As they pulled into the small car park next to her cottage, Bessie was momentarily startled to see lights on inside her home. She’d nearly forgotten that Hugh was staying with her. Shaking her head, she thanked the driver and let herself in. As soon as she opened the door, she could hear Hugh snoring. A glance at the clock told her that it was only eight, so Hugh must have gone to bed very early.
She took a moment to tidy the kitchen, which was in much better shape than she’d expected it to be. Clearly Hugh had learned to keep Bessie’s home neat when he’d visited as a youngster. She checked the refrigerator and was relieved to see that several of the food boxes were now missing. She’d have to go shopping soon if Hugh was going to be staying for long. Even if his normal extra-hearty appetite didn’t return, she still needed to feed them both.
In the small sitting room, she discovered why she’d been able to hear the snoring so clearly. Hugh was sitting at the tiny writing desk in the corner with the pile of case files. One file was open and his head was resting on the papers inside. He was fast asleep and snoring away. There was no way she could just leave him there in that uncomfortable position, Bessie decided. After a moment’s indecision, she headed back into the kitchen and opened the cottage door. After a moment, she slammed it shut, the wind making it even louder than she’d intended. The sound cut right through one of Hugh’s louder noises, and Bessie grinned as she listened to him jumping out of his chair.
“Goodness,” she said loudly as she walked into the sitting room. “I hope I didn’t startle you too badly. The wind took the door right out of my hands.”
“No, no, I was just, um, reading files,” Hugh replied. “Did you have a good night?”
“I did, but I’m exhausted,” Bessie told him. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to have a very early night. We can talk tomorrow about everything I learned today.”
Hugh nodded. “I might as well go up as well,” he said. “I’ll get ready for bed and then read for a while until I’m tired. That way I won’t disturb you later.”
Bessie smiled, as she’d been hoping for just that. The pair went upstairs. On the landing, Hugh touched her arm.
“Grace is okay, isn’t she?” he asked, tears in his eyes.
“She’s fine, and everything is going to work out in the end,” Bessie assured him.
Chapter Nine
When Bessie opened her eyes as six the next morning, she was surprised that she’d managed to sleep at all. The noise coming from the guest bedroom was shockingly loud. She showered and dressed and then headed out for a long walk, hoping Hugh might wake up while she was gone. When she reached the police tape behind Thie yn Traie, she stopped and turned around. The skies were darkening and it seemed as if rain was likely. It would be good to get home. She’d only gone a few hundred paces when she heard a voice behind her.
“It’s Betsey, isn’t it?” someone called.
Bessie turned around and smiled at Sarah, who was slowly climbing down the stairs behind the mansion above them.
“Good morning,” Bessie said. “I didn’t think anyone would be awake at Thie yn Traie yet.”
“No one is, except me and some of the staff. I haven’t slept properly since, well, since the night of the party,” she replied.
Bessie thought the girl looked surprisingly well-rested for someone who wasn’t sleeping, but she kept the thought to herself. “It must have been a terrible shock to you all, losing your friend like that,” she said instead.
“Oh, yes, horrible.” Sarah shivered. “I actually felt better when I thought Nigel had done it, because he doesn’t have any reason to kill me, but now I’m ever so worried.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because Nigel has an alibi.”
“He does?” Bessie asked.
“I’m sorry. I’m just all over the place today,” the girl said. “Last night, when we were all drinking away our worries, Emma let it slip that she and Nigel were together from the time Gennifer left the great room until just before midnight when they came back to the party. That means Nigel couldn’t have killed Gennifer, and now I don’t know who did it.”
“You mustn’t worry yourself,” Bessie said soothingly. “Were you and Gennifer particularly good friends?”
Sarah laughed. “Not hardly. Gennifer barely knew I was alive. I’m not nearly attractive enough to be friends with her, no matter how much money my father has. The only reason she ever spoke to me was because she liked to shop in my store. But she wouldn’t be seen with me socially if she could avoid it.”
“So how did you end up here for New Year’s Eve?” Bessie wondered.
“Bruce invited me. I didn’t realise that it was a huge party.” The girl turned bright red. “Bruce asked if I wanted to go away for the weekend. I thought, that is, I didn’t know.” She stopped and looked down at the ground. “Everyone thought it was so very funny, the shocked look on my face when I met Bruce at the airport and they were all there, too.”
Bessie felt a flood of sympathy for the poor girl and a flash of anger at Bruce. “That was cruel of Bruce,” she said.
“He didn’t mean to be cruel,” Sarah defended him. “He just worded the invitation badly.”
Bessie bit her tongue rather than argue further. After a moment the girl sighed. “You may be right,” she admitted. “He may have been deliberately cruel. I’ve been in love with him for so many years that I don’t see his faults as I should.”
“There are plenty of other men out there,” Bessie said. “Forget about Bruce and work on finding someone who will love you back.”
“Easier said than done,” Sarah told her. “Besides, Emma has given me new hope. She’s been chasing after Nigel forever and she finally got him to pay some attention to her, in spite of Gennifer.”
“Or maybe to spite Gennifer,” Bessie suggested.
Sarah nodded. “I don’t think Emma will care either way. Nigel is being much nicer to her now than he’s ever been. Gennifer’s death has been good news for her, anyway.”
“Who else benefits from it?”
“The entire world,” Sarah said bitterly. “She was a nasty woman and I don’t think anyone will miss her. I did think Nigel might, but he’s obviously already moved on.”
“I’m sure her parents will miss her,” Bessie said.
“Maybe, but they didn’t seem too upset. They just looked like they were doing what they thought they should do.”
“So if Nigel didn’t kill her, who did?” was Bessie’s next question.
Sarah’s eyes went wide. “That’s just it,” she gasped. “I can’t begin to imagine. It must have been an accident or something. She must have just slipped and fallen, or maybe she had a fight with one of the staff and ran out the door and off the cliff without realising it was there.”
Bessie nodded. She wasn’t about to tell the girl about the knife. “I hope you’re right,” she said.
“The police seem to think that young policeman killed her, but he didn’t look like a killer to me. He looked really nice.”
“He is really nice, and I promise you he didn’t have anything to do with Gennifer’s death.”
Sarah shivered. “It’s really cold down here and I think it’s going to rain.”
“You should get back up to the house and get warm,” Bessie said. “And I must get back to my cottage.”
“I wish I could go home,” Sarah told her. “I don’t like it here one little bit.”
“Hopefully, the police will sort everything out quickly and you can be on your way,” Bessie replied. She watched as the girl made her way carefully up the stairs, back towards the mansion above them. As she walked back to her own cottage, Bessie couldn’t help but wonder what Sarah had wanted. Maybe she just needed someone to talk to, Bessie thought. She could only hope all of Sarah’s friends felt the same way when Elizabeth sent them to speak with her.
Back at Bessie’s cottage, Treoghe Bwaaue, Hugh was making pancakes with the leftover batter from the previous day.
“I was just about to come looking for you,” he told Bessie. “You were gone for a long time.”
“I bumped into Sarah Davies, Elizabeth’s friend, and we had a short chat,” Bessie explained. While they ate pancakes and bacon for the second day in a row, Bessie told Hugh all about the people she’d spoken with the previous day.
“Do you think you’ll learn anything from Elizabeth’s friends?” he asked when she’d finished.
“It’s worth trying,” Bessie said. “I’ve already learned one thing anyway. It seems as if Nigel has an alibi.”
She repeated her conversation with Sarah for the man.
“That’s a shame,” he said when she’d finished. “I was really hoping he did it.”
“Sarah told me that Emma is in love with Nigel. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was willing to lie for him,” Bessie said. “I’m not crossing him off my list yet, anyway.”
They tackled the washing-up together, and then Hugh said he wanted to spend more time on his case files. “I’ll just stay out of your way,” he told Bessie. “And when you do get company, I’ll make sure I’m dead quiet.”
As soon as he was settled in the sitting room with his papers, Bessie made a phone call she didn’t want to make.
“Liz, it’s Bessie Cubbon. I was just ringing to see how you’re doing.”
“Oh, Bessie, I’m, well, I’m mostly fine, although I’m not really sleeping. My doctor is keeping a close eye on me and the baby, though, and so far he isn’t too worried. I’m sure I’ll sleep better once the police work out who killed Gennifer.”
“We all will,” Bessie told her. “And that’s the other reason I was ringing. I was hoping you might be able to help with the investigation. The police seem to think Hugh was involved, which is nonsense, of course. I don’t suppose you know of any possible motive anyone might have had?”
“I suppose I had a better motive than most,” Liz replied.
Bessie was surprised at the other woman’s honesty. “But of course you didn’t do it,” she said.
“No, of course not, but I was almost angry enough to consider it,” Liz said. “She and Bill dated for a while and she’d just dumped him when Bill and I met. For the longest time I was convinced that I was just his rebound girlfriend and that he’d soon tire of me and move on. That’s why I had that flirtation with Mack Dickinson.” Liz sighed deeply.
“I’m sure this is all very difficult,” Bessie said.
“It’s definitely that,” Liz agreed. “When Bill told me that Gennifer had asked him to meet her by the front door at half eleven so they could celebrate the new year privately, I was ready to push her off the nearest cliff, I can tell you.”
“She did what?” Bessie gasped.
“She asked him to meet her by the front door,” Liz repeated herself.
“But Bill wouldn’t do that.”
“Of course not,” Liz replied. “I went instead, intending to have it out with her, but she never came.”
“How long did you wait for her?”
“Oh, quite a while,” Liz said. “After ten minutes or so, Bill joined me and we waited together until nearly midnight. Then we went in to join in the celebration, although I didn’t feel much like celebrating, I can tell you.”
“I do hope you and Bill have made up now,” Bessie said.
“More or less,” Liz said with another sigh.
Bessie considered a dozen replies before she decided to keep it simple. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“We’ll work through it,” Liz told her. “A lot of it is my own insecurity, especially now I’m pregnant and feel fat and frumpy. If they’d get the murderer locked up, I think we could move on more quickly.”
“Please ring me if you think of anything I can do to help,” Bessie told her. “Or if you just need to talk.”
“Thank you, Aunt Bessie,” Liz said. “I may just take you up on that.”
Bessie put the phone down feeling sad. Gennifer was dead, but she was still making Liz and Bill and Grace and Hugh miserable. She got up and paced around the kitchen for a short while, finally deciding to bake something just to have something to do. A quick look through her recipe books had her digging around in the cupboards for the ingredients for snickerdoodles, an interesting sounding cookie that she’d found in one of her American cookbooks. She was mixing up the dough when someone knocked on her door.
“Howard, this is a lovely surprise,” Bessie said when she found the man on her doorstep.
“Ah, yes, well, Elizabeth asked me to drop by. She found this coat in one of the spare rooms and wasn’t sure if it might be yours?” He held up a large black coat that would have swamped Bessie’s petite frame.
Bessie looked at it for a moment and then slowly shook her head. “It’s not mine,” she said.
“No, I didn’t reckon it was,” Howard replied.
“But as long as you’re here, do come in for some tea,” Bessie said. “I was just mixing up some cookies, American-style. If you can stay for a while, you can try them when they come out of the oven.”
“I may as well,” he shrugged. “There’s nothing to rush back for at Thie yn Traie.”
“Oh, dear, that doesn’t sound good,” Bessie said. She filled the kettle and switched it on. “You must be anxious for the police to work out what happened to Gennifer so you can all go home.”
“You’re right about that,” he said. “We’re all driving each other crazy, and some people seem to think there’s a murderer loose in the house as well.”
“You don’t?”
“I think that young policeman did it,” Howard said confidently. “That’s what the police have been suggesting and it makes sense to me. Gennifer was trying to get between him and his girlfriend and he decided it was easier to get rid of Gennifer than ignore her. I can sort of see his point. She was difficult to ignore when she wanted you.”
“Elizabeth mentioned that you and Gennifer used to be a couple,” Bessie said. The kettle boiled and Bessie made the tea, waiting for Howard to reply.
“It wasn’t anything serious,” Howard said, waving a hand. “Although I wouldn’t have mind if it had been. Gennifer wasn’t exactly the settling down type, though, was she?”
“I only met her very briefly, but she didn’t seem like that sort to me, no.”
Howard laughed. “Nigel was crazy to think he could tame her,” he said. “Up until last night I thought he’d killed her, you know.”
“But now you don’t?”
“He was with Emma, which is weird, but she’s the one who admitted it, not him.”
Bessie nodded. “How long have you known Nigel?”
“Just about forever,” Howard laughed again. “We went to school together from the time we were four or five until uni. He’s one of my oldest friends.”
“And you still thought he’d killed Gennifer?”
“Yeah, sure. Not like all planned out and everything, just spur of the moment, in the middle of a fight. Those two were always fighting. I can see Gennifer suggesting a romantic walk along the cliff and then her saying something that upset him. It wouldn’t have taken much to push her off. She was wearing those really high heels. It couldn’t have been hard to get her off balance.”
Bessie found herself staring at the man. His description almost made it sound like he’d been there. What he’d missed out was the knife, but maybe that was deliberate, to throw her off. “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” she said eventually, turning back to her cookie dough. She rolled the dough into balls and then rolled the balls in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. When her baking tray was full, she slid it into the hot oven.
“I have given it a lot of thought,” the man agreed. “There’s nothing else to do at Thie yn Traie but think, or drink. I’ve done quite a lot of both.”
“There’s a large library,” Bessie pointed out.
“I’m not much of a reader,” the man replied.
Bessie knew she shouldn’t hold that against the ma
n, but she did anyway. The conversation switched to more general topics for a few minutes while the cookies baked. As she lifted hot cookies onto a plate, Bessie planned her next question carefully.
“So, tell me about your friends,” she said as she put the plate of cookies on the table in front of Howard. “They all seem like very nice young people.”
“Aside from Gennifer, you mean,” Howard smirked. He took a few cookies and put them on his plate. “They’re hot,” he exclaimed.
“They should cool very quickly,” Bessie assured him.
“I don’t know what I can tell you. We talked about Nigel. Jeremy is everyone’s friend, but he never gets close to anyone. Bruce is short and ugly and he has ridiculously high standards when it comes to who he’s willing to date. That’s why he’s single. Sarah is dumb and spoiled and she really thinks that one day she might have a chance with Bruce, which is really dumb. That just leaves Emma, who is about as bland as a person can be. I was surprised Nigel went for her, but she has been incredibly persistent and she’s really pretty, in her own fragile flower sort of way.”
“What about Elizabeth?” Bessie had to ask.
“She’s lots of fun, but doesn’t take anything seriously. Now that she’s moved here for good, I doubt I’ll see much more of her. It isn’t like I’ll be flying back and forth regularly, and she’s said she doesn’t like London any more.”
Bessie nodded and bit into a cookie. She was surprised how much she liked it. Howard followed her example.
“These are really good,” he said after he’d eaten two.
“I’m glad you like them,” Bessie said. She slid a second tray into the oven. “Maybe some of your friends would like to stop over and try them,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “But I need to get back to the house. I’m sure Elizabeth has a whole list of people she wants me to talk to about this coat.”
Bessie let the man out and locked the door behind him. She hadn’t even turned around when she heard Hugh coming into the kitchen.
“What are you baking?” he asked. “The whole house smells of cinnamon. I was drooling over my papers, but I didn’t dare come in and interrupt your conversation.”
Aunt Bessie Knows (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 11) Page 14