Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin

by Nancy Atherton

  “Sit down?” I exclaimed. “I can’t sit on any of these chairs. They’re not meant for sitting. Remember that pretty little desk Miss Beacham mentioned? She must have been delirious when she suggested that I bring it home with me. I could never bring it to the cottage, not unless we built a twin-proof fence around it. It’s a Sheraton Revival cylinder desk! It should be in a museum!”

  “Lori, my darling,” Bill said calmly, “let’s take it from the top, shall we? Did you find Miss Beacham’s apartment?”

  “Of course I found Miss Beacham’s apartment!” I cried. “I’m standing in her living room! And if you ask me, she kept the outside corridor bare on purpose, just so people’s eyes would bug out when they saw what was inside.”

  “What is inside?” Bill asked.

  “Wonderful things,” I breathed, with deep fellow-feeling for the man who’d first peered into King Tut’s tomb. “Rosewood and satinwood and mahogany and brocade and needlepoint and miniatures and snuffboxes—oh, Bill, the snuffboxes alone would knock your socks off. The auction’ll have to be held by Sotheby’s. No one else is equipped to deal with things like this. They’ll need professors and historians and antiquarians and . . . and experts.”

  “So the flat’s come as a bit of a surprise,” Bill understated.

  “Remember the first time I opened Aunt Dimity’s journal?” I asked. “It’s like that.”

  “Wow,” said Bill, impressed.

  “‘Wow’ doesn’t even come close,” I said, and gasped as a horrible thought flittered into my mind. “Ali Baba,” I said in a broken whisper. “Bill! Miss Beacham must have been a thief!”

  “Lori?” Bill said, after a pause. “Have you bumped your head recently?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my head,” I snapped, affronted. “I’m thinking with absolute clarity and I’m telling you that there’s no way on earth a legal secretary could afford to buy stuff like this. She must have embezzled funds from her employers. You know lots of lawyers in London, Bill. Would you please make some calls and find out if any have gone bankrupt lately?”

  “Before I start dialing,” Bill said, “why don’t we consider a few more reasonable explanations? Such as . . . maybe Miss Beacham had an eye for bargains.”

  “You don’t pick up Queen Anne walnut-framed settees at garage sales,” I retorted. “And if you know of a thrift store that carries early Chinese porcelain, lead me to it.”

  “Maybe she inherited it all from a rich aunt,” Bill suggested. “It’s the sort of thing that could happen to anyone. As a matter of fact, I know a woman who inherited a honey-colored cottage full of lovely things from—”

  “Ha-ha, very funny.” I smiled ruefully and scuffed the toe of my boot against the Persian carpet. Bill’s gentle teasing was having its intended effect—my sense of perspective was beginning to reassert itself. “I take your point, and I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. Miss Beacham must have had a dear old, filthy rich aunt who collected antiques and left them to her favorite niece. Now that I think of it, it’s the only rational explanation. The Miss Beacham I knew couldn’t have been a crook.”

  “Excuse me, but I’m the one who cleared the good woman’s name,” Bill pointed out. “You just grabbed hold of my coattails.”

  “Where would I be without your coattails?” I crooned. “They always bring me back down to earth. Thanks, Bill. I think I can manage the rest of the apartment now.”

  “You’re sure your head won’t explode?” Bill said.

  “I may experience a mild pop or two,” I conceded, “but no major explosions. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, though. I haven’t even begun to look at the books and there must be hundreds of them.”

  “You don’t have to look at all of them today,” said Bill. “But if you end up staying late, I want you to get a room at the Randolph and spend the night in town. You can come home tomorrow.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what the weather’s like in Oxford,” he said, “but it’s getting foggy here and I don’t want you driving at night on slick roads in the fog.”

  “You’re adorable when you’re being overprotective,” I told him, smiling fondly.

  “And you’re adorable when you’re hyperventilating,” Bill returned, “but I’d rather you didn’t do it behind the wheel. And don’t get so carried away that you forget to eat,” he went on. “I know what you’re like when you’re book-looking.”

  “I’ll grab a bite at one of the cafés around the corner,” I promised. “Hug the boys for me when you see them.”

  “I’ve seen them already,” Bill said. “Mr. Barlow brought them by on his way to Anscombe Manor to mend a broken hinge on one of Emma’s stable doors. Power tools and horses—Will and Rob must be in seventh heaven.”

  “Why didn’t Emma mend the hinge herself?” I asked. “She knows how to use power tools.”

  “Too much to do,” said Bill. “Only four days left until the grand opening of the Anscombe Riding Center.”

  “If you ask me, she’s panicking,” I commented.

  “Not everyone can be as calm and collected as you, my darling,” Bill said. “And now I must get back to work.”

  “Me, too,” I said, grinning. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  I returned the cell phone to my shoulder bag, took a deep breath, raised the lid of the cylinder desk, and placed the bag gingerly on the green leather writing pad. When the desk showed no sign of collapsing, I allowed myself to exhale.

  Calmer now, I began to notice things I’d been too dazzled to notice before. I heard the muted sounds of traffic on Travertine Road, the blare of a car horn, the patter of rain against the windowpanes. I detected a slight staleness in the air as well, the musty smell of a room left closed for too long.

  I stepped toward the balcony, moved the exquisite bifold screen to one side, opened the glass door, and peered upward. The sullen sky showed no sign of cheering up, but the clouds had stopped spitting, for the moment, so I stepped outside, leaving the door open behind me.

  The damp, chilly air was a welcome change from the apartment’s stale atmosphere, and the view from the balcony was surprisingly panoramic. Although Miss Beacham’s building was only four stories tall, it seemed to tower over its neighbors. If thin veils of mist hadn’t blurred the horizon, I might have seen the university’s dreaming spires, away to the southeast. As it was, I could see a church steeple a block away and I had a bird’s-eye view of the bustling activity taking place on Travertine Road—a woman emerging from a dress shop, carrying a bright pink shopping bag; a white-aproned waiter sneaking a smoke outside an Indian restaurant; a man lugging a sack of birdseed from a pet store; and traffic—lots of traffic—zooming along at its usual breakneck pace.

  “Who needs television when you’ve got life to watch?” I murmured. I observed the busy scene until the dank breeze drove me back inside to take another look at the front room. It seemed like a still life, when set against the animated backdrop of Travertine Road.

  It was nothing like my own living room. As Bill had pointed out, I’d inherited many lovely things from Aunt Dimity, but the cottage had long since ceased to be hers. Over the years, my family and I had made our own marks on it—literally, in the twins’ case. It reflected our passions, our activities, our involvement with each other and with the world beyond its stone walls. The living room’s tables were crammed with framed photographs of family and friends; the window seat was home to an ark’s worth of stuffed animals; and the mantel shelf served as a notice board where Bill and I taped scribbled reminders of everything from bake sales to dental appointments.

  There was no denying the beauty or value of the objects in Miss Beacham’s front room, yet something was missing. Where were the photographs of her brother, her parents, her friends? Where were the cheap souvenirs toted home from seaside holidays? Where were the notepads scrawled with phone numbers or grocery lists? Where was the inevitable clutter of everyday life?

 
I looked through the cylinder desk’s myriad drawers and pigeonholes, but they were empty, and the corner cupboard held nothing but some pads of paper and a pewter tankard filled with pencils. A quick scan of the books in the mahogany bookcases confirmed Miss Beacham’s interest in history, but they were too neat, too regimented, as if they’d been arranged for display.

  “Maybe she stashed her clutter in a back room,” I said to my reflection in the gilt-framed mirror, and snapped my fingers as a solution presented itself. “An office, I’ll bet she had a home office.”

  After all, I reasoned as I made for the narrow hallway, Miss Beacham had worked in a law office for nearly thirty years, and old habits die hard. The front room would have been her reception room, as formal and impressive as any law firm’s, but her office would hold items from her everyday life. I was sure I’d find traces of her personality in one of the rooms I hadn’t yet explored.

  The first room on the left was a small but beautifully furnished guest bedroom, with a walnut daybed and wardrobe, a Queen Anne chest of drawers, and a skirted easy chair beside a reading lamp. The daybed had been made up, ready for use, but the chest of drawers and wardrobe were empty. I wondered if the bed had ever been slept in, or if the room had been set aside in anticipation of visitors who’d never arrived.

  I nodded with satisfaction when the next room proved to be a neatly arranged home office. A banker’s desk paired with a wide-bottomed wooden swivel chair sat against one wall; a dark mahogany cupboard and a black, four-drawer file cabinet sat opposite. The furnishings were heavy and handsome—businesslike rather than charming.

  Even here, however, there was a disappointing absence of clutter. The desk’s surface was as empty as its drawers, and there were no file folders in the black cabinet. The cupboard, too, was empty. The office could have been anyone’s.

  A wastepaper basket stood beside the desk, but there was nothing in it. Where were her bills? I wondered, recalling the trash-filled wastebasket in the lobby. Why weren’t the file drawers filled with bank statements, tax forms, correspondence? I had no intention of reading my late friend’s papers, but I wanted to know what had happened to them.

  Perplexed, I moved across the hall into a dining room that was as dramatic and as formally appointed as the front room, with forest-green walls, a twinkling chandelier, a Hepplewhite dining set, a collection of small, dim still lifes in oil, and a mahogany breakfront displaying a magnificent Sevres dinner service for twelve. I wasn’t immune to the room’s elegance, but I felt a touch of exasperation when I found nothing but silverware in the breakfront’s drawers, and large serving bowls and platters in its lower compartments. Where was her stuff? I wondered.

  The bathroom came next. Its old-fashioned claw-foot tub and pedestal sink had, I was certain, replaced the modern fittings originally installed in the apartment, as had the teak-framed, mirrored door that enclosed the modern, glass-shelved medicine cabinet.

  A translucent bar of inexpensive face soap rested in the oval soap dish on the sink, and the medicine cabinet held the kind of toiletries used by a woman more concerned with cleanliness than vanity. The generic cotton swabs and the bargain-priced jar of cold cream brought to mind the serviceable coats and galoshes in the foyer’s closet, and told me more about Miss Beacham than anything else I’d seen.

  Miss Beacham might have lived in private splendor, but the face she’d presented to the outside world had been a humble one. No one passing her on the street would have guessed that the plain woman in the beige raincoat and black rubber boots was a connoisseur of fine furnishings, and only a mind reader could have known that a woman who evidently spent little on herself would one day give away thousands of pounds.

  Miss Beacham, it seemed, had lived a double life. I couldn’t help wondering why.

  Hungry for clues, I opened a connecting door and discovered a walk-in linen closet filled with the faint scent of lavender. The sweet floral fragrance triggered a mundane but bothersome query in my mind.

  Had Miss Beacham emptied her refrigerator before her final trip to the hospital?

  I stepped into the hallway and sniffed the air experimentally, but detected only the mingled scents of floor polish and dust. If anything in the kitchen had gone bad, the stench hadn’t yet reached the hall.

  “Can’t hurt to check,” I muttered, and trotted to the rear of the apartment, where I found the kitchen.

  It would have been a bright and cheerful room—a perfect place for baking raisin bread, I noted wistfully—if the day had been bright and cheerful. A well-scrubbed pine table sat opposite the double sink, the walls were pale yellow, the countertops creamy white, the floor was covered with terra-cotta tiles, and the modern cabinets were finished in golden oak. A yellow corkboard dotted with colorful pushpins had been affixed to a door that led, presumably, to a pantry or a storage cupboard, and the large window over the sink would have admitted plenty of sunshine, had there been any to admit.

  Unfortunately, the gray day had given way to an even grayer twilight. I glanced at my watch and saw, to my amazement, that it was three o’clock—well past my usual lunch hour. My promise to Bill combined with rising protests from a pathetically hollow stomach clinched my decision to give the refrigerator a quick inspection and leave the cabinets and the pantry until after I’d had a bite to eat.

  It was a sensible plan and I would have followed through on it if a bloodcurdling wail hadn’t stopped me in my tracks. Startled, I yelped in alarm, looked wildly around the room, and froze, petrified by the sight of two demonic yellow eyes peering at me through the kitchen window.

  Six

  The yellow eyes blinked and a sinuous form took shape in the gloom as the black cat stretched its mouth wide to emit another chilling yowl.

  “You stupid creature,” I fumed, clapping a hand over my galloping heart. “You scared the spit out of me. Shoo. Go away. You don’t live here.”

  The cat bumped its head against the windowpane, and it suddenly occurred to me that the foolish animal was sitting on a rain-slicked windowsill four stories above the ground.

  “How on earth did you get up here?” I demanded.

  The cat tapped the window with its claws, then reared up on its hind legs and pressed its front paws against the slippery pane.

  “Are you crazy?” I cried, rushing to the sink. “Sit still or you’ll break your neck!”

  The cat began to prowl back and forth along the sill, flicking its long black tail and yowling.

  I gripped the sink and watched in consternation, terrified that the stupid beast would miss its footing and plunge headlong to the parking space reserved for Miss Beacham’s nonexistent car. I told myself resolutely that I couldn’t let a strange animal into an apartment that didn’t belong to me, especially a stray cat that would no doubt sharpen its claws on Miss Beacham’s irreplaceable upholstery and distribute hair balls liberally across the priceless Persian rugs.

  But I couldn’t let it fall, could I?

  A dozen stoplights flashed crimson in my brain but I ignored each and every one of them as I darted over to close the kitchen door and raced back to open the window. The cat slipped inside, shook droplets from its fur, and sat on the counter beside the sink, regarding me expectantly.

  He was a neutered male and he seemed to be well cared for. He had no visible scars or injuries and he wasn’t alarmingly thin. He was, in my opinion, quite handsome. His wide-set eyes were as yellow as dandelions, his whiskers were wonderfully long, and his black coat gleamed like satin. He appeared to be a well-fed, healthy house pet whose curiosity had led him into danger.

  “You know what killed the cat, don’t you?” I said darkly. “If I wasn’t such a softy, you’d be down to eight lives by now. Cats don’t always land on their feet. I suppose you expect me to go door to door, searching for your owner?”

  The cat gazed pointedly at the cabinet above his head, stood on his hind legs, and patted the door with one damp paw, mewing plaintively.

  “Filled with m
ice, is it?” I shook my head, opened the cabinet door, and let out a soft cry of surprise.

  The cabinet was filled with cans of cat food—expensive, gourmet cat food. Two blue willow-patterned china bowls sat toward the front of the bottom shelf. Between them lay a silver teaspoon. Its handle took the form of an elongated cat.

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  I continued to stare at the cat food while the light of understanding slowly dawned. Miss Beacham had told me that she’d never owned a cat, but that didn’t mean she’d never loved one. The bowls, the spoon, and the food supply bore mute witness to her fondness for the creatures. Did she feed every stray that showed up on her windowsill, I asked myself, or was the black cat a special friend?

  “Hamish?” I said, reaching out to the cat. “Are you Hamish?”

  The cat swatted my proffered hand peremptorily and let out another nerve-shattering yowl.

  “Sorry,” I said, withdrawing hastily. “Dinner first, introductions later.”

  I filled one bowl with water, emptied a can of cat food into the other, and placed both on the floor. Hamish leapt down from the counter and began eating as if he’d never been fed. While he demolished his dinner, I rinsed the empty can and the cat-shaped spoon, set them on the draining board to dry, and boosted myself up on the sink to take a look outside.

  The bare branches of a copper beech beckoned to me from the gathering gloom. The closest were no more than three feet away. Any cat worth his salt could use the tree as a handy stepladder and—with a carefully judged leap—gain access to Miss Beacham’s windowsill.

  “So you’re not just a pretty face.” I slid down from the sink and closed the window. “You’re a clever climber, too. Tell me, did Miss Beacham provide for your every need?”

  I surveyed the room attentively and noticed for the first time that a cat flap had been set into the door sporting the bright yellow corkboard. When I crossed to investigate, I found a utility room with a washer and dryer as well as shelves stocked with folded grocery bags, dust cloths, buckets, and miscellaneous cleaning supplies. I was completely unsurprised to discover a sack of kitty litter beside a plastic litter box on the floor.