Aunt Dimity's Death (25 page)

I sat down again, leaning toward Bill with my elbows on the table. “That’s the strangest part, Bill. I don’t mind at all. It’s a relief, in fact. It’s not easy being the daughter of a saint.”

Bill smiled ruefully and nodded. “Being the son of one is no fun, either. That’s why I constantly remind myself of each and every one of Father’s faults. It’s a depressingly short list, but it helps. Did you know, for example, that he has a secret passion for root beer?”

“Is that a fault?”

“For a man raised on Montrachet? One might even call it a serious character defect. He’d be drummed out of his club if word got around. Please don’t let on that I told you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” We shared a smile, then I lowered my eyes to the wrought-iron tabletop. “You know, Bill, I might not have gone back to the correspondence if it hadn’t been for you. Thanks for giving me a shove.”

“You’re welcome.” The sound of the crickets rose and fell as the dusk turned into darkness. Bill took the rose from Reginald’s paws. “Excuse me, old man, but you don’t mind if I …” He handed the rose to me. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you how beautiful you look. The color suits you.”

I couldn’t be sure if he was referring to the cornflower blue of my new dress or the blush that had risen to my cheeks, so I changed the subject. “Ruth and Louise were very helpful, weren’t they?”

“Yes, indeed.” Bill sat back in his chair. “RM. Robert MacLaren.”

“More commonly known as Bobby—an airman who was killed in action late in the year 1940, just before my mother met Dimity. A call to the War Office would confirm all of that, I suppose.”

“But they wouldn’t be able to tell us about this.” My heart did a flutter step as he reached over to touch the locket. “The War Office doesn’t keep track of that sort of thing. Whatever is tormenting Dimity, it’s not just grief over losing Bobby. Something must have happened between them, something terrible.” Bill stood up. “What we need is someone who knew Bobby and Dimity.” He strode off down the hallway.

“Where are you going?” I asked, scrambling after him as fast as my brand-new pumps would allow.

“Upstairs to pack,” he called from the stairs.

I followed him up. “To pack? Why?”

“I’m going to London.” At the top of the stairs, he turned to face me. “Lori, think about it. Bobby was an
airman
.” He went ahead into his room.

“So?” I stood frowning on the stairs, then hit myself in the forehead, feeling like a complete fool. “Of course! The Flamborough!”

Bill stuck his head out of his door. “Bingo.”

“I thought of the Flamborough when we were talking with the Pyms, but then it slipped away.” I climbed the last few stairs, then stood in Bill’s doorway while he tossed a few things in a bag.

“I’m going to pay a visit to the redoubtable Miss Kingsley,” said Bill, pulling a shirt off a hanger in the wardrobe, “to find out if anyone still knows how to operate the Flamborough Telegraph. They might be able to put us in touch with some of Bobby’s friends or fellow airmen.” He folded the shirt and placed it in the bag, then opened a drawer in the dresser.

“Why do you keep saying ‘I’? You mean ‘we,’ don’t you?”

Bill pulled a pair of socks out of the drawer and shook his head. “Not this time. You have to be here to field calls from Father.” The socks went into the bag.

“Oh. Right.” Bill’s plan made perfect sense. I could trust him to ask the right questions, to discover all there was to discover. There was no need for me to accompany him. So why did my heart sink when he zipped the bag shut?

He left the bag on the bed and came over to where I was standing. “I’ll call as soon as I find anything out,” he said.

“I know,” I mumbled, looking at my shoes.

“I’ll call even if I don’t find anything out.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll give you the number at the Flamborough, Miss Kingsley’s private line, so you can reach me night or day.”

“Okay.”

He bent slightly at the knees and peered at me through narrowed eyes. “So what’s the problem?”

I couldn’t stand it any longer. Scowling furiously, I grabbed hold of his lapels and planted a kiss firmly on his lips. “There, all right? I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to be away from you. I’m packing my own bag and coming along and that’s final, end of discussion, no debate. Okay? Satisfied? Does that answer your question?”

He closed his eyes and stood very still for a moment. Then he released a long breath. “Yes, thank you.”

Looking somewhat dazed, he made his way back to the bed, bumped into the nightstand, knocked the lamp to the floor, picked it up, dropped it again, then left it where it was and came back to the doorway to pull me into his arms.

“I just want to be sure I understood you correctly,” he said. “You know how lawyers are….”

By the time we were both ready to leave, everything was clear enough to satisfy the Supreme Court.

We didn’t lose our heads entirely. I took the precaution of calling Willis, Sr., before we left. It was the middle of the night in Boston, so I left a message informing him that I was so far along in my reading that I had decided to spend a few days exploring the countryside, with Bill in tow to look after things. I added that we would telephone him the minute we got back to the cottage.

Bill phoned ahead and Miss Kingsley responded with characteristic efficiency. Our rooms were waiting for us when we arrived, and a late supper was ready in one of the Flamborough’s private dining rooms. At Bill’s invitation, Miss Kingsley joined us, and she lived up to her redoubtable reputation by remaining undaunted even by the vague nature of our quest.

“Robert MacLaren?” she said. “Well, the name certainly doesn’t ring any bells, but I’m a relative newcomer. I’ve only been at the Flamborough for fifteen years. I’m sure we’ll be able to find someone who can tell you something about the old days, though. Retired military gentlemen are our main-stay. I shall make some inquiries, and I should be very surprised if I have nothing to tell you by tomorrow evening.”

Miss Kingsley’s inquiries took a little longer than that— two days, to be precise—but the results were spectacular. Archy Gorman was worth a whole army of retired military gentlemen. He was a stout man with a
magnificent head of wavy white hair and a drooping handlebar mustache, and before opening his own public house, he had spent seventeen years as the bartender at the Flamborough—including the war years. Archy had long since retired from bartending, but Paul had kept in touch with him, and Miss Kingsley had been able to reach him at his flat in Greenwich. Paul drove the limousine round to pick him up, and the two of them met us in the Flamborough lounge two hours before opening time. The polished dance floor shone in the light from the fluted, frosted-glass wall lamps as we gathered at one of the round wooden tables near the bar. Paul sat with us, but Archy immediately made his way to the taps and began pulling pints for the assembled group.

“Have to keep my hand in,” he explained, with a wink at Miss Kingsley, “and I never was a stick-in-the-mud about the licensing laws, was I, Paul?”

“No, you weren’t, Archy. And there’s many an airman who thanked you for it.”

“Here you are, now.” Bill got up to carry the tray of drinks to our table and Archy joined us there, puffing slightly with the effort. “To happier days,” he said, and raised his glass. I watched over the top of my own as he expertly avoided dipping his mustache into the foam.

“Now, you might be wondering why I was here at the Flamborough for the duration instead of out there doing my duty,” Archy began, folding his hands across his ample stomach. “The plain and simple fact is, they wouldn’t have me. Rheumatic fever and a heart murmur and no-thank-you-very-much said the board.” He thumped his chest. “But here I am, closing in on seventy and never a day’s bother with the old ticker. Never understood it, why they sent the healthy lads off and left the tailings at home, but there you are. You can’t expect common sense from the military, can you, Paul?”

“Not a bit of it, Archy.”

“What was it that Yank told us that one time? Snafu, he called it—you remember, Paul?”

“ ‘Situation Normal, All Fouled Up,”’ Paul recited dutifully.

“That’s your military, the world over.” Archy took another long draught, then set his glass on the table. “Now, tell me again about this chap you’re looking for.”

When I had recounted the little we knew about Bobby, Archy pursed his lips. “He must have flown during the Blitz,” he said. “The Battle of Britain, they called it. Not many survived to tell the tale, did they, Paul?”

Paul shook his head soberly. “After a while, it was hard to strike up friendships with the lads. They were gone so fast, you see.”

“Here today, and gone tomorrow, that’s the way it was, eh, Paul?”

“A truer word was never spoken, Archy.”

“You don’t happen to have a snap of this MacLaren fellow, do you?” asked Archy. “The old memory is sharp as a tack, but there were so many boys through here …”

“No,” I replied, “but I do have some pictures of his girlfriend.” I handed him several photographs from Dimity’s album. “This is Dimity Westwood,” I said.

“Dimity Westwood, you say? Well, there were a lot of girlfriends coming into the old Flamborough in those days. It was a lively place back then, not the museum piece it is now—begging your pardon, Miss K.”

“That’s alright, Archy, no offense taken,” said Miss Kingsley. “Things are rather quieter around here nowadays.”

“Dull as dishwater,” Archy muttered, with a conspiratorial wink at Paul. Stroking his mustache, he looked carefully at each picture. “I couldn’t say that I recognize …” He paused. “Wait, now …”

The rest of us craned our necks to see what had caught his eye. He had come to one of my favorite pictures, a shot of Dimity standing in front of a shop with shattered windows. She had reached inside to touch the dress on a toppled mannequin, and was grinning mischievously at the camera. Archy contemplated the photo for a moment; then his eyebrows shot up and he slapped the table with his hand. “The belle of the ball,” he exclaimed. “You remember, Paul—the beautiful belle of the ball—that’s who she is.”

“By heavens, you’re right, Archy. That’s who she is,” said Paul. “The sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet …”

Archy cupped a hand to his mouth and in a stage whisper explained, “Paul took a fancy to her.”

“Look who’s talking,” Paul retorted. “I seem to remember you being rather fond of her yourself.”

“So I was, so I was,” Archy conceded. “But who could help being fond of her? She was … something else. Something you don’t find every day, I can tell you. You may know her as Dimity Westwood, but we called her Belle. She came in here all the time, on the arm of that Scottish fellow. Frightful accent, mind you, but how he could dance. Bobby … yes, Bobby and Belle. What a pair.”

“Lit up the whole place when they came in,” said Paul.

“I kidded them about spoiling the blackout—you remember that, Paul?”

“I do, Archy.”

Archy put his arm around Paul’s shoulders and the two men gazed, misty-eyed, at the photograph before Archy returned it to me. They emptied their glasses, and stared stolidly into the middle distance.

“It’s easy to remember the happy times,” Archy said. “No one likes to think of the rest, but it was there all the same, wasn’t it, Paul?”

“It was, Archy.”

“I remember the last time Belle came in here. She was on her own that night and I could tell just by looking at her what had happened. I’d seen it so many times before, but my heart broke for her all the same. I gave her the message and off she went, without saying a word. She never came back after that.”

“That’s how it was in those days,” said Paul. “Dancing one minute, and the next—”

“There was a message?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Archy replied. “The chaps were always leaving messages with me here at the Flamborough, billets-doux for their sweethearts and the like.”

“That’s why they called it the Telegraph,” said Paul.

“Do you remember what the message was?”

Archy was taken aback. “I never opened it,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been proper.”

My face must have fallen, because he pushed his chair back and lumbered to his feet. Raising a crooked finger, he said, “Now, you come over here, and I’ll show you something. It’s not something I show to everyone, mind you. You can be sure I didn’t show that young bloke who came in after me. He got very snippy when I tried to show him the ropes—you remember him, don’t you, Paul?”

“A regular Mr. Know-All,” said Paul.

“So I said to him, ‘Fair enough, Mr. Know-All, figure it out for yourself.’ But seeing as you have a personal interest in all of this …”

I followed him to the bar, and the others drifted over from the table. Archy lifted the hatch and motioned for me to go inside, then closed it behind him as he came in after me. He spread his hands flat on the smooth surface of the serving counter, looking very much at home.

“They called it the Telegraph,” he said, “but in point of fact, it was more like a post office. It was a sight more efficient than your official post office, and Paul here will vouch for that.”