“If it’s for me, tell them I’ve given you the sample and gone,” Dorothy said as Bessie got up to answer the call.
“Hello?”
“Miss Cubbon, it’s Adam Marsh. I understand my sister is with you.”
“She was here, but she’s gone,” Bessie replied, feeling odd about lying to the man.
“I see. And while she was there, did she give the police a DNA sample?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s between her and the police. You’ll have to ask Dorothy, I’m afraid,” Bessie told him.
“Can you tell me whether or not there were any members of the constabulary present when my sister was there?” he asked next.
Bessie thought about the question for a minute and then answered. “Hugh Watterson and John Rockwell were both here when your sister was here,” she said.
“I see. Thank you for your time. Please tell my sister that I’m sorry and that it isn’t her fault.”
“What isn’t her fault?” Bessie asked, but the man had already put the phone down.
Bessie turned and repeated the conversation to the others.
“What isn’t my fault?” Dorothy asked. “He’s furious with me, I’m sure.”
“He didn’t sound furious,” Bessie told her. “He sounded sad.”
“I’m going to go and see him after I leave here,” Dorothy said. “We need to talk anyway, about a lot of things.”
John steered the conversation on to neutral topics and the group chatted about the weather and summer holiday plans for several minutes until John was able to take the sample he needed. As he handed Dorothy the swab, she took a deep breath.
“I’m still not sure about this,” she said softly. But she provided the sample anyway. As soon as she was finished, Bessie handed her a cup of hot tea.
Dorothy sipped it slowly while John packed the sample back into the box. “I may ring you tomorrow and tell you that I’ve changed my mind,” she told John as she stood up to leave.
“I may not be available tomorrow,” John replied. “I’m not often at my desk. You can try leaving a message, but I may not get it for a day or two.”
Dorothy nodded. “By which time it will be too late. I understand. Thank you for your patience with me. I’m sure the body isn’t Christopher’s, but, well, I’m also sure that I’ve done the right thing. Now I need to go and talk to my brother and then I suppose I’ll have to go home and deal with Henry.”
Bessie walked the woman to the door. “Thank you,” she told her. “I hope everything works out okay.”
Dorothy nodded but didn’t reply. After Bessie closed the door, John got to his feet.
“I’m going to take this in now and get the processing started,” he told the others. “Just in case anyone tries to pressure Dorothy into changing her mind.”
“That’s a good idea,” Doona said.
Bessie let John out and then turned back to Hugh and Doona. “The body is going to be Christopher’s, isn’t it?” she said sadly.
“It certainly seems that way,” Doona replied. “And I think Dorothy knows it; she just doesn’t want to admit it to herself.”
“So many lies for such a long time,” Bessie sighed.
Doona and Hugh stayed to help Bessie tidy the kitchen, but that didn’t take long. Once they were gone, Bessie found that she felt restless and sad. After pacing around her kitchen for a while, she went out and sat on the rock behind her house. Watching the tide come in helped to calm her, but even that couldn’t get rid of the feeling that something awful was going to happen. Her phone was ringing when she got back inside.
“I’ve been to see Adam,” Dorothy told her. “He’s not as angry as I thought he’d be, really. He understands why I gave the sample, even if I am wasting everyone’s time. Because I’m so worried about Christopher, though, he’s going to start going through Mother’s papers tomorrow. He’s sure he’ll be able to find some sort of contact information in them.”
“That’s all good to hear,” Bessie said. “Let’s hope he finds something quickly.”
Bessie’s sleep was restless again. This time she dreamed that she was sitting on the rock behind her house while hundreds of thousands of bits of paper blew around her. One of them had Christopher’s address on it, but she didn’t know which one. When she woke up she felt as if she’d spent the entire night trying to catch every tiny slip of paper and failing miserably.
A long and brisk walk past Thie yn Traie and nearly to the new houses improved her mood. Back at home she made herself a pot of tea and indulged in the last of the chocolate brownies as a small treat between breakfast and lunch. A short story collection that was meant to be full of award-winning mysteries felt like just the thing for her still scattered mind. She was halfway through the first story when someone knocked on the door.
“Anna, what a pleasant surprise. Please come in,” Bessie said, trying not to stare at the other woman, who had clearly been crying.
“Thank you. I’m not sure why I’m here, really. I should have gone to the police, I suppose, or maybe I should have rung Dorothy or Brian.”
“Sit down. Can I get you some tea?” Bessie offered.
“Tea? No, I don’t think I should. I don’t know what to do, really. I went for a walk on the cliffs. That’s what I always do when I’m upset, but the tide was coming in, and then I remembered your cottage and I thought, well, I don’t know what I thought. I just kept walking until I was at your door.”
“And you’re more than welcome.” Bessie led the woman to the table and pushed her gently into a chair. “Let me put the kettle on. I’m sure tea and a few biscuits will help.”
Anna looked at her for a minute and then slowly shook her head. “I’m afraid nothing will help,” she whispered.
“Anna, what’s wrong?”
“Adam has gone,” Anna replied.
As tears welled up in Anna’s eyes, Bessie looked around for a tissue box. She put it in front of Anna and then sat down opposite her. “Gone where?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“Let me ring John Rockwell. You can tell him everything,” Bessie offered.
Anna shook her head. “I know I’ll have to talk to the police eventually, but I’m not ready for that yet.”
“The police are good at finding missing people.”
“Maybe, but Adam doesn’t want to be found. And I don’t think I want to know where he is, anyway. He killed Christopher, you see.”
Bessie stared at the other woman in surprise. “Are you certain of that?” she asked after a minute.
“He wrote it all in the letter,” Anna explained.
“What letter?”
“The letter he left for me.” Anna shook her head. “I should start at the beginning.”
“Yes, I think you should.”
“Last night around six o’clock Henry rang. He told Adam that Dorothy was going to give the police a DNA sample to compare with the body they’d found on the beach all those years ago. Adam was furious. I’ve never seen him so upset. He shouted and yelled, and then suddenly he got weirdly calm. He rang someone to ask if Dorothy was there, I don’t know who.”
“He rang me,” Bessie told her. “Dorothy met with the police here because she didn’t want to go to the station.”
“You’re right in the middle of all of this, aren’t you?” Anna asked. “Anyway, Adam made a few more phone calls after that one. He rang Brian and talked to him for a short while and then he rang his advocate. He went into his office for that call, so I don’t know what was said. Dorothy arrived while he was still talking to his advocate.”
“She said she was going to go to see him when she left here.”
“They talked in his office. Again, I don’t know what was said. I was expecting shouting and crying and whatever, but I never heard any raised voices and Dorothy was smiling when she came out. She gave both Adam and me hugs before she left.”
“I’m glad to hear that. She was worried about seeing Adam.”
“After that we went to bed,” Anna continued. “I’m sorry to say that I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until around eight this morning. Adam suffered from insomnia. He often got up in the night and I’m afraid I’ve learned to sleep through it. Last night was no exception. When I got up this morning, I found the letter from Adam on the kitchen table.”
“Where is it now?”
“The letter? Still on the kitchen table. I read it about twenty times and I know it by heart. The police will want it, of course.”
“Let me ring John,” Bessie suggested.
“In a minute,” Anna replied, waving a hand. “Don’t you want to know what was in the letter?”
“It sounds as if it’s a matter for the police.”
“Yes, of course, but before I talk to them, I want to talk to you,” Anna replied. “You were so easy to talk to yesterday, when I was talking about Chris. I feel as if you should know what really happened.”
“What happened, then?” Bessie couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“Adam fell in love with me the first time he saw me,” Anna told her. “I knew that, of course. He told me that all the time. And when he saw me in Chris’s arms, it nearly broke his heart.”
“You didn’t know that he knew about you and Christopher?”
“No, not at all. I think I told you that we were trying to keep it a secret. Chris didn’t want to lose my job he was sure Adam would get rid of me if he knew.”
“But he did find out and he didn’t let you go.”
“No, he killed Chris instead,” the woman replied in a flat voice.
Bessie wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she simply kept quiet. After a minute, Anna took a shaky breath.
“According to Adam’s letter, they had a fight, Adam and Chris, I mean. Chris was going back to the UK. Adam asked him what he was planning to do about me and Chris told him that he was going to take me with him, if I was willing to go. Adam said in the letter that he simply lost control. He grabbed an empty wine bottle. They’d been drinking, you understand. And he hit Chris over the head with it. He claimed he was shocked when Chris fell to the ground, dead.”
Bessie’s mind raced. Hugh had told her that the unidentified man had drowned. Maybe it wasn’t Christopher Marsh after all.
“Adam rang his mother and told her what had happened. She made a few phone calls and then turned up with some guy who looked like a criminal, at least to Adam. The man took the body away and Agatha promised Adam that it would never be found.”
Bessie nodded as one of the puzzle pieces fell into place. It was just possible that the man Agatha had hired was Jackson Blakeslee. If Miranda had discovered that her husband had helped get rid of a dead body, then she had powerful ammunition for forcing him to accept the divorce.
“Adam claimed in the letter that he was so upset about it all that he sent me and Dorothy away so that he could have time to think. When the body washed ashore, he was worried it would be identified, but Agatha told the police that it wasn’t Chris and apparently they believed her.”
Things would have turned out very differently if the police had insisted on speaking to Christopher themselves all those years ago, instead of taking Agatha’s word for it that he was alive and well, Bessie thought.
“Anyway, I gather that Adam thought he was safe after all this time. He wasn’t expecting the police to reopen the case. He and Agatha both thought that the police would believe them when they said they knew were Chris was, as well. It was only when all of the talk about DNA samples began that Adam really started to worry.”
“Did Adam tell you where he was going in the letter?”
Anna shook her head. “He simply said that he needed to get away for a while. He said killing Chris had been a terrible accident, and that he was sorry that he’d not simply rung the police at the time. The whole cover-up was Agatha’s idea, anyway, from what I could tell.”
“Why would she cover up for him like that?” Bessie asked.
“Adam was always her favourite,” Anna said. “I’m sure she was afraid that he would go to prison if the police got involved.”
“She’s lucky she passed away before Dorothy gave the police the DNA sample, assuming the body is Christopher’s.”
“I keep going back to that,” Anna sighed. “The body may not be Christopher’s. If it isn’t, then we still don’t really know what happened to him.”
“I don’t know how long the DNA results will take, maybe a week or more,” Bessie said.
Anna shook her head. “I don’t even know who or what to believe anymore. Adam and Agatha lied to me for twenty years and I never doubted them, even though it hurt to think that Chris had just left without saying anything. I should have suspected. I should have asked more questions. I should have gone after Chris and tried to find him.”
“You can’t change the past,” Bessie said in a soothing voice. “Now you have to work out what you’re going to do in the future.”
“I should divorce Adam,” the woman replied. “I don’t want to be married to him anymore, not now. I’m so grateful as well that we weren’t able to have children. I can’t imagine how I would tell my children that their father once killed a man, even if it was an accident.”
“Take your time and do things slowly and carefully,” Bessie counseled her. “You’re going to want to find a good advocate.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Do you think I need one when I talk to the police?”
“That’s up to you,” Bessie replied.
“I need to talk to them, don’t I? There isn’t any way around that, is there?”
“I’m afraid not,” Bessie told her. “Do you want me to have someone come here? My house is more comfortable than the police station.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I think I want to go home. The police will want to see the letter and that’s where I’ve left it. Besides, Adam may have come home by now. I’d like to talk to him before I talk to the police, if I can.”
“I’ll ring Hugh and have him meet you at your house,” Bessie said. She was just a little bit worried that Adam might be there, and he might be sorry that he’d confessed to everything. She’d feel better knowing that Anna would have police protection when she got home.
“I suppose that’s okay,” Anna replied. “But if Adam is there, I want to talk to him first.”
“Let me ring Hugh now,” Bessie said. “Then I can tell you what he says.”
“Anna Marsh is here and she needs to talk to you,” Bessie told the young constable when he answered his phone. “She’d like you to meet her at her house as soon as possible.”
“I can do that,” Hugh replied.
“If her husband is there, she’d like to talk to him before she talks to you, though,” Bessie added, earning a nod from Anna.
“That’s fine. Whatever she wants.”
Bessie repeated Hugh’s words to Anna, who stood up slowly. “I should go, then,” she said. “Even though I don’t want to.”
“Would you feel better if Dorothy was there?” Bessie asked.
Anna shook her head. “Even though I know she was just trying to help, I can’t stop myself from feeling as if this is all Dorothy’s fault. If she hadn’t given the police that DNA sample, Adam wouldn’t have left.”
“And we’d never have known what happened to Christopher,” Bessie pointed out.
“Yes, but not knowing might have been easier than knowing that my husband killed him,” Anna sighed. “Knowing that it was all just a tragic accident is difficult.”
“I can’t imagine,” Bessie told her. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Maybe I can even find a way to forgive Adam,” the woman said as she walked towards the cottage door. “I mean, he shouldn’t have lied to me for all these years, but if it truly was an accident, then maybe I should think about it.”
Bessie shut the door behind the woman with her last words ringing in her ears. For some reason she doubted that it was an accident, no
matter what Adam had said in his letter. There might not be any way for the police to prove it after all this time, but Bessie was fairly certain that Christopher had been murdered by his brother, whatever Anna wanted to believe.
Chapter 15
About a week later Adam’s body washed up on the beach, not far from where his brother’s body has been found twenty years earlier. The DNA test results that confirmed the first body as Christopher’s came back the same day Adam’s body was discovered. John paid a visit to Bessie that afternoon.
“I thought Hugh might come by,” she remarked as she let the inspector into the cottage.
“He’s busy with some personal things, so he asked me to come over and share all the news with you.”
“Let me get the kettle on.” Bessie filled the kettle and piled biscuits onto a plate while John waited patiently in his seat at the kitchen table.
“I’m sure you heard that Adam’s body was found this morning,” he began when Bessie sat down with the tea and biscuits.
“I heard a body was found. I didn’t realise that it had already been identified as Adam’s.”
“It has been, and we’ve had the DNA results from the other body. It was Christopher.”
“Poor Anna,” Bessie sighed. “And poor Dorothy. I hope she doesn’t feel responsible for Adam’s death. What a sad ending to Hugh’s investigation.”
“It is sad, but at least they know what happened to Christopher now.”
“Or at least Adam’s version of what happened.”
“We have another version of events as well,” John told her. “Hugh had the US police question Jackson about it. You were right, he was the hired hand who helped get rid of the body.”
“And does his account agree with what Adam wrote in his letter?”
“In some areas, yes, but there are some key differences. According to Jackson, he and Adam loaded the body into the boot of his car and they drove to the quayside. When they moved the body from the car onto one of the boats, Jackson reckons he heard Christopher groaning. He told Adam, but Adam told him he was imagining things.”
“Hugh did say that Christopher drowned, didn’t he?”
Aunt Bessie Provides (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 16) Page 22