Aunt Bessie Decides (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 4)

by Diana Xarissa

  The trio fell on the hot drinks and biscuits greedily, and within minutes there was nothing left but crumbs.

  “I’ll take the mugs and the tray back to Mr. Costain,” Wilson said, getting to his feet. “Shall I bring the next person?” he asked Rockwell.

  “Yes, I’ll have Penny Jakubowski next, please,” the inspector replied.

  Wilson nodded and then left, pulling the door shut behind him. Bessie yawned deeply. “I shouldn’t be more tired after all that coffee,” she said, mostly to herself.

  “I’m going to take advantage of the gap between interviews to go to the loo,” Rockwell told her. “I’ll be right back.”

  Bessie nodded. She wasn’t in any hurry to get back to her corner behind the panels, so she got up and made a slow circuit of the small room. She peeked inside a couple of boxes, and discovered that the castle had hundreds of rolls of loo paper, two cases of ink for the printer that dispensed admission tickets and at least a dozen broken audio tour headsets. She briefly considered heading outside for some fresh air, but it was too dark to try to walk anywhere. She knew the castle grounds were uneven and she didn’t want to risk a turned ankle. She was making another slow loop of the room when someone knocked on the door.

  Wilson stuck his head in the door, and then Penny pushed it open and rushed inside.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed when she saw Bessie. “I didn’t know you were with the police.”

  “I’m not,” Bessie told her hurriedly. “The inspector has kindly allowed me to sit in here, in the corner, while I’m waiting. He’s going to give me a ride home once he’s done, you see.”

  Penny nodded. “But I’m ever so glad you’re here,” she exclaimed. “I really need someone to hold my hand. They said I can’t have William in here with me. Will you please sit with me during my interview and help me?”

  Bessie looked at Wilson, who found sudden interest in his shoes. “Well, I, um, that is,” Bessie stammered.

  “Oh, please,” the other woman said, tears filling her eyes.

  Bessie sighed. “If the inspector has no objection, I guess I can,” she said slowly.

  “Oh, thank you,” Penny replied, falling into Bessie’s arms. Bessie stood helplessly as the woman began to sob. Wilson’s attention shifted from his shoes to his fingernails as Bessie patted Penny on the back and muttered meaningless words at her. To Bessie, it felt like hours before Inspector Rockwell returned.

  When he pushed open the door, he quickly assessed the situation and shook his head at Bessie.

  “Ms. Jakubowski, please calm down,” he said, taking Penny’s arm gently. “Come and sit down and relax.” He glanced up at the constable. “Wilson, can you go and find some water for Ms. Jakubowski, please?”

  Wilson dashed away, looking grateful for the excuse to get away from the still sobbing actress. Bessie had been digging around in her handbag and she finally found a small packet of tissues. She offered one to Penny, who thanked her excessively for it.

  “It’s okay,” Rockwell said, as they both sat down. “I just have a few quick questions for you and then you can get back to the hotel and get some sleep.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again,” Penny moaned. “Every time I close my eyes, I see Scott lying there, so motionless, so….” she broke off, dropping her head into her hands and sobbing even louder.

  Bessie exchanged glances with Rockwell and then sighed. Someone had to stop this nonsense and it didn’t look as if the inspector wanted to jump in.

  Bessie sat down in the chair next to Penny’s and pulled her hands away from her face. “Enough,” Bessie said sternly. “Pull yourself together.”

  Penny blinked a couple of times, staring at Bessie. “But I….”

  “But nothing,” Bessie interrupted. “You’re an actress. You have to be able to control your emotions on stage. Control them now.”

  Wilson came back in with a bottle of water in his hand. Bessie took it and twisted off the cap. For a moment she was tempted to upend the bottle over Penny’s head, but she resisted. Instead, she handed the drink to the other woman who took a hesitant sip. After a moment, she drank a bit more and then took a long and shaky breath.

  “I’m okay now,” she said. “I’m so sorry about that.”

  “It’s been a very long day for everyone,” Rockwell told her. “But if you can just answer a few questions, I can let you get some sleep.”

  “I’ll try to be brave,” Penny answered. “For Scott’s sake.”

  She choked off a sob at the end of the words and had Bessie wishing she’d dumped the water over her after all.

  “Right, I’m going to take notes and record this as well, if that’s okay with you,” Rockwell told her.

  “It’s fine, but I’d really like it if Mrs., er, um.” She turned to Bessie. “I’m awfully sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name,” she said with a helpless shrug.

  “You can just call me Bessie,” Bessie answered, deciding that informality would simplify things.

  “Oh, right, well, please can I have Bessie stay with me?” Penny asked the inspector.

  “I’m not sure I understand why you want her company,” Rockwell answered.

  Penny shook her head. “I’m sure you don’t mean it, but you’re awfully intimidating,” she told him. “Bessie seems like such a kind and caring person. I’m sure I can be far braver with her holding my hand than I can be on my own.”

  Bessie wasn’t sure what she saw flash over the inspector’s face, but after a moment he simply nodded. “If you prefer, I suppose it will be okay if Bessie sits in on the interview.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Penny said theatrically.

  Rockwell asked Penny to tell him the history of the troupe, and her version was very similar to the others that Bessie had already heard. Like Adam, she was far more positive about recent events than Sienna had been.

  “How many shows did you do in London before you came here?” Rockwell asked after she’d finished.

  “Oh, maybe just a handful,” Penny answered airily. “Of course, once Scott left we were stuck, so it was just as well we didn’t have a lot of shows lined up.”

  “And then you decided to try Mr. Misnik’s play instead of sticking to Shakespeare?” Rockwell asked.

  Penny looked down at the table and then around the room. “Well,” she said finally, “I guess you could put it that way.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, as I said, we were stuck. We couldn’t keep doing Hamlet unless we found at least a couple more strong performers, and we couldn’t seem to agree on a different play. I thought Romeo and Juliet would be ideal, but no one else agreed with me.” She sighed dramatically.

  “Did you know that Mr. Misnik had written a play?”

  “Oh, we all knew that. Adam was always talking about how he was going to be the next great playwright. William and I tried to encourage him, really. I mean, he wasn’t hurting anything, writing in his spare time.”

  “So what made you decide to perform his play?”

  Penny shrugged. “William makes those decisions,” she said. “One day we were discussing what to do next and then the next day William was passing out scripts. Adam had written it just for our troupe, so it was perfect. There were four lead roles and the rest of the show can be filled in with amateur players who can be taught their parts in a matter of min… er, in a few solid hours of rehearsal.”

  “So Adam wrote the play after Mr. Carson and Ms. Sparkles left the show?”

  “I guess so,” Penny said with a frown. “I mean, I never really thought about it. He’s been writing stuff for years. You’d have to ask him when he wrote it, I guess.”

  “What can you tell me about the knife?” Rockwell asked, changing the subject.

  Penny’s eyes filled with tears. “I just got a glimpse of it and the lighting was bad, but the knife looked like, that is, oh.” She dropped her head into her hands again and began to cry.

  Bessie rolled her eyes at the inspect
or and then pulled on Penny’s shoulder. When Penny looked up, Bessie gave her an angry look. “You aren’t helping Scott by crying,” she said stoutly. “If you truly want to help him, you’ll stop carrying on and focus.”

  Penny nodded. “I know you’re right,” she whimpered. “But it’s so hard. I really cared about Scott.”

  “And you can cry all night about him if you want to,” Bessie told her. “But for now, you need to stay strong and answer the inspector’s questions.”

  “Okay,” Penny said, taking a deep breath. “The knife looked like one of our prop knives, but if it had been, it wouldn’t have hurt Scott. It also looked like a knife that I gave William a few years ago. That one was a real knife, but it disappeared about six months ago from our apartment in Los Angeles. If I could get a better look at it, I’d be more certain.”

  “Were they any distinguishing marks on the knife you gave Mr. Baldwin?” Rockwell asked.

  “Our initials were engraved on the blade,” Penny told him. “Sort of fancy-like and entwined. I actually designed the engraving and had it done by an expert.”

  “Did you have any interaction with Scott during the second half of the show?”

  Penny shook her head. “Oh no, I was too busy,” she began and then stopped. “I did,” she said in a very quiet voice after a short pause. “I stopped once, on my way into the changing room tent, to say a quick hello. Scott didn’t answer me. I just thought he was asleep.”

  Tears welled up again, but one stern look from Bessie seemed to get Penny back under control.

  “He may well have just been asleep,” the inspector told the actress. “Was it totally dark by that time or could you still see a little bit?”

  “It was pretty dark,” Penny answered slowly. “We all had flashlights. That sweet man from the castle was handing them to us as we came off stage and then collecting them back when we returned. I turned mine off as I was heading into the tent to change, and then I bent down next to Scott and whispered ‘hi’ or something, but he didn’t reply. I didn’t want to turn the flashlight on and risk annoying everyone else or upsetting his security guards.”

  “Okay, one last question,” the inspector said in a tired voice. “Who do you think killed Scott?”

  Penny blinked. “That’s an easy one,” she said with a small smile. “Candy.”

  Bessie was so surprised that she had to bite her tongue to keep herself quiet. The inspector looked shocked as well, but only for a moment.

  “And why would Ms. Sparkles have wanted him dead?” Rockwell asked.

  “Scott was getting ready to fire her,” Penny said in a confiding tone.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Scott called me last week,” she explained. “He told me how happy he was at Market Square, and that he’d been offered representation from one of the biggest talent management agencies in the world. He felt bad, but he was going to fire Candy and start using them. Candy was in over her head, anyway.”

  “I’m not sure how killing him benefits Ms. Sparkles,” Rockwell remarked.

  “She’s his agent,” Penny replied. “I’m sure she has a large life insurance policy on him, to protect herself from loss of future income. Scott’s death will be a huge payday for her.”

  Rockwell made a few notes and then rubbed a hand over his face. “Thank you for your time tonight,” he told Penny. “I’m going to send you back to your hotel now. I’m sure I’ll have more questions for you very soon.”

  “Oh, that’s it?” Penny said in surprise. She turned to Bessie. “I guess I didn’t really need you after all.”

  Penny shrugged and then stood up and stretched. The action pulled the neckline of the very low-cut dress apart and Bessie wondered just how much more of Penny they were about to see, before the stretch ended and Penny glided towards the door.

  “I’ll see Mr. Baldwin next, please,” Rockwell told Wilson, as he headed out with Penny.

  “And hopefully, we’ll see less of him than we saw of her,” Bessie muttered under her breath.

  Rockwell laughed for a long time, as Bessie did another slow circuit of the tiny space.

  “This is outrageous,” William said in a booming voice as the young constable led him into the room. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  Rockwell gave him a tight smile. “I know exactly what time it is, and I also know that I am supposed to be off this weekend, spending time with my kids. Why don’t you do us all a favour and just confess now and we can all go home?”

  William’s jaw dropped and he stared at the inspector for a moment, then he shook his head and began to laugh heartily. “Well done,” he said through his laughter. “If I’d actually done it, I might just have been shocked into confessing. And you’ve managed to improve my vicious mood as well. I suppose I’d better behave myself now.”

  “I hope that I won’t need more than few minutes of your time,” Rockwell replied. “Please have a seat.”

  William sat down and leaned back in the chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. He seemed to take up far more space in the small room than anyone else had. Rockwell sat down on the opposite side of the table, pulling out his notebook and flipping the recording device back on, after checking that William had no objection to either.

  Bessie quietly slipped back into her corner as Rockwell asked William if he minded her being there.

  “Why should I care?” William asked. “She seems harmless enough.”

  Bessie bit her tongue and slipped into her seat. Was it wrong to hope he was the murderer and that she would play a big part in catching him, she wondered, as she settled in to her chair. She wasn’t sure why the remark rankled so much, but it set her on edge and now she focussed on him intently as Rockwell began his questioning.

  Although Bessie had heard the background on the theatre troupe three times already, somehow William made it sound new and interesting. Bessie decided, after several minutes, that it was his voice that was so compelling. She listened carefully as he told the same story about the group’s travels across the US and their decision to try their luck in the UK.

  “Of course Penny was meant to arrange everything, and she rather let us all down,” William said confidingly. “She didn’t have the slightest idea what was involved in getting the right paperwork sorted out, and in the end, I had to step in and do all of it myself. It took some time, but California was lovely and I think it’s safe to say that we all enjoyed our extended stay there.”

  Rockwell raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. “And how have things been going in the UK?” he asked instead.

  William shrugged. “We haven’t had as much success as I’d hoped for, of course. We did some shows in a little town called Bolsover up north and then had a single booking for London. Again, I hate to put the blame on Penny, but I can’t be expected to do everything, can I?”

  “And Penny booked the fortnight over here?” Rockwell checked.

  “Oh, yes, I suppose that’s something. Of course, we had to change plays before we came over.”

  “Yes, tell me about that,” the inspector invited. “What led to the change in plays and why Much Ado About the Shrew?”

  Bessie noticed William cringe as Rockwell said the name of the play. Interesting, she thought.

  “Well, once Scott and Candy left we had a bit of a dilemma,” William replied. “I love Penny to bits, but she’s rather overconfident in her own abilities sometimes. She wanted to do Romeo and Juliet, which is a lovely play and one I would have enjoyed performing myself, but Penny simply wouldn’t listen when I suggested that Sienna should play Juliet.”

  “Who would have played Romeo?” Rockwell asked the very thing Bessie had been wondering.

  William laughed. “Oh, yes, quite the double standard, I agree. I would have played Romeo, of course, as lead actor in the company. But I do think I’ve aged rather more, um, gracefully, shall we say, than my darling leading lady.”

  Bessie bit back a snort of laughter. She
had no idea how old the man was, but the idea of him playing the teenaged Romeo was just as bizarre as imagining Penny as Juliet.

  “So the company couldn’t agree on a play?” Rockwell dragged the conversation back on track.

  “No, we couldn’t. Adam’s been writing his own plays since before I met him and he’d been nagging for ages for me to give something of his a try. When it became clear that time was running out, I reluctantly gave in.”

  “And how do you think the performance went tonight?”

  Bessie leaned forward in her seat, eager to hear what the director thought of his show.

  “I was very disappointed in tonight’s show,” William said, sighing. “Very disappointed indeed. There is so much talent in our little group, but I don’t think it was properly showcased tonight. We were tragically under-rehearsed, especially with the members of the cast that we added once we’d arrived. The whole thing felt rather confused and unfinished, and one of the reasons I’m so eager to get away tonight is so that I can start arranging for additional rehearsals.”

  Rockwell nodded. “I’m sure that will help,” he said. Bessie didn’t agree.

  “Anyway, before I forget, I would like to offer you and your friends complimentary tickets to a show later in the run,” William said. “I would be delighted if you would all come back and give us another chance.”

  He reached inside his robe and pulled out a small bag. While Rockwell protested, he dug around inside the bag and then smiled at the inspector. “I’ve a number of tickets for Sunday’s matinee, if that appeals to you. Otherwise, I’ll make arrangements for tickets to be held for you for whichever performance you’d like.”

  “I can’t possibly accept,” Rockwell told him. “Although I appreciate the gesture.”

  “Well, then, perhaps your friend can accept them instead?” William suggested. He stood up and walked over to Bessie, handing her a small stack of tickets. “I’d love to see you all again on Sunday afternoon,” he said, bowing to Bessie. “I can promise you a much more thoroughly rehearsed performance.”