ALSO BY NANCY ATHERTON
Aunt Dimity’s Death
Aunt Dimity and the Duke
Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed
Aunt Dimity Digs In
Aunt Dimity’s Christmas
Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil
Aunt Dimity: Detective
Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday
Aunt Dimity: Snowbound
Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin
Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea
Aunt Dimity Goes West
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon
Aunt Dimity Down Under
Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree
Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch
Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince
Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well
Aunt Dimity and the Summer King
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
Copyright © 2016 by Nancy T. Atherton
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ISBN 9781101981290 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781101981306 (ebook)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Also by Nancy Atherton
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
Recipe
For Gillian Weavers,
whose friendship I treasure
One
It was a warm and sunny day in late October. My husband was at work, my sons were at school, and my daughter was teething. Thankfully, Bess had made it clear that she’d outgrown her original source of nourishment, so her new teeth didn’t pose a hazard to my health.
They didn’t bother her much, either. While other infants ran fevers and fussed as each new tooth erupted, Bess seemed content merely to chew and dribble copiously on any object that came within her reach. Those objects included, but were not limited to, plastic dinosaurs, cricket bats, Wellington boots, table legs, and a dog’s ears. The dog in question was a gentle old basset hound who’d tolerated Bess’s attentions until I’d become aware of his plight and rescued him. I’d rescued the dinosaurs, cricket bats, and Wellington boots as well, but not before Bess had coated them liberally with drool.
Bess’s teething adventures had taught my nine-year-old twins, Will and Rob, the inestimable virtue of tidiness. Toys left lying on the floor or scattered on the coffee table were fair game for Bess, who would, despite my best attempts to preempt her, invariably leave her mark on them, a mark that was always damp and occasionally indented.
Though my husband, Bill, had christened our daughter “Jaws” after he’d found her gnawing on the handle of his leather briefcase, Will and Rob were as tolerant of her incursions as the old basset hound had been. They’d never seen a child grow her own teeth before, and they thought it a very clever thing to do.
And Bess was very clever. To keep my sons’ morale from dipping, I refrained from telling them that their almost-eight-month-old sister was sailing through her developmental milestones with a rapidity that made their early accomplishments seem . . . infantile.
Bess had rolled over, sat up, scooted, crawled, and demanded solid food much earlier than the twins had, and as incredible as it might seem, I was willing to swear that she was on the verge of producing intelligible speech. Bill disputed this last claim, declaring that the standard definition of intelligible did not include words like gug, pah, and wahbah, but he couldn’t deny that, by every other measurement, our girl was ahead of the curve.
We hadn’t done anything special to push Bess along. We hadn’t played Mozart to her before she was born or showered her with toys guaranteed to increase her IQ. I credited her speedy progress to her desire to catch up with her brothers and to the abundance of love and attention she received from the tight-knit community we called home.
Bill, Will, Rob, Bess, and I lived in a honey-colored cottage near the small village of Finch, a postcard-pretty hamlet set amid the rolling hills and the patchwork fields of the Cotswolds, a rural region in England’s West Midlands. Although Bill and I were Americans, as were our children, we’d lived in England long enough—and watched enough county cricket—to know the difference between a googly and a yorker.
Our sleek black cat, Stanley, was one hundred percent English, but he’d had no trouble adjusting to our alien accents and our curious turns of phrase. I was convinced that we could have spoken to him in Welsh, and he wouldn’t have cared, as long as we scratched his ears and filled his food bowl.
While Stanley divided his time between eating, sleeping, and keeping out of Bess’s reach, the rest of us had slightly busier schedules. Bill ran the European branch of his family’s venerable Boston law firm from an office overlooking the village green, Will and Rob attended Morningside School in the nearby market town of Upper Deeping, and I juggled the myriad roles of wife, mother, friend, neighbor, and community volunteer. Even so, none of us were as busy as Bess, whose learning curve made ours look pancake flat.
Our cottage was two miles away from Finch, up a narrow, twisting lane lined with tall hedgerows. We shared our little lane with a handful of other families, but the vast majority of our neighbors lived in the village proper. Their homes and their small business establishments stood on either side of the village green, between St. George’s Church and the ancient humpbacked bridge that crossed the Little Deeping River.
From an outsider’s perspective, Finch was an insignificant speck of a village, a sleepy backwater in which nothing of note had ever happened. There were no blue plaques to mark the birthplaces of the great and the famous in Finch because no one great or famous had been born there. Apart from its pastoral beauty and the medieval wall paintings in St. George’s, Finch had very little to recommend it to the world beyond its borders. It was and had always been an ordinary place where ordinary people lived ordinary lives, yet I found it extraordinary.
Despite its sleepy appearance, Finch was, in fact, a buzzing hive of activity. The lengthy time gaps between baptisms, weddings, and funeral
s were filled with flower shows, sheep dog trials, church fetes, jumble sales, art shows, harvest festivals, gymkhanas, and Nativity plays. When my neighbors weren’t organizing and participating in village-wide events, they ran businesses, tended gardens, pursued hobbies, bickered passionately over trifles, and savored the serenity of the surrounding countryside.
Their favorite pastime, however, was the passionate pursuit of local gossip. The villagers paid no attention to so-called celebrity news and very little to world events, but they had an encyclopedic knowledge of one another. Weight gains and losses, new haircuts, altered clothing, and sudden mood swings were observed minutely and discussed endlessly wherever two or more villagers met. Sally Cook’s tearoom was a popular conversation spot, but so, too, were Peacock’s pub, the greengrocer’s shop, the church, the bridge, the village green, the bench near the war memorial, the old schoolhouse that served as our village hall, Peggy Taxman’s well-stocked general store, and every kitchen table in every cottage.
Those craving anonymity would have found my neighbors’ nosiness intolerably intrusive, but it gave me a strong sense of security. If privacy was all but unknown in Finch, so, too, was crime. The villagers could spot a suspicious stranger faster than a kestrel could spot a field mouse, and they were quick to alert others to the sighting. I knew that my children were safe in Finch because I knew how many eyes were trained on them.
Bess was the belle of the ball in Finch, which was understandable, given that she was the only baby in a village populated primarily by retirees and middle-aged working folk. Though the villagers were quite fond of Will and Rob, there was something about an infant that turned even the most curmudgeonly of curmudgeons into a baby-talking pile of mush.
Bess’s most devoted fan, however, was Bill’s father. William Arthur Willis, Sr., was a courtly, old-fashioned gentleman who’d made our lives complete when he’d retired from the family law firm and moved to England to fulfill his role as his grandchildren’s only surviving grandparent. Willis, Sr.’s patrician good looks, impeccable manners, and hefty bank account had made him the most eligible widower in Finch until he’d made his own life complete—and broken many a heart—by marrying the well-known watercolorist Amelia Thistle.
Willis, Sr., was utterly besotted with Bess, and Amelia had filled several sketchbooks with pencil drawings that captured Bess’s essence in a way that made photography seem obsolete. Happily for all concerned, Willis, Sr., and Amelia lived up the lane from us, in Fairworth House, a graceful Georgian mansion surrounded by a modest estate.
The wrought-iron gates guarding the entrance to my father-in-law’s estate were a short stroll away from the humpbacked bridge. The gates were a bit farther away from our cottage, but Bess and I were hearty souls and we enjoyed the walk almost as much as we enjoyed spending time with Grandpa and Grandma. We’d visited Fairworth House daily since the newlyweds had returned from their honeymoon.
On that golden day in late October, though, my footsteps were guided not so much by familial affection as by an unabashed and irrepressible curiosity. A momentous event was about to take place in Finch, and it would take place virtually on Willis, Sr.’s doorstep.
Ivy Cottage, which sat directly across the lane from my father-in-law’s wrought-iron gates, was about to receive new tenants. In a big city, such an event might go unnoticed, but not in Finch.
My neighbors had already ascertained a few basic facts about the newcomers, having engaged them in conversation when they’d visited Finch to view the property. I hadn’t been on hand to join in those friendly chats, but thanks to the village grapevine, which operated at speeds that put the Internet to shame, I felt as if I’d eavesdropped on them.
Sally Cook and several other reliable sources had been quick to inform me that our soon-to-be neighbors, James and Felicity Hobson, were retired schoolteachers with an unmarried son who worked in finance in Singapore and a married daughter who lived with her architect husband and their two young children—a boy and a girl—in Upper Deeping, where she ran a firm that specialized in high-end interior decoration. It was through the decorator daughter in Upper Deeping, I was told, that the Hobsons had learned of Ivy Cottage.
To someone unfamiliar with Finch’s funny little ways, it might have seemed like an awful lot of information to glean from a handful of friendly chats, but I was well aware of my neighbors’ prowess in the fine art of interrogation. The only thing that surprised me was that they hadn’t nailed down the son’s gross annual income, the grandchildren’s school scores, and the daughter’s views on the vexed question of curtains versus drapes.
Tidbits gleaned from a few casual conversations would not, however, be enough to satisfy the most inquisitive villagers. To learn more, they would almost certainly participate in an information-gathering ritual that was, as far as I knew, unique to Finch. Bill called it “the moving van vigil.”
My neighbors prided themselves on their ability to judge people by their possessions. They were as adept at reading armchairs and lamps as a fortune-teller is at reading palms. Since they were also incurable snoops, they never missed a chance to watch a moving van as it was unloaded. They attempted to do so discreetly, of course, because no self-respecting villager would gawk openly at another person’s personal belongings.
Had Ivy Cottage been located on the village green, it would have been child’s play for the villagers to observe the Hobsons’ moving van. They could have surveilled it covertly from the pub or from the tearoom or even through the lace-curtained windows in their own homes. As it was, they would have to cross the humpbacked bridge and amble a short distance up my lane to nab a viewing spot.
I couldn’t wait to join them. I was every bit as nosy as my neighbors. I, too, wanted to know more about the Hobsons. I wanted to know if they could be counted on to participate in village life or if they would spurn our neighborly advances, draw their drapes—or curtains—and keep themselves to themselves. I wasn’t as skilled as the villagers at reading dining room tables, but I could usually deduce a thing or two from a well-used armchair.
My frequent visits to Fairworth House gave me a reasonable excuse to be in the lane when the moving van arrived. I planned to linger near my father-in-law’s wrought-iron gates and eye the van surreptitiously while I fiddled with Bess’s bonnet or rummaged through her diaper bag, but I wasn’t sure what strategies my neighbors would employ to disguise their true intentions.
“I hope we haven’t missed the best bits,” I said to Bess as I steered her pram along the narrow lane.
Bess rattled off a string of syllables that, to my ears, came very close to sounding like, “Be reasonable, Mummy. We had to drive Will and Rob to school, then drive back home to move me from my car seat to the all-terrain pram Daddy bought for me. And don’t forget the diaper incident, which we’ve agreed never to mention in polite company. We really couldn’t have set out for Ivy Cottage any sooner than we did.”
Bill wouldn’t have understood her, but I did.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “But I’ll walk faster to make up for our slow start. Hold on to your hat, baby girl!”
We’d already passed the curving drive to Anscombe Manor, where my best friend, Emma Harris, lived, and the mellow redbrick house young Bree Pym had inherited from her great-grandaunts. We were less than ten minutes away from Willis, Sr.’s wrought-iron gates, but I broke into a trot as we rounded the final bend, then came to a full and deeply appreciative stop.
The tableau that met my eyes was better than any I had imagined. The moving van was there, parked in front of the tall hedgerow that concealed Ivy Cottage from view, and two burly men were unloading it, but I scarcely noticed them. I was too busy studying my neighbors, who’d devised a complex tapestry of reasons to loiter in the lane, some of which were more believable than others.
Dick Peacock, our local publican, appeared to be cleaning the wrought-iron gates with a white cloth and a spray bottle fi
lled with the mysterious blue liquid he used to clean the tables in his pub. Mr. Barlow, the retired mechanic who served as our church sexton as well as our general handyman, had clambered up one of his ladders to oil a wrought-iron hinge. Charles Bellingham and Grant Tavistock, who ran an art appraisal and restoration business from their home in Finch, were walking their small dogs Goya and Matisse very slowly up and down the verge.
Opal Taylor, Elspeth Binney, Millicent Scroggins, and Selena Buxton—whom Bill had dubbed “Father’s Handmaidens” because of their devotion to Willis, Sr.—had elected to appear in the guise of artists, which made a certain amount of sense, since they attended art classes taught by a Mr. Shuttleworth in Upper Deeping. Predictably, their easels sat at angles that would allow them to watch the van while pretending to be absorbed in their work.
Tearoom owner Sally Cook hovered near the Handmaidens, as if fascinated by their paintings, but she abandoned them without a second glance when she spotted me. The others also seemed to be distracted by my arrival because they tore their gazes away from a rather interesting leather sofa the burly men were maneuvering through the gate in the tall hedgerow and followed hot upon Sally’s heels as she darted up the lane in my direction.
Bess and I were accustomed to drawing a crowd in Finch, but the crowd we drew usually clamored for Bess’s attention rather than mine. I was vaguely alarmed, therefore, when the oncoming horde ignored my darling daughter and addressed themselves exclusively to me.
“Lori!” Elspeth Binney cried. “At last!”
“Where have you been?” demanded Opal Taylor.
“We thought you’d never get here!” Charles Bellingham exclaimed.
“Bess and I had to take the boys to school—” I began.
“No time for explanations,” said Sally Cook, waving me to silence. She glanced furtively toward the moving van, then stepped closer to me and murmured, “We have a serious problem with our new neighbors, Lori. And you’re the only one who can solve it.”
Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure Page 1