Well Bred and Dead

by Catherine O'Connell

  “Well, first off, a map of the town would be helpful.”

  He opened a drawer and procured a map, turning it over to me with a cheery, “Here we go now.”

  “Thank you.” I perused the map. In a town so small, it might not be unreasonable to expect that everyone knew everyone else. I took out my copy of the British Ethan Campbell’s birth certificate and handed it to the ticket agent. “Is that name familiar to you by any chance?”

  He pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “There are a few Campbells in this town, but no Ethan that I know of.”

  I guess one could hardly expect success on the first try. In fact, I would have been astonished if the first person I spoke to knew of this Ethan Campbell—though it would have been a nice start. I pointed out the address on the document. “Could you tell me where this is?”

  “Certainly, mum,” he said, obviously happy to be of help again. He circled an area on the far side of the town. “You should find it some-wheres in here.”

  I thanked him and put the birth certificate back in my purse.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind being party to this adventure? It could turn out to be nothing more than a wild goose chase,” I asked Terrance as we walked back to the car. He assured me that he found playing detective an amusing distraction from the demands of his usual world.

  We drove two winding miles across town to the area the clerk had circled on the map and easily found the row house that corresponded to the address. It was an ancient brown brick so covered with ivy that the front window was nearly obscured. We parked directly in front of the house and went to the door where I had to push a green-leaved tendril aside in order to ring the bell. As we waited for some response, I thought about the best I could expect to find. If the parents of the Ethan Campbell on the birth certificate were still alive they would be quite elderly. If they were deceased, maybe Mr. Campbell himself lived here. Or a sibling. Nearly sixty years had passed since baby Ethan had crossed this threshold. Did it still hold any connection to him?

  When a minute passed with no response, I rang again. It occurred to me that maybe it would have been better to conduct this search on a weekend. The present occupants might be at work. But then I heard a voice calling out from the other side of the door. “Coming, coming.” The door opened and there stood a tiny elderly woman. Her hair was in tight curls and she wore a perfectly pressed wrapper the color of cotton candy. A pair of blue eyes paler than a winter sky looked out from a crepe paper face.

  “May I ’elp you?” she asked. Her accent was a thick and rural English, heavy on the vowels.

  “Good day. My name is Pauline Cook. My friend here is Mr. Sullivan. I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, but we’re looking for Mr. or Mrs. Campbell. You wouldn’t be Sarah Campbell by any chance?” I wondered if I had gotten lucky enough for this to be the British Ethan’s mother. She certainly filled the age requirement.

  “No,” she replied, her tiny face showing disappointment we hadn’t come to visit her. “I’m Mrs. Doney, Miriam Doney. You’re American then?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “I’m rather fond of Americans,” she said, off on her own tangent, wanting to keep us engaged. “We ’ad quite of few of your lot stationed ’ere during the war. The air bases were just outside of town, and the pilots would come into town all the time. Almost married one of them myself. Would’ve been living in America now.”

  “I see. It’s a shame that we missed having you in the States, but it’s quite lovely here. If you don’t mind, though, about the Campbell family, Sarah and Lawrence and their son, Ethan. They lived here at one time. Would you happen to know anything about them?”

  She nodded. “The woman who lived in this house before me was a Campbell. She was a widow and sold it to us some thirty odd years ago.”

  “Do you know where she moved when she left here?”

  “I’m afraid not, love.”

  “Would you have a telephone directory that we might be taking a peek at, Mrs. Doney?” Terrance interjected. I looked at him questioningly, and he raised his brow back at me. “Don’t you know, good sleuths always make use of the phone book.”

  The old woman’s eyes lit up at the sound of his voice. “You’re not a Yank. Irish. Dublin. I know that accent like the back of me ’and. I ended up marrying one of your lot.”

  “Then you’ve led a charmed life,” he said, teasing her mischievously.

  “I did—until my Warwick died. I’m afraid the whiskey did ’im in.” She did not appear to be bothered by this admission, but rather accepting of it as if it were just another part of life. The pale eyes drifted off to someplace behind me. “I’m waiting to join ’im now.”

  “The phone book,” I reminded her. “May we intrude upon you for your phone book.”

  “Please, come inside,” she urged, delighted to have guests. We followed her through a dark and austere front room to the back of the house where a bright postage stamp–sized kitchen was located. Mrs. Doney retrieved a directory from the pantry and handed it to me. Then she asked if we would like tea. Hardly able to refuse, I looked up Campbell in the book while we waited for the kettle to boil. There were two: a James and a Robert. When I took out a pen to write down the numbers, Mrs. Doney saw what I was doing and said. “Please love, you can call from ’ere.”

  Using an ancient wall phone that probably dated back to just after the war, I dialed the number given for James Campbell. A woman answered after the fourth ring, her voice tense as a child cried in the background. She regretted that she was no relation to either Sarah or Ethan Campbell. I reached Robert Campbell, who had no knowledge of them either. I put the phone back in the cradle wondering why I had thought this might be easy.

  “Do you suppose there’s some government office that can help?” I asked Terrance.

  “I have a better idea. Mrs. Doney, where is the local cemetery?” Though I found the request odd, I said nothing. The old widow told him that the village cemetery, the resting place of her dear Warwick as well as many other former friends, was located on the outskirts of the town. Terrance asked her to point it out on the map.

  We drank her tea and listened patiently to her stories about England during the war. Now I understand where the expression “war stories” comes from. They stretched on endlessly. Apparently she didn’t have many visitors, so she was taking advantage of the two she had. She probably would have gone on forever had I not stood after finishing my second cup. I could sense her disappointment that her visitors were leaving so soon. She walked us to the door and wished us good luck in our search.

  We thanked her profusely and promised to visit again on our next trip to Bury St. Edmunds.

  “Why on earth are we going to the graveyard?” We were back in the Bentley heading toward the edge of town.

  “Don’t you ever read spy novels?” he asked, reminding me for the briefest moment of Detective Malloy’s same question about police shows on television. “Just supposing the man you knew wasn’t really named Ethan Campbell at all. Suppose he was someone else and wanted a new identity. The easiest way to do it is to get the birth certificate of a dead person, someone born around your date of birth. All records revolve around birth certificates, no one ever checks them against death certificates.”

  “So you’re suggesting my Ethan stole an identity?”

  He shrugged. “Could be. At the very least, we’ll have a walk around the Bury St. Edmunds cemetery. It’s got to be bleeding old.”

  We pulled up to the cemetery. Terrance was certainly right about it being old. The stone walls around the grounds looked as if they had been built some time in the Dark Ages. There was a small caretaker’s cottage just inside the gate and we parked in front of it. Inside the cottage, a balding man sat in a large worn chair that might have predated the stone walls. His nose was buried in a newspaper. He didn’t move a bit when we entered. Terrance cleared his throat loudly and the man finally peered up at us over his bifocals. We explained we were looking for the
grave of Ethan Campbell, and he put his paper down and went into a cabinet, unearthing a large tome that contained a map of the grounds.

  “Campbell,” he said finally. “Don’t have an Ethan Campbell. Got a Lawrence.”

  “Ethan’s father,” I said.

  “Died nineteen forty-four,” he continued. “RAF pilot. He’s located in the northwest sector over here.” He pointed out an area on the map.

  “Is there a Sarah Campbell here, too?” I asked.

  He looked at the tome again and shook his head. “No Sarah. Not yet, anyway.”

  Don’t know what help Lawrence Campbell is to us,” I said once we were back outside.

  “Well, we might as well visit the old boy,” said Terrance, “seeing we came all the way out here.”

  We walked across the cemetery, stepping on top of the remains of the long dead, past headstones dating back to the thirteen hundreds and before. The sun came out and warmed our backs, a welcome contrast to the cool pull of history at our feet. I shivered as the ancient names and dates etched in the marble markers put me in a rare state of feeling insignificant.

  Lawrence Campbell’s grave was exactly where the caretaker said it would be. The headstone was free of grass, making it appear that it was attended to regularly. I wondered who watched this grave. Could it be Sarah? If not, might it be someone who had some information on their son? I noticed that Lawrence Campbell, the RAF pilot, had met his maker in May, a month before D-Day. His son, who would have been just a baby, must have been conceived on a furlough. I wondered if Lawrence was the victim of some training accident here in England or if he had gone down on the other side of the channel. Whatever the case, his body had made it home. I sensed he had been a brave man. I thought of the father my Ethan spoke of, the suicidal one who had squandered the family fortune. This could not be the same man.

  Fifty yards from us, a matronly looking woman in a loose-fitting floral print dress was placing flowers on a grave. She eyed us curiously, her head turning our way every couple of seconds. Finally, she abandoned her basket of flowers and came over to us. She walked with surprising vigor considering her gray hair, and as she drew near I could see her pink face was dewey and unlined. The damp cloudy climate was heaven for the skin.

  “Good day,” she called out.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “Friend of his, were you?”

  “Not really.”

  “I only ask because I’m a friend of Sarah’s. My name is Lacey Blaine.” She toed the marker with a sturdy shoe. “Lawrence was Sarah’s first husband, you know. I’ve promised to look after his grave as well as her second husband’s whenever I come up to tend to Peter’s. I don’t mean to be nosy. It’s just that she’s so alone and so sick now, I was hoping you might be family.”

  “Sarah Campbell is alive,” I stated practically numb. I was astonished at my twin stroke of good luck: to be here at the same point in time as Lacey Blaine, and to learn that the mother of the Ethan Campbell whose birth certificate I held in my purse was still living. I quickly recovered and introduced Terrance and myself, adding, “No, we’re not family, but I might have known her son. Do you know if she had a son named Ethan?”

  It was Lacey Blaine’s turn to look astonished. “She did, but he disappeared years and years ago. He was a queer lad, if you know what I mean, and we always figured that was part of the reason he left. He was just a couple of classes ahead of me in the school.”

  When she said queer, I knew that she meant homosexual, which started me on a new track that maybe the British Ethan and my Ethan were indeed one and the same. Perhaps Ethan had left England to escape the stigma attached to his homosexuality many years back. I explained that a man who might have been Sarah’s son died recently. She told us Sarah was in her nineties and living in a state home for the aged, not ten miles from the cemetery, and that her last name was Moore now, from her second marriage. She obliged us with directions to the home, and Terrance and I headed back out to meet the woman I hoped might hold the key to my obsession for the truth.

  Although the home in which Sarah Campbell Moore lived was immaculate and the grounds manicured and well-kept, it was still depressing simply by virtue of its inhabitants, primarily elderly and wheelchair-bound. And my melancholy grew greater as I realized I might be delivering the message of a son’s death to an aged and ailing old woman.

  When we asked at the desk if it would be possible to see Sarah Moore, no one seemed in the least bit concerned with who we were. They just seemed happy that she had a visitor. We found her sitting in a wheelchair in the television room, a woman as slight and frail and lacking in color as anyone I had ever seen in my life. Her skin was almost transparent and her tiny face held a pair of tiny dark eyes, the only thing in her entire being that did not appear to be gray. Even the robe she was wrapped in was gray, the material falling in great folds of excess around her. She was extremely lucid despite her age, and seemed very curious when the attendant informed her we were there to visit her. I could tell she was racking her memory for some recollection of who we were.

  “Mrs. Moore,” I said, taking her outstretched hand, “you don’t know me. My name is Pauline Cook, and I’m from America.” Before I was able to say anything else, a loud sigh escaped her lips.

  “America,” she said in a hope-filled voice. She set her thin lips in a firm line and closed her eyes, raising her chin toward heaven. “It’s Ethan. You have some word about Ethan.”

  My voice caught in my throat, and I found myself totally unequipped to do what I had to next. I wondered what in God’s name had spurred me on this pilgrimage and cursed Ethan’s memory for putting me in this predicament.

  “I might, but I’m afraid it isn’t good news,” I said. “I had a friend named Ethan Campbell who recently passed away, and I am searching for his family.”

  The heartrending look that registered on her face made me want to cry myself. Her lips quivered, but no tears filled her eyes, giving me the unhappy sense her tears had dried up with age. She reached into the pocket of her bathrobe with a withered hand and unearthed a folded yellowed envelope. She pressed the envelope to her heart. “My Ethan, my dear Ethan. This is the last I ever heard from him.”

  She held out the old letter, bidding me to read it. I took it from her shaking hand. Though the ink of the return address had blurred over the years, I could make out a hotel name, The Alder Arms in Morristown, South Carolina. I removed a sheet of paper from the envelope, so thin and worn from being unfolded and refolded over the years, it felt as fragile as tissue paper. The date in the upper right hand corner was March 14, 1965.

  Dearest Mum, I am finding life in the States much better for me than it was at home. I have already made dear friends, and I suspect I am going to go places in this country. People treat me as if I am royalty when they hear the British accent. I am in the South now, a charming land if you aren’t a Negro, and will be heading even further south as a job opportunity has presented itself. And it’s someplace very warm which you know suits me and my fragile constitution. I would tell you more about it, but I don’t want to jinx it, so I will write you when I have secured the position. I love you very much and think about you daily. Look after father’s grave for the both of us. I’ll write again soon. Your loving son, Ethan

  I refolded the letter carefully and returned it to the envelope. I was fairly certain my Ethan hadn’t written the letter. The handwriting was spare and compact, a far cry from his elaborate cursive. Besides this Ethan mentioned people making a fuss over his English accent. My Ethan never spoke with even the slightest trace of one. I didn’t think the two men could be one and the same.

  Still, I had to be absolutely certain.

  I was carrying several photographs of Ethan in my purse for this very reason. I took them out and selected one of the more flattering ones, taken just last February at his Valentine’s Day birthday bash. He was wearing a pink shirt and red tie and was smiling a satisfied yellow-toothed smile. “This is my fr
iend. Does he look anything like your son?”

  Sarah Moore unearthed a pair of thick glasses from the depths of her robe. She put them on and studied the photo. An even more desolate look crossed her face and she shook her head.

  “This isn’t Ethan,” she said firmly. She went into the robe pocket yet again and this time pulled out a photograph. “This was taken right before he left.”

  I examined the fading picture. Though nearly as time-worn as the letter had been, I could tell this was not my deceased friend. The man in this picture was strikingly handsome with a full head of light-colored curls and a small cleft in his chin. I looked back at the old woman and noticed she had started to cry actual tears that ran pitifully down the creases of her gray cheeks. She had not dried up after all. “I hoped at last to know what had happened to him. I can’t die in peace until I do.”

  As I sat helplessly by, Terrance surprised me by putting his arms around the old woman to comfort her. “Now, now mother, don’t cry. When Pauline goes back to the States, she’s going to ask around after your son. She’ll turn him up, I promise you.”

  I glared at him. As badly as I felt for this poor old woman, how could he speak for me? How was I to learn what had become of her son almost thirty-five years ago? If some harm had befallen him? Or if he had gotten caught up in his life in America and forgotten about the people he had left behind? I was no detective agency, and as it was, I already had my own mission without taking on hers.

  Nonetheless, feeling very much on the spot, I assured her I would do whatever was necessary to unravel the mystery of her son’s disappearance all those years ago.

  Pardon me, Terrance, but don’t you think you were being more than a little presumptuous in telling that poor old woman that I would find her missing son?” We were driving through the gates of the state home, leaving the pitiful and hopeless remnants of the living behind us.