An Isle of Man Ghostly Cozy Collection - ABC

by Diana Xarissa

  “I don’t know,” Fenella told him. “I inherited it.”

  “Oh, how very nice for you,” the man replied. He opened his mouth to speak again, but his mobile buzzed insistently at him.

  As Fenella worked on putting the shopping away, he frowned at his phone and then typed a reply. A moment later, he was punching in numbers.

  “Ah, yes, sir, it’s Constable Corlett. I’m up in the, um, with the witness as instructed, but I’ve just had a text from Jenny and she thinks the baby might be coming. Is there someone that can take my place up here so I can get to Noble’s?”

  Fenella watched the man as he listened to the reply. A moment later he disconnected and then sent another text message.

  “Your wife is having a baby?” Fenella asked when he’d finished.

  “Aye, our first. She isn’t due for another two weeks, but you never know,” he said.

  Fenella smiled. The young man seemed awfully flustered. “Well, congratulations in advance,” she said. “It must be very exciting.”

  “Oh, yeah, very,” he replied. “Jenny’s really pleased.”

  “Jenny is your wife?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “You weren’t to know that, were you?”

  Fenella smiled. “You have a lot on your mind right now,” she said.

  “Yeah, and being in the middle of a murder investigation isn’t going to help,” he said.

  Fenella raised an eyebrow and the young man blushed. “Oh, I don’t mean anything,” he said quickly. “I mean, whatever happens, all investigations get the very best work the Isle of Man Constabulary can produce.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Fenella replied. “Do you mind if I freshen up for a moment?” she asked, feeling as if she needed to run a brush through her hair at the very least.

  “No, go ahead,” he said, his eyes on his phone. “Just don’t ring anyone, please.”

  Fenella shut herself in the master bedroom and studied her reflection in the mirror. She was right, her brown hair, kept in a shoulder-length bob, was a mess. She brushed it back into place and then frowned at her roots. Her color was overdue for a touch-up. It had been on her list of things to do before she’d moved, but she’d run out of time. She was annoyed to find that her mascara had run in the heavy rain.

  “Waterproof indeed,” she muttered as she wiped the mess from underneath her bluish-green eyes. She brushed a bit of powder across her nose and added a slick of fresh lipstick to her lips. “Better,” she pronounced herself.

  Back in the living room, the young constable was still staring at his phone.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  A knock on her door kept the man from having to reply. Fenella opened it and was surprised to find Inspector Robinson standing there.

  “The crime scene team have begun their work,” he said as a greeting. “I was just in the way, anyway.”

  Constable Corlett’s phone buzzed again and he turned bright red as the inspector looked over at him. “It’s my mum,” he said. “Jenny rang her and asked her to come to Noble’s to meet the grandbaby. Mum’s too excited to drive, so she wants me to collect her on my way.”

  “You’d better get going, then,” the inspector replied. “You don’t want to keep your mum or Jenny waiting.”

  The young man nodded and then jumped up. “I’ll let you know what’s happening later,” he said.

  “You do that,” the inspector said.

  Fenella let the man out and then turned to the inspector. “You’ve been out in the rain for a while. Would you like some coffee or something?”

  The man smiled. “I’m guessing from your accent that you’re American,” he said. Fenella nodded. “Once you’ve been here a little while, you’ll learn that tea is the universal solution to all problems,” he told her.

  Fenella laughed. “I wasn’t sure if that wasn’t just a stereotype,” she said. “But I don’t think I have any tea.” She checked her cupboards, but it was really just for show. She’d bought a jar of instant coffee to keep her going until she could get a coffee maker, but she never drank tea herself and had never even considered buying any. She knew the cupboards had been empty before her trip to the shops.

  “Coffee will be fine,” the man assured her.

  Fenella boiled water in the kettle, an excellent invention that she would have quite liked to have had in her house in the US as well.

  “I’ve never tried this coffee,” she confessed to her guest. “I have no idea how much to add to the water to get it right.”

  “Cops drink a lot of coffee,” the man said. “We aren’t very fussy about it.”

  She mixed up two cups with what looked like the right amount of powder and then set them both on the counter. “Milk or sugar?”

  “This is fine,” the man said, taking a sip. “It’s much better than what we have at the station, at least.”

  Fenella smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  She took her own sip and shrugged. It wasn’t very good, but it was hot and warming and she felt damp all the way through.

  “Why don’t we sit somewhere comfortable?” the man asked. “I have a great many questions for you.”

  Fenella crossed to the comfortable sitting area. There was a long couch with two overstuffed chairs that were arranged in front of the bank of windows. “Have a seat,” she suggested.

  The man sat at one end of the couch, setting his coffee down on the small table that sat in front of it. Fenella took the chair closest to him and settled in, hugging her hot drink with both hands.

  “Let’s start with the basics,” the inspector suggested. “Your name and your age and the full address here.”

  “Fenella Margaret Woods,” she replied. “I’m forty-eight, although I’m not sure why you need to know that, and you probably know the address here better than I do. I know it’s apartment 603, but I don’t know what street it’s on or what the zip code is, or anything like that.”

  “Postcode,” the man corrected her.

  “Yeah, that,” she said with a shrug. “My aunt’s lawyer picked me up at the airport and brought me here. I wasn’t worried about the address, as I figured I would find the building again. It’s too big to miss, even along the promenade with all the other big buildings.”

  “They’ve done a nice job with the remodel of this one,” the man said. “So many of the old hotels have been pulled down, but they took great care here to remodel within the existing structure. Of course, they added an extra two floors, which means your flat wasn’t part of the original hotel, but they’ve managed to keep the character of the older building, I think.”

  “It sounds like you know a lot about architecture,” Fenella said.

  “It’s sort of a hobby of mine,” the man replied with a sheepish grin. “But we need to get down to business. Tell me what you’re doing on the island, please.”

  “Do you want the long version or the short version?” Fenella asked.

  The man looked out the window at the heavy rain that was falling steadily. “I think the long version would be best,” he said, settling back on the couch.

  Fenella grinned. “I was living a perfectly ordinary life in Buffalo, New York, working hard and minding my own business, when I had received a letter from a law firm on the Isle of Man telling me that I’d inherited my aunt’s entire estate.”

  “What did you do in Buffalo?”

  “I was a professor at a college there. I taught history to undergraduates.”

  “Did you know that your aunt had passed away?”

  “Oh, yes,” Fenella said. “My oldest brother informed us all when she died. That had to have been two or three months ago, though.”

  “And you didn’t know, at that point, that you’d inherited anything?”

  “I suppose I just assumed everything would go to my oldest brother. I never really thought about it. After my mother died, he assumed responsibility for keeping in touch with Aunty Mona, who was my mother’s older s
ister.”

  “Were she and your mother close?” the man asked.

  Fenella shrugged. “They wrote to each other quite regularly when my mother was alive, and Aunty Mona came to visit a couple of times over the years, but they lived too far apart to be truly close. Their lives were also very different, so they probably didn’t have all that much in common, really.”

  “What was your aunt’s name?”

  “Mona Kelly.”

  The man grinned. “I didn’t realize this was Mona Kelly’s flat,” he said. “I’ve only been on the island for a couple of months myself, but I’ve definitely heard of her.”

  “Really? What have you heard?”

  “She’s something of a legend on the island,” the man said. “She never married and she lived quite an exciting life, at least by island standards.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to tell you anything that might upset you, but I’ve no doubt other people will be full of Mona Kelly stories once they find out who you are.”

  “Go on, then, tell me what I’m going to find out eventually,” Fenella said, curious to hear what the man knew about her Aunty Mona.

  “She never married, but she never lacked for male company,” the man said. “She traveled a great deal and used to have extravagant parties in the ballroom of this hotel. As I understand it, she lived in a room here when it was a hotel, but no one knew how she paid for it.”

  Fenella grinned. “Oh, dear,” she said. “My mother never told me any of this.”

  “I’ve heard that when the hotel was converted into flats, she was given the nicest flat in the building by the owner,” he added.

  “I don’t know that this is the nicest apar, er, flat in the building,” Fenella said. “But it’s really lovely.”

  “She’d only just passed away when I moved across,” the man said. “Her story was getting some play in the local papers when I arrived. That’s why I remember it all. I think there was some question in the papers as to who would inherit her estate.”

  “I don’t think my brother thought there would be much estate to inherit,” she replied. “He was shocked when I received the letter detailing what had been left to me.”

  “I wonder why your aunt didn’t leave everything to him, or split it between you both,” the inspector said.

  “My brother asked the same question,” Fenella said with a laugh. “He didn’t really mind, as he and his wife are quite comfortable and have no interest in moving back to the island, but he did wonder, nevertheless.”

  “So your parents are from the island originally?” he asked.

  “My mother was born and raised here, but my father is American,” she corrected him. “He came over to the island during the Second World War to see the internment camps. He was stationed in England but was being sent to the front. I don’t know the whole story, but I do know he was sent to the island for a few weeks before he was deployed to the front lines.”

  “And he met your mother?”

  “Yes, at a church dance of all things. He always claimed it was love at first sight, and somehow he managed to convince her to marry him before he was sent to France and then Germany.”

  “It all sounds very romantic,” the inspector said.

  “I suppose it was, in a way,” Fenella agreed. “But then they spent over five years apart as first the war finished and then my father was shipped home. It took him a long time after that to sort out the paperwork to come back to the island for his war bride, or so he always said.”

  “And she was still here, waiting for him?”

  “My mother always insisted she never even looked at another man in all those years. My father tended to keep his mouth shut when the subject came up.”

  Inspector Robinson laughed. “But they ended up together anyway.”

  “They did. My father finally moved to the island in nineteen-forty-nine and he and my mother had four boys in the next six years.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, I know. When the youngest was around ten, they decided to move the whole family to the US. They were working through the paperwork when my mother discovered she was pregnant with me.”

  “No doubt a happy surprise,” the man said diplomatically.

  Fenella laughed. “My mother never made any secret of the fact that I was a completely unexpected addition to the family. They had to put their travel plans on hold for a few years as a result, and I’m sure it was difficult for all of them, even if they did gloss over it when I was older.”

  “So you moved to America when?”

  “When I was not quite two,” she replied. “My brothers were eighteen, sixteen, fourteen and twelve.”

  “And your aunt left everything to you and nothing to them?” he asked.

  Fenella shrugged. “She did and I don’t know why. I barely remember meeting her, although as I said, she did visit occasionally. I do remember one time when she came and took me shopping. I must have been around ten or eleven. We went to a big department store and Aunty Mona bought me a dozen or more dresses, pretty much everything I said I liked. When we got back home my mother wasn’t any too pleased. She thought I was already too spoiled, being the youngest and having much older brothers.”

  “And now she’s gone and left you her entire fortune.”

  “Yes, I’m just lucky none of my brothers really mind. They have all threatened to come and stay with me for long visits, but I’ll deal with that when I have to.”

  The inspector smiled. “I’m afraid we’ve wandered rather far from what we should be discussing,” he said. “Just one more question and then we can get back to the matter at hand. What are you planning to do now? Are you planning to sell the flat?”

  “Oh, no,” Fenella said firmly. “I’ve moved here for good, well, at least for now. I sold my little house in the Buffalo suburbs, quit my job, and well, let’s just say I cut my ties. I’m hoping to stay on the island for some considerable time.”

  “Doing what, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  She felt herself blushing as she turned her head to look out the window. “I’m planning to write a book,” she said eventually.

  “What sort of book?”

  “A fictional autobiography of Anne Boleyn,” she said. She held her breath, waiting for him to laugh.

  “You did say you taught history,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll be a fascinating subject to work with. I do think you might be better off basing yourself in London rather than here, but I suppose you have to work with what you have.”

  “Exactly,” Fenella said. “Aunty Mona left me enough money that I can live comfortably, but not extravagantly. I least I hope she left me enough for that. I suppose time will tell. I’ll do as much travelling back and forth to various libraries and research centers in the UK as I can. Anyway, I reckon it’s going to take me a month or more just to get settled in here. I haven’t really thought much beyond that.”

  “You arrived yesterday?” he asked.

  “I did. Aunty Mona’s lawyer met me at the airport and took me to his office, where I signed about a thousand sheets of paper. Then he brought me here and I went straight to bed, feeling incredibly jet-lagged.”

  “And who was your aunt’s advocate?”

  “Advocate, that’s the word. I couldn’t remember it,” Fenella said. “A lovely man called Doncan Quayle.”

  “He’s one of the best on the island.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “What happened today, then?”

  “I slept until around seven, and woke up feeling all out of sorts. I’m sure it’s going to take me weeks to get my head around the time change. Anyway, after I showered and dressed, I realized that there was nothing to eat in the apart, er flat, so I decided to go shopping. Just before I went out, someone knocked on my door.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Oh, goodness, I don’t really know,” Fenella said. She tried to think. “It was after eight, because getting dressed took a long time. I hadn’t unpacked
anything before I went to bed last night. But it wasn’t nine yet, because I checked my watch as I left the building a while later and it was just a bit after nine.”

  “Okay, so who was at the door?”

  “A man who introduced himself as Alan Collins,” Fenella replied.

  “Can you describe the man to me, please?”

  “I’ll try.” She shut her eyes and tried to remember the man standing in her doorway. Her brain kept insisting on showing her the man lying in the alley instead. Finally she took a deep breath and did her best. “I’d say he was maybe fifty or near that. He was bald and he had tiny little eyes that made me nervous for some reason. His clothes didn’t seem to fit properly, and when he introduced himself, he wouldn’t shake my hand.” She shrugged. “I don’t think that’s helped,” she said apologetically.

  “On the contrary, I think it’s quite a good description,” the inspector replied. “And what did he want?”

  “He wanted to give me his card. He seemed to think that I was going to be selling the flat and he wanted me to have his agency handle the sale.”

  “So he gave you his card, and then what happened?”

  “I told him I wasn’t interested in selling the apartment, and, well, really, I sort of shut the door in his face.”

  Inspector Robinson smiled. “No doubt he deserved it,” he told her.

  “I feel bad now, seeing as how he’s dead,” Fenella confessed. “But I didn’t like him. There was something creepy about the man.”

  The inspector nodded and made a few more notes in the notebook he’d been writing steadily in since he’d sat down. “And then you went out shopping?”

  “I waited about ten minutes, or maybe a bit longer,” she said. “I didn’t want to risk running into Mr. Collins in the corridor. Then I went shopping, got myself a mobile phone and then spent a fortune on a bunch of food I’m not sure I recognize before I walked back here.”

  “You didn’t drive?”

  “I’m not sure I want to try,” Fenella admitted. “Aunty Mona left me a car, but I’ve never driven a stick shift before, and the thought of driving on the wrong side of the road and shifting with the my left hand terrifies me.”