to the pram, and darted behind the desk.

“Who's the clever baby?” I said while I scanned the file cabinets. “If I didn't know better, I'd say that your timing was perfect.” I looked over my shoulder at Bess, who was once again chewing contentedly on her shark, and laughed at my own silliness. As a mother of three, I knew for a fact that infants had terrible timing.

Happily, the file cabinets were arranged in alphabetical order. I opened the drawer containing the F files and began to rifle through the folders.

“I
knew
something fishy was going on,” I said to Bess. “What kind of company refuses to advertise? What kind of company throws its clients off the deep end in Finch? Aha!” I crowed as my fingers touched a folder labeled
FINCH
.

I yanked the folder from the drawer, opened it on Marigold's desk, and froze.

There, lying atop a thick sheaf of papers, was a dog-eared photocopy of a map I'd seen recently—a faded, yellowing, hand-drawn map of Finch.

I told myself it meant nothing. I told myself that the map could have been photocopied long before it had come into Arthur's possession. I told myself that there could be no possible connection between the beneficent Summer King and a vile developer. I pushed the dog-eared photocopy aside to examine the sheet of paper that lay beneath it.

My legs gave way and I sat heavily in Marigold's chair.

The letter sent by Monoceros Properties, Limited, to Marigold Edwards had been printed on stationery embossed with a simple line drawing of Hillfont Abbey. I traced the outline of the abbey's square tower with a trembling fingertip, then let my gaze drop slowly, almost fearfully, to the letter's closing.

“‘Sincerely yours,'” I whispered, “‘Arthur Hargreaves.'”

I
fixed my gaze on Bess and waited for my heart to stop pounding. Then I took a deep breath and read Arthur's letter from start to finish. It was a brief, cordial acknowledgment of Marigold's “most recent report” and a directive enjoining her to “continue to act in accordance with our agreement.”

“What report?” I muttered. “What agreement?”

I began to make my way through the file, scanning each piece of paper with a growing sense of perplexity.

Although there was no official title attached to Arthur's name, it rapidly became apparent that he was Marigold Edwards's principal contact at Monoceros Properties, Limited. Her job as the company's managing agent required her to compile reports for him concerning the house hunters she brought to Finch.

Her reports did not, however, contain standard real estate agent notes. They said nothing about a client's age, marital status, financial situation, employment record, or housing preferences.

Instead, Marigold had written detailed notes describing her clients' personality traits, such as the young lawyers' workaholism and the surgeon's narcissism, and their private tribulations. Her descriptions of the advertising executive's hives, the banker's rash, the surgeon's infected hair plugs, the computer engineer's weight issues, and the Oxford don's failed marriage were alarmingly familiar.

I skimmed her reports on other clients as well, clients the Handmaidens hadn't mentioned to me—a financial consultant, an obstetrician, a radiologist, and the economist Lilian Bunting had encountered at St. George's—and they all followed the same pattern: a personality assessment followed by a litany of ills.

Marigold concluded her reports with a description of each client's reaction to the total-immersion tour of Finch. Though her wording varied—some clients were “annoyed and offended,” while others were merely “spooked”—the responses were uniformly negative.

The sound of approaching footsteps spooked me. I shoved the folder back in its drawer, threw myself into my chair, and had Bess in my arms within seconds, but by then the footsteps had retreated.

Bess, on the other hand, had advanced, making it abundantly clear that she wasn't going anywhere until I'd kept my part of the bargain. I adjusted my top accordingly and while she dined, I telephoned Bill.

“Hello, love,” he said. “What's up?”

“Do you rent Wysteria Lodge?” I inquired.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Who collects your rent?” I asked.

“No one,” he answered. “I pay it online.”

“The online account must have a name,” I pointed out.

“I pay my rent to Monoceros Properties, Limited,” Bill said with a soft chuckle.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing, really,” he admitted. “I'm sure Monoceros is a perfectly respectable family name, but it's also the name of a constellation. The constellation's name is derived from a Greek word.”

“Greek may have been on your private-school syllabus,” I said impatiently, “but it wasn't taught in my public school. Translation, please.”

“Monoceros,” said Bill, “is the Greek word for unicorn.” He chuckled again. “I like the idea of paying rent to a mythical creature.”

“Bianca,” I breathed, envisioning the gift Harriet had bestowed upon Bess.

“Sorry?” said Bill. “Did you say something, Lori?”

“Not really,” I said, feeling dazed. “Look, Bill, I have to go. I'll talk to you later.”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm fine,” I said. “I just need to think.”

I dropped my cell phone into the diaper bag and gazed distractedly into thin air as I recalled the not-too-distant memory of standing beside Arthur in his splendid library while his dark-haired, impetuous granddaughter deciphered her family's coat of arms. The bulldog stood for tenacity, she'd explained, the honeybee stood for hard work, and the unicorn . . .

“The unicorn,” I murmured, “represents the power of the imagination.”

Had it amused Arthur to name his company after a potent family symbol? I asked myself.

“Why did he choose the unicorn?” I asked Bess. “Why not the bulldog or the honeybee? What does the power of the imagination have to do with Finch?”

I glanced suspiciously at the file cabinets, wondering how many more files on Finch I would find if I went through them thoroughly. I had a strange feeling that Marigold had sent Arthur reports, not only on the house hunters, but on everyone who lived in or near the village.

“Arthur knew things about me he shouldn't have known,” I said to Bess. “The first time we met him, when he came to fix your pram's axle, he called me Lori because he knew that everyone calls me Lori. He knew that I was from Finch and he knew that I had two young sons.”

Bess reached up to toy with my lips and I nibbled her fingers.

“Do you remember what Arthur said about your grandfather?” I asked her, somewhat indistinctly. “He knew that Grandpa was a retired attorney with a passion for orchids. He also knew about Grandpa's upcoming wedding. He knew things about Emma, too,” I went on. “When we were in the library, he called her ‘the other American' and talked about her riding school. He claimed that he ‘heard' things about Finch in a general way, as one does in the country. But maybe he heard about me and Emma and Grandpa from Marigold.”

I looked at the file cabinets again.

“What's his game?” I asked Bess. “Why is he so interested in Finch?”

I couldn't picture the Summer King as a developer.

He already owns the village, I argued internally. If he wanted to convert his properties to holiday homes, he wouldn't have allowed Amelia to lease Pussywillows. He wouldn't have allowed Elspeth, Opal, Millicent, and Selena to lease their cottages. He would have kept Mr. Barlow from leasing the house near the bridge and he would have had Marigold Edwards tell Bill to look somewhere else for office space.

I stroked Bess's pink cheek.

“Arthur Hargreaves isn't a greedy corporate creep,” I told her. “He's a . . . he's a . . . a teacher.”

My voice trailed away into horrified silence as I realized how Arthur might bring the power of the imagination to bear on Finch.

“They're scientists,” I said in hushed tones. “They like to conduct experiments.”

Arthur's grandson was an astrophysicist, his son was a rocket scientist, and his wife was a structural engineer. While they pursued advanced scientific careers, Arthur's younger grandchildren conducted experiments just for the fun of it.

There was Emily, who buried chicken bones for later excavation; Stephen, who used his Meccano set to construct complex machines; and Colin, the prankster, who thought it would be a good joke to make his grandmother's carriage clock run backwards. Even Harriet's pinwheel cookies were an experiment.

Then there were the kites, the marvelous kites that had been designed and built by a veritable horde of Hargreaveses.

It seemed as though the entire Hargreaves family was fond of experimentation, including Arthur's second nephew, the financier who was “creative, yes, but not in a good way.”

“And let's not forget Great-Great-Grandpa Quentin,” I said, “the inventor who built experimental models.” I caught my breath as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “No wonder Arthur bought a da Vinci sketch, Bess. Leonardo da Vinci was a scientific genius. He spent his whole life jumping from one experiment to the next.”

My horror morphed into anger as my train of thought picked up speed.

Had Arthur decided to conduct an experiment in Finch? I asked myself. Were my neighbors and Marigold's clients unwitting participants in a social engineering project he'd designed? Did he pick and choose residents based on criteria he'd devised? Did he plot the results of the immersion tours on a graph? Did he illustrate them with details taken from Marigold's reports? Was he planning to
publish
his findings?

The answers seemed all too obvious.

“How
dare
he?” I growled. “How dare he sit on his hill and look down on the rest of us? How dare he tinker with people's lives?”

Bess didn't react to my growling because she was asleep. I laid her gently in the pram, shut down the snack bar, and got to my feet. My meeting with Marigold Edwards had proved to be more revealing than Aunt Dimity could have imagined, but I'd gleaned all the information I could glean from Marigold.

To obtain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Monoceros Properties, Limited, I would have to confront Arthur Hargreaves.

 • • • 

I drove directly to Fairworth House, transferred Bess from her car seat to the pram, and headed for the orchid wood. I entered the Hillfont estate through the wrought-iron gate in the boundary wall, crossed the broad meadow, and walked beneath the arched opening in the outermost inner wall.

I passed through the apple orchard, the berry garden, the herb garden, the burgeoning vegetable garden, and the minor courtyards, and I found my way to the fountain court, guided by the distinctive shapes of the half-ruined walls I'd passed when I'd followed Arthur.

The fountain court was abuzz with activity. Stephen, Colin, Emily, and Harriet were there along with five other children I didn't recognize. The nine children appeared to be attaching tails to nine simple but brightly colored kites.

Dressed in a faded Hawaiian shirt, worn blue jeans, and battered sneakers, and adorned with his grape-wreath crown, Arthur stood in their midst, answering questions, giving advice, and lending a helping hand where one was needed.

“Bess!” Harriet cried when she spotted us. “Look, Grandad! It's Bess and Lori!”

She and the rest of the children dropped their kites and clustered around the pram to admire my daughter. Arthur smiled warmly and trailed after them.

“Hello again, Lori,” he said pleasantly. “You've arrived just in time to witness a mass launch.”

I refused to blow my stack in front of the children, but I didn't return Arthur's smile with one of my own.

“I'm not here to witness a launch,” I said coldly. “You and I need to talk.”

Arthur studied my face for a moment, then said lightly, “Harriet? I'll allow you to be launch leader if you promise not to be too bossy. Children? Take your kites to the meadow and give them a proper flight test. Lori?” He inclined his head toward the French doors. “Shall we repair to the library?”

While the chattering children collected their kites and ran out of the fountain court, I parked the pram beside the French doors, slung the diaper bag over my shoulder, and detached the bassinet. Arthur stretched out his hand, as if he wished to help me, but I pulled the bassinet out of his reach and carried Bess and the diaper bag into the library.

I placed bag and bassinet on the rug in front of the sofa and stood over them until Arthur had closed the French doors behind him. I then marched across the room to point accusingly at the map of Finch while I glared at him.

“Arthur Hargreaves!” I roared. “We are not your lab rats!”