Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure (12 page)

“Mr. Barlow has been an invaluable ally,” he said. “I hope the rest of you will forgive our little deception. If my demonstration had taken as long as a real hunt, we might have been here all day.”

Peggy Taxman, who'd been uncharacteristically silent throughout the program, gave a disparaging sniff.

“Seems like a lot of nonsense to me,” she boomed. “Grown men playing in the dirt. Whatever will you think of next? Toy soldiers? Skipping ropes? Come, Jasper,” she bellowed to her husband. “We have less childish things to do.”

She wheeled around and sailed imperiously back to the Emporium, with Jasper trailing meekly at her heels.

“Don't bother your head about Peggy,” Sally Cook said to James. “Her nose is out of joint because no one asked her to take charge of the demonstration.”

“Does Mrs. Taxman know anything about metal detecting?” James asked, looking baffled.

“She does now,” said Elspeth Binney, “but she didn't before. It wouldn't have stopped her from taking charge, though.”

“She
always
takes charge,” said Selena Buxton.

“She thinks it's her
right
to take charge,” said Millicent Scroggins.

“And we let her,” said Lilian, with a hint of reproof in her tone, “because someone has to take charge, and most of us don't want to.”

“True enough,” said Mr. Barlow. “Peggy may be bossy, but she gets things done. Have you finished with your talk, James?”

James, who had been following the conversation closely, looked blank for a moment, then nodded.

“The demonstration is over,” he announced. “Thanks for coming.
Don't forget to take a brochure home with you. If you have any questions, or if you'd like to have a go with my metal detector, please feel free to knock on my door.”

He received a rousing round of applause that wasn't as loud as it should have been because nearly every member of his satisfied audience was wearing gloves.

“Who's for hot cocoa?” Sally asked the group at large.

The group responded by snatching brochures from the table and moving as one toward the tearoom.

“I hope you'll join us, James,” said Henry. “My wife makes an excellent cup of cocoa.”

“I'll pack up my things and fetch Felicity,” said James. “She loves cocoa. And she can't find ours,” he added when the others were out of earshot. “Are you coming to the tearoom, too, Lori?”

“I wish I could,” I said, “but duty calls. Bess needs a diaper change, a snack, and a nap, so I'll drink my hot cocoa at home. Bravo, James. I think you'll be hearing quite a few knocks on your door.”

“I hope so,” he said. “Metal detecting is a peaceful pastime, with brief spikes of excitement that keep me coming back for more.”

“You could be describing Finch,” I said, smiling.

As it turned out, I had it backward. There was plenty of excitement in store for Finch, but peace would be hard to come by.

T
he perfect weather James Hobson had ordered arrived the following morning. The wind faded, the temperature rose, and the sun smiled down on my little corner of England.

London was not so fortunate. The rain that had driven Adam and me into Carrie's Coffees had decided to extend its stay in the city. Carrie Osborne had touched base with me the previous evening, but her call had merely confirmed what she'd already told me: Her Battle of Britain boys would remain at home until the wet weather passed.

“You could ask Carrie if she has their addresses,” Bill suggested over breakfast.

“They're old men nursing war wounds,” I reminded him. “If they're feeling too lousy to go to their favorite coffeehouse, I'm not going to disturb them in their own homes.”

“Why do the old men have war wounds?” Will asked.

“They were injured in battle a long time ago,” I told him, “and their injuries still ache when it's rainy.”

“Why do their injuries ache when it's rainy?” asked Rob.

“I think it has something to do with the change in air pressure,” I replied, and since it was far too early in the morning to explain the concept of air pressure to a pair of inquisitive nine-year-olds, I continued, “Daddy knows much more about it than I do. He'll explain it to you when you get home from school.”

Bill gave me a “thanks a lot” look and went back to eating his porridge.

After waving him off to work, dropping the boys off at school, and looking in vain for chores Bill hadn't done, Bess and I enjoyed a midmorning snack, then drove to Finch to deliver a box of baby clothes to the vicarage for the next jumble sale. We were instantly diverted from our mission by the sight that met our eyes as we topped the humpbacked bridge.

Mr. Barlow was using James Hobson's metal detector to scan the village green, while a knot of villagers followed his every move. Dick Peacock, Henry Cook, and the Handmaidens looked as if they were watching a Lilliputian tennis match as Mr. Barlow swept the device back and forth over the ground. I'd never thought of metal detecting as a spectator sport, but it had clearly become one in Finch.

Mr. Barlow wore his own utility belt and knee pads, but he'd borrowed James's red-handled digger as well as the pinpointer. To judge by his rapt expression, I had little doubt that he would have his own equipment the next time I saw him.

The action was taking place on a narrow swath of green between the Emporium and the tearoom, so I parked the Rover in front of the tearoom, put Bess in her pram, and joined Mr. Barlow's retinue. I was given a neighborly welcome, and Bess received her usual chorus of accolades. While Dick, Henry, and the Handmaidens passed her around, I asked Mr. Barlow if he'd found anything.

“Six tenpenny nails, a horseshoe, and a handful of coins,” he replied, patting a pocket on his utility belt.

“An impressive haul,” I said. “What kinds of coins?”

“Mostly modern,” he said. “Post-decimalization, that is. I did find a 1965 halfpenny, though. You don't see many of them around anymore.”

“I have a milk bottle filled with old halfpennies,” Dick said dampingly.

“You don't see them in circulation, is what I meant,” said Mr. Barlow.

“They're not
in
circulation,” Dick pointed out. “That's why you don't see them around anymore.”

“Never mind,” said Mr. Barlow with a long-suffering sigh.

I suspected that his next foray into metal detecting would take place in a less conspicuous location.

“We've been talking, Lori,” Elspeth Binney said.

“Yes, you have,” Mr. Barlow muttered grumpily.

He continued his slow march while his entourage—and Bess—stayed behind with me.

“We think we should take a page out of James Hobson's book,” Elspeth went on, “and create a little museum of our own, right here in Finch.”

“Where?” I asked.

“In the schoolhouse,” said Millicent Scroggins, with the triumphant air of someone who'd solved a challenging riddle. “We could display our finds in a glass case in the schoolhouse.”

“
Our
finds?” queried Mr. Barlow over his shoulder.

“I'm sure
most
of us will regard it as a duty as well as a privilege to donate our finds to the village museum,” Elspeth said pointedly. “We'll give full credit to the donors,” she added in a slightly raised voice, looking hopefully at the back of Mr. Barlow's head.

“We're studying calligraphy with Mr. Shuttleworth,” Selena Buxton informed me, referring to the Handmaidens' art teacher. “We could make beautiful handwritten labels for the items in the glass case.”

“We'd record the donor's name as well as where and when the donated item was discovered,” said Opal Taylor. “It would be just like James's museum room, only with more than one donor.” She, too,
raised her voice as she addressed Mr. Barlow's back. “I'm sure
everyone
in the village will be eager to participate in such a worthy project.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” I said. “Do you have a display case?”

“Not yet,” Millicent admitted.

“There's a glass case in the back room of the Emporium,” said Henry Cook. “Maybe Peggy would lend it to us for the museum.”

There was a brief silence, as if everyone present had recalled Peggy Taxman's disparaging comments about “grown men playing in the dirt.”

“Or we could buy one secondhand,” Henry Cook amended hurriedly, realizing his mistake.

“With whose money?” called the ever-practical Mr. Barlow.

“We could take up a collection,” Millicent Scroggins proposed. “Or we could hold bake sales. Or—”

“Maybe we should see what kind of things people find,” Dick interrupted, “before we start raising money for a museum. If it's just a load of old nails and a handful of coins I can find in my own till, I don't see the point of—”

He, too, was interrupted, but not by a human voice. Every head swiveled in Mr. Barlow's direction as the detector's mournful wail cut through the chatter.

“Wait!” Henry shouted at Mr. Barlow. “I promised Sally I'd tell her when the thing went off again.”

Henry ran into the tearoom, and the Handmaidens ran toward Mr. Barlow. After passing Bess to me, Dick Peacock scurried over to gaze, enraptured, at a spot a few inches in front of Mr. Barlow's work boots. Mr. Barlow laid aside the detector, knelt on the ground, and pulled the red-handled digger from its sheath.

Having received a surfeit of adoration, Bess was happy to return to the pram and munch on the shark-shaped teether her brothers had
picked out for her. I was still fastening her safety harness when Henry and Sally trotted out of the tearoom and sped past us, hand in hand. Bess and I reached the circle of observers in time to see Mr. Barlow pull the digger out of the soil and slide it back into its sheath.

“Probably another ruddy nail,” he grumbled as he pulled the square plug of dirt from the ground. He pointed the pinpointer at the plug of dirt, and to his evident surprise, the miniature metal detector beeped. With the delicacy of a man who knew every blade of grass on the village green personally, he dug his finger and thumb into the spot the pinpointer had indicated and removed a small, mud-covered object. It didn't look like a nail.

“It's a ring,” Mr. Barlow announced, brushing the wet soil from his find.

The rest of us responded with a sharp communal intake of breath, except for Bess, who continued to chew placidly on her shark.

“A lost ring,” breathed Elspeth, who was a romantic at heart. “How tragic.”

“It could've been thrown away in a fit of pique,” said Opal, who was less of a romantic.

“Maybe she threw it at her boyfriend's head,” said Millicent, “because she saw him kissing another girl.”

“How do you know it's a woman's ring?” Dick demanded. “Could be a man's.”

“It's a wedding ring,” Mr. Barlow informed us, getting to his feet. “A gold wedding band. There's an inscription inside it.”

“Wonderful!” cried Elspeth, clasping her hands to her chest. “If it's a name, perhaps we can restore the lost ring to its rightful owner.”

“If she wants it back,” said Opal.

“It may not be a
she
,” Dick insisted.

“Too big to be a woman's ring,” said Mr. Barlow.

“I told you so,” said Dick, preening.

“Unless it belonged to a big woman,” Mr. Barlow added, taking some of the wind out of Dick's sails. He squinted at the gold ring, then shook his head. “Can't read the inscription. Looks foreign.” He held the ring out to me. “You have a go, Lori. You're better at foreign languages than I am.”

I didn't know what had given him that idea, but I took the ring from him and examined it closely.

“I think it's Spanish,” I said, and attempted to read the words aloud. “
Te amaré para
—” I broke off and looked uneasily at Sally.

“Siempre.”
Sally finished the sentence for me in a voice that could have frozen molten steel. “
Te amaré para siempre.
” She turned a gimlet eye on her wilting husband. “You can translate the inscription into English for us, can't you, Henry?”

But Henry didn't have to translate the inscription for us because we'd heard him translate it once before. Everyone in Finch knew that, having met and fallen in love in Mexico, Sally and Henry had decided to have their wedding rings engraved in Spanish. Henry had read the inscription aloud at their wedding ceremony, then repeated it in English as he'd slipped Sally's ring onto her finger. It was a moment none of us would ever forget.

“‘I will love you forever,'” Sally said frostily. “Isn't that what it means, Henry?”

“Yes, dear,” he croaked.

“Henry?” said Sally, tilting her head toward the ring I was holding. “Is that your wedding ring?”

Henry gulped.

“If it is,” Sally continued remorselessly, “then what's that
thing
you're wearing on your ring finger?”

“I can explain,” he said, hiding his left hand behind his back.

Sally folded her arms and said, “I sincerely hope you can.”

“Do you remember when you asked me to pick up a jar of macadamia nuts at the Emporium?” Henry asked as beads of sweat began to glisten on his forehead.

“Macadamia nuts?” Sally peered at him as if he'd lost his mind. “Henry, that was
ten months
ago, when I made the macadamia nut cake for my granddaughter's birthday.”

“Yes, I know.” Henry held his hands up in a pacifying gesture, caught himself, and thrust his left hand behind his back again. “But here's the thing: The ring was on my finger when I left the tearoom, but it wasn't there when I came back from the Emporium. I looked everywhere for it, Sal, but I couldn't find it, and I couldn't ask if anyone else had found it because I couldn't let anyone know I'd lost it. I knew how much it meant to you, Sal, so I went back to the jeweler and had another ring made in a smaller size so it wouldn't slip off so easily.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sally. A distant look came into her eyes, as if a memory were clicking into place. “That would be about the time you cut your finger with the bread knife, wouldn't it? The finger you covered up with the sticking plaster?”

“I couldn't think of any other way to keep you from seeing my finger,” said Henry. “It took a week to get the new ring from the jeweler. I promise you, Sal, it was the worst week of my life.”

Sally didn't appear to be sympathetic. Her nostrils flared as she took a deep breath and said through tightened lips, “You've worn a counterfeit wedding ring for the past
ten months
, Henry Cook?”

“It's a very nice ring,” Henry said pleadingly. “It's eighteen-karat gold, just like the first one. And it's not as if our marriage is counterfeit, is it, Sal? It's—it's just a ring.”

The Handmaidens groaned, I winced, and Dick looked away, as if he couldn't bear to watch a man dig his own grave.

“It's
just a ring
?” Sally repeated in a voice shrill enough to shatter the tearoom's windows. “It may be ‘just a ring' to you, Henry Cook, but it's ten months of barefaced lies to me!”

She wheeled around and made for the tearoom. Henry ran after her and managed to slip inside mere seconds before she slammed the door. A plump hand appeared in a window to flip the
OPEN
sign to
CLOSED
.

And all was silence.

“Um,” I said awkwardly. “What should I do with Henry's ring?”

“I don't think Sally'll let you put it in the museum,” said Mr. Barlow, with a hearty guffaw.

“It's no laughing matter,” Elspeth scolded. “Henry should have told Sally the truth instead of pulling the wool over her eyes with his little charade.”

“She would have hit the roof either way,” said Dick. “I don't blame him for putting it off as long as he could.”

“You don't blame a man for lying to his wife for nearly a year?” Opal said, looking outraged.

“Not if it keeps peace in the family,” Dick responded.

“But it's a false peace,” Selena objected.

“Better than no peace at all,” said Dick.

Mr. Barlow quietly replaced the plug of grassy soil, tamped it into place, and picked up the metal detector.

“I'm packing it in for the day,” he said. “I can't stand the noise.”

Dick and the Handmaidens stared at him as he walked home.

“Was he referring to us?” Opal asked indignantly.

“I don't think he was talking about the metal detector,” said Elspeth.

“We were making a bit of a racket,” Dick acknowledged equitably.
“Ah, well, it's lunchtime. I'd best get back to the pub or Christine'll think I've abandoned her. See you later, ladies. 'Bye, Bess.”