Aunt Dimity: Detective Part 13

The baptismal font in Saint George's Church was nearly a thousand years old. The imposing stone bowl had once been embellished with bold reliefs depicting fanciful creatures and plants, but the carvings had worn away with the pa.s.sage of time, leaving only faint b.u.mps and hollows to hint at the font's former glory.

The ma.s.sive stone bowl stood atop its blunt pillar at the far end of the south aisle, in a shadowy recess opposite the Lady Chapel. Come Easter the bowl would be spilling over with lilies and drooping ferns, but the sweetly perfumed blossoms would do little to soften the font's air of austere authority.

I was here before the Church of England, it seemed to say, and I will be here long after you have gone.

It was a strange place to choose for a confession, but it was the place Peggy Taxman chose. Nicholas's astonishing declaration had shaken her visibly, but she was, as her husband claimed, a formidable woman. She remained on her feet long enough to stagger over to a handful of folding chairs cl.u.s.tered around the font, leftovers from the most recent christening. I wondered if Peggy had selected the spot for my benefit, to remind me of my "abandoned" babes, who'd both been baptized there.

When we reached the shadowy recess, Peggy seemed to run out of steam. Her face went slack; she collapsed onto a folding chair and lost her grip on her purse. The black bag opened as it fell to the floor, and a host of objects came tumbling out. Among them was a tiny stuffed animal, a brown monkey with a tan face and ears. He was faded and worn at the seams, as if he'd been with Peggy for a long, long time.

Nicholas went down on his knees to collect Peggy's things. He returned the wallet, handkerchief, date book, pens, and lipstick to the purse, but when he picked up the monkey, Peggy stretched out her hand peremptorily.

"Give him to me," she ordered.

Nicholas handed the tiny toy to her and set the purse on a vacant chair. As Peggy ran a thumb over the monkey's round and smiling face, Nicholas and I sat in chairs I'd placed opposite hers. We were close enough to hear her easily but not so close as to make her feel trapped.

The rhinestones on her pointy gla.s.ses glinted as she raised her eyes from the monkey's face to mine. "You've told your husband the truth, have you?"

I nodded. "I told Bill that I was attracted to Nicholas but that I hadn't done anything with him that I couldn't do in front of my sons. That's the truth. Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you."

"Did Bill believe it?" she asked.

I nodded again.

Her eyes narrowed. "Angry, was he? About the attraction, I mean."

"He wasn't jumping for joy," I admitted. "But he appreciated the fact that I'd been honest with him."

"Takes courage to be honest," Peggy acknowledged, looking down at the brown monkey.

"You're a courageous woman, Mrs. Taxman." Nicholas sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands loosely clasped, a humble priest counseling a parishioner. "You're one of the most courageous women I've encountered. You've been doing your level best, under profoundly difficult circ.u.mstances, to protect your husband from a truth he might find painful."

"Poor Jasper," she murmured, "thinking so highly of me when all along . . ." Her words trailed off. She shifted slightly in her chair, pulled her coat collar more closely around her throat, and cupped the monkey in her hands.

"Prunella Hooper knew the truth," Nicholas said quietly. "She also knew why you felt you couldn't share it with your husband."

Peggy could have walked away at any moment, but Nicholas held her there with an unspoken promise of understanding, compa.s.sion, and forgiveness. His gentleness enfolded her anger and extinguished it, like a soft blanket thrown over a rising flame. Without using force of any kind, he forced her to see that, having been caught out in one lie, it was best to dispense with them all. Peggy surrendered to him without a whisper of protest.

"It started long before Prunella," she told him. "I was eight years old when my parents packed me off to Finch, to keep me safe from the blitz. I didn't go back to Birmingham till I was fifteen. I was bored to death with the country by then and raring to have a go at real life." She reached up to pat her hair, as if remembering what it had been like to be a fifteen-year-old girl taking on the big city. "Thought I knew everything there was to know, in those days. Got myself a job in a servicemen's canteen."

"A canteen?" I said. "Wasn't the war over by then?"

Peggy gave me a scornful glance. "You think soldiers run off home the minute peace is declared? Don't be daft, girl. There were millions of battle-weary men on the move all round the world and fresh ones sailing to England every day. There're still American servicemen in England, but there were more of them, in those days."

I sat back and listened, fascinated.

"There was one boy, an American fresh from training camp," Peggy went on. "He'd missed the proper war, but he came over to do his duty nonetheless. He was stationed in London, but they sent him to Birmingham to survey the reconstruction work." Peggy raised her head and stared into the middle distance while her thumb continued to stroke the monkey's face. "He came to the canteen one day. Wasn't much older than me. Had thick dark hair and hazel eyes and fine white teeth. He looked so handsome and clean in his uniform, and he was friendly, outgoing, the way Americans are. I was over the moon before he ever said boo to me."

Peggy looked down at the monkey, and I gazed at her, trying to picture the slim, bonny girl she'd once been. I imagined her gliding through a sea of panting males toward the one man who'd caught her eye, an outgoing, dark-haired boy who was far from home.

"Told him I was eighteen," Peggy said, "same as I told everyone else. Don't think he'd've looked at me twice if he'd known my real age. But he did look at me, more than twice, and after that he came to Birmingham every chance he got. Took me to funfairs and the pictures." She held up the monkey. "Won Sam for me target shooting. Named him after Uncle Sam because, he said, Uncle Sam had made monkeys of us all. He was brash like that, daring, and I loved it." Peggy smiled down at Sam. "Mark Leese, his name was. J. Mark Leese. Said he'd tell me what the J stood for after we were married."

I frowned and glanced at Nicholas before asking hesitantly, "Wasn't your first husband named Kitchen?"

"Didn't say I married Mark Leese, did I?" Peggy snapped. "Didn't get the chance. He was blown up."

I winced, and Nicholas lowered his eyes.

"Happened in London," she said gruffly. "A team of experts was defusing an unexploded bomb. Mark was cycling past when it went off. Killed the experts. Killed him." She blew a harsh breath through her nostrils and glared at me. "You think a war is over just because a few old men say it is? There's bombs and mines and ammo dumps just waiting to carry on killing. They're still digging up bombs from the first war, over there in France and Belgium. But Mark Leese's bomb was in London, and it killed him."

The tragedy tugged at my heart across more than half a century. The war had stolen most of Peggy's childhood. It seemed unspeakably cruel that it should s.n.a.t.c.h her first love from her as well. I could think of nothing adequate to say, but beside me, Nicholas stirred.

"It was a long time ago, Mrs. Taxman," he said. "Don't you think your husband would understand if you told him that you were once in love with an American soldier?"

Peggy turned her face toward the altar to avoid Nicholas's gaze. "He might," she allowed stiffly. "But he wouldn't understand about the baby."

My jaw dropped. I looked from Peggy's shuttered face to the baptismal font and felt a chill of apprehension. "There was a baby?"

Peggy shifted Sam from one hand to the other. "I told you. I thought I knew everything in those days, but I didn't. Found out I was pregnant after Mark had been blown up. My mother and father were so ashamed that they sent me north to Whitby, to live with an aunt until the baby came, so no one at home would know what kind of girl I'd turned out to be."

"Whitby," Nicholas said under his breath.

If Peggy heard him, she gave no sign.

"My auntie wanted me to stay indoors, knitting balaclavas for displaced refugees," she said. "But I was fifteen. I couldn't sit still for nine minutes, let alone nine months, so I'd sneak out while she was at church. That's how I met Prunella. . . ."

Shadows drifted across the dim recess as Peggy told her tale, her voice rising and falling with the rhythm of the rain. Prunella Hooper had been born and raised in Whitby. Her mother's boardinghouse had been two doors down from the house in which Peggy had stayed. Prunella had noticed Peggy's solitary strolls and decided one day to befriend her.

"She asked me in for a cup of tea," Peggy told us. "I was so bored and lonely that I nearly wept with grat.i.tude. After that, we met every week for a cup of tea in her mother's kitchen."

The two girls soon discovered that they had much in common. They were the same age, and both had been evacuated to rural villages during the war. Peggy played it safe, at first, and stuck to stories about the years she'd spent in Finch, living above the Emporium with Mr. Harmer and his family. But Prunella proved to be a good listener, an ideal confidante, and Peggy needed desperately to talk with someone about the dashing American soldier, J. Mark Leese. It eased her heart to speak his name aloud, and before too long she'd told Prunella everything.

"Prunella wasn't a bit shocked," said Peggy. "I suppose she'd seen it all, growing up in a boardinghouse. Whatever the case, she didn't go on at me the way my auntie did, and I was grateful. She was my only friend, in those days." Peggy's gaze came to rest on the stone font. "Then the baby came. It was a boy. My auntie had it adopted and sent me home."

Her careful use of the neutral p.r.o.noun was nearly as heartbreaking as her rushed account of the baby's birth. Had she been allowed to hold her son before giving him up? Or had the child been spirited away before a bond could form between him and his young mother? I took one look at Peggy's stolid expression and couldn't bring myself to ask.

"I'd promised to keep in touch with Prunella," Peggy continued. "But after I came home I didn't want to remember Whitby, so I never answered her letters. I married Mr. Kitchen, and when he died, I came back to Finch and bought the Emporium from old Mr. Harmer. Then I married a second time. That was Jasper. Never told my husbands about Mark Leese or the baby. Never saw the need."

The need arose when Prunella Hooper sent a letter to Finch.

"It came last autumn, a week after Harvest Festival," Peggy said. "Don't know how she tracked me down. I suppose she remembered the stories I'd told her about the Emporium."

Prunella had expressed a friendly interest in Peggy's affairs and brought Peggy up-to-date on her own. In the closing paragraph Prunella had described her son's recent move to Birmingham and her own desire to come south, to be nearer her grandson. She'd asked if Peggy knew of a place that would suit her.

"Wish I'd burnt the letter," Peggy growled, "but like a fool, I wrote back. Told Prunella I couldn't help her." Her blue eyes glittered fiercely. "I didn't want her coming here, reminding me of things I wanted to forget."

It was too late, however. Prunella wrote again to say that she'd seen Crabtree Cottage listed with other holiday homes in a tourist office in Birmingham. She thought Crabtree Cottage would suit her splendidly if she and Peggy could come to terms on the rental fee.

"She asked if I had fond memories of the time we'd spent together." Peggy's voice was taut with fury. "She made it sound harmless, an old friend reminiscing, but I could read between the lines. Then she showed up, bold as bra.s.s, at the Emporium-with Jasper behind the counter!-pa.s.sing herself off as an old chum from Birmingham."

"You allowed your husband to believe her," Nicholas pointed out. "You supported her story."

"Had no choice," Peggy retorted. "It was play her game or have her tell Jasper what sort of woman he'd married."

Peggy played Prunella's game. She charged Prunella nothing to live in Crabtree Cottage, and when Prunella asked for money to buy her beastly grandson the latest sneakers or the newest computer games, Peggy supplied it. Peggy defended her in public and cursed her in private. If Peggy lost her temper or threatened to rebel, Prunella brought her back in line by wondering aloud what had become of the fine baby boy Peggy had left behind in Whitby.

I glanced upward. The drumming on the roof had lessened, and dappled shadows raced across the memorial tablets, as if the sun had broken through the scudding clouds. Peggy had fallen into a meditative silence, and Nicholas appeared to be lost in thought.

As I turned Peggy's story over in my mind, I saw that it revealed more about her than perhaps she realized. I'd thought her deranged when she'd accused me of abandoning my sons, but I understood her rage better now that I knew she'd been forced to abandon her child. The strict moral code by which she judged Kit, Nicholas, and me had its roots in her own hard experience. Her love for Mark Leese had cost her dearly, and she'd been Nell Harris's age when she'd paid the price.

How could she help seeing a reflection of her vulnerable, arrogant, fifteen-year-old self in Nell? How could she restrain her hostility toward Kit if she thought he was preying on a young girl? And how could she turn a blind eye to my behavior with Nicholas when any hint of immorality would trigger memories of her own fall from grace?

"It's not just that I was in love with Mark," Peggy said haltingly. "It's not just that I had a baby out of wedlock. Jasper might understand about those things." The corners of her mouth trembled. "What he wouldn't understand is my giving the baby away. He always wanted a son, you see. He could've had mine if I hadn't let them . . ." She put a hand to her mouth. "I wanted to give Sam to the boy so he'd have something from his father, but they took him away before I-" A tear fell on the monkey's smiling face.

If I'd had no other reason to despise Prunella Hooper, the sight of Peggy Taxman reduced to tears would have been reason enough. Mrs. Hooper hadn't merely stuck a knife in Peggy's back. She'd twisted and turned it and thrust it in more deeply with each jab.

"Why do you put flowers on her grave?" I asked, bewildered.

Peggy cleared her throat. "My parents are gone. My auntie is gone. Prunella was my last link with the child I gave up, my last link with Mark." She wiped a tear from her cheek. "I'm grieving for Mark and my baby as much as Prunella, and I'm grieving for the girl she used to be. Prunella Hooper was a good friend to me in those days, my only friend. I'd never have believed she could turn so wicked."

Chapter 20.

Peggy returned Sam to her purse and withdrew a nononsense plain white cotton handkerchief. She dried her eyes and wiped her gla.s.ses, tucked the handkerchief in beside Sam, and closed the purse. She seemed becalmed, as if she'd absolved herself of responsibility for whatever happened next. Having put her fate in our hands, she awaited judgment.

Nicholas ran his fingers through his damp hair and stood. He stepped up to the baptismal font and rested his palms on its rough rim. With his back to Peggy, he said, "You know what I have to ask."

"I didn't kill her," Peggy said.

"She was blackmailing you." Nicholas gave a weary, half-regretful sigh, as though he'd hoped to avoid pressuring Peggy. "She was tormenting and threatening you. You weren't with your husband on the morning of Mrs. Hooper's death. Where were you?"

"I was rearranging the display window at the Emporium when Prunella was killed," said Peggy. "I was setting up the lawn mower and the bolt of chintz. You can ask Billy Barlow, if you like. He waved to me as he and Buster went past."

Nicholas was reluctantly relentless. "When I last spoke with you, Mrs. Taxman, you gave me the distinct impression that you hadn't seen Mr. Barlow and Buster. You said you'd heard that he'd been up early that morning. You agreed that he might have been walking his dog. You tried to cast suspicion onto him."

Peggy roused herself. "Don't you think I know how bad it looks for me?" she barked. "If some ferret-faced detective finds out about the blackmail, I'll be first in line when it comes to handing out motives. I didn't want to draw attention to myself, so I . . ." She bit her lip and squirmed as I eyed her reproachfully.

"You drew attention to other people." Nicholas finished the sentence and turned toward Peggy. His face betrayed no emotion. "You told the police to question Kit Smith, didn't you, Mrs. Taxman?"

Peggy craned her neck, as if her coat collar were choking her. "Someone had to question him. All those letters coming in, drenched in perfume. It isn't right."

"It isn't his fault," I said. "Nell's infatuated with Kit. He's tried to discourage her, but she won't give it up." I paused before adding, "Nell's fifteen, Peggy. She thinks she knows everything there is to know."

Peggy shot a wounded glance at me. "That's why she has to be protected."

"Not from Kit," I said sternly, refusing to back down. "Kit's incapable of harming anyone but himself. You were wrong to hold him responsible for Nell's actions. You've been wrong about him from start to finish, and you owe him an apology."

"You also owe the police an explanation," Nicholas said. "You must tell them why you sent them to Ans...o...b.. Manor on a wild-goose chase."

Panic sparked in Peggy's eyes. "That would mean telling them . . . everything."

"The police will keep any information you offer confidential if it has no bearing on the crime," said Nicholas. "As will we." His expression softened, and a melancholy note entered his voice. "But I do wish you'd speak with your husband. He loves you dearly, Mrs. Taxman. It's my belief that he'll love you more dearly still when he knows what you've endured for his sake."

"I'll . . . consider it." Peggy got to her feet. "Are we finished?"

"For the time being," said Nicholas. "We may need to speak with you again, after we've spoken with Mr. Barlow." He made a gracious half-bow. "Thank you for confiding in us, Mrs. Taxman. I hope you understand why it was necessary."

Peggy sniffed. "When murder comes through the door, privacy goes out the window," she said tartly, starting for the door. "Any fool knows that."

"Mrs. Taxman," called Nicholas.

Peggy turned.

"I nearly forgot." Nicholas took a step toward her and smiled his most engaging smile. "My aunt has called for an extraordinary meeting of the Easter vigil committee to take place tomorrow at seven in the schoolhouse. She hopes that you and Mr. Taxman will be able to attend."

"Easter vigil committee?" Peggy frowned. "First I've heard of it. Tell your aunt she can count on us, though. Jasper and I never miss committee meetings. Good day to you both-and mind how you behave. Finch is a decent village, and I intend to keep it that way." With a haughty toss of her head, she opened the oak door and left the church.

Peggy's parting shot floored me, even as it filled me with grudging admiration. The confession that had reduced her to tears hadn't come close to quenching her cantankerous spirit, and I astonished myself by hoping that nothing ever would. Though she angered and annoyed me more than anyone on earth, I knew that Finch wouldn't be Finch without its dragon.

I turned my attention to Nicholas. He was no longer smiling. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets, gazing wistfully at the iron-banded oak door.

"A pillar of the community," he murmured. "I wonder how she'll fare once her story comes out."

"Peggy will continue to breathe fire until she stops breathing altogether," I said confidently. "They broke the mold when they made her. Thank G.o.d."

Nicholas allowed himself a brief, muted chuckle.

"You okay?" I asked.

"I'm a bit overwhelmed," he replied. "Who wouldn't be? It was a moving story."

"You're the one who got it moving." I stood and stretched. I felt as if I'd been sitting in one place for hours. "How did you know that Mrs. Hooper wasn't from Birmingham? Or was it a lucky guess?"

"It wasn't a guess." Nicholas opened the door and drew a deep breath of rain-washed air. A warm, humid breeze tugged at his hair and took the edge off the chill in the church. "The urgent telephone call I had earlier came from Aunt Lilian's G.o.ddaughter."

I scanned my memory for the reference. "The one who works at the police station?"

"That's the one. I asked her to pull up Mrs. Hooper's computer file." Nicholas took off his coat, shook residual raindrops from it, and folded it over his arm. "She discovered that Mrs. Hooper's place of birth was Whitby, not Birmingham. Mrs. Hooper lived in Yorkshire until she came to Finch."

I stared at my friend in dismay. I had no objection to receiving the odd snippet of information from Lilian Bunting's G.o.ddaughter, but I had serious reservations about pursuing those snippets intentionally. It seemed too much like spying on the police, which seemed an awful lot like something that could get him and Lilian's G.o.ddaughter arrested. Nicholas had once again behaved in a way I considered both risky and extreme.

I knew that Aunt Dimity, for one, would agree with me. She'd found it strange that Nicholas would go to such great lengths to discover who'd murdered a woman he'd never known-a woman with whom he had no personal connection. As Aunt Dimity's words came back to me, a startling idea took shape in my mind: What if Nicholas had a personal connection?