Aunt Bessie Considers

by Diana Xarissa

  Inspector Corkill got to his feet. “Ms. Jamison, I have to caution you against saying anything at all without your advocate or solicitor present.”

  Claire gave the man a shaky smile. “It’s okay,” she said. “I knew I was going to get caught. Oh, I tried my best, but I’m strictly an amateur when it comes to murder.”

  Joe Steele got up and took her hand. “Claire, it was all just an unfortunately accident, right? I mean, maybe you took him the brownie, but you didn’t know it would kill him, did you?”

  Claire laughed lightly. “I’m sorry, Joe, really I am. You are such a sweet, dear man. But I knew exactly what I was doing with that brownie. I baked it myself Thursday night, after I told Mack how excited I was that I was going to get to see him again. That much was true, you know. I’d been waiting and hoping for a chance to see him again. I started planning how I’d kill him as soon as he left me.”

  “Ms. Jamison, please. I think we should have this conversation in my office,” Inspector Corkill said, taking a few steps towards the woman.

  “Bessie wants to hear my story, don’t you, Bessie?” Claire asked. “And I bet everyone else here wants to hear it as well. How I hung up the phone and started baking. I’d made brownies so many times for Mack when we were together. He loved my brownies, and he loved this batch just as much. I put in extra chocolate, you see, lots and lots of extra chocolate. He never even tasted the ground peanuts.”

  She shook her head. “But I’ve started at the end of the story and I haven’t told you about when Mack and I met. How he swept me off my feet and promised me the world. He was researching Roman finds on Anglesey and then he was accused of, well, stealing someone else’s research. He denied it, of course, but after an initial investigation the university’s chancellor asked him to just leave quietly.”

  Claire sighed. “So off he went, without even saying goodbye. My heart was broken beyond repair and then, a week later, when I’d finally stopped crying and managed to drag myself into my office, I discovered that when he left, some of my research notes had gone with him.”

  Joe put his arm around her and gave her an awkward hug. “You should have called the police,” he murmured.

  “The police aren’t interested in personal quarrels,” Claire told him. “I called Mack and demanded that he return my notes. He did send them back eventually, and I warned him that he’d better not ever use so much as a single word from them in anything he did or he’d be sorry. Surely I should get credit for warning him?” she asked Inspector Corkill.

  “I take it he used your research in a paper, then?” Bessie asked from the podium.

  Claire smiled grimly. “He was subtle and clever with it,” she told Bessie. “Just little bits, here and there, often things that he might have stumbled over himself, if he’d actually done any research on Anglesey. But I was with him when he was on Anglesey and I know exactly how he spent him time. It wasn’t doing research.”

  “Look, I think this has gone on long enough,” Corkill said. “Let’s go down to the station and you can put everything into a formal statement,” he told Claire.

  “There isn’t much else to tell,” Claire shrugged. “I baked the brownies and then I dyed my hair brown. Everyone knew Mack loved blondes. I figured no one would connect me with Mack if I were a brunette. After Mack’s speech I went and got a drink and then told everyone I needed the loo. When I went back out, the foyer was empty and it was easy to sneak back into the lecture theatre. Mack let me into the cuillee and he was ever so pleased that I’d brought him a treat. We made plans to get together for a drink as soon as he was done speaking. When he gave me a big hug, I was able to grab the bag he kept his injectors in out of his pocket. I didn’t realise until later that he’d also put a second set of slides from his talk in the same bag. I’ve mailed them to a friend,” she said to the inspector. “I’ll give you his name and address and someone can collect them from him.”

  Corkill nodded. “Let’s get going, then,” he suggested.

  Claire shrugged. “I wanted to just leave him,” she continued, seemingly unable to stop herself. “I was at the door just as he took his first bite of brownie, and then someone started knocking.” Claire looked down at the ground and shuddered. “It was so horrible. I actually reached into my bag for Mack’s injectors. I was going to try to save him, but I couldn’t. I knew if he survived I would be charged with attempted murder.”

  Joe was looking at Claire with a stunned look on his face. After a moment, he let his arm fall from her shoulders and sank back down into his seat.

  “It only took a few seconds for him to die,” she said. “It felt like hours, but it was only a few seconds. Then I straightened him up a little bit because he’d struggled so much while he was trying to find his injectors. I crept back out and everyone was still eating and drinking and having fun. No one seemed to even notice that I’d been gone.”

  “What happened to the other set of slides?” Paul Roberts demanded. “I want a look at them.”

  Claire shook her head. “I don’t know anything about them,” she told him. “I only found one set in the bag Mack had in his pocket.”

  “What about Bambi?” Bessie asked.

  “You were right about that,” Claire told her. “I made a big fuss about collecting water bottles and then swapped hers almost right in front of her face. She was too busy flirting with everyone around her to notice.”

  “Okay, I think you’ve confessed to just about everything,” Corkill said. “Time to get to the station and call your advocate.”

  Claire gave him a thoughtful look. “I guess you’re right,” she said finally, with a strange smile. “We should go.”

  The Kinvig Room was silent as Claire picked up her handbag and then let Inspector Corkill take her arm. Everyone watched the pair exit the room and then all eyes focussed on Bessie once more.

  “I don’t suppose anyone one really wants to hear about nineteenth-century wills at this point, do they?” Bessie asked the group.

  In the end, Bessie did give her talk. If the audience didn’t give her remarks their full attention, that was understandable. She cut a few paragraphs out here and there, trying to make up the time that solving Mack’s murder had taken up. The question-and-answer session was fairly short. Many people wanted to ask Bessie questions about Mack and the murder, but they didn’t feel that they should do so during her presentation. Very few could think of anything to ask her about wills.

  Harold got up at the end to thank her.

  “Let’s have a nice round of applause for Elizabeth Cubbon,” he requested. Bessie smiled as she stepped back from the podium. She couldn’t help but wonder if people were clapping for her speech or for her role in finding Mack’s killer. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

  “Anything that Marjorie and I have to say will, perhaps, feel anticlimactic after what we’ve just heard,” Harold told the crowd. “However, we do have a lot to talk about in our summary of the weekend’s events. We’re going to take a short break, maybe ten minutes, for everyone to grab a drink and stretch their legs and then we’ll resume in here with our conclusions, including a discussion of what Mack claimed to have discovered.”

  Harold’s last sentence was about the only thing that could have distracted the crowd from Claire’s unexpected arrest. As everyone made their way into the foyer for tea and coffee, excited voices eagerly discussed Mack’s death, Claire and what Harold might be going to talk about in equal measure.

  Bessie made her way from behind the podium towards her friends.

  “Congratulations,” Rockwell told her. “That was very cleverly done.”

  Bessie shook her head. “I don’t feel like I want congratulating,” she said sadly. “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt sorry for a murderer before, but I feel desperately sorry for Claire. I almost wish I hadn’t said anything.”

  Hugh frowned at her. “But she killed Mack. It was clearly premeditated from what she said, as well.”

  “Mack broke h
er heart and stole her research,” Bessie replied. “And he wasn’t a very nice person, either.”

  “That doesn’t give her the right to end his life,” Rockwell said soothingly. “Moirrey Teare was thoroughly unlikeable, but she didn’t deserve to die, did she?”

  “No,” Bessie said softly. “But the person who murdered her wasn’t any more likeable than Moirrey. Claire’s different, somehow.”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Doona told Bessie, giving her a hug. “Claire was treated very badly by Mack, until she behaved in a way that was totally out of character for her. But no matter what Mack did, she shouldn’t have killed him.”

  “I know,” Bessie sighed. “I just feel, I don’t know, miserable.”

  The foursome made their way towards the door.

  “Maybe some sweet milky tea will help,” Doona suggested. “And half a dozen chocolate biscuits.”

  Joe Steele was the only person still in the room. He was sitting in the same seat that he’d dropped into during Claire’s confession and his face still wore a dazed look.

  “Joe?” Bessie stopped next to him and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Joe, truly I am.”

  Joe shook his head and then looked up at Bessie. “She stood there, in the same room with him, and watched him die,” he said in disbelief. “I could just about understand plotting to kill the man. I’m sure she isn’t the first woman to come up with crazy ideas to get rid of a man who hurt her. I could even understand her baking the brownies and colouring her hair. Taking his injectors, well, that’s a little bit harder to get my head around, but even then….” He trailed off and looked at the ground.

  “You won’t ever be able to understand,” Doona told him, sitting down next to him and starting to rub his back gently. “Take it from someone else who once dated a murderer, you won’t ever understand how they could seem so wonderful while hiding a secret that big. You’ll always feel like you should have been able to tell somehow, that you should have noticed something or felt something was wrong. And you’ll always feel like you were being used somehow.” Doona sighed.

  “I think we all need a cup of tea,” Bessie announced in the brightest tone she could manage. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Doona stood up and pulled a reluctant Joe to his feet.

  “Tea and biscuits,” Bessie told the man, “are the classic British panacea.”

  Joe looked like he might argue, but he followed them from the room. The foyer was crowded and noisy.

  “You lot wait here,” Rockwell told the others. “I’ll fight my way over to the tables and bring back tea for everyone.”

  “You don’t have enough hands to manage that,” Hugh said. “I’ll come as well.”

  The pair was quickly swallowed up by the crowd. “Hugh just wants to make sure some biscuits come back with the tea,” Doona told Joe.

  He managed a weak smile. “Maybe some sugar will help,” he replied.

  “It can’t hurt,” Bessie told him, patting his arm. “I’m sorry that I didn’t realise that it was Claire sooner, before you two had become so involved.”

  Joe shrugged. “We weren’t that involved,” he told her. “She kept sort of pushing me away. I couldn’t tell if she was really interested or just being nice. I was sort of falling for her, so I’m a little bit sad, but mostly I just feel like an idiot. It never even crossed my mind that she might have killed Mack.”

  Rockwell and Hugh were back a moment later with mugs of hot tea. Doona and Bessie laughed when Hugh passed around the plate full of biscuits he’d brought with him.

  “What’s so funny?” Hugh demanded, looking from Bessie to Doona and back again.

  “Try a chocolate one,” Doona urged Joe, ignoring Hugh. “Chocolate can fix almost anything.”

  A moment later, Harold was trying to talk over the crowd. “Okay, everyone, um, everyone? Hello?”

  Bessie grinned at Doona. “Maybe the museum should try to get George to pay for a microphone and speakers for the foyer.”

  “Um, right then,” Harold continued once everyone had fallen mostly silent. “Marjorie and I are ready to begin, if you’d all like to find seats in the Kinvig Room.”

  Bessie and her friends were still standing near the door, so they were among the first back into the room. Rockwell steered the group towards the front. “This should be interesting,” he said to Bessie. “I get the feeling that Dr. Smythe has a lot to talk about.”

  They settled into their seats in the front row and waited while the room slowly filled to capacity. Bessie had a feeling that they were about to discover what had happened to the other set of missing slides.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Marjorie walked to the podium as soon as the audience was settled.

  “I had a number of things I intended to say this afternoon,” she told the crowd. “But in light of everything that’s taken place in the last couple of hours, and knowing what Harold has to discuss, I’m going to keep my remarks short.”

  She paused for a breath and gave Bessie a grin. Bessie smiled back, happy to see her friend recovering from the ordeal that the conference had turned out to be.

  “Harold and I spent many months organising this conference, and I’m pleased that in spite of, um, difficult circumstances, shall we say, a great deal of very interesting research was presented and discussed. I’d just like to thank, very sincerely, each and every person who took the time to be here, either as a speaker or as an audience member. Every person contributed something to the parts of this conference that were successful.”

  “I guess she’d consider Mack’s death as a less successful part?” Doona whispered to Bessie.

  “Those of you who were able to hear Dr. William Corlett’s talk are aware that there is an effort being made to establish a centre here on the island to provide a focus for any and all research about the Isle of Man. This would, of course, include archeology and history, but also language and literature, music, popular culture,” she shrugged. “Basically anything with any Manx component could be a part of the centre and I think everyone who works for Manx National Heritage is excited by the idea. We will be asking all of our conference participants to consider submitting a copy of their paper to us. We would like to publish all of the papers from this weekend in a single volume. All proceeds from the sale would go towards helping with the initial funding of the new centre.”

  A whisper went through the crowd and Bessie grinned. She’d be happy to have her paper included in such a publication.

  “A great deal more information will be forthcoming over time,” Marjorie told the group. “For today, I think, perhaps, it is more important to tie up a few loose ends. I’m delighted to turn things over to Dr. Harold Smythe, who will be sharing some of his most recent findings with you all.”

  Harold bounced up the podium and smiled brightly at the audience. “Thank you, Marjorie. I’m delighted to be here this afternoon to share with you some important information. I assume that the vast majority of you were also here on Friday evening when Dr. Mack Dickson shocked us all by showing slides of various Roman settlement finds that he claimed to have unearthed right here on the Isle of Man.”

  Harold cleared his throat and then looked nervously at Inspector Rockwell. “I suppose I must start my comments with a small confession,” he said, almost sheepishly. “After Mack finished speaking, in the excited chaos that followed, I, er, well, that is, you see, I….” Harold took a deep breath.

  “I pulled off the slide carousel with Mack’s slides in it and dumped the slides into my briefcase. No one saw me do it, but I could have bluffed my way through it if I’d been spotted. I simply wanted a few minutes to study them more closely, but before I could do that I was grabbed by first one person and then another. Everyone wanted to talk to me about Mack’s speech and I never got a moment alone to look at them.”

  Harold gulped his water, watching Rockwell nervously. When the inspector did nothing, he continued.

  “I was so flustered after M
ack’s death that I almost forgot about the slides. With the police questioning everyone, and everything else that was happening, I didn’t feel like I could say anything. Of course, I should have told Inspector Corkill that I had them and given them to him immediately. In fact, I decided to give them to the inspector the very next day, but I took a quick look at them before I did so. What I saw made me more reluctant to hand them over to the police. Lights, please?”

  The lights dimmed and Harold clicked a remote that brought a slide up on the screen behind him.

  “Those of you who were here Friday night will recognise this as one of Mack’s slides, one that he claimed came from a photo that he’d taken in the last few weeks. This one, however,” Harold clicked again and a second slide appeared, “is from a talk that was given at a poorly attended conference on Italian political history about five years ago in Italy.”

  The audience buzzed with excitement. The two slides were identical.

  The lights came back up and Harold grinned at the crowd. “When I studied Mack’s slides closely, I thought some of them looked vaguely familiar. So far, this is the only one of Mack’s slides that I can definitely prove was copied from elsewhere. This particular collection of coins was actually unearthed near Rome itself about ten years ago and is considered relatively insignificant there. After all, Roman finds ought to be found near Rome.”

  Everyone chuckled at that. “I’ve sent copies of Mack’s slides to a number of experts in Roman remains and I intend to spend some time with Paul Roberts, one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, as soon as the conference wraps up. I’m confident that the experts will be able to identify every one of the slides that Mack claimed were his own.”

  “But why would Mack do something like that?” a voice from the crowd shouted out.

  Harold shook his head. “I can only guess that when he came back out for the question-and-answer session he was going to announce that his talk was all an elaborate hoax. I know he did something similar at a conference about seven years ago, getting everyone in the crowd excited and then using his follow-up talk to discuss how easily he’d managed to create a believable fake presentation.”