I was abroad when I had the letter telling of my Aunt Kestrel’s death. She was over ninety and had been in a nursing home and failing for some time. I had always sent her birthday and Christmas cards and presents but I had seen her very little since the holidays I spent at Iyot as a boy and now, as one always does, I felt guilty that I had not made more effort to visit her in her old age. I am sure she must have been lonely. She was an intelligent woman with many interests and one who was happy in her own company. She was not a natural companion for a small boy but she had always done her best to ensure that I was happy when I stayed there and as I grew older I had been able to talk to her more about the things that interested her and which I was beginning to learn a little about – medieval history, military biography, the Fenlands, and her impeccable botanical illustrating.
I was saddened by her death and planned to return for her funeral but the day after I received the news, I had a letter from her solicitor informing me that Aunt Kestrel had given him strict and clear instructions that it was to be entirely private, followed by cremation, and so anxious had she been not to have any mourners that the day and time were being kept from everyone save those immediately involved and the lawyer himself. But he concluded:
‘However, I have Mrs Dickinson’s instructions that she wishes you and your cousin, Mrs Leonora Sebastian to attend my office, on a day to be arranged to your convenience, to be told the contents of her Will, of which I am the executor.’
I wrote to Leonora at the last address I had but I had had no contact with her for some years. I knew that she had married and been divorced and thought she sounded like her mother’s daughter, but she had not replied to my last two cards and had apparently dropped out of sight.
Then, the evening I received the solicitor’s letter, she telephoned me. I had just arrived back in London. She sounded as I might have expected, haughty and somewhat brusque.
‘I suppose this is necessary, Edward? It’s not convenient and I hate those bloody fens.’
‘He wouldn’t have asked us if he could have dealt with it any other way – he is almost certainly acting on Aunt Kestrel’s instructions. I shall drive up. Would you like me to take you?’
‘No, I’m not sure what arrangements I shall make. I want to see the house, do you? I presume we are the only legatees and we’ll get everything? Though as I am older and my mother was older than yours, it would seem fairer that I get the lion’s share.’
She left me speechless. We agreed to meet at Iyot House, and then again at the solicitor’s the following morning. I wondered what she would look like now, whether she still had the wonderful flaring red hair, if she still had a temper, if she had married again and borne any children. I knew almost nothing about Leonora’s adult life, as I imagined she knew little about mine. She would not have had enough interest in me to find out.
She had not, of course, turned up the previous evening at the house, and left no message. I daresay she couldn’t be bothered. But that she would bother to attend the reading of our aunt’s Will I had no doubt.