This page is for tropes that have appeared in Aunt Dimity.
For the rest:
- Dark and Troubled Past: While the series is generally upbeat, many characters have had brushes with insanity, tragic accidents, serious diseases, major injuries, even war and murder. In some cases, coping with the fallout occurs over an extended period (often carrying over from one book to the next). The fates of other, more minor characters are addressed in the epilogue that closes each novel; they typically go about rebuilding their lives, and are usually better off after all is revealed.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Lori uses this to her advantage in Aunt Dimity: Snowbound. When a chipper Catchpole brings her breakfast in bed (thinking she's ill), Lori plays up the reaction when he opens the curtains in order to make her illness seem real.
- Dead Man's Chest: In Aunt Dimity's Good Deed, Gerald Willis produces a box containing the remains of Sybella Markham Willis and explains the story of how the Willis family came to be on both sides of the Atlantic. Sybella, an heiress and ward of Sir Williston Willis, was supposed to marry the elder of Sir Williston's sons, but she and the younger one fell in love and secretly married. Sir Williston's widow ordered her elder son to kill Sybella and had her younger son drugged, bound and taken aboard a ship headed for the American colonies. Mother and son took possession of Sybella's property and faked documents to paper over their theft. The elder son disinterred Sybella's coffin after his mother's death and the remains, together with a journal of his conversations with the dead Sybella, was passed from father to eldest son for some three hundred years. Willis Sr. promises to arrange for the remains to be buried with her husband in the American Willises' family plot in Boston.
- Dead Man Writing: Often about unfinished business, even if only indirectly.
- After Willis Sr. is sure of Lori's identity, he gives Lori two letters, one from Aunt Dimity and one from her mother. Dimity's provides some background on the terms of her will and the reasoning behind it, while Beth's sets Lori a second task to carry out.
- In Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin, after cancer patient Elizabeth Beacham's death, Lori gets a package from her; it contains the keys to her flat, a parking pass, and a letter entitling her to her choice of items from the flat. Particular mention is made of a Sheraton Revival desk.
- Late in Aunt Dimity: Snowbound, the trio of "lost" hikers finds one in the family crypt, in a faux burial chamber designed to safeguard the Peacock Parure.
- Different in Every Episode: Someone or something with the name "Shuttleworth" appears in nearly every book. Occasionally, it will be attached to a minor character with actual lines, such as Rev. and Mrs. Shutttleworth of Penford Harbour in Aunt Dimity and the Duke. It was also the name of an inn in Salisbury that Lori had once visited, and which she used as part of her cover story for Simon's visit to the hospital in Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday. Most often, it is someone no longer on the scene due to death, or someone never seen yet referenced because they perform some plot function. Two of the references are from Finch (and possibly the same person), a Miss Shuttleworth once ran the village tea room, and Dimity names a Patricia Shuttleworth whose dog's unlikely victory in the local dog show caused a "kerfluffle". The same Shuttleworth (an art teacher in the nearby market town of Upper Deeping) is mentioned in Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree and Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch. The name also appears on the tombstones of a family that died in an epidemic in Bluebird, Colorado; as one of Bill's clients whose demands keep him in London; as the pseudonym Sir Percy Pelham used to scout out Erinskil before his purchase of his island castle; and Mr. Barlow's Whitby informant on Prunella Hooper and Peggy Kitchen's secret son. According to the author, the references pay tribute to a real Mrs. Shuttleworth, who wrote the first fan letter the author received, putting her effusive praise on embossed stationery no less.
- Disease Bleach: Kit Smith's hair is noted as prematurely grey (he's only around thirty when he is introduced in Aunt Dimity's Christmas); he spent years living as a vagrant and nearly died of a combination of hypothermia and pneumonia.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Aside from the meta-example of "Harry Peters":
- Lori is struck by waves of déjà vu when she goes to Bluebird, Colorado: many of the locals resemble her neighbours in Finch, down to similar-sounding names.
- At the close of one of their conversations on Mistress Meg Redfern in Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch:
You've grown fond of Mistress Meg, haven't you?
"Yes, I have," I said.
I can understand why. She was independent, bullheaded, energetic...Hmmm...Who does she remind me of?
"Goodnight, Dimity," I said with a wry smile.
Good night, my dear. - Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project: Averted twice in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince:
- Emma calls Lori to tell her the riding school is closed due to burst pipes in the stable yard. While Emma makes a jocular reference to the yard resembling an ice skating rink, her husband Derek's repair efforts are successful (since he rehabs buildings for a living), even uneventfully so.
- Bree Pym foolishly repaints her bedroom during a February cold snap and avoids opening the windows (and thereby bursting her pipes) by leaving the house closed up for several days. She does go back to check on the place and opens the windows for a short while in the daytime, but closes them again before nightfall.
- Doom It Yourself: Bree Pym's poorly-timed painting project (noted above) brings her to Lori's doorstep in hopes of a place to stay for a few days.
- Doting Grandparent: Willis Sr. vis-à-vis Will and Rob. There are many references to this, including a jocular reference to the "law" that grandparents must spoil their grandchildren and being an attorney, Willis Sr. is stickler for obeying the law. He refurbishes the stables at Fairworth House not for his own use (he doesn't ride himself), but so that the twins will ride over for frequent visits.
- Double Take: Another way Lori often wears her heart on her sleeve in an amusing way. Notably, when the ghost of Cyril Pennyfeather wrote in the blue journal for the first time: "I glanced down at the journal, did a double take that nearly sent Reginald flying, and lowered my arm very slowly."
- Driven to Villainy: In Aunt Dimity Goes West, it is revealed that an infamous local mine disaster was due to sabotage caused by a disgruntled employee who had owned the claim originally, sold it for a relative pittance ($5,000.00 in the 1860s), and later learned it contained a rich vein of gold (worth over $200 million by the 1890s!). It also turns out that his wife committed suicide, his son was sent to an orphanage, and his great-grandson later reopened the mine and set a bomb in it to destroy the house built on the site by the owner's descendants.
- Embarrassing Tattoo: Refreshingly averted by the Pym sisters when they finally meet their great-grandniece Bree. They mention having seen tattoos on a sailor and a male farmhand, and while they express curiosity to see them on a young woman, they give no hint of condemnation of the practice. They are also familiar with the Maori cultural influence on New Zealand. After a bit of coaxing, Bree does push up her sleeves to show them, and she tells them about the morepork owl on her left shoulder. Ruth and Louise also recognize the specific flowers (bamboo orchid, red mistletoe and white tea tree blossoms) she has on her arms.
- English Rose: "A somewhat distant and distaff twig of the [Penford] family tree, but a twig nonetheless", Susannah Ashley-Woods was a fashion model known as "Ashers, the English Rose", effectively trading on this trope. Not that she quite lives up to the ideal; explaining her ill-manners, the duke says of her, "She was raised by wolves, you know." She's rude to Emma particularly, since she makes a play for Derek Harris and sees Emma as a rival. She also proves to be nursing a grudge: her father was ruined financially after taking investing advice from Grayson's father and killed himself, and Susannah invites herself to Penford Hall and twits Grayson over his involvement with Lex Rex in revenge. It is only after she's assaulted by a hero-worshipping housemaid who dreams of being a fashion designer that she reverts to the good manners associated with this trope; it also helps that Grayson offers her rooms in Penford Hall and her manager facilitates a business arrangement with Nanny Cole and the housemaid designer.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Many of the plots resolve themselves in this way. Lori was right to suspect someone was in the woods in Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter, but it wasn't a vampire or a pedophile, it was a neighbour with a sun allergy thinking about a lost love. Willis Sr.'s new housekeeper and gardener have a secret, but they aren't burglars casing the joint, they're caring for an elderly aunt with dementia who grew up in the house. The elderly man wasn't robbed of his treasures by his family, his grandson loaned them to a museum with an inadequate security system, and he wasn't imprisoned by relatives taking advantage of his illness, he himself sent word that he couldn't see anyone due to his post-polio syndrome. The mysterious neighbour isn't scheming to knock down the value of Finch's houses and buy them on the cheap before putting up some profitable and soulless development, he and his ancestors have saved Finch from gentrification by owning nearly all of it outright in a trust and screening potential new residents.
- Escalating War: This provides a major plot in Aunt Dimity Digs In. When an archaeologist starts a dig on church land and takes over the local hall for his specimens, a civil war brews between supporters of the project, led by Sally Pyne (who redecorates her tearoom in Roman motifs) and opponents, led by Peggy Kitchen (who hands out a series of flyers against the dig and starts a petition to the local bishop to send the dig team packing). Apart from a scheduling conflict with the village fete, the biggest question seems to be whether the dig and the potential tourism it might generate will be a boon or a curse for the residents.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: The image appears a few times in the series, when a character is tired due to stress. To cite only one example, new mother of twins Lori is described with "her brown eyes smudged with bruises of fatigue".
- Everyone Can See It: The consensus opinion of the villagers about Nell Harris and Kit Smith being a perfect couple is this trope, at least after the death of Prunella Hooper in Aunt Dimity: Detective. The process takes a few years (and a few novels), but after many postponements (for a variety of reasons), the wed at the end of Aunt Dimity Down Under.
- Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: When the doorbell rings at Fairworth House just after Willis Sr.'s housewarming party, Willis Sr. mentions that he's expecting neighbour and art restoration expert Grant Tavistock to return for the soot-covered painting in his study. Lori refuses to carry it to Grant's car because she doesn't want it to soil her lovely dress. Willis Sr. pays her a courtly compliment on said dress, Lori thanks him, and then: "I curtseyed in a ladylike manner, then hiked up my lovely dress and set off for the entrance hall at a distinctly unladylike jog."
- Family Business: The law firm of Willis and Willis is run in Boston by William Willis Sr. and his son Bill. The English branch of the family also runs a law firm in London, and Willis Sr. initiates a plan to combine the two. Eventually, Willis Sr. retires and has his nephew Timothy Willis run the Boston office of the firm, and Bill runs the European branch of the international firm from an office in Finch with occasional trips to the London office of distant cousins Gerald and Lucy.
- "Fawlty Towers" Plot: One of the main plots in Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree. Sally Pyne was so caught up in the fantasy of her foreign vacation that she told a few tall tales about her manor house to an attentive suitor. She's aghast when the man writes announcing his intention to visit, and a scheme is hatched to allow her to play the role of Lady Bountiful in Willis Sr.'s house during his visit while concealing her presence there from the other villagers (particularly a quartet of single women who've set their caps for eligible widower Willis Sr.). Naturally, things don't go as planned...
- Finish Dialogue in Unison: Often used when the penny drops for two characters at once, or when two of the participants in a multi-sided conversation are thinking the same thing.
- After Evan flees the cottage:
Lori: "What did you do to the cookies?"
Bill: "I was about to ask you the same thing."
Together in unison: "Dimity."- Early in Aunt Dimity Digs In, Lilian Bunting is recounting the tale of a former schoolmaster who sired many of his pupils without bothering with the formalities of matrimony, when Lori says, "Wow. The PTA meetings must've been—" In response to a sound from the village square, she stops, then says, "What's that noise? It sounds like..." Then Lilian's eyes meet Lori's and they both say "Peggy Kitchen."
- Late in Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree, Kit and Lori are outside Fairworth House (Willis Sr.'s newly restored home) and see smoke coming from an upstairs window. They call the emergency services and rouse the household and guests including the heretofore unseen Aunt Augusta. After a farcical round of introductions, Lori pipes up:
"Can we postpone the meet-and-greet?" I said, glancing nervously up the staircase. "There's a fire—"
"There's no fire," Declan interrupted.
"We saw smoke," Kit and I chorused.
"Where there's smoke, there's not always fire," said Declan. - Fist Pump: After the successful confrontation with the Bowenists and their guru near the end of Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, Bree Pym does one of these (with her arm out of her car window) as she drives away from Fairworth House.
- Flat Joy: During the hunt for Abaddon in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea, Bill bemoans the disturbance the police investigation brings to his clientele:"Can you imagine the impression it will make?" he asked. "How would you react if a policeman knocked on your door and asked to speak with the family psychopath?"
"I'd introduce myself," I said brightly, but my husband was in no mood for jokes.
"Ha," he said bleakly. - Flower Motifs: Many and recurring throughout the series, partially justified by the setting and ties to England generally and the Cotswolds specifically. Many of the residents of Finch are devoted amateur gardeners, and gardening and flowers are frequent plot points. A partial list:
- Dimity's favourite flowers are white lilacs, which according to some sources stand for youthful innocence and memories. Some of them grow at her cottage, and bouquets of them (sans cards) appear at weddings, funerals, and other special occasions both before and after her death. The twins' first nanny Francesca is welcomed by the scent of white lilacs in the cottage.
- The cottage is also covered in ivy (particularly outside the study where Lori keeps the glue journal), which is variously described in the sources as referring to friendship, matrimonial bonds, and dependence.
- Early in Aunt Dimity and the Duke, Emma Porter is an American amateur gardener who is taking a tour of English gardens after a decade-plus relationship ends. She meets the Pym sisters at a garden maze, and has a lengthy conversation with them on the subject, not realizing that it was a job interview of sorts. She takes their card and their suggestion to visit the gardens at Penford Hall, and is soon tasked with restoring a walled garden on the estate. She also finds her personal life sorted out as well.
- Lori's favourite flowers are blue irises. She is astonished to find a vase of them on a coffee table in the Willises' Boston parlour (in a cold and slushy early April) the day after she first met the attorneys. Irises are associated with the Greek messenger goddess of the same name, and blue irises specifically stand for faith and hope.
- The unkempt vicarage garden is a problem in Aunt Dimity Digs In, not to mention cover for a burglar. Emma Harris takes the place in hand, with an ebullient eight-year-old Rainey Dawson to assist her. The cleanup provides a clue to one of the minor mysteries of the book.
- Later on in the same book, Rainey has an arrangement of orange lilies to surround her stuffed tiger for a local contest until she causes a mishap that knocks over the vase. Not only do the orange flowers go well with the tiger, the flowers mean passion.
- The weeping willows around the village war memorial (symbolizing mourning) are replaced with holly (meaning foresight and/or domestic happiness).
- Miranda Morrow has a garden chaotically filled with unusual plants that other gardeners might term weeds (including references to marijuana, though nothing is proven). Miranda is an independent-minded sort (the village's only known practising Wiccan) who prepares medicinal poultices, teas and infusions.
- The Pym sisters are associated with lavender (meaning variously serenity, grace, calmness, devotion or distrust); the scent of lavender water permeates their cottage.
- When we finally meet Bree Pym in Aunt Dimity Down Under, she's wearing a greenstone pendant in the shape of a koru (an opening fern frond), and when she finally rises from her seat to leave the park with Lori, she "unfolded like an opening fern frond". Bree also has several flower tattoos: bamboo orchid, red mistletoe and white tea tree blossoms
- Willis Sr. eventually retires and moves to an old estate near Finch. He cultivates orchids in his greenhouse, just as he had in the hothouse of his Boston home. Orchids are symbolic of refined beauty, and Willis sr. is nothing if not refined.
- A botanical artist of great renown features in Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch. A subplot turns on a particular painting of hers (a spring crocus symbolizing youthful gladness) and the language of flowers, and the exposition of its meaning fills in some of Willis Sr.'s Backstory.
- A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: According to the background of Aubrey Pym, after he was turned out of the family home with the clothes on his back, he emigrated to New Zealand, married into money, lost his beloved wife in childbirth, took to drinking and lost much of his fortune. He was wise enough to set aside a packet in his sisters' name and protect it with enough red tape that no one else could touch it before his life reverted to its former ragged state.
- Foreshadowing: Frequent occurrences, including:
- In Aunt Dimity Detective, Lori notes Nicholas' knuckles appear scarred and misshapen, as if he'd been punching a wall, and he later admits to doing just that several times in dealing with his grief. Lori also describes Nicholas' interrogation technique as good cop/bad cop in one conversation with Dimity, and the local witch makes coy remarks to him about inviting the drug squad to tea at her house. It's later revealed that he is in fact a police detective.
- Early in Aunt Dimity Goes West, Bill marshals many arguments to convince Lori to vacation in Colorado with the boys and Annelise; among them, he cites the many wonderful activities available to the boys and says, "They'll have a tale or two to tell their friends when they start school in the fall, that's for sure." Yes, and some of those tales will prove more exciting than even he bargained for—so exciting that they prompt the school's headmistress to summon Bill and Lori for a conference early in Aunt Dimity Vampire Hunter.
- Friend to All Children: Bree Pym proves to be this in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince. Not only does she help entertain Lori's seven-year-old twins when the family is suffering a bit of cabin fever (thanks in part to newly revealed talents for juggling, acrobatics and sleight-of-hand magic, she befriends a poor family from a nearby town and invites them to visit her cottage near Finch on a regular basis.
- From the Mouths of Babes: Early in the series, Nell Harris is the most likely candidate to do this. Later on, Lori's own twin sons Will and Rob take over this task. When they were four years old, they read tabloid headlines out loud in the general store—in front of the local bishop.
