Aunt Bessie Needs (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 14)

by Diana Xarissa

  “Were you friends with him?” Bessie asked.

  “I knew him, but we weren’t friends,” Humphrey replied. “We met at various functions over the year and a half that he was here, but I never warmed to the man.”

  “Can you remember why not?” was Doona’s question.

  Humphrey shook his head. “At the time, I think I just assumed it was because he was from across and was clearly not committed to staying on the island for long. He said something when we first met about doing two or three years here and then getting himself a job in Australia. He didn’t like the Manx weather.”

  “I understand he did move to Australia for a while,” Bessie said.

  “Did he? I wonder if he liked it there any better,” Humphrey replied.

  “As I understand it, he didn’t stay there for long. This is all second- or third-hand information, but I was told that he got himself into trouble there and ended up moving to Canada,” Bessie told him.

  Humphrey shook his head. “I never heard from him again after he left the island, and I can’t say I wasted much energy thinking about him, either, at least not until I met Julie.”

  “Had she stayed in touch with him?” Bessie asked.

  “I don’t think so,” the man said, looking surprised. Then he shook his head. “No, she would have told me if she had.”

  “Did she have fond memories of him?” Doona’s question was interrupted by the arrival of their food. For a few minutes everyone focussed on eating. Humphrey ate as if he was starving, clearing over half of his plate in minutes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he put his fork down. “I haven’t been hungry since, well, since Julie died. This is the first thing I’ve eaten that tastes of anything, but I shouldn’t be inhaling it.”

  “Nonsense, eat as quickly as you like,” Bessie said. “And then order yourself more if you’re still hungry. Your body has had a huge shock. You need to keep it fed.”

  The man picked up his fork and took another bite before he spoke again. “You asked if Julie had fond memories of George. That’s a tough question to answer. She seemed to enjoy remembering him, but I don’t think it was him as much as the situation that she liked revisiting. She liked the forbidden nature of the relationship, I think.”

  “That would fit the girl I remember,” Bessie told him. “She wasn’t nearly as wild as she liked to think she was, but she liked living on the edge of acceptable behaviour.”

  Humphrey nodded. “That’s a good way to describe her,” he said. “That was one of the reasons why we didn’t get married for such a long time. I didn’t have any objection to marriage, but she felt it was what ordinary people did. She didn’t want to be ordinary. She liked feeling as if she was different.”

  “But you still did get married,” Bessie said.

  “We did, but only because I insisted,” he replied. “And then we ran away together and didn’t tell anyone until we were back. But after her health scare, well, I just wanted to know that she was mine, legally and everything. I suppose I’m just an ordinary man.”

  “Do you remember her getting into any trouble when she was a student in Douglas?” Bessie asked.

  “No more so than anyone else,” he told her. “Of course she brought a certain reputation with her after the incident in Ramsey, but in my class, anyway, she did her work and kept quiet.”

  “And you never talked to her outside of class,” Doona added.

  “I was extra careful not to talk to her outside of class,” he replied. “After the problems in Ramsey, all of the male teachers were given extra training in dealing with female students. We were all watched more closely, as well. As I said earlier, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t interested in getting involved with my students. In fact, when Julie was in my class I had a serious girlfriend.”

  “And then you didn’t see Julie again for twenty years, was that it?” Bessie asked.

  “It was something like that,” he agreed. “The woman I was seeing when I had Julie in class decided that teachers were boring and ran away with my closest friend. He was between jobs, which meant he was happy to leave the island with her, which was what she wanted to do.”

  “Did they live happily ever after?” Doona wondered.

  Humphrey laughed. “I forgave him after a while, because he really did me a favour. She dumped him about three months after they moved to Birmingham because he still hadn’t found a job. She ended up getting involved with a married man, falling pregnant, and begging my friend to take her back. He politely refused and she came back to the island to bring up the baby.”

  “Where are they now?” Bessie asked, fascinated by the story.

  “He’s in London. He’d always been one for tinkering with things and he ended up inventing some little valve or something that’s made him millions. He has a flat in London and a summer home in France. Last I knew, he was still single and very happy that way. She’s in Port Erin. She’s been married twice and divorced twice.”

  Bessie stopped herself from asking any more questions, even though she really wanted to know more. People fascinated her and she enjoyed hearing about other people’s lives.

  “So what happened when you met Julie again?” Doona asked as the waiter cleared their plates and handed them pudding menus.

  “She came up to me in ShopFast to say hello,” the man recalled. “She’d been living in Peel because she’d been working at the bank branch there, but she’d just been transferred back to Douglas. We started talking in the frozen food aisle and ended up having dinner together, and, well, breakfast, too.” The man coloured slightly at the memory.

  “Pudding?” the waiter asked. They all ordered. Once the man had walked away, Humphrey continued.

  “It wasn’t like me to jump into bed with a woman I’d just met,” he said, blushing a deeper red. “But Julie was very convincing. I remember thinking afterwards that I was lucky she’d never managed to get me alone when I had been teaching her. I might have found myself with the same problem as George White.”

  “But you were both adults now. That makes a difference,” Bessie said.

  “Yes, of course it does,” Humphrey agreed. “Anyway, she had been looking for a flat in Douglas and ended up simply moving in with me. We were together from that day until her death.”

  “From what you said at the memorial service, you were very happy together as well,” Bessie suggested.

  Humphrey nodded. “I’d like to think so, anyway. I know I was happy. I believe she was, as well, even though we’d become rather ordinary.”

  Bessie smiled. “That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.”

  “Julie wouldn’t have agreed with you,” Humphrey replied. “We did try to do different things, at least before she fell ill. We travelled a lot and we never had children. Julie always said she was too selfish to deal with children and I didn’t really mind either way.”

  “There are other ways to, um, keep from being ordinary in a marriage,” Doona said, catching Humphrey’s eye. The man shook his head.

  “I never cheated on Julie,” he said firmly.

  “But did she cheat on you?” Doona asked.

  Humphrey opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. The waiter delivered their puddings before he spoke again. “I hope not,” he said eventually. “The idea did cross my mind, just recently, but I don’t think, that is, I’m fairly sure I was just, well…” he trailed off and then took a deep breath. “We had a bit of a rough patch in the last month or so and I did start to wonder if she might be thinking about starting an affair, but, well, I don’t think anything happened.”

  “Did you suspect someone in particular of being involved with her?” Doona asked.

  “No, not at all,” Humphrey said. “That’s part of why I don’t think anything happened. I wondered if she might be tempted if she met someone, but I don’t think she’d met anyone yet.”

  Bessie ate her pudding, her mind racing in different directions. If Julie had been contemplating an affair, would Marcus
Porter have been a possible partner? What about Sidney Harris? Or even Alan Rossini?

  “I’m sorry to ask this, but have you given any thought to who might have killed her?” Bessie asked as she sipped her tea.

  “It seems impossible that anyone would murder her,” Humphrey replied. “Even if she was having an affair, no one gets murdered over that sort of thing anymore.”

  “Maybe her partner had a jealous wife,” Doona suggested.

  Humphrey shook his head. “I loved my wife tremendously, but if I found out she was cheating, I would have divorced her. I certainly wouldn’t have even contemplated killing the man she was involved with.”

  “But you’re sane,” Bessie remarked. “Many murderers aren’t.”

  “I just keep thinking it must have been something random,” Humphrey said. “Maybe someone wanted to steal the car or her handbag or something.”

  “Was anything missing from her handbag?” Doona asked.

  “Not as far as I could tell,” the man said. “But she fell on top of it when she, well, when, that is, she fell on top of it. Her car keys were in the bag, too. Maybe the killer was going to take her bag and her car, but he couldn’t.”

  Bessie thought about arguing, but didn’t bother. If the idea gave the man some comfort, she didn’t want to take that away from him.

  “It could have been mistaken identity, as well,” Doona suggested. “I don’t suppose you know Laura Meyers?”

  “I do know Laura,” the man replied, surprising Bessie and Doona. “I met her when I grabbed her hand one night in the building’s foyer, thinking she was Julie. They did look a lot alike, I’ll grant you, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill Laura, either.”

  “That’s for the police to work out,” Doona said. “She’s fairly new to the island. It’s possible there’s something in her past that’s caught up to her.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Humphrey said. “And now I’m not sure if the idea makes me feel better or worse. It was hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill Julie, but I can’t stand the idea that she was killed by mistake.”

  Bessie patted his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “The whole situation must be terrible for you.”

  “It’s much more difficult than anything I’ve been through before,” he said. “I thought, when Julie was sick, that nothing could be any worse than that. This is worse. When she was suffering through her treatments, throwing up and losing her hair, I tried to prepare myself for the possibility of losing her. But I didn’t lose her. She recovered. She was doing so well. To have her taken from me, suddenly and without warning, after that, has been incredibly difficult.”

  “I can understand why you wanted to marry her under the circumstances,” Bessie said.

  “She couldn’t, you know. I really had to push her into it, but I don’t regret it. Being married to her made me the happiest I’ve ever been,” he replied.

  “Do you know if she had any trouble at work?” Doona asked, changing the subject.

  “Trouble? Not that I know of. She was working full-time when we first met, but after a while she cut back to part-time. I didn’t mind as we lived cheaply. Our only extravagances were holidays and we did those as cheaply as possible as well. We backpacked across Europe one summer and we rented a car and drove across America another year. We slept in the car for more than one night just to save a few dollars.” The man shook his head. “If I could do it over again, I’d spoil her a lot more. The thing was, though, she loved sleeping in the car, or at least the thought of doing something so out of the ordinary. No one really enjoys actually sleeping in a car.”

  “And she kept working all while she was ill?” was Doona’s next question.

  “She did, although she cut her hours back further and further until she was only going in once or twice a week. It was good for her to get out of the house, though, and to have something else to focus on. Otherwise she sat at home and felt miserable.”

  Doona nodded. “Did she get along okay with the other women she worked with?” she asked.

  “As far as I know. She didn’t really talk about her job any more than I talked about mine. It annoyed her that we had to work, really, as that was rather ordinary. I know I keep using that word, but it was the one thing that Julie never wanted to be. Unfortunately, keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table meant that we both had to work. As I said, she worked as little as possible, which was fine by me.”

  “I met Alan Rossini at the memorial service,” Bessie said. “He wasn’t the most pleasant person. Did he and Julie get along okay?”

  Humphrey shrugged. “She never really talked about him, except when he would shout at her for being late. She was often late, I’m sure. She was terrible at keeping track of time.” The man glanced at his watch and slid his chair back. “On that note, I should be going,” he said. “Thank you for talking to me today. I’m running out of people who aren’t tired of hearing about Julie.”

  “I enjoyed talking with you very much,” Bessie said. “Did Julie ever mention a man called Marcus Porter at work?” she had to ask.

  “I don’t think so,” the man replied. “It doesn’t ring any bells, anyway.” He got to his feet. “Thank you again.”

  Before Bessie could ask any more questions, the man walked away. Bessie sat back in her chair and sighed. “I wasn’t done,” she said softly.

  “Weren’t you? What else were you going to ask?” Doona wanted to know.

  “I wanted to ask him about Sidney and Stephanie Harris,” Bessie replied. “And more about when Julie was ill. There’s something about that that’s bothering me, but I’m not sure what it is.”

  “I tried to throw in as many questions as I could,” Doona told her.

  “You did a wonderful job,” Bessie said. “He kept wandering off on tangents about other things. You did well keeping him on topic.”

  “I didn’t want to be rude, but I didn’t really want to hear about his ex-girlfriend.”

  “I did,” Bessie laughed. “I love hearing about people’s lives, even people I don’t know and won’t ever meet.”

  “I was just hoping we’d get closer to helping Pete solve the murder,” Doona said. “But I don’t know that we accomplished that.”

  “I’ll ring John when I get home and tell him everything that Humphrey said. Maybe there’s something there that will help,” Bessie replied.

  “And there’s still the thing at the bank on Monday,” Doona added. “Maybe someone will be feeling guilty enough to confess by then.”

  “We can but hope,” Bessie said. She caught the waiter’s eye and waved.

  “Yes? Did you need more tea?”

  “Just the bill, please,” Bessie replied.

  “Mr. Randall paid the bill,” the man told her. “He arranged it when he first arrived.”

  Bessie frowned. “I didn’t realise,” she said. “Thank you.”

  The man nodded and walked away.

  “We’ll have to thank him on Monday,” Doona said as she reached for her handbag.

  “I suppose it gives us an excuse to talk to him, anyway,” Bessie agreed.

  The pair made their way out of the restaurant and back into town.

  “I think it’s getting busier,” Doona said as they pushed their way through the crowds.

  “And the weather isn’t getting better,” Bessie added. “In fact, I think it’s raining harder again.”

  “Let’s head for home,” Doona suggested. “Unless you wanted to shop for anything else.”

  “No, I’m happy to go home. I have a box of chocolates and four new books. A quiet afternoon at home sounds just about perfect.”

  The only problem Doona had was fighting her way out of the parking garage. There were so many people looking for spaces that she had trouble getting out of her spot. When they were finally on the road back to Laxey, she was able to relax.

  “Now I remember why I don’t go into Douglas on a Saturday,” she told Bessie. “It’
s much better during the week.”

  “It is, isn’t it? And now that summer is rapidly approaching, it will be even busier with tourists.”

  Doona helped Bessie carry all of her shopping into Treoghe Bwaane. “I won’t stay, if you don’t mind,” she told Bessie. “I’m damp from being caught in the rain and all I really want to do is have a long hot bath and read a book in my pyjamas.”

  Bessie laughed. “You go home and enjoy,” she said. “I’ll see you on Monday, assuming you’re driving to the bank?”

  “Yes, and we can collect Grace again if she wants to go, too,” Doona said. “Tell her we’ll collect her at half one.”

  Once Doona was gone, Bessie rang Grace.

  “Oh, Bessie, I was just thinking about you,” Grace said. “I’ve taken the afternoon off on Monday for the reception at the bank. Is Doona going as well?”

  “She is, yes. We’ll collect you around half one,” Bessie told her.

  “I’ll be ready,” Grace promised.

  Next, Bessie rang John. He wasn’t home, so she left a message on his machine and curled up with a book while she waited for him to return her call. While she didn’t usually read thrillers, this one had tempted her with a wonderful cover and a well-written blurb on the back. Now Bessie could feel her heart racing as the killer made his way towards his next victim. When the phone rang, Bessie shrieked and then laughed at herself.

  “How was your lunch?” John asked.

  Bessie took him through the entire meal, repeating as much of the conversation as she could remember. She could picture John taking notes as she spoke. When she was finished, she felt like she needed a cup of tea.

  “Nothing in that leaps out at me, but I’ll ring Pete and repeat it all for him,” he said. “He might ring you if he has any questions.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll be here,” Bessie assured him. Maybe reading something a little less exciting, as well, she added to herself.