Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin

by Nancy Atherton

  “They’re ours, Mummy,” the boys chorused blissfully. “Kit says they’re ours.”

  “W-what?” I managed as the red haze of panic slowly receded from my vision.

  Kit climbed over the fence and approached me cautiously.

  “Now, Lori,” he said, “calm down. I’m sorry about the screams. The twins were a bit overexcited when they saw their new ponies.”

  “New ponies?” I said, baffled. “What new ponies? Bill and I didn’t buy ponies for the boys.”

  “No,” said Kit, “but Miss Beacham did.”

  Fifteen

  I gradually became aware of the tranquil scene that surrounded me: Gabriel standing with his back to a tree, his pencil moving swiftly over the sketchpad braced in the crook of his arm; Joanna and Annelise, leaning companionably on the fence; Chloe, helmeted and booted, feeding carrots to Toby; my sons gazing down on their hearts’ desires with the light of heaven in their eyes. My knees wobbled as the high-octane maternal adrenaline drained from my body, and I leaned limply against Kit.

  “Surprise!” he said.

  “Any more surprises like that and I’ll need a heart transplant,” I said weakly. “Does Bill know about the ponies?”

  “He will in a moment,” said Kit.

  I looked up and saw Bill walking toward the arena, with Emma on his arm.

  “It’s a conspiracy,” I growled. “You and Emma knew, and Derek must have known, too. How long have they been here?”

  “They arrived yesterday evening,” said Kit. “It’s too soon to let the boys ride them—they’ll need a few days to settle in—but Miss Beacham wanted Will and Rob to meet their new mounts today, as part of the celebration.”

  We crossed to the gate, where Bill and Emma now stood. Bill appeared to be as dumbfounded as I was.

  “Did you tell Miss Beacham that the twins wanted ponies?” he asked, looking at me.

  “I must have,” I said with a helpless shrug. “I must have mentioned the ARC’s grand opening, too.”

  “Did you tell Miss Beacham that I’d like a yacht?” Bill asked hopefully.

  “And that I’d like a new greenhouse?” Emma added.

  “And that I could do with a new car?” Annelise chimed in.

  “No,” I said shortly, “I don’t believe I did.”

  “What a shame,” said Bill.

  Emma and Annelise snickered.

  “We’ve named them, Mummy,” said Will. “Mine is Thunder—”

  “—and mine is Storm,” said Rob.

  “Thunderstorm!” they chorused and laughed like drunken sailors at their own scintillating wit.

  “Is it time for my pony ride?” Chloe asked. She’d run out of carrots.

  “It is, Miss Chloe.” Kit opened the gate. “We’ll walk a little ways with Toby and then we’ll get started.”

  Joanna climbed the wooden fence and sat on the top rail, to have a better view of her daughter’s crowning moment, but Gabriel stayed where he was, absorbed in his drawing, and Annelise remained leaning on the fence. While Kit lifted Chloe into the saddle, Bill and I took Emma aside and quizzed her about Miss Beacham’s unexpected gifts.

  “It’s not that we’re not pleased,” Bill assured her. “We may not look it, but we’re thrilled. Still, it has come as a bit of a shock.”

  “I knew when I heard from Miss Beacham’s solicitor that you wouldn’t mind,” said Emma. “After all, you’ve been meaning to buy ponies for the boys forever. They’re a sound pair, from a reputable dealer, and Miss Beacham left enough money to cover their boarding fees for six months. You two are, in fact, the ARC’s first paying customers.”

  “It’s vintage Miss Beacham,” I said. “In one fell swoop, she’s made all of us happy—Will and Rob, me and Bill, and you and Kit.”

  “I know something else that will make you happy,” said Emma. “I did the Internet search on Kenneth Beacham. I’ll give the results to you when things quiet down.”

  She left to get back to work, and I flung my arms around Bill’s neck.

  “At last!” I crowed triumphantly. “By the end of the day, I’ll know everything there is to know about Kenneth Beacham!”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Bill.

  A soft gasp from the arena caught our attention. Gabriel had finished his sketch and presented the pad to Joanna for inspection. She sat atop the wooden fence, staring at the drawing, while Gabriel gazed anxiously up at her.

  “It’s just a rough study,” he said diffidently. “A souvenir of the day.”

  “It’s . . . it’s beautiful.” Joanna turned her head to look down at him.

  Gabriel’s chest expanded. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “I love it,” said Joanna. She gazed deep into his eyes a while longer, then seemed to recall that she and Gabriel weren’t alone. She held the pad out toward Bill and me and invited us and Annelise to examine the pencil-drawn masterpiece.

  Gabriel had found a surefire way to win Joanna’s heart. Instead of producing a dreamy drawing of his potential lady love, he’d done an enchanting portrait of her daughter. There was Chloe—stretch pants, sweatshirt, boots, helmet, and all—and there was Toby, patiently taking a carrot from her hand. The sketch captured perfectly the little girl’s quivering intensity. For her, at that moment, no one else existed but the sweet-natured old pony.

  “Beautiful,” I murmured.

  “Very nice,” said Bill.

  “It’s only a rough drawing,” Gabriel protested.

  “It’s perfect,” said Joanna and, leaning down, she kissed him on the cheek.

  I promptly hooked elbows with Bill and Annelise and quietly hustled them away from the arena.

  “Where are we going?” asked Bill. “What about the boys?”

  “Shut up and keep walking,” I muttered. “Kit will look after the boys.”

  I was fairly sure that Kit would have to look after all three children for a while. Joanna and Gabriel had vanished into a world of their own.

  The villagers departed, with words of congratulations and a few blisters, Julian Bright drove back to St. Benedict’s, and Annelise took the twins home, after somehow convincing them that Thunder and Storm would sleep more soundly if they didn’t have two little boys staring fixedly at them all night. Joanna and Gabriel left, too, after Gabriel confirmed our plan to interview Kenneth Beacham’s former neighbors on Monday morning. Chloe, tuckered out by the day’s spectacular events, was asleep in her car seat before we’d finished saying good-bye.

  When the multitudes had finally dispersed, the caterers—under top-secret instructions from Derek—reset the tables in the marquee for a splendid candlelit dinner. Bill and I sat down with Emma, Derek, Kit, and a few other close friends to a meal that would have done Buckingham Palace proud. Toast followed toast and the night air rang with so many rousing cheers that Thunder and Storm must have thought they’d come to live at a racetrack.

  The party broke up at ten, when Derek declared that he could no longer keep his eyes open and went up to bed. Emma, too, should have been exhausted, but the unanticipated and wholly joyful banquet had given her a second wind. She was happy to usher Bill and me into her ground-floor office to give us the results of her Internet search. They were somewhat disappointing.

  Emma had found less than a page of links related to Kenneth Trent Beacham. His birth announcement, which was posted on-line, indicated that he’d been named after his father; this was followed immediately by links to announcements of his father’s death in 1980 and his mother’s in 1986. Then came the announcement of his marriage to Dorothy Susan Fletcher, in St. Mary of the Fields Church, Cripplegate, on May 6, 1986.

  There was no mention of his educational background. If he’d gone to university or taken a degree, he’d done so without notifying the media, and there was nothing to indicate what career path he’d taken. Another posting announced the birth of his and Dorothy’s only child, Walter James, at a private nursing home in London, on February 17, 1987. And that was it.
<
br />   “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. Je
nsen 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?”