Free Aunt Dimity: Detective by Nancy Atherton Page A

“Let’s hope she’s in a chatty mood.”
    â€œIf she’s not, I’m sure you’ll put her in one,” I commented.
    â€œI can but try.” Nicholas opened the door and stood aside to let me enter first.
    Sally Pyne was short and round and highly energetic. She’d already cleared the tables and reset them for the lunch crowd and was sitting at the table nearest the cash register, sampling one of her own excellent jam doughnuts, when we arrived. I motioned for her to stay seated while we joined her at the table, but she insisted on fetching a plateful of jam doughnuts and a pot of tea for two from the kitchen.
    â€œSally Pyne,” I began when she’d resumed her seat, “may I introduce—”
    â€œNicholas Fox,” she broke in, “the vicar’s nephew. You two are thick as thieves these days. Bill out of town again?”
    Aunt Dimity would, I thought, be delighted to hear how closely my neighbors were monitoring my behavior during my husband’s absence. If I were ever foolish enough to have an affair, I decided, it would have to take place a long, long way from Finch.
    While Sally demolished the jam doughnut, I presented her with the Pyms’ gingerbread. It was a coals-to-Newcastle sort of gift for someone with Sally’s baking skills, but she was impressed by the sisters’ handiwork. They’d cut the cookies in four basic shapes—a cross, a paschal lamb, a palm frond, and a lily—and adorned them with intricate patterns of edible gold leaf.
    After Sally had tucked the box of gingerbread behind the cash register, I carefully explained that my husband would be home on Saturday and that Lilian Bunting had asked me to entertain her nephew during his visit because the vicar wasn’t feeling well.
    Sally huffed triumphantly when she heard about the vicar. “He’s probably worried sick about who’s going to do the font for Easter. He knows better than to ask me.”
    â€œWhat a pity.” Nicholas sounded truly disappointed. “I was so looking forward to seeing your arrangement, Mrs. Pyne. My aunt tells me that you’re magical with moss.”
    â€œVicar should’ve remembered that when he sacked me,” Sally retorted.
    â€œIndeed, he should have.” Nicholas nodded gravely. “I believe he meant well when he reassigned the task to Mrs. Hooper. He was trying to make a new parishioner feel welcome.”
    â€œA new parishioner.” Sally snorted derisively. “A blood-sucking piranha, more like. Vicar was bamboozled by Pruneface’s smarmy flattery. She was sweet as honey when she saw something she wanted, and what she wanted was to snub me. ”
    Nicholas leaned forward. “Why on earth would she want to snub you?”
    â€œBecause I tossed her beastly grandson out of my tearoom.” Sally pointed to a spot on the wall above the cash register, crying indignantly, “He broke my clock!”
    I looked up and noticed for the first time that the glorious sunburst clock had been replaced by a cat-shaped plastic timepiece with hideous ticktocking eyes, a dial in its belly, and a swinging pendulum tail.
    â€œCame in here with a football, the little beast, and threw it when I told him not to. Knocked my beautiful clock right off the wall,” Sally went on. “I could’ve wrung his fat neck, but I just told him to get out. Next thing I know, Vicar’s given the font to Pruneface.” She paused to catch her breath. “Now, you may think I’m adding two plus two and getting five, but—”
    â€œI don’t,” I interrupted. “Kit Smith had a run-in with Mrs. Hooper, involving her grandson, and she made him regret it.”
    Sally was all ears as I told her about the incident at the Anscombe Manor stables and the rumor Mrs. Hooper had spread to punish Kit for refusing to let her grandson ride Zephyrus.
    Nicholas, on the other hand, was all eyes. I