Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure

by Nancy Atherton

  “He put down his mum and his dad as his next of kin on his enlistment papers,” said Mr. Barlow, “and they were already dead. The police looked into it, but they couldn’t find anyone else. So he was buried here”—he shook his head—“like this.”

  “Mr. Barlow,” said Lilian, “why didn’t you tell Teddy or me about Mr. Dillehaye’s grave?”

  “Nothing much you or the vicar can do about it,” Mr. Barlow said reasonably. “Didn’t want to upset you.”

  Lilian’s lips compressed into a thin line as she stared at the lichen-covered block of stone. She took the map from her pocket and folded it reverently over the Victory Medal. She tucked the little packet into her pocket, then swung her leg back and gave the wall a vicious kick. Mr. Barlow and I fell back a step in surprise.

  Lilian paused to watch a gentle shower of stone flakes tumble from the wall, then rounded on Mr. Barlow.

  “I am upset,” she said. “I’m upset with you, Mr. Barlow.” She kicked the wall again, releasing a few more flakes. “You are our sexton. The upkeep of church property is your responsibility, yet you’ve allowed this section of wall to fall into disrepair. Look at it. A sharp breeze would knock it over.”

  Mr. Barlow and I turned our attention to the section of wall Lilian had kicked. It seemed perfectly sound to me.

  “The wall will have to be relaid, Mr. Barlow,” Lilian stated authoritatively. “It will have to be torn down and reconstructed from the ground up. Since the wall must be rebuilt, it may as well be moved. I’m sure I can persuade the Hodges to donate a sliver of their farm to St. George’s. I see no reason why the wall can’t be moved five or even ten feet from its present position.”

  Mr. Barlow’s gaze shifted from Lilian to the wall, then came to rest on the grave. A small smile played about his lips, but when he looked at Lilian again, he was all business.

  “It’s a big job,” he said. “I’ll have to hire a crew to help me.”

  “Hire one,” snapped Lilian. “Teddy and I will pay the men’s wages.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said, stepping forward. “Bill and I will pay the crew. We’ll cover whatever expenses are involved.” Lilian opened her mouth to protest, but I raised my hand to silence her. “When our time comes, we’ll want to be buried in St. George’s churchyard, Lilian. I imagine the rest of our family will want to be buried here, too. It’s in our interest to make sure there’s enough room for all of us.”

  A look of understanding passed between us. I didn’t have to explain to Lilian that my desire to finance the wall’s realignment had nothing to do with my family and everything to do with reuniting a family that had been cruelly separated in death. She acquiesced to my wishes with a brief nod, then turned to Mr. Barlow.

  “How soon can you finish the new wall?” she asked.

  “With the right crew?” He shrugged. “A month, if the weather cooperates. Six weeks or more if it doesn’t.”

  “I suggest you make a start,” said Lilian. “It’s never too late to rectify a wrong, Mr. Barlow, and I would like to rectify this particular wrong as expeditiously as possible. When you’ve finished relaying the wall, Teddy will bless Mr. Dillehaye’s grave and hold a service of remembrance in his honor.”

  “Right you are, Mrs. Bunting,” said Mr. Barlow.

  “I’ll see to it that Mr. Dillehaye’s name is added to our war memorial,” said Lilian. “In the meantime, I’ll have a little chat with Mrs. Taxman. I shall not rest until Mr. Dillehaye’s Victory Medal is displayed properly.”

  Sparks seemed to fly from her eyes as she spoke, and her jaw was set as she strode away from us.

  “I’m guessing we’ll get the glass case,” said Mr. Barlow.

  “It’ll be in the old schoolhouse by nightfall,” I agreed, nodding.

  “And before too long, Dave’ll be with his mum and dad,” said Mr. Barlow, “where the poor chap should’ve been all along.”

  If nothing else came of Finch’s foray into metal detecting, I thought, the righting of this wrong would be enough to satisfy me. I squatted beside the grave to lay a hand on Dave Dillehaye’s marker, then put Bess in her pram and headed for home.

  The gallon of milk could wait. I had no intention of intruding on Lilian Bunting’s showdown with Peggy Taxman. I was a Finch-trained snoop, but I wasn’t crazy.

  Twenty

  It came as no surprise to Mr. Barlow or to me when the vicar announced from the pulpit on Sunday morning that Mrs. Taxman had generously donated a fine antique glass cabinet to the village museum.

  Hardly anyone else was surprised, either. News traveled at the speed of light in Finch, and the news of Lilian’s triumph over the formidable Peggy Taxman had been a headline grabber. Everyone agreed, though not within Peggy’s hearing, that we owed the vicar’s wife a debt of gratitude.

  The vicar went on to welcome James and Felicity to the parish and to assure them that the vicarage door would always be open to them. He then managed to surprise me greatly by delivering James’s pocket watch speech.

  As he described the family feud James had unintentionally reignited, I recalled that James had visited the vicarage on the day of the palette knife incident. When he exchanged a meaningful look with Felicity, I couldn’t help but think that he’d gone there to explain the dangers of metal detecting to the vicar.

  “It would be a great pity,” the vicar concluded, “if we allowed our discoveries to damage the bonds of affection that hold our village together. Let us not emulate a family fractured by a petty dispute over a pocket watch. Let us not be dismayed by a few unpleasant revelations. Let us explore our past fearlessly, secure in the knowledge that its gifts will outweigh its gaffes. Let us continue to be the strong, loving family we have always been.”

  The villagers took the vicar’s words to heart, in part, I suspected, because they wished to show themselves to be superior to the silly people James Hobson had known before he’d moved to Finch. When we gathered in the churchyard after the service, it was as if nothing unsettling had ever happened. Sally and Henry had clearly put the wedding ring crisis behind them, and Mr. Barlow spoke to Dick Peacock without scowling. Best of all, Elspeth accepted an invitation to join Opal, Millicent, and Selena for brunch at Opal’s cottage.

  Peggy, meanwhile, attempted to turn defeat into victory with an unaccustomed but welcome show of humility. She dismissed James Hobson’s thanks for the cabinet donation with a gracious wave of her hand, saying that, as a member of the community, it was her duty to support community projects.

  Sally Cook reacted to Peggy’s magnanimous statement by clucking her tongue and pulling me aside to inform me that it would be some time before the “fine antique glass cabinet” found its way to the schoolhouse because it was scratched, stained, and crammed with broken knickknacks.

  “It’ll take a week for her to empty it,” said Sally, “and a month for Jasper to refinish it.”

  I was certain that, with Sally to nudge it along, the truth about Peggy’s gift would enter the public domain before lunchtime. I was equally certain that the villagers would be as tickled as I was to hear that the cabinet Peggy had refused to fill with old rubbish was already filled with it.

  Bill, Will, Rob, Bess, and I spent the rest of the day with my father-in-law and his new wife at Fairworth House. After a sumptuous brunch, Amelia accompanied the boys on a long walk through the grounds while Willis, Sr., stayed indoors with Bess, following her as she crawled from room to room and gazing adoringly at her when she lost her lunch on his exquisite Aubusson carpet. He was, as has been previously noted, besotted.

  We left for home shortly after dinner, in part because it was a school night but also because I had a big day ahead of me. If all went according to plan, I would finally meet the elusive Badger.

  I wanted to be wide awake when I achieved the impossible.

  * * *

  Adam was there to meet me when my
train pulled into Paddington Station on Monday morning. Although I could have found my way to Carrie’s Coffees without his help, I’d asked him to meet me because I couldn’t pass up the chance to speak with him privately. I was extremely curious to know what, if anything, had transpired between him and Sarah Hanover since I’d last seen them.

  I thought I’d have to get the ball rolling with a delicate inquiry or two, but Adam took the ball and ran with it without my prompting.

  “What did you think of Sarah Hanover?” he asked, and before I could answer, he said, “I thought she was amazing, coming forward as she did and telling you what she knew and setting up your meeting with Stephen. She works in the British Museum bookshop. That’s how she came to know about Stephen’s work—his books fill an entire shelf. I met her there on Saturday and took her to lunch at the Court Café, and she mentioned a film she wanted to see, so I said, ‘Why don’t we see it tonight?’ and we went to dinner afterward and for a walk along the river after dinner—”

  I interrupted the flow to remind him to change trains at Piccadilly, but once we were on our way, it continued unabated.

  “Sarah’s from Ipswich,” he informed me, “and she’s studying design. Well, you can tell it just by looking at her, can’t you? She has a great sense of style, and she loves to sew, and she’s filled a whole sketchbook with drawings of artifacts from the Sutton Hoo ship burial because she reckons the Anglo-Saxons knew a thing or two about beautiful design. We went to see the exhibition on Sunday, and she seemed to be quite interested in the things I pointed out. . . .”

  He went on and on until we spotted Sarah Hanover waiting for us outside Carrie’s Coffees, when he became completely tongue-tied. After saying hello to her, I waved to Carrie Osborne through the café window. She pointed at Sarah, then gave me a broad wink accompanied by a crisp okay sign. I could not have agreed with her more.

  Nor could I blame Adam for losing the power of speech. Sarah was as cute as a button. She’d pinned her braided hair over her head in a close-fitting, wispy halo and paired her thrift store jacket with what I assumed to be another one of her creations. The skirt of her colorful peasant dress seemed to flutter joyously as we set out for Wilmington Square.

  “I rang Stephen a few minutes ago,” she informed us, “to let him know that we were on our way.”

  It took me a moment to recall that Stephen was Badger, but after a brief pause, I said, “Good thinking, Sarah. Thanks.”

  “He’s quite looking forward to meeting you, Lori,” she said.

  “The feeling’s mutual,” I told her, running my hand over the spot where the garnet bracelet rested in my shoulder bag.

  Like Adam, Sarah was a fast walker, but when I began to fall behind, she put a hand on his arm to slow him down. He responded to her touch instantly, and I was given a reprieve. I was not, however, given any information about the places we passed on the way to Wilmington Square. Adam was far too distracted to act as my tour guide, and I didn’t mind in the least.

  Wilmington Square was lined mainly with Georgian and postwar pseudo-Georgian town houses. They were pleasingly uniform in color—brown brick upper stories with white stucco ground-floor facades—and they overlooked a small park that was called, unsurprisingly, Wilmington Square Gardens. The park’s black boundary railings enclosed an assortment of trees, shrubs, and flower beds that looked rather forlorn without their leaves, buds, and blossoms.

  My companions and I didn’t enter the gardens, but as we strolled alongside the railings, I caught glimpses of a somewhat shabby open-sided pavilion and a pair of decrepit water fountains. Though the square’s buildings appeared to be in fine shape, its centerpiece hadn’t been maintained half so well as the one Adam had shown me in Queen Square.

  “Wilmington Square Gardens,” Adam said to me out of the blue, as if he’d suddenly heard the clarion call of duty, “has streets on three sides and a pedestrian walkway on the fourth. The walkway is there because the square’s builder—a man named John Wilson—ran out of money. He couldn’t afford to construct another street, so he put in a walkway instead. And here it is.”

  We passed through an opening in the park railings, climbed a short flight of stone steps, and found ourselves on a wide sidewalk bordered on one side by the park and on the other by a long row of tidy three-story Georgian town houses.

  “A happy accident, I’d say,” I commented admiringly. “The people who live on the walkway can look into the park directly, as if it were their front yard.”

  “I wonder what they do when they have furniture delivered?” said Sarah. “There’s no room for a lorry.”

  “There’s room round the back,” said Adam. “The tradesmen’s entrance.” He turned to me. “Most of the town houses were converted into flats at one time or another, but the ones that weren’t are worth a fortune. You won’t find poor people living in them.”

  “Stephen lives with his son,” said Sarah. “As his son is a barrister, I expect he can afford to live wherever he likes.”

  It was the first I’d heard of Badger’s son, but I found the news oddly reassuring. If Badger had married and started a family, it meant that he hadn’t wasted his life pining for the girl in the Rose Café. Though I was certain that Aunt Dimity would be pleased for him, I wasn’t quite as certain that Badger’s son would be pleased to meet me. I hoped he’d be well out of earshot when I delivered a host of messages from a woman his father had once loved.

  “Rather humble digs for a barrister, I would have thought,” said Adam.

  “Perhaps he’s a humble barrister,” Sarah suggested.

  “There’s no such thing,” said Adam, and they both laughed.

  “Hey, guys,” I scolded, “go easy on the lawyer jokes. My husband’s an attorney, and he happens to be a very humble man.” I thought of the study’s spotless hearth and added judiciously, “Most of the time.”

  “Your husband is the exception that proves the rule,” Adam stated firmly.

  “He’s pretty exceptional,” I agreed.

  “We’re here,” Sarah announced, coming to a halt.

  If it hadn’t been for the numbers on the doors and the drapes in the windows, the town houses overlooking the park would have been difficult to tell apart. Each had one set of stairs leading down to a basement entrance and another set leading up to a shallow porch framing the elevated ground-floor entrance. The four-panel front doors were bracketed by white pilasters and surmounted by half-moon fanlights, and although each town house’s door was painted a different color, the colors seemed to come from the same dark palette. Badger’s was dark blue.

  It was only when Adam smoothed his hair nervously and Sarah patted her braids that I remembered how excited they were about meeting the famed Egyptologist Stephen Waterford. I expected Sarah to charge up the stairs ahead of us and ring the doorbell, but she remained glued to the pavement, as if she’d been struck by stage fright. Adam, too, hesitated, and before I could take matters into my own hands, the door was opened by a strapping man with a headful of salt-and-pepper curls.

  The man stepped onto the porch, closed the door behind him, and joined us at the bottom of the stairs. He appeared to be in his fifties, and he was dressed casually but expensively in a pale gray cashmere cardigan, a soft white cotton shirt, beautifully tailored charcoal-gray trousers, and gleaming black leather wing tips.

  “Good morning,” he said in a bluff, genial voice. “You must be Sarah Hanover, Lori Shepherd, and Adam Rivington. Have I got that right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m Lori.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Steve Waterford,” he said. “Named after my father—Stephen to my colleagues, but Steve when I’m at home, to avoid confusion. Glad I caught you.” He glanced up at the ground-floor window and lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “I wanted to have a word with you about Father.”

  “If he’s ill, we can—” I began,
but Steve cut me off.

  “No, no, he’s remarkably healthy for a man of his age,” he said. “His mind is still razor sharp, too, but he does tire easily. Three of you at once might be a bit much, if you see what I mean.”

  “It’s your show, Lori,” said Adam, manfully concealing his disappointment. “Sarah and I will make ourselves scarce.”

  “It’s not that he doesn’t wish to meet you,” Steve said anxiously.

  “We understand,” said Sarah in flattened tones.

  “Wait,” I intervened. “Would it be okay if my friends came in just for a minute? Just to say hello?”

  Someone rapped loudly on the ground-floor window. I looked up to see a wrinkled hand make a beckoning gesture. Steve glanced at the hand and smiled.

  “Apparently it would be okay,” he said. “But just for a minute and just to say hello, I beg you. Father is sometimes too hospitable for his own good.”

  Adam and Sarah nodded solemnly, straightened their jackets, and followed Steve and me up the stairs and through the dark blue door.

  Twenty-one

  Steve Waterford escorted us to a sunny, pleasantly disordered sitting room at the front of the house. Framed etchings of desert scenes hung on the biscuit-colored walls, and books seemed to be everywhere, piled on small tables, stacked on the parquet floor, and packed into the built-in shelves that flanked the white marble fireplace in which a coal fire was burning steadily.

  The room had two windows, each taller than I was and considerably wider, offering unobstructed views of the park. A bird’s-eye maple desk sat between the windows, and a pair of slipcovered, overstuffed armchairs faced the hearth. An arched opening in the wall opposite the windows led to the room next door, which appeared to be a bedroom, though it was similarly littered with books.

  An elderly man stood beside the desk, facing us, his hands resting one atop the other on the worn silver handle of a malacca cane. He wore a pale blue shirt and loose-fitting black trousers, and though the room seemed overheated to me, he’d donned sheepskin bedroom slippers and a navy blue cable-knit cardigan. A tousled crop of white ringlets framed his lean, clean-shaven face. His gaze was as keen as a hawk’s, and his voice was deep and mellow, with none of the reediness I associated with old age.