Page 8 of Welcome to Murder Week

That’s so far from my experience that I share the truth.

“She left me when I was nine,” I say. “My grandmother raised me.”

Now it’s my turn for a tender hand pat from Amity.

“Oh my.” She takes a sip of tea. “But your mother must have cared about you to plan a surprise like this. It’s a lovely gesture.”

It figures that Amity likes surprises. Optimists generally do.

I don’t feel like saying more, so I push back my chair and, trying to sound casual, say, “Well, I guess I’ll unpack and take a shower before I’m totally crushed by jet lag.”

“You mean you’ve just flown in?” Amity says. “You didn’t visit London first?”

Coming early never occurred to me. Signing on for the full week was almost more than I could handle.

Wyatt looks at his watch. “How about you two unpack and shower and then we’ll go check out the village before death comes a-knocking? I’ll wait down here; I’ve already had a kip and a scrub.”

“Have you now?” says Amity, looking delighted.

“A what and a what?” I ask.

“British English, pet. A nap and a shower,” Wyatt says. “Sorry, I always fall into foreign accents. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and discovered Monty Python. Imagine ten-year-old me on the playground: “?‘Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!’?”

“I think it’s good fun,” Amity says. “You feel a Britishism coming on, accurate or not, let it rip. You do you.”

“Hear, hear,” I say.

“By golly, you two are enchanting,” Wyatt says. “We’re going to have a cracking good time solving this murder.”

Amity claps her hands and says, “Indeed we are.”

I’ve never been much of a joiner, but Mr. Groberg made me promise to throw myself wholeheartedly into the game, to get into the spirit and all that. There’s no way I’m going to match the enthusiasm of these two, but I figure I’d better at least try. In my best British accent, which is admittedly pretty pathetic, I say, “By Jove, we’re going to be bloody brilliant.”

CHAPTER SIX

When my mother told me to pack for our trip to Vermont, I had trouble filling my overnight bag. Two changes of clothes and underwear, my pajamas, scrunchies for my hair, a hairbrush and toothbrush, and I was done. But my mother filled a large suitcase, the same vinyl one she’d brought from Indiana years before. She packed sweaters, skirts, jeans, yoga clothes, pajamas, and slippers. She also took the mohair throw she liked to wrap around her legs when she watched television on the couch, a framed photograph of herself as a bride, herEspresso Yourselfcoffee mug, and an inlaid wooden box filled with beaded necklaces and earrings. We both had to sit on her suitcase to zip it closed. After I was back home in Buffalo for a month and my mother still hadn’t returned, I thought about that overstuffed suitcase and decided that staying away without me must have been her plan all along. And maybe it had been. But in time, I saw that she always overpacked, filling that old suitcase even for a mere weekend in Buffalo. Traveling light, she once told me, is overrated.

I would have packed more for this trip, but I’d been warned against checking a bag. I shake out my rain jacket and hang it in the closet, along with my two dresses and two blouses. I toss mysandals and boots in the closet and put the rest of my clothing in the dresser. I tuck my nightgown under a pillow, plug in my phone charger by the night table, and set my toiletries case on the dresser, which seems like a more considerate place to keep it than in the shared bathroom. I close my empty suitcase and stash it in a corner.

It’s strange to have so few possessions. Usually, I’m surrounded by so muchstuff. My own things, my grandmother’s things, things that belonged to my grandfather, who I barely remember, and my father, who I don’t remember at all. My grandmother’s house—and I still think of it as hers even though it’s been mine for three years—is brimming with paintings and books and tchotchkes of all kinds. There are baskets of yarn left over from the blankets my grandmother crocheted, old copies ofField & StreamandThe New Yorker, fly rods and fishing reels. There are everyday dishes, my grandmother’s wedding china, and pantry shelves filled with candlesticks, tablecloths, and old Haggadahs. The linen cabinet in the upstairs hallway holds not only the sheets I got on sale at Target last month but also my father’s baby blanket, pale green with a white ribbon running through it, and the old cotton sleeping bags my grandmother would unzip and use for picnics. The house is toasty with history and personality, and I love it.

But standing in this spare room, knowing how little the drawers and closet hold, I feel buoyant. Like I’ve Marie Kondo’d my life, but instead of bringing only items that spark joy, I packed things that have not had a prior life, that have never belonged to anybody but me. I have the basics that I will need to dress, and bathe, and sleep, and nothing more. I’ve never felt burdened by my home, but being in a place that holds so little of my past makes me feel like anything is possible.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It’s a short walk to the village center, down the hill and then four blocks along a two-lane road with a sidewalk so narrow that we have to go single file. Wyatt takes the lead. Amity, who is reading as she walks, lags behind.

“According to this itinerary, we have two hours and fifteen minutes before we have to be at the parish hall for the opening assembly,” she says. “More than enough time. It says here that Willowthrop, population 1,853, is one of the smaller villages in Derbyshire.”

Wyatt stops by a red cylindrical pillar, which turns out to be a Royal Mail postbox. He rests an elbow on it and takes a selfie. His jaunty pose reminds me of Dick Van Dyke inMary Poppins, a film I watched a zillion times on VHS as a child and that my mother loved to ridicule.

“Chim Chim Cher-ee?” she used to sneer. “God help us.”

“How many villagers are part of Murder Week?” Wyatt asks.

Amity flips through her pamphlet. “Here we go: ‘The mystery has a cast of twenty-five characters, some of whom will be playing characters while others may seem to be characters but will be playing themselves, albeit with adjustments to their words and actions toadhere to the storyline of their given characters.’ Goodness, I hope the quality of the mystery exceeds the quality of the writing.”

She continues.

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