Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

Avail yourself of them. It’ll do you good to relax.”
    “If you insist,” I said, and after checking in with the boys, who were absorbed in making highly detailed drawings of fantastic helicopters, I followed Sir Percy’s advice. Although it felt a bit like fiddling while Rome burned, I pushed buttons on the headset controls until I heard an actor reading The Wind in the Willows, settled back in my capacious seat, and confounded my own prediction by falling instantaneously into a deep and mercifully untroubled sleep.

Four
    W hen I awoke, we were flying low over the sea. It had to be the sea, because even the largest lakes in the United Kingdom didn’t stretch out to the horizon in endless, rolling swells, but whether it was the North Sea or the Atlantic Ocean, I couldn’t tell.
    A glance at my wristwatch told me that I’d been asleep for nearly an hour. Will and Rob, who were now engaged in drawing fantastic whales, sharks, and octopi, looked up from their sketch pads and bobbed their heads cheerfully at me. I switched my headset back to intercom mode—cutting off, with some regret, a dramatic recitation of Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”—and asked them if Sir Percy had said anything about our destination while I slept, but Percy broke in before they could reply.
    “Lori, Lori, Lori,” he said sorrowfully. “Pumping your sons for information? For shame. For no good purpose, either. I promised your dear husband that I’d keep our destination secret, and secret it shall remain. For a few minutes longer, at any rate.”
    “A few minutes,” I echoed thoughtfully. It was the closest thing to a hint I’d heard since he’d mentioned Gretna Green, though admittedly it wasn’t a very helpful one. If we were only a few minutes from our destination, it had to be on a coast, but since Great Britain was an island, there were a lot of coasts to choose from. Sighing, I peered through the window and tried once more to figure out where Sir Percy was taking us.
    The sky was a pale, misty blue, but the sea was dazzling, a wrinkled sheet of aquamarine slashed with silver shards of sunlight. I spotted a small fishing boat floating among the glittering waves below us and an enormous oil tanker far out at sea, plowing steadily onward. It wasn’t until Will shouted “Land, ho!” that I looked away from the tanker and saw that we were approaching a small island.
    “Erinskil,” Sir Percy announced through the headphones. “The jewel of the Scottish isles and my little home-away-from-home. Yours, too, until it’s time for you to leave.”
    “The Scottish isles!” I exclaimed. “How wonderful!”
    “I’m glad you approve,” said Sir Percy.
    If I craned my neck to look through the windows on the twins’ side of the cabin, I could see a series of larger islands in the distance, but it was difficult to tell how far they were from Erinskil. If I squinted, I could just make out an even larger body of land beyond the islands.
    “Is the west coast of Scotland off there to our right?” I asked.
    “It is,” Sir Percy answered, and continued in the singsong voice of a well-practiced tour guide, “the golden isle of Erinskil lies forty miles west of the Scottish mainland, thirty-two miles from the nearest neighboring island. Fewer than two hundred souls live on Erinskil, spread comfortably over twenty square miles of occasionally arable land. The ferry visits our pleasant shores once a week, but tourists seldom come to call, thanks to our somewhat primitive landing facilities. An ideal retreat for those seeking peace and privacy, wouldn’t you say?”
    “I would,” I agreed wholeheartedly. Sir Percy’s solution to our security problem was, to my mind, nothing short of masterful. I’d sleep much better while Abaddon was on the loose, knowing that the twins and I were protected by such a formidable moat.
    “Shall I give you an aerial tour?” Sir Percy inquired.
    “Yes, please,” I said eagerly. I’d