Auntie Mayhem Read online

  Renie had now espied the tea shop just around the corner. “I’m fine. We’re fine. If we aren’t, we’ll call the local lawyer.”

  The man cleared his throat. “I am the local lawyer. Solicitor, as it were.” He pulled his hand back inside the car, fumbled around on the front seat, and proffered a business card to Renie. “Arthur Tinsley, at your service. If you’ll excuse me, I’m late for an appointment.”

  “You’re excused,” Renie muttered to the departing vehicle. “Goofball. He could have killed us.” She plunged across the High Street, then noticed that Judith was still standing at the curb. “Hey, come on. Let’s eat.”

  But Judith’s gaze had followed the big car as it turned into the lane and kept going past the church. There was only one place that Arthur Tinsley could be headed, and that was Ravenscroft House. Judith wondered why.

  FIVE

  JUDITH WAS RIGHT. The Marchmonts had dispensed with afternoon tea. The cousins were informed that Mrs. Marchmont was resting, Mr. Marchmont had gone out to the stables with Mr. Paget, and Mr. Karamzin and Miss Karamzin were playing tennis in Great Pauncefoot.

  “Cocktails will be served at six-thirty in the drawing room,” Mrs. Tichborne announced. “Dinner is at seven.” With a supercilious expression on her gaunt face, the housekeeper headed toward the kitchen.

  Renie tried to follow her, but Judith grabbed her sleeve. “Knock it off, coz. It’s after four. That sardine sandwich will hold you just fine.”

  “Are you kidding?” Renie snarled. “That was one anemic sardine and the bread was the size of my thumb. I can’t believe the tea shop was out of food.”

  “We’re lucky they still had a half-dozen sugar cookies. Come on, let’s take them to Aunt Pet.”

  Renie grumbled all the way up the main staircase to the third floor. The cousins came out into the gallery, just a few feet from Aunt Pet’s rooms. Dora turned very pink when she saw Judith and Renie with their small bakery bag.

  “You’re ever so kind!” the maid exclaimed, reaching for the biscuits. “Thank you. I’m afraid I can’t ask you in. Miss Pet has a visitor.”

  Judith leaned into the doorway. A swift glance told her that the visitor must be in the other room, where Aunt Pet had received the cousins.

  “Does Miss Ravenscroft have trouble walking?” Judith inquired in her most sympathetic manner.

  Dora put the hand that didn’t hold the bakery bag to her withered cheek. “Indeed she does. That arthritis plagues her something cruel. Poor lady, she can’t take but a step or two on her own. That’s why she keeps to her bedroom, except on special occasions. Like tonight.”

  “But,” Judith protested, “your mistress doesn’t need to come down to dinner for our sake. It sounds like an imposition.”

  Dora’s brown eyes shifted away from the cousins. “I really couldn’t say about that,” the maid said evasively. “Miss Pet has made up her mind to dine with the family.”

  Renie muscled Judith out of the way. “Does she have tea in the afternoon? With a little something?”

  Dora gave Renie a quizzical look. “She’s having it now, with her visitor. That’s why I must take her these biscuits.”

  Judith shoved Renie back. “Her visitor—that wouldn’t be Colonel Chelmsford?” she asked, knowing that it wasn’t likely he’d returned.

  “My no!” Dora was horrified. “Miss Pet put a flea in his ear! Imagine! Such cheek!” With a quick glance over her shoulder, the maid lowered her voice. “It’s Mr. Tinsley, Miss Pet’s solicitor. I believe he’s staying to dinner.”

  Judith tried to hide her surprise. “Really? But dinner isn’t until seven. They must be having a long meeting. Or is it just a social call?”

  Dora’s expression became very prim. “I couldn’t say, I’m sure.” Then, feeling the bag of sugar biscuits, she grew more loquacious. “Mr. Tinsley is like one of the family. He and his father before him—Mr. Edward Tinsley that was, and his grandfather, Mr. Edmund Tinsley that was, all served the family. Very nice men they were—for being solicitors and all. Rest their souls.”

  An impatient tinkling bell cut short Dora’s confidences. “Miss Pet,” she whispered. “No doubt she’s anxious for her biscuits.” Giving the cousins a grateful smile, she closed the door.

  Renie slunk away, still grumbling. “I should have pinched a couple of cookies. I’d have done the old girl a favor. Now she’ll get a stomachache.”

  “You’re giving me a headache,” Judith chided. “Let’s go to our rooms and air out our tiaras. We’ve got to dress for dinner.”

  The cousins rendezvoused in the hallway at six twenty-five. Fortunately, their large suitcases included the evening dresses they’d worn to the IMNUTS banquet. They eyed each other critically in the fading April light.

  “That trailing scarf’s dangerous,” Renie said. “Don’t let Dora near it with a cigarette lighter.”

  “Aunt Pet won’t like that bronze shimmer,” Judith retorted, referring to Renie’s metallic tunic that went over the black crepe-de-chine skirt. “You glow in the dark.”

  “Screw it,” said Renie, making for the stairs. “I’ll tell her it’s chain mail. She can’t see up close, remember?”

  The drawing room was on the opposite side of the main staircase from the parlor. The furnishings and decor were almost exclusively eighteenth century, elegant and graceful. Harwood was propped up behind the makeshift bar, mixing a martini for Claire. Charles, attired in a business suit, was already quaffing a scotch and soda. Judith requested the same.

  “Hors d’oeuvres,” Renie hissed. “Where are they?”

  “They aren’t,” Judith hissed back. “Shut up and drink.”

  But Renie was once again thwarted. Harwood had neither American bourbon nor Canadian rye. Renie was forced to settle for a screwdriver.

  “Alex and Nats are late,” Claire fretted, glancing at the Breguet clock on the Palladian mantel. “They have no sense of time.”

  “Or courtesy,” Charles put in. “They roar down here once every two months, spend five minutes with Auntie, drink all the good liquor, and then go off to parties with their young set. What they both need is a job.”

  Claire carefully set her glass down on a small mahogany pedestal stand. “They have jobs, Charles.”

  “Rubbish!” snapped her husband. “Alex tests sports cars when he feels like it, and Nats offers interior decorating advice when she’s in the mood. I don’t call those ‘jobs.’”

  “Well,” Judith remarked affably, “they’re still young, and if they can support themselves—”

  “Nonsense!” Charles exclaimed. “They can’t. That’s why they come to Ravenscroft House, to wheedle funds out of Auntie.” His blunt features grew sly. “But this trip may be in vain. Auntie’s of a mind to cut them off at the pockets.”

  At that moment, a commotion erupted outside the drawing room. Judith heard a groan, followed by a grunt, and then the shrill voice of Aunt Pet: “Do be careful! You’re jostling my spine! Put some leg into it, Arthur! I’m not a rag baby! Walter, mind the doorway! You’ll scrape my elbows!”

  Aunt Pet was being carried into the drawing room by a red-faced Walter Paget and a pale Arthur Tinsley. She was seated—or tilted, at the moment—in a Sheraton armchair. Judging from her bearers’ state of near-collapse, they had hauled their burden all the way downstairs from the third-floor bedchamber. Staggering to a place by the hearth, they lowered Aunt Pet onto the floor.

  “Bother!” muttered Aunt Pet. “In my day, men were men! They hefted a hundred pounds of equipment into the African bush. They slung tigers over their shoulders out in India. They bagged elephants in Ceylon with only a—”

  “—lift,” Claire was saying softly. She stood next to her aunt’s chair, proffering a glass of sherry. “I can’t think why you won’t let us install a lift, Auntie. It would be such a help. To you. To Dora. To all of us.”

  Aunt Pet clutched the sherry glass in both gnarled hands. “Such extravagance! Did the Dunks need a lift? Did my fa
ther, Sir Henry Ravenscroft? Or either of my brothers, poor sticks that they were? Bother!”

  Taking Judith’s advice to heart, Renie had already polished off her screwdriver and was chewing on the ice she’d insisted that Harwood add to her drink. “What was wrong with your brothers?” she demanded. “Couldn’t they find a rhino to wrestle?”

  Aunt Pet started to look affronted, then burst into a high-pitched cackle. “Those two couldn’t find a dik-dik in the petit fours,” Pet said when her glee had subsided. “Chauncey and Oakley were pitiful excuses for real men.” Her hard blue eyes narrowed at Renie. “You’re a saucy one, Miss Renee. You’ve got spunk. I like that. Good to find kinfolk with spunk, even if they are Americans.”

  “But…” Renie exchanged a puzzled look with Judith.

  “My father,” Aunt Pet went on with vigor, “Sir Henry Ravenscroft to you—was a self-made man. Rich as Croesus and wise as Solomon. He knew better than to entrust the family fortune to his sons. No spunk, you see. Oh, Oakley was brave—and foolish. He saw nothing but romance in war, and got himself killed in the process. Was he shot in an artillery attack? Was he felled by hand grenades? Not Oakley. He slipped on a wet tin of pilchards, fell down a flight of stairs, and broke his neck. Dunkerque, indeed! He never got out of England!”

  Charles’s gasp of protest went unheeded. “As for Chauncey, he was the dreamer. Yearned to be a poet—or a priest. Silly man passed his foolishness on to his son, George.” The blue eyes glinted at Claire. “So your father runs off to Swaziland to convert the half-clad natives. Waste of time. Better off worshipping tree stumps. Ever see pygmies holding a church bazaar?”

  “They’re not pygmies,” Claire countered in an agonized tone. “Really, Auntie, a very large portion of Swaziland’s population is Christian. I know, I grew up there…”

  In response, Aunt Pet shoved her empty glass at her great-niece. “Medicinal, this. Keeps my blood circulating. Come, girl, move along.”

  Since Claire seemed frozen in place, Renie took the sherry glass from Aunt Pet. “I’ll get us both a refill,” she said.

  With unveiled admiration, Aunt Pet watched Renie walk to the bar. “Fine female specimen, that Renee. But why do her clothes light up?”

  Judith was spared concocting an answer. Alex was strolling across the room, wearing a suit and tie, and looking none too pleased about it.

  Yet when he came up to Aunt Pet, his chiseled features broke into a charming grin. “How’s my favorite girl?” he asked, leaning down to kiss her cheek.

  “Fine as frog hair,” Pet replied. “All things considered. Why aren’t you and Charles in dinner jackets? Young Paget, too. Arthur has an excuse. He’s been working.” One eye almost closed, and there was an edge in Aunt Pet’s voice.

  Alex straightened up. “He has?” His gaze took in Arthur Tinsley, digested the solicitor, and appeared to spit him out. “Doing what?”

  Aunt Pet wagged a crooked finger. “Never you mind. You’ll learn soon enough. Ah, here’s my sherry.” She accepted the glass from Renie.

  Somehow, Judith had been maneuvered next to Walter Paget. For want of anything better to say, she inquired about the Ravenscroft stables.

  The query seemed to plunge Walter into gloom. “The Marchmonts aren’t horsemen. They don’t understand. Miss Ravenscroft does, of course. But she thinks in terms of the past. Especially when it comes to money. The pound doesn’t buy what it once did.”

  Even though she wasn’t sure what Walter was talking about, Judith was sympathetic. The elderly seemed incapable of comprehending inflation. Gertrude quoted Depression era prices for hamburger, the cost of shoes during World War I, and housing sales that were roughly the same as contemporary annual property taxes. Judith’s mother refused to spend more than five dollars on a birthday present, and when informed that her grandson Mike had shelled out fifty bucks taking his girlfriend, Kristin, to a baseball game, she wanted to know if he’d come home with the ball, the bat, and a couple of utility infielders. As far as Gertrude Grover was concerned, the dollar was as sound as it ever was—in 1910.

  “Old people get fixed ideas,” Judith said somewhat vaguely.

  Still gloomy, Walter nodded. “We can’t maintain the bloodstock at this rate. What’s the point of keeping hunters if no one wants to pay stud fees? They’ll go elsewhere, to farms with first-class animals. These days, people want to show their horses, not just ride them to the hounds.”

  Slowly, Judith was becoming enlightened. “Has this always been a stud farm?”

  “No,” Walter answered, after taking a sip from his gin and tonic. “Only for the last hundred years. Before that, the farm was more diversified. They had tenants then. But Sir Henry Ravenscroft was a great one for the hunt. So were several of the Dunks before him, but their own stables had declined. Sir Henry wanted the very best of everything. He had the money to invest in excellent stock and decided to use it not merely for pleasure, but for profit. The estate flourished for years. It’s only in the last decade that things have begun to go downhill. Unfortunately, that trend started shortly after I began my tenure as the Ravenscroft steward.”

  Across the room, Judith saw Natasha in the doorway. A vision in scarlet chiffon, she paused just long enough to entice Arthur Tinsley to her side. Judith sensed Walter Paget stiffen beside her.

  “But Sir Henry didn’t make his fortune breeding horses, right?” she asked as Arthur escorted Nats to the bar.

  “What?” Despite his attempt at self-control, Walter seemed unnerved. “Oh—no, Sir Henry was an investor. Machinery, mainly. He was fascinated by mechanical things. I gather he had a magic touch for making profitable choices. Excuse me, I must refresh my drink.”

  Judith murmured her assent, though she knew that Walter’s glass was still half-full. A moment later, he was speaking to Nats. Arthur appeared disgruntled. Then he saw Renie and became terrified.

  Judith rushed to intervene. But Renie, well into her second screwdriver, was feeling magnanimous.

  “Hey, Arthur,” she said, slapping him on the back, “no harm, no foul. I’m not the best driver, either.”

  That, Judith thought, was putting it mildly. Upon occasion, Renie was appalling. More often, she was merely erratic. Back on Heraldsgate Hill, Renie drove the Joneses’ big blue Chev as if it were part of an armored division.

  “I don’t think we’ve met, officially,” Judith said to Arthur Tinsley. She put out her hand.

  Arthur’s grip was limp and vaguely clammy. “I had no idea you were guests of Ravenscroft House. I say, I am terribly sorry about this afternoon.”

  “It was the pits, all right,” Renie agreed cheerfully. “You should have seen that sardine sandwich!” She leaned over the bar and waggled her empty glass at Harwood, who looked as if he might be legally dead.

  Judith stepped on Renie’s Via Spiga pump. “Knock it off, coz,” she said under her breath. “We’re about to go into dinner. I hope.”

  “Not a chance,” Renie shot back. “We’re never going to eat again. That’s why I’m getting juiced. I’ll pass out before I die of malnutrition.”

  But Harwood revived sufficiently to refill Renie’s glass. Judith surrendered and requested a refill, too. Then Harwood left his post and walked woodenly into the entry hall. Trying to make conversation, Judith asked Arthur if he had an office in Little Pauncefoot.

  “I do, actually,” the solicitor replied in his dry voice. “I share space with Dr. Ramsey. But I live at Mon Repos, off the Great Pauncefoot Road. It’s less than a mile from the village.”

  Judith nodded in a sanguine manner. There seemed to be a great deal more scotch than soda in her second drink. “This part of England seems quite unsoiled. Unspoiled, I mean.” She felt her cheeks grow warm, for various reasons.

  “Both,” Arthur replied with a faint lift of one eyebrow. “Actually, I live five doors from the Giddyap Grill. It’s Texas-style barbecue. Very messy. Lona refuses to dine there.”

  “Lona?” Judith forced her eyes to focus.
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  “My wife.” Arthur didn’t look very pleased at the concept. “She’s delicate. Spicy foods distress her.”

  Renie had draped her arm around Arthur’s neck, no mean feat, since he was half a head taller, even allowing for her Via Spigas. “Puny, huh? Or does she just get a lot of gas?”

  Judith held her head, or tried to, but missed, the free hand sailing past her left ear. “Coz…”

  Arthur, who was now white around the lips, attempted to free himself from Renie’s quasi-hammerlock. “Lona suffers from colitis,” he explained in an almost frantic voice. “That’s why she’s not here this evening. Dr. Ramsey felt she should stay home and rest.”

  Sagely, Renie nodded. “My mother has colitis. Sometimes she’s really constipated, other times, she just lets loose and—”

  Fortunately, a gong sounded from somewhere within the bowels of the house. Or at least that was how Judith interpreted the noise, given the topic of conversation. The entire group congregated behind Charles Marchmont, who offered Claire his arm, and led the way to the dining room.

  The change of venue benefited Judith. She felt relatively sober as she was seated between Charles and Alex. Renie, apparently by special request, was across the table and down, next to Aunt Pet, with Walter Paget on her left. Miraculously, Renie also seemed reconstituted. No doubt the promise of food had erased the effects of alcohol. Judith knew her cousin had not only a bottomless stomach, but a hollow leg as well.

  Dinner was served by a sullen, pigtailed teenager who didn’t know and certainly didn’t care from which side dishes should be presented or in what order. Judith, Charles, Claire, and Alex received green salads; Renie, Arthur, Nats, and Aunt Pet faced the soup. A bewildered Walter was left staring at poached halibut.

  But nobody, not even Aunt Pet, complained. Judith’s salad was crisp, with a tangy vinaigrette dressing. Judging from Renie’s benign expression, the lentil soup was more than adequate. And Walter was lapping up halibut like a hungry house cat.

  The company turned quite jovial. On her right, Alex talked animatedly about the various sports cars he’d tested. His conversation was vapid, if engaging, though Judith thought he seemed a trifle intoxicated. To her left, Charles related mildly amusing anecdotes about his colleagues in The City. Judith listened and smiled, smiled and listened, all the way to the saddle of lamb, which, fortuitously, was brought to everyone at the proper time.