Aunt Dimity Digs In (21 page)

Rainey was as good as gold. She didn’t budge until Francesca had removed the key from the ignition, released her seat belt, and unlocked the doors. Then she exploded from the car and tore across the field like an escaping convict.

“Whoa,” said Adrian, scooping her up as she came within reach. He set her on her feet and placed his hands on her shoulders. “You’ll have to be more careful, Rainey. We don’t want you tripping over those ropes.” He lifted his head and shouted, “Miss Graham!”

Katrina dropped the bucket into the wheelbarrow and trotted down the sloping field to Adrian’s side. Her skin glistened with sweat and her headband was soaked through, but she didn’t seem in the least fatigued. “Yes, Dr. Culver?”

Adrian bent to retrieve the hat that had tumbled from Rainey’s head. “We have a new recruit,” he said, placing the hat back where it belonged. “Please see to it that Miss Dawson is issued with sunscreen, then show her how to utilize the waste dump.”

Katrina gave a husky laugh. “Yes, sir,” she replied. “Come along, Miss Dawson.” She took Rainey’s hand and led her to the work area beneath the tarpaulin.

Adrian strode over to the Mercedes. “Welcome to Scrag End, Lori. I’m so glad you’ve come.”

I eyed him doubtfully as I extricated Will from his car seat. “ The waste dump?”

“It’s where we put the soil we’ve removed from the trial trench,” Adrian explained. “It seems the best way to deploy Rainey’s talents.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m new at archaeology.”

“You’ll be an old hand by the time you leave here today. Please, Miss Sciaparelli, allow me.” Adrian hurried over to help Francesca lift the strollers from the trunk.

“Thank you for the flowers,” Francesca murmured, concentrating on unfolding Rob’s stroller. “It was kind of you to bring them.”

Adrian wobbled slightly, as though staggered by Francesca’s passionate words. “I’m . . . you’re . . . it’s . . .” He might have gone on all day if I hadn’t intervened.

“Adrian,” I said, “would you please hold Will while I get Rob?”

Adrian stopped stuttering. “Me?” he said, retreating a step or two.

“Just for a second,” I coaxed. “My son won’t bite. He can’t. His teeth haven’t come in yet.”

Adrian took a deep breath and wiped his palms on his shirt. He stood stiffly at attention as I placed Will in his arms, but my son was adept at dealing with inexperienced adults. Will wriggled and squirmed until Adrian loosened up, then snuggled his head into the crook of Adrian’s neck.

The look of abject terror faded from Adrian’s eyes. “Such soft skin,” he murmured. “ The sun won’t do it any good at all, old chap. We must get you into the shade.”

I turned to inform him that Will’s stroller had a perfectly adequate awning, but he was already striding toward the tarpaulin, with my son cuddled close to his chest.

Francesca seemed taken aback by his desertion. As she clicked the sturdy awning into place, she muttered, “You’d think the man had never held a babe before.”

“Maybe he hasn’t,” I said.

“A man his age?” Francesca protested.

“Bill never held a baby until he had his own. Does Adrian have any children?” I asked, putting Rob in the stroller.

“No,” said Francesca, “nor a wife, neither.” She flushed suddenly and bent low over Rob’s straps. “Or so I’ve heard.”

Katrina was still annointing Rainey with sunscreen when Francesca, Rob, and I arrived at the tarpaulin. Adrian had returned to the folding chair near the propped sketch pad and appeared to be entirely absorbed in watching Will grasp his index finger. While I piled an empty table with the miscellaneous baby-bags, he peered curiously from one twin to the other.

“How do you tell them apart?” he asked.

Rainey piped up unexpectedly: “You look in their eyes.”

All heads turned in her direction, but Francesca was the first to speak.

“What d’you mean, Rainey?” she asked.

“I . . . I don’t know,” said Rainey, unnerved by the attention her remark had drawn. “It’s just that . . . when I look at Will, Will looks back at me. And when I look at Rob, Rob looks back at me.”

Francesca’s full lips curved into a slow, sweet smile as she bent down to lift Rainey’s chin. “It’s their souls you’re seeing,” she told the little girl. “You can’t mistake one soul for another, any more than you can mistake a cat for a cabbage. D’you see?”

Rainey nodded eagerly. “Rob’s is silvery blue and Will’s is sort of golden. Is that what you mean?”

Francesca gave an astonished laugh. “I believe you see ’em more clearly than I do,” she said. “Those are the lights of their souls, sure enough.”

I looked from Rainey to my boys. I’d always been able to tell Will and Rob apart, but I’d never known how to explain it to the nurses or Dr. Hawking or anyone else who asked—leave it to an eight-year-old to do it for me.

“Your soul is a soft, dark brown,” Rainey added, gazing into Francesca’s eyes, “like Mummy’s brown velvet hat. Isn’t that right, Dr. Culver?”

Adrian fielded the question gamely. “I’ve, er, never seen your mummy’s hat,” he replied.

“I’ll ask her to wear it to my party,” Rainey assured him. “Mummy can stand next to Francesca and you can stare into Francesca’s eyes, the way you always do, and—”

“Dr. Culver,” Katrina interrupted. “Do you think we’ll be much longer? We have to get those soil samples back to the lab for analysis.”

Adrian had all but buried his face in Will’s T-shirt. Now he got up, with my son cradled in his arm, and bustled over to one corner of the work area to retrieve a dirt-filled bucket.

“The soil samples can wait until our guests have departed,” he said, carefully avoiding Francesca’s eyes. “I believe you were about to show Rainey the waste dump. While you’re there”—he handed the bucket to Katrina—“don’t forget to discard this detritus, as well.”

It was a gentle reproof, but a reproof all the same, and Katrina didn’t take it well. She shot a hostile glance at Francesca before trudging across the field to the wheelbarrow, with Rainey trotting happily in her wake.

“Miss Graham is apt to take her science a bit too seriously,” Adrian observed when Katrina was out of earshot.

“She’s sweet on you,” Francesca commented, eyeing the muscular little blonde dispassionately.

Adrian looked alarmed. “Surely not,” he protested.

“Plain as the nose on your face,” Francesca told him, taking Will from his arms. “And why shouldn’t she be? You’re the famous professor, the man with all the answers.”

“I can assure you that I have far more questions than answers,” Adrian said, with a self-deprecating wave of his hand. “But I am being remiss in my duties. Won’t you have a seat? May I offer you a glass of cold water?” Adrian tossed his hat aside, opened an ice chest, and took from it a bottle of the springwater Katrina had ordered from Mr. Taxman at Kitchen’s Emporium. He filled a pair of plastic cups.

“Scrag End has me baffled,” he said, handing us our drinks. “Miss Graham has advanced several theories to explain what’s going on here, but I find them less than convincing.”

Francesca and I exchanged puzzled glances. It was a queer remark, coming from a man who planned to finance a museum on the strength of his finds at Scrag End field.

“Is there something wrong with Scrag End?” I asked.

“Everything’s wrong,” Adrian replied. “We’re finding the wrong artifacts from the wrong periods in the wrong places.” He reached for the sketch pad, flipped to a blank page, and pulled a chair over, so he could sit between Francesca and me.

“Archaeological sites have their own logic,” he began, resting the oversized pad on his lap. “To put it simply, if you find a lot of broken pottery, it’s reasonable to assume that you’ve happened upon a potter’s shop. And if you find nothing but fifth-century pottery, it’s reasonable to assume that the potter lived in the fifth century. Furthermore . . .” He pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket and drew five horizontal lines on the sketch pad. “Layers of soil are like layers of time. As a general rule, the deeper you dig, the older the artifacts.”

As he bent once more over his sketch pad, my heart began to race. I’d read enough picture captions in
National Geographic
to follow Adrian’s argument. Archaeologists expected to find artifacts from different periods clustered in different layers of soil. A fifth-century spearhead lying beside a first-century statue of Minerva would set off all sorts of alarms. If Cornelius Gladwell had been stupid enough to dig a hole and simply dump his Roman gewgaws into it, then his hoax was doomed to failure. Not even an Oxford-trained archaeologist like Adrian could fake enough documentation to cover such a colossal blunder.

Adrian finished adding a series of dots to the horizontal lines. He pointed to the dots nearest the top of the page. “ These represent my initial discoveries. They range in date from the second to the fifth century. Do you see my problem?”

I tried to sound nonchalant. “Too many artifacts from too many centuries in the same place.”

“Exactly.” Adrian tossed the sketch pad onto the table. “And the trial trench isn’t clarifying the situation.”

I looked at him in confusion. He seemed to be admitting that his site was highly suspect, but he showed not the slightest sign of dismay or disappointment.

“Would you care to see the trial trench?” he offered.

“You go ahead, Lori,” said Francesca. “I’d sooner stay in the shade with the boys.”

The heat hit like a wet velvet curtain the moment Adrian and I left the shade of the tarpaulin. I glanced across the field at Rainey, hidden under her hat and helping Katrina shovel dirt from the wheelbarrow into what appeared to be a large wood-framed sieve. I was grateful to Adrian for providing her with sunscreen.

Adrian gazed skyward. “It’s beginning to cloud up. I believe we may be in for a good soaking before the weekend’s through.”

I looked up and saw a flock of fleecy clouds streaming across the sky, harbingers of heavier rain clouds to come. “The gardeners will rejoice.”

“ The farmers, as well,” said Adrian, with a glance at the stunted crops across the river, “but I’m afraid it won’t make my work any easier. Please, watch your step.” He took me by the elbow and guided me carefully through the maze of staked ropes to the edge of a yawning hole the size and shape of a grown man’s grave.

“Not a textbook trench,” Adrian observed, with a wry smile, “but nice work, nevertheless. Miss Graham is willing to work long hours, and her fitness fanaticism has paid off—she’s very strong—invaluable traits in a budding archaeologist.”

“Do you consider honesty an equally invaluable trait?” I asked.

“Naturally,” said Adrian.

“Then why did you lie to the vicar?” I demanded.

“I beg your pardon?” said Adrian.

I turned to face him squarely. “You told Mr. Bunting that you’d never heard of the Gladwell pamphlet, yet you’ve all but admitted that Scrag End is a hoax.”

“I never called Scrag End a hoax,” Adrian protested. “I merely pointed out a few anomalies, and Miss Graham has come up with some interesting explanations to account for—”

“Dr. Culver!” Rainey’s shout smote my eardrums like a clap of thunder. “Look what I found!”

20.

Rainey raced across the field and hurdled the staked ropes with the agility of a track star, then spoiled the effect by crashing into Adrian and nearly knocking him into his trial trench. As he caught his balance—and hers—Katrina dashed up, apologizing for the disruption. Adrian waved her to silence as Rainey held out a grubby fist.

“Look, Dr. Culver! Isn’t it grand?” Rainey gazed up at Adrian, transported.

Adrian bent low to examine the silver coin in Rainey’s filthy palm. “What luck!” he exclaimed. “It’s not many archaeologists who find a silver denarius on their first trip out.”

Rainey’s gaze dropped to the coin. “I thought it was money.”

“It
is
money,” Adrian assured her. “It’s a kind of money people used long ago.” He squatted beside her and pointed at the coin with his little finger. “See here? This is a picture of Constantine, a Roman emperor. After you’ve brought the denarius to the schoolhouse, Miss Graham will tell you all about the emperor Constantine.”

Rainey’s face fell. “I can’t keep it?”

“You don’t want to keep it for yourself,” Adrian told her.

“I don’t?” Rainey closed her fist over the coin.

Adrian shook his head. “When we find things here, they don’t belong to us. They belong to everyone. That’s why we put them in museums, where everyone can see them.”

Rainey gave the proposition some serious thought. “May I bring Mummy and Daddy and Jack and Gran to your museum to see my denarius?”

Adrian let
your museum
pass without comment. “Of course you may. Let’s go back to the work station. We’ll put Constantine’s denarius in a box, so you won’t mislay it. It’s a splendid discovery, Rainey. I’m very proud of you.”

I almost sympathized with the resentful look that flashed across Katrina’s sweaty face. She’d put a lot of hard work into the dig. It had to be galling for her to be upstaged by a scrawny eight-year-old.

“Katrina,” I said, “why don’t you take a break? You look as though you could use one.”

“I don’t need a break,” she said shortly, looking down at the trench.

“ That’s too bad,” I said. “I was hoping you’d explain your theories to me.”

She glanced up. “Did Dr. Culver mention my theories?”

“Yes,” I said, “and he gave you full credit for them.”

“He’s too generous,” she said, thawing slightly. “All I’ve done is recapitulate his lectures.”

“I’d love to hear your interpretation of his lectures,” I coaxed.

Katrina cast a sour glance toward the tarpaulin. “Are you sure I won’t interrupt—”

“Don’t be silly,” I said firmly, taking her by the arm. “Our visit wouldn’t be complete without a lecture from an expert.”