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CHAPTER 1
All we want for Christmas is our Anthea. The MISSING posters were tacked to every telephone pole on the high street of Little Beecham. The message in bold red type created a plaintive contrast to the evergreen swags and fairy lights that decorated the honey-colored limestone cottages and shops of the Cotswold village.
Ellie Kent could only imagine the need that had driven someone to hang them on a day like this when the temperature had been dropping steadily from raw to bitter cold. And now it was snowing. The swirling flakes that made the village look like an enchanted snow globe were quickly puckering the signs. There were more shoppers about than usual, but they hurried past without a glance, heads bent against the storm, eager to be home for their tea. It was only three o'clock, but the turn toward dusk had begun.
Ellie tightened her grip on her own packages and leaned in for a closer look at the photo of a slim, dark-haired young woman. It showed her laughing, with her arms spread wide as if to embrace the world and her future. A student at Oxford, the poster said.
Name: Anthea Davies
Age: 20
Last seen: 1st October in Oxford
She studied the face and felt an uncomfortable twinge of recognition. Anthea Davies looked a lot like she had at that age.
All we want for Christmas is our Anthea. Please help.
The number was local.
But there was really nothing she could do to help, Ellie told herself, as she walked quickly away. She had only moved to Little Beecham from San Francisco in the autumn and still had trouble navigating the winding lanes from there to anywhere. She was more likely to get lost herself than to find a missing person.
Still. She couldn't help wondering what had happened to Anthea, whose joyful confidence had taken her down some wrong road. That was another thing Ellie recognized.
As she approached The Vicarage, a rambling brick Georgian house that stood at the end of the high street next to the church, she turned her focus back to the challenge she had already taken on: what she had come to think of as the 40 days of Christmas.
When she was younger, she had always enjoyed Christmas, but, since the end of her first marriage (admittedly, a major wrong road), she had limited her holiday celebrations to the obligatory party for the English Department at the university where she taught, Chinese food with friends on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day with her parents where they ate turkey and exchanged books.
She had fantasized about someday spending this time of year in the place she'd studied for so long, imagining an idyllic season of frosty winds and candlelit Christmas trees, roasting chestnuts and pink-cheeked carolers, flaming puddings and the appearance of a ghost or three. Now she was here––and it was even snowing––but she was not on a vacation. Four months ago she had married Graham Kent, the vicar of Little Beecham's Church of St. Michael and All Angels, and that meant she was in for what she jokingly called "the full English" when it came to Christmas. Today was day 25, starting from the church's annual Christmas coffee morning, with 15 days to go until the three kings would arrive in Bethlehem, and the season would be over.
Today at least she could cross off one big item on her to-do list. She had settled on her family gifts, which she purchased after endless rumination at the village antique shop, The Chestnut Tree. Her friend Michael-John Parker owned the shop, and he had congratulated her roundly on her final choices: an antique rosewood fife with brass fittings for Graham and delicate gold Victorian earrings for his daughter––her new stepdaughter––Isabelle.
"Now I hope you'll begin to relax and enjoy yourself," said Michael-John, as he handed her a gift bag embossed with a spreading chestnut tree. "You should be excited. I'm sure the Kent family Christmas will be just like one of those Leech illustrations of Dickens that we all love so much."
"I am excited," said Ellie. "I'm just having trouble seeing myself as part of the picture, instead of looking at it."
"Put on your paper crown, say 'Please pass the bread sauce', and you'll fit in perfectly."
"Bread sauce?" said Ellie. "Isn't that an oxymoron?"
He laughed. "Oh, you do have a lot to learn," he said, and wished her luck.
She thanked him for his help and for the luck, both of which she surely needed. Even Graham, who appeared to love Christmas unreservedly, had looked tired that morning, hunched over his typewriter, banging out yet another sermon conveying the world-changing importance of one long-ago birth to people addled with more immediate expectations––both good and bad.
All we want for Christmas is our Anthea. Please help.
The electric candles in The Vicarage windows were already lit, a welcome sight twinkling through the blue dusk and falling snow. Ellie crossed the snowy yard to the back door, as always a little amazed that this 18 century Georgian house was where she now lived.
The kitchen was so toasty from the day's baking that Hector, their rough- coated Jack Russell, barely opened his eyes to greet her then promptly went back to sleep in his basket by the Aga. Mrs. Finch, The Vicarage's longtime housekeeper, had left for the day, but on the farmhouse table that doubled as a worktop, a new batch of her mini mince pies was cooling on racks. Ellie had begun the season eating these traditional pastries with gusto, but by now the smell alone gave her heartburn. She stowed her gifts at the back of the china cupboard and went to find Graham.
When they'd met at her parents' home in Berkeley nearly a year ago, Ellie hadn't known Graham was a vicar. She had dropped by to see how her mother was faring after some minor surgery and found her on the patio drinking iced tea and carrying on a lively discussion about the subject–object dichotomy with Ellie's philosophy professor father and an attractive Englishman. A widower, it turned out, a few years older than Ellie, but with a lanky body, gingery hair, and lively blue eyes that gave him an aura of boyishness.
Of course she joined in the discussion of whether the subjective realm of perception and belief is separate from the world of events and objects––and ended up staying for dinner. Of course she rode back to San Francisco on the BART train with the Englishman, who happened to be renting a room not far from where she lived while he was in the Bay Area on sabbatical. Of course, she saw him again, the very next day. She had been certain from the first moment that this was not a wrong road taken, but who ever knew where a new road would lead?
The door to the study where Graham worked and conducted parish business was closed, but she could hear the clatter of typewriter keys, which meant he was alone. Ellie went back to the kitchen and put together a tray for tea then returned, saying, "Room service," as she opened the door.
He pulled a piece of paper out of the typewriter with a flourish, turned to her, and smiled. Dressed in old corduroys, denim shirt, and a sweater with patched elbows, he was what she thought of as "her Graham," not the priest in Holy Orders whose closest ties were beyond her comprehension.
"Just what I need," he said, helping himself to a McVitie's digestive biscuit coated with dark chocolate.
"Biscuits, tea, or me?" asked Ellie, as she handed him a mug and settled into the chair beside his desk.
"You, of course. But the tea and biscuits are brilliant too."
A mountain of crumpled paper had been consigned to the wastebasket, and three neat piles of pages were lined up on the desk. How he could write on a typewriter was beyond her comprehension too.
He yawned, stretched his full length, and took off his tortoiseshell glasses. "I'm always amazed when I finish. Until I get there, it seems like I never will," he said, coming back to upright.
"I know what you mean. So what did you decide to say about the virgin mother and her little babe?"
"I can't tell you," he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. "It would spoil the surprise."
"You mean I'll have to come to church to find out?"
He nodded. "All three times."
"It's the magic number," she said and leaned over to give him a kiss.
The snow was still falling at five o'clock when Graham set off to meet the members of Beecham Morris, the Morris dance side he belonged to. As part of a longstanding tradition, they were performing a medieval mummers' play at several pubs in the area that evening. This was called a Christmas play, but it was really about the Winter Solstice: the death of the old year and the birth of the new.
Ellie had never given much thought to the Solstice before, but in a place where the shortest day offered only seven hours, 49 minutes, and 45 seconds of light, she could see why you'd want to celebrate the fact that the next day would be one second longer. According to Graham, the date of Christmas had been arbitrarily set in December to piggyback on the hope generated by this seasonal change.
He was playing Saint George this year and, before he left, he put on his costume with its tin knight's helmet and demonstrated his sword-fighting moves for Ellie and Hector, swinging and thrusting at an imaginary dragon. Ellie was impressed––she hadn't known he was on the fencing team when he was at Oxford––but Hector was beside himself, barking and leaping until he collapsed, exhausted with pleasure.
When she was alone, she tidied up the kitchen and then sat idly watching the snow beat against the window and transform the landscape of church, churchyard, and the woods beyond. She had been warned not to expect a white Christmas. The "snow on snow, snow on snow" described in one of her favorite carols was hardly more true for Oxfordshire than it was for Bethlehem, and a cold, dismal rain was far more likely. Still, this storm showed no signs of stopping, so maybe she was going to be lucky. Her first English Christmas would include all the special effects.
As she drank a cup of chamomile tea, her thoughts drifted and eddied from memories of Christmases past to the face of Anthea Davies, who might or might not fulfill her parents' wish by turning up for the holiday. Who might or might not turn up anywhere ever again.
Ellie had run away once, when she was 16––even younger than Anthea. At the time she'd thought of it as a highly romantic adventure––a lark––and a chance to show she was not a child any longer. She had never even considered the impact on her parents until she saw the look on her father's face when he found her three days later in a motel with the boy she loved. It was years before he could say out loud how terrified he'd been that he would never see her again, and 20 years on, Ellie knew her mother hadn't entirely forgiven her for not being the girl she thought she was.
Three months was a lot longer than three days though. She checked the clock and decided she had time to see what was online about Anthea Davies' disappearance before she had to get to the pub for the mummers' play. She went up to her study on the third floor, which was her little bit of home filled with the things she had brought from California. Moving aside a pile of books on Jane Austen that she had been using to research a book idea, she set down her mug of tea, opened her laptop, and entered the words: Anthea Davies Oxford.
There had been a flurry of coverage in the Oxford and local papers with stories illustrated by the same photo as appeared on the poster. This had apparently been taken in Oxford, and Anthea had emailed it to her parents on the first of October with a brief message saying she would see them soon, but that was the last time they heard from her.
She had spent the summer in London, working as an intern at the Joffrey Museum of British History, and had left her job and lodging there as scheduled at the end of September. Her parents expected her to visit before the start of the Michelmas term and then join the other students, with whom she shared a flat in Oxford, but she had never arrived at either place.
Arthur and Frances Davies of Pidlington reported her missing on October 7, and the police had launched an investigation. Although there was evidence, in addition to the photo, that confirmed she was in Oxford on the first of the month, no trace of her had been found since. Detective Inspector Derek Mullane of the Thames Valley Constabulary said the police were doing everything they could to locate Miss Davies, and members of the public were urged to call if they had any information. But the story petered out fairly quickly. You could only report that there was no new information so often. No wonder her parents were desperate.
Ellie checked the places she knew students went online, but Anthea Davies was apparently not a fan of social media. The only thing she found was a Facebook page that offered the minimum of public information and a photo that appeared to be Anthea with her back to the camera and only a suggestion of her face looking over her shoulder. On October 18, a Melanie Thomas had posted: "PM me," but if there had been a reply, it was not visible. Ellie looked at Melanie's page and learned that she was also an undergraduate at Oxford but all of her other information was private.
The village of Pidlington, where the Davies family lived, was about 10 miles southwest of Little Beecham. So why had posters about Anthea's disappearance been put up in their village? Did she have connections here? And why were they put up now, so long after she had last been heard from?
Perhaps her parents were blanketing the area, hoping to stir up some fresh information. Losing a daughter was not, after all, something you could easily come to accept and choose to move on. Also it was Christmas: the season when your happiness and all of your relationships come under a microscope that defines your life. How well it is––or isn't––going.
All we want for Christmas is our Anthea. Please help.
She put her computer on sleep and then pawed through a Plexiglas box that held business cards and other scraps of paper until she found the one she wanted. On the front it said Detective Inspector Derek Mullane with the seal of the Thames Valley Constabulary. On the back, his mobile phone number was written in his awkward sloping hand.
The snow was still coming down quickly when Ellie walked to The Three Lambs on the high street. There were few streetlights in the village, but the golden squares of the lamp-lit windows illuminated the way and reminded her of the old- fashioned Advent calendar Graham had put on the mantel in the sitting room. Her boots squeaked, and she tipped her face to feel the icy flakes kiss her cheeks. There was something wonderful about snow that made it seem like all should be right in the world, even though you knew it wasn't.
The Lambs was surprisingly crowded for a Tuesday night. Dark and low- ceilinged, Little Beecham's only pub prided itself on not giving in to new marketing ploys, such as white tablecloths and posh food, and mainly catered to the locals as a place for a quiet pint, a bag of crisps, and a good gossip. Ellie recognized a few faces––Mrs. Wiggins from the village shop and Mrs. Tiddington, the butcher's wife––but she also received looks that made it clear that she was recognized as an incomer, despite wearing an ancient Barbour parka she'd found in the coat closet, jeans, and wellingtons.
She was standing uncertainly with her pint of Hooky Bitter, looking for a place to sit, when a familiar voice called "Over here, Guv!" and she saw her friend Morag MacDonald's son Seamus waving to her. Relieved, she waved back and made her way through the jostling crowd to where he and his mother were sitting.
Like herself a former teacher, Morag was the first friend Ellie had made in the village, and 14-year-old Seamus had become a good friend too. With their dark curly hair, fair skin, and pink cheeks, the two were as unmistakably related as a pair of twins.
"Wow," she said, as she slid into a chair at their small corner table. "I had no idea a mummers' play would draw a standing-room-only crowd in Little Beecham."
Morag laughed and patted her hand. "I hate to disillusion you, but I expect the weather has more to do with it than the mummers. We wanted to go to the cinema, but the roads were so rubbish, we turned back."
"I think it was fate that we've met. The game is afoot, you know," Seamus said, taking a damp copy of the MISSING poster out of his pocket. "Have you seen this?"
"I have," said Ellie, not quite liking the eager look on Seamus's face. His ambition was to be a private detective, and he thought there was no reason to wait until he grew up to pursue this career.
"Don't you think we should help? I mean, they're asking everyone, aren't they?"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "What Child Is This?"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Alice K. Boatwright.
Excerpted by permission of Cozy Cat Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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