Aunt Dimity Goes West (28 page)

“Somewhere behind the concrete plug.” James

tapped the wall with his knuckles. “I thought I might

break through it with the pickax, but I gave up pretty

quick. The angle makes it hard to take a good swing,

and only Mr. Auerbach knows how thick the plug is. He

made damned sure his sons couldn’t get into the mine,

so I don’t think you’ll have to worry about your twins.”

I pressed my palms against the cool concrete and

nodded. “Since Rob and Will are only five years old

and not
quite
as strong as you are, James, I’d have to agree.” I withdrew my hands and heaved a little sigh. “I have to confess that I’m a tiny bit disappointed. I was

kind of hoping to see a glint of gold in the darkness.”

“If any gold’s left inside the Lord Stuart, it’s out of

our reach,” said James. “But you should watch your-

self, Lori. Gold fever’s a nasty bug.You don’t want to

get bit by it.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

237

I moved out of his way, he pushed the door shut,

and we walked back to the great room in the Aerie.

Since it was already eleven o’clock, I made a detour

to the kitchen to put the lasagna in the oven, then

helped James carry the wooden crate to his truck.

After we’d loaded the crate, James closed the tailgate

and turned to survey the Aerie.

“I liked it here,” he said. “One day Janice and me

and the kid are going to have a cabin in the mountains.

It won’t be as fancy as this one, but it’ll be ours.”

“With scenery like this, you don’t need fancy,” I

said, sweeping a hand through the air to indicate the

lake, the forest, the snowcapped peaks, and the daz-

zling blue sky. “Are you sure you can’t stay for lunch?

There’s plenty of food and you’re more than wel-

come. I know for a fact that your replacement, Toby

Cooper, would love to meet you.”

“Thanks, but I’d better be going,” said James. “I left

Janice with one of her girlfriends, but she gets fretful if I’m gone too long.”

“You’re a lucky man,” I said, clapping him on the

shoulder. “You have so much to look forward to. Give

Janice my best.”

“I’ll do that, Lori.” James climbed into the cab of his

truck, started the engine, and drove down the steep

lane toward the dirt road that would take him back to

the highway.

It wasn’t until the truck was out of sight that I re-

membered the lantern I’d left in the library. I felt a

stab of guilt for forgetting to give it to James, but there

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Nancy Atherton

was nothing I could do about it, so I went inside to

make the artichoke salad and set the dining room table

for lunch.

While I puttered from one task to another, I reran

the past hour in my mind, rehearsing the revelations I

planned to share with Bill, Aunt Dimity, Toby, and

Rose Blanding. I was fairly certain that I could rely on Rose to share my news with every living soul in and

around Bluebird.

The fishermen returned from Willie Brown Creek

at half past eleven, crowing over the trout they’d caught and thrown back. Rob and Will were wet, muddy, and

in dire need of baths, so I had no chance to speak pri-

vately with Annelise or to inform Toby of James Black-

well’s unexpected visit. While Toby put the salad and

the bread on the table, filled water glasses, and added

ice to the sun tea, Annelise and I whisked the boys first into the bathtub, then into their room to dress them in

clean, dry clothes.

I ran back to the kitchen to check on the lasagna,

and Annelise brought the boys and their buffalo into

the great room to play quietly—and cleanly—while

we waited for the doorbell to ring. At precisely twelve

o’clock, it did.

Rose Blanding stared avidly around her as I ush-

ered her into the great room and introduced her to

Annelise,Will, and Rob.

“How lucky you are to have such a lovely place to

stay,” she said to the boys.

Aunt Dimity Goes West

239

“We slept in a
bunk bed
at the ranch,” Rob informed her airily.

“And we saw
two
snakes,” said Will.

“But they weren’t rattlers,” said Rob, with a wistful

sigh.

The twins continued to extoll the ranch’s virtues

while we ate, but Rose seemed to be preoccupied with

the Aerie’s. She appeared to listen attentively to the

boys’ chatter, but her eyes roved around the room as if

she were memorizing every detail of her surroundings.

I was confident that a minute description of the Aerie’s interior would find its way onto the local grapevine

before sunset.

After we’d finished the meal, I left Rose to wander

at will while Toby and I cleared the table and Annelise

took the boys outside to hunt for fossils. Rose seemed

captivated by the objects displayed in the rustic cabi-

net. She was still peering at them when I joined her.

“The twins took naps when we first got here,” I

told her. “But they don’t seem to need them any-

more.”

“They’re acclimatized,” Rose observed knowledge-

ably. “It’s amazing how quickly children adjust to the

altitude.” She favored me with an inquisitive, sidelong

look. “Did I see James Blackwell’s truck pass by the

parsonage this morning?”

“James Blackwell!” Toby exclaimed from the kitchen.

He threw down a dish towel and hurried over to

where Rose and I were standing. “Did
he
ring the

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Nancy Atherton

bell this morning? Did you get a chance to speak

with him, Lori? Did you find out if he”—he glanced

at Rose and finished cautiously—“did what I thought

he did?”

“Let’s all have a seat,” I said. “James’s visit was ex-

tremely informative. I have a lot to tell both of you.”

Toby perched on the hearth ledge while Rose and

I made ourselves comfortable on the sofa. They lis-

tened raptly while I told them a slightly abbreviated

version of James Blackwell’s story. I enjoyed shooting

a significant look at Toby when I described James’s un-

successful assault on the Lord Stuart Mine. I had no

intention of discussing Toby’s unworthy suspicions in

front of Rose, but I relished the prospect of forcing

him to admit—after Rose had gone—that he’d been

wrong to accuse his predecessor of theft.

Rose was shocked to learn that Amanda Barrow

had played such a pivotal role in the Auerbachs’ depar-

ture, but Toby wasn’t even mildly surprised.

“Amanda tried to pull the same stunt yesterday,”

he informed Rose indignantly. “She tried to use the

curse to scare Lori.”

“But it’s nonsense,” Rose protested. “The curse is

utter nonsense.”

“So is everything else Amanda does,” said Toby, “but

it doesn’t stop people from believing in her.”

Rose’s gray eyes narrowed. “I’ll have to have a lit-

tle talk with Amanda. I don’t mind it when she prac-

tices her profession on adults, but when it comes to

frightening an impressionable teenaged girl . . .” She

Aunt Dimity Goes West

241

gazed fiercely into the middle distance, then cleared

her throat and turned a much gentler visage toward

me. “I’m sorry for the Auerbachs, of course, but

they’ll be all right. People with money always are.

James, on the other hand, may find himself struggling

to make ends meet once the baby arrives. I’m worried

about him.”

“I am, too,” I admitted. “What if he can’t find a job

after the baby’s born? Danny Auerbach won’t hire him

back.”

“Leave it to me,” said Rose. “I’ll think of something.

James was well liked in Bluebird. I may be able to find

a way to bring him back—with his family, of course.”

“That’d be great,” I said. “He loves it up here.”

Rose folded her hands in her lap. “You certainly

had an interesting morning, Lori. Thank you so much

for telling me about James.The lasagna was delicious,

by the way.And your sons are adorable, so big for their

age and so articulate.”

Rose added a few more compliments before it

dawned on me that she was waiting to be taken on the

promised tour.

“Would you like to see the rest of the Aerie?” I

asked.

“I would,” she replied instantly.

I took Rose Blanding from one end of the Aerie to

the other, leaving out only the caretaker’s apartment

and cleverly making the library our last stop. I wanted

her full attention when I asked her about the photo-

graphs in the gray archival box.

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Nancy Atherton

Rose’s face lit up when we entered the library. She

walked straight to the shelves to look over the books

and uttered soft cries of delight when she found ones

she knew to be rare or out of print.

“I realize that envy is a sin,” she said, sighing deeply,

“but I can’t help being envious of Mrs. Auerbach. Her

collection is truly priceless.”

“Here’s your box, Mrs. Blanding,” said Toby, draw-

ing her over to the banker’s desk. “Lori and I were

looking through it last night. We wondered if you

could identify any of the men in the pictures.”

“I can identify
all
of them,” Rose assured us, opening the box.

My eyes met Toby’s over Rose’s bowed head, but

we looked away quickly, suppressing smiles.

“James Blackwell was interested in the Lord Stuart

mining disaster,” said Rose, “so I gave him contem-

porary accounts of it: articles from the local news-

paper, photocopies of relevant correspondence, and

so on.”

“Toby and I are interested in the photographs,” I re-

iterated, to keep Rose from going off on a tangent.

“The group portrait is the key,” she explained. She

lifted the large photograph out of the box and showed

it to Toby and me. “Every man in the photograph, but

one, died in the disaster.”

“Oh, my gosh,” I said, peering down at the proud

faces of the doomed men. “I should have guessed.

Twenty red granite headstones in the cemetery, twenty-

one miners in the photograph.”

Aunt Dimity Goes West

243

“I included an individual portrait of each man in

the group portrait.” Rose passed the group portrait to

Toby and raised a handful of photographs from the

box, fanning them out like playing cards. “I also in-

cluded a portrait of Cyril Pennyfeather, whose obelisk

we saw in the cemetery.” She plucked one photograph

from the rest and handed it to me, then put the others

back into the box.

A wave of affection tinged with sorrow swept over

me me as I took in Cyril’s narrow chest and shoulders,

his wavy blond hair, and the pince-nez perched on the

bridge of his rather prominent nose. He was dressed in

a serviceable tweed suit and held an open book in one

long-fingered hand, as if he’d looked up from his read-

ing to have his picture taken. He stood at a slight angle to the camera, before a backdrop that included a classical bust on a truncated Doric column. If I hadn’t already known he was a schoolmaster, I would have guessed it.

“He has such intelligent eyes,” I murmured.

“He was, by all accounts, a highly intelligent man,”

Rose said. “He could speak French, German, Latin,

and Greek, and he knew most of Shakespeare’s works

by heart.”

“Macbeth,” I murmured, returning the photograph

to the box. “Act two, Scene two.”

Toby was still examining the group portrait. He

handed it back to Rose and asked, “Which one of the

men survived?”

A shiver traveled up my spine as Rose pointed un-

erringly to the wild-eyed, bearded man in the back row.

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Nancy Atherton

“He brought water to the other miners,” she said.

“He was refilling his can when the mine collapsed

and so escaped unharmed. His name was Ludovic

Magerowski.”

“I
knew
it!” I cried, as Cyril Pennyfeather’s words came rushing back to me. “I
knew
he was crazy.”

“How did you know?” Rose asked in mild surprise.

I blinked at her, then said quickly, “His eyes. He has

crazy eyes.”

“You do judge men by their eyes, Lori,” Rose com-

mented, looking amused. She turned back to the pho-

tograph. “But you were right about Cyril Pennyfeather,

and you’re right again about Ludovic. He was de-

ranged. That’s why they wouldn’t allow him to handle

tools or to have anything to do with explosives. No one

trusted Ludo to do anything but deliver water.”

Rose went on to describe Ludovic Magerowski’s

life. Her account tallied with the one Cyril Pennyfeather had written in Aunt Dimity’s blue journal, but Rose had

one enormous advantage over Cyril—she knew what

had happened after the disaster.

“Rumors flew,” she said. “The most popular one

was that Ludo had sabotaged the mine to exact re-

venge from Emerson Auerbach for cheating him out

of a fortune.” She rifled through the box and came up

with a frail newspaper clipping encased in a protective

clear plastic envelope. “As you can see, Ludo didn’t

help matters. He gave an interview to the Bluebird