Aunt Bessie Solves

by Diana Xarissa

  Carol nodded and then disappeared back into the kitchen. A few minutes later one of the waitresses brought their bill and their puddings.

  “Put the round container in the freezer as soon as you get home,” she told Bessie as she handed her a large bag. “That has ice cream for two in it. The rest should go in the refrigerator until you’re ready to eat it.”

  Andrew insisted on paying for dinner. “While I’m here, dragging you around the island so that you can show me the sights, I will pay for everything,” he told Bessie. “Let’s not argue about it, okay?”

  Bessie wanted to argue, but decided to save it for later. So far he’d only paid for one dinner. That was certainly reasonable enough.

  “I hope I don’t get stopped for speeding,” Andrew joked as he and Bessie made their way back to Laxey. “I want to get the ice cream in the freezer before it melts.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine. I can’t imagine what John would say if you did get stopped.”

  “My children would go crazy. They’d assume I’d lost my mind and put me into assisted living or something.”

  “Oh, dear. And people wonder why I’m happy I never had children.”

  Andrew laughed. “My children mean well, they really do, but they worry about me far more than they should. I’m surprised my mobile hasn’t been ringing all evening, really. I thought they’d all be checking up on me by now.”

  “Is it turned on?” Bessie asked.

  Andrew glanced at her and then laughed. “It probably isn’t. I switched it off on the plane and I probably never switched it back on. The peace and quiet has been nice, anyway.”

  Back at Bessie’s cottage, Bessie put the ice cream in the freezer and the other two containers in the refrigerator while Andrew turned on his phone. A cacophony of noise burst out of it as soon as it was powered on.

  “It appears I may have missed a few calls,” he chuckled as he looked at the phone’s display.

  “Do you need to ring anyone back?” Bessie asked.

  “I’ll just ring Helen. She’ll let the others know I’m okay, and then they can all talk about me for hours while I eat ice cream and chocolate truffles.”

  Bessie grinned and then filled the kettle with fresh water. A cup of tea would go nicely with their puddings, she thought. She tried not to listen to Andrew’s side of the conversation, but he made no effort to lower his voice.

  “It’s your father. I see from my phone that you rang me twelve times in the last five hours.”

  “I had to switch it off on the plane and then I got busy with hiring the car and getting checked into my cottage. Then I had a nap.”

  “I feel fine, stop fussing.”

  “You know you’d be welcome, but I have plans for every day while I’m here. You’d have to either come along or find your own things to do.”

  “I’m not giving you my complete itinerary. You don’t need it. You can ring me if you want to talk to me.”

  “I’ll try to remember to leave my phone on, but that also means remembering to keep it charged. I won’t promise to do both. I can give you Inspector John Rockwell’s number if you’d like. You can always ring him if you need to get in touch with me.”

  Bessie grinned when Andrew pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. It was the exact same type of notebook that John always used. Andrew flipped through it for a minute and then read out a phone number that Bessie recognised as John’s office number.

  “Don’t ring him unless it’s an emergency, though. He’s a very busy man,” Andrew told his daughter.

  After he pushed the button to end the call, he shook his head at Bessie. “She’s treating me like a small child. I didn’t treat her like a small child even when she was one. Okay, maybe when she was very small, but still.” He sighed. “I don’t know if I’m too upset to enjoy my pudding or if pudding is exactly what I need.”

  “Why not have a cuppa first,” Bessie suggested. “It will soothe you.”

  After a few sips of tea, Andrew frowned. “It’s no good. I need chocolate and ice cream.”

  Bessie laughed and then pulled the containers out of her refrigerator. “Here you go,” she said, putting them on the table. “I’ll just put the ice cream into bowls.”

  When she opened the round container she was shocked by the huge amount of ice cream it held. “This is a lot more than two servings,” she told Andrew. “I’ll just give us each a scoop for now.”

  “Maybe two scoops,” Andrew suggested.

  Chuckling, Bessie spooned two generous scoops into a bowl for Andrew and two slightly smaller ones into another bowl for herself. Then she sat down and opened her box.

  “Oh, goodness, how wonderful,” she sighed as she looked at the beautifully displayed puddings.

  “I’m surprised they held up so well on the journey home.”

  “Yes, but they look almost too good to eat.”

  “I’m not having any trouble eating them,” Andrew laughed. “While we eat, shall we talk about murder?”

  Bessie nearly dropped her spoon. “Murder?”

  “I’m sure I told you that I have a cold case I want to discuss with you.”

  “Yes, you did, but I didn’t realise it was a murder case.”

  “If you’d rather not talk about it, we can talk about anything you’d like,” Andrew offered.

  “No, we can talk about your case. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather tell me more about the castles and other sites?”

  “No, not at all. Those are best discussed when you’re seeing them, anyway. Go on, then, tell me about your murder.”

  “It wasn’t even my case,” Andrew began. “I wasn’t there, in fact, I’ve never been there. The murder took place in Switzerland at a ski resort, and it really doesn’t matter which one, although I’ll tell you if you want to know.”

  “I’ve never been to Switzerland, so I doubt the name would mean anything to me, even if you did tell me.”

  “I’ll just say that it was a large and popular resort. It still is, for that matter. The investigation was assigned to a man who was more used to looking for lost property or stolen jewellery, rather than investigating murders. Having said that, everything I’ve learned about the case suggests that he did a competent job with the investigation. He even solved the case and received a full confession.”

  “I thought you said this was a cold case,” Bessie said.

  “It isn’t really, I suppose. The murder took place about thirty years ago, and the man who completed the investigation subsequently came to London and spent some time working with me. One night we started talking about cold cases, sharing stories about the ones that we’d failed to solve and that still kept us up at night. Towards the end of the evening, he told me about this case. It wasn’t properly a cold case, in that he’d received a confession and the alleged killer had gone to prison, but he was still losing sleep over the case, some twenty years after it had happened.”

  “The wrong person went to prison, then?”

  “Maybe, although my colleague didn’t seem to think so. There was just something about the case that didn’t feel right and he’d never managed to work out what it was.”

  “Now I’m intrigued. Let me make some more tea while you get started.”

  “I could do with one more scoop of ice cream if there’s any left.”

  “There’s a lot left.” Bessie gave them each another scoop of the rich and creamy caramel ice cream before putting the kettle on again. A few minutes later she was back at the table, ready for Andrew to begin.

  “It was a dark and stormy night,” he said in a mysterious voice.

  Bessie laughed. “Really?”

  “I’ve always wanted to say that,” Andrew told her. “You’ve no idea how tempting it was to start some of my police reports in that way, but I was always afraid I’d get into trouble if I actually did it. It would have been just my luck to actually sneak it into one and then end up having to
read it out in court or something. Anyway, it truly was a dark and stormy night.”

  “It’s a great beginning.”

  “Five women had travelled from London to Switzerland for a short skiing holiday in December. One of the women was getting married on New Year’s Eve. As I understand it, it was something of a last getaway before the wedding.”

  “A sort of hen night holiday?”

  “Yes, but I don’t believe women did hen nights thirty years ago.”

  “You could be right.”

  “Anyway, there were five of them. I won’t use their real names, to keep things confidential.”

  Bessie nodded. “Do you know their real names?”

  “I don’t actually. My colleague never shared them. He worried that I might know some of the people involved. London isn’t that big a place, really.”

  “How mysterious. But perhaps you’re simply making the whole story up to give us something to discuss.”

  “That’s an idea. I wish I were clever enough to do that, actually. You may believe me that clever, if you’d like.”

  “Let me hear the story first. It may not be that interesting,” Bessie laughed.

  “Right, well, I’ll give them all very ordinary names to keep things simple. Let’s start with Abby Smith. She was the oldest by a few years, maybe thirty, although she’d have probably denied it. She was undoubtedly the best skier in the group, and it was highly likely that the entire holiday was her idea. She was, well, let’s say, the ringleader of the little group.”

  “What did Abby do for a living?”

  Andrew frowned. “I don’t think their occupations matter, but all five of the girls were models. Not supermodels who were making millions, but rather more ordinary ones who did a lot of catalogue work and made a decent but unspectacular living at it.”

  “But you don’t think their work had anything to do with the murder?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “No professional rivalry between the girls? Modelling is a very competitive business, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s less competitive at the level these girls were at. It was thirty years ago, too. For the most part, they were just working while they were waiting to find husbands. They all had family money with which to support themselves. From what I was told, the modelling was more of a hobby than a career for any of them.”

  Bessie nodded. “So we have Abby, who’s the ringleader and an avid skier. Who’s next?”

  “Betty Jones. She was twenty-five, and she was the young woman who was getting married later in the month.”

  “Presumably she liked skiing enough to go along with Abby’s plans?” Bessie made the statement a question.

  “My colleague always got the feeling that most of the women were more interested in keeping Abby happy than anything else. When I say she was the ringleader, she was that and perhaps more. My colleague always felt as if she had some sort of control over the other girls.”

  “I have a dozen questions about that, but tell me about the rest of the party first.”

  “Cindy Jones was Betty’s younger sister. She was maybe twenty-two or twenty-three at the time. She was easily the most attractive of the women, and she seemed to take her job seriously, unlike the others.”

  “So if there was any professional rivalry, it was probably between Cindy and someone else.”

  “Perhaps. Dorothy Johnson comes next. She was also around twenty-five, the same age as the bride-to-be. Her family was new money, something that caused a bit of friction between her and Abby, who was very much old money and rather snobbish about it. Dorothy was only invited because Betty really liked her.”

  “Oh, my. What an interesting bunch of people.”

  “Last, but not least, Flora Wright rounded out the party. Again, she was around twenty-five. She was, well, the least successful in modelling. My colleague described her as plain and rather heavyset. What she had in her favour was a father with a great deal of money and a real willingness to spoil his daughter. As I understand it, he paid companies to hire Flora as a model, paying for entire advertising campaigns or catalogues, many of which were never actually released anywhere.”

  “The poor girl. Perhaps her father should have paid for her to get a good education so that she could find a job doing something that better suited her talents,” Bessie suggested.

  Andrew chuckled. “My colleague also told me that she was rather thick.”

  Bessie sighed. “I feel sorry for all of them, and I don’t even know what happened next.”

  “What happened next was that dark and stormy night I mentioned earlier. The girls were staying in a small chalet some distance from the main resort. It was an expensive option, but it came with its own staff to cook and clean for the women. They arrived on a Friday evening and spent the night eating and drinking and laughing together. That’s according to the cook and the maid who were charged with looking after them.”

  “A cook and a maid? How lovely,” Bessie sighed. “I’d love a cook. In fact, I’d love to hire Dan to come in and make all my meals from now on.”

  “Do you think he’d be willing to do it? Maybe he could split his time between your cottage and my flat in London.”

  Bessie shook her head. “He loves having his own business. My friend Mary Quayle has offered him a job numerous times, at a far more generous salary than I could afford, and he always turns her down.”

  “I suppose I shall have to go back to ready meals and cold cereal,” Andrew sighed.

  “But we’ve wandered away from your story. What happened after a night of eating and drinking?”

  “The maid and the cook left the chalet right around two o’clock in the morning. All hotel staff lived in a block of rooms in a separate building behind the main resort building. There was security at the front door and everyone had to check in and out. I believe they were trying to avoid having the staff, um, fraternizing with the guests. Anyway, both the maid and the cook checked into their building about two-fifteen. Around three o’clock a blizzard blew in and began to dump significant amounts of snow on the resort and the surrounding area.”

  “I’ve never been skiing, but having grown up in Cleveland, Ohio, I’ve seen more than my fair share of snow. It’s shocking how much can pile up in a short space of time.”

  “Apparently, they received three feet of snow over the next six hours. Obviously the entire resort was at a standstill on Saturday morning. The snow didn’t actually stop falling until nearly midday, by which time something like four feet of snow had piled up across the area. Work crews were sent out to start digging everyone out. When they reached the women in their chalet, though, one of them was missing.”

  “Which one?” Bessie demanded as Andrew stopped to sip tea.

  “Would you like to guess?”

  Bessie thought for a minute. “Betty Jones,” she said after a moment.

  “How did you know?”

  “There was just something about the way you talked about her that made me think something awful was going to happen to her,” Bessie explained. “It wasn’t anything you said, more the way you said it.”

  Andrew frowned. “And I was trying so hard not to give you any hints.”

  “Maybe it was just my imagination. I did have a twenty per cent chance of guessing correctly, anyway.”

  “Well, you were right. Betty was missing and the other girls were frantic. Someone rang the police and my colleague was sent to investigate.”

  “Poor Betty,” Bessie sighed as she got up to make more tea. “You did say this was a murder case, so I can only assume she was the victim.”

  “Yes, but you’re getting ahead of the story,” Andrew replied. “My colleague questioned all four of the girls at the chalet. They all told the same story, almost word for word. They’d been drinking together and having a wonderful time until about four in the morning. Then the phone had rung. It was Betty’s fiancé. The others sat quietly while Betty spoke to him. There was a screaming row that ended
with Betty slamming down the phone and running off to her bedroom. The others decided it was probably bedtime as well, so they all headed upstairs. Each of the four girls claimed to have knocked on Betty’s door to check on her before she went to bed. In every case, Betty allegedly told them through the door that she was fine and she’d see them in the morning.”

  “Not a very heavy door then,” Bessie mused.

  “No, that was one of the things that my colleague checked. The women would have had to shout pretty loudly, but if the rest of the chalet was quiet, they could have heard one another through the door.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Abby woke up first the next morning. When she discovered that the cook hadn’t arrived to make breakfast, she began waking the others to see if anyone was capable of cooking anything. Betty didn’t answer her door, so Abby just assumed she was still sleeping. It was only hours later, after Flora had made everyone else breakfast, that Cindy went to check on her sister.”

  “And found the room empty and the bed not slept in?” Bessie guessed.

  “Yes, exactly that. It didn’t take the women long to search the entire chalet, but Betty was nowhere to be found. A short while later, the resort staff finally dug a path to the chalet’s door.”

  “What did the fiancé say about the phone conversation he’d had with Betty?”

  “He denied ringing.”

  “But four women heard half of the conversation.”

  “Except the storm started right around three and by four o’clock the resort’s phone lines were all down.”

  Bessie sat back in her seat and frowned. “All four women lied? But why?”

  “An excellent question. I can’t tell you the answer to that, but I can tell you that they all stuck to the story, even when confronted by the facts. They all insisted that the phone lines to the chalet were still working at four and that Betty’s fiancé had rung, even though he denied it and the resort manager testified in court that the lines were down.”

  “The chalet didn’t have it’s own separate line or anything like that?”

  “This was thirty years ago. The chalet was lucky to have a phone at all. Even a year or two earlier, guests in the chalets had to walk to the main resort if they wanted to ring anyone.”