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

by Diana Xarissa

  “This case is a little different from a standard murder investigation,” John began. “We are withholding some information, but for the most part, we’re sharing nearly everything we learn. We’re trying to trigger people’s memories of events from thirty years ago and we need all the help we can get.”

  “Are you sure it was murder?” Bessie asked.

  “No, not entirely at this point,” John conceded. “Certainly concealing the body was a crime, even if it wasn’t murder, but the coroner hasn’t released any of his findings to us yet. It is possible, perhaps even plausible, that the verdict will be inconclusive. Thirty years is a long time and the body wasn’t exactly being kept in ideal conditions behind that wall.”

  “But we’re treating it as murder,” Hugh added.

  “We are,” John confirmed. “And from what we’ve been told so far, it seems likely that we know who the murderers were, as well, or at least who put the body behind the wall.”

  “Sarah said she remembers her father building the wall,” Bessie said. “She even offered to help, but he wouldn’t let her.”

  “She told me the same thing,” John said.

  “She also said that her father complained that Adam had left and wasn’t there to help,” Bessie added.

  “He what?” Doona demanded. “That’s pretty cold, considering he had to know that Adam was dead, most likely because he’d killed him.”

  “We don’t know that,” John reminded her.

  “But it seems like the most likely scenario,” Doona argued. “They wouldn’t have hidden their own son’s body if someone else had killed him, would they?”

  “I suppose that rather depends on who that someone else might have been,” Bessie said, thoughtfully. “If they were afraid of the person or the person had some hold over them, they might have done it, mightn’t they?”

  “Keeping it quiet for thirty years feels like guilt to me,” Doona said firmly. “If they were afraid of someone, surely they would have talked eventually.”

  “Unless they were afraid of being blamed. Besides, they’d committed a crime themselves, when they hid the body, right? Perhaps they were afraid of being in trouble themselves or of not being able to prove who’d really done it.” Bessie shook her head. “I’m not sure we can ever figure out what happened thirty years ago.”

  John nodded. “Unfortunately, that may well be the case. No doubt many people will assume that Frederick and Nancy King murdered their son and hid his body. It’s also possible that Adam met with some unfortunate accident and his parents simply hid the body for some reason. At this point, it’s also possible that the body isn’t Adam King, but we’re going with that as a working assumption.”

  “So what can I do to help?” Bessie asked.

  “I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the summer before young Adam disappeared,” John said. “Did you see much of Adam? What was Nancy doing? Did anything different or strange happen on the island that summer? That sort of thing.”

  Bessie sighed. “I’ll have to dig out my old diaries,” she told John. “I doubt they’ll be anything interesting in them, but I can have a look.”

  “I didn’t know you kept diaries,” Doona said.

  “When I was younger I wrote nearly every day, but I’m quite out of the habit now,” Bessie told her. “I’m sure I have some from the right time period, but I may not have written in them during that particular summer. I’ll definitely see what I can find.”

  “I’d really appreciate that,” John told her. “ And the sooner the better,” he added.

  Bessie nodded. “First thing tomorrow,” she promised.

  “For tonight, I’d like to hear about your tea with Sarah Combe, and also anything you can remember about Adam and his disappearance, just off the top of your head,” John continued.

  “Sure,” Bessie said. “Let me put the kettle on.”

  “I’ll get it,” Doona said, getting up.

  Bessie shrugged. “Sarah’s distraught,” she told the inspector. “She was very upset when her mother died, but this has just about devastated her. She and Adam were very close and I think she feels guilty that she never questioned what her parents told her about his disappearance.”

  “Do you remember what you were told?” John asked.

  “I was trying to remember when I talked to Sarah,” Bessie replied. “I seem to remember Elinor telling me about Adam’s leaving and suggesting that I not mention it to Nancy, as she was very upset about it.”

  “And that didn’t seem odd to you at the time?” Hugh queried.

  “We’ve already talked at length about what a secretive group the Raspberry Jam Ladies were,” Bessie said. “And how they protected each other. It wasn’t at all unusual for one of them to share news about another, and it wasn’t the first time I was asked to not talk to someone about something upsetting, either.”

  “Can you recall specific examples of that?” John asked. “I’m just wondering how often it happened and under what circumstances.”

  “It was usually to do with their children,” Bessie said. “So this felt no different to when I was asked not to mention Joan’s baby after she’d lost her or when everyone suddenly stopped talking about Matthew in front of Agnes after he’d moved across. The ladies were always trying to protect one another from having to discuss upsetting subjects. It’s no different to my telling people not to ask Doona rude questions about her divorce, really.”

  Doona laughed. “How often do you do that?” she asked.

  “Not as often as I used to,” Bessie replied, patting her friend’s shoulder.

  The sound of the kettle boiling interrupted briefly. Doona fixed the tea while Bessie put out biscuits. Hugh’s eyes lit up when he saw the plate that Bessie put on the table.

  “You have some of those special chocolate ones,” he said enthusiastically.

  “I thought you might appreciate those,” Bessie said. “And since I had so much lovely food at tea with Sarah, I decided to be generous tonight and share them.”

  Everyone laughed and then fixed their tea and chose a few biscuits before John picked back up with the conversation.

  “So it didn’t feel strange when Elinor told you that Adam had gone,” he checked.

  “Not really,” Bessie said. “Most kids left at that sort of age to go to school or just to get away. The island can feel a bit claustrophobic, and I knew the boy hadn’t had a particularly happy childhood. If anything, the only surprise was that he went to Australia, rather than simply across.”

  “Did anyone ever give you any reason why he picked Australia?” John wanted to know.

  “I remember discussing it with Elinor. I recall her hinting that he’d found himself in some trouble. I’m sure it had to do with Mark Carr. Maybe there’ll be more details in my diary,” Bessie said hopefully.

  “Did Sarah say anything else that you found interesting?” John asked.

  “She said she recognised all of the clothes,” Bessie replied. “Even the ones on the skeleton.”

  “Yes, but that isn’t conclusive,” John said.

  “I think it was Mike who told me that you can’t find Mark Carr,” Bessie added. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “We weren’t looking for him too hard before,” John answered. “But we are now.”

  “Do we know if he ever actually came to the island?” Bessie questioned.

  “Nothing is definite at the moment,” John said with a sigh.

  “What was he even in prison for?” Doona asked.

  “Theft,” John told her. “It’s all public record, so I can tell you that he was working for a bank across and was caught helping himself to a bit of cash at the end of the day. He’d have been out a lot earlier, but he managed to get himself into trouble inside just often enough to keep him incarcerated a lot longer than the original sentence. Then, every time he did get out, it didn’t take him long to get sent back in. About a year ago he suddenly seemed to come to his senses and straighten out.
He suddenly became a model prisoner.”

  “And now he’s disappeared,” Bessie said.

  “His last cellmate was interviewed about that. He says that in the last year all Mark would talk about was coming back to the island. Allegedly Mark told him that he still had friends here who would look after him.”

  “I can’t imagine who,” Bessie exclaimed. “He’s been away thirty years and the only real friend I can remember him having was Adam, anyway.”

  John shrugged. “He is going to inherit something from his mother’s estate,” he said. “She left most of her assets to a cancer charity in memory of her daughters, but Mark should get a decent amount once the estate is settled.”

  “I’m surprised Joan didn’t cut him out of her will entirely,” Bessie said tartly.

  “He was only left a fraction of the estate,” John told her. “But the house is worth quite a bit, even in its rather poor condition, and she had some other assets as well. Even that fraction will probably seem like a lot of money to Mark.”

  “Once he’s found,” Doona added.

  “Which brings me to my next question,” John said. “Who else did Mark and Adam spend time with? Who were Adam’s friends? And who might Mark turn to if he needed a place to stay?”

  “I guess the easy answer is the rest of the Raspberry Jam Ladies’ kids,” Bessie said with shrug. “I mean, they were more or less forced to spend time together over the years. Mark and Adam were some of the youngest, but they all would have played together.”

  “So I need to talk to Spencer Cannon again,” John said. “I understand he’s moved back to the island.”

  “He has,” Bessie confirmed. “He’s renting a flat in Ramsey for the moment, while he looks for a house.”

  “I’ll ring him tomorrow,” John said, making a note in his small notebook.

  “Adam’s brothers might be able to help as well,” Bessie suggested. “Sarah said that they’re coming across in the next few days.”

  “Oh, they’re already on my list,” John assured her.

  “Okay, let me run through the other jam ladies,” Bessie said. “Agnes only had Matthew and he passed away before she did. Elinor’s son Nathan also passed before his mother. We already talked about Joan’s only remaining child, Mark, and we talked about Nancy’s children. Spencer is here and he was Peggy’s only child. Elizabeth Porter had two children who’ve been across for many years. Her grandson was here in July, though.”

  “We have people talking to both Ted and Tom Porter,” John told her.

  “That just leaves Margaret Gelling. She had two children as well and neither of them came back for her funeral. She told me, not long before she died, that Hazel is in Manchester and Jack is in Rugby,” Bessie said.

  “I don’t suppose you know Hazel’s married name?” John asked.

  Bessie shook her head. “Margaret didn’t talk about her children very often,” she replied. “I can’t remember ever hearing it.”

  “Spencer might know,” Doona suggested. “I gather he made some effort to keep in touch with the other ‘jam children,’ as he calls them.”

  “So I guess having a chat with Spencer Cannon is my next job,” John said. “But that’s for tomorrow. It’s getting late and we don’t want Hugh to be late for his date.”

  Hugh flushed. “If we have more that we need to discuss, it’s fine,” he said. “Work has to come first.”

  “In this case, I think you’re in luck,” John said. “We’ve pretty much finished, unless Bessie has anything else to add.”

  Bessie gave them all a quick rundown of her conversation with Sarah and Mike. “I think I’d already covered most of that anyway,” she said at the end.

  John had taken a few notes. “You mentioned a cuddly toy that she was holding. Where does that come in? Has she had it all these years?”

  Bessie shook her head. “She found it in a box in her mother’s desk when she cleared out the house after her mother died.”

  “Do you think she’d be terribly upset if I took it for forensic examination?” John asked.

  “I think she’d be heartbroken,” Bessie answered.

  “If it’s been sitting, untouched, since Adam left, it’s just possible we could find something like blood splatters on it, assuming he had it with him when he died,” John argued.

  “It looked very clean, if a bit misshapen,” Bessie told him. “Surely if it had blood on it, Nancy would have destroyed it or, at the very least, left it behind the wall with the body.”

  “Which raises the question of why she did keep it,” Hugh spoke.

  “From everything I’ve heard about her, she wasn’t the type to keep things out of sentiment,” Doona said.

  “Not for her children, anyway,” Bessie told them. “The rest of the box was full of cards and notes from her husband. There wasn’t anything in there from any of her children. According to Sarah, there wasn’t anything elsewhere in the house, either.”

  “And yet she kept a cuddly toy that belonged to the son she knew was dead,” Hugh said.

  “Unless it isn’t Adam that we found,” John suggested. “If Adam killed someone and his parents hid the body and sent Adam away, maybe she kept the toy as something to remember Adam by.”

  “But why would he have to run away?” Bessie asked. “If it wasn’t Adam, who was it? I’m sure you’ve checked the missing person reports from the time, and maybe I’ve forgotten something, but I certainly don’t remember anyone else disappearing around that time.”

  “There were a few missing person reports on the island that were active that September,” John told her. “Two of the three people eventually turned up and the third was a young child. The body we found was not that of a child.”

  “Myrtle Kincaid,” Bessie muttered. “I haven’t thought about her for years.”

  “Who’s Myrtle Kincaid?” Doona asked.

  “She was a little girl in Lonan who disappeared in July, 1967. I think she was five or six and she was playing in her garden behind her house. When her mother called her to come in for lunch, she never came.”

  “How awful,” Doona said.

  “In those days, no one panicked. Her mum just assumed she’d gone to a friend’s house or something. I don’t think the police got involved for several hours, by which time, apparently, there was no trace,” Bessie added.

  “One of the things I’m doing at the station is reexamining cold cases,” John said. “I actually had the Myrtle Kincaid file on my desk when we found the body at the King residence.”

  “What a strange coincidence,” Bessie said.

  “Really strange,” Doona said with a frown. “But you’re sure it isn’t her?”

  “Ninety-nine per cent sure,” John told her. “The coroner’s preliminary findings are that the body is that of a young male, maybe eighteen or nineteen.”

  “That certainly fits for Adam,” Bessie said.

  “And not for Myrtle,” Hugh added.

  The gathering broke up after that. Hugh rushed off for his date and Doona wasn’t far behind.

  “There’s this new American comedy on telly tonight that I want to try,” she told Bessie. “I know you don’t even have a television, but some programmes are very funny, and you can never have too much laughter in your life.”

  The inspector was just tidying away the last of the tea things when Bessie shut the door behind Doona.

  “I can manage that little job,” Bessie told him.

  “Just trying to be helpful,” he replied. “I stayed behind to ask you how you’re feeling. I know everything that happened in July was very upsetting for you, and then I was gone for most of August. Now, this has to have dragged a lot of unpleasant memories back up for you, hasn’t it?”

  Bessie nodded, swallowing hard. “I wish I could say no,” she told him. “But what happened with the jam ladies was a huge shock. I thought I knew them all reasonably well and I never expected that any of them would, well, I never expected what happened. Now, to find ou
t that Nancy hid a body in her own home for thirty years, well, that’s another big emotional blow. Nancy and I were never close friends, but I never would have considered such a thing possible just a few days ago.”

  John crossed to Bessie and took her hands. “You never know what people might do in unusual circumstances,” he told her. “Most parents would kill to protect their children, for instance.”

  “But that doesn’t seem like the case here, does it?” Bessie asked wryly. “It seems as if they killed their child.”

  “Were Nancy and her husband close? Would she have lied for him and helped him conceal a body?”

  “According to Sarah, her mother was devoted to her father, so much so that the children felt unloved,” Bessie replied.

  “So if Frederick killed someone, Nancy would have helped him hide the body?”

  “From what I’ve heard of their relationship, yes.”

  “Even if the victim was their own son?”

  Bessie sighed. “Yes, even then,” she said sadly.

  Chapter Six

  The next day, after breakfast and her walk, Bessie dug out her old diaries from a pile of boxes in the back of the spare room’s wardrobe. She flipped through them, resisting the urge to actually read the entries. Today was for helping John, not strolling down memory lane, she told herself sternly. When she found the book that covered the relevant period, she took it downstairs and curled up in a chair with it.

  It wasn’t long before she was up again, grabbing a box of tissues from the kitchen. Only a few entries into the book she was remembering old friends, long since deceased or moved away, and unwanted tears wouldn’t be far behind.

  Bessie read through entries about little Myrtle Kincaid and sighed. Her first mention of the subject was full of misplaced confidence.

  “A small child in Lonan has gone missing, but no doubt she’ll soon turn up, having decided to hide at the neighbour’s house or spend the night with a little friend.”

  The next entry, a week later, was less optimistic.

  “They have yet to find little Myrtle Kincaid in Lonan. Her mother was interviewed by the local paper. Apparently the child’s sixth birthday is next week and the mother said she was still going to make a cake and buy her missing daughter a present, just in case. It’s all very sad.”