Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure Read online

  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.

  Six

  I descended the ladder, restored order to the hallway, and looked in on Bess, who was still in dreamland. Though I was in desperate need of a shower, I gritted my gritty teeth, bypassed the bathroom, and went downstairs. I left the Hobsons’ blender on the table in the front hall and brought the glittering bracelet with me into the study.

  The study was quieter than the attic had been, but it wasn’t much brighter. Rain pummeled the strands of ivy that crisscrossed the diamond-paned windows above the old oak desk, and the autumnal gloom sent a chill through me that had nothing to do with the room’s actual temperature. In self-defense, I knelt to light a fire in the hearth. I waited until the flames were leaping high enough to warm me inside and out, then stood to greet my oldest friend in the world.

  “Hi, Reginald,” I said, pulling cobwebs from my hair. “Yes, I know I’m a mess. I’ve been up in the attic. You won’t believe what I found there.”

  Reginald was a small, powder-pink flannel rabbit with black button eyes and beautifully hand-sewn whiskers. My mother had placed him in my bassinet shortly after my birth, and he’d been by my side ever since. A sensible woman would have put him away when she put away childish things, but I wasn’t a sensible woman. My pink bunny sat in a special niche in the study’s tall bookshelves, where I could see him and speak with him and let him know that he was not forgotten.

  Reginald’s black button eyes blushed crimson when I held the garnet bracelet up for his inspection.

  “I found it behind the old trunk in the attic,” I informed him. “I’m pretty sure it belongs to Aunt Dimity, but I won’t be one hundred percent certain until I ask her.”

  I wiped my hands carefully on my jeans before I gave Reginald’s pink flannel ears an affectionate twiddle, then reached for a book that sat on the shelf next to his. The book was a journal bound in blue leather and filled with blank pages. Though I had no intention of writing in it, I took it with me to one of the tall leather armchairs that faced the hearth.

  I’d inherited the blue journal from my late mother’s closest friend, an Englishwoman named Dimity Westwood. The two had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War. Together they had endured bombing raids, firestorms, and the constant fear of an enemy invasion, and their shared experiences—good and bad—had created a bond of affection between them that was never broken.

  When the war in Europe ended and my mother sailed back to the States, she and Dimity maintained their friendship by sending hundreds of letters back and forth across the Atlantic. After my father’s sudden death, those letters became my mother’s refuge, a peaceful retreat from the daily pressures of working full time as a teacher while raising a rambunctious daughter on her own.

  My mother was very protective of her refuge. She told no one about it, not even her only child. When I was growing up, I knew Dimity Westwood only as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of a series of bedtime stories told to me by my mother. I had no idea that my favorite fictional character was a real woman until after both she and my mother had died.

  It was then that Dimity Westwood bequeathed to me a comfortable fortune, the honey-colored cottage in which she’d spent her childhood, the precious postwar correspondence she’d exchanged with my mother, and a curious book bound in blue leather. It was through the blue journal that I finally met the real Aunt Dimity.

  Whenever I opened the journal, Aunt Dimity’s handwriting would appear, an old-fashioned copperplate taught in the village school at a time when plow horses could still be seen in furrowed fields. I’d nearly fainted the first time it happened, but once I’d recovered from the shock, I’d realized that Aunt Dimity’s intentions were wholly benevolent.

  I couldn’t explain how Aunt Dimity’s spirit managed to remain in the cottage long after her mortal remains had been laid to rest in the churchyard—and she wasn’t too clear about it, either—but the love I felt for her needed no explanation. She was as good a friend to me as she’d been to my mother. I simply refused to imagine life without her.

  By the light of the flickering flames, I placed the garnet bracelet on the ottoman, seated myself in the tall leather armchair, and opened the blue journal.

  “Dimity?” I said. “I have a question to ask you.”

  I smiled as the familiar lines of royal-blue ink began to curl and loop across the blank page.

  Only one, my dear? I have at least a thousand questions to ask you. Was there a good turnout for the moving van vigil? Was it instructive, or did you arrive too late to see anything of interest?

  “The moving van was nearly empty by the time Bess and I reached William’s gates,” I replied, “but it didn’t matter. Thanks to the villagers’ paranoia and my skill at deciphering Felicity Hobson’s handwriting, I was allowed to walk straight into Ivy Cottage. I spent half the morning chatting with Felicity and her husband, James.”

  You broke the three-day rule? And lived to tell the tale?

  “The villagers waived the three-day rule,” I said.

  Congratulations, Lori. You have succeeded in astonishing me. Why did the villagers waive the three-day rule? What triggered their paranoia? Why did you have to decipher Felicity Hobson’s handwriting? Do you like the Hobsons, or will you need more than half a morning to decide? I’ll let you know when I reach my thousandth question, but the ones I’ve asked just now are enough to be going on with.

  I lowered the journal to look at the garnet bracelet, then put it out of my mind while I told Aunt Dimity about the museum boxes, the villagers’ fears, and my unexpectedly smooth entry into Ivy Cottage. I told her about the illegible checklist, the reheated carrot purée, and the coastal erosion that had driven the Hobsons from one dream home to another. I mentioned Felicity’s love of gardening as well as James’s passion for metal detecting, and I confessed to warning them about their sense of humor. Finally, I described the talk James had given about his hobby and the interest it had aroused in the villagers.

  “James plans to give a metal-detecting demonstration on the village green as soon as he and Felicity have finished unpacking,” I concluded. “It should draw a big crowd. He’s an excellent teacher.”

  High praise, coming from the daughter of another excellent teacher. It sounds as though the Hobsons will be a definite asset to Finch.

  “They will,” I agreed. “Bess and I like them very much.”

  When will you see them next?

  “Tomorrow morning,” I said. “Their blender was broken during the move, so I’m giving them one of our spare wedding gifts.”

  One of the gifts you haven’t yet donated to the charity shop?

  “It’s just as well I haven’t,” I retorted. “If I were an efficient housekeeper, I wouldn’t have had a blender on hand to give away.”

  Fair point.

  The clock on the mantel shelf chimed the quarter hour, and I realized that the afternoon was slipping away. Since I wanted to take a quick shower before getting Bess up for the school run, I began to talk a little faster.

  “While I was in the attic, looking for the blender,” I said, “I found something I wasn’t looking for.”

  I imagine you found quite a few things you weren’t looking for. Spiders, for example. And moths.

  “If there were spiders and moths up there, I didn’t see them,” I said, thanking God for small favors. “I thought I’d found a nest of mice, but it was a false alarm.”

  Of course it was. Stanley is a hardworking cat.

  “Stanley spends most of his time asleep in Bill’s ch
air,” I pointed out.

  True, but when he’s not sleeping, he works very hard.

  I laughed and pressed on.

  “To return to the attic,” I continued. “What I thought was a mouse’s nest turned out to be a splendid piece of jewelry. It was hidden behind your old trunk.”

  There was a pause before the handwriting resumed.

  A splendid piece of jewelry? What sort of jewelry?

  “A gold and garnet bracelet,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like—” I broke off as a few brief words appeared on the page.

  Oh, dear. Oh, no. The graceful lines of royal-blue ink stopped flowing. When they began again, they were shaky and faint. Forgive me, Lori, but I must go. I must compose myself before we continue.

  “I’m sorry, Dimity,” I said in dismay. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  It’s not your fault, my dear. You couldn’t have known. Come back later. We’ll speak then.

  I waited for Aunt Dimity’s handwriting to fade slowly from the page, as it always did, but it vanished in an instant, like a snuffed candle flame. Bewildered, I closed the blue journal and stared at the bracelet through narrowed eyes. The garnets glittered in the firelight like drops of blood.

  Only once before had Aunt Dimity ended a conversation so abruptly. It had happened soon after our first meeting, when I’d unknowingly touched on a subject too tender for her to discuss.

  “Bobby,” I whispered.

  Bobby MacLaren had been the great love of Aunt Dimity’s life. She’d met him during the war, a few weeks before she’d met my mother. He’d been a dashing young fighter pilot, and like so many dashing young fighter pilots, he’d been shot down over the English Channel. His body had never been recovered.

  Had I blundered again? I wondered. Had Bobby given the bracelet to Aunt Dimity? Had its reemergence reawakened memories she found hard to bear?