Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Good Deed

A PENGUIN MYSTERY

AUNT DIMITYS GOOD DEED

Nancy Atherton is also the author of Aunt Dimitys Death (the winner of the Mystery Guild New Discovery Award), Aunt Dimity and the Duke, Aunt Dimity Digs In, Aunt Dimitys Christmas, Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, and most recently Aunt Dimity: Detective. She lives next door to a cornfield in central Illinois.

For

Mark G. McMenamin,

Patron of the Arts

1.

They say that three wishes are never enough, and maybe what they say is true. Thered been a time when, given a genie and a lamp, Id have wished for nothing more than a job I didnt hate and a rent-controlled apartment in the part of Boston that reminded me of England, a country Id loved since childhood.

My third wishthe result, no doubt, of a dreary first marriage and an even drearier divorcewould have been for a more or less stable relationship with a guy who wasnt a total creep, who would tell me the truth at least as often as he picked up his socks. Back then no one could have accused me of having great expectations. In those days my wildest dreams were so tame theyd eat out of your hand.

But when Aunt Dimity died, all of my wishes came true in ways Id never dreamt possible. Aunt Dimity left me a honey-colored cottage that actually was in England, and enough money to ensure that Id never have to work again. She also saw to it that her will was administered by a guy who was not only honest and scrupulously considerate about his socks, but head over heels in love with me.

Thanks to Aunt Dimity, Id had a fairy-tale courtship, complete with a Handsome Princefor so Bill Willis appeared to me, though he was neither handsome nor a princeand a cozy, honey-colored castle in which he had finally popped the question. It all happened so quickly, so effortlessly, that Id fallen deeply in love with Bill before I knew who he really was. And maybe thats where I made my mistake.

Because the trouble with a fairy-tale romance is everything that comes after. Id been married before, so I wasnt naiveI knew wed run into rough seas on occasionbut I never suspected that my own sweet Bill would try to sink the boat.

I thought I knew all there was to know about him. During our time together in Aunt Dimitys cottage, I watched expectantly for a fatal character flaw to surface, but it never did. Despite his slightly warped sense of humor, Bill Willis had been a comfortable, easygoing companion, a genuinely decent guy, and he remained that wayas long as we were in the cottage.

The problem was that Id never observed Bill in his natural environment. Id never seen him sitting behind his desk during regular working hours. Hed been on a vacation of sorts when Id met him, a long leave of absence from his familys law firma condition of Aunt Dimitys willand our courtship had taken place in strange and romantic surroundings. It had been a wonderful idyll, but it had in no way prepared me for life back in the States, where my relaxed and carefree fiance became a work-obsessed, absentee husband.

Even our honeymoon had been interrupted by a flurry of faxes from the firm. It had seemed amusing at the time, but in retrospect I saw it as an early sign of less amusing things to come.

Bills native habitat wasnt a cozy cottage, after all. Hed grown up in the Willis mansion, a national historic landmark occupying some of the priciest real estate in downtown Boston. We lived with Bills father, William Willis, Sr., in the mansions west wing and central block, but the east wing was devoted to the offices of Willis & Willis, one of the oldest and most prestigious law firms in New England. Willis & Willis could trace its roots back to before the Revolution, and so could most of its clientele, a fusty lot of old Bostonians whose litigious habits had made the Willis family rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

Bill had been born to serve a demanding bunch of blue-bloods, and the moment we got back to Boston, he vaulted into an endless round of phone calls, meetings, luncheons, banquets, and paperwork. Up before dawn and in bed after midnight, Bill ran like a rat in a cage, losing weight and adding lines of worry to a brow I seldom had the opportunity to smooth.

Bills manic schedule was designed, in part, to ease his fathers workload. Willis, Sr., hadnt asked for a lighter workload, but Bill wasnt convinced that his father knew what was best for him. My sixty-five-year-old father-in-law was usually in blooming good health, but he had a history of heart trouble, and Bill dreaded the thought of losing him. Gradually, Bill took over much of the day-today running of the firm, in order to reassure his father that all would be well with Willis & Willis should the old man decide to retire.

I suspected that Bill was trying to prove something to himself, as well. It wasnt always easy being the son of the great William Willis, Sr. It wasnt always easy being a Willis, period. Bills predecessors had been bringing glory to the Willis name since theyd come over from England; some had been judges, others had been congressmen, but all had done something remarkable. It was a weighty tradition to uphold, and Bill had reached an age, in his mid-thirties, when he felt the need to demonstrate that he was worthy of wearing the Willis mantle.

So my husband had good and understandable reasons for working himself into an early grave, and I had good and understandable reasons for tearing my hair out. The Handsome Prince Handbook is mute on the subject of chronic workaholismPrince Charming, apparently, knew how to delegateand I didnt know where else to turn for help. What do you do when life begins to go wrong and youve used up all three wishes?

I refused to sit around the mansion, pining. My friend and former boss, Dr. Stanford J. Finderman, had plenty of jobs for me to do. Stan was the curator of the rare-book collection at my alma maters library, and he was more than happy to stretch his tight academic budget by dispatching me to Englandat my own expenseto attend auctions or evaluate private collections.

For two long years, I threw myself into my work. I met scores of fascinating people and visited hundreds of beautiful places, and each assignment served to distract me from the low-pitched, incessant, and wholly irrational voice that murmured insidiously in the back of my mind: Its you. Youre why Bills keeping such long hours. Hes wondering why on earth he married you.

It was an absurd, ridiculous thought, yet it wouldnt go away, and as months flew by in which a dent in Bills pillow was the only sign I had that hed been to bed at all, I began to think it might contain a tiny germ of truth.

However much we had in common, Bill and I didnt share the same background. Hed been raised in a national historic landmark, for pitys sake, whereas Id grown up in a nondescript apartment building on Chicagos west side. He came from a long line of distinguished men and women whod sailed first-class from England before the United States was united. I came from Joe and Beth Shepherd, an overworked businessman and a schoolteacher, whose ancestors had probably paid for their passage to America by scrubbing decks. Id gone to a good college, but it was Bill who wore the Harvard crimson, and if it hadnt been for Aunt Dimity, my net worth wouldnt have equaled what my husband spent annually on shoelaces.

Id lost all the family I had when my mother died, but Bill still had his father, several cousins out on the West Coast, and two aunts who lived nearby in Boston. I hadnt met Bills cousins, but his father was an absolute peach, and we got along famously.