Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin

by Nancy Atherton

  Mr. Moss turned his mild gaze on me. “My client was willing to take the risk. She saw in you a kindred spirit, Ms. Shepherd. She learned from her nurse that you were a wealthy woman without airs and graces. She learned from her conversations with you that you were, among many other things, outgoing, sentimental, stubborn, intelligent, and fond of puzzles. You also seemed to be quite fond of her.”

  “I was,” I said, and felt a sentimental lump rise in my throat.

  “My client was an excellent judge of character, Ms. Shepherd. She knew you wouldn’t fail her.” He paused to sip his tea, then resumed. “I assembled the album, under my client’s direction, from photographs she had deposited with my firm. She wrote the captions the day before she died, and I placed the album in the cylinder desk that evening. As you will recall, we both encouraged you to examine the desk.”

  “Miss Beacham told me in her letter to take it home with me,” I acknowledged. “If I hadn’t found the hidden compartment, my sons would have. They like to take things apart.”

  Mr. Moss’s smile flickered briefly and was gone. “When you questioned me about Miss Beacham’s brother,” he continued, “I knew that the first part of my client’s plan had succeeded.”

  “Do you know how crazy you made me?” I demanded. “You told me that Kenneth had disappeared!”

  “And so he had, to all intents and purposes,” Mr. Moss interjected.

  “But you acted as though you didn’t care,” I said. “You called it a pretty conundrum and hung up. I thought you were a no-good shyster planning to rip off Miss Beacham.”

  “The effect was calculated,” Mr. Moss confessed. “I hoped your frustration with me and your desire to protect my client would motivate you to seek Kenneth and, eventually, to find him. And here you are.” He looked from face to face around the table. “Here we all are.”

  Gabriel leaned forward to refill his glass from the half-empty bottle on the table, then sat back and eyed Mr. Moss thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” he said. “Here we all are, including you, Mr. Moss. How did you know where to find us?”

  “Sir Percy Pelham is a client,” Mr. Moss replied. “He has a habit of ringing me before he flies anywhere, to make sure his will is up to date. He rang me last night and in the course of the conversation mentioned that Ms. Shepherd would be accompanying him to Newcastle. My flight landed an hour after yours this morning, and a few simple inquiries led me to the friendly, talkative automobile rental agent who’d served you.”

  I nodded my appreciation, but Gabriel remained unsatisfied.

  “You’ve answered one question,” said Gabriel, “but here’s another: How did you gain admittance to Fairhaven? Dorothy must have put a watch on the guest list. How did you get past her dragons?”

  “I golf,” said Mr. Moss. “My club has a reciprocal membership agreement with Fairhaven. If I’d known that Mr. Fletcher-Beauchamps was a member, I would have come here sooner. No woman can interfere with a gentleman’s right to golf.” He turned his head to gaze at the rain-streaked windows. “Alas, the inclement weather will keep me off the links today.”

  Gabriel lifted his glass in a silent toast to Mr. Moss, who responded with a half bow, first to Gabriel, then to me.

  “Please,” he said, “allow me to thank you sincerely, Ms. Shepherd and Mr. Ashcroft, for your invaluable assistance in this matter. My firm is deeply indebted to you.”

  Gabriel gave a sudden laugh. “Consider the debt paid. I thought you’d come to repossess Miss Beacham’s furniture.”

  “Nothing could be further from my mind,” Mr. Moss assured him. “Miss Beacham once told me that she’d observed your former wife removing furnishings from your flat. Since she never observed you replacing them, she feared that your flat had become rather barren. I believe she would be pleased to know that her possessions are now yours.”

  “She didn’t miss much, did she,” said Gabriel with a wry smile.

  “She took an interest in people,” said Mr. Moss.

  Kenneth’s head swung from side to side as he tried to follow the exchange, and his forehead wrinkled as he addressed Gabriel. “Am I to understand that you’ve furnished your flat with my sister’s antiques?”

  “Your sister gave them to me,” I explained, “and I gave them to Gabriel.”

  Kenneth frowned angrily and began to bluster. “Look here, Moss, you had no right to—”

  “Your sister gave me the right,” Mr. Moss interrupted, unperturbed. “I have, of course, brought a copy of my client’s will for you to examine, but I can tell you now that you are not mentioned in it.”

  “Not mentioned?” said Kenneth. “Lizzie left me nothing?”

  “Not a tuppence,” said Mr. Moss. “My client had full confidence in your ability to support yourself and your family, and elected therefore to distribute her wealth among those whose need was greater.”

  “B-but she must have been worth several hundred thousand pounds,” Kenneth protested.

  “Mr. Fletcher-Beauchamps . . .” Mr. Moss’s mild expression hardened and his voice became stern. “Please forgive me for saying so, but you do not have, nor have you ever had a clear idea of your sister’s worth.” He rose, briefcase in hand. “If you will excuse me, I’m feeling rather peckish. I believe they serve a quite acceptable salmon in the dining room.” He looked from me to Gabriel, pointedly ignoring Kenneth. “Would you care to join me?”

  “You two go ahead,” I said. “I’d like a moment with Kenneth.”

  When Mr. Moss and Gabriel had exited the lounge, Kenneth drained his glass, refilled it, and regarded me with unconcealed hostility.

  “I suppose Lizzie left her money to you, as well as her antiques,” he said. “The angel at her bedside—or should I say vulture?”

  “I don’t need her money,” I told him. “If she’d left it to me, I would have given it away.”

  “You are like her,” he sneered.

  “I wish it were true.” I unzipped the canvas satchel and took from it the photo album Mr. Moss had planted in Miss Beacham’s desk. “It’s not quite accurate to say that your sister left you nothing, Kenneth. When you look at the photographs in this book, you’ll see that she left you a lifetime’s supply of love.”

  I placed the album on the table, but Kenneth refused to pick it up.

  “There’s one more thing.” I reached into the satchel and pulled Hamish into the light. “I’d like to keep him, but he wants to be with you.”

  Kenneth caught his breath. He fixed his gaze on the little hedgehog. His hand seemed to move in slow motion as he reached across the table to take Hamish from me.

  I left the table in silence, but couldn’t resist pausing at the door for a last look back. Kenneth sat with his head bowed and Hamish in the crook of his arm, paging slowly, very slowly, through the album. As I turned to leave, I could have sworn that I saw a contented gleam in the hedgehog’s brown button eyes.

  Gabriel and I had several hours to kill after lunch. Neither one of us was in the mood for sightseeing, so we ended up in a café at the airport, rehashing the events of the past week and a half. He promised to stop at the cottage when he brought Chloe to Anscombe Manor for her riding lessons, and I promised—though he claimed it was a threat—to take him with me to St. Benedict’s one day soon.

  The flight to Oxford was blissfully uneventful. After we’d disembarked, Percy offered to drive Gabriel home in his Aston Martin DB6, and Gabriel jumped at the chance—the sporty Aston Martin had considerably more cachet than a canary-yellow Range Rover equipped with children’s safety seats. I didn’t have the heart to tell Gabriel that Percy behind the steering wheel was a lot more adventurous than Percy in the cockpit, but I couldn’t suppress a wicked chuckle as I drove home from the airport.

  It was nearly nine o’clock by the time I walked into the cottage. Will, Rob, and Stanley were in bed and asleep, Annelise was reading in the living room, and Bill was at the office, burning the midnight oil. I chatted briefly with Annelise and looked
in on the boys—as well as Stanley—before retiring to the study.

  Reginald seemed happy to have his niche all to himself again, and though I missed Hamish, I had no second thoughts about my decision to return him to his rightful owner. Kenneth’s sadly twisted heart needed all the help it could get.

  It took a long time to explain everything to Dimity, to weave together Emma’s brainstorm, Stanley’s adoption, Gabriel’s dinner party, Kenneth’s rationalizations, Dorothy’s schemes, and Mr. Moss’s revelations into one coherent story.

  Dimity listened without comment—she’d had years of practice following the convoluted tracks along which my train of thought ran—until I fell silent at last and sat back in the tall leather armchair, gazing down at the journal.

  You’ve done well, Lori.

  “Have I?” I said. “Finding Kenneth seems like a big, fat waste of time to me, now that I’ve met him. He’s a worthless, weakkneed, squirming little worm, Dimity. He didn’t deserve to have a sister like Miss Beacham.”

  Perhaps not, but she loved him nonetheless. You found Kenneth for her sake, not his. And in that, you did well.

  “How could she love him? He chose Dorothy over her, and Dorothy is . . .” I struggled to select one foul adjective from the dozens that sprang to mind, and finally settled for: “She’s everything I never want to be. She’s Miss Beacham’s evil twin, yet Kenneth married her and deserted his sister. How could Miss Beacham go on loving him after that?”

  He was her baby brother, and she adored him.

  “He was her baby brother, and he dumped her,” I retorted. “When I think of the pictures in the photograph album, I could cry, Dimity. One by one, Miss Beacham’s family just disappears. First her father, then her mother, then Kenneth, until Miss Beacham’s left alone on Brighton Pier.”

  She may have been alone, but she wasn’t lonely. Kenneth was important to her, yes, but he wasn’t essential to her happiness. When she lost her own family, she created another, out of the friends and neighbors who shared her world. There’s the family you’re born to, and the family you choose. From what you’ve told me, Miss Beacham chose well.

  I thought back to the tears that had fallen when the news of Miss Beacham’s death had traveled down Travertine Road, and knew that Dimity was right. Miss Beacham’s heart had been big enough to include everyone, even a brother who’d scorned and rejected her.

  “It’s the strangest thing, Dimity,” I mused aloud. “I’ve been told twice today that I’m like Miss Beacham. Do you think I stand a chance of measuring up to her? If I talk less and listen more and stop being impatient and irritable and moody?” I gazed anxiously at the journal. “Do you think I stand a chance?”

  If you did all of those things, my dear Lori, you’d be unrecognizable. But yes, I can say without hesitation that you most definitely stand a chance.

  Epilogue

  The memorial service took place on a beautiful morning in April. “Closed” signs hung in the windows of many shops and businesses along Travertine Road, and Father Musgrove looked out over a church awash with people as well as flowers.

  The Gateway to India staff took up one pew, and Mr. Mehta’s extended family took up another. Mr. Mehta’s brother walked down the center aisle on his new leg without a trace of a limp, and Mrs. Mehta, a plump woman in a gorgeous purple sari, spent fully half of the service shooting speculative glances at Joanna Quinn.

  Joanna and Gabriel sat close enough to me and Bill for me to note the absence of a wedding ring on Joanna’s left hand. They sat close enough to each other to explain the engagement ring that had taken its place.

  Will, Rob, and Chloe had half of our pew to themselves. They needed the room, since they spent the entire service sprawled on their tummies, munching raisin bread and drawing portraits of Thunder, Storm, and dear old Toby.

  Ms. Carrington-Smith sat beside Tina Formby, who wore an extraordinary black dress with see-through sleeves and leather inserts, presumably of her own design. Mr. and Mrs. Formby, Mr. Blascoe, Mr. Jensen, Mrs. Chalmers, and Mrs. Chalmers’s father—whose pink face glowed with good health—filled the rest of the pew.

  Nurse Willoughby was there, too, seated toward the rear of the church, with Julian Bright, Blinker, Big Al, and Limping Leslie. Mr. Barlow had driven in from Finch to pay his respects, and Mr. Moss had abandoned Mr. Pratchett to pay his. I thought I recognized the waiter Gabriel and I had frightened when we’d dined with Joanna at the Italian restaurant, as well as the maitre d’.

  Most of the pews were occupied by men and women I’d never seen before, but I could tell by their solemn expressions that each had known and cherished the woman whose urn was now buried beneath a yew tree in St. Paul’s churchyard, not far from the bustling traffic on Travertine Road.

  The Fletcher-Beauchampses did not attend.

  There’s the family you’re born to, and the family you choose, I thought as I surveyed the congregation. Miss Beacham’s chosen family had loved her well.

  While everyone else took advantage of the general invitation issued by Mr. Mehta to enjoy a meal at his restaurant after the service, I slipped away on my own for a few minutes, to revisit Miss Beacham’s building one last time.

  I’d seldom been more wrong about a place. I’d seen it as the essence of institutional bleakness, but within it Miss Beacham had created a haven of tranquil beauty. From its balcony she’d looked down on Travertine Road and seen a village filled with neighbors whose joys and sorrows mattered to her. I hoped her friends would continue what she’d started. It seemed to me that if they each held out a helping hand when a helping hand was needed, they’d form an unbreakable chain of caring that would one day encircle the world.

  The auction, even without the furniture, raised an astonishing sum, which was disbursed among a number of charitable organizations. Gabriel’s extraordinarily truthful portraits of St. Benedict’s colorful crew will be featured in a special exhibition at a London gallery as soon as he and Joanna return from their honeymoon in August. The cylinder desk now sits in the master bedroom at the cottage, where it’s more or less safe from the children, and I got a call from Nurse Willoughby this morning.

  I’m going back to the Radcliffe tomorrow.

  Miss Beacham’s Raisin Bread

  11⁄2 cups seedless raisins

  11⁄2 cups water

  1 egg, slightly beaten

  1 cup brown sugar

  2 tablespoons vegetable oil

  1 tablespoon grated orange peel

  21⁄2 cups flour

  1 teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda

  Place raisins and water in a saucepan; bring to a boil. Cool to room temperature. In a separate bowl, mix the next four ingredients. Combine mixture with cooled raisins and raisin water. Sift together dry ingredients; add to mixture, beating well. Pour into greased bread pan. Bake about 60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in middle of loaf comes out just a bit moist.