Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil (Aunt Dimity Mystery) (26 page)

No one can predict the future, Lori. That’s what makes life interesting.

“My life has been a little too interesting lately,” I told her. “I’m going to dig up Edward’s treasure, then run straight home to my husband and kids.” I looked down at the journal. “I don’t suppose you know where the treasure’s hidden.”

The hiding place is much too obvious. You’d be embarrassed if I told you.

“Go ahead, embarrass me.”

I’ll give you one hint and then I must be off: Claire was an accomplished seamstress.

When the familiar loops of royal-blue ink had faded from the page, I closed the journal and leaned back on the fainting couch, to ponder Aunt Dimity’s clue.

Claire’s skill with the needle came as no surprise to me. There’s been evidence of it everywhere in the tower room: the sewing basket, the embroidery frame, the neat stitches that had kept Edward’s letters safely hidden in the mattress. I’d seen another display of fine stitchery in the dainty wardrobe Nicole had discovered in the concealed storeroom, but the storeroom wasn’t what I’d call an obvious hiding place. There were too many nooks and crannies among all of the toys.

Stumped, I glanced across the room at Reginald, who sat on the bedside table, watching me sympathetically.

“Okay, Reg,” I said. “If you were a treasure, where would you hide?”

The firelight danced in his black button eyes and suddenly I knew the answer. It was so excruciatingly obvious that I was, as Dimity had predicted, mortified by my failure to see it sooner. I jumped up from the couch, hoping that Nicole and Dickie were still with Adam. I wanted everyone together when I made my startling announcement.

I waited outside of Adam’s door, wincing with each clap of Dickie’s thunderous voice. The words “breaking and entering” were bandied about, along with “attempted robbery,” “trespassing,” and the truly breathtaking “reckless endangerment of a young woman’s mental health.” If it hurt Adam to laugh, I could only imagine how much it hurt him to endure one of Dickie’s patented rants.

But Nicole was in love, truly in love this time, and a woman in love will forgive a man almost anything. Her persistent, placating murmurs, spoken in Adam’s defense, proved to be as powerful, in their own way, as Dickie’s roars.

“No, Uncle Dickie,” she said patiently. “You shan’t thrash Adam, or throttle him or throw him from the Tyne Bridge. The poor man has twenty stitches in his head. Surely he’s suffered enough.”

“You listen to me, Nickie—” Dickie began, but Nicole cut him off.

“It’s your turn to listen,” she told him.

It sounded as if the worst of the storm had blown over, so I tapped on the door and went in.

Claire’s portrait had been moved from the bed to the mantelpiece, and Edward’s photograph had been tucked into the lower lefthand corner of the portrait’s gilded frame. Theirs were the only tranquil faces in the room.

Adam sat slumped against his mound of pillows, his palm cupped gently over his left eye, looking as if his head were about to explode. Dickie stood at the foot of the bed, legs planted wide and arms akimbo, gazing in exasperation at his
niece. Nicole was in the visitor’s chair, meeting her uncle’s gaze with a rather fiery one of her own.

When she saw me, her face lit up.

“Lori!” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Adam’s told us of the way in which Claire…influenced your behavior. I’m so looking forward to telling Guy that he was wrong about you. When his men saw you and Adam up on the moors, he naturally assumed that—”

“I know what he assumed.” I ducked my head to hide my blushes. “Doesn’t it bother you to know that you’ve been living with a ghost?”

“I’ve been living in a house filled with high explosives,” Nicole replied. “Compared to that, a single ghost seems almost pleasant.”

“Don’t forget the thief,” Dickie grumbled.

“I haven’t.” Nicole nailed her uncle with a stern glare. “You listen to me, Uncle Dickie. Wyrdhurst is my home, not yours. It’s up to me to decide whether or not to bring charges against Adam, and I choose not to. Adam is a member of my family. My door will always be open to him.”

“Doesn’t seem to need doors,” Dickie muttered.

Nicole sniffed. “If you must be angry with someone, for heaven’s sake be angry with Josiah. That evil man’s responsible for everything that’s happened.”

“Ah, well…” Dickie’s tone became marginally more conciliatory. “I suppose you’re right, love. The old devil has a lot to answer for.” He cocked a calculating eye at Adam. “I’ll wager you think your mother should’ve been raised a Byrd and given every advantage.”

Adam returned his look with one of quiet dignity. “My mother had the greatest advantage of all, sir: a secure and
happy childhood. It enabled her to make a great success of her life. She needs neither your pity nor your charity.”

Dickie’s neck turned red. “I wasn’t offering—”

“Nor was I asking,” Adam interrupted. “I didn’t come here to claim anything from you, not even kinship.”

“You wanted to steal the letters,” Dickie snapped.

“You wouldn’t have missed them,” Adam said heatedly. “You didn’t even know they existed.”

“What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over, eh?” Dickie snarled. “Was that how you planned to justify stealing the treasure?”

“I’ve told you already,” Adam replied through gritted teeth. “I don’t know where the treasure is.”

“I do.”

Two and a half pairs of eyes swung in my direction.

I stepped forward. “I know where the treasure is.”

“Don’t keep us guessing,” Dickie barked. “Where is the bloody thing?”

Nicole made way for me as I crossed to the bedside table. When I pulled a penknife from my pocket and reached for Major Ted, her eyes widened in alarm.

“Minor surgery,” I assured her. “He won’t feel a thing.”

I sat cross-legged on the bed and inserted the knife blade between Teddy’s head and the band of his high-peaked officer’s hat. With infinite care, I sliced through each neat stitch that held the hat in place, then set the knife aside and lifted the hat from the bear’s toffee-colored head. A collective gasp went up as we caught the glint of old gold gleaming from between Teddy’s ears.

The rings were set with bloodred rubies in a sumptuous Byzantine filigree. One was large enough for a grown
woman, the other meant for a much tinier hand. They were sewn securely to the top of Teddy’s head and wedged between them, held in place with an X of silken thread, was a tightly folded square of yellowed paper. When I freed the rings, I passed them to Nicole, but I placed the square of paper in Adam’s hand.

He unfolded it delicately, so as not to tear a single crease. A ragged edge suggested that the scrap had been torn from a larger sheet, as if Claire had chosen to preserve only one part of a longer letter. When Adam saw Edward’s scrawl, he took a shaky breath, and read aloud:

“‘And something to put aside for the daughter we’ll have after we’re married, my darling, for I pray to God that we’ll have no sons. I want no child of mine to roam these battlefields, except, perhaps, to mourn the men who died here.’”

The fire’s crackle and the steady drumming of the rain filled the heavy silence. Edward had written his last words without knowing that his daughter would be born after his death, or that her son would one day roam the battlefields, telling the stories of the men who died there.

Nicole was the first to break the silence. She held the baby ring out to Adam, saying, “Take it.”

Adam turned his face away. “I don’t want it.”

“You’ll not get it,” Dickie muttered.

“Yes, he will.” Nicole pointed to the portrait. “Claire brought us together. She wants us to be one family. Are the two of you too stiff-necked to respect her wishes?”

The men eyed each other resentfully. Finally, Dickie drew himself up and approached the head of the bed, his hand outstretched.

“Just make sure you come through the front door from
now on,” he said gruffly. “As Nickie says, it’ll always be open to you.”

Adam resisted a moment longer before relenting.

Dickie gave his hand a hearty shake, then took the baby ring from Nicole and shoved it under Adam’s nose. “Now, young man, you take this ring and give it to your mother. Tell her to come to Wyrdhurst, if she can find the time. Nickie and I would very much like to meet her.”

“She’ll find the time.” Adam took the ring and folded it in the scrap of paper. “She taught me long ago that nothing’s more important than family.”

A cool breeze caressed my cheek and I looked up at the portrait. The face that had seemed demure in the storeroom and defiant in the library was now entirely at peace. She gazed benevolently down at us, with Edward by her side, secure in the knowledge that their daughter had lived to raise a loving son.

What more, I wondered, could any mother ask?

T
he next day was All Hallows Eve. Nicole assembled us in the library for a ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of Claire’s Byrd’s birth.

It was hard to believe that only a week had passed since my car had tumbled down the mountainside. As I looked slowly around the room, my gaze moving from one familiar face to the next, I felt a poignant sense of impending loss. The strangers of a week ago had become friends. I’d leave something of myself behind at Wyrdhurst, and hold a place in my heart for each of them when I left.

Adam, wearing his own black jeans and cobalt-blue ribbed sweater, rested in relative comfort on the sofa, while Dickie Byrd fussed with a magnum of champagne. Nicole and Guy stood arm in arm before the hearth, gazing up at Claire.

Hatch had removed the clouded mirror from above the fireplace and replaced it with Claire’s portrait. Edward’s photograph, framed in silver, sat atop the mantelpiece, beside a delicate glass dome. Beneath the dome, pillowed on a cushion of black velvet, lay the gold-and-ruby ring, the ring that signified a bond that neither a world war nor a father’s twisted love could break.

I looked over my shoulder at the empty space above the rolltop desk. At Nicole’s behest, Hatch had filled the peepholes and delivered Josiah’s portrait to Blackhope’s bonfire pile, where it would burn amid much rejoicing on Guy Fawkes Day. Nicole could think of no more fitting punishment for the old devil than to consign his grim image to the flames.

Nicole planned to fill the space with an oil painting she’d commissioned, based on Edward’s photograph. Since the library had brought Claire and Edward together, she wanted them to reign over it for as long as Wyrdhurst stood.

The ceremony began with a heartfelt prayer for the repose of all young lovers’ souls, and continued with many glasses of Veuve Cliquot. The champagne brought a sparkle to Nicole’s eyes and gave her the courage to step forward.

“I know it’s a bit premature,” she said, “but since it’s our last day together, Guy and I wanted you all to know that we’ll have a special announcement to make as soon as my present marriage—if one can call it that—is annulled.” She blushed prettily as we offered sincere wishes for their happiness. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find another tenant for Wyrdhurst, Uncle Dickie. Guy’s being transferred to Germany in the spring.”

The savvy businessman was unfazed. He’d foreseen
Nicole’s departure and mapped out Wyrdhurst’s future accordingly. For the next half hour, he regaled us with his plan to turn Josiah’s folly into a first-class hotel, with a spacious suite reserved for the family and plenty of jobs for the villagers.

“I’m going to clear Josiah’s muck out of the library,” he declared, “and replace it with Claire’s toys and clothes and books.” He gazed levelly at Adam. “We’ll call it the Claire Cresswell Museum of Childhood, in honor of Adam’s grandparents.”

“Claire Cresswell.” Adam repeated the name slowly, as if trying it out for the first time, then raised his glass to Dickie. “It’s a fine idea, sir.”

“Of course it is. I thought of it.” Dickie turned to me. “I don’t suppose you could persuade Claire to hang about for a bit, could you, Lori?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Claire doesn’t need to be here anymore.”

“Well, for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone that Wyrdhurst isn’t haunted,” Dickie urged. “There’s nothing like a resident ghost to bring the tourists running.”