Aunt Agatha Leaving
Sailing past Fox island in Penobscot Bay with her Aunt Jessie, Roz Howard catches sight of the ruins of the old Randolph mansion, and learns the sad story of the family's demise. But is it the true one?
"Aunt Agatha Leaving," a mystery short story, was published in Malice Domestic 8, Avon Books, 1999. The text appears here in its entirety with a few changes in format.
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Aunt Agatha Leaving
A mystery short story
by Susan Kenney
"What’s that?” Roz Howard asked, pointing to the crumbling remains of two tall chimneys looming on the headland as she and Aunt Jessie True rounded the northernmost tip of Fox Island. They had been out for a lingering early September day sail in Aunt Jessie’s sloop Verorum, and were now on a final starboard tack that would take them straight back to the mooring at Bayside and the promise of a warm fire. The setting sun had momentarily blazed golden off the brick, picking out the ruined stacks and throwing them into glowing relief against the trees. That was what had caught her eye.
Aunt Jessie was at the helm with her back to the island, so had to twist around to see what Roz was talking about. “Why, land sakes!” she exclaimed. “That’s the old Randolph estate—I didn’t realize you could still see anything after all these years, what with the trees and puckerbrush growing up all around and everything let go since the tragedy.”
“Randolphs? What Randolphs?” In her own peregrinations around the upper reaches of Penobscot Bay Roz had encountered most of the legendary names attached to great family estates--Pingree, Rockefeller, Watson, Cabot, Onterdonck--but this was the first she’d heard of any Randolphs, let alone a long-ago tragedy.
“Why, the Beacon Hill Randolphs, of course. A brother and three sisters, Archie, Alice, Ada, and Agatha; he made a fortune in oil and land speculation right after the War, put up scads of fancy hotels and such, Randolph Arms this and Randolph Court that--who do you think invented Quadruple A?” She looked vigilantly to windward for a moment, readjusted the tiller slightly, then turned back to Roz.
“So sad. They owned this whole end of the island. Rich as stink, for all the good it did them. That was the main house; it burned right to the ground some fifty-odd years ago with everyone in it. Well, all except Agatha in point of fact, but that hardly mattered since she was gone within the week. Wiped ‘em all out in one fell swoop. Such a pity. But mind the jib now; we’re coming into that squirrelly bit just off the gong. I’ll tell you all about it when we get back to port.”
* * *
Some hours later, the old sloop now safely bobbing on her mooring, Aunt Jessie and Roz settled down in front of the fire with steaming bowls of beef stew that had been simmering away on the old cook stove along with a pot of mulled cider while they sailed around the bay.
“As I said,” Aunt Jessie began, “there were just the four of them, all in their late fifties or early sixties; not a one of them had ever married. Your uncle Lou was the family lawyer; he’d inherited the job from his father, who was Uncle Archie’s roommate at Williams. We called them all aunt and uncle, courtesy titles of course, but that’s how close the families were. They lived right around the corner from each other near Louisburg Square, and in the summers we all headed up to Maine together. Lou’s dad claimed he built this place on the bluff just so he could keep a lookout and get a running start on Archie if he ever had to. That Archie was a pistol; he had everyone else coming and going six ways to Sunday.”
“What about the sisters? What did they do?”
Aunt Jessie chuckled. “Other than spend Archie’s money for him, as he used to say? Well, I’ll tell you, they were quite a colorful bunch. Archie had all the money, but he saw to it that his sisters were well taken care of; they lived in style, adjacent townhouses, cars, traveling allowances, the whole ball of wax. Aunt Alice’s forte was a golf and tennis; some said she was the model for May What’s-her-name in that Edith Wharton novel--the title escapes me, House of Innocence or something. I always had my doubts about that; she may have been a terror on the links, but she wasn’t any lissome beauty by a long shot, built like a fireplug with a face like a Boston terrier, just like the rest of them. All I know is, Archie had a tennis court and a 9-hole golf course built out there on the island just for her. Alice was the one who kept house for him in the summer; they liked to ‘rough it’ when they were in residence, meaning no live-in staff to speak of other than a secretary. They’d just hire in day help from the locals when they needed it; it was their way of helping out the island economy.
“Now Aunt Ada was active in the art world; she painted some, but mainly she liked to buy things; she was a regular whiz at acquisition. When she filled up one house she’d go and buy another, all of which Archie anted-up for, naturally. Then there was Aunt Agatha, the world traveler, roaming the earth searching for adventure, and recording it all with her trusty movie camera. She was my favorite.” Aunt Jessie paused for a moment, a pensive expression on her face.
“In a lot of ways she was the most tragic. She was the youngest and by far the most independent, but even so, no one expected her to break ranks with the others, especially when she reached the ripe old age of 35. But lo and behold, she got herself engaged to marry a young man in the diplomatic corps, the date set and the linens bought. Then her fiancé went down with the Lusitania. When she recovered from the shock she took up film-making. Her first trip abroad after the war she brought back movie footage that would break your heart. She and her fiancé had planned to have a family, and she wanted to adopt some war orphans, but Archie and the rest of the family put their foot down; all for one and one for all, and no outsiders need apply.
“But I think the disappointment made her restless; it always seemed that wherever she was, she was forever leaving to go somewhere else. She just kept on traveling around the world and shooting her blessed movies everywhere she went. She had her own darkroom and processing laboratory with all the latest equipment to edit them, splicers and titlers and whatnot; all very professional. Whenever your uncle Lou and I went out to the island to visit, she’d show her latest--Venice, Constantinople, Baghdad, New York--they were quite good, too. In fact, at the time, some folks wondered if that’s how the fire got started, some of that old highly flammable film stock she’d left there igniting spontaneously somehow. But no one ever knew for sure, since there was almost nothing left of the place. They couldn’t even identify the bodies, only that they were the four that had been in the house together--Archie, Ada, Alice and that poor young woman.”
“Wait a minute, Aunt Jessie! Who was the young woman? And if Aunt Agatha wasn’t in the house, where was she? How--”
“Now, Rosamund, just hold on a minute; you’re worse than a six-year-old with your whos and wheres and hows! I’m getting to that. Here, sit back with your cider and be quiet, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
* * *
“It would have been right around this time, Labor Day weekend back in ‘38. I remember it as if it were yesterday,” Aunt Jessie mused. “The four Randolphs were all gathered out on the island as usual for their end of the summer bash. Archie and Alice and Ada had been here for most of the summer, and Agatha, who’d been off in Timbuktu or someplace exotic like that, had come in on the mail boat a day or so earlier. It was a regular house party, all kinds of people popping in and out, Alice with her golf and tennis tournaments, Ada with her latest tent art show, Agatha with that old movie camera cranking away the whole time, recording it all for posterity--folks in their summer whites, croquet on the lawn, strolls on the beach, antics in the pool, all that happy pre-war nonsense. We were there, of course, as friends of the family, but also because Uncle Archie had asked Lou to help him draw up a new will.
“Under the terms of the old will, everything went to the surviving siblings, and if none of them or other issue survived him blah blah blah and so forth and so on, it was to go to charity, plain and simple--what your Uncle Lou used to call ‘bachelor boilerplate.’ But that was way back before Archie’d made his bundle and they were all past the point of having any “issue.” It seems he wanted to set up a foundation, so that when he passed away all the money would go into a trust, with his sisters provided for in their lifetimes. When the last of them died, the whole shebang--property, artwork, money, the lot--was to go to endow the Randolph Family Fox Island Foundation, with the house and grounds to be used as a public library and museum, and enough left over to build a school. He thought it would be a fitting memorial to their long and happy life together on the island. When the islanders got wind of this, they were ecstatic.
“Alice and Ada were all for it. The problem was, they couldn’t get Agatha to sign off. Some years earlier, she’d taken this young man under her wing, some sort of distant cousin on the mother’s side, but she referred to him as her nephew, and she wanted him in the will, too. Archie would have none of it. So that weekend they spent hours haggling over the terms in the library, while the guests cavorted all over, and that poor young secretary, who’d only just been hired and was new to the job in the first place, had to play hostess to everyone.
“Well, finally the weekend was over, the rest of the guests had dispersed, and Lou and I had to get back, with still no sign of a new will. ‘I’ll talk to you in a few days,’ Archie told Lou. ‘I’m sure Aggie will come around.’
“No one ever quite knew what happened after that. Tuesday morning we all woke up to find the Randolph place burnt right to the foundation, with everyone in it. Only the garage was left standing. We could see the smoke from here.” Aunt Jessie paused, and took a long swig of her now-lukewarm cider.
“But you said it wiped them all out,” Roz ventured. “What about Aunt Agatha?”
“I was getting to that part. It seems that after their family set-to, Agatha up and decided to leg it back to Beacon Hill, and had left on the last mail boat that afternoon. The nephew, who’d accompanied her abroad, was staying at her townhouse. He was the one who took the call the next morning and broke the news to Aunt Agatha, who’d gotten in late the night before.
“Well, of course she went to pieces, prostrate with grief. So the nephew drove up the day after and went with Lou to identify the bodies, which was a formality, of course, since they were burnt past all recognition. It was pretty much a matter of counting up on your fingers who was and wasn’t there. As far as anyone could tell, the four of them had been watching a bunch of Agatha’s movies in the library; it was a cool night, and they had the coal heater running. It must have malfunctioned, and with all that film lying around--well, the place went up like an incinerator.
“Agatha immediately went into seclusion; when Lou tried to speak to her by phone, she couldn’t even talk. She was last seen later that week getting into her car in Boston to drive up here to make the funeral arrangements. But she never arrived. They found her car parked by the Penobscot River Bridge, with a note saying she’d 'gone to join the others'. Evidently she’d walked out onto the bridge and jumped. Her body was never found. Now isn’t that a sad story?”
They sat in silence for some time, staring into the fire. Finally Roz spoke. “What happened to all the money?”
“Funny you should ask. After the shock wore off, that’s what everyone wanted to know, especially the islanders. Well, to their dismay, the nephew wound up with the whole bundle. Since Agatha had survived Archie, even if it was only for a few days, under the terms of the current will, she was deemed to have inherited. And he was next of kin, even if he was only a first cousin once removed. Their father’s sister’s daughter’s son, if I remember rightly--name of Holden, Edward Holden.
“Once the will was probated, that was that. Lou talked him into donating the estate to the island with a few thousand over, which was not too popular with the locals, since it barely covered the loss of the tax revenue and the town ended up barely breaking even. Then before we knew it, he’d sold up the Boston property lock, stock and barrel, and gone to Europe. We pretty much lost touch with him after that. I do know he served in the Army over there and ended up with a British war bride, but what became of them after that, I have no idea.”
“Hmmm,” said Roz. “Sounds pretty suspicious to me, Aunt Jessie. Cui bono and all that. Take the money and run.”
Aunt Jessie spluttered into her mug of cider. “As I live and breathe, if you aren’t just a caution, Roz Howard! You’re not going to start playing detective on me, are you? I thought you were on vacation!”
“Come on, Aunt Jessie,” Roz countered, laughing. “You love a good mystery as much as I do! It’s a classic--a disputed inheritance, Aunt Agatha leaving in a huff and miraculously surviving the others, only to do herself in a few days later? And the distant cousin cops the lot just in the nick of time before the will gets changed? Didn’t anyone think that was a little fishy? Was there anyone other than the so-called nephew who actually saw Aunt Agatha after the fire? For that matter, did anyone see Aunt Agatha get on the boat? Did anybody think of that?”
“Why, of course they did!” Aunt Jessie sputtered. “We weren’t born yesterday, you know. There was a proper inquest; your uncle Lou and I even gave testimony. Besides, they had it all on film.”
Roz sat forward. “Film, what film?”
“The movie!” Aunt Jessie said in an exasperated voice. “The one I told you they were all busy shooting that weekend! The one that showed Aunt Agatha leaving! The one that’s still downstairs in the basement with all the other stuff Lou saved from that time, if you want to see for yourself, little Miss Marple!”
It took the two of them a while to locate the can of film, packed in a fireproof metal box that smelled of mothballs. Then Aunt Jessie had to ferret out the old 16mm projector and the screen, the workings of which Roz luckily was familiar with from her summers here as a child. Still, by time everything was set up and running, it was past ten.
“Are you sure you want to do this now, Aunt Jessie?” Roz asked. “It’s late. We can do it another time, you know.” In fact, she was dying to see the old movie footage, to put faces to all these names whose long ago history had taken over, at least for the moment, her inquisitive imagination.
“Don’t be silly, girl, I can tell you’re champing at the bit. Anyway, it won’t take long—the whole thing runs just under four minutes. There was just the one reel that survived; it was still in the camera they found in the ruins. The coroner had it developed and they ran it at the inquest. But don’t get your hopes up. It’s quite rough, all kinds of stops and starts, what with the camera changing hands and such; I swear Agatha had everyone but the dog shooting at some point. If she’d lived, she’d no doubt have made something of it, but--you’ll see what I mean.”
* * *
“Why look, Aunt Jessie, it’s you and Uncle Lou! Don’t you both look handsome in your starched whites!”
It was the best Roz could do in terms of commentary under the circumstances. Aunt Jessie had not exaggerated the poor quality of the movie footage; it was for the most part fuzzy, full of blips and jerks, jumping from scene to scene and person to person in a flurry of senseless motion. The film had come on in a series of fits and starts, panning the lawn and gardens in a psychedelic blur, wobbling down the path to the private dock, then inexplicably cutting to a round, gnomish face peering roguishly into the camera upside-down.
“That’s Aunt Agatha,” Aunt Jessie explained. “Such a clown she was, and full of tricks. She takes the camera here; you’ll be able to tell. Someone else who didn’t know much about movie cameras had been filming up to now, probably Archie’s secretary Helen Trent. I think Agatha was trying to coach her a bit here, and a good thing too, since she ended up doing most of the honors that last day while Agatha was inside closeted with the others.”
Sure enough, the film smoothed out at that point, and proceeded with some continuity and grace into scenes taken throughout the day, couples playing tennis, people strolling through the garden, lounging around watching a short stocky older man with a familiar gnomish grin diving repeatedly and acrobatically off the board into a round swimming pool—(“Uncle Archie showing off as usual,” was Aunt Jessie’s acerbic comment); Alice vanquishing all comers on the putting green, Ada showing off the latest arte moderne; people standing for their photos, waving goodbye, and trooping down the path toward the dock. A touchingly young Aunt Jessie and Uncle Lou proudly rowing out in their dinghy to a spanking new Verorum, casting off and sailing away, waving hats and hankies in a parody of farewell. The three older Randolphs and the pretty young secretary comically wiping their brows, staggering about, leaning together in a comic huddle, then waving at the camera. Come with us, come with us, the lips mouthed silently, the beckoning hands urged. Helen the secretary coming forward, the film jiggling as the camera changed hands, then the four Randolphs together, arm in arm, a quartet of amiable trolls dancing a comic cancan into the house.
Another break in continuity, and Aunt Jessie’s voice in the darkness. “Now watch here. This is the part you wanted to see--Aunt Agatha leaving.”
Roz sat forward attentively as the camera focused on the doorway. And sure enough, here came Agatha, backing out in her fashionable, absurdly large fur-collared coat and close-fitting city hat, valise in hand, her face turned inward, talking to someone. Head nodding, Yes, yes, yes. Still backing away, then turning, catching sight of the camera, walking toward it with an oddly awkward gait, then—what? Waving it aside? It was difficult to tell. If this was Aunt Agatha leaving in a huff, she didn’t look particularly upset; in fact, Roz noted, she was still smiling, laughing even. But perhaps that was for the camera’s benefit.
Cut to the dock. Aunt Agatha, still smiling and waving, always the ham, moving away from the camera along the dock to the waiting mail boat, handing down her valise to the cabin boy, climbing down the ladder and, still facing the camera, mouthing her farewells. Like a cowboy wielding a lasso, the boy unloops the lines from the stanchions, the mail boat begins to churn forward away from the dock, Aunt Agatha standing at the rail, waving goodbye. The boat heads outward, with a wide sweep turns into the channel and chugs out of the frame.
“See?” Aunt Jessie said triumphantly. “What did I tell you? Proof positive. Aunt Agatha leaving.”
Roz nodded absently as she reached for the light switch. Sure enough, going, going gone. So that was that. End of story.
“Hey, not so fast,” Aunt Jessie protested. “Don’t you want to see the rest?”
Startled, Roz looked at the film reel revolving slowly on the projector, then at the screen, still filled with dappled images. The film was barely past the midpoint. “But Aunt Jessie, I don’t get it. How can there be more footage when—”
“Tsk. And you the noted detective. There’s more footage because Agatha left the camera behind. And,” she prodded, “Agatha left the camera behind because—”
“Oh, I see—because there was still a lot of film yet to go. She left it with them so that they could finish the reel.”
“That’s right. Family motto: Waste not, Want not; that’s how the rich stay that way. Anyway, there’s still nearly two minutes worth, nearly half the reel. Now pay attention; this is the most interesting part. You’ll get to see the inside of the house.”
Roz focused on the screen. Here were the three remaining Randolphs, once again stationed right where they’d been on the front terrace, laughing and talking, beckoning and gesticulating, addressing the camera: come hither, join us, join us. Roz wished she could read lips, to know exactly what they were saying. Something white fluttered off to the side, the camera jiggled—then, poof! The three had vanished, magically plucked away, the house front blank. The secretary’s inexperienced hand at work, no doubt.
Then suddenly she was inside the sprawling, dark-shingled house, moving down the light-struck hallway that opened out the other side, panning from doorway to doorway. Roz watched, fascinated as the camera wound through the dining room, the kitchen, the formal living room. And here were the Randolphs three discovered relaxing in their overstuffed chairs in the library, feet up, newspapers everywhere, nodding and smiling at the camera.
Amazing, Roz thought, the details of the interior quite sharp, only a little fogged by the light streaming in the large-paned windows. She shivered a bit at the sight of the filmy curtains lifting eerily in a long-ago ocean breeze blowing gently through rooms that no longer existed.
Was that a telephone on the big old partners’ desk? Yes, and as she watched, three heads swiveled toward it expectantly, then Archie moved to pick up the handset and stood there chatting amiably, nodding in staccato rhythm, hand in his pocket, jingling change. Roz listened, mesmerized: I’m losing my mind, she thought. I can actually hear the breeze whispering, the waves slapping against the rocks.
But it was only the film coming to an end, slipping off and flapping around the take-up reel. Roz reached over, shut off the projector light and set the film to rewind, then sat for a while in silence, lost in thought. “You know, Aunt Jessie,” she said finally. “There’s something strange about that movie. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but--”
Aunt Jessie didn’t answer. The dear old woman was sound asleep.
* * *
“Well,” remarked Aunt Jessie the next morning. “You’ve certainly got a bee in your bonnet about this old Randolph business, haven’t you? Well, now so you can just sit there and rummage to your heart’s content. Though I can’t imagine you’re going to come up with anything to prove that cock-a-mamie theory of yours after all this time. I’m going up to town to do some marketing, so you just make yourself at home.”
Last night, after Roz had seen a very sleepy Aunt Jessie up to bed, she had rerun the film several times, stopping and starting in a number of places, even watching it backwards. An idea had come to her, but when she had tried it out on Aunt Jessie over breakfast, the older woman had pooh-poohed it in no uncertain terms.
“Why, Roz Howard, that’s the most far-fetched notion I’ve ever heard! If it were even remotely possible, don’t you think someone would have thought of it back then? Your uncle Lou wasn’t exactly a babe in the woods, you know, and neither was that feller who conducted the inquest.” But Roz had kept after her with various questions, until finally Aunt Jessie had stomped off downstairs to the storage room, and come back with a box of dusty file folders, which she set down on the kitchen table in front of Roz.
“There!” she said. “It’s all in there. Lou kept all the records, right up till the bitter end. He even talked them into giving him that old film reel when the county coroner’s office was ready to chuck it out with all the other evidence when the case was closed. That’s how we came to have it, since you didn’t ask. Lou told them it had great sentimental value, moving pictures of him and his two best girls--me and the boat.”
Aunt Jessie paused briefly in the doorway, a wistful expression on her face. “That old rascal could talk the mud out of a puddle and the wallpaper off the wall. Hmm, ahem!” She made a great show of turning away and rearranging her canvas carryall. “But you know that,” she said briskly over her shoulder to Roz. “See you later. Bye.” And with that she was out the door and away, chugging down the lane in her beloved old Woodie.
Roz worked quickly down through the pile of folders, most of them carefully labeled in Uncle Lou’s fine, upright (if somewhat faded) Spencerian hand: “Randolph: Legal Papers.” Copies of wills, deeds, financial transactions, a typed draft of Archie’s unsigned will, a record of the will that had actually been probated, all of it just as Aunt Jessie had described.
She paused briefly over the four death certificates, and then went on to a file that held mainly newspaper clippings carefully sorted and arranged by subject and date. Here were several accounts of the fire, with banner headlines from various local and regional newspapers: PROMINENT CITIZENS DEAD IN EARLY MORNING FIRE, with follow-up stories detailing the investigation and conclusions of the authorities at the inquest. An article from the Globe detailing Agatha’s demise, a summary of the text of the note, the second inquest rendering a verdict of Missing, Presumed Dead, a victim of suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed. Lavish obituaries for all four Randolphs, and one brief notice for “Miss Helen Trent, 23, formerly of Dorchester, tragically, Tuesday, September 5, l938, in a fire that also took the lives of etc. etc. Miss Trent leaves no survivors.”
How profoundly sad, Roz thought; the poor girl had been an orphan, with no one to remember her. The Randolphs--judging by the film footage at least--were probably the closest thing to family she had.
What else? So far there she had found nothing strikingly amiss, nothing to cast doubt on the official version of events. Just two more clippings, dated some years apart: “Randolph Estate Settled.” Roz raised her eyebrows at the amount. Granted, Edward Holden had had to wait a few years until Agatha was officially declared dead, but even so, he had ended up an extremely rich young man.
The last clipping was newer; Heir to Randolph Fortune Dead at 78: Edward Holden’s obituary. So he had lived to a ripe old age, enjoying his good fortune in every sense of the word. Roz was about to read it through when her eye was caught by an envelope, much smudged, with Uncle Lou’s name written across it in faded ink: “Louis Fairbrother True, Esq.” A small nearly illegible tag on it identified it as “Case 38-456 Exhibit B.”
Roz opened the flap and slid out the piece of paper, folded into thirds, a good bit narrower than the envelope was long. She unfolded it carefully.
Monday
“Dear Lou—(the typed message read)
I could not come to terms with my dear siblings –
leaving. I will rejoin them only in hope we can be –
together. I simply cannot accept the prospect of –
being left out. I am sure you will understand and –
find a way to settle matters.
Yours
Agatha
What’s this, Roz thought, a suicide note in the style of Emily Dickinson? Odd, distinctly odd, and it wasn’t just the dashes and idiosyncratic diction, either. She held first the notepaper, then the envelope up to the light. The watermarks matched, even if the sizes didn’t. She stared for a long time at the handwriting, with its distinctive curls and dashes, flowing headlong from one edge of the narrow sheet of notepaper to the other, with virtually no regard for margins. The day of the week but no date at the top, also no comma after "Yours". Hmm. Obviously written in haste and distress, more in the style of Virginia Woolf.
Or was it?
Roz took a sheet of paper from the pad she had been using to take notes, creased it down the middle, smoothed it out and began to copy the note exactly as it appeared, but with the entire text to the left of the centerline. She was still at it, surrounded by wadded up sheets of paper, when Aunt Jessie walked in the door an hour later, bag of groceries in hand.
Which she nearly dropped all over the floor when Roz announced to her in no uncertain terms:
“Aunt Jessie, it’s just as I suspected. Aunt Agatha never committed suicide. In fact, she never left the island at all. That film of yours was doctored, and not only that, I’m willing to bet this note is bogus, too. If you’ll just bear with me, I’ll show you what I mean.”
* * *
Roz stopped the projector and sat back in the old wicker chair she had perched in while she demonstrated her version of events to a skeptical Aunt Jessie. “See the direction the mail boat takes as it leaves the dock, Aunt Jessie? It’s heading off to the right. But the channel markers indicate the channel is to the left. Either the boat is going in the wrong direction, or--”
“The channel is to the left. Always was. It shoals up into mudflats not twenty yards off that dock. That’s why the mail boat always backed in, so it’d have enough purchase heading out that the rising tide wouldn’t push it right off the swamp. But I still don’t see--”
“Just wait. You will.”
Aunt Jessie watched in silence while Roz ran the segment backwards. The mail boat stopped in mid-channel, emitted a puff of smoke, reversed, and proceeded to back up to the dock. The cabin boy looped the docking lines around the pilings, and a grinning Aunt Agatha emerged, valise in hand, waving and gesturing.
“And here’s what everyone missed before. Supposedly this is the late afternoon boat, but there are no shadows. This was filmed at noon. So you see, Aunt Jessie, that’s not Aunt Agatha leaving at all. It’s Aunt Agatha arriving the day before. Now, watch this.”
Roz ran the film forward to the scene with the three Randolphs waving and cavorting in front of the house. “Now here we presume, since all the guests were long gone and Agatha too was seen leaving, that there were only the three Randolphs left, and the camera was in the hands of Helen Trent. But look here.” Roz stopped the film again, and pointed to the flash of white at the edge of the frame. “This is the hem of someone’s dress flapping, and there’s a shoe heel to go with it. See the footprint in the gravel? There was a fifth person here, just out of sight.”
“But ... but, who is it?”
“None other than Helen Trent, coming to take the camera from Aunt Agatha—”
“Who never left.” Aunt Jessie sat quietly for a moment, her hands folded in her lap. “So,” she said at last. “She died in the fire too. They all died together.” Suddenly she turned to Roz, her face a mask of agitation. “Then what happened to Helen Trent? Did she—was she—?”
“A murderer?” Roz finished. “I don’t know, Aunt Jessie. All I know at this point is what we can gather from the film and the faked suicide note. I have an idea of what must have happened and that it involves Edward Holden, but it’s only speculation at this point.”
“So,” Aunt Jessie murmured sadly. “I guess that means we’ll never know.”
“Not necessarily.” Roz picked up the copy of Edward Holden’s obituary notice. “Listen to this. ‘Mr. Holden, a world traveler who later made his home in Newport, Rhode Island is survived by his wife, also of that city.’ I need to do a little checking first, but after that—how would you like to take a quick trip south?”
* * *
The Holden mansion was not particularly ostentatious by Newport standards; it wasn’t even on the ocean, but tucked away behind great gnarled hedges along a quiet side street. Roz had found the address through the simple expedient of looking up the name of Mrs. Edward Holden in the Newport phonebook. The plate on the stone pillar guarding the driveway said simply: “FORAY.”
“Why, as I live and breathe!” exclaimed Aunt Jessie. “This place looks just like the old Randolph place on Fox Island. They went and built themselves a replica!”
“Pretty creepy, but at least they were grateful,” Roz commented as they drove into the circular drive and around to the port-cochiere. They were expected. A liveried valet helped them out of the car and ushered them inside, where a butler greeted them. “Ladies. Mrs. Holden is in the solarium. Please follow me.”
She was standing at the far end, staring out the tall window at the gardens beyond, the apparent steadiness of her tall, upright figure belied by the walker that stood off to one side.
“Miss Rosamund Howard and Mrs. Louis True, madam,” the butler announced. “From Maine.” He bowed, then excused himself, backing out the door and pulling it shut it in front of him like a cuckoo in a clock, so comical in his precision, Roz nearly laughed. But this was serious business. The woman turned and looked at them, impassive, hands clasped in front just at her waist.
Aunt Jessie True spoke first. “Hello, Helen,” she said.
Helen Trent Holden put a hand out to steady herself on the walker, took a deep breath, and sighed. When she spoke her voice quavered ever so slightly. “So someone’s worked it out at last.”
* * *
“Though you may think otherwise, it was in fact an accident, a tragic accident,” the woman who had once been Helen Trent told her two guests, now seated across from her in a grouping of bamboo lounge chairs set in a corner away from the bright sun. A maid had brought in tea, lemonade, and a plate of tiny sandwiches.
“That night I went to bed as usual in my apartment over the garage. I couldn’t sleep, and finally I got up and went into the main house to fix myself some hot milk. The lights were all blazing away, but there wasn’t a sound, except for this flap flap flap noise coming from the library. I was already beginning to feel dizzy and sick, but I rushed in and—there they were, sprawled in their chairs as if they were sleeping. At first I couldn’t believe it, their faces all rosy, and it seemed they must be still breathing, but--”
She paused, blinked several times. “Please excuse me. It was quite awful. I still find it hard to—recall the details. But I saw immediately what had happened. It had gotten quite chilly that evening. All the windows had been shut tight, and they had the coal heater going full blast. The room was like an oven. The four of them had been overcome by carbon monoxide. I threw open all the windows and doors, but it was too late. I didn’t know what to do; in a panic I called Edward; we were in love and had decided to get married. He was stunned. He adored Agatha—she was like a mother to him—in fact she had gone to the island that weekend expressly to make sure that Archie made provisions for Edward in his will. But that hadn’t happened, and now they were all dead, and Edward would be disinherited. It seemed such a waste, and Edward so deserving...”
“So you decided to fake your death in place of Agatha’s, so Edward would inherit after all,” Roz said gently. “There was the movie camera with the film still in it, and you grabbed it up, along with Agatha’s valise and all the other evidence of her presence. Then you set the unwound reels of old film on fire, and as soon as the whole place went up, you simply walked away. No one noticed you on the mail boat, since you boarded at the public landing with so many others of the morning crowd.”
“That’s right,” the old woman said with just a trace of bitterness. “No one would have recognized me anyway; I was just another nameless, faceless minion in the Randolph household.”
Roz continued. “The place went up like tinder, the firefighters had no chance, and by mid-day the fire had consumed everything. By then you were well on your way to Boston, film in hand, where Edward was waiting. But what gave you the idea to fake the film?”
“It was Agatha herself. I had been sent down to the dock to film her arrival with the new camera Archie had bought her as a surprise. She saw me and started laughing and waving and acting odd, walking backwards and the like, and when she got to the house, she told me I’d been holding the camera upside down the whole time, that it was a trick filmmakers used to make things go in reverse and it would be terribly funny once she spliced it into the finished movie—‘We’ll have me coming and going!’ is what she said.
“Edward knew all about developing and editing from his travels with Agatha. We worked all that night in her photo lab, cutting and splicing, then projecting it over and over to make sure we had something that would work as proof of her leaving—”
“And then you refilmed the result, leaving it undeveloped in the camera, which Edward took back with him and surreptitiously planted at the scene when he drove up to identify the bodies. Meanwhile, you stayed at Beacon Hill posing as Aunt Agatha in a state of grief, black veil and mourning garb, speechless with tears, until you could fake her death as well. But the note was sheer luck, wasn’t it?”
Mrs. Holden nodded. “She’d typed it earlier that day, and left it on my desk to mail. I opened the envelope; it was a letter to the family lawyer--your husband, Mrs. True--about the disagreement over the will. When I read it over, I realized that if I cut it in half, what was left made it sound like a suicide note. It was perfect; frosting on the cake. Of course that wasn’t what it said at all. I can’t remember now exactly how it went, but she had refused to sign until she got her terms, and Edward was included in the will. She was going to leave the island and come back only when the rest of them stopped blaming her for holding everything up, and agreed to include Edward. So you see, all we did, really, was to see that Agatha got her wish.”
Mrs. Holden paused briefly, a distant look in her eyes. Then she cleared her throat and went on in the same precise, even tone.
“Edward and I never had any children. But we had a good life together, and when he died, he left everything to me. You may be interested to know my will establishes a foundation to benefit Fox Island--the Holden-Randolph Family Bequest. It’s been some years, but the islanders will get their money after all. With the proviso that this house be pulled down and rebuilt on the estate to replace the one that burnt.”
With that, Mrs. Edward Holden pulled the walker over to the side of her chair, pushed herself upright and stood, her figure regal, her face inexpressibly sad. “Thank you for coming; I find it, oddly enough, something of a relief to speak of it at last. Willis will see you to the door.”
* * *
“Do you really believe it was an accident?” Roz asked Aunt Jessie as they headed north.
Aunt Jessie thought for a moment. “If it was, that was certainly some very inspired extemporizing on the part of those two young people--with a little help from the dear departed Aunt Agatha of course--to make sure they got what they wanted and thought that they deserved. But I’m not sure it matters.”
“Why not?”
“That was one of the saddest faces I’ve ever seen on a woman, the kind you earn only over the course of a lifetime. Her whole life was a lie. She erased herself; the woman who was Helen Trent ceased to exist. Somehow I don’t think either one of them got much joy from their riches, however they justified it. In the end, they only had each other and the memory of what they’d done.”
“Well, at least it comes out right in the end.”
“That’s so. The folks on Fox Island are in for some rare good news, and very shortly, if I don’t miss my guess.” Aunt Jessie turned to Roz with a twinkle in her eye. “Say, shall we tell them?”
“Oh, I think not, Aunt Jessie. Let them be surprised.”
The End
Aunt Agatha’s original, typed letter read as follows:
Monday, Sept 6, ‘38
Dear Lou—
I could not come to terms with my dear siblings–I make my point by
leaving. I plan to rejoin them in hopes we can be–more reasonable
together. I simply cannot accept the prospect of–my dear boy Edward
being left out. I'm sure you will understand and–I trust,
find a way to settle matters.
Fondly,
Agatha R