Aunt Bessie Provides (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 16)

by Diana Xarissa

  Dave left Bessie at the large bookshop in Ramsey, promising to collect her in a few hours from the grocery shop at the other end of the high street. She had an agreement with the bookshop that meant that they sent her new books from her favourite authors whenever they arrived. That saved Bessie from having to carry hardcover books around Ramsey when she came into town to do her shopping. Today she found three new paperbacks from authors she hadn’t tried before. They were light enough to put into her handbag while she did the rest of her shopping.

  Her next stop was at a nearby boutique that made custom gift baskets. She couldn’t stop thinking about Helen and how stressed she was about her upcoming wedding. With the help of the sales assistant, Bessie made up a basket full of relaxing bubble bath, chocolate truffles, and a scented candle.

  “We can deliver that tomorrow,” the girl told Bessie. “Or any day next week.”

  “Tomorrow would be good,” Bessie replied. She’d copied Helen’s address from her address book before she’d come out; now she filled out the paperwork for the shop. “Hope this helps you to relax,” she wrote on the card. “Please let me know if I can do anything to help.”

  With that out of the way, Bessie headed back out onto the street. She dropped into a couple of charity shops, looking for secondhand books, but not finding any that she wanted. ShopFast was busier than she’d expected, and from what she could tell, nearly all of the customers were summer visitors. Swallowing a sigh, she got herself a trolley and began a slow walk around the shop.

  She was surprised to reach the tills without seeing a single person she knew. Perhaps all of her friends and acquaintances were smart enough to stay away from the town centre during the tourist season, she thought. She added a local paper to her trolley and then waited in what she hoped was the shortest queue for her turn to pay. Of course every customer in front of her had some sort of problem with their shopping or their payment method, and Bessie found herself constantly glancing at her watch as time ticked past. Dave would wait for her, of course, but she hated making him do so.

  When she finally pushed her trolley out of the building, she found that the car park was completely full and that there were a great many cars circling the lot, looking for spaces. Feeling as if she might never find Dave in the chaos, Bessie moved forward uncertainly.

  “Aunt Bessie, you just wait there,” a voice shouted at her.

  She looked over and spotted Dave. He was just sliding his car into a space that looked a bit too small for his vehicle. Bessie shut her eyes and waited to hear the crash. When she opened them again, Dave was standing in front of her.

  “I had plenty of room,” he assured her as he pushed her trolley through the car park. “You may need to wait next to the car, though, after I’ve loaded in the shopping. I’m not sure you’ll be able to get the passenger door open.”

  Bessie looked at the huge green truck that was parked next to Dave. From what she could see, there was only about an inch of space between the vehicles. Dave put Bessie’s shopping into his boot and then slowly backed his car out of the space. Once it was far enough back, Bessie climbed in.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “But I drove around for twenty minutes looking for a space and that was the only one available.”

  “Make sure you bill me for your time,” Bessie told him.

  “It looks as if it’s going to be a long and busy summer,” Dave replied. “The schools haven’t even shut yet and the shops are already too busy.”

  “And it’s only Friday. What must they be like on the weekends?”

  “As I said before, it’s good for business, anyway. Maybe we should try going into Ramsey a little bit earlier next week.”

  Bessie nodded. “You know I’ll be up. Let’s try an hour earlier.”

  The parking area next to Bessie’s cottage was happily empty. Sometimes, when the holiday cottages were full, guests would park next to Bessie’s rather than use the car park for the cottages. Bessie didn’t typically mind, unless she had friends coming around. Dave carried her shopping into the cottage for her. She unpacked and made herself a cup of tea before settling in with the local paper.

  The article by Dan Ross, her least favourite reporter, carried a headline that made Bessie wince. “Laxey Police Seeking Murdered Man’s Identity” it read. The article just seemed to repeat everything that Bessie already knew. Dan seemed to hint in one paragraph that the police were sure the body was that of a local resident, but then he spent several paragraphs discussing all of the various ways a body might wash ashore on the island from elsewhere.

  The article closed with dark speculation as to how the poor man had ended up in the sea in the first place. While Bessie was sure that Hugh had been very careful with what he’d told the reporter, Dan seemed to suggest that Hugh was reopening the case as a murder investigation. Bessie could only hope that Hugh wouldn’t get into trouble with John, or anyone higher up, for the way Dan had written the article.

  Bessie had only just finished reading when her phone rang.

  “Aunt Bessie? It’s Hugh. If you’ve seen the local paper, you might know why I’m ringing.”

  “I just finished reading about the case,” Bessie replied. “Is there a problem?”

  “Let’s just say the chief constable isn’t very happy with the way that Dan Ross wrote his article,” Hugh said with a sigh.

  “I hope you aren’t in any trouble,” Bessie exclaimed.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” Hugh assured her. “I was smart enough to record the interview when I spoke to Mr. Ross. John listened to it the same day I talked to the man, and he was happy with what I said. The chief constable knows that I didn’t say one thing to Dan Ross about murder. Mr. Ross added that part all by himself.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “He also added a great deal of speculation about how the body might have arrived here under a number of different scenarios. Most of them are unlikely, and a few are completely impossible,” Hugh told her. “I was hoping that getting the story into the papers might encourage someone to come forward with new information, but I’m afraid all I’ve done is given Mr. Ross a lurid headline.”

  “Is the chief constable very upset?”

  “I don’t think he’s upset, but he’s concerned,” Hugh replied. “He doesn’t like this sort of publicity and he isn’t happy that it now looks as if we have a twenty-year-old murder case that has never been properly investigated. He’s demanding that the paper print a correction, but you know how likely it is that anyone will read that.”

  Bessie nodded. No doubt the correction would be buried on the back page in small print, with a headline that would guarantee no one would bother to look at it. “What happens now, then?”

  “I’ve been told to find a different case to work on,” Hugh said, sounding miserable. “The chief constable wants me to focus on clearing up some criminal cases, rather than worrying about an unidentified body.”

  “But that body belonged to a man who had family or friends,” Bessie argued. “And they deserve to know what happened to their loved one.”

  “Yeah, I agree, but closing criminal cases has to be a priority over anything else. I understand, and I even agree with the chief constable; it’s just that I still have a feeling about this case.”

  “I do, too,” Bessie told him. “Even if you’re giving up on it, I’m not, at least not right away.”

  “Officially, I’m giving up,” Hugh told her. “Or rather, scaling back. Because of the press coverage on the case, I’m still allowed to work it for a few hours each week, but that’s all. Any help you can give me, therefore, will be much appreciated.”

  “Where do I start?”

  Hugh chuckled. “Just keep doing what you’re already doing. Ring your friends and chat to them about missing men. You can tell them that you’re asking because of the case I’ve reopened, but please don’t let them think that you have any official police backing on this.”

  “Oh, that’s not a probl
em. Everyone knows I’m just nosy. No one will be surprised that I’m asking more questions, especially not after today’s paper.”

  “I have your list of names and I’m going to be working through them, trying to track down the men. I’ll let you know if I learn anything about any of them. Please let me know if you find anyone from the list or if you have anyone to add to it.”

  “I will do,” Bessie promised. “If I were you, I’d focus on Craig Fox. He seems like the most likely candidate at this point.”

  “As I said before, the inspector at the time eliminated him from consideration, but I don’t know why.”

  “And he isn’t still around to ask?”

  “Sadly, no. I’m actually meeting with his widow on Monday. I’m hoping she might have some of his old papers or notebooks that I can go through. It’s possible that he took notes on the case that never made it into any official reports.”

  “That would be helpful.”

  “Yeah, in the meantime, ring if you learn anything. I have to go.”

  Hugh put the phone down before Bessie could speak. It was quite unlike the man to be rude. She could only assume that someone had come into the room and was listening to his conversation. No doubt he would explain himself the next time she saw him.

  Bessie paced around her kitchen for several minutes. Like Hugh, she could see the chief constable’s point. Everyone wanted the police to solve crimes, but surely finding the identity of the dead man was important as well. And if it was Craig Fox, it seemed highly likely to Bessie that he was murdered. After all this time, the man definitely deserved justice.

  Since she’d presented her latest findings at the Manx Museum conference the previous month, Bessie hadn’t begun any new research. No doubt Marjorie would have a pile of old wills that Bessie could go through, if she wanted them. While she was trying to decide whether she wanted to get back to work or not, the phone rang.

  “It’s Bahey. I just saw the local paper. The body has to be Craig Fox. Hugh needs to find a distant relative and compare their DNA.”

  “Do you know where Hugh might find his relatives?”

  “I’ve no idea, but he must have cousins out there somewhere. It can’t be anyone else.”

  “Surely, if it was Craig, he would have been identified at the time,” Bessie suggested.

  “Not if Miranda was still living on the island when the body washed ashore,” Bahey said. “Her husband would have made sure no one came forward to identify the poor man.”

  “Was Miranda still on the island, though?”

  “I don’t know that, either, but Hugh will be able to work it all out as long as you point him in the right direction.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Bessie replied. “But I’ll certainly share your thoughts with him.”

  “If it isn’t Craig, then it must be some random person who fell off a fishing vessel, mustn’t it?”

  “You would think that someone would notice if a man fell off a fishing boat.”

  “Maybe, but maybe they were fishing illegally. Or maybe the man had a fight with the others on the boat and they threw him overboard. Or maybe…”

  “We should stop speculating wildly,” Bessie cut through Bahey’s increasingly shrill tone. “Hugh is looking at people who disappeared from the island around that time. There isn’t much more he can do than that. If the man was from across, we’ll probably never know who he was.”

  “I still think it was Craig Fox,” Bahey said before she rang off.

  It was an opinion that many of Bessie’s friends seem to share. For the next hour or so, Bessie’s phone seemed to ring every time she tried to put it down. Everyone she knew had seen the local paper and nearly every caller felt certain that the body in question was Craig Fox’s.

  “I still don’t understand why it wasn’t identified at the time, if it was Craig,” Bessie told one friend.

  “Oh, I’m sure Miranda made certain it wasn’t,” the other woman replied. “She may even have gone and looked at the body and then told the police it wasn’t Craig. That’s the sort of thing she would have done. She was cold-hearted enough to look at his body and swear it wasn’t him, just to cover for that husband of hers.”

  After that call, Bessie put the phone down and left it where it was, even though it rang again almost immediately. She was tired of hearing the same thing over and over again. Hugh was already looking for Craig Fox; there was nothing she could do. As another friend left a long message on her answering machine, Bessie decided she needed a walk. The beach was far too crowded to appeal to her, so she headed up the road to the shop at the top of the hill.

  Her friend, Anne Caine, had worked at the shop for many years before being suddenly let go when a new owner decided to hire his stroppy teenaged daughter instead. The girl had run off across several months ago, leaving Anne to fill in, even though Anne no longer needed the money thanks to an unexpected inheritance. Now the girl was back, and Bessie found that she was quickening her pace as she remembered that the girl, while still disagreeable, baked delicious cakes and sold them by the slice at the shop.

  “Hello, Bessie,” Anne said from behind the shop’s small counter. “I was hoping you might visit today.”

  “Anne? How lovely to see you,” Bessie said, glancing around, hoping that the table full of cake slices would be there, even if the girl wasn’t.

  “Why does everyone come in and start looking around for cake slices now?” Anne asked with a sigh. “They used to be happy to see me here, but now everyone is disappointed because I don’t have any cake.”

  “I’m very happy to see you here,” Bessie told her. “But the cakes are very good.”

  “Yes, well, I’m afraid you’ll have to visit local restaurants to get them now. They’re proving so popular that she’s stopped working here and she’s baking full-time.”

  “Good for her. I’m surprised to see you back here, though.”

  Anne shrugged. “I wasn’t doing anything much at home.” She sighed. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I was bored to bits at home and I was delighted when the owner rang and asked me if I wanted to come back to work. I don’t really need the money, as Andy gives me everything I could possibly want, but it is nice to have my own income again, even if I just spend it on incidentals.”

  “How is Andy?” Bessie asked, smiling as she pictured the young man who’d spent a large portion of his teens in her cottage.

  “He’s enjoying being back on the island for the summer, but he’s already looking forward to getting back to culinary school as well. He and his girlfriend split up because she decided to quit culinary school and move to Australia, but he doesn’t seem too upset about that. Mostly, he’s bored and spending all of his time cooking and baking for me. I never know when I get home if we’ll be having a huge Sunday roast, some sort of salad, or just cold sandwiches because he’s been doing cakes and pastries all day.”

  Bessie grinned. “I hope you like surprises,” she said.

  Anne laughed. “I do, really. It’s wonderful not having to do any cooking myself, and if I’m totally honest, the cold sandwich days are my favourite because Andy does the best puddings in the world.”

  “You’re right about that. If he wanted to sell slices of cake in here, I’m sure he’d do very well.”

  “I’m not going to suggest that to him. I wouldn’t want the owner here to think Andy’s trying to take anything away from what his daughter has accomplished.”

  Bessie knew that Anne was right, but that didn’t stop her from being disappointed. Andy was a very talented baker and it would have been wonderful to be able to buy cakes from him whenever she wanted a slice.

  “What do you need today?” Anne asked as Bessie wandered around the shop.

  “Nothing at all,” Bessie admitted. “I just needed to get out of the house. My phone won’t stop ringing.”

  “It’s the news from the local paper that’s done that, isn’t it?” Anne asked. “Let me guess, everyone thinks they know who the body be
longs to, and they’re all ringing you instead of the police.”

  “Something like that,” Bessie laughed. “Although I suspect the police are getting quite a few calls as well.”

  “There was a time when I wondered if the body might have been Andrew Teare’s,” Anne told her. “The age wasn’t exactly right, but whenever I heard about an unidentified body, I wondered.”

  Bessie frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

  “Thank you. I know that we never would have lived happily ever after or anything, but I wish he could have known his son. And I know Andy missed out on having a proper father, as well.”

  “Do you have an idea who the body might belong to?” Bessie asked, changing the subject away from Anne’s difficult past.

  “Andy and I were talking about that this morning before I came to work,” Anne replied. “He had to run out to get a few things, and he grabbed the local paper as well. Obviously he was just a toddler when the body was found, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It wasn’t that far down the beach from the Teare estate.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Bessie exclaimed. She rarely walked as far as the new houses, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone as far as the Teare estate when she walked on the beach. But coming from the other direction, the Teare mansion was probably closer to the new houses than Bessie’s cottage, and Anne’s tiny home on the estate was even closer still.

  “I remember thinking at the time that they’d found Craig Fox,” Anne said. “But then someone told me it wasn’t him.”

  “Do you remember who told you that? Because everyone I’ve spoken to today seems to be convinced that it’s Craig.”

  “It may have been Miranda,” Anne said. Bessie opened her mouth to reply, but Anne held up a hand. “I know, I know. She was the villain in the whole thing, but she and Craig didn’t live all that far away from my little cottage and I got to know her quite well while she was here. She wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone thought she was.”