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

by Diana Xarissa

  “Not much,” Doona laughed. “I just ate the most expensive thing on the menu, had pudding and then walked out.”

  It was only a few minutes later when someone knocked on Bessie’s door. Hugh was quickly on his feet.

  “I brought Indian,” John announced, handing several boxes to Hugh. “And I stopped at La Terrazza for one of those chocolate chip cookies pizzas that they do for after.”

  Bessie smiled and got up to get out the plates and napkins. A spicy smell began to fill the room and she couldn’t help but feel that a giant chocolate chip cookie was a better pudding than strawberry trifle.

  Chapter Ten

  When everyone had their plates filled, Bessie looked at John with a dozen questions in her eyes. He shook his head.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d really like to eat for a few minutes before we talk,” he said in an apologetic tone. “I never got any lunch and I’m starving.”

  Bessie nodded. Hugh fetched cold drinks for everyone and for several minutes they all focussed on the delicious food. Eventually, having cleared his plate twice, John took a slice of cookie pizza and then looked up at the others.

  “Okay, I’m feeling better,” he said. “How are you feeling?” he asked Bessie.

  “I’m fine,” Bessie replied. “A bit frustrated, maybe, about being babysat all afternoon, but other than that, I’m fine.”

  John nodded. “I’m sorry about that. Any time George Quayle is involved in anything, I get nervous. The last thing I need is his advocate sticking his nose in and refusing to let me speak to either George or Mary.”

  “I can’t see what I have to do with George Quayle getting involved,” Bessie said.

  “I was hoping we could keep the whole thing quiet until I’d had a chance to talk to Mary at length,” John sighed. “As it is, someone rang the newspapers and they rang George, and then he came rushing up, screaming and shouting that he should have been notified immediately and threating to have me fired.”

  Bessie sighed. “I can ring him,” she offered.

  “It’s fine,” John replied. “Mary calmed him down and even told him that she’d asked me not to ring him so that he wouldn’t be disturbed at work. Then she told him to take his advocate and go sit in the car while she talked to me. I didn’t know she had it in her to stand up to him, but she was very strong.”

  Bessie nodded. “She’s very shy and quiet, but I’m certain there’s an incredibly strong woman hiding inside of her.”

  “She didn’t have that much to tell me, though,” John said. “I didn’t ask her to look at the body. She was pretty sure that nothing was disturbed into the unit, aside from the wardrobe that she didn’t recognise. I’m only telling you that because she told me she’d already discussed it with you.”

  “Indeed, and once she made the comment, I could see her point. The wardrobe that fell out of the unit was not the sort of quality that Mary Quayle would buy,” Bessie replied.

  “We had George take a look at the body, but he claimed he’d never seen the man before,” John told her. “I didn’t mention the possible connection with Seaside Terrace.”

  Bessie nodded. “I could be wrong about that,” she said. “But if it isn’t the same man, they looked very similar, and they were wearing the same clothes.”

  “Are you sure about the clothes?” John asked.

  “As far as I can remember,” Bessie said. She sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise at the time that it would be important,” she told John. “Inspector Corkill might be able to help there.”

  “I’ve rung Pete,” John told her, referring to the Douglas area CID inspector by his Christian name. “He’s going to meet me tomorrow to have a look at the body.”

  “Do you have any idea who he is?” Bessie asked.

  “I have to admit to suspecting that it’s Mark Carr,” John replied. “He’s the only missing person we have on the books that fits the body we found.”

  “Has he been on the island that long?” was Bessie’s next question.

  “He was released from prison in the last week of July,” John told her. “His ferry ticket, which was used, was for the 2nd of August.”

  “So I could have seen him in Douglas in August, when I was there,” Bessie exclaimed.

  “Indeed,” John said.

  “But I should have recognised him,” Bessie argued. “I knew him when he was younger and there should have been a resemblance between him and his father, surely?”

  John shrugged. “He left the island when he was eighteen or nineteen and spent pretty much his entire adult life in prison. It’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t look the same as you remember.”

  “He doesn’t look anything like his father, either,” Bessie mused. “If anything, he rather resembled the middle-aged Nicholas Lewis more than Michael Carr.”

  John frowned. “Is it possible, that is, could Joan Carr have had an affair with Nicholas Lewis?”

  Bessie shook her head and took a big bite of cookie. She needed something sweet to wash down the unpleasant thought.

  “I thought Elinor said that her husband cheated on her,” Doona said.

  “She said a lot of crazy things,” Bessie said. She sighed. “I suppose it’s possible,” she admitted. “And I suppose it doesn’t much matter, does it? Everyone concerned is dead now, aren’t they?”

  “It doesn’t matter unless it has something to do with why Mark Carr was killed,” John corrected her. “Assuming it was murder, of course. At this point we can’t say anything for certain.”

  “Of course it was murder,” Bessie said. “Someone shoved his body inside a wardrobe, for heaven’s sake.”

  “As I said, we aren’t certain yet,” John repeated himself.

  “And you aren’t sure who it is, either,” Bessie said. “Does anyone else see alarming parallels between this and the other body we found recently?”

  “If it is Mark Carr, there’s another link,” John said. “But first we have to be sure who we’ve found.”

  “How long will it take to find out?” Bessie asked.

  “Not as long as it’s taking for the other body, at least,” John said. “We’ve taken fingerprints from the corpse, and if it is Mark Carr we should know in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Did George have any idea how the body got into his storage unit?” Bessie asked.

  “Everything Mr. Quayle said is privileged communication,” John said stiffly.

  Bessie nodded. “I’ll have to ring George tomorrow and ask him, then,” she said.

  “I hope you do,” John replied. “I’d be interested in hearing what he has to say, actually.”

  “What about Grant Robertson?” Bessie asked.

  “What about him?” John asked.

  “Did you ask him to look at the body?”

  “No. As far as we know, he doesn’t have any connection to the storage units. If Pete identifies the body as the man who was found in the flat on Seaside Terrace, we might ask him to have a look, since he owns that building, but at the moment we’ve nothing that even remotely ties him to the body.”

  “So, if we assume it is Mark Carr, can we assume he was killed to keep him from talking about what happened to Adam King?” Bessie asked.

  John shrugged. “You’re making a couple of very large assumptions there, but I’m happy to have a chat about the situation based on them, as long as everyone understands that we’re just making idle conversation.”

  Hugh and Doona nodded while Bessie waved an impatient hand.

  “If that’s the case, if Mark was killed to prevent him talking about Adam, that suggests that whoever killed Adam is still alive and still on the island,” she said.

  “That’s certainly one possibility,” John said.

  “But if someone else killed Adam, why did his parents hide his body in their home? It simply doesn’t make sense,” Doona said.

  “Maybe George Quayle killed him and gave Adam’s parents lots of money to hide the body,” Hugh suggested.
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  “I can’t see Nancy ever agreeing to that,” Bessie said. “She might not have been the most loving mum in the world, but even she wouldn’t cover up her own son’s murder for money, surely.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know about it. Maybe George paid Frederick to do it and he never told Nancy,” Doona speculated.

  “I don’t know that George had that much money in those days,” Bessie said. “He was working for the bank, but he wasn’t anywhere near as wealthy as he is now.”

  “So who had enough money in 1967 to persuade a man to hide his own son’s body?” Hugh asked.

  “I don’t think that’s what actually happened,” Bessie said. “But, Grant Robertson was already making quite good money by that time. Not only that, he was Frederick’s boss. Perhaps he offered Frederick a promotion or something instead of money.”

  “Or in addition to money,” Hugh added.

  “I don’t remember the Kings ever having a lot of extra money,” Bessie said, thoughtfully. “They never took fancy holidays or drove new cars or anything.”

  “We can request their bank records from the sixties,” John told her. “But I doubt very much, if they were paid to keep quiet about a murder, that they put the money into their bank account.”

  “Is there anyone else who might have wanted Mark Carr dead?” Hugh asked.

  “Who inherits his mother’s estate?” Doona asked.

  “Mark was only getting a portion of the estate,” Bessie told her. “Most of it was going to a couple of cancer charities. I believe, with Mark gone, they’ll both get a slightly larger share, assuming Mark didn’t have a will, I guess.”

  “That’s one for the advocates to fight about,” John said. “We do know that Mark had virtually no money of his own.”

  “So where had he been staying while he’d been here?”

  “If he is the man you saw in Douglas, it seems likely he was staying in that empty flat, at least for a little while,” John said. “Tomorrow we will be going through every storage unit at the Jurby site, looking to see if there’s any sign that anyone was staying in any of them.”

  “How did he get to Jurby in the first place?” Doona asked. “And why would he want to go to Jurby, anyway?”

  “You’re assuming he was alive when he went there,” John pointed out quietly.

  “Oh,” Doona said. She took a deep breath and then grabbed another slice of cookie pizza. Bessie thought about it for a moment before following her friend’s lead. There was very little in life that a bit more chocolate couldn’t improve, even if it only made things a tiny bit better.

  “Is it possible that Mark’s death has nothing to do with Adam’s?” Bessie asked.

  “Anything is possible at this point,” John replied. “Mark was pretty much a career criminal. He’s been in and out of gaol for his entire adult life. I think his longest stretch outside was about three months, and that was in the early eighties. Prison is a tough place. It’s possible that he made enemies in there and came to the island to get away from them. And it’s also possible that they followed him.”

  “He had to have had help,” Bessie said. “There’s no way he could have hidden himself on an island this small for this long without someone helping him out.”

  “We’re checking into his known associates,” John replied. “But we’ve been doing that since we found the first body, as we were rather anxious to talk to Mark. So far we haven’t turned up anything.”

  “Why would anyone help him?” Doona asked. “Elinor said his own mother wasn’t looking forward to seeing him.”

  “Maybe he told someone he was going to inherit everything from his mum,” Hugh suggested. “Or maybe he blackmailed someone into helping him.”

  “I’m afraid blackmail is one possibility we’re taking quite seriously,” John said. “Especially in light of what happened to him. Always assuming it is Mark Carr that we found, of course.”

  “It can’t be anyone else,” Bessie said. She poured herself more tea and sipped it, her mind racing. “What was he doing at Seaside Terrace?” she asked.

  “Maybe he was just taking advantage of an empty flat,” Doona said.

  “Maybe, or maybe someone put him in that empty flat for safekeeping,” Bessie suggested. “And where did Mark go once he left Noble’s? Was he running away from someone or running to someone?”

  “All excellent questions,” John said. “I hope we can find answers to them eventually.”

  “I can’t help but feel as if Mark is the key to this whole thing,” Bessie said. “I’m convinced that he knew what happened to Adam.”

  “It seems likely that he knew something more than anyone else we’ve spoken to, at the very least,” John replied.

  Everyone fell silent for a moment and then Bessie’s phone clicked. “I really should check my messages,” she said with a sigh. “There are probably over a hundred.”

  “Go ahead and check,” John told her. “I just need to ring someone and then we can wrap this up for tonight.”

  John stepped into Bessie’s sitting room to make his call while Bessie pressed play on her machine. For several minutes she and Doona and Hugh listened as person after person asked Bessie to ring them back with all the details on the dead body in Jurby. After the tenth call, Bessie pressed “pause” and sighed deeply.

  “Not one of them bothered to say that they hope I’m okay,” she said.

  “I guess they all figure you’re getting used to finding dead bodies,” Hugh said.

  Bessie gave him an angry look, shifting the look to Doona when she noticed that Doona was smirking at the remark. “I don’t mean to keep finding bodies,” she said in a hurt voice.

  “We know that,” Doona assured her, patting her arm. “But you do seem to have done quite a lot of it lately.”

  “I didn’t find any bodies in July or August,” Bessie protested. “Okay, lots of my friends died in July and I did find a badly beaten-up man in August, but he wasn’t dead, at least not until now. Anyway, I can’t just stay home all the time. None of this is my fault, anyway.”

  “Since the first body you found was practically on your own doorstep, I’m not sure staying home would help, anyway,” Doona said.

  Bessie shook her head and pressed “play” again. A dozen more calls of the same nature were listened to and deleted. John walked back in as the very last message began to play.

  “Bessie, it’s Mary. I do hope you’re feeling okay. I was very shaken up by today’s events and my doctor has given me something to help me sleep. I’m going to take it after I hang up, so please don’t ring me back until tomorrow. I just wanted to check on you, really, and also to remind you about the art auction on Friday evening. I know the timing isn’t great, but it’s a charity thing and George and Grant are insisting we can’t reschedule. It’s tied to some big event across, apparently, and, well, anyway, if you can make it, I’d love to see you. It’s just wine and light food with the auction of art by a group of very talented local artists. I forget the name of the charity it is in aid of, but it’s always a good cause, isn’t it? Ring me tomorrow and let me know that you’re okay. I’m off to bed.”

  “Am I allowed to ring her back?” Bessie asked John.

  “I was just checking with the Chief Constable about that,” John replied. “Apparently George Quayle has given an interview to the local paper, telling them absolutely everything about the case. Because of his position, he was privy to perhaps more information than he should have been, and all of that is going to be spread across the front page tomorrow.”

  “You won’t be in any trouble, will you?” Hugh asked.

  “I didn’t even speak to George,” John said. “The Chief Constable himself is the one who shared some things he shouldn’t have.”

  “So I can talk to whomever I like?” Bessie asked.

  “You can,” John said, nodding. “The only thing I’d rather you didn’t mention to anyone is that you think you saw the dead man in the flat at Seaside Terrace. The inf
ormation might be out there, but I’d rather people think that Pete Corkill recognised him, instead of you.”

  Bessie nodded. “And what about this party on Friday? I assume there’s no reason for the police to stop it going forward?”

  John shrugged. “I’d like to, after what George has done, but no, we haven’t any reason to stop it from happening, at least not yet.”

  “Is there anything else we need to discuss?” Bessie asked.

  “I thought you might like an update on Ms. Partridge,” John told her, smiling.

  “Oh, yes, what happened to the lovely Fiona?” Bessie asked.

  “She was questioned, then escorted back to her hotel for her things and taken to the airport. Her company paid for her to fly back to London immediately. Apparently, they will be sending someone else to handle the furniture auction when it’s eventually rescheduled.”

  “Poor Mary,” Bessie said. “When will that be?”

  John shrugged. “We were willing to try to be finished up there by Friday so the sale could go ahead as planned, but Mary decided to just cancel and reschedule. I guess Fiona was also going to handle the evening event, but they’ll have to send someone else for that as well. Ms. Partridge has been asked not to return to the island.”

  “That seems a bit harsh,” Bessie said, unable to imagine being told she couldn’t come back to the beautiful island that she called home.

  “Yes, well, I requested that she remain at the scene of a very serious crime and she refused. When cornered by police, she fled on foot and then, when arrested, she resisted. She admitted, when questioned, that she’d taken some rather high-powered pain medicine this morning. Of course, she claimed that she has a prescription for it, but we couldn’t confirm that. In the end, we agreed that it might be best for everyone concerned if she just flew home and didn’t come back.”

  With that piece of news, it seemed as if everyone had run out of things to discuss. Doona and Hugh quickly helped Bessie tidy up the small kitchen after John left.

  “I’ll ring you tomorrow,” Doona told Bessie as she walked them to the door. “I’m not sure about this auction on Friday. I think George Quayle is mixed up in these murders somehow.”