Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold

by Nancy Atherton

  “Are you sure Tilly didn’t hit her head?” I asked Emma. “She seems a bit disoriented.”

  “According to Bill,” Emma said dampingly, “you seemed addled after you drove your car into the ditch in front of Bree’s house. And you didn’t hit your head.”

  “One accident,” I said with an exasperated groan. “I have one measly accident umpteen years ago and Bill can’t stop talking about it.”

  “I would have called for an ambulance if I thought Tilly had a concussion,” said Emma, “but I don’t believe she does. I couldn’t run a riding school without knowing the symptoms. Her speech isn’t slurred, she remembers the accident clearly, she’s not sensitive to light or noise, she hasn’t vomited, she doesn’t seem to be nauseous, and she’s making as much sense as she can, considering the circumstances. She’s shaken, but she’s not concussed.”

  “I suspect she’s suffered a loss,” Lilian said thoughtfully.

  “What kind of loss?” I asked.

  “The loss of someone close to her,” Lilian replied, “perhaps a family member. I can’t be certain, of course, but she’s dressed rather somberly and she’s wearing a jet brooch.”

  “I noticed the brooch,” I said, putting a hand to my throat. “I’ve seen similar brooches in antique shops. They’re always Victorian.”

  “Queen Victoria made jet jewelry fashionable,” said Lilian. “She draped herself in it after Prince Albert’s untimely death, and those who could afford to follow her example did so. Wearing jet to signify mourning is an old-fashioned custom, but Tilly strikes me as an old-fashioned woman.”

  “You may be onto something,” I said, feeling a stab of pity for Tilly. “Remember when she said there was no one we could call for her, apart from the hotel? She’s traveling solo, too. The death, if there was one, may have left her alone in the world.”

  “A recent loss would explain her navigational error,” Lilian reasoned.

  I nodded. “She could have taken the wrong turn because she was overwhelmed with grief.”

  “Before you kill off Tilly’s friends and relations,” Emma said dryly, “you might try asking her if she’s suffered a loss.”

  “I shall ask her,” said Lilian, “but not tonight.”

  “Not unless she brings it up,” I put in. “If she wishes to share her burden, we’ll be there for her.”

  “It would be unkind not to listen to her,” Lilian added virtuously.

  “Of course it would,” Emma said, rolling her eyes. “In the meantime, you might try listening to someone who really has suffered a loss.”

  I stared at her blankly for a moment, then banged a fist against my forehead, exclaiming, “Bree! I forgot about Jack MacBride dumping Bree! I must be the worst friend in the history of friends.”

  “I forgot about her troubles, too,” said Lilian with a rueful grimace. “What shall we do about Bree?”

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” said Emma, “but for now, let’s feed Tilly.”

  Emma arranged cutlery, a cloth napkin, and the heaping plate of leftovers on a wooden tray and lifted it from the table. To disguise the real reason for our retreat to the kitchen, I took a glass pitcher from a cupboard and filled it with water, and Lilian extracted a clean glass from the dishwasher.

  “Feeble,” Emma said scornfully, but though she had no trouble seeing through our ruse, I hoped it would fool Tilly Trout. Tilly had yet to learn that, in Finch, gossip was a way of life.

  We returned to the great hall to find Cassie explaining to Tilly that The Royal Hop Pole’s owner had agreed to cancel her hotel reservation without penalizing her. Apparently, the ice storm had engulfed Tewkesbury, too.

  Nell made room for the wooden tray by moving the silver one to another table, Kit shifted the round table so that it sat in front of the armchair, and Emma set Tilly’s meal before her. Lilian and I added our contributions and stood back.

  “Thank you,” said Tilly. “I feel as if Christmas has come early.” She spread the napkin over her lap, then glanced self-consciously at the circle of faces surrounding her.

  “Let Miss Trout eat in peace, will you?” Mr. Barlow said gruffly. “You’ll give her indigestion, gawping at her like that.”

  Like chastened schoolchildren, we ducked our heads and, with mumbled apologies, shifted en masse from the fireplace to the Christmas tree, making a concerted effort not to look in Tilly’s direction.

  “Sardines?” Emma suggested, referring to an English version of hide-and-seek. “Treasure hunt? Blindman’s bluff?”

  “Would you mind very much if Teddy and I begged off?” said Lilian. “We’re sorry to be party poopers, but it’s well past our bedtime.”

  “It’s past ours, too,” said Peter, putting a protective arm around his wife.

  “I tire more easily these days,” Cassie admitted apologetically.

  “We’ll excuse ourselves as well,” said Nell, taking Kit’s hand.

  He curled his fingers through hers and explained, “We have to be up with the birds to feed the horses.”

  “Sleep well, one and all,” said Emma. “We’ll see you”—she glanced at her watch—“later this morning.”

  The early-to-bed brigade said their good-nights and vacated the hall, leaving the rest of us to carry on without them.

  “To tell you the truth,” said Grant, “I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “I’m not in the mood to sing carols, either,” said Derek.

  “I’m not going to bed,” I said stubbornly.

  “Well, then,” said Emma, “what shall we do next?”

  Mr. Barlow, who’d seated himself in a chair beside Tilly’s, called over his shoulder, “Here’s an idea, Emma: Go and look at that peculiar room of yours, and take everyone with you. If Miss Trout needs anything, I’ll get it for her.”

  His proposal was greeted with an enthusiastic murmur of approval.

  “The ayes have it,” said Emma. “Follow me!”

  Six

  The peculiar room was tucked away at the end of a gloomy oak-paneled corridor on the ground floor. Its carved oak door blended in so well with the paneling that I would have walked past it if Emma hadn’t brought our procession to a halt. Even the doorknob was made of pitch-black oak.

  “Here we are,” Emma announced.

  “Wait,” I said as she reached for the doorknob. “Lilian’s going to kill us when she finds out that we came here without her. Should I run upstairs and fetch her?”

  “Let her sleep,” Emma advised. “The room’s not going anywhere. I can give her a private showing tomorrow.”

  “It won’t be the same,” I warned. “She’ll miss out on the what’s-the-room-for contest.”

  “She’s married to a vicar. She’s required by law to forgive us,” Charles said, adding impatiently. “Are we going in or not?”

  “I’ll get the lights,” said Emma.

  She opened the door, stepped across the threshold, and touched a wall switch. Six brass wall sconces came on all at once, three on one side of the room and three on the other.

  “I wired the sconces for electricity after we moved into the manor,” Derek informed us. “Originally, they would have held candles.”

  The rest of us said nothing as we followed Emma to the center of the room, craning our necks to see what there was to see.

  There wasn’t much. The sconces cast a warm glow over a windowless oblong chamber with a decorative plaster ceiling and an elegant parquet floor. Though Emma and Derek had used it for storage, the ceiling, the floor, and the fine, head-high linenfold wainscoting suggested to me that it had once served a more exalted purpose.

  “The Anscombe family owned the manor house for a few centuries before Derek and I bought it,” Emma explained, “and the Mandeville family owned it before the Anscombes. I searched the house archives for an architectural pla
n that might indicate how the room was used in the past, but the ones I found simply identify it as a ‘room,’ if they identify it at all.”

  “When was it built?” asked Bill.

  “The Mandevilles built this part of the manor house in the mid-sixteenth century,” said Emma. “It’s Tudor, like the great hall. If the first Queen Elizabeth had visited the Mandevilles, she could have held court in here.”

  “Good Queen Bess would never have held court in a room like this,” Charles scoffed. “For one thing, it’s too small to accommodate a royal retinue, and for another, it’s too claustrophobic.” He shuddered expressively. “I feel as if I’m standing in a giant’s coffin.”

  “I was making a point about its age, Charles, not its purpose,” said Emma. “I’m open to other suggestions.”

  “It could have been used as a bowling alley,” Grant said tentatively.

  “A sixteenth-century bowling alley?” I said, eyeing him doubtfully.

  “I’m referring to lawn bowling,” Grant clarified, “not the mechanized modern sport.” Having won Finch’s lawn bowling championship for three years running, he was regarded as something of an authority on the subject. “I know nothing of the mechanized version,” he continued, “but I do know that lawn bowling predates the Tudor era. A bowling green in Southampton dates back to 1299.”

  “A medieval bowling alley?” I said. “I’m amazed.”

  “Bowling was so popular during Henry VIII’s reign that he banned commoners from playing it,” Grant went on. “He wanted them to concentrate on tilling the soil and practicing archery with the longbow. Aristocrats, on the other hand, were allowed to bowl whenever the fancy took them.”

  “Sir Francis Drake insisted on finishing a game before he sailed off to defeat the Spanish Armada,” Charles put in.

  “The Sir Francis Drake story may be apocryphal,” Grant said, smiling, “but it illustrates the game’s immense popularity. Lawn bowling usually takes place outdoors, on a bowling green, but the Mandeville family could just as easily have played it in a custom-built room.”

  “A rainy-day bowling alley for an aristocratic family?” said Charles, surveying the room. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s too fancy,” I objected. “That’s why not. Look around. Would you line the walls of a bowling alley with expensive linenfold panels?” I shook my head. “If bowlers used this room, the wainscoting would be broken or dented.”

  “It’s neither,” said Derek. “It hasn’t been patched up, either. I inspected the woodwork after Emma emptied the room. Apart from a few scratches, it’s as pristine today as it was when it was first installed.”

  “I rest my case,” I said.

  “Brava, Madam Barrister,” Charles said huffily. “The world awaits your learned opinion.”

  “I don’t have a one,” I replied, ignoring his sarcasm. “It feels like a sensory deprivation chamber to me, but I don’t think such a thing existed in Tudor times. Not unless you count dungeons, and I’ve never seen a dungeon with linenfold wainscoting and a parquet floor.”

  “No one has,” Derek said dryly. “Dungeons tend to be a little less refined.”

  “So . . . not a throne room, not a coffin, probably not a bowling alley, definitely not a sensory deprivation chamber, and absolutely not a dungeon,” said Emma, ticking the guesses off on her fingers. “We’ve ruled out five possibilities, but we haven’t ruled anything in. More suggestions, please.”

  “Bomb shelter?” Bree ventured.

  If Jack MacBride hadn’t stomped on Bree’s heart and left her to pick up the pieces, I would have been certain that she was joking. As it was, I didn’t allow myself to chuckle until a weak smile appeared on her face. Her facetious guess had, however, inspired Bill to come up with a serious one.

  “It could be a strong room,” he proposed. “No windows, only one door, oak-paneled, buried at the back of the house . . . It fits the profile of a strong room.”

  “What’s a strong room?” Bree asked.

  “A room where valuables were kept,” Bill replied. “Gold, silver, spices, tea—high-priced items that might be targeted by thieves. I’ve never seen a strong room as large as this, but I suppose it could have been designed to allow the family to hide in here with their treasures if the house came under attack.”

  “So it could have been a bomb shelter,” said Bree, looking astonished. “I was kidding.”

  “It’s the likeliest idea I’ve heard so far,” said Bill.

  “Any others?” Emma requested.

  Heads were scratched, chins were rubbed, and feet were shuffled, but no one spoke until a timid voice asked, “May I come in?”

  I turned to see Tilly Trout standing in the doorway. Mr. Barlow stood behind her, his arms folded and his lips set in a thin, disapproving line.

  “You may both come in,” said Emma.

  “The more the merrier!” said Derek.

  “I don’t mean to intrude,” Tilly said as she and Mr. Barlow joined us, “but while I was enjoying the excellent meal you so thoughtfully prepared for me, Emma—your cranberry sauce is the best I’ve ever tasted, and the goose was so tender I could cut it with a spoon!—Mr. Barlow told me about the peculiar room. I must admit that my curiosity was piqued. When I’d consumed the last morsel—I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I began eating!—I asked him if I, too, might see the room.”

  “I wanted her to stay off her feet,” Mr. Barlow grumbled, “but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “How did you know where we were?” Emma asked. “You’ve never been in this part of the house before, have you, Mr. Barlow?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he answered, “but a deaf man could’ve heard you lot jabbering.”

  “We followed the sound of your voices,” said Tilly, polishing Mr. Barlow’s rough reply. “Would you mind very much if I examined the room, Emma? It’s Tudor, isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t mind, and yes, it’s Tudor,” said Emma. “Feel free to speculate about why it was built. We’ve run out of plausible ideas.”

  “I haven’t,” Bill murmured, holding fast to his strong-room hypothesis.

  Tilly strolled away from us to the far end of the room, opposite the door. She paused once before a wall sconce, paused again to gaze at the floorboards, and paused a third time to peer at the ceiling.

  “Yes,” she murmured, “it’s as I thought.”

  “What’s as you thought?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve worked out a solution.”

  “I believe I have,” said Tilly.

  “It’s a strong room, isn’t it?” Bill said.

  “A strong room?” Tilly shook her head. “Oh, no, it’s not a strong room. It’s a chapel.”

  “A chapel?” Emma said incredulously.

  “What makes you think it’s a chapel?” Bill asked.

  “The evidence,” Tilly replied succinctly. She tilted her head back to gaze upward. “There’s the hole in the ceiling where the sanctuary lamp hung.”

  “I’ve never noticed a hole,” said Derek.

  “It’s been plastered over,” Tilly explained, “but if you know where to look—”

  “Show me.” Derek crossed to her side in three strides and gazed intently at the ceiling directly above her head. “Ah, yes, I see it now, the slight indentation where the plaster’s shrunk over time.”

  “You could probably poke your finger through it,” said Tilly, “but I hope you won’t. It would spoil the plasterwork.”

  “How did you know where to look?” he asked.

  She pointed at the floor. “Do you see the worn spots, indicating that something heavy was dragged across the floor repeatedly? They were made by the legs of a table that was used as an altar. Where there’s an altar, there must also be a sanctuary lamp.”

  “I see the worn spots,” Derek conceded, “and I agree that a table
must have made them, but I’m not as certain as you are that the table was used as an altar.”

  “You will be,” she said serenely. She raised her voice slightly as she addressed the rest of us. “If I might draw your attention to the wall sconces? It doesn’t matter which one. They’re identical.”

  We scattered like pinballs and came to rest in six little groups, one before each of the sconces. Bill, Bree, and I studied ours dutifully. The curved arm that supported the electrified candleholder was quite plain, but the flat piece of metalwork that formed the backplate was inscribed with a floral pattern. I found the pattern attractive, but its significance eluded me.

  “If you look very closely at the entwined rose stems in the incised design,” said Tilly, “you’ll see that they are, in fact, a stylized representation of crossed keys.”

  I stood on tiptoe to examine the inscribed backplate more closely, then nodded. “You’re right, Tilly. Now that you’ve pointed them out, I can see the crossed keys.”

  A murmur of general agreement rumbled through the room.

  “The crossed keys symbolize the keys to the kingdom of heaven, promised to Peter the apostle by Christ,” said Tilly.

  “Peter was the first Roman Catholic pope, wasn’t he?” said Charles.

  “He was,” Tilly confirmed. “In the Roman Catholic Church, the crossed keys represent the pope’s authority.”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t an Anglican chapel,” said Grant.

  “It most certainly was not,” said Tilly.

  “If it’s a Roman Catholic chapel,” I said, “why is it so plain?”

  “It’s all to do with the English Reformation.” Tilly’s brow furrowed slightly, then cleared as she said helpfully, “I can recommend several excellent works on the subject.”

  “Can you give us a condensed version?” I asked.

  “I can, but even a condensed version is complicated,” Tilly demurred. “I don’t wish to be a bore.”

  “I’m not bored,” I said, eager to gauge the depth of her knowledge. “Is anyone bored?”

  “Not in the least,” Derek said gallantly, and the others murmured encouraging words, except for Mr. Barlow, who looked as though he would have preferred to see Tilly resting before the fire in the great hall.