“Thanks,” I added, and ran up the stairs after Kit.
We raced up the drive, through the gates, and down the lane, until we spotted the bracken-lined path Henrietta had described. We followed it through the grove of trees until we came to a clearing.
The little house that stood in the clearing was a classic slateroofed, stone-walled cottage, similar to many others I’d seen lining the winding lanes in our part of the Cotswolds. The clearing, on the other hand, was unique. It was littered with bird feeders, birdbaths, birdhouses, nesting hutches, small woodpiles, bales of hay, and chipped bowls containing grains, nuts, raw vegetables, and dried fruit. It was also alive with small furry creatures—squirrels, rabbits, shrews, mice—and a mixed flock of twittering birds. The animals scattered when Kit and I entered the clearing, but I could feel hundreds of tiny eyes watching us as we crossed to the cottage’s front door.
Since Kit’s hands were full, I knocked on the door and called out, “Mr. Tanner?”
“That you, Henrietta?” a quavering voice called back.
“No, sir,” I replied, speaking more loudly, in case the old man was hard of hearing. “But we’ve brought the meals Henrietta prepared for you.”
“Come in,” the voice called. “Door’s not locked.”
Kit and I entered a corridor that divided the cottage in two. I was about to call out again for guidance when the sound of a hacking cough led us through a closed door on our right and into a room that had once served as a front parlor.
It was now a sickroom. Its comfortable furnishings had been Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
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rearranged to make space for a hospital bed. The bed sat next to an open window overlooking the south end of the clearing, and although it had no side rails or call buttons attached to it, its upper half had been raised to allow the man lying in it to look out the window. I imagined that the day’s warmth meant far more to him than it did to me.
The deep windowsill at his elbow held a pair of binoculars, several notebooks, and a coronation mug bristling with pens and pencils, but a bedside table was cluttered with pill bottles, inhalers, tissue boxes, and dirty dishes. A wastebasket beneath the table was overfl owing with used tissues.
The bed’s occupant was so thin that his legs barely made a bump in the smooth bedclothes. Although the electric fire in the hearth was pumping out a generous amount of heat, he was wearing a navy-blue stocking cap, fingerless gloves, and a bulky, navy-blue woolen sweater that hung loosely on his diminished frame. He had a prominent beak of a nose and a puckered mouth that suggested the absence of teeth, and his eyes were clouded with fatigue and pain. Kit’s impulse to get to the gamekeeper’s cottage quickly had, I realized, been a canny one. It didn’t look—or sound—as though the old man in the bed had much longer to live.
The hacking cough that racked the man’s frail body made me wince. I pulled out my cell phone to call for an ambulance, but when the man saw what I was doing, he signaled to me to put the phone away.
“No doctors,” he croaked irritably, when he could finally speak.
“No hospitals. It’s too late for all of that anyway, and I’d sooner die here than on a ward.”
“Are you Rory Tanner?” Kit asked.
“No. I’m Winston Churchill.” The old man rolled his rheumy eyes. “Well, of course I’m Rory Tanner. Who else would be living in Rory Tanner’s cottage? And why are you two standing there like a pair of daft badgers? The room’s a tip, and I’m hungry.”
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Kit and I took the heavily dropped hint and got busy. While Kit made tea and dished up a bowl of Henrietta’s nourishing gruel in the surprisingly well-appointed kitchen, I washed the dirty dishes, emptied the wastebasket into a garbage bag I found in a kitchen drawer, and tidied the bedside table.
Kit helped himself to a handful of the jammy biscuits Henrietta had packed, but the mere sight of the bleeding cookies still gave me the willies, so I abstained. We were both fascinated to discover that one of the insulated shopping bags held nothing but airtight containers filled with grains, nuts, raw vegetables, dried fruit, and birdseed. Henrietta, it seemed, had found an outlet for her banqueting skills.
I went outside to top up the bowls and the bird feeders, then returned to the parlor to fi nd Kit spoon-feeding Mr. Tanner. The old man’s color was a bit better after he’d had some gruel and tea, and his coughing fits came less often after he’d used one of his inhalers.
Kit evidently thought the time was ripe to do what he’d come to do, because he pulled two comfortable walnut armchairs to the side of the bed and motioned for me to sit in one while he sat in the other.
“Mr. Tanner,” Kit began.