Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin (10 page)

Mother and Father joined Lizzie and Kenny in family snaps taken at the London Zoo, on the steps of the British Museum, beneath festoons of Union Jacks on the queen’s Silver Jubilee. Hamish was there, too, but it was Kenny rather than Lizzie who clutched his paw. Hamish appeared time and time again—dangled absently from Kenny’s fist, clasped tightly in Kenny’s arms, standing on Kenny’s knee—until 1970, when he vanished altogether. At ten years old, Kenny had evidently outgrown his childhood chum.

A series of photographs interspersed at regular intervals throughout the album seemed to commemorate the family’s annual outing to Brighton Pier. Father, Mother, Lizzie, and Kenny stood windblown and grinning in every seaside shot until 1980, when the quartet became a trio and the caption read:
Our first holiday together after Father’s death.
Five years later, Mother and Lizzie were on their own. Mother was in a wheelchair, with Lizzie smiling cheerfully by her side, but the caption offered no explanation for Kenny’s absence. In the next and last photo, taken in 1986, Lizzie stood alone on Brighton Pier. Beneath the picture, Miss Beacham had written:
Mother gone in May. My last seaside holiday, taken in memory of happier times.

There the pictures ended. I paged back and forth through the album until the distant sound of church bells pulled me back to the present. It was ten o’clock. I closed the album and sat with my hands folded on top of it, staring into the middle distance, deep in thought.

I’d wanted to find something that spoke to me of Miss Beacham’s private life. Well . . . I’d found it. No tale could have been more intimate than the one revealed by the photo album. It was as if she’d cried out to me from the grave.

I turned my head slowly until my gaze came to rest on the cylinder desk. Miss Beacham had wanted me to have the pretty desk. She’d written specifically that it would
appeal to me on many levels.
Mr. Moss had spoken of it, too, almost as if he’d been following Miss Beacham’s instructions: “My client thought the Sheraton cylinder desk might be of particular interest to you.” Why had Miss Beacham drawn my attention to the desk? We’d never discussed my passion for antiques.

We had, however, discussed mysteries. “I find real life sufficiently mysterious,” she’d said. Then she’d listened intently—very intently, it now seemed to me—while I’d rambled on about the various real-life mysteries I’d encountered over the years. Had she decided to present me with a new one?

“What happened to Kenneth?” I asked, looking down at the album. “Why did he disappear from the photographs, and where is he now?”

No one could doubt that Miss Beacham had loved her brother. She’d preserved Hamish long after Kenny had outgrown him; she’d assembled a collection of photographs that proclaimed her love; and she’d hidden both from Mr. Moss. Why?

Mr. Moss was supposed to search for Kenneth, but what if Miss Beacham had lost confidence in her solicitor? His cavalier comment about Kenneth’s alleged disappearance—“A pretty conundrum”—had rubbed me the wrong way when he’d said it, and he’d been much too quick to tell me that it was none of my concern. What if Miss Beacham had come to doubt Mr. Moss’s commitment to finding her brother? Perhaps she’d feared that, if Mr. Moss were left to his own devices, Kenny would never be found.

“Am I her backup plan, in case Mr. Moss fails?” I murmured. I spread my palms on the album’s smooth leather cover and recalled the premonition that had come to me when Miss Beacham’s keys had glinted in the lamplight in the study, back at home. I’d felt then that something of great importance would surface when I explored Miss Beacham’s apartment, and I’d been right. She’d given the keys to me, she’d invited me into her home, and she’d led me to the cylinder desk, in hopes that I’d find the album and understand the message it contained.

“So many questions begging for answers,” I said aloud. “So many lost things waiting to be found.” I pressed my palms against the pebbled leather, as if taking a vow. “Okay, Miss Beacham, you’ve got yourself a bloodhound. I don’t know how, but I’ll find Kenny for you.”

I was in bed a half hour later, though I lay awake long into the night, haunted by the image of a sister who’d lost the baby brother she adored.

 
An early-morning phone call to Bill, who was acting as my weatherman, confirmed that a brisk east wind had scoured the fog from Finch and its environs overnight. The way home was clear and, in Bill’s words, “as safe as it would ever be” with me on the road. I washed, dressed, breakfasted on tea and toast, and tidied up. Since Hamish and the photo album were coming home with me, I’d left them in the foyer, tucked into a grocery bag to protect them from the damp. My jacket was halfway on before I remembered to write a heartfelt apology to Gabriel Ashcroft for my intemperate outburst the previous evening. I slipped the note under his door on my way out.

Rain had stopped falling in Oxford, but the sky was still cloud-covered and the sun provided nothing more than a hint of silvery brightness without warmth. When I reached the open road beyond Oxford, fine droplets of mist dappled my windshield and scarves of fog drifted in the folds of the plowed fields. The gray day dampened my spirits and I began to have second thoughts about the stirring conclusion I’d reached the night before.

If Miss Beacham had wanted me to find her brother, why hadn’t she asked me? She could have put the request to me directly, at the Radcliffe, or indirectly, in the letter she’d written. There’d been no need to drop vague clues that I might or might not understand, or play hide-and-seek with objects that clearly meant the world to her. What if I’d decided to take something other than the cylinder desk? The desk would have been auctioned off and its contents would have ended up in the hands of a stranger who neither knew nor cared about Miss Beacham’s next of kin. She was an intelligent woman. If she’d really wanted me to find Kenneth, she could have come up with a less risky scheme for letting me know.

Doubt assailed me all the way home. I wanted to discuss my stunning insight with Bill, but since he was at work, I decided to run it by Aunt Dimity first. I could rely on her to tell me if I was way off base.

I came home to a silent cottage. A note from Annelise— taped to the mantel shelf in the living room—informed me that she’d given in to the twins’ demands to return to Anscombe Manor and help Emma Harris and Kit Smith prepare for the grand opening of the Anscombe Riding Center. Worried that the boys might be more hindrance than help, I went to the study to put in a call to the manor.

Kit Smith answered the phone. Kit was the stable master at Anscombe Manor and one of my most cherished friends. He lived in a spartan flat overlooking the stable yard and seemed to ask nothing more of life than peace, quiet, and the company of horses. Bill and I loved him, and the twins idolized him. When I asked if the boys were underfoot, he assured me that they were not.

“We have ten crates of rosettes and ribbons that need sorting,” he said. “Rob and Will are making a vital contribution to the ARC with their nimble fingers—and freeing me and Emma for other tasks.” His voice softened as he added, “Annelise told me about your friend, the woman who died. I’d love to hear more about her, Lori.”

“You will,” I promised. “But you’ve got your hands full at the moment, so I’ll fill you in later.”

“You know where to find me,” said Kit, and rang off.

I put down the phone and smiled, picturing the twins up to their elbows in colorful rosettes, many of which would grace our mantel shelf once Bill and I got around to buying the pair of ponies we’d been meaning to buy for the past year. I added
ponies
once again to my mental to-do list, knelt to light a fire in the hearth, and stood to introduce Hamish to Reginald.

“He’s an orphan,” I said, and the explanation seemed to suffice. The two sat side by side in the same niche, and though Hamish’s eyes remained blank, Reginald’s seemed alight with understanding. I was left with the irrational but nonetheless comforting feeling that Reg would do his best to make the poor, raggedy hedgehog feel at home while he was at the cottage.

I placed the photo album on the ottoman, took the blue journal from its place on the bookshelves, and curled up in the tall leather armchair before the fire.

“Dimity?” I said, opening the journal. “I’m counting on you to tell me if I’m making sense or being a sentimental fool.”

Dimity’s fine copperplate curled across the page without hesitation.
It is possible to make sense and be sentimental at the same time, my dear, but I will do my best to detect any trace of foolishness. Proceed.

I told Dimity about the letter, the keys, and the money Miss Beacham had left to St. Benedict’s, Nurse Willoughby, and Mr. Barlow.

“Definitely not,” I said. “I’ve been to her apartment and it’s not the run-down walk-up I expected. The building’s quite nice, in a horrible modern sort of way, and her flat’s not only exquisitely decorated but furnished with priceless antiques. If she’d needed extra cash, she could have raised it easily by selling off a chair or two. She wasn’t elderly, either. She was only in her midfifties when she died.”

“So can heartache.” I took a deep breath, and braced myself for ridicule. “I think Miss Beacham’s brother broke her heart, Dimity. I think he vanished from her life without warning and never bothered to contact her again. And I think I’m supposed to find him.”

I laid out my argument as logically as I could—the letter leading to the desk, the desk leading in turn to the album that told the tale of a beloved, lost brother who would never be found by a lawyer who refused to take his disappearance seriously—but even to my ears, it sounded far-fetched. I was taken aback, therefore, when Dimity agreed wholeheartedly with my conclusion.

I blinked in surprise. “But . . . why didn’t she just
ask
me?”

“True enough,” I said. “I’ve got about a thousand I’d like to ask her right now. The only thing she told me about her brother was that he attended an Oxford college, but I don’t know which one, or when he was there. And Mr. Moss is useless. When I asked him about Kenneth, he told me to mind my own business. So where do I go? Where do you go to find a missing person?”

“I checked,” I said. “I looked in the Oxford directory before I left Miss Beacham’s apartment. There’s no listing for Kenneth Beacham.”

I snorted derisively. “If Miss Beacham had lived in Finch, I’d know Kenneth’s height, weight, shoe size, and the results of his latest dental checkup. Everyone would. But Oxford’s a city, Dimity. There’s no such thing as neighbors. I met a guy who lived downstairs from Miss Beacham for four years and didn’t know the first thing about her. He didn’t even know she’d been hospitalized.”

“What kind of friends would leave her alone while she was dying?” I asked.

It hadn’t occurred to me that Miss Beacham might have concealed her illness. “Why wouldn’t she tell her friends that she was sick?”

“It’ll certainly come as a shock to Kenneth,” I said. “If I’m interpreting the photo album correctly, he disappeared twenty years ago and left no forwarding address.” I stared moodily at the ivy-covered window above the desk. “I’m an only child, Dimity. I don’t know what it’s like to have brothers or sisters, but I’d like to think that if I’d had one, I would have kept in touch.”

“But Miss Beacham loved her brother,” I objected.

I pursed my lips thoughtfully. “A crime worth a twenty-year sentence would be reported in the newspapers, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course it would,” I said. “Kenneth probably pulled a bank heist or kidnapped the queen’s corgis. It’d have to be something pretty big. They don’t put shoplifters away for twenty years.”

“It’s a good explanation, though,” I said. “It would explain why Miss Beacham didn’t want to talk about him, and why Mr. Moss doesn’t give a hoot about him. I’ll ask Emma to do an Internet search for me. If Kenneth Beacham’s a major-league criminal, his name’s sure to turn up somewhere.”