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find Aubrey.
    “Why not?” I asked.
    Because Aubrey can’t possibly be alive. He was five years older than Ruth and Louise. He must be dead and buried by now.
    “Let’s back up a step,” I said. “Who is Aubrey?”
    Didn’t they tell you?
    “They’re as weak as kittens,” I explained. “They asked me to find Aubrey, then drifted off to sleep before they could give me further details.”
    Vagueness was ever their hallmark, bless them. Very well, then, I’ll tell you what I know. Ruth and Louise weren’t the only children in the Pym family. There was a boy as well. Aubrey Jeremiah Pym was the Pym sisters’ older brother.
    “I didn’t know they had a brother,” I said, frowning.
    Few people do. I never met Aubrey, but I heard stories about him when I was a little girl, whispers shared by grown-ups when good children were supposed to be in bed.
    “What kind of stories?” I asked.
    The kind that surface in the wake of a family tragedy. Aubrey wasn’t a nice young man, Lori. In fact, he was a scoundrel.
    I leaned back in the chair and gazed skeptically at the journal. In my experience, whispering villagers favored highly colored rumors over the plain, unvarnished truth. Aunt Dimity might take the old, overheard stories seriously, but I found it almost impossible to believe that the genteel, hymn-singing Pym sisters could be related to a scoundrel.
    “Aubrey was a bad boy, was he?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “What did he do? Leave the house without a clean pocket handkerchief? ”
    Your customary flippancy is unwarranted in this case, Lori. Aubrey Pym was a disgraceful reprobate. His beleaguered parents could do nothing to stop his gambling, his drinking, his womanizing, and his fighting, but when he took money from the poor box to pay for his vices, they were forced to act. The poor box he emptied, I might add, was the one in St. George’s Church.
    “The son of a parson robbed a poor box to pay for his betting and boozing?” I said, appalled.
    He did. My father was strolling past St. George’s on the night in question. He caught young Aubrey red-handed.
    I ducked my head, chastened. “Sorry about the flippancy, Dimity. I should have known that you wouldn’t trash a man’s reputation without being sure of your facts.”
    Yes, my dear, you should have.
    “Aubrey was a rat, all right,” I conceded humbly. “Was he arrested for stealing the money? ”
    No. His parents couldn’t bear the shame of seeing their only son sent to prison, so they covered up the crime. When he refused to change his ways or to show any sign of remorse, however, he was summarily banished from the family home.
    “Banished? ” I said.
    He was sent away with little more than the clothes on his back. The servants were instructed to bar the door to him, his belongings were given to the poor, and he was cut out of his father’s will. To my knowledge, none of the remaining family members ever spoke his name again. They certainly did not do so in public.
    “What happened to him? ” I asked.
    No one knows. He was never seen again in Finch.
    “How old was Aubrey when his parents gave him the boot?” I asked.
    He’d just turned twenty.
    “Good grief.” I said, taken aback. “He must have started down the wrong path at an early age.”
    He broke his parents’ hearts, Lori. They were never the same after Aubrey left. My father believed that they blamed themselves for their son’s wickedness, but I suspect that they regretted their decision to banish him. I think they must have longed for a reconciliation that never took place.
    “Loose ends,” I murmured, nodding. “Ruth and Louise told me that their mother and father would want to know what happened to Aubrey.”
    I imagine they already know what happened to him, since he’s surely as dead as they are.
    “Why are you so certain that he’s dead?” I asked. “If Ruth and Louise are anything to go by, the Pyms are a long-lived family.”
    Long-lived, perhaps, but not