Aunt Bessie Joins

by Diana Xarissa

  “What’s wrong?” Mark called from the doorway.

  “I fell over something,” Carolyn shouted back. “And I can’t find the main plug for the trees, either. I was sure it was right at the doorway.”

  Mark switched on the overhead lights and gasped. Bessie crossed to him quickly, ready to help preserve what she was sure was going to be a crime scene. She looked into the room. Trees had been toppled to the ground, and smashed ornaments were everywhere. In the centre of the room, the four wise men and their horses were in pieces on the table. Black crepe hung in tatters where it had been torn from the walls. Carolyn was sitting on the floor just inside the door and as she looked around, she began to scream.

  “We need to ring the police,” Bessie told Mark.

  “My beautiful room,” Carolyn sobbed. “All my hard work, gone.”

  “Come on,” Mark said. He offered Carolyn his hand and pulled her to her feet. “We shouldn’t touch anything. The police need to investigate.”

  “Oh, sure,” Carolyn said sarcastically. “Maybe they can learn something from fingerprints. Oh, that’s right, there were a dozen people in there today, decorating.”

  “We still need to ring them before we touch anything,” Bessie told her, even though she agreed with the woman’s words. She couldn’t imagine that the police would be able to do much.

  “Who had access to the keys?” Richard asked Mark as they all stood around awkwardly waiting for the police to arrive.

  “The main site custodian keeps a set with him and there is a second set kept in the desk in the ticket booth,” Mark explained.

  “Who is the site custodian?” Richard asked.

  “That would be me,” Henry said from the doorway. “Please don’t tell me you’ve found another body,” he added.

  “No, nothing like that,” Mark assured him. “But someone has destroyed the decorations in this room.”

  Henry stuck his head in the room and then shook his head. “I didn’t even look when I locked everything up,” he said. “I just shut the door and locked it.”

  “What time was that?” Carolyn asked.

  “About four, I think,” Henry said, frowning. “The charity volunteers had all gone down to the press conference and everyone else went off to get changed. Mark didn’t want any doors that could be shut and locked left open when the site was deserted.”

  “Why didn’t you reopen it before the guests began to arrive?” Carolyn demanded.

  “I wasn’t aware that it was ready to be seen,” Henry said. “I opened up the rest of the site and then I went to find Mark to ask him about this room, but he was busy with a group of people and I never got a chance. I thought it was better to leave it locked up than open it if it wasn’t ready.”

  “And you were right,” Mark said firmly over whatever Carolyn began to say. “Why don’t we all move back into the banquet room? It’s far more comfortable than standing around in the corridor.”

  The group walked back to the large room. Everyone stood alone, and Bessie thought she saw more than one suspicious look on various faces. A few moments later a uniformed constable arrived. He took a look at the room and then shrugged. “It’s a mess,” he said. He pulled out his mobile and made a call. While he was doing that, Bessie quietly made a call of her own.

  “No one was hurt?” Pete Corkill asked when Bessie finished telling him about the room.

  “No, but the room has been pretty well destroyed. At least, the decorations have been.”

  “I can’t see how this connects with Mr. Hart’s murder, but I’m going to come down and have a look anyway,” he told Bessie. “I’ll ring the local constabulary and let them know I’m on my way.”

  “My wife and I are tired,” Richard announced a moment later. “We’ll just be going.”

  “I’m sorry sir, but I’ve been told to ask everyone to remain here for the time being,” the uniformed constable said. “One of our inspectors will be coming over to ask you all a few questions.”

  “Someone didn’t like the colour theme and tore the room up a bit,” Richard said. “That’s hardly a police matter.”

  “Criminal damage,” the man replied. “MNH could press charges.”

  “But they won’t,” Richard said. “I’ll pay for any damage to the castle itself, although there doesn’t actually appear to be any. The decorations were all my wife’s property and she won’t want to press charges, I’m certain.”

  “Some of those figurines were valuable,” Carolyn protested.

  “But we won’t be pressing charges,” Richard repeated loudly.

  “MNH would like a thorough investigation,” Mark said quietly. “A lot of hard work has gone into this event and we can’t afford to worry about vandalism.”

  The man that walked into the room now was a stranger to Bessie. He was in his thirties and he was wearing a dark suit that matched his dark hair and eyes. He looked around the banquet room and then focussed on the uniformed constable.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “It’s down here, sir,” the man said, walking down the corridor.

  Bessie watched as the uniformed man gestured towards the still open door. The man in the suit glanced inside and then shrugged.

  “I take it that wasn’t a design choice?” the man asked the room at large.

  “Of course not,” Carolyn snapped. “The room was beautifully decorated as a tribute to Christopher Hart, the wonderful designer who helped so much with getting the rooms throughout the castle decorated.”

  “I see,” the man said. “Seems like your little tribute made someone angry.”

  Carolyn gasped. “Whoever murdered poor darling Christo must have done this,” she exclaimed. “They hated Christo and couldn’t stand to see such a beautiful tribute to his memory.”

  She glanced over at her husband, and snapped her mouth shut.

  “Last I knew, the murderer was still at large,” the policeman replied. “I suppose it’s just possible he or she was responsible for this mess.”

  Bessie had been thinking along the same lines, but really, she thought, anyone who didn’t like Carolyn might have destroyed the room just to get at her, and that included an awful lot of people.

  “I’m Inspector Armstrong,” the man told them all. “Let’s see if we can work out when this happened.”

  It was quickly established that the room had been locked at around four, and as far as anyone knew, not opened again until Mark had done so and discovered the damage more than five hours later.

  “Now I suppose we should talk about alibis,” Inspector Armstrong suggested. “I know the castle was open to many hundreds of guests tonight, but as you are all still here, I’d like to be able to clear as many of you as possible.”

  That may have been his intention, but it quickly proved impossible. With everything that had been going on around the site, no one was able to prove where they were at any given time, let alone for the entire period that the room had been locked up.

  “Who knew where the keys were kept?” the inspector asked after several frustrating minutes of trying to work out people’s movements.

  “All of the MNH staff, everyone on the committee, and probably all of the volunteers,” Bessie supplied.

  The inspector groaned. “It’s too late at night to get involved in this mess,” he said. “Especially as it seems nothing is missing and no one was hurt. For tonight we’ll just lock the door and I’ll come back in the morning and start investigating.”

  “I’d like to ask a few questions before everyone leaves,” a new voice said from the doorway.

  “Inspector Corkill, no one told me you were coming down,” Inspector Armstrong said, his cheeks reddening.

  “I informed your office,” Pete said easily. “I gather they never passed the message along.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Armstrong said coldly.

  Bessie felt sorry for whoever had failed to informed Inspector Armstrong of Pete’s interest in the case. She was sure they were
going to be in a good deal of trouble when the inspector next saw them.

  “I’ll just take a look, if I may?” he asked.

  Inspector Armstrong waved a hand. “It’s fairly hopeless,” he said. “The room is a mess, but everyone here and about two hundred other people had access to it during the relevant time. It’s not on the path through the museum for the Christmas thing, so sneaking back here would have been easy.”

  Pete stuck his head in the door to the room and then came back to the banquet room. “It looks as if several of the nativity figurines are missing,” he said. “I couldn’t quite make out what the smashed figures were, but there doesn’t seem to be enough of them for a full nativity scene.”

  “It wasn’t a nativity scene,” Carolyn told him. “It was the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

  “Happy Christmas,” Pete muttered under his breath as he turned and looked around the crowd. “Ah, Miss Cubbon, there you are,” he said as his eyes met hers. “Can I have a quick word?”

  Bessie nodded and followed him out of the room, down the corridor towards the damaged room.

  “Any thoughts?” Pete asked her as soon as they were out of earshot of the others.

  “Anyone could have done it,” Bessie told him. “At least anyone associated with the event. We all knew where the keys were kept and we all knew how to access this room through the back corridors, as well.”

  “Motive?”

  “Anger at Christopher Hart? Anger at Carolyn? Just tired of the whole ‘Christmas at the Castle’ event?” Bessie rattled off the first three things that crossed her mind. “I don’t think anyone liked what Carolyn did with that room. It was dark and depressing, and it actually could have generated some negative publicity for us. I wasn’t the least bit disappointed when Mark told me it had been left locked up, I will say that.”

  “But you weren’t tempted to destroy it all.”

  “No, of course not, but clearly someone was.”

  “Did you find out what happened to Michael?” Pete asked.

  “He said he fell and tore his trousers and had to go home and change.”

  “And did he?”

  “How should I know?”

  “I mean, did he return wearing different clothes?”

  Bessie shrugged. “I didn’t pay any attention to what he was wearing this morning,” she said. “I’m not even sure I could tell you what he’s wearing now.”

  Pete nodded. “How was the grand opening?”

  “The guests seemed to have a good time, but Carolyn, Michael, Richard, and Natasha seemed to be having some sort of elaborate battle amongst themselves.”

  She gave the inspector a brief run-through of the evening, which left him shaking his head.

  “Maybe I should take a few of them in for questioning,” he suggested. “Although I can’t touch Richard or Carolyn. They have friends in high places.”

  “That isn’t fair,” Bessie complained.

  “I doubt anyone would tell me anything at this point,” he said. “Most of them probably don’t know anything and the person who does is too well covered. I think we’ll have to leave it for tonight and see if we can pick up any fingerprints tomorrow.”

  “Everyone here had a hand in decorating that room,” Bessie told him. “You’re going to have fingerprints on top of fingerprints.”

  “Ah, but I’m hoping we might find a few on the insides of the broken pieces of those figurines,” Pete said. “Only one person could have touched the insides, I reckon.”

  “That’s why you’re the police inspector and I’m just a nosey middle-aged woman,” Bessie said with a laugh. “That never crossed my mind.”

  Pete walked Bessie back to the banquet room. Everyone looked at them expectantly.

  “As Inspector Armstrong pointed out, it’s getting late. As nothing seems to have been stolen and no one has been hurt, as far as I’m concerned we can leave the investigating until tomorrow,” Pete announced.

  “Thank goodness for that,” Carolyn muttered.

  “Everyone is free to go,” Inspector Armstrong announced. “I’ll expect to see all of you here in the morning.”

  “I have nothing to do with this mess,” Richard objected. “If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to do so at my offices in Douglas.”

  “I’m sure we can arrange something that will be convenient for everyone,” Pete murmured, looking at Armstrong for confirmation.

  “Of course,” the man said, nodding curtly at Richard.

  “Excellent,” Richard replied, smiling smugly.

  Bessie stood back and watched as everyone slowly filtered out. Carolyn and Richard left together, whispering back and forth. Michael said something to Natasha, who shook her head and then swept out alone. Mary hurried after her, leaving Michael to walk out behind them.

  “That was not how I wanted the evening to end,” Mark complained to Bessie as they made their way out, locking every door they could behind them.

  “No, but at least it was just us when the mess was found,” Bessie pointed out. “No one else need know about it.”

  Chapter Eight

  They were both too tired to talk on the journey home. Bessie wasn’t sure what she could say to the man who’d put so much time and effort into “Christmas at the Castle,” only for this to happen. Aside from confirming what time he would collect her in the morning, Mark didn’t speak at all.

  It was only half ten, but it felt like midnight when Bessie finally got to bed. She pulled the covers up over her head and tried to forget about everything that had happened at Castle Rushen. Her brain refused to cooperate, instead insisting on replaying the various conversations she’d overheard or been a part of.

  “What were Carolyn and Richard playing at?” she demanded as she sat up in bed. “And why did Natasha and Michael get in the middle of it all?”

  She slid back under the covers and sighed. Even with all of her years of experience, she still didn’t really understand how people could treat other people so badly. She could only hope that everyone went home and calmed down, and that they would all behave better on Saturday. The more she thought about Michael, the more puzzled she became. He’d acted as if he was really drunk some of the time, but he hadn’t sounded all that intoxicated later in the evening. Neither had Carolyn, really.

  “This isn’t helping,” she said loudly. Giving up on sleep, she grabbed the first book she came to on the closest shelf and found herself rereading an old favourite. Nero Wolfe never suffered from sleepless nights, she thought, as the overweight detective played with his orchids and sent Archie out into the big bad world to detect things. By chapter four she was yawning. She’d read the book too many times to lose sleep over it, so she set it down on her nightstand and slid under the covers. She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Her internal alarm gave her an extra twenty minutes of sleep the next morning, which meant Bessie had to hurry to be ready when Mark arrived to collect her.

  “Good morning,” he said as Bessie buckled her seatbelt.

  “Good morning,” Bessie replied. “Let’s hope the police can work out what happened in Carolyn’s room quickly so we can just get on with having ‘Christmas at the Castle.’”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Mark said, “but I’m not the least bit sorry this happened, assuming the damage remains confined to Carolyn’s room. I hate what she did with it and I don’t think it adds anything to our event.”

  “I’d have to agree with that,” Bessie told him. “I didn’t like the room either, and I’ve no idea what the four wise men of the apocalypse were doing there.”

  Mark laughed. “You do make me feel better,” he told Bessie. “I couldn’t sleep last night for worrying about our vandal.”

  “I’m sure whoever it was deliberately targeted that room,” Bessie assured him. “I’d be tempted to suggest that Mr. Hart’s murderer was behind it, but I’d rather think that whoever killed him is long gone back across.”

  “I was think
ing something similar,” Mark said. “Whoever destroyed the room had to know where the keys were kept, which makes it seem likely that it was someone connected to the event.”

  “So maybe it has nothing to do with the murder,” Bessie said cheerfully. “Maybe someone just got tired of doing Carolyn’s work for her and threw a fit.”

  “A pretty dramatic fit,” Mark said. “I only glanced into the room, but it looked as if just about everything was broken or damaged.”

  “That had to take some time,” Bessie mused.

  “I don’t know,” Mark replied. “Smashing things doesn’t take all that long. Someone could have pulled down the wall fabric in seconds, pushed over all the trees and then spent less than five minutes with a hammer on the figurines.”

  Bessie sighed. “After all of our hard work, it’s sad that it could all be destroyed that quickly, but I think you’re probably right.”

  “I’ll have Henry check today to see if any hammers are missing.”

  “But if someone took it, they could have simply returned it when they were finished,” Bessie said with a sigh. “I noticed you have a few small hand tools in the ticket booth. It would have been easy enough for someone to take the hammer when they took the keys and then return both when they were finished.”

  “Maybe the hammer will have fingerprints on it,” Mark said.

  “Haven’t we all borrowed that hammer in the last few weeks?” Bessie asked. “I know I used it at least a couple of times.”

  Mark sighed. “Maybe someone will simply confess,” he said tiredly.

  “Anything’s possible,” Bessie said, patting his arm.

  Mark parked near the castle and the pair walked up the stone steps together. Mark unlocked the first door and Bessie followed him inside.

  “We’ll just wait here for Henry,” Mark said. “He can send up the committee and the volunteers as they arrive and keep everyone else out.”

  “What time do we open today?” Bessie asked. She flushed. “I know I ought to remember, but I don’t.”

  “We’re open from one to five today, and then again tonight from seven to nine,” he reminded her. “That is assuming we have police permission to carry on.”