Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Epilogue

  Miss Beacham’s Raisin Bread

  Also by Nancy Atherton

  Aunt Dimity’s Death

  Aunt Dimity and the Duke

  Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed

  Aunt Dimity Digs In

  Aunt Dimity’s Christmas

  Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil

  Aunt Dimity: Detective

  Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday

  Aunt Dimity: Snowbound

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in 2005 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Nancy T. Atherton, 2005

  All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  eISBN : 978-0-143-03654-8

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  For

  Miss Mousehole

  and

  Mr. Scooter-pie,

  my little loves

  One

  I stopped reading newspapers years ago and I never watch the television news. It may seem irresponsible in the larger scheme of things, but that’s something else I’ve given up: the larger scheme of things.

  I simply couldn’t take it anymore. Endless stories about heartrending catastrophes occurring all around the globe didn’t strengthen my resolve to make the world a better place. The relentless barrage of tragedy just wore me down, because it filled me with despair—the numbing hopelessness that silences the protests of the heart. Large-scale grief made me feel small and weak and useless, incapable of ever helping anyone.

  It was a stupid way to feel. I wasn’t small or weak, and I’d be useless only if I chose to be. I was in my midthirties, with a husband who loved me, wonderful twin sons, resoundingly good health, and no financial worries whatsoever. I’d inherited a fortune from my late mother’s closest friend, and my husband Bill had been born into a well-heeled Boston Brahmin clan, so I was able to give spanking sums to charity, and I did. I supported literacy programs, shelters for battered families, and famine-relief projects, not to mention a wildlife refuge for orangutans and the Aunt Dimity’s Attic chain of charity shops.

  But funneling funds down a long-distance pipeline seemed too easy, too detached. I wanted to do more. I wanted to spend my time and energy on what mattered most to me, and what mattered most to me was people.

  Instead of gnashing my teeth over the cruel impossibility of curing the world’s ills, I set my sights on curing ills closer to home. Home was a honey-colored cottage near the small village of Finch, in the west midlands of England. Although my husband, sons, and I were American, we’d lived in England long enough to feel we belonged. Will and Rob, who’d just turned five, had never lived anywhere but the cottage, and Bill ran the European branch of his family’s venerable law firm from an office overlooking the village square. As for me, I lent a hand in Finch whenever a hand was needed.

  The good people of Finch didn’t quite know what to make of a foreigner who jumped so eagerly at any chance to work for their community, but they recognized fresh blood when they saw it and—in true Tom Sawyer fashion—graciously permitted me to paint their fences. I helped organize benefit auctions for the local parish church, collected pieces of cast-off furniture for Guy Fawkes Day bonfires, painted booths for Harvest Festivals, and built scenery for each year’s Nativity play. I was occasionally offered leadership positions in villagewide events, but after witnessing the titanic turf wars waged among the Ladies Bountiful who directed the most prestigious projects, I decided to play it safe by staying humble.

  Although my horticultural skills were severely limited, my name was on the flower-arranging rota at St. George’s Church, and I polished the pews there every other Saturday. I dedicated one morning a month to scrubbing bird droppings from the war memorial on the green, one afternoon to tidying the churchyard. It goes without saying that I patronized local shops and businesses.

  If a villager was sick, I stopped by to do the dishes and drop off a casserole. I made a habit of looking in on my elderly neighbors, to make sure they had enough to eat, share a pot of tea, and enjoy an unhurried chat.

  My sons came with me on my self-appointed rounds and displayed an amazing capacity to adapt themselves to different situations. If an old, arthritic farmer liked to see a bit of life around the place, Will and Rob happily bounced off the walls. If a neighbor preferred peace and quiet, the boys settled down with a box of crayons to record their new surroundings for posterity. As a result, all cookie jars were open to them, and their arrival on any scene provoked grins instead of grimaces.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t always Suzy Sunshine, pirouetting through the village with a basket of good cheer. I had grouchy days and lazy days and days when I did nothing but shop for shoes. But in between those days, I did my best to do my best, and even when I failed—which I did with dismal regularity, owing to a sharp tongue, a stubborn streak, and a somewhat hasty temper—I still slept better at night, knowing that at least I’d tried.

  I had, through a curious set of circumstances
, become the principal patron of St. Benedict’s, a homeless shelter in Oxford, which I’d visited twice weekly for the past few years. As the shelter’s principal patron, I was allowed to scrub pots, make beds, and write large checks. I hoped one day to work my way up to cleaning the bathrooms.

  Will and Rob accompanied me on these trips, too, and acquired a devoted following among the down-and-outs who called St. Benedict’s home. Although I was still squeamish about some of their more colorful admirers, I’d learned over the years not to blanch visibly when my bright-eyed baby boys paused on the street to greet a favorite panhandler by name and ask in clear, piping voices, “Good takings today, Mr. Big Al, or have the punters been stingy?”

  There were times, of course, when an outbreak of good health in the village and a lull in community affairs meant that I had little to do except carry on with my twice-weekly tours of duty at St. Benedict’s. It was during one of those fallow periods that I fell into a project that would take me on a wholly unanticipated voyage of discovery.

  Lucinda Willoughby inspired the project. I’d met the red-haired, round-faced student nurse while visiting a sick friend at Oxford’s world-renowned hospital, the Radcliffe Infirmary. Now fully certified, Lucinda felt more than fully qualified to express her opinions to the world at large whenever we met for a bite of lunch in the hospital cafeteria.

  “It’s disgraceful,” she declared, on one such occasion. “Old Mr. Pringle’s been here for three days, Lori, and none of his children have come to see him. I do what I can to buck him up, but I’m run off my feet as it is. It’s hard enough to be sick and old and a widower, but to be abandoned like that by your own children . . .” She clucked her tongue in disgust. “Disgraceful.”

  Her impassioned comments struck a chord in me. Remembering a friend who’d lain in intensive care for nearly three weeks without so much as a word from his family, I decided on the spot to do something for those who found themselves similarly abandoned.

  After clearing my scheme with the hospital authorities, I became the Radcliffe’s first freelance visitor. Nurse Willoughby kept an eye out for those patients who, for one reason or another, were neglected by their nearest and dearest, and she let me know when my services were required. I’m happy to say that they weren’t required often, but when they were, I was there to provide them.

  To spare the patients’ feelings—no one likes to be reminded that they’re being neglected—I didn’t barge in on them sporting an Angel of Mercy armband on my sleeve. I disguised my mission by borrowing a trolley of books from a bookseller friend and wheeling it into the appointed room as visiting hours commenced. More often than not, the yammering television would go off and conversation would begin—about books, at first, and then about everything under the sun.

  One man recounted his wartime experiences with ration books and backyard air-raid shelters, oft-told tales that probably bored his grown children to tears, but that held me spellbound. A retired stonemason taught me all I know about cricket. A school-teacher, weakened by chemotherapy and pneumonia, asked me simply to read aloud to her, which I did every day for seven days, until she was strong enough to go into a nursing home, where her daughter and son-in-law finally deigned to show their faces.

  I was, for the most part, a passive visitor, sitting back and listening while my charges did the talking. And they were, for the most part, content to tell their stories, complain about the food, and wish me well when they left. It wasn’t until the middle of March, a week after the twins’ fifth birthday and three weeks before the first meeting of Finch’s Summer Fete committee, that I met the patient who captured my imagination by saying almost nothing.

  Elizabeth Beacham was unmarried and undergoing treatment for a rare form of liver cancer. She’d been hospitalized for a week before Lucinda Willoughby telephoned to alert me to her situation.

  “She’s terminally ill, but no one seems to care,” the young nurse informed me. “I know she has a brother—he’s listed as her next of kin—but he hasn’t bothered to come and see her. She hasn’t gotten a potted plant or a bouquet of flowers or a single telephone call. I wish she wasn’t in a private room. If she was on the ward, she’d be with other people, but as it is, she has nothing to look at but the television, and no one to talk to but staff members who don’t have time to talk. It’s horrid.”

  I agreed, and trundled my book trolley into Miss Beacham’s private room promptly at nine o’clock the following morning.

  The first thing I noticed about Miss Beacham was her frailty.

  Her face was as gaunt as a prisoner of war’s, the skin on her hands was like blue-veined parchment, and her gray hair had dwindled to a few stray strands, which she tried to hide beneath a red-checked hospital-issue bandana. She seemed as small as a child in the huge hospital bed, with IV poles and a bank of monitors looming over her, but the measuring look she gave me as I entered her room was far from childish. Her gaze was so penetrating, her eyes so bright and full of life, that her frailty seemed to fade into the background.

  “Good morning,” I said. “My name’s Lori Shepherd.”

  “The listener. The bringer of books.” Miss Beacham’s voice was breathy and weak, and she spoke with frequent pauses, as if full sentences taxed her strength. “I’ve heard of you, Ms. Shepherd. I wondered if you would stop by.”

  “Please, call me Lori,” I said, and rolled the trolley closer to the bed. I was slightly disconcerted to learn that my fame, such as it was, had preceded me. “How did you hear about me?”

  “Mr. Walker mentioned you,” Miss Beacham answered.

  “The retired stonemason,” I said, recalling the old man’s scarred and powerful hands.

  “That’s right.” Miss Beacham nodded. “Mr. Walker and I were parked beside each other—in our wheelchairs, you understand—waiting for tests. He told me he preferred your visits to watching the morning chat shows. High praise, indeed.”

  “Is it?” I glanced at the blank screen of the wall-mounted television facing Miss Beacham’s bed. “I can’t help noticing that you’re not watching the morning chat shows.”

  “I’d rather have my teeth drilled,” she said evenly.

  I chuckled appreciatively. “Television isn’t my cup of tea, either. I’ll take a good book over a chat show anytime.”

  “I see you like detective novels,” she commented, eyeing the books on my trolley.

  “People confined to hospital seem to like them. That’s why I bring so many.” I selected a book with a particularly gruesome cover illustration and held it out for Miss Beacham’s inspection. “One of Mr. Walker’s favorites,” I explained. “He can’t get enough gore. Decapitation, strangulation, any horrible thing done with an axe—it’s his idea of light entertainment. The more heinous the murder, the better, as far as Mr. Walker’s concerned.”

  “But detective novels don’t appeal to you, personally?” Miss Beacham observed.

  “I don’t mind nibbling on one from time to time,” I admitted, “but I prefer a steady diet of history, memoirs, biographies.”

  “Such books are spattered with their share of gore,” Miss Beacham pointed out. “Mary, Queen of Scots, for example, met a very sticky end.”

  “True.” I returned Mr. Walker’s favorite to the trolley. “But Mary wasn’t hacked to pieces in a back alley by a psychotic little weasel. She was given the opportunity to straighten her wig and say her prayers and walk in a procession before her head was lopped off. And the executioner had excellent manners.”

  Miss Beacham’s eyes began to twinkle. “In other words, you don’t mind murder, so long as it’s accompanied by pomp and circumstance.”

  “Style is so important, don’t you think?” I said airily.

  Smiling, Miss Beacham motioned for me to draw up the chair reserved for visitors. I pushed the trolley aside, took a seat, and asked what kind of books she liked.

  “My tastes run along the same lines as yours,” she replied. “I’m partial to history, British history in
particular. Give me a biography of Disraeli, and I’ll be happy for hours.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as if she needed to rest before going on. “I find real life sufficiently mysterious. So many questions begging for answers. So many lost things waiting to be found.”

  I nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ve stumbled into more than my share of real-life mysteries. I suppose that’s why I don’t feel the need to go looking for them between the covers of a book.”

  Miss Beacham’s eyebrows rose. “How intriguing. I hope your real-life mysteries haven’t involved heinous murders or psychotic weasels.”

  I laughed. “Thank heavens, no. Though a woman in my village was killed with a blunt instrument a couple of years ago. . . .”

  “Do tell,” Miss Beacham coaxed.

  It was all the encouragement I needed to embark upon a series of anecdotes that would have continued well into the afternoon if Nurse Willoughby hadn’t arrived to take Miss Beacham away for treatment.

  The intrusion startled me. Miss Beacham had been such an engaging companion that I’d forgotten I was in a hospital, conversing with a desperately ill woman. I felt as if I’d discovered a kindred spirit and I was eager to see her again. The moment I left the Radcliffe I made a beeline for my bookseller friend’s shop, where I bought a fat biography of Disraeli, which I presented to Miss Beacham the next morning.

  “You needn’t bring any more books to me,” Miss Beacham said, cradling the biography in her frail hands. “I shall be quite content to spend the remainder of my days here reading this.”

  By our third visit, my reputation as a good listener was kaput. Miss Beacham seemed so interested in everything I said that I just kept talking. I told her about the twins’ passion for horses—and presented her with equine portraits the boys had drawn for her the night before. I recounted recent happenings in Finch, including the spectacular fire that had destroyed Mr. Barlow’s chimney in February, and described the ragtag army of friends I’d made at St. Benedict’s. I gave my new friend plenty of opportunities to talk about herself, but I didn’t press. My job was to entertain, not to interrogate.