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

by Diana Xarissa

  The two were deep in conversation, with William’s arm draped over Sienna’s shoulders. As they walked back towards their tent, he kept a firm hold on the pretty young actress.

  “That looked very cosy,” Doona hissed, after the pair disappeared into the tent.

  “And Penny isn’t pleased,” Hugh said. They all looked up and watched as Penny dashed from behind the stage into the tent. Her eyes were red and swollen and she held a huge wad of tissues in her hand. Adam followed not far behind Penny, his own face a picture of indifference.

  “I’m sure I saw Candy behind the stage earlier,” Bessie told the others. “I wonder what she was doing there.”

  She didn’t have to wonder for long, as just then Candy emerged from behind the stage and headed straight for the VIP section.

  “Bessie, my darling, how lovely to see you here again,” she said as she reached the roped-off area.

  Bessie returned the quick and superficial hug that Candy bent down to give her, pulling back rapidly as she breathed in the alcoholic fumes that the other woman was emitting.

  “Maybe I could sit with you to watch the rest of the show?” Candy asked, dropping to the ground between Bessie and Doona. “I arrived too late for the first half and ended up standing outside the locked castle door until the interval. It wasn’t until people started leaving that I was able to get in.”

  “Why bother?” Doona asked. “I would have thought you’d have better things to do.”

  Candy laughed heartily. “You don’t mince words, do you?” she said to Doona. “I was torn, really, between coming and not. In the end, I wanted to see how much they’d managed to improve things over the last two days. I’m still interested in helping little Sienna along, as well. I wanted to see her work again, especially in the context of all the stress she must be under.”

  “Any special reason why Sienna would be under more stress than the others?” John asked.

  Candy shrugged. “She has to think that Adam killed Scott, doesn’t she? That must put a damper on their relationship.”

  “I thought you suspected Sienna,” John said.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Candy waved a hand. “Sienna, Adam, William, Penny, spin the wheel, flip a coin, throw a dice. It could have been any of them.” She laughed again. “Except only one dice is called a die, isn’t it? That’s ironic.” Candy’s drunken laughter echoed around them for a moment. Bessie finally interrupted.

  “Candy, are you okay?” she asked with genuine concern.

  “Oh, I’m drunk, I suppose,” Candy answered. “But I took a taxi here. I didn’t drive. I just can’t seem to find anything to do with myself except drink wine and get maudlin. I didn’t realise how much I cared about Scott, you know? He was a good kid and we were having fun together. He was going to go far, he was, and he was going to take me with him. Now I’m back on my own. And you know what?”

  Candy leaned in close to Bessie and whispered. “I’m almost ready to consider axing, ax, I mean, asking William for my old job back.”

  Bessie held her breath until the woman swayed back away from her. Candy smelled as if she’d been bathing in wine as well as drinking it.

  “Do you think the troupe would take you back?” Doona asked.

  Candy shrugged. “I’m not sure I want to go back,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to see the show again. It sucked big time on Friday night. I need to know if they’ve improved it. You saw the first act was it any better?”

  Bessie and her friends exchanged looks.

  “No,” Hugh blurted out. He blushed. “That is, I still didn’t understand what was going on.”

  Candy nodded. “That’s what I thought on Friday. I thought maybe I just drank too much wine and that’s why I was confused.”

  “You seem to have drunk more today,” Doona suggested.

  Candy laughed again. “You’re right about that, sister. But I don’t have time to sober up. The troupe is only here for another week.” She laughed again, and then the laughter turned into a coughing fit. After several minutes, Bessie started to worry. Doona offered Candy a bottle of water, and after a few sips the coughing finally petered out.

  “Three packs a day for twenty years,” Candy gasped out.

  The sound of voices stopped anyone from replying. The supporting cast members had returned to the stage while Bessie and her friends had been focussed on Candy. Now they all turned their attention back to the show.

  Twenty minutes in, Bessie felt like just walking out. The second half remained as confused as it had been on Friday, even if the extras all knew their cues perfectly. Bessie let her mind wander. She tried to think back to the night of Scott’s murder. As she watched the four lead actors take part in each short scene, only to disappear back into their tent to reemerge in different costumes for another, Bessie tried to remember the comings and goings from Friday.

  “They’re doing things in a different order,” Doona hissed to Bessie. “Dare I say, it’s even more confusing now than it was on Friday?”

  “They’ve changed the running order of the scenes,” Candy said, shaking her head. “It barely made sense on Friday. This is madness.”

  Bessie shifted on the grass, trying to find a more comfortable position. She glanced back towards the audience behind them. Several people were standing up and packing up their things in spite of the performance going on in front of them. While it was rude, Bessie sympathised.

  A few moments later, Bessie watched as Penny carefully climbed the wooden stairs to the small balcony that was perched on the edge of the stage. She remembered the scene from Friday; it had been lifted from Romeo and Juliet almost exactly as written and had been the one small part of the show that she’s actually felt she’d understood. Whatever else she thought of Penny, the woman had poured her heart and soul into Juliet’s balcony scene.

  William appeared and began the famous scene. The audience seemed to grow quieter and more attentive as if everyone suddenly felt like they could understand what was happening. William was overly dramatic, though, and Bessie couldn’t help but feel that his Romeo wouldn’t have attracted Juliet in the slightest. She watched Penny, wondering what the woman was feeling as she perched on the tiny balcony.

  “O Romeo, Romeo,” she began.

  Bessie gasped. “But that’s Sienna,” she whispered to Doona.

  “What’s she doing up there?” Candy barked out loudly.

  A sudden loud cracking noise cut off the conversation. Bessie and the others watched helplessly as the tiny balcony seemed to shake, and then the entire structure crashed down onto the stage below.

  Sienna’s scream echoed across the castle grounds.

  Chapter Ten

  Inspector Rockwell was halfway to the stage before Bessie even fully registered what was happening. Hugh was only a step behind. Doona quickly got to her feet and started giving orders.

  “You two stay here,” she told Bessie and Candy.

  Bessie watched as Doona grabbed Bob and said something to him. Bob nodded and rushed off towards the front of the castle. People all around the site had risen to their feet and now stood watching the scene on the stage unfold.

  John was clearly giving the orders on the stage, and Bessie noticed that Hugh had his mobile out. She wasn’t anywhere near close enough to actually see it, but she imagined that she could tell that he’d pushed a single number three times over. It wouldn’t be long before the emergency services began to arrive.

  The robed members of the local theatre group made their way off the stage and back to their tent. That left Penny, William and Adam helping John and Hugh to rescue Sienna from the wooden rubble. Bessie could see blood on Sienna’s head as she was pulled out of the wreckage. She gave the audience a weak wave, which generated a huge round of applause from everyone.

  John and Hugh carefully stretched her out on the stage and then John stepped to the edge.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” he said loudly. “I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the end of the
show for today. I’m going to ask you to bear with me for a short while. Obviously, the Isle of Man Constabulary, of which I am a part, will have to investigate this accident. Therefore, I will ask you all to remain where you are until you’ve had a chance to give a statement to an officer.”

  A generally disgruntled murmur went through the crowd, but no one said anything loudly enough for Bessie to hear.

  The inspector turned back to Sienna, and only a few moments later Bessie could hear sirens. It wasn’t long before several uniformed officers arrived, along with a pair of ambulance men pushing a stretcher. John came off the stage to issue instructions to the newly arrived officers, while the paramedics took charge of Sienna.

  Within minutes, they were wheeling her away over the rough ground towards the castle entrance. Penny, William, and Adam watched from the stage, all three looking stunned.

  As officers began to take statements from the audience, Doona came back over to Bessie and Candy.

  “John’s going to set up in the storage room again. He wondered if you’d like to join him?” she said to Bessie.

  Bessie got up slowly. “I would, indeed,” she said. “Especially if he has a chair for me.”

  Doona laughed. “We need to get you a little folding chair for these sorts of things,” she told her friend. “I think I could do with one as well.”

  “What am I meant to do?” Candy asked in a dull monotone.

  Bessie looked at the woman, who appeared to be almost in shock.

  “Can you wait here for a bit?” Doona asked her. “I’ll have someone bring you a cup of tea. I’m sure Inspector Rockwell is going to want to talk to you.”

  Candy shrugged. “That’s fine,” she said.

  Bessie followed her friend through the crowds towards the little storage room. Doug, from MNH, was there with his keys to let her in.

  “Where’s Henry today?” Bessie couldn’t help but ask.

  “He’s having a much-deserved day off,” Doug told her. “Bob and I figured we could handle things. Jack’s here somewhere, as well. He’s from the maintenance team.”

  “Henry will be glad he missed this,” Bessie said.

  “Aye, he will,” Doug agreed. “He was plenty shook up by what went on Friday night, you know. At least today he wasn’t anywhere near here when things went wrong.”

  “You can just wait here for John,” Doona told Bessie. “I’ve got to go and help sort out the interviews with the audience. There’s quite a few more of them today than there were Friday night, even if a lot of them did sneak away during the interval.”

  Bessie and Doug set up the small table and chairs in the same way that they had been set up on Friday evening. Bessie thought about moving the panels back into place with a chair for herself behind them again, but decided against it. All of the main cast members knew her by now. If they didn’t want her in the room, they could tell the inspector that, but she wasn’t going to stay out of sight in a corner.

  Once Doug was happy that the room was set up the way the inspector would want it, he left Bessie there and headed out to see what else needed doing.

  Bessie sank down into one of the chairs. She’d brought along one of her larger handbags and now she dug inside it for a book. There were at least two in there, and she let fate chose for her by simply pulling out the first one she touched.

  She’d brought her picnic hamper with her as well, so now she helped herself to a handful of custard creams and settled in to read. It was nearly an hour before the inspector finally joined her, and Bessie was absorbed in imagining what might happen if she, too, simply turned up at CIA headquarters and offered her services as a spy.

  Of course, she’d reasoned to herself, it would make more sense if she applied at MI-6, the British Intelligence service. Otherwise, she totally agreed with her book’s heroine, though. Why didn’t spy agencies hire the elderly, who had an entire life’s worth of experiences behind them, and a great deal of extra time on their hands?

  Bessie didn’t have a husband or children to worry about. She could travel the world, carrying out missions, and hardly anyone would even notice she’d gone. With nothing else to do in the tiny storage room, Bessie had set the book aside and given the notion some semi-serious thought. By the time John joined her, she’d decided that she would miss her little cottage by the sea too much to leave. She was just rejoining the action with the fictional elderly spy when the inspector opened the door and walked in.

  He looked exhausted, and Bessie handed him a chocolate Bourbon biscuit as he sat down, before he even spoke. After a surprised look, the man ate the biscuit as if he hadn’t been fed in months. Bessie pulled out the packet and handed it to him. About half the container disappeared before the inspector spoke.

  “Thank you. Those really hit the spot,” he told Bessie. “I didn’t realise I was hungry, but clearly I needed something.”

  “I have digestives and custard creams if you fancy anything else,” Bessie replied. She grinned as she watched him think about it.

  “No, better not,” he replied eventually, patting his flat stomach. “Anyway, we have a lot to do and I need to get around to Noble’s to talk to Sienna as soon as I possibly can, as well.”

  “How is Sienna?”

  “Better than she might have been,” John said with a sigh. “She was conscious and her vital signs were good when she left here, anyway. The paramedics think she may well have a broken leg and a concussion, but it could have been much worse. She fell a pretty long way and she landed in a pile of broken wooden beams. She could easily have been killed.”

  “Did she tell you anything useful before they took her away?” Bessie asked.

  “No, not really,” John told her. “She was pretty shaken up.”

  Bessie frowned. “I’m guessing that you don’t think it was an accident.”

  “No,” John said. “I don’t think it was an accident. From what I could see, it looked as if someone pulled a number of nails out of at least one of the main support beams. It’s possible they did more than that. There’s an accident investigation team on-site at the moment, inspecting everything. There were a crowbar and a hammer behind the stage, right next to the steps for the balcony. Anyone could have used them to pull out the nails.”

  “Why were they there?” Bessie asked.

  “No one is sure,” John sighed. “Jack, the maintenance man on duty, swears that all of the tools and equipment were put away before the show started, but Bob remembers Jack working on a loose step right up until two o’clock. It’s possible he left the tools there when the extras began to take to the stage. Regardless, the tools were kept in an unlocked closet behind the ticket booth. Anyone could have simply walked in and taken what they wanted. I can’t see anyone stopping a member of the cast from borrowing a hammer. Bob said the entire cast has been on the site since ten this morning.”

  “What about the audience or the extras?” Bessie asked.

  John shrugged. “As with Scott’s murder, we aren’t ruling anyone out at this early stage. The extras have to be more likely than the audience. Doug was on duty next to the stage, at least during the show and the interval, and I think he would have intercepted any audience member that might have wandered back there. Unfortunately, he was on the opposite side of the stage from the balcony, and he doesn’t think he saw anything significant.”

  “Presumably the extras were all over the place back there, though,” Bessie said thoughtfully.

  “They were,” John agreed. “I’m hoping at least one of them might have noticed something significant, but I’m not sure that any of them had any reason for wanting to hurt Sienna.”

  “Are you sure Sienna was the target, though?” Bessie asked. “On Friday night the Juliet role was played by Penny.”

  John rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Maybe I will have a few custard creams,” he said eventually. After he’d eaten a handful of biscuits, he continued. “In answer to your question, no, I’m not sure Sienna was the target. It’s also p
ossible that someone was just trying to disrupt the show, with no clear target.”

  “Surely if it was one of the players, they were putting themselves in danger as well, though,” Bessie said, thinking hard. “The people on stage were at risk for getting hit with flying bits of debris, and anyone standing under the platform might have been really hurt.”

  “A few of the extras did sustain minor injuries,” John told her. “Just cuts and bruises, but, as you say, it could have been worse.”

  Bessie sighed. “I’m trying to remember who was on stage when it happened. William was there, but he was about as far away from the balcony as you could get.”

  “Did you get the feeling he was trying to stay away from the balcony?” John asked.

  Bessie shrugged. “I’m pretty sure he stood in the same sort of place on Friday,” she said. “He was meant to be Romeo, watching Juliet from afar, right?”

  John nodded. “I thought the staging was about the same as Friday, also, but I wanted your impression.”

  “I don’t think either Penny or Adam was on the stage during the scene,” Bessie said thoughtfully.

  “No, they were both backstage when the accident happened,” John confirmed. “I suppose, on some level, that makes them the most likely suspects.”

  “What about Candy?” Bessie asked.

  John nodded. “She’s also a possibility. She was definitely behind the stage between acts.”

  “But what possible motive could she have had for hurting Sienna?”

  “Penny might have been the target,” John reminded her.

  Bessie sighed. “I can’t see any reason why Candy would have wanted to hurt Penny, either.”

  “Neither can I,” John sighed. “I think we’d better get on with questioning everyone.”

  The inspector went to the door and asked the constable stationed there to start bringing the main cast members in to him, one at a time.

  “I want to leave Candy for last. I’m hoping she might be closer to sober by then.”

  Bessie nodded.