Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin (6 page)

Dazzled, I stepped inside and shut the door on the sterile corridor. I felt as if I’d entered an alternate universe. To my left a mirror framed in ebonized bamboo hung above an ebony half-moon table inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. To my right, framing a door papered to blend in with the walls, hung two Japanese scrolls displaying delicate brushwork calligraphy.

A neatly furled black umbrella protruded incongruously from a knee-high, black-and-gold cloisonné vase sitting beside the papered door. When I opened the door, I discovered a cedar-lined closet containing a modest selection of serviceable coats clearly purchased with the vagaries of the English climate in mind. A pair of old-fashioned black galoshes perched humbly in an enameled tub on the closet floor, waiting to do their duty on rainy days. It pained me to think that the feet they’d once protected would never again stride confidently through puddles.

I dropped my rain-speckled parka in the tub with the galoshes and left the closet, drawn onward by a set of four framed Japanese woodcuts facing each other across the far end of the foyer. I paused to admire them before entering a hallway that led back through the apartment, past a number of closed doors. The narrow passage was hung with the same gold-shot, pleated paper as the foyer, and a pair of Persian runners ran its length.

A quick left turn took me under an archway and into a rectangular living room that stretched east and west across the entire front of the building. Here the extravagant paper ended. A second wall switch lit sconces that revealed walls painted a deep burgundy and a Persian carpet large enough to hold Ali Baba and at least twenty well-fed thieves. I fleetingly recalled the thieves’ fabulous hidden treasure as I drifted dreamily across the room, mouth agape, struggling to reconcile my vision of a cheaply furnished cold-water flat with the splendor that surrounded me.

A row of stately mahogany bookcases graced the rear wall, divided in two by the arched entry. Lush gold brocade drapes hung along the front wall, concealing a pair of plain, aluminum-framed picture windows that overlooked St. Cuthbert Lane. Matching drapes hid a similarly innocuous window in the short east wall, and a glorious, hand-painted bifold screen camouflaged the utilitarian glass door that gave access to the small balcony.

I parted the brocade drapes briefly, but the gray daylight was so dreary that I promptly closed them again and lit lamps instead. The room looked better by lamplight and would look better still, I thought, washed by the golden glow of candlelight. Almost everything in it was from a candlelit time. The “pretty little desk” alluded to in Miss Beacham’s letter had to be the Sheraton Revival cylinder desk that stood between the picture windows and beneath a large, gilt-framed beveled mirror. I stood with my back to the desk and tried to take in an array of furnishings that would have made an antiques dealer dizzy with desire.

A superbly carved pine fireplace held pride of place in the west wall, flanked by glass-fronted display cabinets that held a stunning collection of silver snuffboxes, Venetian glassware, Georgian candlesticks, and portrait miniatures. A walnut-framed Queen Anne settee sat before the hearth, grouped with a George IV elbow chair and a Gainsborough chair with the original needlework upholstery. Above the mantel shelf hung a seventeenth-century Dutch painting of peasants skating on a frozen canal, and pieces of early Chinese porcelain littered the Regency rosewood sofa table behind the settee.

A double-sided Regency bookstand stood at the east end of the room, between a deep-seated Sheraton library chair and a George I wing chair upholstered in gold damask. In one corner, near a mahogany corner cupboard, four slender-legged Chippendale chairs clustered around an eighteenth-century satinwood card table.

“The games room,” I murmured with a bubbling giggle, but the laughter died in my throat when I thought of a sick old woman playing endless games of solitaire in her lovely, lonely flat.

The living room should have felt crowded, but it didn’t. Each piece of furniture was perfectly proportioned to fit the space it occupied, and each was in excellent repair. A thin film of dust dimmed the wood surfaces, but none were scratched or chipped or stained, and although the luxurious fabrics showed signs of wear, the colors were still brilliant.

It was too much, entirely too much to take in all at once. I felt overwhelmed, overheated, as if I’d overindulged in a rich meal. I put a trembling hand to my forehead, reached into my shoulder bag, retrieved my cell phone, and punched the speed-dial for Bill’s number.

My husband must have detected a note of incipient hysteria in my greeting because the first words out of his mouth were: “What’s wrong, Lori?”

“Ohmygod, ohmygod,” I babbled. “It’s incredible, Bill. It’s . . . just . . . simply . . .
incredible
. If you were standing here next to me, you wouldn’t believe it. And I’ve only seen
two rooms!
If the rest are like this, my head will explode.”

“Breathe, Lori,” Bill advised. “Sit down and take a deep br—”

“Sit down?” I exclaimed. “I can’t
sit
on any of these chairs. They’re not meant for
sitting
. Remember that pretty little desk Miss Beacham mentioned? She must have been
delirious
when she suggested that I bring it home with me. I could
never
bring it to the cottage, not unless we built a twin-proof fence around it. It’s a Sheraton Revival cylinder desk! It should be in a
museum
!”

“Lori, my darling,” Bill said calmly, “let’s take it from the top, shall we? Did you find Miss Beacham’s apartment?”

“Of course I found Miss Beacham’s apartment!” I cried. “I’m standing in her living room! And if you ask me, she kept the outside corridor bare on purpose, just so people’s eyes would bug out when they saw what was inside.”

“What
is
inside?” Bill asked.

“Wonderful things,” I breathed, with deep fellow-feeling for the man who’d first peered into King Tut’s tomb. “Rosewood and satinwood and mahogany and brocade and needlepoint and miniatures and snuffboxes—oh, Bill, the snuffboxes alone would knock your socks off. The auction’ll have to be held by Sotheby’s. No one else is equipped to deal with things like this. They’ll need professors and historians and antiquarians and . . . and
experts
.”

“So the flat’s come as a bit of a surprise,” Bill understated.

“Remember the first time I opened Aunt Dimity’s journal?” I asked. “It’s like that.”

“Wow,” said Bill, impressed.

“‘Wow’ doesn’t even come close,” I said, and gasped as a horrible thought flittered into my mind. “Ali Baba,” I said in a broken whisper. “Bill! Miss Beacham must have been a
thief!
”

“Lori?” Bill said, after a pause. “Have you bumped your head recently?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my head,” I snapped, affronted. “I’m thinking with absolute clarity and I’m telling you that there’s no way on earth a legal secretary could afford to buy stuff like this. She must have embezzled funds from her employers. You know lots of lawyers in London, Bill. Would you please make some calls and find out if any have gone bankrupt lately?”

“Before I start dialing,” Bill said, “why don’t we consider a few more reasonable explanations? Such as . . . maybe Miss Beacham had an eye for bargains.”

“You don’t pick up Queen Anne walnut-framed settees at garage sales,” I retorted. “And if you know of a thrift store that carries early Chinese porcelain, lead me to it.”

“Maybe she inherited it all from a rich aunt,” Bill suggested. “It’s the sort of thing that could happen to anyone. As a matter of fact, I know a woman who inherited a honey-colored cottage full of lovely things from—”

“Ha-ha, very funny.” I smiled ruefully and scuffed the toe of my boot against the Persian carpet. Bill’s gentle teasing was having its intended effect—my sense of perspective was beginning to reassert itself. “I take your point, and I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. Miss Beacham must have had a dear old, filthy rich aunt who collected antiques and left them to her favorite niece. Now that I think of it, it’s the only rational explanation. The Miss Beacham
I
knew couldn’t have been a crook.”

“Excuse me, but
I’m
the one who cleared the good woman’s name,” Bill pointed out. “You just grabbed hold of my coattails.”

“Where would I be without your coattails?” I crooned. “They always bring me back down to earth. Thanks, Bill. I think I can manage the rest of the apartment now.”

“You’re sure your head won’t explode?” Bill said.

“I may experience a mild pop or two,” I conceded, “but no major explosions. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, though. I haven’t even begun to look at the books and there must be hundreds of them.”

“You don’t have to look at all of them today,” said Bill. “But if you end up staying late, I want you to get a room at the Randolph and spend the night in town. You can come home tomorrow.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know what the weather’s like in Oxford,” he said, “but it’s getting foggy here and I don’t want you driving at night on slick roads in the fog.”

“You’re adorable when you’re being overprotective,” I told him, smiling fondly.

“And you’re adorable when you’re hyperventilating,” Bill returned, “but I’d rather you didn’t do it behind the wheel. And don’t get so carried away that you forget to eat,” he went on. “I know what you’re like when you’re book-looking.”

“I’ll grab a bite at one of the cafés around the corner,” I promised. “Hug the boys for me when you see them.”

“I’ve seen them already,” Bill said. “Mr. Barlow brought them by on his way to Anscombe Manor to mend a broken hinge on one of Emma’s stable doors. Power tools and horses—Will and Rob must be in seventh heaven.”

“Why didn’t Emma mend the hinge herself?” I asked. “She knows how to use power tools.”

“Too much to do,” said Bill. “Only four days left until the grand opening of the Anscombe Riding Center.”

“If you ask me, she’s panicking,” I commented.

“Not everyone can be as calm and collected as you, my darling,” Bill said. “And now I must get back to work.”

“Me, too,” I said, grinning. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I returned the cell phone to my shoulder bag, took a deep breath, raised the lid of the cylinder desk, and placed the bag gingerly on the green leather writing pad. When the desk showed no sign of collapsing, I allowed myself to exhale.

Calmer now, I began to notice things I’d been too dazzled to notice before. I heard the muted sounds of traffic on Travertine Road, the blare of a car horn, the patter of rain against the windowpanes. I detected a slight staleness in the air as well, the musty smell of a room left closed for too long.

I stepped toward the balcony, moved the exquisite bifold screen to one side, opened the glass door, and peered upward. The sullen sky showed no sign of cheering up, but the clouds had stopped spitting, for the moment, so I stepped outside, leaving the door open behind me.

The damp, chilly air was a welcome change from the apartment’s stale atmosphere, and the view from the balcony was surprisingly panoramic. Although Miss Beacham’s building was only four stories tall, it seemed to tower over its neighbors. If thin veils of mist hadn’t blurred the horizon, I might have seen the university’s dreaming spires, away to the southeast. As it was, I could see a church steeple a block away and I had a bird’s-eye view of the bustling activity taking place on Travertine Road—a woman emerging from a dress shop, carrying a bright pink shopping bag; a white-aproned waiter sneaking a smoke outside an Indian restaurant; a man lugging a sack of birdseed from a pet store; and traffic—lots of traffic—zooming along at its usual breakneck pace.

“Who needs television when you’ve got life to watch?” I murmured. I observed the busy scene until the dank breeze drove me back inside to take another look at the front room. It seemed like a still life, when set against the animated backdrop of Travertine Road.

It was nothing like my own living room. As Bill had pointed out, I’d inherited many lovely things from Aunt Dimity, but the cottage had long since ceased to be hers. Over the years, my family and I had made our own marks on it—literally, in the twins’ case. It reflected our passions, our activities, our involvement with each other and with the world beyond its stone walls. The living room’s tables were crammed with framed photographs of family and friends; the window seat was home to an ark’s worth of stuffed animals; and the mantel shelf served as a notice board where Bill and I taped scribbled reminders of everything from bake sales to dental appointments.

There was no denying the beauty or value of the objects in Miss Beacham’s front room, yet something was missing. Where were the photographs of her brother, her parents, her friends? Where were the cheap souvenirs toted home from seaside holidays? Where were the notepads scrawled with phone numbers or grocery lists? Where was the inevitable clutter of everyday life?

I looked through the cylinder desk’s myriad drawers and pigeonholes, but they were empty, and the corner cupboard held nothing but some pads of paper and a pewter tankard filled with pencils. A quick scan of the books in the mahogany bookcases confirmed Miss Beacham’s interest in history, but they were too neat, too regimented, as if they’d been arranged for display.

“Maybe she stashed her clutter in a back room,” I said to my reflection in the gilt-framed mirror, and snapped my fingers as a solution presented itself. “An office, I’ll bet she had a home office.”

After all, I reasoned as I made for the narrow hallway, Miss Beacham had worked in a law office for nearly thirty years, and old habits die hard. The front room would have been her reception room, as formal and impressive as any law firm’s, but her office would hold items from her everyday life. I was sure I’d find traces of her personality in one of the rooms I hadn’t yet explored.