Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin (3 page)

“Who’s been hurt?” I asked, dreading news of a second tragedy. “Is it serious?”

“Big Al Layton fell over in the street and split his head open on a cobblestone last night.” Nurse Willoughby managed a wry smile. “He was drunk as a lord at the time, but the stitches sobered him up. I imagine he’ll be back at St. Benedict’s by dinnertime. Would you like me to fetch Father Bright? He can be here in two ticks.”

I stared down at the floor. I knew that Julian would be comforting, that he’d say the right things and know when to say nothing, but at that moment, I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I just want to go home.”

I turned to look around the room once more, but saw no trace of my friend in it. It was as if Miss Beacham had been erased.

 
The gloomy March day suited my mood as I escaped Oxford and steered my canary-yellow Range Rover toward home. Bleak fields stretched to the horizon beneath lowering clouds. Rooks crowded the skeletal branches of leafless trees, and the east wind blew damp and chilly, without the faintest hint of spring to soften its sharp edges. Everything I saw seemed black or gray, as if clad in the monochrome of mourning.

I negotiated curves and roundabouts without thinking, passed through familiar towns without looking left or right. I felt as if a giant hand were pressing down on me, making it difficult to breathe. No patient on my visiting list had ever died before, and none had meant as much to me as Miss Beacham. I found it very hard to believe that she was gone.

When I reached Finch I was tempted to stop at Bill’s office and fling myself into his arms, but decided that the risk of being seen outweighed the reward of being comforted. My neighbors were, to put it kindly, extraordinarily observant. If I was spotted on the green sporting a morose expression, someone would surely wonder—aloud and often and to anyone who happened to be passing—what was wrong. Before sunset, rumors would start to fly and I’d start hearing from people eager to commiserate with me over my impending divorce or the scandal at Bill’s law firm or the twins’ wretched tonsillitis or some other calamity that existed only in the villagers’ fertile, gossip-loving imaginations. In order to avoid becoming grist for the rumor mill, therefore, I confined myself to casting a longing glance at the wisteria vine that twined over Bill’s office door before bumping over the humpbacked bridge and heading for home.

I considered dropping in on my best friend, Emma Harris, as I passed the drive leading to Anscombe Manor, the fourteenth-century manor house she called home, but I quickly dismissed the notion. Emma was an American who’d married an Englishman, but although she and I came from the same country, we didn’t always speak the same language. While I ran on emotions, Emma had a distressing tendency to rely on logic. If I told her that the death of a terminally ill woman had upset me, she’d almost certainly give me a puzzled look and explain gently that it wasn’t uncommon for terminally ill people to die. She’d mean well, but she wouldn’t provide the kind of consolation I needed.

Apart from that, Emma was on the verge of bringing a long-held dream to fruition. Saturday would mark the grand opening of the Anscombe Riding Center, a small riding academy Emma planned to run with the help of her friend and stable master, Kit Smith. Emma and Kit had put their hearts and souls into the project, and I didn’t want to dampen their enthusiasm with my gloom.

I knew who I wanted to talk to, and I knew exactly where to find her. When I reached the cottage I switched off the Range Rover’s engine and sat for a moment in the graveled drive. I rested my hands lightly on the steering wheel and let my gaze move slowly from the cottage’s golden stone walls to its lichen-dappled slate roof while I thought of the remarkable Englishwoman who’d lived there before me and who, in a sense, lived there still.

Dimity Westwood had been my late mother’s closest friend. The two had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War, and had maintained their friendship by writing hundreds of letters to each other long after the war had ended and my mother had been shipped back to the States.

Those letters became a refuge for my mother, a private place where she could go when the trivialities of everyday life grew too burdensome to bear. My mother kept her refuge a closely guarded secret. She never told me about the letters, and she introduced her dearest friend to me indirectly, as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of my favorite bedtime stories.

It wasn’t until many years later, when both my mother and Dimity were dead, that I learned the truth. I could scarcely avoid learning the truth then, because Dimity Westwood bequeathed to me the honey-colored cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious correspondence she’d shared with my mother, a comfortable fortune, and a curious, blue-leather-bound journal.

It was through the journal that I came to know Dimity Westwood—not because of what she’d written in it before her death, but because she continued to write in it postmortem. Don’t ask me how she managed the trick, because I haven’t the foggiest notion, but I think I know
why
she kept in touch.

The bond of love that connected her to my mother also connected her to me. The redoubtable Aunt Dimity would allow nothing, certainly nothing as paltry as death, to break that bond. If anyone could be overqualified to act as a grief counselor, I told myself, it would be Dimity.

The clammy wind snatched at my hair as I emerged from the Rover and trudged despondently up the flagstone path. I pulled the collar of my wool jacket close, opened the front door, and stood listening on the threshold. Will and Rob were in the kitchen with their live-in nanny—the saintly Annelise—and if their giggles were anything to go by, they were having a high old time “helping” her make something that smelled a lot like leek-and-potato soup.

I didn’t want to spoil their culinary fun with my long face, so I closed the front door quietly, hung my shoulder bag and jacket on the coatrack, and tiptoed stealthily down the hallway to the study, where I closed the door quietly behind me.

I switched on the lamps on the mantel shelf, deposited the horse portraits and the biography on the old oak desk beneath the ivy-covered windows, and knelt to put a match to the logs piled in the fireplace, hoping a fire would ward off the chill that had followed me home from the hospital. As the flames caught and crackled, I stood and smiled wanly at Reginald, the small, powder-pink flannel rabbit who sat in his own special niche among the bookshelves.

Reginald had been by my side from the moment I’d taken my first breath. I’d confided in him throughout my childhood and saw no reason to stop doing so just because some people believed—mistakenly, in my opinion—that I’d grown up.

“Hi, Reg,” I said, touching the faded grape-juice stain on his snout. “Hope your day’s been jollier than mine.”

I didn’t expect Reginald to respond, but I detected a muted gleam in his black button eyes that suggested a degree of understanding. I stroked his pink flannel ears, then reached for the blue journal and settled with it in one of the pair of high-backed leather armchairs that sat before the hearth. Heaving a dolorous sigh, I opened the journal and looked down at a blank page.

“Dimity?” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

I felt my throat constrict at the sight of Dimity’s handwriting, an old-fashioned copperplate learned in the village school at a time when motorcars were a rare and wondrous sight. Until that moment, I’d been too stunned for tears but now I felt them stinging my eyes.

I blinked rapidly and said, “It’s Miss Beacham. She died this morning.”

“I don’t know why I was so fond of her.” I sniffed. “It seems silly, doesn’t it? We spent only a few hours together, a few measly—”

“That’s what it was.” I nodded sadly. “An instant connection. There was something about her that reached out and grabbed me. She had a light in her eyes, Dimity, a brightness that drew me to her. She was smart and funny and she loved history and I can’t believe I’ll never see that brightness again.”

“She was fatally ill,” I conceded. “Lucinda Willoughby made it clear from the start that Miss Beacham’s chances of survival were nonexistent, but I guess I let myself forget how sick she was. She never complained, Dimity. She never talked about her illness. She never mentioned the hospital at all, so I . . . I guess I let myself forget why she was there.”

“Her mortality never crossed my mind,” I said dejectedly. “When I looked into her eyes, I didn’t see a dying woman. I saw
her.
”

“I hope you’re right,” I said. “I’d like to think that I helped her in some way. But I know so little about her. I want to know so much more, and now it’s too late.”

“No,” I said, feeling a stab of anger. “Matron was with her when she died. Darling Kenneth never bothered to show up, and the hospital staff can’t find him because they don’t have his current address. He doesn’t even know she’s dead.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “She listed him as her next of kin. She wouldn’t have put his name down if he was dead.”

“Then someone else should have been worried about her,” I insisted. “A friend, a neighbor . . . She was hospitalized for two weeks, Dimity, and I was her only visitor. It breaks my heart to think of her being so alone.”

“Some consolation.” I smiled mirthlessly. “The only person grieving for her is me, a total stranger.”

“Yes. I was.” I swallowed hard. “And I’ll miss her terribly.” The doorbell rang and I looked up from the blue journal. “I’d better go, Dimity. When Annelise answers the bell, she’ll see the Rover and wonder where I am.”

I watched as the graceful lines of royal-blue ink slowly faded from the page, then returned the journal to its place on the bookshelves, blotted my eyes on my sleeve, and trotted hastily up the hall to the front door.

Annelise was standing on the doorstep, chatting amiably with Terry Edmonds, the uniformed courier who hand-delivered legal documents to Bill’s office in Finch. Annelise raised an eyebrow when I appeared beside her, but said nothing.

Terry tipped his cap. “Special delivery for you, Lori,” he said, and proffered a computerized clipboard and a stylus. “Sign here and it’s all yours.”

“Mine?” I said, scribbling my signature. “Not Bill’s?”

“See for yourself.” Terry retrieved his clipboard, passed a slim cardboard parcel to me, and dashed down the flagstone path to his paneled van, calling over his shoulder, “Give my best to Bill and the twins!”

“Will do, Terry!” I waved as the courier spun out of the driveway, then turned to look toward the suspiciously silent kitchen. “Where are Rob and Will? They’re not attempting to make their own lunch again, are they?”

Annelise rolled her eyes. “After the fun they had with the jam sandwiches? Not likely. They’re playing with their trains in the solarium while the soup simmers.” She watched in silence as I ripped open the parcel, then said quietly, “Nurse Willoughby rang this morning. She told me about your friend at the Radcliffe. Do you want me to keep the boys out of your way for a little while?”

It was a considerate offer, but I didn’t respond. My attention was focused on the white envelope I’d removed from the slim cardboard box.

“Lori?” said Annelise. “What is it?”

“It’s a letter,” I replied dazedly. “A letter from Miss Beacham.”

Three

It wasn’t the first letter I’d received from a dead woman—my mother had left one for me to open after her funeral—but I hoped with all my heart it would be the last. Living with a pair of five-year-olds provided me with a perfectly adequate supply of chills and thrills. I didn’t need any more.

“Miss Beacham?” cried Annelise. “Isn’t she—”

“She’s the woman who died this morning,” I confirmed.

“My word,” Annelise murmured. “Talk about postcards from the edge. . . .” She put a hand on my arm. “You’ll want to read it straightaway, I expect. I’ll get the boys’ lunch and keep them out of your hair until you’re done.”

“Thanks,” I said absently. “I’ll be in the study.”

Reginald’s black button eyes flickered with interest when I returned to the study. The fire was still burning in the hearth and I’d left the mantel shelf lamps on, but I took Miss Beacham’s parcel to the oak desk and turned on the lamp there as well. I felt a serious need for illumination.