Dovecote

by Oleson, Anne Britting;

  “So he’s just blowing smoke, as they say.”

  Mr. Simms raised his fine eyebrows at the turn of phrase, but nodded. “As they say.” He opened the file before him and sorted through the papers inside, glancing at a sheet before setting it aside and picking up another. “Mrs. Chelton, as I’ve said, was of sound mind when she made her will. It was signed and witnessed right here in this office, with all due care.” He paused, looking again at her, waiting for the next gambit. He closed the folder and placed his hands on it. “You told my secretary over the telephone that you wanted some further information about Mrs. Chelton,” he prodded after a moment, glancing at the wall clock. Time was money, after all, Gwynn supposed, and she wondered what time his next appointment was scheduled for.

  “Yes. Some questions have arisen during the past few days in the cottage. I thought to ask you, so that I could avoid the gossip asking in the village would cause.” She looked up at him over the rim of her tea cup; he seemed to have caught and lightly savored the veiled compliment.

  “Go on,” he only said.

  “My great-aunt. First, how did she die?”

  Mr. Simms cleared his throat. “You know she was nearly ninety. She’d lived a good long life by anyone’s standards.”

  Gwynn nodded, waiting.

  “She died at home. The housekeeper, Mary Tennant, found her seated in a wing chair, a cup of tea gone cold on the table beside her.”

  “At home.” But not in her bed. For that one thing, Gwynn found herself suddenly grateful. Still—poor Mary! The sympathy welled up. She wondered why Mary had not mentioned it. It had to have been difficult for her. It would be, Gwynn knew all too well, difficult for anyone.

  “Yes.” Mr. Simms looked properly mournful. “Despite the shock, Mrs. Tennant did the right thing: she telephoned for the paramedics, but it was already too late.” He glanced down again to the papers before him. “The coroner’s verdict—it was an unattended death, you see—was a heart attack. Her heart just—stopped. Because, I suppose, she’d just worn out, poor woman. As we all do eventually. And thus you are the beneficiary.”

  For a moment the misery of her great-aunt’s situation struck her. To live nearly sixty years alone, unhappy—only to die alone, kept company by a single cup of cooling tea. What would have happened had she not had a housekeeper? She might not have been found for days, weeks. No one would have known.

  Of course, there was always Paul Stokes, across the way at The Stolen Child. How long would it have taken him to notice the light left on, the newspapers piling up? According to Colin Moore, Stokes had made little effort with the elderly woman, but surely he would have noticed? Abruptly she set her teacup on the desk before her, pushed it aside.

  “But I don’t know why.” Gwynn looked up at him, puzzled. “Why me, I mean.”

  Mr. Simms took off his glasses for a moment and rubbed his eyes, a gesture Gwynn found strangely endearing. “I don’t think any of us knew why she chose to do what she did. She was not a woman who took people into her confidence. However, she obviously had her own reasons for what she was doing. The result was, of course, in your favor.” He replaced the glasses slowly, but looked over them at her. “Believe me, Mrs. Forest, when I say that you are safe in possession of Gull Cottage. Your cousin may believe he deserves more, but under the law, he has no claim.” He cleared his throat. “Will there be anything else?” he asked after a pause, again with the surreptitious glance at the clock.

  Gwynn nodded, deciding to take the plunge. “Yes. Mr. Chelton. He that would have been my great-uncle.”

  This was not the question the solicitor had expected, and his eyebrows rose over his reading glasses. “Yes? He’s been dead a very long time.”

  “How long?”

  Mr. Simms frowned, again sifting through the pages in the file before him. “I’m afraid I can’t say for certain,” he hedged, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. “He died before I was born. My father would have been the one to answer that question to the year, if that’s what you’re looking for. Sometime in the 1950s, I believe.”

  “And you wouldn’t know how he died?” Gwynn didn’t know why this suddenly seemed important.

  Mr. Simms only shook his head. “Again, before my time. Without research, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Your father?” she asked. “Would he know?”

  A soft clearing of the throat, but no other falter. “He most likely would have known. Sadly, however, he’s been dead these two years past. I will, however, find the answers to your questions, should you wish me to.” Those questions, though, seemed to make him uncomfortable, and now he stood. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Forest, to rush you, but I’m expecting another client shortly.”

  Gwynn retrieved her cup and saucer, then stood to replace them on the tray. “Of course. I’m sorry for keeping you.”

  Full recovery. “No, no, that’s fine.” Mr. Simms moved to open the door for her. “Please,” he said as she slipped into the outer office, “remember to get in touch should Mr. Stokes, or a representative from him, make contact.”

  “I will do that,” Gwynn said, and left, feeling distinctly dissatisfied.

  WHEN ALL ELSE fails, make a list. Gwynn had always done that in the days she spent in the office of the construction company she had started with Richard, all those years ago. Now the dictum surfaced again as she tossed the boxes she’d collected in town into the guest bedroom; clearing there could wait at least until she tried to settle her mind. She made herself a pot of tea and brought the tray to the dining room table. The clutter here was dissatisfying, too, and not conducive to clear thinking, so she gathered up everything that wasn’t a drawing in progress, stuffed it into the wood stove, and threw a fistful of kindling on top. In a moment the morning’s embers flared up, and after adding a stick of fire wood, she closed the door on the flames.

  Now she drew her sketch block toward her, tore off the rough drawing on the top sheet, and began to write.

  Thomas Chelton died in the fifties.

  She stared at the words, remembering the T incised into the note in the bedside table drawer.

  How? She wrote. When?

  Then, why is that important?

  Everyone who had spoken to her about her great-aunt had been sure to mention the same thing: Gwynn Chelton had never married again, had never had any children.

  How long were they married?

  Why did she never marry again?

  Not for the first time, Gwynn wished she had a picture of her great-aunt as a young woman. She glanced up, her gaze darting about the room. Surely there must be photographs, somewhere. She hadn’t seen any, though they still might be tucked away someplace she hadn’t cleaned. Now that she thought about it, she wished she had a picture of her great-aunt as an old woman. Or at any time in her life. Gwynn squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember whether her grandmother Lucy had any old photographs of the three siblings, but she couldn’t bring anything to mind.

  The reflection in the window.

  She looked down at the pad and was surprised to see she had written that. She thought of the moment, just the other evening, when she had seen that face surrounded by white hair, the raised hand—a greeting? A warning? The reflection and the memory solidified. She had not imagined it. That had been Gwynn Chelton. She was certain of it. The other Gwynn, standing behind her. The reflection of two Gwynns in the front window.

  She shivered, looking up at the window now. The lights were beginning to come on, early evening that it was. Down in the road before The Stolen Child, a couple passed, slowed, and continued, arm-in-arm. Gwynn tried to will herself into the state she had been in when her great-aunt had stood behind her, tried to unfocus her eyes slightly. It was no use; she couldn’t even see her own reflection.

  “Gwynn,” she said out loud, holding her face in her palms. “Gwynneth.”

  No one appeared.

  One half of her wasn’t at all surprised. She didn’t believe in ghosts, after all. Never mind
that, if there were ghosts in the world, this would be the house in which to find one. Never mind that her great-aunt, so far in all descriptions, had been a lonely old woman—and weren’t unsettled spirits the kinds which were supposed to return to the places where they had lived?

  The steps on the stairs.

  She had heard them her first night. She had convinced herself that she had simply imagined them, being overtired and overexcited as she had been. But—had she? If Gwynn were still here, then of course she’d go up and down the stairs. However, her great-aunt was dead, and this line of thought was purely imaginative. She shook her head.

  What else?

  The brambles.

  This was a stretch, of course. She really knew nothing of brambles, or any kind of plant, come to think of it, except perhaps household geraniums—and even those she killed every time she brought a plant home, thinking this time would be different. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that the brambles in the rear garden grew up more quickly than they should have, almost malevolently. They hadn’t wanted her to get to the gate; they hadn’t wanted her to open it. This time she really shivered where she sat, and quickly took a sip from her tea cup. That was it, wasn’t it? The brambles had not wanted her near that gate.

  “Stop it,” she told herself sternly.

  THIS LIST WAS getting creepy. Gwynn got up to feed another piece of wood to the fire and to refill her tea pot. As she passed through from the dining room to the sitting room to the kitchen, she turned on lights: let Harvard down at the shops think she was throwing yet another party. Somewhere deep in her gut she wished Mary were here. Or Colin. Returning through the sitting room, she ran her hand along the back of the sofa where he’d spent the other night. The pillow she’d clasped to her that morning was gone, back up to the guest room as Mary’s parting shot. However, Gwynn had, before abandoning it, pressed her face to it, breathing the male scent of the sleeping Colin. The realization that she wished she had awakened to the male scent of the sleeping Colin on her own pillow nearly made her spill her tea.

  She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself. Yes, that had been a rogue wave of lust washing over her, she told herself briskly. Get over it. He was an attractive man, tall, long-limbed, with those unreadable gray eyes, and that dark hair going gray over the temples. In her mind’s eye she pictured him going upstairs that night with her, undressing, undressing her. Kissing her. She caught her breath. She’d fallen asleep thinking this way last night, and she hadn’t thought like this about a man in a long time. She hadn’t let herself think like this, not since Richard’s death.

  “Stop it,” she said again, aloud.

  Gwynn tried to imagine instead the face of her dead husband, his golden hair, his blue eyes. She tried to remember the feel of his skin, the way he smelled. But after six years, she could not call him up in her memory, could not bring him back to her. The face was still Colin’s, the dark hair, the gray eyes. The build. And—though she had never seen much of it and it was only wishful thinking, she could imagine his bare skin, could almost feel her fingers tracing their eager way over it.

  No. Colin had better stay away this evening. He would be a complication she didn’t have the inner resources to deal with, and a complication she was certain she wouldn’t be able to resist.

  No matter how easy it had been for him, the other night, apparently, to resist even the thought of her. I’ll stay down here, he’d said, after checking all the rooms, the doors, the windows. To keep an eye on things.

  She’d brought him the blankets, the pillow, and retreated upstairs, tired, frightened, unquestioning.

  He hadn’t kissed her good night. He hadn’t even touched her.

  GWYNN SAT BACK down to her list. It was full dark outside, and she thought perhaps she should fix something for dinner: an omelette, maybe. That would be easy and filling. The lights outside drew her gaze again down to The Stolen Child. She thought perhaps she could hear music, a bass line—but it seemed far away and inconsequential. Did the pub do live bands on Friday nights? It seemed more than likely. She wondered momentarily what music Paul Stokes would book, but she couldn’t even guess. Maybe he didn’t book the bands. Maybe he left it up to someone else. The woman Sarah, perhaps. Gwynn supposed that would have to remain an idle wondering for now, because it seemed highly unlikely she’d make her way across to the Child to check, at least for a while. Until her cousin got over his great fury. If.

  She put her chin in her hands again and gazed out. She was saddened by Paul Stokes and his anger. To think that she’d come all this way to find a relation she had no idea existed—and he already despised her. It seemed a waste. Great fury. He felt short-changed, cheated of something he thought he was owed. Yet Colin had insisted Stokes had not earned the inheritance of the house through any great effort toward caring for the cantankerous old lady, their great-aunt, any more than she had earned it. Still, some people, she knew very well, felt entitled, and thus always felt cheated. Those people very rarely overcame their feelings of being treated unfairly, and never got over their great fury at the unfairness of the world. Gwynn frowned at the pub’s facade, knowing that this was one such instance. Perhaps her one sojourn to The Stolen Child would be her last, because it was unlikely her cousin would ever accept her inheritance of Gull Cottage with good grace.

  Sighing, Gwynn again let her eyes drop to her list.

  Doves, she’d written.

  She stared at the word, stared at the pen in her hand, then wrote beneath that:

  crying

  dead

  And shivered again.

  12

  “MARY,” GWYNN SAID, “we have to talk.”

  Mary looked pointedly at the clock on the mantle. It was ten o’clock, spot on. Her two hours were up, to the minute. Even now she was pulling on her dark coat, having removed her apron and folded it away into her bag. Her jaw hardened.

  “If I don’t suit—” she began stiffly.

  Gwynn held up a hand. “It’s not that. Nothing like that.”

  Mary waited, tying the kerchief under her chin; it was not raining yet, but looked as though it might shortly.

  Now Gwynn felt wrong-footed, as she did so much of the time with Mary. She clenched her fists, then opened her hands and rubbed her palms down her jeans. “I just wanted to ask a question. Whether you knew something.”

  Now Mary’s expression was guarded, measured, back to the vaguely suspicious gaze Gwynn had come to know so well. Mixed with something that bordered on relief? Still Mary waited.

  “I went to see the solicitor,” Gwynn said. “Mr. Simms. Friday afternoon. He told me“—and she looked into Mary’s broad unreadable face—“that you were the one to find my great-aunt. When she died.”

  Mary nodded. She pointed to the wing-backed chair facing the sofa. “There.”

  Gwynn’s eyes were drawn to the chair, the one she always chose, the one she felt most comfortable sitting in. The chair in which her great-aunt had taken her last breath. Why had she not known that? Felt it?

  “It must have been hard for you.”

  Mary only shrugged. “She was in her eighties. She could have gone at any time. It’s not like it wasn’t expected.”

  “But still—”

  Mary had gone still, then, in remembrance. Her eyes were still on the chintz-covered chair. “She was just sitting. Her eyes still open. A book on her lap. There was a cup of tea. It was stone cold.”

  She tilted her kerchief-ed head, still looking at the chair, as though she could see her former employer still seated there. “She must have sat down for her nightly read and cuppa before bed, and it came upon her. Just like that.” Now she shook her head sadly. “Just like that, poor soul. And no one there for her.”

  Gwynn felt a lump in her throat. Unpleasant and angry though her great-aunt might have been, here was a woman, unimaginative as she seemed, who loved her in a strange, quiet way. Despite being pushed away repeatedly.

  With a quick intake of breath, Mary
became herself again. Her industrious fingers began to do up the buttons on the black coat. “There wasn’t anything I could do. She was cold. Long gone. I called the paramedics and waited.”

  For a moment they both gazed on the empty chintz chair.

  “What book?” Gwynn asked suddenly.

  Mary’s head swiveled, her eyes widening in surprise.

  “What book was she reading?”

  Mary set her purse down on the coffee table and crossed to the shelf, where the books ranged neatly: none of that haphazard piling on her watch. She ran her hands along the spines until she found the one she wanted and pulled it from its place between its brothers. She handed it to Gwynn. “This one. I put it back when I cleaned. Afterwards. But I marked the place.” That, apparently, was the only logical step—as though the next reader might want to pick up where the last had left off. Later. Or as if the last reader might be back—but Gwynn thrust that thought away.

  Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Gwynn was struck by the oddness of her great-aunt’s choice. Fairy tales? In her hands the book felt warm. The cover was worn, a uniform, faded green.

  She carried the book to the wing-backed chair and sat, holding it on her lap. Afraid to open it to the marked place.

  “If that’s all—” Mary retrieved her purse and threw another look at the clock atop the bookcase. Wherever she was meant to be, her expression plainly said, she was already late. The entire conversation had been a sacrifice, throwing her off her schedule.