This page is for tropes that have appeared in Aunt Dimity.
For the rest:
- Tampering with Food and Drink: 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 says of Simon: "I tried to warn him, but he wouldn't listen. Won't listen must be made to listen." Then she audibly whispers to Derek: "Make him drink his tea...." After she leaves the room, an Inspector from Scotland Yard asks everyone to avoid touching the teacup, since the police intend to have it analysed.
- Teen Pregnancy: This is revealed to be the reason Prunella Hooper was able to blackmail Peggy Taxman. Peggy was fifteen when she met a brash young American serviceman, and she had his baby shortly after he was killed by an exploding piece or ordinance leftover from WWII. She is reunited with her son over fifty years later.
- Tempting Fate: When Emma is describing the hiking trail she's urging Lori to take at the opening of Aunt Dimity: Snowbound, she is excessively optimistic:"I'll put in a map of the trail." Emma leaned forward and patted my arm. "But I promise you, you won't get lost this time. Honestly, it's a simple, straightforward route. There's only one turning, and," she sailed on, blithely uttering the curse that had doomed travellers for centuries, "you can't miss it."
- There Should Be a Law: Alluded to in Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch. Fearing dire possibilities if the Bowenists come to Finch and actually settle there, Lori's neighbours Charles and Grant suggest she consult her husband Bill on potential legal remedies. Bill tells Lori that certain things are illegal (loitering, harassment, and so forth), but there's no legal way to prevent the New Age cultists from coming to Finch or buying property in the area.
- Think in Text: Dimity's dialogue is rendered in italics. In Aunt Dimity Goes West, the ghost of Cyril Pennyfeather also communicates via Dimity's journal, and his dialogue appears in a distinctive font.
- Thoroughly Mistaken Identity: In Aunt Dimity's Good Deed, Uncle Williston thinks Nell Harris is Sybella Markham Willis. Then again, he also thinks he's his own ancestor.
- To Absent Friends: A toast is drunk to the deceased tenth Earl of Strathcairn in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea. The villagers have great respect for him, and the digging of his grave unearthed the treasure that allowed to islanders to not only save their community, but also prosper there.
- Together in Death: Happens a few times:
- Dimity tells Lori that she and her fiancé Robert MacLaren celebrated their honeymoon in the afterlife. This and an unwillingness to meddle in Lori's life are the reasons she gives for her two-year absence.
- Willis Sr. arranges for Sybella Markham Willis' remains to be buried in the family plot along with those of her husband, the ancestor of the American branch of the Willis family.
- At the end of Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, one of the ruby rings found in Major Ted's head vanishes from its display, and the portrait of Claire Byrd shows her wearing a ring just like it on the third finger of her left hand. Lori tells Adam Chase Claire's grandson, "Don't you get it? They've finally said their vows."
- Tomboyish Name: The Pym sisters' great-grandniece is named Aubrey Aroha Pym (she's descended from their older brother Aubrey Jeremiah Pym). She is commonly called "Bree".
- The Tourney: King Wilfrid's Faire stages a tourney daily in Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon. Lilian Bunting enthusiastically notes it is complete with the melee.
- Tree Cover: Sometimes used for comic effect, sometimes not.
- It is revealed late in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea that Abaddon camps out in the cottage's hedgerow to directly spy on Bill's family. Lori and Bill discuss removing the hedges for safety's sake, but ultimately decide against it.
- In Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree, Rainey Dawson hides in the bushes near Willis Sr.'s house during the housewarming party. When Lori goes outside for a breath of air, Rainey takes her by surprise. Rainey came there to secretly enlist her aid for her grandmother Sally Pyne, whose tall tales have caught up with her.
- In Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Lori and Bree are leaving Tappan Hall after being told Lady Barbara is just back from hospital and too ill to receive visitors when Barb herself hisses at them from her hiding place in the bushes. She's violating doctor's orders by being out of her specially-fitted bedroom (no dusty books and no ashy fires), and she invites Lori and Bree into her book-filled study, leading the way with her oxygen tank in tow.
- Twin Banter: Lori's sons Will and Rob will do this a fair amount, sometimes with just a simple one-upmanship , sometimes in a larger succession. Their request to visit Skeaping Manor's museum prompts this exchange:Lori: Yes, we'll go. If—Will: We clear the table.Rob: And load the dishwasher.Will: And play nicely until bedtime.Rob: And go to bed without arguing.Will: And promise to behave ourselves in the car.Lori (laughing): How quickly they learn.
- Twin Desynch: In a mild version of this trope, when Lori returns to Finch with Bree Pym near the end of Aunt Dimity Down Under, Ruth and Louise Pym ask to see both of them. After the introductions, Ruth and Louise turn to Lori and drop their lifetime ping-pong speech habit to each thank Lori individually. Lori notes:It was the first time I'd heard them speak as individuals. I was so surprised, and so deeply touched, that I nearly forgot my manners, but I managed to blurt an inadequate, "You're welcome."
- Unexpected Inheritance:
- As noted above, the series begins with Lori getting one of these from someone she thought was fictional; it's a double surprise when she fulfills the terms of the will and doesn't simply get the ten grand, but Dimity's entire fortune and the cottage.
- A whole raft of these are revealed after Miss Beacham's passing in Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin; among the recipients are not just Lori (who visited her in hospital) and Fr. Bright (whose homeless shelter Lori mentioned to her), but also a nurse who had leftover student debt and several local small business owners in her Oxford neighbourhood.
- In Aunt Dimity Down Under, Lori brings Bree back with her from New Zealand to visit Ruth and Louise Pym before they die, and they have revised their wills to leave their house and a substantial trust fund to Bree.
- Unsuspectingly Soused: Bill tries to get out of Morris dancing at the next village festival in exchange for helping Peggy Kitchen get rid of the archaeologist in Aunt Dimity Digs In. Peggy offers mead judging as a less time-consuming alternative; when Bill protests that he knows nothing about mead, she has publican Dick Peacock offer him samples—of twelve different kinds of mead. Derek Harris has to persuade Bill off the pub floor, off Bill's bicycle, and into his pickup truck to get Bill home. Next morning, Bill is still green about the gills and occasionally vomiting, and Derek's wife Emma brings homemade thyme honey and strawberry leaf tea for his hangover.
- Unusual Euphemism: As part of an early skirmish against Mae Bowen's hippie fans, Peggy Taxman accuses one Bowenist of this in Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch. From her outraged response, he said something about her "petals", and she took it to mean her labia. Definitely Played for Laughs, but the laugh's on the cultist.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The expat Americans Angelo and Renee Velesuonno knew Bree Pym since she was ten years old, and Angelo hangs this lampshade when they meet Lori and Cameron for dinner in Ohakune, New Zealand. His description of Bree: "Nice kid—good manners and sharp as a tack." The Velesuonnos go on to say they were shocked at the recent changes in her appearance, particularly the choppy haircut.
- Vampire Vords: Bill talks this way to tease Lori in Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter.
- The Vicar: Rev. Theodore Bunting is grey-haired and generally mild mannered, but certainly not clueless. He and his wife Lilian frequently act as the villagers' conscience.
- The Villain Knows Where You Live: Early in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea, Bill shows Lori a printout of a threatening email he received earlier that morning, the latest in a series. The note came with recent photos of the cottage, Lori, their nanny Annelise and the twins on their ponies. The text reads:You came like a thief in the night to cast me into the abyss. You chained me in darkness, but no earthly chains can hold me anymore. I have risen.Behold, I am coming soon to repay you for what you have done. All that you love will perish. I will strike your children dead and give your wife a like measure of torment and mourning. I have the keys to Death and Hades, and I will blot your name from the book of life forever.Your nightmare has begun. There is no waking.Abaddon
- War Refugees: In Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Gracie Thames' husband Tony is a descendant of a Russian Jew who fled the Nazi invasion during WWII and settled in Britain. Tony's father changed the family name so British customers would buy their line of frozen fish. Also, Mikhail's parents fled Russia when the Bolsheviks came to power, settling in Britain five months before Mikhail was born.
- Wartime Wedding: Happened in the case of Lori's parents, and averted when Dimity broke her engagement with Bobby MacLaren. Both are traceable to the same underlying fact, namely the high risk of death in combat or as a victim of the Blitz.
- Will They or Won't They?: Lori's repeated flirtations with men other than her husband Bill are often handled this way. To date, nothing more than the occasional kiss has happened, but there have been a number of close calls, often when one or both characters have gotten wet from rain and need to dry off and/or warm up.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Nell Harris is widely known to be this. It's part of the reason her marriage to Kit Smith is widely accepted in the village, despite the difference in their ages. Lori hangs this lampshade in Aunt Dimity: Detective:"Nell had a fey quality that might make her seem childlike to the untrained eye, but those of us who knew her best had long since learned—sometimes to our cost—that she was wise beyond her years."
- Women Drivers: Lori's poor driving is something of a running joke in the series. She frankly admits to it, noting that the retired mechanic Mr. Barlow had "come to depend on the income he earned banging out the dents and retouching the scratches I tended to accumulate whenever I drove in England." The Range Rover Bill gives her and its replacement (after an accident due to a washed out road) are both canary yellow, with the colour choice said to be intended as a warning to other drivers.
- World War II: The war heavily figures in the series, although the books themselves are set in the present. Dimity Westwood and Lori's mother met and became friends in wartime London; following her mother's wishes expressed in a letter, Lori researches people in Dimity's past in the first book. Several of the residents of Finch were child evacuees who returned to live there as adults, and one Italian POW settled in the area, later fathering several children who appear in later books. In Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Gracie Thames notes that she and her husband named three of their children for family members who were killed by the Nazis when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
- You Look Like You've Seen a Ghost: Just after the first time Dimity uses the journal to communicate directly with Lori, Bill starts to say this and Lori cuts him off. He begins to insist he wasn't joking, and the penny drops as he realizes she isn't either.
- You Must Be Cold:
- Cousin Gerald Willis loans Lori his leather jacket in a draughty local church in Aunt Dimity's Good Deed. This involves some sexual tension, since Lori is questioning her marriage after her workaholic husband begged off their second honeymoon.
- Fleeing a stifling after-dinner conversation about makeup, Lori goes outdoors at Hailesham House in her evening gown. Unfortunately, it's an October evening and she's soon chilled. Simon Elstyn, a handsome and charming cousin, offers her his dinner jacket.
- You Should Have Died Instead: Late in Aunt Dimity's Christmas, Lady Haverford admits to provoking this in her brother Christopher Anscombe-Smith, known as variously as "Kit" and "Smitty", the vagrant who collapsed in Lori's driveway. He had questioned the glory of their father's actions in WWII, and the father compiled a memoir of his unit's bombing raids in an effort to explain himself to his son. Some ten years later, the father hanged himself and Lady Haverford blamed her brother for causing the suicide. The brother took this accusation to heart, gave away his wealth, lived as a vagrant, and performed a variety of good deeds along the way.
- You're Drinking Breast Milk: An early conversation between a frazzled first-time mother Lori and her new nanny Francesca in Aunt Dimity Digs In:Lori: "Sorry I'm late."
Francesca: "No trouble. I spotted the bottles you'd left in the fridge—"
Lori: "Did you use the right ones?"
Francesca: "Would the ones labeled My Milk be the right ones?"
Lori: (Blushing) "Yes, well...Bill sort of mixed them up a few weeks ago and—"
