Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure (21 page)

F
inch's history museum was unveiled on a fine Sunday afternoon in mid-November. The folding tables in the old schoolhouse groaned under the weight of the food the villagers had prepared, and everyone had dressed up for the occasion. I'd been unable to dissuade Will and Rob from wearing riding gear, but I had at least persuaded them to don the formal attire they wore at gymkhanas instead of the grubby garb they wore while cleaning the stables.

Thankfully, Bess was too young to make her own sartorial decisions. I thought she looked adorable in the festive red velvet ensemble I'd chosen for her, and her adoring fans seemed to think so, too. Willis, Sr., took her from Bill's arms as soon as we walked into the schoolhouse and proudly showed her off to his friends and neighbors, while Amelia recorded the grandfather-granddaughter moment with yet another series of captivating sketches.

Peggy Taxman's antique cabinet occupied a prominent position in the center of the schoolhouse's north wall. The cabinet was at least six feet tall and four feet wide—much larger than I'd imagined it— but I couldn't tell whether it was Victorian or Edwardian or Early Troglodyte because it was shrouded in one of Mr. Barlow's paint-spattered drop cloths. I suspected that Jasper's refinishing work had met Peggy's exacting standards, however, because she looked as serene as a millpond.

Though the cabinet and its contents were concealed by the drop
cloth, the Handmaidens' ink-stained fingers bore witness to their calligraphic endeavors, and a laminated version of Lilian's minutely marked map of the village green was being passed from hand to hand, to great acclaim.

I was discussing Lilian's map with Grant Tavistock and Charles Bellingham when Sally Cook collared me. Will and Rob, who clearly had no future in diplomacy, had evidently informed her that the cream buns I'd brought back from London were the best they'd ever tasted. I appeased Sally by employing Aunt Dimity's strategy of downplaying Carrie Osborne's baking skills and playing up my sons' indiscriminate fondness for all forms of pastry. The boys atoned for their blunder by appearing at my elbow with powdered sugar mustaches and chocolaty fingers.

“Well done, Lori,” said Grant, after Sally, Will, and Rob had departed.

“Handled like a pro,” Charles agreed. “Were the London cream buns better than Sally's?”

“My lips are sealed,” I said, “but I'll give you an address where you can find them.”

Grant and Charles were feeling rather pleased with themselves, having discovered a hammered farthing from the reign of Edward I in their back garden. They'd dutifully reported it to the proper authorities, who'd returned it after recording it for posterity.

Bree Pym had also scored a major coup with James Hobson's metal detector, but she hadn't had to report it to anyone. While scanning her front garden, she'd unearthed a trowel that had once belonged to her great-grandaunts. Bree, like Grant and Charles, had donated her find to the museum, along with a photo of Ruth and Louise Pym and some dried flowers from the garden they'd created.

At the appointed hour, Lilian Bunting asked for everyone's
attention. My family group was scattered far and wide, but Bill managed to tear himself away from the sausage rolls Christine Peacock had brought to the festivities and join me. The vicar, who had been similarly engaged, brushed crumbs from his fingers, made his way to the shrouded cabinet, and gave a short homily on the importance of preserving the past.

He expressed his gratitude to Peggy Taxman for presenting her display case to the village, and he singled out the donors without whom the display case would be an empty shell. He acknowledged the Handmaidens' artistic contributions, and he concluded by thanking his wife for her map and for the research she'd done to enhance our understanding of the objects within the cabinet.

After a brief round of applause, I expected Peggy Taxman to sweep past the vicar and yank the drop cloth from the display case. Instead, the vicar asked James Hobson to step forward. James seemed genuinely taken aback by the request, but after Felicity gave him an encouraging shove, he smiled sheepishly and went to stand beside the vicar.

“James,” said the vicar, “I know I speak on behalf of the entire village when I say that you have done us a great service by introducing us to your fascinating hobby. You have shown us that metal detecting can be used, not for personal gain, but for the enlightenment of a community. It is with great pleasure and sincere gratitude that I invite you to, er, remove the drop cloth from our history museum.”

“M-me?” James faltered, glancing furtively at Peggy Taxman. “Are you sure you don't mean—”

“He means you, James,” Peggy boomed. “Get on with it!”

The hearty round of applause that followed was directed solely at Peggy. The good people of Finch knew a generous gesture when they saw one, and Peggy's willingness to allow a newcomer to take the
lead in a once-in-a-lifetime village event redefined the boundaries of generosity.

I was proud of Peggy for giving James the spotlight he deserved, but I was also relieved that she hadn't stepped into it. If she'd assumed her usual role, she would almost certainly have subjected us to a lengthy and full-throated panegyric about a hobby she'd once dismissed as “playing in the dirt.” James, by contrast, waited until the applause died down to make the shortest speech ever heard in Finch.

“Without further ado . . .” He left the sentence hanging as he reached up and plucked the drop cloth from the cabinet. The tumultuous applause he received suggested that I wasn't the only one who was aware of our lucky escape.

A crowd of villagers converged on the cabinet, but I could see enough of it to realize that, although it was handsome, it was no more antique than I was. The plain cherrywood frame, the mirrored rear wall, the massive glass panels, and the interior lighting hinted at a relatively recent date of manufacture.

“Antique, my foot,” I whispered to Bill.

“Haven't you heard?” he murmured in return.

“Heard what?” I asked, pulling my allegedly gossip-proof husband away from prying ears.

“Christine Peacock told me that Peggy's old display case was riddled with woodworm,” Bill explained. “It came apart in Jasper's hands.”

“Disaster,” I said, wincing.

“To save face,” Bill continued, “Peggy bought a brand-new curio cabinet at the discount furniture shop in Upper Deeping.” He looked around to make sure no one else was listening before he added delightedly, “Rumor has it that she persuaded them to cut the price in half.”

“The woman knows how to haggle,” I acknowledged.

“Christine saw Peggy and Jasper unload the flat pack from the trunk of their car,” said Bill. “She says it took Jasper a week to assemble the parts.”

“Poor Jasper,” I said, trying not to laugh.

“What are you two whispering about?” inquired Lilian, strolling over to us.

“Woodworm and flat packs,” I replied.

Lilian disguised an unseemly snort of laughter with a cough.

“I never thought I'd say it,” she said quietly, “but thank God for woodworm. Peggy's original donation was dark, musty, and horridly Victorian. I much prefer the new one. The shelves are adjustable, the glass door slides sideways for easy access, and the light switch is mounted on the back, so we won't have to open the case every time we turn the lights on and off.”

“Thank God for woodworm,” Bill and I chorused.

“It's no good looking at it from over here, though,” said Lilian. “The crowd's thinned a bit. You should be able to see the displays now. I'd like to know what you think of them. Your honest opinion, mind. I'm impervious to flattery.”

Bill and I walked with her to take a closer look at Finch's history museum. A small placard on top of the cabinet credited the Handmaidens' calligraphy and Lilian's research, while a modest brass plaque mounted on the base cited Peggy's major contribution. Since I'd expected Peggy to emblazon her name across the schoolhouse wall in lurid pink neon, the brass plaque came as a pleasant surprise.

Each object or group of objects was accompanied by a simple white place card upon which the Handmaidens had inscribed the donor's name in a script reminiscent of Aunt Dimity's fine copperplate, though they'd elected to use black ink instead of royal blue.
While the place cards were both handsome and legible, Lilian's painstaking research gave the little collection of odds and ends an unexpected depth.

Mr. Barlow's horseshoe and Lilian's hand-forged horseshoe nails were grouped together in front of a sepia photograph of the old smithy. Sally Cook's lira was paired with a group photograph of Piero Sciaparelli's numerous descendants. Peggy's hair clip glittered prettily before a black-and-white photo of a Ferris wheel at Madame Karela's traveling fair, and Elspeth Binney's palette knife was accompanied by a color photo of all four Handmaidens dressed in their pastel painters' smocks.

Henry Cook's counterfeit wedding ring stood in for the real one Mr. Barlow had discovered. It lay before a color photograph of Sally and Henry grinning at the camera while he held his left hand, fingers splayed, over his heart. Mr. Barlow's rusty hammer and his tenpenny nails were displayed with a photo of him putting up shelves in the vicarage.

Grant's and Charles's hammered farthing was dwarfed by a postcard portrait of Edward I, and Bree's dried flowers had been lovingly arranged around the trowel and the photo of her great-grandaunts.

Lilian had selected photographs of world events to go along with the modern English coins the villagers had unearthed. Her 1965 florin, for example, had been placed before a photograph of Sir Winston Churchill's state funeral. As expected, Peggy had donated more items to the museum than anyone else, and though most of her finds fell into the e
xtremely
modern coin category, Lilian had diligently dug up photographs to accompany them.

Not content merely to illustrate the displays, Lilian had also written captions for them. All of the captions contained basic information—
the place and date of an object's discovery as well as a brief description of it—but a few contained much more. Lilian had taken the time to write detailed and occasionally humorous narratives about the fair, the smithy, Mr. Barlow's hammer, Henry Cook's wedding ring, Elspeth Binney's palette knife, Bree Pym's great-grandaunts, and Piero Sciaparelli's prisoner-of-war camp.

Lilian had clearly saved her best efforts for the top shelf. She'd lined it with black velvet, placed Dave Dillehaye's bronze-colored Victory Medal on a faded Union Jack, and surrounded the faded flag with photographs from the First World War.

It wasn't easy to look at the shattered limbs, the blood-soaked bandages, the filth, the rats, and the ragged corpses—and I was glad that the images were too high up for my sons to see—but the photographs brought home the horrors that had pushed Dave and others like him past endurance. His caption was much longer than the others' because it included his honorable service record, the shameful story of his original burial, and Lilian's plans to give the story a new and kinder ending.

Tears stung my eyes as I finished reading about Dave, and when I turned to Lilian, I had to swallow hard before I could speak.

“Is it all right?” she asked.

“It's a long way beyond all right,” I replied, wiping my eyes. “The scholars at the British Museum couldn't have done better.”

Lilian flushed with pleasure as Bill added his praise to mine. While they discussed the displays, I gazed in silence from one object to the next. None of the villagers had unearthed the tiaras and the gold doubloons I'd envisioned during James's metal-detecting demonstration, and they knew nothing of the Anglo-Saxon hoard, but they'd discovered buried treasure nonetheless.

My neighbors' mundane finds served as portals to the past. The hoard might outshine the rusted, worn, and broken treasures the villagers had rescued from oblivion, but it was part of the same story, the story of an ordinary place where ordinary people had always lived extraordinary lives.

I
t was a cold and snowy night in mid-December. Bill was dozing in his favorite armchair, and Stanley was dozing in his lap. Will and Rob had gone to bed, and Bess was dreaming baby dreams in the nursery. I was in the study, seated in one of the tall leather armchairs that faced the hearth, enjoying the warmth of the roaring fire while I brought Aunt Dimity up to date on recent events.

“Peggy offered to donate a second curio cabinet to the museum,” I said, “but I don't think we'll need another cabinet anytime soon.”

Have the villagers lost interest in metal detecting?

“They're strictly fair-weather detectorists,” I replied. “When winter sets in, they stay in. James is still out there, though. He's scanning the pasture behind Ivy Cottage. So far he's found a soup can, three horseshoes, a pair of embroidery scissors, and a gold-rimmed monocle.”

The monocle must have belonged to Mr. Perry. He lived in Mr. Barlow's house when I was a girl, but he and his wife were bird-watchers, and the pasture behind Ivy Cottage was one of their local haunts. It took an entire month for Mr. Perry to replace his precious monocle—he had an unusual prescription—but his wife continued bird-watching without him. At least, she said she was bird-watching. The scissors could have slipped out of her pocket when she was . . . bird-watching. I'm afraid the lost monocle didn't help their marriage one bit.

I burst out laughing, then shook my head helplessly.

“I love your stories, Dimity,” I said. “James would love them, too, and Lilian would find them riveting. It's a shame that I have to keep them to myself.”

I suppose it would be difficult to explain how you came by them.

“Lilian and James would think I'd gone soft in the head if I told them about you,” I reminded her.

Perhaps you could bend the truth a little, as you did in London. You could tell them that you heard my stories from your mother.

“I did hear your stories from my mother,” I said, “but none of them mentioned Mr. Perry and his monocle.”

Are you certain? Isn't it possible that you forgot Mr. Perry's story, but it returned to you when you learned of James's discovery?

“Dimity,” I said, wagging a finger at the blue journal, “I believe you're leading me down the path to perdition.”

Don't be melodramatic, Lori. I'm merely attempting to give James Hobson pertinent information about the monocle he found. I'm sure it would make him happy.

“James seems to be at his happiest when he's figuring things out for himself,” I said. “He may be able to identify Mr. Perry through his unusual prescription.”

If he doesn't, please feel free to use the story I've devised for you.

“Well,” I said, “the story you concocted about Carrie Osborne's cream buns kept Sally Cook from blowing her stack, so I'll keep the monocle story in my back pocket.”

How is the new churchyard wall coming along?

“The weather has not cooperated,” I declared, “but Mr. Barlow thinks it'll be finished by Christmas.”

A fine time of year to consecrate a grave.

“Spiritually, yes,” I allowed, “but if we get any more snow, we'll
need a horse-drawn sleigh to get to the grave. Bess wouldn't mind. She thinks snow is the best thing since puréed carrots.”

You'll attend the consecration, then, regardless of the weather?

“Everyone will attend the consecration,” I said firmly. “The villagers may be fair-weather detectorists, but they'll brave a blizzard for poor old Dave Dillehaye. It was snowing like mad when Lilian unveiled his name on the war memorial, but everyone was there.”

I wish my family had been as attentive to him while he was alive, but we weren't aware of his troubles until after he died. My parents fell out with the vicar when he refused to bury Dave in the churchyard. We stopped attending services at St. George's until a new vicar replaced the old one.

“Where did you attend services?” I asked.

St. Leonard's in Upper Deeping. It cost my father a small fortune in petrol to drive there every Sunday, but he was willing to make a small sacrifice to honor Dave's much greater sacrifice. We all were.

“Your parents were ahead of their time,” I said. “I'll ask the vicar to say a prayer for them during Dave's memorial service.”

Thank you, Lori. Has the vicar set a date for the memorial?

“Not yet,” I said. “Lilian's waiting for Mr. Barlow to finish the wall. Whenever it's held, I'm sure it'll draw a standing-room-only congregation. The piece Lilian wrote about Dave for the museum has gotten a lot of attention.”

She's an excellent writer. Speaking of which, did you remember to deliver the copies of
Peter Pan
to Morningside School?

“I did,” I replied. “One copy per student to read during Christmas break. The teachers explained that the money from the books helps sick children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. As it turns out, one of the twins' classmates had been
in
Great Ormond Street Hospital, so the books meant more to the school than I'd thought they would.”

Perhaps they'll put on the play next year.

“If they do,” I said, “I know two little boys who will jump at the chance to fly.”

The Christmas holiday began yesterday, didn't it?

“Yep,” I said. “Will and Rob spent all day playing in the snow. I thought I'd need a blowtorch to thaw them out, but hot chocolates did the trick. Bill and I took them to see the history museum after church on Sunday. They were too busy stuffing their faces with Sally's profiteroles to look at it on opening day.”

And?

“And they were disappointed by the lack of bugs,” I replied. “They told Lilian all sorts of things about the horseshoes, though, and they were chuffed when she jotted their comments in her notebook.”

I suspect a revised caption is in the offing.

“Our museum will always be a work in progress,” I said. “Contrary to what most people think, history doesn't stand still.”

Very true. There's always more to learn about the past.

“I've certainly learned a lot about your past in the last few weeks,” I said. “I feel as if I should write a thank-you note to the Hobsons' movers. If those klutzes hadn't broken the blender, I wouldn't have found the armlet, and if I hadn't found the armlet, you wouldn't have told me about your life in London during and after the war.”

Am I really so reticent?

“Not at all,” I said. “You're just so interested in other people that you forget to talk about yourself.”

Now that you mention it, I've been meaning to ask you about Adam and Sarah and everyone else you met in London.

“See what I mean?” I said, smiling. “You can't help yourself. You'd rather talk about anyone but you.”

Indulge me, then. Tell me if Adam and Sarah are still good friends.

“Adam and Sarah are well on their way to living happily ever after,” I said, “with Carrie's wholehearted approval, I might add. I don't expect to see Chocks, Ginger, and Fish again until the spring, but Carrie tells me they're doing well. And as you know, Badger continues to be remarkably healthy.”

I still find it hard to believe that you brought Bess with you when you last visited him. What happened to your fear of London?

I shrugged. “I don't know if I've changed or if London has—maybe it's a bit of both—but the big scary city doesn't scare me anymore. After all, it's just a collection of villages. And I know how to handle myself in a village.”

You most certainly do.

“I don't want Bess and the boys to be as stupid as I was,” I said, “so I'm going to take them to London much more often. The boys can hardly wait to start our grand gala Christmastime walking tour of Bloomsbury.”

There's no place quite like London at Christmas, especially if you wander off the beaten track.

“Adam and Sarah are coming with us,” I said, “so we can wander as far off the beaten track as we like.”

Will you visit Badger?

“The man has a library full of scarabs,” I said. “We can't
not
visit him. Besides, he's promised to tell the boys spooky stories about the pyramids while they're guzzling his hot chocolate. Will and Rob may not love him when we walk into the town house, but they'll love him by the time we say good-bye.”

Badger's easy to love.

“Do you ever wish you could have loved him?” I asked. “And I'm not talking about loving him like a brother.”

I know what you mean, Lori, and I hope you'll forgive my reticence, but I
believe I'll keep my answer to myself. In the immortal words of Peggy Taxman: Some things are best left buried. Good night, my dear. Sleep well.

“Good night, Dimity,” I said. “I always sleep well in winter. Except on Christmas Eve.”

Naturally!

As the graceful, old-fashioned handwriting faded from the page, I thought of the many treasures I'd encountered since the Hobsons had moved into Ivy Cottage. One was made of gold and garnets, while another was nothing more than a bit of ribbon attached to a bronze-colored metal disk. The most valuable were made of flesh and blood, but the most mysterious were buried deep within the heart.

“The buried treasures of the heart,” I murmured. “You needn't guard them from me, Dimity. I won't come looking for them. But I may ask to you help me pick out a Christmas present for Badger. Something tells me you'll know what he likes.”

Smiling, I closed the journal, returned it to its shelf, kissed Reginald on the snout, and went to rouse the treasure of my heart from his slumbers.