Aunt Bessie Goes (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 7)

by Diana Xarissa

  Mike frowned. “She’s been very badly upset by the whole thing,” he told Bessie. “She and Adam were very close. I think she feels guilty that she never demanded more information about his disappearance from her parents.”

  Bessie nodded. “That’s understandable, but thinking like that isn’t helpful. I hope I can be of some help to her.”

  “I do, too,” Mike said with alacrity.

  The drive to Port Erin took about half an hour and Mike filled the time by telling Bessie his life story. He’d been born and raised in Castletown, and Bessie was pleased to find that they had a number of acquaintances in common. He and Sarah had met when they worked for the same company, and after their marriage they’d bought a house in Port Erin.

  “We bought a nice big four-bedroom place,” he told Bessie. “We both just assumed we’d have plenty of little ones to fill it up with. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, we were never blessed with children. A few years ago we decided it was silly to keep cleaning and looking after such a large home and we sold it and bought a flat on the seafront.”

  Bessie actually knew someone else who lived in their building, an amateur historian who was obsessed with Bronze Age pottery. “My friend loves it there,” Bessie told Mike. “I don’t think there’s anything that anyone could do to persuade him to move away from Port Erin.”

  “We love it as well,” Mike replied. “We go into Douglas twice a month or so, but we rarely go further north than that. I had to dig out a map to find your cottage. I don’t think I’d been to Laxey for more than ten years.”

  Bessie laughed. “You’re missing out,” she said. “Laxey has a lot of wonderful shops and restaurants. I’ll have to treat you and Sarah to dinner at La Terrazza when she’s feeling better.”

  Mike smiled. “I’ve heard wonderful things about La Terrazza, but we’ve never tried it. I’ll remind you of your offer in a month or so.”

  “I hope you do,” Bessie said sincerely.

  They pulled into the large car park for the building. After they’d emerged from the car, Mike took Bessie’s arm.

  “We do get quite high winds here,” he told her as they walked to the building’s entrance. “I don’t want you to blow away.”

  Bessie’s “thanks” was almost completely blown away by a sudden forceful gust of the promised wind. In the building’s foyer, she ran her fingers through her short hair.

  “That was some wind gust,” she said, checking that she still had her handbag.

  “That’s one of the prices we pay for being right on the sea,” Mike told her. “We think the views are worth it, though.”

  He led her to the lifts where one set of doors was standing open. Inside, he pressed the button for three, the top floor.

  A moment later he was ushering Bessie into the flat. The door opened into a large foyer, where Mike took Bessie’s coat before escorting her into a large reception room.

  “A little wind is absolutely a small price to pay for this view,” Bessie said as she entered the large and bright space. Windows took up the entire back wall of the huge room and they showcased the sea below.

  “Let me go and find Sarah,” Mike said, his tone anxious. “Please make yourself at home.”

  Bessie sank into one of the large comfortable sofas that were angled to best allow people to enjoy the view. Even though she lived on the beach and had amazing sea views herself, she felt as if she could sit and watch the water forever. It was several minutes before she heard a door open and close somewhere. A moment later, Mike was back.

  “Sarah would prefer if we meet in the kitchen,” he told Bessie in an apologetic voice. “She’s making tea.”

  “That’s fine,” Bessie assured him. “Whatever Sarah wants.”

  “Thank you.”

  The kitchen was only a few steps away, down a short corridor. It was modern and filled with gleaming appliances and more cupboard space than Bessie could imagine ever filling. The single window, over the sink, did have sea views, but it was small and somewhat awkwardly placed unless you were actually standing at the sink. Bessie assumed it was there for the benefit of whoever was doing the washing up after a meal, although she also spotted a dishwasher mixed in with the row of cabinets.

  Sarah was standing at the large island that filled the middle of the room. She seemed to be staring blankly at the wall. One hand was holding tightly to the countertop, as if anchoring her in the space. The other was clenching a cuddly toy that Bessie recognised as “Mr. Hiccup,” a stuffed monster that Sarah had made for her younger brother when they were children.

  Bessie immediately went to her and enveloped her in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured to the woman, rubbing her back and then just holding on as Sarah sobbed in her arms.

  Mike got busy, bustling around the kitchen, filling the kettle and switching it on. He piled biscuits onto plates and took a tea set out of the cupboard. After a moment, a timer buzzed and Mike opened the cooker and removed a tray of freshly baked scones. He took them off their tray and put them in a basket, adding the basket to the row of plates full of food on the long counter. Then he found the clotted cream and a jar of jam in the refrigerator and placed them next to the scones. When the kettle boiled, he poured the hot water into the teapot, and then he crossed to Bessie and Sarah.

  “Sarah, love, the tea’s ready,” he said gently.

  Sarah stiffened in Bessie’s arms and then took a deep, shaky breath. After a moment, she lifted her head. “Yes, okay,” she said unsteadily.

  “Tea sounds lovely,” Bessie said.

  Sarah smiled wanly. “It beats having a sobbing woman in your arms, anyway,” she said.

  “You know I’m here to help,” Bessie said. “Whatever sort of help you need.”

  Sarah just about managed a real smile. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I know you really mean that.”

  “Miss Cubbon, you should grab a scone while they’re still warm,” Mike said. “They’re Sarah’s special recipe.”

  Bessie turned towards the man and then, following his urging, began to fix a plate from the food on offer. There were small cakes, crustless sandwiches and fresh fruit, as well as the biscuits and scones, and Bessie quickly began to regret even her light lunch.

  “Everything looks wonderful,” she said as she filled her plate. She covered her scone in clotted cream and jam and then poured herself a cup of tea.

  “Let’s just sit in here,” Mike suggested, gesturing to the small table in the corner of the room.

  Bessie took a seat and then Mike escorted Sarah over to join her. “I’ll fix you a plate,” he told his wife. “I think I know what you like by now.”

  Sarah managed to give her husband a watery grin. “What would I do without you?” she asked, squeezing his hand as he pushed her chair in at the table.

  “You’d be in a terrible fix,” Mike said brightly. “Same as me without you. We’ve been together way too long. No one else would ever have us.”

  While he piled a plate full of food for Sarah, he chatted brightly with Bessie, telling her all sorts of inconsequential things about the flat. By the time he delivered the plate and a cup of tea to Sarah she seemed to have regained some control over her emotions.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after she’d taken a sip of tea. “The police aren’t even sure it’s Adam.”

  Bessie thought of a dozen questions she wanted to ask, but she bit her tongue and sipped her drink. The woman was distraught and now was the not the time for nosy questions.

  “The clothes in the suitcases, they were Adam’s,” Sarah continued, answering one of the questions Bessie hadn’t asked. “And the clothes the, um, the, well, I’m pretty sure all the clothes were Adam’s.”

  Bessie patted the woman’s hand. “Eat something,” she suggested softly, her brain processing the fact that the skeleton had been wearing Adam King’s clothes. That didn’t prove anything, of course, but it seemed to make it more likely that the dead man was Adam.

  Sarah nibbled on
a biscuit for a moment and then sighed. “I’m not hungry,” she said, pushing her plate away.

  “You have to eat,” Mike told her firmly. “At least have a scone while they’re hot. I did my best with your famous recipe.”

  Sarah picked up her scone and took a tiny bite. “It’s lovely,” she said, dropping the rest back on her plate.

  Bessie and Mike exchanged glances. Bessie could tell the man was worried about his wife, but she wasn’t sure how best to help her.

  “They’re really delicious,” Bessie said to Mike. The scone was light and fluffy, exactly as it should be.

  “Thanks,” Mike shrugged.

  “I remember when dad built that wall,” Sarah said as Bessie ate her scone. “I couldn’t understand why he was making the room smaller.”

  “Really?” Bessie asked.

  “Don’t you remember when my dad built that wall?” Sarah asked, grasping Bessie’s hand.

  Bessie shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “It was thirty years ago, right after Adam disappeared. I’d moved out by then, of course, but I was visiting quite often, mostly to see Adam, and then because I expected mum to be upset about Adam’s leaving. Dad said there was some sort of leak in the roof and he couldn’t be bothered to repaint everything after he’d fixed it, so he was just putting up a new wall over the top of the old one.”

  “I suppose that sounds logical,” Bessie said.

  “It wasn’t, though,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “He covered up the only window in the room and shrank the space noticeably. I even asked him, at the time, why he was building the new wall so far out rather than right over top the old wall, but he made up some excuse about leaving space for the walls to breathe or something. Even I knew that the walls didn’t need two feet of space for ‘breathing.’” Sarah made air quotes around the last word.

  “You couldn’t possibly have guessed why he built it the way he did,” Bessie said soothingly.

  “I should have known something wasn’t right about their story,” Sarah argued. “Adam never would have left without saying goodbye.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Bessie said.

  “No, but I should have guessed.”

  “I can’t see how,” Mike said.

  “Not that they’d killed him, but that something was wrong,” Sarah explained. “I kept visiting, expecting mum to need my support, but she didn’t seem sad at all. Even though I knew she didn’t really like her children, I still expected her to be a little upset when he left so suddenly and went so far away. She didn’t like George or Fred either, but she was a little sad, at least for a while, when they each moved across.”

  “There wasn’t anything you could have done,” Bessie told her firmly.

  “I wish I’d looked behind the wall while dad was building it,” Sarah replied. “At least if I’d found the body, my parents could have been punished. I wish my mum were still alive so she could go to prison for what she did.”

  “You’re getting rather ahead of things,” Mike said, patting her hand. “The police haven’t determined if it’s Adam or not and they don’t know how the man died, either.”

  “I offered to help dad with the wall,” Sarah said, continuing as if she hadn’t heard what Mike had said. “He didn’t think women could handle tools. He did complain, though, that Adam had gone. He actually said that it was a shame that Adam had moved away just when he could have been the most helpful.”

  Sarah began to cry again, softly but steadily. Mike shook his head and pushed back his chair. He stood up and pulled Sarah up into his arms. He stroked her back for a few minutes, before tipping her chin up and staring into her eyes.

  “You have to stop this,” he said firmly. “This isn’t helping.”

  Sarah nodded. “I know, and I’m sorry.” She sat back down and took a sip of tea. After a moment she pulled her plate towards her and picked up her scone. She finished it with several large bites and then washed it down with the rest of her tea.

  “Can I have another scone?” she asked Mike, giving him a forced smile.

  “Of course you can.” Mike jumped up and fixed her another plate, carrying the teapot back with him as well to refill her cup. He also topped up Bessie’s drink before he sat back down.

  “I didn’t invite you over to watch me cry,” Sarah said to Bessie once she’d taken another sip of tea. “I really want your help in figuring out what happened to Adam.”

  “That’s what the police are for,” Bessie reminded her.

  Sarah waved a hand. “I’m sure they’ll try, but the nice inspector that came to talk to me said that it was highly unlikely that they’ll even be able to be sure what killed Adam after all these years. Mum and dad are both dead, so even if it was murder, and I’m sure it was, they’ve no reason to pursue the case, have they? But I need to know what happened.”

  “Tell me what you can remember about Adam’s disappearance,” Bessie suggested. While she had no intention of investigating anything, talking about the past should help Sarah come to terms with it. At least that was what Bessie was hoping.

  Sarah picked up a biscuit and nibbled on it, her brain clearly occupied. After a moment, she sighed. “I was so busy with my own life,” she said. “I wasn’t paying enough attention to Adam.”

  “You were, what, twenty, and no longer living at home. You were perfectly entitled to live your own life,” Bessie told her.

  “Thank you,” Sarah said softly. “Anyway, I tried to visit Adam at least once a week or so. He was working for dad at the bank and he hated it. Adam was smart, but he was also lazy and easily influenced. He and Mark Carr were best friends, and Mark was nothing but trouble.”

  Bessie nodded. “I remember the pair of them getting into all sorts of mischief,” she said. “I seem to recall them starting out quite small, swiping sweets from the corner shop and that sort of thing, but I remember Joan Carr telling me that nothing she did to punish Mark ever seemed to make any impression on him.”

  “Adam was much the same,” Sarah said with a sigh. “Mum did try to discipline him, but he never seemed to care. I don’t think mum tried all that hard, mind you, and dad wasn’t really interested in Adam at all. He was an accident that dad saw as nothing but a burden, really.”

  “And yet your father got Adam a job at the bank,” Bessie pointed out.

  “That always puzzled me,” Sarah replied. “I applied for a dozen jobs there from the time I turned sixteen until I left home. Dad never even considered me for a job there. Then, one day, he just up and gave a job to Adam.”

  “What was Adam doing at the bank?”

  “He was an errand boy, really,” Sarah said. “He used to deliver the post to the different offices, go out and collect sandwiches at lunchtime and help with the filing, that sort of thing.”

  “But he didn’t enjoy it?”

  “He hated it. Like I said, he was really smart. He was just bored and he hated the fact that he had to answer to everyone else there, even though he knew he was smarter than most of them. He kept telling me he was going to leave one day, but I thought it was just talk.”

  “You didn’t think he was planning to move to Australia, then?”

  “No, I don’t think he ever even mentioned Australia,” Sarah said. “Why didn’t I hear alarm bells when mum said that was where he’d gone?”

  “Do you remember exactly what she said?” Bessie asked.

  “I went up to see them on a Saturday morning. I was going to take Adam to lunch. He’d been really upset the week before. Apparently one of the big bosses from the bank had been in the Laxey branch and he’d snapped at Adam to get him tea or something. I remember Adam saying something about Grant Robertson not being anywhere near as smart as he thought he was.”

  Bessie gasped when she heard the name. “Grant Robertson?” she echoed.

  “Yeah, he was already a junior vice president or something and Adam was always complaining about how he threw his weight around when he vis
ited the Laxey branch.”

  “I didn’t realise,” Bessie said softly.

  Grant had, of course, continued to rise up through the ranks at the bank, eventually taking early retirement as one of their most senior executives. Bessie had only spoken to him a few times, but she hadn’t been very impressed with him as a person. He was close friends and business partners with George Quayle, and Bessie was becoming increasingly friendly with George’s wife, Mary. Mary disliked Grant, which did nothing to improve Bessie’s opinion of him.

  “Anyway, I was going to take Adam to lunch, but when I got to the house, no one was home. That was unusual, but not worryingly so. I just turned around and went back to Castletown. When I rang that evening, mum told me that they’d been taking Adam to the airport, that he’d persuaded dad to pay for a one-way ticket to Australia.”

  “And you had no reason to doubt her,” Bessie said.

  Sarah shook her head. “I had every reason to doubt her,” she said too loudly. “I just didn’t, and I don’t know why.”

  “You had no reason to think she’d lie to you,” Bessie countered.

  “But Adam had never mentioned Australia to me. He was forever talking about leaving the island, but he always talked about going to London to live with Fred or going to America. As far as I know, he never even thought about Australia.”

  “But he might have,” Mike interjected. “The skeleton could be someone else altogether and Adam might be living in Australia, having a cold beer right now.”

  Sarah smiled sadly. “I wish I could believe that,” she said, squeezing her husband’s hand. “Dad would never have paid for his flights, anyway,” she added. “Dad was a big believer in kids earning their own way and finding their own opportunities. That’s why I was surprised he gave Adam a job in the first place, but he never would have funded a move to another country. I should have challenged mum on that at the time, but I hated arguing with her.”

  “Was there anything else that felt wrong to you?” Bessie asked.

  “He didn’t ring to say goodbye,” Sarah replied. “Mum said it was all last-minute and once dad agreed, Adam was so eager to get away that he just took off, but Adam would have found time to ring me to say goodbye, I know he would have. That’s why I’m so sure it’s him that they found. It’s the first thing that’s made sense since Adam disappeared.”