Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin Read online

  It wasn’t until the fourth visit that Miss Beacham let slip a few details about her private life. When I mentioned that Bill was a lawyer, she told me that she’d been a legal secretary in London for twenty-nine years before moving to Oxford six years earlier, to be near her brother Kenneth. My ears pricked up at Kenneth’s name—mainly because I wanted to track him down and nail him to a wall for being such a rotten, absentee brother—but she veered away from the subject and turned instead to her love of baking. At one point she closed her eyes to recite from memory a recipe for raisin bread, which I jotted down covertly on the back of a bookmark.

  “I do miss my kitchen,” she confessed. “The measuring and the mixing, the scent of fresh-baked loaves drifting through the flat, the sight of butter melting on a thick slice of warm bread . . .” She sighed.

  “What else do you miss?” I asked. “Is there anything you want from your flat? I’ll be happy to get it for you.”

  “No, no, there’s nothing I want.” She hesitated, and her gaze turned inward for a moment. “Well, perhaps one thing . . .”

  “Name it,” I said.

  Her pale lips curled into an odd smile as she whispered, “Hamish. I miss Hamish.”

  “Your cat?” I ventured, vowing silently that if Miss Beacham wanted to see her cat, I’d break every rule in the hospital to bring it to her. But Hamish, as it turned out, wasn’t a cat.

  “I don’t own a cat,” Miss Beacham replied. “My flat has no back garden, you see, and I don’t believe a cat can be truly happy without a back garden. No, I’ve never owned any pets.”

  “Then who’s—?”

  The door swung open and Nurse Willoughby put her head into the room.

  “Quick, Lori,” she said, beckoning urgently. “You’ve overstayed visiting hours. Matron’s on the way and if she catches you here, she’ll have my head—and yours.”

  “My weekend’s filled up,” I said quickly to Miss Beacham. “But I’ll be back on Monday.”

  I bent to buss her gently on the cheek, then sprinted from the room at top speed. I was grinning as I left, already filled with plans to surprise my new friend pleasantly on Monday morning. I thought it would be the first of many pleasant surprises I would spring on her. I thought I had all the time in the world to get to know Miss Beacham better, and to find out who Hamish was.

  I was wrong.

  Two

  I returned to the hospital on Monday morning in high spirits. I’d spent much of the weekend in my kitchen, where I’d baked seven loaves of Miss Beacham’s raisin bread before producing one fine enough to present to her. After wrapping the flawless golden loaf securely in tin foil, I’d swaddled it in a length of calico tied up with pale pink ribbon. I doubted that Miss Beacham would be able to eat the bread—her diet was strictly regulated—but I hoped its fragrance would bring a touch of home to her hospital room.

  Nurse Willoughby wasn’t at her station when I arrived, so I headed for Miss Beacham’s room without bothering to check in. When I reached her door, I paused briefly to examine the pretty gift I’d brought. I tweaked the silk ribbon nervously, like a schoolgirl anxious to make a good impression on a teacher, then entered the room, calling a cheerful greeting.

  “Good morning, Miss Beacham. You’ll never guess what I’ve—” I faltered, then fell silent while my brain tried to process what my eyes were seeing.

  It wasn’t just that the hospital bed was empty. The bed had been empty before, when tests and treatments had taken Miss Beacham to other parts of the hospital. But this time the bed wasn’t merely vacant—it had been stripped bare. The crisp white sheets, the pillows, and the lightweight green blanket were gone.

  The IV poles had vanished as well, and the looming monitors had been switched off and pushed back against the wall. The horse portraits my sons had drawn were no longer on the bedside table, and the Disraeli biography was missing as well. The room reeked of disinfectant, as though it had recently been cleaned.

  “Miss Beacham?” I said, in a very small voice.

  The door opened behind me.

  “There you are.” Nurse Willoughby closed the door and came to stand beside me. “I’d hoped to intercept you on your way in, but there was an emergency on the ward and I was called away.”

  “Where is she?” I asked, swinging around to face the red-haired nurse.

  “I’m sorry, Lori,” she said. “Miss Beacham’s gone.”

  I understood what she meant, but refused to believe it.

  “Gone home, you mean? Gone back to her flat? But that’s wonderful. You’ll have to give me her address so I can—”

  “No, Lori, that’s not what I mean.” Nurse Willoughby squared her shoulders and said firmly, “Miss Beacham is dead. She died an hour ago. I tried to reach you at the cottage, but Annelise told me you’d just left. And your mobile—”

  “—wasn’t on,” I said numbly. “Bill doesn’t like me answering my cell phone while I’m driving. Both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road . . .” I glanced at the stripped bed, then looked away.

  “She took a sudden turn for the worse,” Nurse Willoughby said gently. “There was nothing we could do to save her.”

  I nodded. “Was anyone with her when she . . . ?”

  “Matron was with her.” Nurse Willoughby held up a hand. “And before you start to squawk, Lori, let me tell you that I hope and pray that I’ll have someone like Matron with me when my time comes. You’ve seen only her authoritarian side, but I’ve seen her with dying patients. There’s no one better.”

  “Okay,” I said, chastened. I put a hand to my forehead. I felt dazed and disoriented, uncertain of what to do next. “Have you notified her brother?”

  “Not yet,” Nurse Willoughby said. “We’ve been unable to locate him.”

  “But he’s her next of kin,” I said. “His name should be on a form somewhere.”

  “It should be, but it’s not.” Nurse Willoughby’s mouth tightened in disapproval. “Unfortunately, Roberta Lewis in clerical failed to notice that the form was incomplete. We didn’t realize that the address was missing until we looked for it this morning.”

  I frowned in confusion. “If you can’t find her brother, who’s going to arrange the funeral?”

  “There won’t be a funeral,” Nurse Willoughby informed me. “Miss Beacham elected to be cremated. She left instructions with her solicitor.”

  “What about her ashes?” I asked. “Where will they go?”

  “I don’t know, Lori. If I find out, I’ll ring you.” Nurse Willoughby held something out to me. It took a moment for me to realize that she was returning the crayon drawings and the biography I’d given to Miss Beacham. “I thought you might like to have these back.”

  “Yes.” I took the book and the drawings, and handed the calico-wrapped loaf to the nurse. “It’s raisin bread,” I explained. “Miss Beacham’s recipe. It was supposed to be a surprise, but . . .” I cleared my throat and took a steadying breath. “Share it with the other nurses, will you?”

  “Of course.” Nurse Willoughby’s freckled forehead creased sympathetically. “Would you like to speak with Father Bright? He’s on the ward, attending to one of his strays.”

  Father Julian Bright was the Roman Catholic priest who ran St. Benedict’s Hostel for Transient Men. He came to the Radcliffe every day, to look for members of his disreputable flock who’d become ill or injured overnight. He was a good friend and an extremely good man.

  “Who’s been hurt?” I asked, dreading news of a second tragedy. “Is it serious?”

  “Big Al Layton fell over in the street and split his head open on a cobblestone last night.” Nurse Willoughby managed a wry smile. “He was drunk as a lord at the time, but the stitches sobered him up. I imagine he’ll be back at St. Benedict’s by dinnertime. Would you like me to fetch Father Bright? He can be here in two ticks.”

  I stared down at the floor. I knew that Julian would be comforting, that he’d say the right things and know when to say nothing, bu
t at that moment, I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I just want to go home.”

  I turned to look around the room once more, but saw no trace of my friend in it. It was as if Miss Beacham had been erased.

  I negotiated curves and roundabouts without thinking, passed through familiar towns without looking left or right. I felt as if a giant hand were pressing down on me, making it difficult to breathe. No patient on my visiting list had ever died before, and none had meant as much to me as Miss Beacham. I found it very hard to believe that she was gone.

  When I reached Finch I was tempted to stop at Bill’s office and fling myself into his arms, but decided that the risk of being seen outweighed the reward of being comforted. My neighbors were, to put it kindly, extraordinarily observant. If I was spotted on the green sporting a morose expression, someone would surely wonder—aloud and often and to anyone who happened to be passing—what was wrong. Before sunset, rumors would start to fly and I’d start hearing from people eager to commiserate with me over my impending divorce or the scandal at Bill’s law firm or the twins’ wretched tonsillitis or some other calamity that existed only in the villagers’ fertile, gossip-loving imaginations. In order to avoid becoming grist for the rumor mill, therefore, I confined myself to casting a longing glance at the wisteria vine that twined over Bill’s office door before bumping over the humpbacked bridge and heading for home.

  I considered dropping in on my best friend, Emma Harris, as I passed the drive leading to Anscombe Manor, the fourteenth-century manor house she called home, but I quickly dismissed the notion. Emma was an American who’d married an Englishman, but although she and I came from the same country, we didn’t always speak the same language. While I ran on emotions, Emma had a distressing tendency to rely on logic. If I told her that the death of a terminally ill woman had upset me, she’d almost certainly give me a puzzled look and explain gently that it wasn’t uncommon for terminally ill people to die. She’d mean well, but she wouldn’t provide the kind of consolation I needed.

  Apart from that, Emma was on the verge of bringing a long-held dream to fruition. Saturday would mark the grand opening of the Anscombe Riding Center, a small riding academy Emma planned to run with the help of her friend and stable master, Kit Smith. Emma and Kit had put their hearts and souls into the project, and I didn’t want to dampen their enthusiasm with my gloom.

  I knew who I wanted to talk to, and I knew exactly where to find her. When I reached the cottage I switched off the Range Rover’s engine and sat for a moment in the graveled drive. I rested my hands lightly on the steering wheel and let my gaze move slowly from the cottage’s golden stone walls to its lichen-dappled slate roof while I thought of the remarkable Englishwoman who’d lived there before me and who, in a sense, lived there still.

  Dimity Westwood had been my late mother’s closest friend. The two had met in London while serving their respective countries during the Second World War, and had maintained their friendship by writing hundreds of letters to each other long after the war had ended and my mother had been shipped back to the States.

  Those letters became a refuge for my mother, a private place where she could go when the trivialities of everyday life grew too burdensome to bear. My mother kept her refuge a closely guarded secret. She never told me about the letters, and she introduced her dearest friend to me indirectly, as Aunt Dimity, the redoubtable heroine of my favorite bedtime stories.

  It wasn’t until many years later, when both my mother and Dimity were dead, that I learned the truth. I could scarcely avoid learning the truth then, because Dimity Westwood bequeathed to me the honey-colored cottage in which she’d grown up, the precious correspondence she’d shared with my mother, a comfortable fortune, and a curious, blue-leather-bound journal.

  It was through the journal that I came to know Dimity Westwood—not because of what she’d written in it before her death, but because she continued to write in it postmortem. Don’t ask me how she managed the trick, because I haven’t the foggiest notion, but I think I know why she kept in touch.

  The bond of love that connected her to my mother also connected her to me. The redoubtable Aunt Dimity would allow nothing, certainly nothing as paltry as death, to break that bond. If anyone could be overqualified to act as a grief counselor, I told myself, it would be Dimity.

  The clammy wind snatched at my hair as I emerged from the Rover and trudged despondently up the flagstone path. I pulled the collar of my wool jacket close, opened the front door, and stood listening on the threshold. Will and Rob were in the kitchen with their live-in nanny—the saintly Annelise—and if their giggles were anything to go by, they were having a high old time “helping” her make something that smelled a lot like leek-and-potato soup.

  I didn’t want to spoil their culinary fun with my long face, so I closed the front door quietly, hung my shoulder bag and jacket on the coatrack, and tiptoed stealthily down the hallway to the study, where I closed the door quietly behind me.

  I switched on the lamps on the mantel shelf, deposited the horse portraits and the biography on the old oak desk beneath the ivy-covered windows, and knelt to put a match to the logs piled in the fireplace, hoping a fire would ward off the chill that had followed me home from the hospital. As the flames caught and crackled, I stood and smiled wanly at Reginald, the small, powder-pink flannel rabbit who sat in his own special niche among the bookshelves.

  Reginald had been by my side from the moment I’d taken my first breath. I’d confided in him throughout my childhood and saw no reason to stop doing so just because some people believed—mistakenly, in my opinion—that I’d grown up.

  “Hi, Reg,” I said, touching the faded grape-juice stain on his snout. “Hope your day’s been jollier than mine.”

  I didn’t expect Reginald to respond, but I detected a muted gleam in his black button eyes that suggested a degree of understanding. I stroked his pink flannel ears, then reached for the blue journal and settled with it in one of the pair of high-backed leather armchairs that sat before the hearth. Heaving a dolorous sigh, I opened the journal and looked down at a blank page.

  “Dimity?” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

  What’s happened, Lori?

  I felt my throat constrict at the sight of Dimity’s handwriting, an old-fashioned copperplate learned in the village school at a time when motorcars were a rare and wondrous sight. Until that moment, I’d been too stunned for tears but now I felt them stinging my eyes.

  I blinked rapidly and said, “It’s Miss Beacham. She died this morning.”

  Oh, my dear child, I’m so very sorry. I know how fond of her you were.

  “I don’t know why I was so fond of her.” I sniffed. “It seems silly, doesn’t it? We spent only a few hours together, a few measly—”

  It is not silly, Lori. You met someone and felt an instant connection. Time is immaterial in such cases.

  “That’s what it was.” I nodded sadly. “An instant connection. There was something about her that reached out and grabbed me. She had a light in her eyes, Dimity, a brightness that drew me to her. She was smart and funny and she loved history and I can’t believe I’ll never see that brightness again.”

  She was gravely ill, wasn’t she?

  “She was fatally ill,” I conceded. “Lucinda Willoughby made it clear from the start that Miss Beacham’s chances of survival were nonexistent, but I guess I let myself forget how sick she was. She never complained, Dimity. She never talked about her illness. She never mentioned the hospital at all, so I . . . I guess I let myself forget why she was there.”

  Has it occurred to you that you, in turn, allowed her to forget? You weren’t a doctor or a nurse. You didn’t come to take blood samples or deliver more bad news. Your sole desire was to be a pleasant companion. You gave her a chance to think of things other than her own mortality.

  “Her mortality never crossed my mind,” I said dejectedly. “When I looked into her eyes
, I didn’t see a dying woman. I saw her.”

  What a great gift you gave her, Lori! You reminded her that she wasn’t merely a disease, but a whole entire person with interests and passions that had nothing to do with her illness. When she looked at her reflection in your eyes, she didn’t see a dying woman. She saw herself.

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. “I’d like to think that I helped her in some way. But I know so little about her. I want to know so much more, and now it’s too late.”

  Did her brother ever come to see her?

  “No,” I said, feeling a stab of anger. “Matron was with her when she died. Darling Kenneth never bothered to show up, and the hospital staff can’t find him because they don’t have his current address. He doesn’t even know she’s dead.”

  Perhaps he, too, is dead.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “She listed him as her next of kin. She wouldn’t have put his name down if he was dead.”

  Perhaps they were estranged.

  “Then someone else should have been worried about her,” I insisted. “A friend, a neighbor . . . She was hospitalized for two weeks, Dimity, and I was her only visitor. It breaks my heart to think of her being so alone.”

  But she wasn’t alone. You were with her. It must have been a great consolation to her to know that you would grieve for her.

  “Some consolation.” I smiled mirthlessly. “The only person grieving for her is me, a total stranger.”

  Your distress shows me quite clearly that you were no longer a stranger, Lori. You were Miss Beacham’s friend.

  “Yes. I was.” I swallowed hard. “And I’ll miss her terribly.” The doorbell rang and I looked up from the blue journal. “I’d better go, Dimity. When Annelise answers the bell, she’ll see the Rover and wonder where I am.”

  Some thoughts before you leave, my dear: Feel sorry for yourself, by all means. You have good cause; you’ve lost someone dear to you. But don’t feel sorry for Miss Beacham. She knew that death was near and she had time to prepare herself to meet it. Although you’ll find it difficult to understand, you must trust me when I tell you that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a human being. I speak as one who knows.