“That’s right.”
“What else?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
She hesitated for a moment, looking me over as though trying to decide how much to tell me. Then she said, “My uncle died a few years ago and apparently left my aunt some money. No one knows how much.”
I simply sat there.
She started choosing her words, and I knew she was being careful, trying to say exactly what she wanted to say. “My aunt is now fifty-two. During the past few years, I am afraid she has become inordinately vain. She is a very young-looking woman for her age, but she carries it to extremes and is getting positively silly. She has developed a passion for asking people to guess her age — well, you know how that is. Nothing seems to be too absurd for her. As I say, she’s fifty-two. If a person guesses her as forty-five, Aunt Amelia gets just a little bit frosty. If it’s forty, she’ll smile. But if they put her down around thirty-seven, Auntie will simper and beam and really warm up and say, ‘Darling, you never would guess it, but I’m actually forty-one’.”
“Her hair?” I asked.
“Henna.”
“Disposition?”