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.It was a durable cellular model, a Christmas gift from Derek inspired by Bill’s comment that Derek would have less trouble getting hold of his wife if he installed a phone booth in the garden.A phone booth would have been more practical, since Emma, a former computer engineer, had a somewhat cavalier attitude toward high-tech toys.The cellular phone had been hoed, raked, fertilized, and very nearly composted, so finding it buried at the bottom of a barrow ful of radishes was par for the course.I pulled the carrying case from a tangle of greens and passed it to Emma, then strolled over to the cucumber frames, out of earshot, where I waited until she’d finished her conversation.“That was Nell,” she called, dropping the phone back into the wheelbarrow.“She says William’s not at the cottage.”“He was there when I left,” I said, picking my way back to her.“Yes, but Nell says he’s not there now.In fact.” Emma bent to pull a tarp over the barrow, looking thoughtful.“When was the last time you heard from Dimity?”“What do you mean?” I asked, coming to an abrupt halt.“Aunt Dimity’s not at the cottage anymore.”Emma straightened.“Yes, but Nell says that William’s.disappeared.And she seems to think Aunt Dimity’s gone with him.”My stomach turned a somersault and the tilled earth seemed to shift beneath my feet.“Aunt Dimity?” I said faintly.“How—?”“I have no idea,” Emma replied.“That’s why we’re driving over to the cottage right now.Let’s go.” She pulled off her sunhat and tossed it onto the tarp, letting her dishwater-blond hair tumble to her waist as she hurried toward the central courtyard of the manor house, where her car was parked.I blinked stupidly at the barrow for a moment, then ran to catch up with her.“If Nell’s pulling my leg.” I began, but I left the sentence hanging.If Nell Harris was pulling my leg, I’d have to grin and bear it.Nell wasn’t the sort of child one scolded.Even so, I told myself as I climbed into Emma’s car, it had to be some sort of joke.My father-in-law was a kind and courtly gentleman.He was also as predictable as the sunrise.He wouldn’t dream of doing something as inconsiderate as “disappearing.” He simply wasn’t what you’d call a spontaneous kind of guy.I said as much to Emma while we cruised down her long, azalea-bordered drive.“William never even strolls into Finch without letting me know,” I reminded her.“And as for Aunt Dimity going with him—impossible.”“Why?” asked Emma.“Because she’s dead!” I cried, exasperated.“That’s never stopped her before,” Emma pointed out.I felt a faint, uneasy flutter in the pit of my stomach.“True,” I said.“But I mean really dead.Not like before.”Emma gave me a sidelong look.“Are you telling me there are degrees of deadness?”“I’m simply saying that the situation has changed,” I replied.“Dimity had unfinished business to take care of the last time she.visited.That’s why she couldn’t rest in peace.But we settled all of that two years ago.It’s over.She’s gone.”“Perhaps she has new business,” Emma suggested.“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.“Dimity can’t just flit in and out of the ether at will.” Because, if she could, I.added mutely, she’d have come through for me with some whiz-bang advice on How to Save My Marriage.“There must be rules about that sort of thing, Emma.”“If there are,” Emma commented dryly, “then I’m willing to bet Aunt Dimity’s rewriting them.”I opened my mouth to protest, but shut it again without saying a word.Emma had a point.Nothing about my relationship with Aunt Dimity had ever been remotely conventional.For starters, we weren’t related by blood or marriage but by a bond of friendship.Dimity Westwood had been my mother’s closest friend.They’d met in London during the war and kept up a flourishing correspondence long after my mother had returned to the States.When I was born, Dimity became my honorary aunt, and when my father died shortly thereafter, she did what she could to help my mother bear the twin burdens of a broken heart and a bawling baby.Dimity was always helping someone.She worked with war widows and orphans and parlayed a small inheritance into a considerable fortune, which she used to found the Westwood Trust, a philanthropic enterprise that was still going strong.Dimity had made a name for herself in the financial markets at a time when women didn’t do that sort of thing, and although she’d made enough money to kick back and swig champagne with the smart set, she’d chosen instead to live a reclusive life, going quietly about the business of doing good.Dimity Westwood hadn’t been a conventional woman, aunt, or millionaire, so why should she have a conventional afterlife? She’d already exploded the myth that hauntings had to be spooky.No moaning in the chimney for her, no materializing in an eerie green haze or rattling chains in the dead of night.When Aunt Dimity wanted to communicate with me across the Great Divide, her messages appeared on the pages of the blue journal, an unobtrusive little book bound in dark-blue leather.I still took the blue journal down from its shelf in the study every time I arrived at the cottage, still hoped to see Aunt Dimity’s fine copperplate curl and loop across the page, but my hopes had begun to fade.I’d told myself that it was foolish to expect to hear from Aunt Dimity again, because the problems that had bound her spirit to the cottage had been solved—or so I’d thought.Why would she return now? What kind of “new business” would induce her to go anywhere with Willis, Sr.? Was he in some sort of trouble? What kind of trouble could a respectable, sixty-five-year-old attorney get into, sitting quietly in an armchair, reading a book?I’d asked myself so many questions that I felt a little dizzy.I didn’t know what to expect.But the first thing I noticed when we turned into my drive was that Willis, Sr.’s car was missing.3.I kept two cars in England: a secondhand black Morris Mini for my own use, and a shiny silver-gray Mercedes for my guests.When I was away, I garaged both cars in Finch with Mr.Barlow, the retired mechanic who’d come to depend on the income he earned banging out the dents and retouching the scratches I tended to accumulate whenever I drove in England.Mr.Barlow had ferried both cars from Finch to my graveled drive that morning, but only the Mini was there now.“William’s car is gone,” Emma noted, pulling in beside the black Mini and shutting off her engine.“Maybe he’s driven to Bath to see the bookseller Stan told him about.” A devoted armchair traveler, my father-in-law had assembled a splendid collection of books on Arctic exploration.He was always on the lookout for new finds, so he might very well have taken my old boss’s advice and gone to see a man in Bath about a book.Emma maintained a wait-and-see attitude, but I got out of the car and walked back along the driveway to the edge of the road, studying the tire marks in the gravel.Each set curved out of the driveway in the direction of Finch except one, which turned in the opposite direction.“See that?” I said triumphantly, pointing to the gravel.“William turned south, in the direction of Bath.I’m sure that’s where he is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]