Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch Read Online Free PDF Page A

I was tenacious, and I could be fiercely territorial, something the Bowenists would find out if they were foolish enough to invade my village.

Three
    M  y departure from Crabtree Cottage coincided with the moving truck’s departure from Pussywillows. By the time it lumbered past me on its way out of the village, the tearoom had emptied and small knots of chattering villagers had formed on the green. I knew for a fact that my neighbors were discussing Mrs. Thistle’s furnishings, and though I longed to hear every delicious detail, I resisted the urge to join them and scurried across the green to my husband’s place of business, Wysteria Lodge.
    Bill had transformed Wysteria Lodge into a thoroughly modern law office. He’d retained the undulating flagstone floors, the rough stone walls, the mullioned windows, and the gnarled vine that gave the lodge its rustic charm, but he’d filled the rooms with the tools of his trade—tons of legal tomes, mountains of paperwork, and the multitude of electronic devices that allowed him to serve his wealthy, international clientele from a modest building in a tiny English village.
    Since Bill’s profession frequently took him away from home, it was a treat to pay him an impromptu visit in the middle of a workday. I found him behind his desk with a half-eaten apple in one hand, poring over a sheaf of densely printed legal papers. He dropped the apple when he saw me and came around the desk to envelop me in a hug.
    My husband was a fine figure of a man, quite literally tall, dark, and handsome. He’d had a scraggly beard and a paunch when I’d first met him, but he’d gotten rid of both within a few years of our marriage, and replaced his heavy, horn-rimmed glasses with contact lenses. I’d loved Bill before his transformation and I would have gone on loving him if he hadn’t changed at all, but I had no strong desire to turn back the clock.
    “What’s the verdict?” he asked, sitting on the edge of his desk. “Did Mrs. Thistle pass muster? In my estimation,” he continued before I could answer, “she acquitted herself admirably in the furniture department: a tasteful collection of simple, solid antiques as well as a few custom-made pieces. What she didn’t inherit, she purchased from reputable craftsmen. Either way, I think it’s safe to assume that our new neighbor isn’t poor, which should make the vicar happy. If Mrs. Thistle is a churchgoer, she should be able to make a hefty donation to the church roof fund.”
    I scrutinized him carefully. My husband had never displayed the tiniest crumb of curiosity about Mrs. Thistle. He had, in fact, teased me mercilessly for being overtly interested in her, yet here he was, delivering a learned dissertation on all things Thistle. I couldn’t imagine what had come over him.
    “You didn’t watch them unload the moving truck, did you?” I asked.
    “From start to finish,” he said with gusto. “First the rugs, then the furniture, and finally, the boxes.” He heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Boxes are cruelly tantalizing. Do they contain songbooks, ferrets, clown shoes? It’s impossible to tell. Our new neighbor prolonged the agony by bringing with her quite a few boxes—far too many for a small place like Pussywillows—which led me to my first deduction.”
    “Which is?” I asked.
    “Mrs. Thistle is downsizing from a much larger home, but hasn’t yet realized what downsizing means,” Bill replied. “Which leads, in turn, to my second deduction.”
    “Out with it, Sherlock,” I said with a bemused smile.
    “The next few bring-and-buy sales will enjoy an infusion of new wares as Mrs. Thistle gradually unloads the items she can’t squeeze into the cottage. They should be quality items, too, if the furniture’s anything to go by, which will make for a nice change from thechipped teacups, the stained ashtrays, and the hideous lamps offered at the last few sales.” He cocked his head to one side and eyed me