“Students and faculty. Some of my fellow teachers enjoy getting down and dirty sometimes.” And he smiled, making the worried expression vanish from his face.

“But no outsiders?”

“We’ve had a couple of visiting academics as well as a reporter or two from Dublin.”

“How recently?”

The man sighed, thinking. “It’s been raining a lot so we haven’t been able to get out here much.” He looked down at the trench. “Pamela, Carol, do you remember when we last had a visitor?”

Pamela shook her head. “Not for a couple of weeks. The weather has been beastly.”

“These visiting academics,” Darcy said. “All from Ireland, were they? People you knew?”

Pamela looked at Carol and grinned. “There was that American professor, remember? He was really funny.”

“Amusing? Witty?”

Pamela shook her head. “Strange. He didn’t really seem interested in what we’ve found. He seemed awfully keen on gold, didn’t he, Carol? I told him the likelihood of gold in a burial chamber is not very high, but he didn’t seem to have much clue about Irish burial customs. I suppose old in America is two hundred years, not two thousand.”

“Do you remember where he was from?”

“University of Southern Nebraska, was it?” Pamela asked.

“Did he join in the dig?”

“We invited him, but he said he was in his traveling clothes and didn’t want to get dirty.”

“Who invited him to come?” I asked.

“Nobody. He just showed up one day and said he was touring Ireland and had heard about us and had to come and see for himself,” the professor answered.

“Do you remember his name?”

“Peabody. Professor Peabody,” Pamela said. “We had a bit of a giggle about it because he was quite large and Carol whispered that she had never seen a pea that size.”

“Thank you,” Darcy said. “Good luck with your dig. Does a portion of any gold found go to the O’Maras?”

“If it’s valuable it’s all treasure trove and the government has first pick,” the professor said with a smile. “Naturally we hope that any significant find will be donated to Trinity. But we’ll obviously let your family know exactly what has been found. We plan to have an exhibition at Trinity if the site eventually warrants it.”

“Why start now? At this time of year?” I asked Pamela. “Wouldn’t the summer be more pleasant?”

“Definitely.” She smiled at me. “But I wanted to get started on the research part of this PhD, so as soon as I identified the site in the photographs, I asked if we could start work right away.” She paused and grinned at Carol. “I’ve regretted it several times already when we’ve been up to our ankles in mud and freezing our fingers off. I can’t think what January will be like.”

“Good luck,” I said. “I hope you find something worthwhile.”

We exchanged a smile.