The Irwin Case

by Diana Xarissa

  “As I said, we weren’t expecting you,” Joan said. “Most of our guests book in advance.”

  “So we were fortunate that you have a room at all,” Gary said. “Do we pay when we leave?”

  “I do ask all guests to pay in advance,” Joan told him. “It’s much easier for everyone that way.”

  Roberta frowned, but she didn’t object as Gary pulled out his wallet and counted out the correct amount.

  “Here are your keys,” Joan said, handing them to Gary. “The smaller one is the room key and the larger one opens the front door. If you come in late at night, Janet and I will probably be asleep when you get in. What time would you like your breakfast in the morning?”

  Gary looked at Roberta. “What do you think?” he asked her.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t want to get up too early. We don’t have anywhere we have to be. Let’s say nine?”

  Gary nodded. “Nine sounds good,” he agreed.

  “Very good,” Joan said.

  All four of them headed back down the stairs into the sitting room.

  “We’re just off to see our friends, then,” Gary said. “We’ll see you later.”

  They let themselves out and Janet checked that the door was locked behind them.

  “Well, we went from no guests to a full house in less than a hour,” Janet said. “I hope that’s all of our surprises for today.”

  Chapter 6

  “Maybe we need to forget about the carriage house for now,” Joan said.

  Janet smiled. That was the sort of surprise she liked. “Okay,” she said eagerly.

  “What we really need is a trip to the supermarket. I hadn’t planned on making breakfast for six tomorrow.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Janet said. “Shall I go? Or do you want to come as well?”

  Joan thought for a minute. “I’d like to come as well, but I do think one of us should stay at home. You know when we have guests, I’m always happier if one of us is home at least most of the time.”

  “Yes, I know,” Janet said. “So do you want to go to the supermarket and I’ll stay here?”

  Joan shrugged. “I would like to get out, but I do hate the long drive. Maybe you should just go.”

  “Make me a list, please, while I run a brush through my hair,” Janet told her. When Janet came back down the stairs a short time later, Joan had the list ready.

  “I’ve added what I’d need for a chicken casserole for tonight’s dinner,” Joan told her. “If that doesn’t sound good, you can get something else instead.”

  Janet thought about dinner as she drove to the supermarket. Chicken casserole did sound good, but so did a dozen other things. Too bad Joan couldn’t be as accommodating as the café had been, she thought. She could only imagine the face that Joan would make if she asked her to prepare small portions of three different meals. It might be almost funny, really.

  She pushed her trolley around the shop slowly, looking for things she hadn’t seen before and hoping for inspiration. When she didn’t find any of either, she gave up and found everything on Joan’s list instead. When she finally reached the tills, the queues were long and tempers seemed short.

  “We were spoiled in Doveby Dale,” one woman remarked loudly. “The queues were always kept short there.”

  “But the prices were quite a bit higher,” someone shouted.

  “It was worth paying a bit more if it meant not having to stand here and watch my ice cream melt,” the first woman snapped.

  Janet chose what looked like the slowest-moving queue. In her experience, she always got it wrong when she tried to select the fastest-moving one, so maybe she would have some sort of reverse luck by picking the slowest. Within minutes the shop assistant behind the till had been sent on a break. Her replacement was considerably quicker, working her way through the customers in quick succession. The man in front of Janet was only buying a dozen or so items, and Janet was busily unloading her trolley when the shop assistant turned on the light over her till. Clearly, there was a problem.

  Janet swallowed a sigh and kept adding things to the conveyor belt. She had fewer things left to unload than what she had already piled on the belt, so she decided that she might as well continue.

  A man in a shirt and tie, presumably a manager, walked over.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked the girl behind the till.

  “Credit card won’t go through,” she replied.

  The man in the tie frowned. “May I see the card?” he asked the customer.

  The man handed him his credit card, and the manager ran it through the computer a second time. After a moment, he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, but the card is being declined,” he told the customer.

  “Why?” the man demanded.

  “I don’t know,” the manager told him. “All I know is that you’ll need to pay with a different method.”

  “But the card is good,” the customer protested.

  “You’ll have to take that up with your credit card company,” the manager said.

  The man took his card back from the manager and spun on his heel. “I’ll simply do my shopping elsewhere,” he said angrily.

  Janet watched as he stormed out of the shop. The manager exchanged glances with the girl behind the till. “That’s the second one today,” he told her. “I wish I’d noticed which bank the card was from. Someone is having some problems somewhere.”

  He voided the transaction off the till and then took the man’s shopping bags away. The girl turned to Janet and smiled.

  “I hope you aren’t planning on using a credit card,” she said. “It seems like there’s a problem with the system today.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to,” Janet said apologetically. “I never carry much cash around with me.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to cross our fingers,” the girl told her.

  Janet’s card went through without any difficulty, even though the total did make Janet wince slightly. Feeding unexpected guests was a costly undertaking. Maybe she should have brought some of the cash that Joan had tucked away in her safe to cover the purchase, she thought as she loaded the shopping into her boot.

  She was halfway home before she thought to wonder whether she should have told the manager to ring Robert about the credit card issue. “Some help you are,” she said to herself. She’d been so caught up in the moment, she hadn’t even thought about Robert.

  Back at Doveby House, she and Joan unpacked the shopping. “I think I’m going to ring Robert,” she told Joan. “The man in front of me in the queue had his credit card declined and the manager said that he was the second today. I think Robert ought to know about it.”

  She rang the local station on their non-emergency number, but no one answered. “That’s odd,” she said to Aggie, who was chasing after one of her toys in the sitting room. “I wonder where Susan is.” Perhaps the woman had just popped over to the coffee shop for a sandwich, Janet thought. She would try again later.

  Joan made them lunch. “As chicken casserole is quite filling, I though we should keep things light now,” she told Janet as they ate.

  “What are we having for pudding tonight?” Janet asked. She’d been excited to see apples on her sister’s shopping list.

  “I thought as I’ve been out so much lately, that you might like an apple crumble tonight,” Joan said.

  Janet smiled widely. “I really would,” Janet agreed. Apple crumble was her favourite pudding and she’d have it every night if Joan would agree.

  After they’d cleared away the lunch dishes, Joan gave her a serious look. “We should each go through two boxes from the carriage house this afternoon,” she suggested. “Who knows what wonderful things we might find?”

  Janet frowned. She and Joan both knew that they were unlikely to find anything interesting in the boxes that had been in the carriage house for years. Maggie Appleton, the previous owner of Doveby House, had been an astute busi
nesswoman. There was no way she’d put anything into the carriage house that had any real value.

  “You know it’s all just piles of papers and old books,” Janet grumbled.

  “I don’t know any such thing,” Joan told her. “I’m sure some of those boxes have been in there since before Margaret Appleton bought the house. From everything we’ve been told about her, I can’t see her taking the time to go through them, can you?”

  Janet chuckled. “From what we’ve heard, she was too busy getting married and divorced to dig through old boxes.”

  “Exactly,” Joan said. “Who knows what she might have missed.”

  Janet sighed. She couldn’t really argue any more, not when Joan was making apple crumble for pudding. “I’ll go and get a torch and the keys,” she said. “But only two boxes each.”

  “Agreed,” Joan said.

  They walked through the garden slowly, taking the time to enjoy the first signs of spring. “This is going to be beautiful soon,” Janet said, waving an arm over the many different beds that contained flowers and shrubs. “I don’t know what we would do without Stuart.”

  Stuart Long and his wife, Mary, lived on the other side of Michael Donaldson’s semi-detached house. Stuart was a retired gardener and he looked after the extensive gardens at Doveby House in exchange for a very small salary and all the tea and biscuits he could eat. The sisters hadn’t seen him much lately, as the garden didn’t need much doing to it in the winter months.

  “I saw Stuart yesterday,” Joan said. “He told me that he’ll probably be out here every day again starting next week. Mary was with him, and she wasn’t very happy about his plans.”

  “I don’t understand those two,” Janet said. “They don’t seem to spend much time together and they don’t seem to get along very well, either.”

  “Mary is usually off visiting one or another of her children,” Joan agreed. “Stuart seems quite happy on his own, I must say, especially when we provide him with breakfast and lunch.”

  Janet unlocked the door to the carriage house and pulled the cord for the single overhead light. She pushed the door open as far as it would go and made sure she had the key in her pocket before she did anything else.

  “We haven’t seen the ghost lately,” she remarked as she switched on her torch.

  “We’ve never seen the ghost,” Joan said sharply. “Anyway, there isn’t any ghost.”

  A sudden gust of wind blew the door shut and somehow also managed to switch off the light. Janet looked over at her sister. “I think you’ve made him angry,” she said.

  Joan rolled her eyes and then walked over to the door and pulled the light cord. The light came back on, but when Joan tried the door, it was locked.

  “You have the key?” she asked Janet.

  Janet patted her pocket. “I’ll get it when we’re ready to leave,” she said. “Otherwise the ghost will just lock us in again.”

  Joan looked as if she wanted to argue, but she bit her tongue and then pointed to a random box. “Let’s start with this one,” she suggested.

  Janet joined her and they pulled open the box. “Books,” Janet said, feeling slightly disappointed. Thus far, the only books they’d found in the carriage house had been waterlogged nursing textbooks. She wasn’t optimistic that this box would hold anything better.

  “We’ll take them in the house and go through them,” Joan said. “It’s a bit chilly out here.”

  Janet nodded and then flipped her torch around the space. “I’m going for this one,” she said, selecting a random box that was on top of a small pile along the wall.

  “What have you found?” Joan asked.

  “Paperwork,” Janet said sadly.

  “Again, we’ll have to go through it in the house,” Joan said. “I’m freezing.”

  Janet pulled the box down and opened the one under it. No doubt the entire stack was full of the same boring papers. They might as well go through two boxes of it rather than one.

  She was wrong. The second box had been carefully packed with those little packing peanuts that seem to go everywhere whenever you open a box of them.

  “More papers?” Joan asked.

  “No. But I’m not sure what I’ve found,” Janet replied. She reached into the box and felt around, her fingers touching a cool and round object. Putting the torch down, she pulled it out of the box.

  “What is it?” Joan wondered.

  “It seems to be a glass elephant,” Janet said. “I wonder if it’s valuable or just cute?”

  “I would suggest it isn’t either,” Joan told her.

  Janet laughed. “But that’s all that’s in the box,” she said. “I can put it in my room and we’ve cleared another box out of the carriage house.”

  “For that, I’d even put it in my room,” Joan told her.

  Janet looked at the elephant and shook her head. “No. I’ll have her,” she said. “I quite like her.”

  “You’ll have to watch that Aggie doesn’t knock it over,” Joan warned. “It’s probably quite fragile.”

  Janet nodded. “I’ll find a safe place for her. But you have one more box to open and then we can get out of here.”

  Joan opened the box that she was standing closest to and sighed. “More paperwork,” she said. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”

  Janet hid a smile as she slid the elephant back into its box. “I’ll take this and come back for the books,” she told Joan. “Let’s get out of here.”

  It took Janet a minute to get the door unlocked. The key didn’t seem to want to turn in the lock.

  “Oh, do hurry,” Joan said. “I feel as if I might never get warm again.”

  The sisters burst out of the carriage house and into the April afternoon. The sun was already setting, but the air felt warm to them after the cold interior of the carriage house.

  Neither was eager to make a second trip for their second boxes, but Janet didn’t want to mention her unease and Joan simply pressed her lips together and stomped across the grass as if on a mission. Janet stood in the doorway while Joan picked up her box and then Joan did the same while Janet collected hers. Neither woman said a word, but they were both determined not to get locked inside again.

  Safely back in Doveby House, Janet put the elephant in her room and grabbed a cardigan. The house was warm, but she felt chilled all the way through. Joan’s chicken casserole would be the perfect evening meal, she thought as she walked back towards the kitchen.

  There, Joan was sorting through piles of paper. “So far everything in this box has been from Maggie Appleton’s years of ownership,” she told Janet. “It’s mostly old electricity and telephone bills. I’m just putting them all in a pile to put out with the rubbish.”

  Janet nodded and opened the box of books. She pulled them out one at a time, making note of each one.

  “Anything interesting?” Joan asked.

  “We have twenty-four copies of Poems for the One I Love by Alberta Emerson,” Janet told her. “I’ve actually read that wrong, though, as the word ‘the’ is spelled ‘H-T-E’ on the cover. If I tell you that I think more time was spent proofreading the cover than the rest of the book, you’ll know how excited I am about the find.”

  “Oh, dear,” Joan said.

  Janet opened one of the books and read the cover page. “Printed privately by Alberta Emerson, also known as Alberta Montgomery,” she read. “Copyright 1937.”

  “I don’t suppose those will be worth anything,” Joan said.

  “I wonder who she was,” Janet said. “I’ve been meaning to research the history of Doveby House. Maybe she used to live here.”

  Joan opened her other box. After a moment, she looked up at Janet. “I think you may be right about her living here,” she said. “This box seems to be full of her letters.”

  Chapter 7

  “Letters to her or from her?” Janet asked, feeling excited.

  “It appears to be both,” Joan said. “And this may be her diary, as well.�
�� She held up an old and worn book. Janet could see “Alberta Montgomery” written across the front in a childish-looking loopy handwriting.

  “Let me see,” Janet said.

  “I’m not sure we should read her diary,” Joan replied. “Or her letters, for that matter.”

  “We need to find out who she was,” Janet suggested. “She must have family that would want the letters and diaries.”

  “Even they won’t want the books,” Joan predicted.

  Janet laughed. “You never know, people can be oddly sentimental about some things.”

  Joan went through the rest of the box. It was full of piles of letters and several diaries. “I feel weird about reading them,” Joan said.

  “I know, but I’m also curious,” Janet said. “Let’s pack them all up and put them out of the way for today. Maybe we can find out more about who she was and then decide whether to read them or not.”

  They repacked Joan’s box and then put the books back into their box. Joan cleared a space for them in the back of her wardrobe.

  “I’m not sure we’ve accomplished much,” Joan said. “We have emptied two boxes, but we’ve also simply moved two from the carriage house into my wardrobe. That might be considered a step backwards, in some ways.”

  Janet shook her head. “You want to get the carriage house cleared out,” she said. “We could simply move everything in it into the main house. That would be the fastest way to do it.”

  “We don’t want to clutter up our lovely home with the boxes from the carriage house,” Joan said. “You’re just looking for ways to get around going through the boxes.”

  “Yes, I am,” Janet agreed.

  Joan shook her head. “I really think…” she began. A knock on the door interrupted her.

  “Robert, what a lovely surprise,” Janet said when she opened the door. She let the man in quickly, hoping that his visit would keep Joan from ever finishing her sentence.

  “I can’t stay long,” the man warned. “I have several other people I need to talk to today.”

  “Come and have a cuppa,” Joan suggested. “Surely you have time for that.”