Susan Wittig Albert Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - The Village Animals Confront a Crisis

  Chapter 2 - The Crisis Deepens

  Chapter 3 - ʺIt’s a Conundrum!ʺ

  Chapter 4 - In Which We Meet an Artistic Ferret and Learn More about a Manx

  Chapter 5 - Another Conundrum

  Chapter 6 - Bosworth Badger Is Perplexed

  Chapter 7 - Miss Potter Accepts an Assignment

  Chapter 8 - The Captain and the Vicar Confer

  Chapter 9 - The Captain Lays Down the Law

  Chapter 10 - At Applebeck Farm

  Chapter 11 - The Captain and the Major Make a Plan

  Chapter 12 - In Which We Hear a Ghost Story

  Chapter 13 - An Unlucky Chapter

  Chapter 14 - Miss Potter Puts on the Brakes

  Chapter 15 - Hyacinth Takes a Test

  Chapter 16 - Miss Potter Lets Something Slip

  Chapter 17 - In Which We Are Surprised

  Chapter 18 - The Lost Is Found, and Then Some

  Chapter 19 - Mr. Beecham, a Conundrum, and Another Surprise

  Chapter 20 - At Applebeck

  Chapter 21 - A Modest Proposal

  Chapter 22 - In Which All Conundrums Are Resolved—Or Are They?

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  China Bayles Mysteries by Susan Wittig Albert

  THYME OF DEATH

  WITCHES’ BANE

  HANGMAN’S ROOT

  ROSEMARY REMEMBERED

  RUEFUL DEATH

  LOVE LIES BLEEDING

  CHILE DEATH

  LAVENDER LIES

  MISTLETOE MAN

  BLOODROOT

  INDIGO DYING

  A DILLY OF A DEATH

  DEAD MAN’S BONES

  BLEEDING HEARTS

  SPANISH DAGGER

  NIGHTSHADE

  WORMWOOD

  AN UNTHYMELY DEATH

  CHINA BAYLES’ BOOK OF DAYS

  With her husband, Bill Albert, writing as Robin Paige

  DEATH AT BISHOP’S KEEP

  DEATH AT GALLOWS GREEN

  DEATH AT DAISY’S FOLLY

  DEATH AT DEVIL’S BRIDGE

  DEATH AT ROTTINGDEAN

  DEATH AT WHITECHAPEL

  DEATH AT EPSOM DOWNS

  DEATH AT DARTMOOR

  DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE

  DEATH IN HYDE PARK

  DEATH AT BLENHEIM PALACE

  DEATH ON THE LIZARD

  The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert

  THE TALE OF HILL TOP FARM

  THE TALE OF HOLLY HOW

  THE TALE OF CUCKOO BROW WOOD

  THE TALE OF HAWTHORN HOUSE

  THE TALE OF BRIAR BANK

  THE TALE OF APPLEBECK ORCHARD

  Nonfiction books by Susan Wittig Albert

  WRITING FROM LIFE

  WORK OF HER OWN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Frederick Warne & Co Ltd is the sole and exclusive owner of the entire rights titles and interest in and to the copyrights and trade marks of the works of Beatrix Potter, including all names and characters featured therein. No reproduction of these copyrights and trade marks may be made without the prior written consent of Frederick Warne & Co Ltd.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  Copyright © 2009 by Susan Wittig Albert.

  Interior map created by Peggy Turchette.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  eISBN : 978-1-101-13363-7

  1. Potter, Beatrix, 1866-1943—Fiction. 2. Women authors—Fiction. 3. Women artists—

  Fiction. 4. Country life—England—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.L2637T343 2009

  813’.54—dc22

  2009012791

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Peggy Moody,

  Webmistress, helper, and friend,

  with thanks for all

  you do

  Cast of Characters

  (* indicates an actual historical person or creature)

  People of the Land Between the Lakes

  Beatrix Potter* is best known for the series of children’s books that began with The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She lives with her parents, Helen and Rupert Potter, at Number Two, Bolton Gardens, in London, but spends as much time as possible at her farm, Hill Top, in the Lake District village of Near Sawrey. Mr. and Mrs. Jennings and their three children live in their part of the Hill Top farmhouse.

  Will Heelis* is a solicitor who lives in the nearby market town of Hawkshead. Well-known to everyone in Sawrey, he helps Miss Potter with her property purchases.

  Adam Harmsworth is the owner of Applebeck Farm at the edge of Far Sawrey. His wife, Ernestina, keeps the house, helped by Mr. Harmsworth’s fourteen-year-old orphaned niece, Gilly.

  Thomas Beecham (known to the villagers as Auld Beechie) is a former employee of Mr. Harmsworth’s. He now works as odd-jobs man at the Tower Bank Arms.

  Major Roger Ragsdale is president of the Claife Heights Ramblers, an association of fell-walkers. A retired military man, he lives in Teapot Cottage, Far Sawrey.

  Sarah Barwick operates the Anvil Cottage Bakery in Near Sawrey.

  Captain Miles Woodcock, who lives in Tower Bank House, is justice of the peace for Sawrey District and a trustee of Sawrey School. Elsa Grape cooks and keeps house for him.

  Vicar Samuel Sackett is the vicar of St. Peter’s Church in Far Sawrey. Mrs. Hazel Thompson
(a cousin of Agnes Llewellyn) keeps house for him.

  Margaret Nash is head teacher at Sawrey School. She lives in one of the Sunnyside Cottages with her sister, Annie Nash, a piano teacher.

  Bertha Stubbs and her husband, Henry, live in the Lakefield Cottages. Bertha, a tempestuous character, cleans Sawrey School; Henry operates the Windermere ferry.

  Dimity Woodcock Kittredge, Captain Woodcock’s sister, is married to Major Christopher Kittredge, of Raven Hall. The Kittredges have two children, little Flora and baby Christopher.

  Mathilda Crook boards visitors at Belle Green. Her husband, George, is the village smith.

  Agnes and Dick Llewellyn live next door to Belle Green, at High Green Gate.

  John Braithwaite is the constable for Near and Far Sawrey; he and his wife, Hannah, live at Croft End Cottage.

  Caroline Longford, sixteen, lives with her grandmother, Lady Longford, at Tidmarsh Manor. Caroline has set her heart on becoming a musician and composer. Also at Tidmarsh Manor: Caroline’s governess, Miss Cecily Burns, a friend of Miss Potter’s.

  Creatures of the Land Between the Lakes

  Tabitha Twitchit, president of the Village Cat Council, is a calico cat with an orange and white bib. Tabitha’s rival, Crumpet , is a handsome gray tabby cat. Max the Manx is once again between assignments and looking for steady work.

  Rascal, a Jack Russell terrier, lives at Belle Green but spends his time making sure that the daily life of the village goes according to plan.

  Fritz the ferret has a reputation as a disagreeable hermit. Escaped from captivity, he now lives alone near the bridge over Wilfin Beck.

  Bosworth Badger XVII keeps The Brockery, an animal hostelry on Holly How. Parsley serves up fine meals from The Brockery kitchen, while Primrose manages the housekeeping, ably assisted by her daughter, Hyacinth. Her son, Thorn, has been traveling since January.

  Professor Galileo Newton Owl, D.Phil., is a tawny owl who conducts advanced studies in astronomy and applied natural history from his home in a hollow beech at the top of Cuckoo Brow Wood. As far as he is concerned, his is the final say on any important matter in the region.

  Kep the collie is top dog at Hill Top Farm. Other notable barnyard animals include Winston the pony; Aunt Susan and Dorcas, the Berkshire pigs; Kitchen the Galway cow; and Blossom, her calf.

  PROLOGUE

  Before the Beginning

  Every story has a beginning. Ours opens on a bright August morning in 1910, in the Lake District of England. The sun, eager to be about his day’s work, has already waded through the layer of cottony mist that blanketed Lake Windermere, clambered up the steep eastern slope of Claife Heights, and launched himself with a cheer into the clear blue sky above the Land Between the Lakes, a vantage point from which he can beam down upon the leaf-green and lake-blue earth.

  But before every story there is . . . well, another story. For this is not the first time the sun has made his daily journey across the Land Between the Lakes. A great deal of time—a vast immensity of time, an unthinkable infinity of time, human and otherwise—has transpired before the beginning of our story. In fact, you might think that the sun is already quite tired of his day-in and day-out routine, for he has climbed Claife Heights more times than you or I could possibly count.

  But if you asked the sun, I’m sure he would tell you that every day brings something interesting and intriguing to observe. He has seen mountains rise beneath him, volcanoes erupt in his face, and seas ebb and flow. For a long time he watched icy glaciers advancing and retreating as they carved the ancient rock, scooping out convenient places for lakes and dropping enormous boulders here and there as if they were pebbles carelessly falling through a hole in a boy’s pocket. All this ice made the earth shiver and even the sun felt a little chilly and remote and not terribly interested in what was going on below.

  But then the weather warmed. The sun took off his overcoat and mittens, the ice thawed, and rivers and streams took over the job of pushing rocks here and moving mountains there, and generally rearranging the furniture. The lakes brimmed and green things made themselves at home, putting down roots and thrusting up leaves—mosses and lichens at first, then heather and bilberry and fern and willow and alder and finally oak and beech and yew and juniper and the lovely hawthorn. Animals set up housekeeping in the dales and fells, fish filled the lakes, birds took to the skies, and the sun was happy for the company.

  And then the animals had to move over, because people had arrived. First came the clans who worked with stone, then iron and bronze. These people did not travel much farther than they could walk in a day, having nearly everything they needed and wanted right in front of their noses. But then the Romans landed in the south of England. Since they had already traveled a considerable distance from Rome, you’d think they’d be ready to settle down. But they weren’t, so they built a network of military roads and a massive wall of stone and turf right across England, east to west, to separate the civilized from the barbarians (although the sun was hard-pressed to tell which was which).

  But things didn’t exactly turn out as the Romans planned, and a few centuries later, they packed up and journeyed back to Rome. The Celts carried on until they were joined by the Angles and the Saxons, and they continued carrying on as the Norsemen arrived and settled around the lakes, farming in the dales and pasturing sheep in the fells. The old Roman roads conveyed wayfarers from one market town to another, whilst the villages and farms were linked by cart-ways suited to oxen and carts, bridleways suited to horses, and narrower footways suited to people. These were a great convenience, permitting people who lived in one valley to travel over the mountain to the next valley. Everyone went from cottage to market and church and field by the most direct and shortest route, and all got on quite famously.

  But then people began buying and selling the land and constructing stone walls around the parts of it they owned, miniature versions of the Roman Wall. Hills were enclosed and divided, woodlands were fenced, fields hedged. The Age of Enclosure had arrived, and the land that was once used by many in common—for picking fruit, pasturing livestock, gathering wood or bracken or peat or stone—became the private and exclusive property of a few. More than seven million acres of England’s fields, forests, pastures, and uplands were turned over to private ownership and enclosed.

  The sun was baffled by this, and failed to see how all those walls, fences, and hedges made life better for anyone, except possibly for the few rich people who owned the land. In fact, it looked to him as if all these barriers were a frightful nuisance, getting in the way of people and animals and requiring the bother of gates and stiles so people could continue to do their ordinary business, going along the by-ways they had used since longer than any could remember.

  Time passed, as time has a way of doing. A young girl named Victoria became England’s queen, and then grew to a very old and much loved lady. The kingdom prospered, and railways and roads were built to carry newly manufactured goods to seaports and cities. By this time, there were a great many more people in the Land Between the Lakes. They came afoot, on horseback, by carriage and coach and bicycle, and even by motor car, an occasional brash toot-toot! frightening the birds into flight. A ferry made regular (more or less) trips across Lake Windermere and the railroad arrived at the edge of the district. It was kept by public opinion from going farther than Windermere Station, so there it had to stop and turn around and go back to London, sulking all the way.

  The railroad and ferry brought even more people, of course, so that the more-traveled lanes became turnpikes and the less-traveled lanes became roads, and some of the paths became lanes, and others—well, they kept to being footpaths, for the convenience and pleasure of those who still, by choice or otherwise, went on foot. And because they had been footpaths for a very, very long time, everyone thought it quite reasonable that they all should go on being footpaths, forever, no matter who might own the property over which they crossed.

  But that did not happen.
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  And that is where our story begins, on an August morning in 1910, in the Lake District of England.

  1

  The Village Animals Confront a Crisis

  It was the sort of bright, dry day when farmers in the Land Between the Lakes could cut their hay and stook their barley and oats without fear that their crops would get wet and spoil. The sun had just scrambled to the top of Claife Heights and was preparing to coast across the sky in the direction of Coniston Old Man, the great, broad-shouldered fell that loomed against the western horizon. The Sawrey Village animals were gathered on the grass in front of Belle Green, the house at the top of Market Street, to discuss a just-discovered and exceedingly disturbing problem.

  “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” asked Tabitha Twitchit crossly, curling the tip of her tail over her front paws. “What is all the fuss about?” A calico cat with a fluffy orange and white bib, Tabitha was getting on in years and had become (I am sorry to say) rather stout. But while the increase in girth had somewhat slowed her mousing abilities, it had not dulled her curiosity. And as senior cat and president of the Sawrey Cat Council, she felt it her obligation—and her entitlement—to be fully informed about and completely in charge of everything that went on in the little Lake District village.

  “It’s about the footpath,” Rascal explained. He was momentarily distracted by the sight of Sarah Barwick, owner of the Anvil Cottage Bakery, pedaling her bicycle up Market Street in the direction of Castle Cottage, her wicker basket piled high with morning deliveries of bread and scones. You could set your pocket watch (if you had one) by Miss Barwick, Rascal thought with approval. A Jack Russell terrier with a strong organizational sense, he always felt more comfortable when people went about their business (which was Rascal’s business, too, of course) in the usual way, at the usual time, by the usual means. Which was why this affair of the footpath was so unsettling.