Aunt Dimity Goes West

by Nancy Atherton

  “I wonder if Florence Auerbach knows about the curse?” I mused aloud.

  “I have no idea,” said Toby testily. “And I don’t know how you can fill your head with such drivel when you have”—he swept his arm through the air—“this to look at.”

  “Huh? What?” I snapped out of my reverie and realized with a start that Toby had led me away from Stafford Avenue to the gravelly west shore of Lake Matula and one of the prettiest sights I’d yet seen.

  The long, narrow lake lay at our feet, a light breeze wrinkling its surface into a million fluid facets that sparkled like fool’s gold in the sun. To our left and slightly above us stood a white-painted church, its spire gleaming against a backdrop of dark pines. Next to it stood a large Victorian house with a wraparound porch, a turret that rivaled the church’s spire in height, and a veritable sampler of lacy gingerbread trim. The house was painted a demure shade of dove gray, but nothing could disguise its flamboyant architecture.

  “It’s fantastic,” I said, laughing with delight. “Like something out of a fairy tale.”

  “I’m glad you noticed,” Toby said sarcastically. “It’s the parsonage, where Mr. and Mrs. Blanding live.” He scuffed the toe of his hiking boot in the gravel. “I wish you’d never heard about the curse, Lori. If you’re not careful, you’ll become obsessed by it.”

  “If I show the slightest sign of obsession,” I said lightly, “you have my permission to throw me in the lake.”

  “I’ll do it,” Toby warned, shaking an index finger at me.

  “I know you will.” I hooked my arm through his. “Come on. Let’s see if Mrs. Blanding is at home.”

  It took us five minutes to walk the rest of the way to the parsonage. The front door was open, as Carrie Vyne had told us it would be, but the screen door was shut. As I raised my hand to ring the doorbell, we heard voices approaching from within. Toby recognized them at once.

  “It’s Rufe and Lou Zimmer,” he said, his face brightening. “You’ll like the Zimmer brothers, Lori. There’s no one else like them on earth.”

  After my experiences at the Brockman Ranch and Caroline’s Cafe, I was more than ready to challenge the veracity of his last statement, but I held my tongue, a feat that became increasingly difficult to do when the men in question finally tottered into view.

  The Zimmer brothers were tiny, ancient, and utterly identical, from the tips of their brown wingtip shoes to the tops of their bald heads. They carried matching straw boaters in their identical right hands and wore matching gold cuff links in the cuffs of their starched white shirts. Their shirts were tucked into pleated cream-colored trousers held up by matching pairs of red suspenders. When they spoke, they sounded so much alike that I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart in the dark. The only reason I could tell them apart in daylight was that one of them held a brown briefcase in his left hand.

  “…mighty kind of you, Rose,” said the one holding the briefcase. “We’ll be sure…”

  “…to bring the maps back when we’re done with them,” continued the other. “Shouldn’t take us too long…”

  “…to work out where the Escalante forge used to be,” the first went on. “Old Lou thinks it was on First Street…”

  “…and old Rufe swears it was on Third,” said Lou. “But we’ll work it out. We surely do…”

  “…appreciate the loan,” finished Rufe.

  “Oh…my…Lord,” I breathed.

  Despite my previous encounters with Bluebird’s army of doppelgangers, I was dizzied by déjà vu. Rufe and Lou Zimmer appeared to be the exact male equivalents of the ancient, identical Pym sisters, who lived up the road from me in Finch. They even talked in the same ping-ponging fashion. If I hadn’t been clinging to Toby’s arm, I would have keeled over from the shock.

  Rufe and Lou were accompanied by a slender, middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a sun-burnished face. She was dressed for the warm weather in a rose-colored linen skirt, a sleeveless white silk blouse, and extremely sensible shoes. Although she had the refined, slightly pedantic manner of an old-fashioned schoolmistress, I assumed that she was Rose Blanding, the minister’s wife.

  “Please, take your time,” she urged the brothers. “There’s no need to bring the maps back quickly. I know you’ll take good care of them.” She glanced up, saw me and Toby through the screen door, and smiled broadly. “Why, look, boys, I have more visitors.”

  “It’s young Tobe!” Rufe exclaimed.

  Identical smiles lit the Zimmer brothers’ faces as Mrs. Blanding ushered them out onto the porch. They greeted Toby fondly, asked after his family, and told him he’d grown at least two inches since they’d last seen him. Toby then conducted a round of introductions that turned out to be for my benefit rather than theirs. The Zimmers and Mrs. Blanding already knew who I was, where I was staying, and with whom.

  “Rufus and Louis are Bluebird’s oldest citizens,” Mrs. Blanding informed me, beaming at the two elderly men. “Though, technically, Rufe is older than Lou by two minutes. Their birth certificates are on display at the historical society.”

  Rufe nodded. “Some people think we founded the town…”

  “…but we’re not that old,” said Lou.

  The brothers chuckled wheezily, then turned to Toby.

  “So, tell us, Tobe,” said Rufe, “have you had any trouble…”

  “…up at the Auerbach place?” Lou asked.

  “None,” Toby declared, with a touch of impatience. “Everyone’s healthy, happy, and having a great time.”

  “Hope your luck holds.” Rufe glanced down at the briefcase. “Well, we’ll get out of your way. We got us some map-reading to do. Mighty pleased to meet you, Lori. Hope to meet your boys…”

  “…one of these days,” said Lou. “And their pretty nanny.”

  The Zimmer brothers winked simultaneously, placed their boaters on their heads at identical angles, and tottered down the stairs. I shook my head to clear it, but it didn’t help because Rose Blanding reminded me so forcibly of Lilian Bunting, who was married to the vicar of St. George’s Church in Finch. In this instance, however, the resemblance made a certain sort of sense to me. The wives of vicars and ministers probably had a lot in common, I reasoned, no matter where they lived.

  “Will they get home all right, Mrs. Blanding?” I asked, observing the brothers’ unsteady progress along the lakeside path.

  “They’ll be fine,” she assured me. “Rufe and Lou may look frail, but they’re as tough as old axe handles.”

  “Of course they are,” I murmured. “Just like the Pyms.”

  “If I’m to call you Lori,” she went on, “you must call me Rose. Please, leave your things in the hall and come into the front parlor. Can I get you a bite to eat or a cold drink? It looks as though you hiked down from the Aerie.”

  We left our packs and packages on a table in the entrance hall and followed Rose into a high-ceilinged, spacious room overlooking Lake Matula. While Toby refused her offer of refreshments, explaining that we’d had lunch at the cafe, I took in the front parlor.

  There was a lot to take in. The house’s demurely painted exterior concealed an interior that paid unrestrained tribute to grand Victorian style. The tables were made of heavily carved walnut, the chairs and sofas were upholstered in lush fabrics, and the walls were covered in a flocked wallpaper that imitated silk brocade. Layers of drapes drawn back by tasseled cords hung at the tall windows, and a large rug with a swirling floral pattern covered the polished hardwood floor.

  Dainty whatnot shelves displayed a splendid collection of Victoriana: beaded reticules, kid leather baby shoes, embroidered gloves, tiny spectacles, cobalt-blue medicine bottles, impossibly elaborate Valentine’s Day cards, and feathered fans. A stereopticon sat on a small, marble-topped table near the love seat in the bay window and a voluminous silk paisley shawl had been draped over the baby grand piano. Toby and I sat on the fringed, bottle-green velvet sofa, and Rose sat opposite us on a button-backed
easy chair with low arms and braided trimming.

  “You have a lovely home,” I said, as soon as we were seated.

  “Do you like it?” Rose asked, as her gaze made a leisurely circuit around the room. “It was once a bordello.”

  “A…a bordello?” I gaped at her in astonishment. “Next door to a church?”

  “Not originally, but the situation did occur.” Rose leaned back in the easy chair and shrugged nonchalantly. “It could hardly be avoided. At one time houses of prostitution outnumbered schools and churches in Bluebird by a factor of twenty to one.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “That’s a lot of…entertainment…for such a small community.”

  “Bluebird wasn’t small back then,” said Rose. “Nearly eleven thousand people lived in the valley in 1865, and the vast majority of them—” She stopped short and tilted her head toward Toby. “Forgive me, Toby, I cast no aspersions on your noble sex, but the truth remains that the vast majority of the early residents were men. I’m sure there were some who didn’t require such entertainment, as you so delicately put it, Lori, but evidently many of them did.”

  “Evidently,” I said, smiling wryly.

  “So many of them were single, you see,” Rose continued, “or acted as if they were. Gold fever struck office workers, salesmen, farmers, and factory workers not only because it offered them a chance to get rich quickly, but also because it offered them a chance to escape the restrictive lives they’d led back East—to throw off their traces and kick up their heels.”

  “Hence, the multitude of bordellos,” I put in.

  “And drinking establishments and gambling hells. But respectable women came to Bluebird, eventually, and tamed some of its wilder aspects.” Rose paused, lowered her eyes, and smiled self-consciously. “Forgive me. I’m lecturing. It’s an occupational hazard when one is both preacher’s wife and president of a historical society.”

  “Don’t stop,” I said. “It’s fascinating. I had no idea that Bluebird used to be a metropolis.”

  Rose seemed only too pleased to carry on. “From 1865 to 1870, Bluebird’s population doubled. Butchers, barbers, bakers, blacksmiths—every type of tradesman was needed to serve the mines and the miners, and many of the tradesmen brought their families with them.”

  “Families that needed schools and churches,” I said, nodding.

  “And much more,” said Rose. “In its heyday, Bluebird had an opera house, a theater, a newspaper, two hotels, five boarding houses, seven law offices, four debating societies, countless gambling hells, saloons, and brothels, and no fewer than seven churches. I’d have to consult a reference book to give you the exact number of shops that once lined Bluebird’s streets, but you could find almost anything here that you could find in Denver. Passenger trains stopped here seven times a day.”

  I gazed at her incredulously. “What happened? Not that Bluebird isn’t lovely as it is,” I added hastily, “but it’s not exactly metropolitan.”

  “Boom and bust,” Rose replied succinctly. “The price of silver plummeted in 1893, when the country went on the gold standard. The silver claims dried up, the miners moved on to other jobs, and businesses failed. Bluebird shrank. By 1930, there were fewer than a thousand people living in the Vulgamore Valley. The state authorities selected the valley as a good place to build a reservoir partly because there were so few people left to displace.”

  “Hold on a minute,” I said, glancing toward the bay window. “Are you telling me that the town of Bluebird used to be where Lake Matula is now?”

  “Yes,” Rose said brightly, “and I can prove it. Would you like to see a photograph of Bluebird at the height of its prosperity?”

  “Very much,” I said.

  Rose left the front parlor and returned a moment later carrying a framed, oblong, sepia-toned photograph that was at least three feet in length. Toby and I made room for her to sit between us and she propped the photograph on her lap for us to see.

  “It’s a composite photograph,” she explained, “a collage made in 1888 by a photographer named Mervyn Blount. Mr. Blount came to the valley in the early days to document the prospectors’ lives, and stayed on to photograph the burgeoning town. He was quite the outdoorsman. He took these photos from a vantage point halfway up Ruley’s Peak, and that’s a difficult mountain to climb.”

  I peered curiously at the panoramic view Mervyn Blount had pieced together from separate photographs. The Vulgamore Valley was scarcely recognizable. Buildings of all shapes and sizes jostled for space along streets that ran parallel to a narrow stream—“Bluebird Creek,” Rose informed me—at the very bottom of the valley. Railroad tracks emerged from the serpentine canyon we’d passed through on the way from Denver to Bluebird, and great swathes of forest were missing from the surrounding slopes.

  “Where are the trees?” I asked in dismay.

  “Propping up mine shafts, heating stoves, housing machinery and people,” Rose replied matter-of-factly. “Mining was not kind to the environment in those days. It still isn’t.” She pointed to a blurred complex of wooden buildings halfway up the northern wall of the valley. “The Lord Stuart Mine stayed open a bit longer than the silver mines because it produced gold, but the gold vein played out, as gold veins always do, and it closed in 1896.”

  “And forty years later, they built the reservoir and drowned the town,” I said sadly.

  “There wasn’t much of a town left by the time they flooded the valley.” Rose’s fingers drifted from left to right over the photograph. “Long before the reservoir was built, a series of flash floods had driven the remaining townspeople to higher ground at the valley’s western end. They’d already salvaged what they could from the ruins of the old town.”

  “Danny Auerbach followed their example,” I commented. “He reused timber from the old mine buildings when he built the Aerie.”

  “Waste not, want not.” Rose pointed to the photograph. “The parsonage was built where it now stands, but Good Shepherd’s loyal congregation dismantled the church in 1934, a year before construction began on the reservoir, and moved it to its present location.”

  “Next door to a bordello?” I said questioningly.

  Rose laughed. “My house was used as a bordello for only a few years, after which it was occupied by a series of fine, upstanding families. Still, my husband and I had to do a great deal of restoration work on it when we came to Bluebird, thirty-five years ago. Fortunately, the town was in the midst of a resurgence then, thanks to the outdoor adventure trade. We mine tourists now, instead of gold and silver.” She swiveled her head from side to side. “Iced tea, anyone? Please say yes. I’ve talked myself dry!”

  “Iced tea sounds great,” said Toby, “but let me carry the photograph for you.”

  After he and Rose had left the room, I walked over to the bay window to gaze at the reservoir. I tried to superimpose Mervyn Blount’s sepia-toned image of the bustling town onto Lake Matula, but I couldn’t manage it. It was almost impossible for me to imagine clouds of smoke fouling the crystalline sky, train whistles blotting out birdsong, a vigorous community filling the Vulgamore Valley from end to end.

  Rose and Toby returned, with Toby balancing a cut-glass pitcher and three tall glasses on a rosewood tray. He placed the tray on a round table next to Rose’s easy chair, and resumed his seat while she filled glasses and passed them to us. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until I took my first sip of iced tea, and Rose appeared to enjoy hers thoroughly.

  “Ah, that’s better,” she said, after she’d drained half her glass.

  “You know,” I mused aloud, “Danny Auerbach would never have been allowed to tear down and recycle the old mine buildings in England, where I live. There, they’d be praised for their historic value and preserved by the National Trust.”

  “The site of the Lord Stuart Mine was a hazardous eyesore,” Rose stated firmly. “It’s also private property, so Mr. Auerbach was well within his rights to do with it as he pleased. The Auerbachs have
owned land up there since 1860, when they bought out the claims of a few hardscrabble prospectors. Fortunately, they invested the profits from the mine wisely, so even when it closed, they prospered. Unlike their workers,” she added, a note of disapproval entering her voice, “most of whom lived a hand-to-mouth existence. But don’t get me started on working conditions in the mines. I’d bore you to death.”

  “You haven’t so far,” I told her earnestly. “You’ve opened my eyes to a whole new world. I’ve enjoyed every minute.”

  “Thank you,” said Rose. “I’m always glad to share my knowledge of Bluebird’s past.”

  “What about its folk legends?” I asked.

  Toby heaved a despondent sigh, as if he knew where my question would lead and wished I wouldn’t go there. Ice clinked as Rose took another sip of iced tea before answering.

  “It’s said that on a still night church bells can be heard beneath the waters of Lake Matula,” she said, her eyes dancing. “There’s even talk of a ghost train running along the tracks at the bottom of the lake.” She chuckled indulgently and shook her head. “Long winters make for tall tales.”

  “Have you heard the church bells?” I asked.

  “Certainly not,” Rose said good-humoredly, “and those who think they have, have spent far too much time in Altman’s Saloon.”

  “So I suppose a sighting of the ghost train is out of the question,” I said.

  “You suppose correctly. Even if I believed in the legend, the water isn’t clear enough for anyone to see all the way to the bottom of the lake.” Rose’s gray eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I think I can guess why you’re interested in ghost trains and phantom church bells, Lori. You’ve heard about the curse, haven’t you?”

  I nodded. “I’d like to hear more.”

  “Why?” Rose asked sharply. “Do you believe in such things?”

  “No,” I said, “but I find them interesting. Why do so many people in town still believe in the curse when it no longer serves a useful purpose?”