Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure (4 page)

He opened the museum box and took a large bronze coin from it, then held the coin high in the air for all to see.

“I'm sure I don't have to tell you what this is,” he said.

“It's an old penny,” said Mr. Barlow. “The kind we used before decimalization.”

“That's right,” said James. “It's a 1957 bronze penny.”

“Why would you want an old penny?” Opal Taylor asked. “You can't use it in the shops anymore. It's worthless.”

“Is it?” James said, gazing up at the coin. “I found it in a field where a traveling fair once pitched its tents. If it could speak, imagine the stories it would tell.”

Every eye, including mine, was suddenly fixed on the penny.

“When I look at my penny,” James continued, “I can almost hear children laughing as they ride a merry-go-round or gorge themselves on candy floss or win a prize at a carnival game. I imagine the child who lost it, the desperate search, and the tears that followed.”

I wasn't sure about the others, but I found myself hoping the coin hadn't slipped from a sticky little fist.

“Some metal detectorists,” James went on, “focus on the monetary value of a find. Simply put: If it isn't gold, it isn't worth keeping. Others, like myself, enjoy the story each object tells. It's like holding a piece of history in my hand. I can't help imagining who made it,
who owned it, who left it behind, and why. With a lot of research and a little imagination, I can reconstruct the world that produced my coin. A 1957 bronze penny may not be valuable in material terms, but every find connects me to another time and place.”

“Have you found any gold?” asked Millicent Scroggins.

James's hand disappeared into the box again. When it came out, he was holding a round brooch made of pearls inset in gold to mimic a daisy's petals. An awed murmur ran through his rapt audience.

“Sorry,” he said, responding to the murmur. “In this case, all that glitters
isn't
gold. The pearls are fake and the metal is painted brass, but when I dug it up, I thought I'd found a treasure. And I was right. Although my brooch turned out to be a tatty piece of mid-twentieth-century costume jewelry, I'll never forget the thrill I felt when I first saw it, and I've never stopped weaving stories around it. Who made it? Who owned it? Was it lost, or was it cast aside?”

“Why would someone throw away a perfectly good brooch?” demanded Selena Buxton.

“I can think of many reasons,” James replied. “If you put your mind to it, you can, too.”

The villagers became thoughtful, as though they were concocting scenarios ranging from temper tantrums to broken engagements to failed marriages. James Hobson was clearly a gifted teacher. My mother, I thought, would have approved.

Elspeth Binney was the first to break the spell.

“You could have put an advertisement in the paper,” she suggested, bending to lift Bess into her arms, “saying you'd found something of value in such and such a place. The brooch's owner might have come forward to claim it.”

“I did place an advert in the paper,” said James, “but no one came forward. I like to think I've given it a good home in my museum.”

“So,” Sally Cook said slowly, “it's a . . . a private museum, is it? Not open to the public? No tearoom?”

Felicity pressed a hand to her mouth, presumably to keep herself from laughing, but James responded to Sally's questions without betraying a hint of amusement.

“My museum is nothing more than the room in which I display my finds,” he explained. “I display them for my own pleasure, but once I've unpacked and organized them, you'll be welcome to view them, free of charge, whenever you like—within reason.”

The villagers smiled broadly this time, and Sally Cook's worried frown vanished.

“I'll be happy to make a cup of tea for anyone who stops by,” James added, “but if you want a really good cup of tea, I suggest that you continue to patronize Mrs. Cook's charming establishment.”

Sally beamed at him.

“I'm sure we'll all enjoy viewing your finds and listening to the stories you've invented about them, James,” she said. “But we've taken up enough of your time this morning. You must have better things to do than to stand around in your garden, talking to us.”

“I'm afraid we do,” said Felicity, stepping forward. “We've hardly begun to unpack. I'll probably spend the next half hour hunting for dishes so James and I can have our lunch.”

“Don't you worry about cooking,” said Opal. “We'll fill your fridge before you can say snap.”

“If there's any heavy lifting to be done, I'm your man,” said Mr. Barlow.

“I'll bring a keg of ale along,” said Dick, “to spare you the walk to the pub.”

“There's no need—” Felicity began, but Sally silenced her polite protest.

“Of course there's a need,” said Sally. “Moving house is no joke. We'd be ashamed of ourselves if we left you two to fend for yourselves.”

“Well, then . . . thank you,” said Felicity, admitting defeat with a grateful smile.

“When you've got your place sorted out, James,” said Mr. Barlow, “I'd like to take a look at this detector gizmo of yours.”

“So would I,” said Charles Bellingham.

“I think we all would,” said Grant Tavistock. “I don't suppose you'd consider giving a demonstration, would you? We could hold it in the old schoolhouse—it's our village hall.”

“It'd make more sense to hold it on the village green,” Mr. Barlow pointed out. “There's nothing under the schoolhouse but a stone foundation. The green might have anything buried in it.”

“A truer word was never spoken,” said James. “All right, then . . . In response to popular demand, I'll give a demonstration on the village green as soon as our home is presentable.” He bent his head toward Mr. Barlow. “How does one make announcements in Finch?”

“Church bulletin board,” Mr. Barlow replied.

“Then you can look for an announcement on the church bulletin board very soon,” said James.

“Much obliged,” said Mr. Barlow. “We'll be off, then.”

With a jerk of his head, Mr. Barlow signaled to the others to follow him along the brick path that would take them back to the lane. Elspeth Binney paused only to return Bess to me.

“I hope you like casseroles,” I said to the Hobsons after the villagers had departed. “Because you're about to receive quite a few.”

“We'll take whatever's given and be thankful for it,” said Felicity. “It'll be a luxury to have someone else cook for us. We'll use the spare time to shop for a new blender in Upper Deeping.”

“I forbid it,” I said adamantly. “If you manage to carve out some
free time over the next few days, put your feet up and relax. I'll bring you a blender.”

“You're a generous lot, aren't you?” James observed.

“No more generous than you,” I said. “You did very well, James. The villagers won't forget it.”

“It truly was my pleasure,” said James. “I could talk about my hobby for hours on end.”

“And yet,” said Felicity, “you were the soul of brevity.” She kissed her husband on the cheek.

“I wouldn't worry about brevity when you tell the villagers the tragic tale of your cliff-top cottage,” I said. “You're right, James. They'll gobble it up.”

“You've reminded me that it's lunchtime,” said Felicity, pressing a hand to her stomach. “Will you share our casseroles with us, Lori?”

“Thanks, but Bess and I will follow our neighbors' example and get out of your hair,” I said. “You must be longing to have the cottage to yourselves.”

“Let me drive you home,” James offered.

“No, thanks,” I said. “A quiet walk will be better for Bess after her action-packed morning.”

The couple accompanied Bess and me to the pram, then to the gate, where they waved us off. I returned the friendly gesture, then set out for home, convinced that Ivy Cottage was in very good hands indeed.

“Remind me to look for the blender,” I said to Bess, but she was too busy chewing on her blanket to respond.

As I strolled up the leaf-strewn lane, thinking of crumbling cliffs, bronze pennies, tatty brooches, and my lunch, I couldn't have known that my search for a simple appliance would take me on a journey through space and time. I couldn't have known that it would mark the beginning of my very own treasure hunt.

T
he blue sky had vanished behind a heavy blanket of clouds by the time Bess and I reached the cottage, but the rain was unusually considerate. It waited until we were indoors to come bucketing down.

I said hello to Stanley, who was in the living room, curled snugly in Bill's favorite armchair, and wheeled the pram down the hallway to its parking place in the solarium. Bess was entranced by the rain cascading down the glass walls, so we stayed put for a while, watching the world through a glimmering waterfall.

Bess stayed awake long enough for a hearty lunch, a diaper change, and a spirited game of peekaboo, but she nodded off shortly thereafter, worn out by the fresh air and her burgeoning social life. I carried her upstairs to the nursery, settled her in her crib, turned on the baby monitor, and left her to dream about a world filled with teething rings.

“Next stop, attic,” I murmured as I closed the nursery door.

I clipped the baby monitor's mobile receiver to a belt loop on my blue jeans, then took a short pole from the linen closet and used its hooked end to open the trap door in the hall ceiling and to pull down the attic's folding ladder. It wasn't a smooth operation—it never was—but I knew that the thumps, bumps, and grumbling wouldn't bother my sleeping beauty.

The roar of rain battering the slate roof surged into the hallway when I opened the trap door, reminding me that the day had gone
from sunlit to stygian. Since the attic was illuminated by one dim, dusty lightbulb and two small, grimy windows, one at each gable end, I took a flashlight from a drawer in my bedside table and brought it with me as I climbed the ladder.

When Bill and I first moved into the cottage, the attic had been empty, apart from a light coating of dust and an old leather trunk that had been tucked away in a dark corner by the cottage's previous owner. Before the twins had come along, the wide floorboards had been clutter free, and nothing had concealed the hand-hewn roof beams, the burly tie beams, or the slender laths beneath the slate tiles.

The attic had changed a lot since then. The beams and the laths were still visible, and the old trunk was still tucked away in its dark corner, but the dust had become omnipresent and the floorboards could no longer be described as “clutter free.” After more than a decade of use, our attic had come to resemble a badly organized garage sale.

The dangling lightbulb revealed a maze of storage boxes overflowing with Christmas ornaments, Halloween decorations, Easter paraphernalia, camping gear, picnic supplies, wrapping paper, toys the boys had outgrown but couldn't quite part with, miscellaneous odds and ends I'd saved for rainy-day crafts projects, the quilting squares I'd temporarily set aside after the twins had been born, and an embarrassing array of sports equipment—tennis racquets, golf clubs, badminton sets—that rarely saw the light of day.

Some of the boxes contained nothing but packing material. Bill had stowed them in the attic in case he had to return an electronic device in its original packaging. Though he'd never returned a single device, he'd accumulated an outstanding collection of boxes.

As I picked my way through the maze, ducking under a tie beam
and stepping over a fluffy purple stegosaurus that had escaped from its storage container, I made the same vow I made whenever I visited the attic.

“You've got to clean this place up, Lori,” I muttered. “It won't take more than a day or two to get it organized. Next week. I'll do it next week.”

I meant it every time and forgot it just as often.

Our surplus wedding gifts—unopened, untouched, and still in their original boxes—had been the first of our possessions to find a home in the attic. Bill and I had stacked them neatly next to the old trunk in the corner, intending to wait for a decent interval to pass before we donated them to the thrift store in Upper Deeping.

The decent interval had passed so long ago that it had become indecent, but the Crock-Pots, coffeemakers, juicers, rice cookers, toasters, bread-making machines, and all but one of the blenders hadn't gone anywhere. Though their colorful boxes were now furred with dust and linked by cobwebs, they remained in their neat stacks.

I switched on my flashlight as I approached the dark corner, feeling like an appliance archaeologist. A reminiscent smile curled my lips when its beam picked out the boxes Bill and I had toted up the ladder after we'd returned from our honeymoon. He'd volunteered to tackle the chore himself, but I'd told him that we'd tackle it together or not at all. My somewhat belligerent offer of help had provoked a highly memorable kiss that had been repeated several times while we were in the attic.

With a happy sigh, I moved forward to continue my search. I knew which blender I wanted to give to the Hobsons—it was an exact duplicate of the one I used—but I couldn't remember its precise location. As I squatted before the wall of wedding gifts, I murmured a brief word of thanks to the world's appliance manufacturers
for packaging their wares in illustrated boxes. I could barely make out the written descriptions, but the colorful photographs showed me that the model I sought was at the very bottom of the blender stack. To make matters worse, the blender stack was in the middle of the wedding gift wall.

With a less happy sigh, I placed the flashlight on the floor and began to dismantle the blender stack. Though I handled each box as gingerly as a bomb disposal expert, I couldn't avoid stirring up a cloud of dust. When the dust hit my nostrils, the inevitable happened.

My sneeze didn't topple the wedding gifts, but a violent jerk of my hands did. One brain-rattling sneeze followed another as the dusty boxes tumbled pell-mell to the floor, knocking me onto my bottom but doing no real harm until a plummeting juicer struck the flashlight and sent it spinning around the old trunk and into the dark corner.

After the dust settled—more or less—and my sneezing fit stopped, I pulled a crumpled tissue from my pocket, blew my nose, and took stock of my situation. On the plus side, the Hobsons' blender was lying at my feet. On the minus side, the surplus wedding gifts were in disarray and the flashlight was beyond my reach.

“Drat,” I said.

By the dim and distant light of the dangling bulb, I picked up the blender and put it behind me, then patiently restacked the gifts, vowing under my breath to donate them to the thrift store by the end of the week.

“If Bill offers to bring them down, I'll let him,” I grumbled. “I've had my fill of the attic.”

I put the last coffeemaker back in place, then crawled around the
reconstructed wall to retrieve my flashlight. It had come to rest in the narrow gap between the old trunk and the attic's stone wall, with its beam pointing in an entirely useless direction.

I was so eager to leave the attic that I stuck my arm into the narrow space without a second thought. I felt a sense of relief when my groping fingers bumped into the flashlight, but I quickly snatched them back as its beam swung around to reveal a gleaming row of beady red eyes peering at me from the shadows.

I recoiled with a horrified squeal.

“Mice,”
I breathed, my heart racing.

Though I wasn't abnormally fearful of mice, I didn't relish the thought of sticking my fingers into a nest filled with them. I sat back on my heels and listened for the pitter-patter of tiny clawed feet that would signal a rodent retreat, but it was an exercise in futility. I couldn't hear anything through the rain's constant din, except for the baby monitor and my thundering heart. I contemplated beating a hasty retreat of my own until I imagined the look on Bill's face when I told him that I'd been chased out of the attic by a handful of beady-eyed mice.

I made a mental note to have a serious talk with Stanley about a feline's household duties, reminded myself that I was a big girl, and looked cautiously into the shadowy gap.

The red eyes were still there, and so, presumably, were the mice. They seemed to be frozen in place, as if the poor creatures were too terrified to move. I banged on the trunk, hoping to release them from their paralysis, but they didn't even blink.

“I just want my flashlight,” I explained, raising my voice to be heard above the rain.

Nothing happened. Puzzled, I leaned forward and realized with a
mixture of relief and embarrassment that I'd been completely mistaken. I hadn't discovered a mouse family hiding behind the old trunk. I'd discovered a piece of jewelry. Chiding myself for being both a ninny
and
a nincompoop, I rescued the flashlight and the glittering trinket, then sat back to examine my find.

It was a cuff bracelet, about two inches wide, and designed to fit a wrist much bigger than mine. There was nothing tatty about it. The bracelet appeared to be made of solid gold inlaid from one edge to the other with an intricate, intertwining pattern of small, simply cut garnets that gleamed in the flashlight's beam like drops of wine.

“Mouse eyes,” I scoffed, running a fingertip over the garnets.

Despite James Hobson's cautionary tale about the monetary worth of his brooch, I was confident that my bracelet was the real deal. I'd seen enough antique jewelry to distinguish between the warm glow of old gold and the harsh shine of plated brass, and I doubted that fake gems could mimic the garnets' rich, deep shade of burgundy.

I wondered how such a precious object could have lain undetected in the shadows for so many years, but when I recalled the rosy haze of newlywed bliss that had filled the attic when I'd last approached the old trunk, I understood. On that day, Bill and I had been so absorbed in each other that a shower of gold coins could have rained down on us and we wouldn't have noticed. It had certainly never occurred to us to look behind the trunk for lost jewelry, and once we'd constructed the wedding gift wall, the trunk had been effectively concealed.

Though I was certain that I'd found a treasure, I was also certain that it didn't belong to me. Bill had given me quite a few pretty baubles and I'd purchased some for myself, but I had nothing to compare with the bracelet. If it had fallen out of the old trunk, however, then
I knew exactly who owned it. I wasn't sure how I would return it to her, but I could at least tell her I'd found it.

I rose creakily to my feet, stuffed the bracelet into my pocket, picked up the blender, and began the long journey from the attic's outermost reaches to a comfortable chair in the study.

I needed to speak with Aunt Dimity.