Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity Digs In

Bill sighed mournfully. “I feel compelled to point out that we’ll be forsaking the delights of Francesca’s cooking. Are we willing to make such a sacrifice for the Buntings’ sake?”

I paused, remembering the vicar’s troubled face and the undercurrent of concern in Lilian’s voice. I owed an awful lot to those two kindly souls. I’d given up on religion when my mother had died, but the twins had made me reach for it again. Delivery rooms, like foxholes, make believers of us all, and when I’d first entered Saint George’s, furtively and by a side door, too embarrassed to admit how lost I felt, the Buntings had welcomed me as though I’d never strayed.

Bill had turned to look back at me. The playful note was gone from his voice when he said, “I know. It’s the least we can do.”

I hugged him, then pushed away. “Hey, Mr. Big Shot Boston lawyer—how did you get to be such an expert on small towns?” I’d intended to lighten the mood, but Bill’s face remained somber.

“Finch reminds me of my prep school,” he said, “which means that we’d better catch our thief quickly. When people in a close-knit community start taking sides in a dispute, things can turn ugly overnight.”

7.

“Shepherd! How the hell are you? Up to your armpits in crappy nappies?”

Dr. Stanford J. “Call me Stan” Finderman wasn’t your standard academic. My old boss looked more like a long shoreman than a scholar, with a bristly crew cut, a barrel chest, and hands that could wring the neck of a rhinoceros. His forthright manner and colorful vocabulary were legacies of a stint in the navy.

“Brats off the tit yet?” Stan continued. “Or d’you plan to go to college with ’em?”

“The boys are fine, Stan,” I replied. It was nine o’clock in the morning and I felt like a million bucks. I’d slept like a rock for six hours, fed the boys, then rolled over for another luxurious half hour while Francesca got them bathed and dressed. My sterling nanny had baked croissants for breakfast—after I showed her how to open the kitchen cabinets—and Bill had pedaled off to work whistling blithely, while I retreated to the study to make my call to Stan. “Can you spare a minute? I need your help.”

“Anytime, anyplace, Shepherd.” Stan’s sense of loyalty was another legacy of his stint in the navy.

“I’m trying to do a favor for some friends,” I explained. “Do we know anyone who collects obscure Victorian archaeological ephemera?”

“To buy or to borrow?” he asked.

“A loan would suffice,” I replied.

“Tried the British Library?” It was a logical suggestion. A three-hundred-year-old law required British publishers to send a copy of every book to the British Library, free of charge.

“Don’t think it’ll help in this case,” I said. “I’m looking for a privately printed pamphlet, written and published by a hobbyist named Cornelius Gladwell. He was C of E vicar, an amateur archaeologist, and a vindictive son of a gun. I don’t think he’d’ve bothered with the niceties of publishing laws.”

“My kind of guy,” said Stan. “ Tell me more, Shepherd.”

Stan chortled gleefully while I recounted Mr. Gladwell’s uncharitable scheme to defraud posterity—Stan had always had a soft spot for scoundrels—but he settled down when I got to Lilian Bunting’s description of the missing pamphlet.

“I’m afraid there’s not much to go on,” I said, consulting the red spiral-bound notebook. “My friends describe the pamphlet as ‘small, mouse-colored, and flimsy.’ ”

“ That’s a big help,” Stan said sarcastically. “Has it got a title?”

“It’s called Disappointments in Delving ,” I told him, “and we know that Mr. Gladwell printed ten numbered copies.”

“ Ten copies!” Stan exclaimed.

“ That’s right,” I said. “And we need to find one ASAP.”

Stan grunted and fell silent. I could almost see him leaning back in his office chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his collar undone, his red face pointed ceilingward as he scanned his enormous memory bank of names, faces, and book-collecting habits.

“I’m drawing a blank,” he grumbled at last, “but don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ll throw out the nets and see what I can haul in.”

“Great,” I said. “Thanks, Stan.”

“Stow it,” he replied. “ Taught your brats to read yet?”

I spent the rest of the morning on the phone, explaining my plight to friends at museums and libraries in Great Britain and the United States. Gradually, by working the network of experts I’d come to know over the years, I managed to connect with about a dozen antiquities scholars who promised to search their respective collections for me.

Finally, I called Emma and asked her to run a computer search of on-line catalogs. I also pleaded with her to see what she could do about taming the Buntings’ jungle. She agreed to undertake both assignments, but I suspected that the latter would receive priority treatment.

“I’m an old hand at reviving neglected gardens,” she assured me, “and I’ve been dying to yank out all of those weeds. I swear there’s a Rosa hemisphaerica buried in there somewhere, and the Clematis cirrhosa would be glorious if it were given room to breathe. And the Cotinus coggygria! Can you picture it against the wall?”

I let her burble on, though I couldn’t understand one word in twenty. By the time she’d finished, the boys were ready for lunch and I was ready to toss the telephone out of the window.

“Watch your step,” Francesca cautioned as I entered the kitchen, rubbing my phone-sore ear.

Will and Rob were waving furiously at me from their bouncy chairs, as though trying to draw my attention to Francesca’s latest stroke of genius. I looked down and saw that she’d tied a long cord to their chairs, so she could give them a reassuring jiggle from across the room. She was, at that moment, standing at the stove, stirring yet another aromatic stockpot.

“Francesca, this is brilliant,” I said, stepping carefully over the cord. “Just like the circus animals in the tree yesterday.” I crossed to breathe in a bouquet of mouth-watering scents. “Lunch, I hope?”

“Tomato-and-basil soup,” Francesca replied. “I thought it’d go well with the croissants left over from breakfast.” As she reached for the wooden spoon, her bronze medallion swung forward.

“That’s a striking piece of jewelry,” I said. The medallion featured a raised, cherubic face surrounded by a halo of curly hair—not unlike my own—with a pair of tiny wings protruding from the temples. “Is that supposed to be Mercury?”

“It’s Mercury’s winged head.” Francesca touched the bronze disk. “It’s called a phalera . It’s a military decoration Roman soldiers used to wear. My father gave it to me, to remind me of where he came from.” She lifted the wooden spoon to her lips and switched off the stove. “Finito. D’you want to take care of the bambinos before or after we eat?” She used the Italian words offhandedly, and without a trace of an accent, apart from her west-country burr. I wondered if she was testing the waters to see if the cottage had been infiltrated by the prejudices her father had encountered.

“Bambinos first, is my motto,” I said, and was rewarded with an amused flicker from the corner of her eye.

Francesca had already prepared bowls of pureed chick peas and rice, and we spent a splendidly messy half hour helping Will and Rob vector in on the glide path between bowl and mouth. My little aces hit the target so often that they barely had room for milk afterward, and were willing to doze, full-bellied as Buddhas, while Francesca and I sat down to eat.