Aunt Bessie Considers

by Diana Xarissa

  Bambi shook her head. “I’m sure it’s all very interesting for some people, but Mack promised me a lot more excitement than it seems like he’s going to be able to deliver. I think I might change my flight and head home tomorrow.”

  Bessie was torn between trying to persuade the girl to stay on the off chance that she might learn to enjoy history, and having sympathy for the girl’s situation. Before she could decide how to respond, Harold Smythe interrupted them.

  “I say, Bessie, would you mind terribly going and checking on Dr. Dickson? He said twenty minutes about half an hour ago and, um, everyone’s getting restless.”

  Bessie grinned. Or rather, you’re getting restless because you can’t wait to ask a few pointed questions, she said to herself. She was nothing but polite out loud, though.

  “I’d be happy to go and see if Mack is ready,” she told Harold. “Pardon me, please.” The last remark was directed towards Bambi, who nodded vaguely in Bessie’s direction.

  As Bessie crossed the room and walked back through the mostly empty foyer, she speculated that there wasn’t really anyone else that Harold could have asked.

  Mack would have been insulted if just anyone disturbed him, but as a fellow presenter at the conference, Bessie was at least quasi-official. And she was just about the only person involved in the conference who wasn’t furious at the man.

  She walked through the foyer and into the lecture hall. The room felt larger now that it was nearly empty. Henry and Doug were hard at work straightening the rows of chairs so that everything would be ready for the promised question-and-answer session.

  “Kyst t’ou, Henry?” Bessie asked.

  “Oh, um, ta mee braew,” Henry replied, looking slightly flustered. “And I hope that’s all the Manx you’ll be wanting from me tonight,” he told Bessie with a smile. “I’m too busy to think hard enough to remember my Manx.”

  Bessie laughed. “No worries,” she told the man. “I don’t want to do any more than that myself. But at least this way I can tell Marjorie I practiced when we get to class on Monday.”

  Henry laughed. “Oh, aye, every little bit helps, I suppose.”

  Henry was in the same beginning Manx language class that Liz and Bessie were taking. Marjorie Stevens was the instructor and they’d been meeting for several weeks already. Bessie’s good friend, Doona, was also taking the class. With only a few weeks to go, Bessie knew she should have been able to say a lot more than ‘how are you,’ but even though this was her third attempt at the class, she didn’t feel like she was retaining much of anything. Still, she found the class great fun and she enjoyed spending time with her classmates, even if she never mastered even the basics of the difficult Celtic language.

  “I don’t suppose Dr. Dickson has come out?” Bessie asked Henry now.

  “I haven’t seem him,” Henry said, his tone apologetic. “But we’ve only been in here a minute or two. We were keeping track of the tea and coffee and the cakes until now.”

  “Everything was wonderful,” Bessie told him with a smile. “The café bakers outdid themselves.”

  Henry grinned. “They had me in there all day yesterday mixing up stuff and hauling trays in and out of the oven. It’s the first time I’ve ever helped in the café, but I think they were desperate.”

  Bessie laughed. “Well, you must have done a good job, because everything was delicious. They might want you to start working there full-time.”

  “Oh, I hope not,” Henry answered. “It was fun in the kitchen for a change, but I love being outside at the different sites, meeting the tourists and the like. I’d really miss all of that.”

  “I’m sure they’d never move you where you didn’t want to go,” Bessie assured him. “You’re too valuable to MNH.”

  Henry flushed at the praise and then turned back to rearranging chairs. Bessie took the final few steps to the small door at the front of the room. She tapped lightly on it.

  “Mack?” she called softly. “Mack, are you in there?” Bessie increased the volume as she called his name again and then knocked a second time, more loudly. She waited a moment, straining to listen for a reply. She sighed and then rapped on the door quite hard. Henry and Doug had both stopped what they were doing to watch her with undisguised curiosity.

  Bessie shrugged at the pair and then cautiously tried the door. Bambi had said the door was locked, but the knob turned easily in Bessie’s hand. She pushed the door open and was surprised to find the room dark. Either Mack left or he was sitting in the dark gathering his thoughts. Bessie frowned, angry at Harold for putting her in this uncomfortable situation.

  “Mack? Dr. Dickson?” She forced herself to speak firmly, feeling foolish as she suspected the room was empty. Pushing the door open the rest of the way, she reached around its frame to switch on the light. She was wrong. The room wasn’t empty.

  Mack was sitting on one of the small couches, facing towards the door. His face was red and it looked wrong, as if it were swollen or something. Bessie didn’t take time to study it. She stepped backwards, nearly tripping over her own feet as she did so. With a shaking hand, she pulled the door shut behind her and spun around.

  Henry took one look at her face and sighed. “Not another dead body?” he asked.

  Chapter Three

  “Henry, you need to stay here and make sure no one goes in that room,” Bessie instructed. “I need to go and talk to Harold.”

  “He’s in there dead, isn’t he?” Henry repeated himself. “I don’t know what I’ve been doing wrong lately, but it seems like everywhere I go someone turns up dead.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Bessie answered dryly. She left the room quickly and headed back towards the crowd that was still gathered in the Kinvig Room. Harold was standing near the door, presumably watching for Bessie.

  “So, did you find him?” he asked as Bessie approached.

  “Yes,” Bessie said quietly. “But we need to call the police. Mack’s dead.”

  “This isn’t the time for jokes,” Harold replied. “If Mack doesn’t want to face the crowd, just tell me that and I’ll make some sort of announcement.”

  “Harold, I really really wish I were joking,” Bessie said earnestly. “But Mack is dead and the police will want to investigate.”

  “Show me,” Harold demanded.

  Bessie led him back across the foyer and into the lecture theatre. Henry hadn’t moved from where Bessie had left him, in front of the door to the cuillee that held Mack’s body.

  Harold took a deep breath and then opened the door. He took a long look at the body and then shook his head. “You’re not joking,” he said in a choked voice. “All this time we were talking about killing him, he was in here dead?”

  Bessie pulled him away from the door. “Henry, please shut the door,” she said softly as she guided Harold to the nearest chair. The academic seemed to have aged ten years in the last ten seconds.

  “Sit,” Bessie demanded. Harold sank onto a chair and blinked at Bessie.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “I’m going to call the police,” Bessie told him. “They’ll have to come and investigate. We just have to hope whatever happened had natural causes.”

  “You can’t be suggesting that someone murdered him?” Harold said in a shocked voice. “That simply isn’t possible.”

  “I’m suggesting we call the police and let them handle things,” Bessie said soothingly. “It isn’t our job to worry about what happened. They’re the experts.”

  Harold was staring at the door that Henry was standing in front of with a blank look on his face, so Bessie dug her mobile out of her handbag and dialled 999.

  Bessie limited herself to the facts and kept the call as short as possible. She just hoped that the police would arrived before the conference crowd got tired of their “dessert bar” and headed back to the lecture theatre to see why there was such a long delay.

  She needn’t have worried. Within a very few minutes the firs
t uniformed constables had arrived to secure the scene. Bessie and Harold were asked, very politely, to remain where they were until the Criminal Investigation Division Inspector arrived.

  “Bessie, what exactly is going to happen next?” Harold asked as the two uniformed men ushered Doug and Henry into chairs towards the back of the lecture hall.

  “I’m not sure,” Bessie replied. “I think….”

  “Sorry, but we have to ask you to not talk to one another,” one of the uniformed men said. “It’s just a precaution.”

  Harold opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. Bessie sighed and slid back in her seat, wishing that it was going to be Inspector John Rockwell from the Ramsey CID coming in to investigate. There was no chance of that, however, in downtown Douglas.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later an angry-looking middle-aged man whom Bessie had never seen before stomped into view. Something about him said both “important” and “official” and Bessie smiled to herself as the two young constables snapped to attention when they spotted him.

  The man spoke quietly with the two uniformed men and then opened the door to the small room where Mack’s body remained. He spent no more than a moment or two looking into the space before he turned towards Bessie and Harold. A seemingly permanent frown was etched on his face, as he crossed to them.

  Bessie studied him as he took the half-dozen or so steps necessary to cross the room. His dark brown hair had more than a smattering of grey mixed into it. From where she was sitting it was difficult to determine his exact height, but Bessie would have guessed that he was a few inches shy of six feet tall. When he was close enough to speak, she noted that his brown eyes already looked tired.

  While the new arrival was probably of a similar age to Bessie’s friend, Inspector Rockwell, Bessie had never noticed any grey hair on her friend’s head. She couldn’t help but feel that Rockwell was in far better shape and was much better looking than the man who now spoke.

  “Who found the body?” he demanded without preamble.

  “I did,” Bessie answered in a clipped voice.

  “And you are?”

  “Miss Elizabeth Cubbon.”

  “And how did you happen to find the body, Ms. Cubbon?”

  “Dr. Smythe,” Bessie waved a hand toward Harold, “asked me to find Mack and ask him if he was ready for the question-and-answer session. I was looking for him, and I guess I found him.”

  “Rather,” the man sighed. “Can you formally identify the dead man?”

  Bessie gulped. “I don’t know,” she prevaricated. “What does that entail? I mean, I knew who he was, but we weren’t related, or really even friends.”

  The man sighed again. “Is there anyone here who was related to the deceased?”

  “Not that I know of.” Bessie looked at Harold who simply shrugged. “His girlfriend is here. Does she qualify?”

  “Never mind,” the man said impatiently. “Who was he?”

  “Dr. Mack Dickson,” Bessie replied. “I think his first name was actually Malcolm, but everyone called him Mack. He was an archaeologist and historian who came to talk about his research at the conference that started tonight.”

  “Who’s in charge of the conference?”

  “I suppose that would be me,” Harold spoke with obvious reluctance. “I mean I organised it, with help from a few others, mainly Marjorie Stevens. Mr. George Quayle is our conference sponsor.”

  The inspector rolled his eyes. “As if it weren’t bad enough,” he muttered.

  Movement at the back of the room caught everyone’s attention as the man himself strolled in.

  “Ah, Inspector Corkill, what brings you here?” George demanded as he looked around the room.

  “It seems your honoured guest ended up dead,” the policeman replied.

  “Mack? Well, he was asking for it,” was George’s unexpected reply.

  “Really?” the inspector asked. “What makes you say that?”

  “Well,” George said as he joined the inspector and the others. “He came in here and made all sorts of unreasonable demands about giving the first talk of the conference. Then he turned up with a girlfriend just out of school who was guaranteed to make all his exes unhappy. And finally he made an announcement about his findings that had to be designed to upset everyone. I bet whoever killed him had a queue behind him to help finish the job.”

  “I don’t believe I said it was murder.” The inspector was staring at George. “But I’m intrigued by the idea that you assumed it was.”

  George waved a hand. “He was young and reasonably fit and healthy,” he argued. “There’s no good reason for him to just drop dead. Someone had to have killed him.”

  “It looks to me like anaphylaxis,” the inspector said. “It could just be a tragic accident. I don’t suppose any of you know what he might have been allergic to?”

  “Peanuts.” A voice from the doorway at the rear had them all jumping and turning to see who had come in.

  Bambi spoke again as she walked towards them. “Mack was very allergic to peanuts. But he was super careful about them. He never would have eaten anything that he wasn’t sure about. And anyway, he always had at least two adrenaline injectors with him. He knew the warning signs and how to deal with them. He would have given himself an injection and called 999 if he thought he was having a reaction.”

  The inspector shrugged. “We haven’t searched the scene yet. Maybe he panicked or something.”

  Bambi turned to him. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Bambi Marks,” she told him.

  “I’m Inspector Peter Corkill from the Douglas branch of the CID. I assume you were well acquainted with the deceased?”

  Bambi flushed. “We were, that is, we started dating about a month ago. This conference was Mack’s idea of a romantic weekend getaway.”

  Inspector Corkill nodded. “I’m sure I’ll have many questions for you once the coroner has inspected the body.”

  “Anyway, someone needs to let everyone know what’s going on,” Bambi told them all. “It’s getting late and people are starting to wonder what’s gone wrong.”

  “The whole bloody conference has gone wrong,” Harold muttered from his seat, dropping his head into his hands.

  “I’ll make an announcement,” the inspector said. “I’ll get my men to start taking people’s information and then letting them go. Until I hear otherwise, I’m assuming that this was just an unfortunate accident.”

  “But where did Mack get his hands on something with peanuts in it?” Bambi demanded. “He never would have eaten anything he wasn’t sure about.”

  “There’s a plate on the table next to him with a half-eaten brownie on it,” the inspector replied. “I saw a table full of brownies and cakes when I came in. Presumably he thought the brownie was safe and, sadly, he was wrong.”

  “He never went anywhere near the dessert bar,” Bambi argued. “Someone must have taken the brownie in to him. He was murdered.”

  Peter Corkill shook his head. “You’ve quite the imagination,” he told Bambi. “But it isn’t murder unless I say it’s murder. And at the moment I’m saying tragic accident.”

  Bambi opened her mouth to argue further, but Bessie interrupted before she could speak.

  “My dear child,” she said as she stood up and took Bambi’s arm. “You’re obviously tremendously upset at your heartbreaking loss. Right now the best thing we can do is get out of the inspector’s way and let him get on with his work.” She began to guide Bambi out of the room, muttering soothing nothings to her as they went.

  They were nearly at the door before the inspector spoke. “Just let me make that announcement before you go out there,” he told Bessie. “Otherwise you’ll get overrun with questions.”

  Bessie nodded and stepped aside to let the inspector leave the room ahead of herself and Bambi. She followed him quickly, though, not wanting to miss what he was going to tell the crowd.

  Back in the foyer, it appeared that almost everyone
had made their way out of the Kinvig Room. People stood in small clusters and most of them were now casting anxious looks at the inspector.

  “Good evening, everyone,” Inspector Corkill said loudly. The last of the auxiliary chatter died out and everyone looked curiously at him. He cleared his throat.

  “I know that it’s getting late, but I’m going to have to ask you to bear with me for a short time longer. There’s been an unfortunate accident and I’m sorry to inform you that Dr. Dickson appears to have suffered a fatal allergic reaction to something.”

  The loud gasp interrupted whatever the inspector was going to say next. All heads turned and watched as the colour drained from Marjorie Stevens’ face. The teacup she was holding fell to the ground, mercifully bouncing on the thick carpet rather than breaking. A man standing near her reacted instinctively in reaching out to catch her as she swooned.

  “Who’s that?” Corkill barked at Bessie.

  “Marjorie Stevens. She works here at the museum and helped organise the conference,” Bessie replied without thinking.

  “Interesting,” the inspector said.

  Across the room, two men were now helping Marjorie into a chair that someone quickly dragged out of the Kinvig Room. The inspector cleared his throat again.

  “I’m going to ask you all to be patient while the constables interview each of you in turn. At this point I’m really only gathering names and contact information. It’s late and we all need our sleep. You’ll be allowed to leave as soon as you’ve spoken to one of my men.”

  “What about my conference?” Harold demanded, from the doorway behind the inspector.

  Corkill swung around and Bessie caught the angry look that flashed across his face before he gave Harold a tight smile. “Assuming I don’t find anything suspicious in my investigation, the conference can carry on as scheduled,” he replied. “I can’t promise you access to the lecture theatre, but I’m sure the museum can find space for things elsewhere.”

  For a moment it looked as if Harold was going to argue, but finally he shrugged and moved into the foyer, heading towards Marjorie.