Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin (20 page)

“She had a nephew,” I said sadly. “Miss Beacham had a nephew and Kenneth took him away from her. I wonder if Walter James even knew he had an aunt?”

“I wonder if he knew he had a father,” Bill countered. “Dear old Kenneth Trent seems to be the original invisible man.”

“I don’t get it.” I tapped the printout with an index finger. “If he wore fancy suits and lived in a ritzy neighborhood, he must have had a good job. We should have found articles about stunning promotions or business-related social events. Instead, there’s nothing.”

“There’s nothing about a prison record, either,” Emma pointed out, “so it’s probably safe to assume that he’s not working for the mob.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been caught yet,” Bill murmured.

“Thank heavens for Big Al,” I said. “Without him, it might have taken us weeks to find out about Crestmore Crescent and its stone lions.” I frowned down at the infuriatingly uninformative printout. “What about his wife’s charity work? If she sponsored garden parties, you’d think something about them would pop up, but nope—nothing, nada, zip. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Does the wedding date tell us anything?” Bill asked.

I thought for a moment before answering. “I doubt it. I’ll have to check the photograph album, but I’m pretty sure Kenneth vanished from it in 1985, the year
before
he married.”

“Maybe his family didn’t approve of his fiancée,” Bill suggested.

“Or vice versa,” said Emma. “His fiancée might not have approved of his family.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “Miss Beacham would have done everything she could to please Kenneth’s fiancée, and she was great at pleasing people. Everyone on Travertine Road loved her.”

Bill put an arm around me. “Sorry, love. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Emma. “The Web search hasn’t been as helpful as I’d hoped it would be.”

“It’s not your fault,” I told her. “It’s the curse of the Beachams. Miss Beacham was a proverbial clam when it came to talking about herself, and Kenneth’s profile is so low it’s barely visible. Secrecy seems to be a family tradition.”

“But you won’t let it stop you,” said Bill.

“It’s a setback,” I admitted, “but no, it won’t stop me. Gabriel and I are going to canvass Kenneth’s former neighbors on Monday. If they can’t give us a lead, we’ll go from one end of Oxford to the other, until we find someone who can.”

“That’s my Lori,” said Bill. “Give her a clam and she’ll hammer away at it until it opens. And now I believe we should allow our hardworking hostess to take the rest of the night off.”

Emma looked at the clock on her desk. “Wow,” she said dryly. “A whole hour, all to myself.”

“Make the most of it,” said Bill, giving her a hug. “It may be the last hour of leisure time you’ll see for quite a while.”

“I know,” said Emma, glowing. “Isn’t it
wonderful
?”

Sixteen

On Sunday I retreated to the bosom of my family, but is even there I couldn’t escape thoughts of Miss Beacham. As we entered St. George’s Church in Finch for the morning service, Will and Rob delighted the vicar by asking him, very earnestly, to say a prayer thanking Miss Beacham for Thunder and Storm. The vicar promised solemnly to do so, and as her name resounded from the church’s stone walls, I saw Mr. Barlow bow his head. He was calling to mind, no doubt, the money Miss Beacham had provided for his new chimney, and adding his words of praise to the vicar’s.

Since Annelise spent Sundays in the bosom of her own family, Bill and I had the boys to ourselves for the entire day. After church, we worked as a team to clean up the churchyard, took a long, rambling walk through the oak woods that separated our property from the Harrises’, and stopped by Anscombe Manor to look in on the new ponies. We spent the evening in the living room, pajama-clad, with popcorn and storytelling around the fire. Most of the stories involved heroic ponies and the brave—but eminently sensible and properly helmeted—little boys who rode them.

On Monday morning Bill returned to his office in Finch, Annelise returned to the cottage, and I returned to 42 St. Cuthbert Lane to pick up Gabriel, who was waiting for me on the sidewalk in front of his building. Once we’d located Crestmore Crescent on my handy map, I let him take the driver’s seat, to spare him the nerve-wracking ordeal of listening to my traffic-induced screams.

The fine weather, which had held throughout the weekend, had turned wet again, with stiff breezes blowing spatters of rain from the east. March was clearly vying with April for the Cruelest Month title, but I was determined not to complain. The sun had shone when it counted, on Emma’s big day. If clouds covered the sky for the rest of the month, it was okay by me.

Gabriel lapsed into silence as we drove north, but whether it was because he was concentrating on following the directions or lost in another introspective mood, I couldn’t tell.

“Did you have a good time on Saturday?” I asked.

“I had a wonderful time,” Gabriel replied. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Chloe seemed to enjoy herself.”

“She declared it the best day of her life,” he said, but he spoke with so little enthusiasm that I began to worry. Had something gone wrong with the match made in heaven?

“And Joanna—did she have a good time?” I inquired.

There was a long pause. Finally, and without taking his eyes from the road, Gabriel said, “She’s allergic to cats, Lori.”

“Oh,” I said, and as comprehension dawned: “Oh, dear.”

“Yes.” Gabriel sighed. “She hasn’t been to my flat yet—it’s not really fit to be seen. But she happened to mention it on the drive back. Several cats live at Anscombe Manor, apparently.”

“Five, at last count,” I put in.

“That would explain it.” Gabriel sighed again. “She sneezed all the way home.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”

“I could never abandon Stanley,” Gabriel went on. “He and I have been through the wars together.”

“Don’t worry,” I repeated, more forcefully. “Human beings cope with allergies every day. We’ll find a way for Joanna to cope with hers. Now, would you like to hear what Emma found out about Kenneth?”

The question diverted Gabriel from his dolorous thoughts, just as I’d hoped it would. He shared my disappointment at the lack of information gleaned by the Internet search, but before we could discuss its implications, we’d entered Willow Hills, the mellifluously named real estate development just north of Oxford whose tree-lined streets included Crestmore Crescent.

The size of the trees and the maturity of the shrubs bordering the wet but manicured lawns indicated to me that it wasn’t a brand-new development, as Big Al had suggested, but one that had been around for some twenty years or more. The community wasn’t as swanky as Big Al had led me to expect, either, though to give Big Al his due, it was far swankier than the neighborhood encircling St. Benedict’s. The houses were large, but not palatial, and the back gardens reflected the predictable taste of a newly arrived upper middle class: modest gazebos, modest fountains, and the usual layers of wooden decking surrounded by lawns sprinkled with well-defined flower beds.

There were seven houses on the cul-de-sac that bore the name Crestmore Crescent, but only one had a pair of concrete lions guarding its paved driveway. Number 6 was a three-story mock-Tudor-style house with an attached two-car garage and a generic coat of arms mounted over the front door. Gabriel parked the Rover four driveways down from the concrete lions and switched off the engine.

I gripped the door handle, then stopped, held in check by a strange feeling of awkwardness. Gabriel seemed similarly paralyzed.

“It’s quiet,” he murmured ominously. “
Too
quiet.”

I giggled. “It’s definitely not Travertine Road. People like Mr. Blascoe and Mr. Jensen
expect
strangers to prance into their shops, but these are private homes. I hope we don’t annoy anyone. I hope no one mistakes us for insurance salesmen.”

“Or missionaries,” said Gabriel.

We paused to survey each other’s attire and decided that Gabriel’s bulky turtleneck and twill slacks, and my blue fleece pullover and black corduroy trousers, combined with our rain jackets, made us look more like college students than anything else.

“People living in or near Oxford are generally kind to college students,” Gabriel reasoned. “I doubt that anyone will set the dogs on us.”

“Even so, you’d better do the talking,” I told him. “I don’t want my accent to spook the natives.”

“Right.” He took a deep breath and opened his door. “Let’s have at it.”

We started ringing doorbells at the end of the cul-de-sac and worked our way toward number 6. No one answered at the first two houses, and the third door was opened by a cleaning woman who lived in Woodstock and had never heard of Kenneth Beacham.

It wasn’t until we’d reached the fourth house that we found ourselves face-to-face with an actual resident, a tall, stately woman in her midfifties, dressed in a flowing, multicolored caftan and gold-tinted sandals. Her fingers were laden with gemstudded rings, her hair was artfully arranged in a smooth bouffant style, her finger- and toenails were polished to perfection, and her face was flawlessly made up. She seemed overdressed for ten o’clock in the morning. I wondered if she was hosting a brunch.

“Good morning,” said Gabriel. “My name is Gabriel Ashcroft, and this is my, er, colleague, Lori Shepherd.”

“How do you do?” I said. “I hope we’re not interrupting—”

“No, no, I’m quite alone,” said the woman. “How may I help you?”

“We’re attempting to locate someone,” said Gabriel, “a gentleman who lived at number six Crestmore Crescent approximately five years ago.” He raised an arm to point at the mock-Tudor house two doors down, then went on. “His sister died recently and we’ve had some difficulty contacting him, in order to notify him of her death. Were you by any chance acquainted with—”

“Are you talking about Kenneth?” asked the woman.

Gabriel blinked.

“Yes,” I said hastily.

“Of course I knew Kenneth,” she said. “His wife was one of my dearest friends. I’m so sorry to hear about his sister. Won’t you come in?”

I had to nudge Gabriel to get him over the doorstep, but eventually our jackets were hung in the hall closet and we were seated in white wicker chairs in a white-carpeted, glass-walled conservatory attached to the back of the house. The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Beryl Pollard, offered us a choice of beverages, and repaired to the kitchen to prepare tea.

“White carpet,” Gabriel said softly after she’d gone, “and not a spot on it.”

“No kids,” I whispered back. “Or else she keeps them tied up in the basement.”

Mrs. Pollard returned a short time later, pushing a wheeled trolley laden with a silver tea service, bone china cups and saucers, and a plate filled with the plain cookies known in England as “digestive biscuits.” She transferred the trolley’s contents to the glass-topped wicker coffee table at our knees, took a seat across from us, served the tea, and sat back, entirely at ease. I was deeply impressed. If I’d tried to perform so many complex tasks while wearing a flowing caftan, I would have caught a sleeve on the teapot, tripped on the hem, and sent the delicate china crashing onto the white carpet.

“I confess that I didn’t know Kenneth had a sister,” Mrs. Pollard informed us. “He never mentioned her to me, nor did dear Dorothy. Were they estranged? It’s such a pity when these things happen. Family bonds should be inviolable, don’t you think? Of course, individual family members can sometimes be extremely difficult. I haven’t spoken to my sister for ten years, all because of a silly disagreement over a flower arrangement. ‘Livia,’ I said, ‘your roses are too tall,’ and before I knew what was what, she was calling me names I refuse to repeat in polite company. I forgave her, of course, but things have never been the same between us since. Such a pity.”

The monologue flowed on in such a steady, unstoppable stream that I thought Mrs. Pollard must be either an exceedingly lonely woman or one who’d been hitting the bottle since dawn. Both scenarios would have explained why she’d been so willing to invite Gabriel and me into her home without asking for identification.

“Um, about Kenneth . . . ,” I began, and she was off again.

“Darling Kenneth,” she said. “He’s not especially good-looking, mind you, rather plain and paunchy, if truth be told, but he knows how to dress and that’s more than half the battle, don’t you think? Who can resist a man in a Savile Row suit? Dorothy called it investment dressing and we’d both laugh because, of course, that’s what he did, invest other people’s money in wise and clever ways. His sister died, did you say? How tragic. And how odd that Dorothy never mentioned her to me. Did she live overseas, by any chance? So difficult to maintain family ties over great distances. Of course, Dorothy leads such a frantic life that she can’t be expected to remember everything.” Mrs. Pollard paused to sip her tea.

“Kenneth’s sister lived in Oxford,” I said.

“Not overseas? How odd,” said Mrs. Pollard. “But as I say, Dorothy’s far too busy to remember everything. Her life was a mad whirl while she was living here: bridge parties, garden parties, galas, and balls, all in support of the most reputable charities. And the hours she spent entertaining Kenneth’s clients! She hadn’t a minute to call her own. I admired her greatly, we all did, here in the crescent. Dorothy supported worthy causes and made sure her son met the right people, and that’s what’s important, don’t you think? She was devoted to her son.”

“Walter James?” I said quickly.

“Dear Walter, such a nice boy,” said Mrs. Pollard. “I didn’t see much of him, of course, after he went off to prep school, but he came home occasionally, for a few Christmases, and when he was home, he was charming. So polite, so bright, and so much better looking than his father. He’s more like
Dorothy’s
father, if truth be told, which is lovely, don’t you think? Walter has his grandfather’s looks as well as his name, and he’ll have his grandfather’s business one day, too, which is so lovely for him. Shall I fetch more biscuits?”