Aunt Dimity / Tropes Q to S

This page is for tropes that have appeared in Aunt Dimity.

For the rest:

• Tropes A to C
• Tropes D to F
• Tropes G to I
• Tropes J to L
• Tropes M to P
• Tropes T to Z

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• Rags to Riches: Lori starts Aunt Dimity's Death working as a temp and having lived in a succession of cheap apartments after her divorce. Most of her things are in boxes, and she sleeps on a mattress on the floor. She describes her feelings on seeing the Boston office of Dimity's American attorneys for the first time: "Great, I thought, Willis & Willis Meets the Little Match Girl." After coming into her inheritance, she at first displays a certain reluctance to spend money, but eventually is found consigning her old wardrobe to Oxfam in favour of items like silk-lined custom trousers, handmade Italian boots, and a sumptuous black cashmere swing coat. "I'd never been a clotheshorse, but I was learning fast."
• Rain, Rain, Go Away: In Aunt Dimity's Death, an extended rainstorm gives way to three days of dense fog. Aside from visits to and from neighbour Emma Harris, Lori and Bill remain at the cottage, postponing an expedition to a location in a photograph Lori's mother left her.
• Real Dreams are Weirder: In Aunt Dimity Goes West, Lori goes from the recurring nightmare of being shot and menaced by Abaddon (back in Finch) to dreaming of blue-eyed cocker spaniels, who remind her of the Colorado cabin's young caretaker Toby.
• Red Herring: No mystery series would be complete without a few of these, including:
  • In Aunt Dimity Digs In, after the pamphlet is stolen from the vicarage, Emma and Rainey clean the overgrown garden around the French doors and find a bronze phalera just like the one Lori's nanny Francesca is seen to wear. It turns out the cleaning woman at the vicarage is her sister and had one as well, and anyway, she had no motive to steal the pamphlet, since she also wanted the archaeology team to leave the area.
  • In Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday, when Lori finds the children's books used to make the anonymous notes sent to Simon, she finds one of Nell's long blond hairs between the pages of one of them. It's later revealed that Nell had been in the supposedly long-unused nursery. In the same book, Lori seizes on the mention of the suspect's organ playing hobby to accuse a red-haired maid (who behaved in an unprofessional fashion by sitting down and playing the piano she was supposed to be dusting) of being the former nanny in disguise; the real culprit is a different staff member.
• Red October: As related in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Mikhail Markov's parents fled Soviet Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik takeover because his father was a silversmith who crafted art objects for the upper classes. Mikhail himself was born five months after the couple's eventual arrival in England.
• Retail Therapy: At the start of Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday, Emma is upset to learn her husband of ten years has kept his real name and title from her, and after Lori tells her that Bill has secretly been her noble father-in-law's attorney for three months, Emma says, "I'm tired of boys' games. Let's go shopping." Lori notes, "We spent the next week buying clothes." It seems to work; after getting a newly becoming haircut at a salon, Emma stops scolding Lori for addressing her as Viscountess.
• Romancing the Widow: Played straight and gender-inverted. After Willis Sr. moves to the Finch area, he is pursued by a quartet of older women that Bill nicknames "Father's Handmaidens"; a humorous four-way rivalry ensues. In Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, he begins paying court to newcomer Mrs. Amelia Thistle, and things get really complicated.
• Rule of Three: Humorous uses of this rule include people having to get Lori's attention by saying her name three times, each one progressively louder (Dimity has to write her efforts, the third and last one in ALL CAPS). Also, in the fire alarm farce late in Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree, among those gathered in the entrance hall of Willis Sr.'s house is an elderly woman who sees no need to evacuate since she lit the fire in question. Willis Sr. steps forward to inquire who she is, and the Donovans burst in:
  "Aunt Augusta!" Deirdre cried.
  "Aunt Augusta?" said Willis Sr.
  "Aunt Augusta," Declan said, with a weary sigh.
• Scavenger Hunt: A hunt of the "preprinted clues" variety is one plot in Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch. A seventeenth-century rector wrote an account of a woman reputed to be a witch and hid pages of it in locations in and around the village. Mrs. Amelia Thistle has the first page, left to her by her late brother, and comes to Finch to find the rest. Each page has a graphic clue to the location of the next, and Lori and other residents join in the search for the successive pages and help decipher the clues.
• Secret-Keeper: One ongoing example and two plot-specific ones:
  • Bill, Emma and Derek know about Dimity's ongoing contact with Lori via the journal (Bill and Emma have actually experienced it for themselves). To date, they have not shared this info with anyone other than Nell and Kit; oddly, even Dimity's former attorney Willis Sr. is out of the loop.
  • Gerald Willis in Aunt Dimity's Good Deed guards the remains of Sybilla Markham Willis and the journal of her brother-in-law's conversations with the dead Sybilla (after he killed her for marrying his younger brother). They were passed from father to eldest son for some three hundred years.
  • A major plot resolution in Aunt Dimity Digs In. Many years earlier, Italian POW Piero Sciaparelli worked for old Mr. Hodge on his farm and found an ancient Roman grave in the floor of the stables. When his daughter Francesca became engaged to young Burt Hodge, her father entrusted her with the location of it so she could protect it from vandals and archaeologists, and he gave her a replica of the bronze phalera to wear as a pendant. Later on, her younger sister Annunzia or "Annie" married Burt and took over the primary role of protector even getting her own phalera. Anxieties over which of the two might reveal the secret (the elder sister dating the archaeologist or the younger trying to save a drought-stricken farm from total ruin) drive the family animosity.
• Self-Deprecation: In Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Lori and Dimity are discussing the diverse exhibits at Skeaping Manor when Dimity writes: "You and I are living proof—more or less—that some people prefer the pretty to the icky."
• Series Continuity Error: In Aunt Dimity's Death, Bill tells Lori that his mother was struck and killed by a bus when he was twelve, even giving this as the reason his father avoids public transport. In Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, Jane Willis is said to have died after a long bout of cancer. Unlike the Backstory of Derek Harris and his fraught relationship with his father, there is no secret that Willis Sr. kept from his son; the author readily admits this was a mistake on her part.
• Sexy Priest: Father Julian Bright, the advocate for the homeless introduced in Aunt Dimity's Christmas.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Bill and his father are noted to dress this way, with Willis Sr. retaining his sartorial habits into his retirement.
• Shed the Family Name: Derek Harris so despised his father that he changed his entire name; he was born Anthony Evelyn Armstrong Seton, Viscount Hailesham. The change is also meaningful since he took the name of the estate's carpenter and he prefers to work with his hands, which is is considered unsuitable for a peer's son.
• Shifting Voice of Madness: At the climactic Elstyn family meeting in Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday, only Simon, the recipient of the threatening notes, takes a cup of tea offered by the maid. That maid is revealed to be Derek's insane former nanny, who targeted Simon in the belief that he was trying to take Derek's inheritance. She rambles insanely about Simon: "I tried to warn him, but he wouldn't listen. Won't listen must be made to listen." And follows that with a Stage Whisper order to Derek: "Make him drink his tea...." Once she leaves the room, an Inspector from Scotland Yard is disturbed enough by the behaviour that he asks everyone to avoid touching the teacup, since the police intend to have it analysed. Afterward, there is some speculation among the other characters about whether she will be legally judged insane.
• Shout-Out: Aside from the Dorothy Parker references above:
  • In Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea, Peter Harris, son of Lori's neighbour Derek disguises himself as a dark haired young man with glasses named "Harry Peters" to avoid hordes of reporters after his grandfather wrote a letter to The Times bragging about him. Hmm, a dark haired young man with glasses plagued by fame...
  • In Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, a man named Brocklehurst who claims to be a pious prophet (hippie-style), yet dishonestly turns a great personal profit evokes the hypocritical clergyman headmaster and larcenous treasurer of Lowood School.
  • In a Shout-Out that also serves as a Red Herring in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Sergei Sturgess proves to be thoroughly English: his mother named him (and his brothers Vaslav and Rudolf) for famous Russian ballet dancers she admired. Famous Kindly Vet and storyteller James Herriot created the Yorkshire native Farnon brothers (Sigfried and Tristan), whose father was a devoted fan of the composer Wagner and named his sons accordingly.
  • Also in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Lori describes finding the sleigh-shaped saltcellar ("...when what to my wandering hand should appear") in a deft paraphrase of Clement Clarke Moore's poem.
• Significant Anagram: In Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter, the surname of the owners of Aldercot Hall is DuCaral. Elderly recluse Lizzie Black spells the name and the anagram Dracula on the hearthstone with her fireplace poker during Lori's visit to her farmhouse.
• Significant Birth Date: Claire Byrd the ghost who possesses Lori from Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, was born on October 31st.
• Simple, yet Opulent: Fairworth House, Willis Sr.'s Georgian-period home, is described this way, mostly due to its architecture and moderate size.
• Single-Minded Twins: Two sets!
  • Ruth and Louise Pym, the elderly sisters who live in a cottage outside Finch. They not only dress alike, they finish each other's sentences such that conversation with them is like watching a tennis match.
  • Rufus "Rufe" and Louis "Lou" Zimmer, another pair of elderly identical twins who also dress alike (with old-fashioned style) and give their listeners' neck muscles a workout. They're among the many residents of Bluebird, Colorado that Lori finds oddly familiar.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Invoked by the villain in Aunt Dimity Goes West: an immigrant Polish miner sells his claim to a mine for five thousand dollars, and the wealthy buyer makes over $200 million from the mine. Not only does the miner himself sabotage the mine, his great-great-grandson sets a bomb in the same mine, which runs under the cabin built on the site by the still-wealthy descendants.
• Sleeping Dummy: Late in Aunt Dimity: Snowbound: Having convinced the caretaker that she and Wendy are ill in bed, Lori arranges one of these with pillows so she can slip out and help the other hikers search the house. Wendy compliments her on the ruse, and Lori is pleased to have out-thought the rocket scientist for once.
• Small Town Boredom: As Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon opens, Lori and her neighbours are bored with their usual summer routine and welcome the arrival of King Wilfred's Faire. Once they have to deal with the traffic, litter, tourists and everything else, the usual routine doesn't seem so bad.
• Snowed-In: Used a couple of times:
  • This, along with the man's medical condition, justifies Willis Sr.'s call for the RAF helicopter evacuation of the vagrant at the beginning of Aunt Dimity's Christmas.
  • As indicated by the title, the plot of Aunt Dimity: Snowbound is started by a sudden blizzard.
• Solitary Sorceress: Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch has the residents of Finch learn of such a person who lived in the area centuries earlier when they go on a treasure hunt for the pages of a firsthand account of her.
• Speak in Unison: Late in Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure, the residents of Finch are viewing a display cabinet in the village hall. Peggy Taxman had been persuaded to donate an antique cabinet to house the items the villagers found with Mr. Hobson's metal detector, but in the end that cabinet was literally falling apart. The vicar's wife says, "I never thought I'd say it, but thank God for woodworm," and extols the modern virtues of the newly-purchased replacement. In response, Bill and Lori chorus, "Thank God for woodworm."
• Spiky Hair: Early in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Bree first arrives on Lori's doorstep with her hair dyed a fiery red and done in a spiky hairdo:
  Lori: Good grief. What have you done to your hair?
  Bree (turning head to one side): Like it?
  Lori: It looks like your head is on fire.
  Bree: Brilliant. Just the effect I was aiming for. I call it my portable hearth. There's nothing like red hair to take the edge off a cold snap.

Bree is also a free spirit who likes challenging the stuffier residents of the village. She later says that when Peggy Taxman saw Bree's hair in church, Peggy gave her a look that "would have curdled milk." In Bree's estimation, this is a feature, not a bug.

• Spit Take: Lori does one of these when Jinks the jester vaults over her garden wall to introduce himself in Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon.
• The Storyteller: A number of characters do this, including:
  • Lori's mother Beth and Dimity herself provide the tales that are to be published in Aunt Dimity's Death.
  • Lori herself has to recount some of the "Aunt Dimity" stories to satisfy the terms of Dimity's will, including establishing her identity for Dimity's executor, Willis Sr.
  • Bill regales his English Willis cousins with his recent adventures in Maine (negotiating a family dispute over a fishing rod and coping with a storm and power failure) to much laughter and applause.
  • Sir Percy Pelham tells a number of stories over dinner at his castle, including the history of the castle's builder, the local legend of Brother Cieran, and a funny yarn about a tone-deaf Chinese goat-herder who loved to sing.
  • Little Daisy Pickering proves to be a gifted and spellbinding storyteller working with true people and events in her life in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince.
• Strawberry Shorthand: The innocent-yet-wise six-year-old Nell Harris in Aunt Dimity and the Duke is seen eating strawberries, and the book's recipe is for "Nell's Strawberry Tarts". Later, engaged lovers Emma and Derek are seen eating strawberries and drinking champagne at the long-awaited fête.
• Surprise Pregnancy: Lori is so busy tracking down Willis Sr. in Aunt Dimity's Good Deed that she fails to appreciate the significance of her cravings and morning sickness until Willis Sr. relays the phone message he got from her doctor.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: When unhappy or unpleasant truths intrude on the relatively peaceful lives of characters in the series, they often do so in this way. Open a box expecting to see maybe an heirloom—find fully dressed human remains. Heave a sigh a relief that the "murder" turns out to have been an accident—well, that's jolly nice, but your hero has just had a flashback on a real murder he witnessed and is near catatonic. Similar mood dynamics occur when solutions are given and the culprit turns out to be obsessed and/or insane.
• Survivor Guilt: At the end of Aunt Dimity's Christmas, it is revealed that Sir Miles Anscombe committed suicide on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, due to his guilt over his bombing runs on that city and other civilian areas in WWII.
• Symbiotic Possession: In Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, Lori finds she's being possessed by the ghost of a young woman who died in the house where she's working. After some difficulties, including awkward moments with a handsome neighbour, Lori decides to help resolve the old issue troubling her new ghostly companion.

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