Aunt Bessie Joins

by Diana Xarissa

  “Oh, I do hope they don’t make us cancel,” Bessie said. “We’re raising an lot of money for all of the good causes with every ticket we sell.”

  “I just hope people don’t stay away when they hear what happened,” Mark said.

  “Maybe we can keep it quiet,” Bessie suggested. She and Mark exchanged glances and Bessie laughed.

  “Okay, there’s no way we can keep it quiet, not on this island, but why would it keep people away? A little light vandalism in a room that wasn’t even open to the public shouldn’t bother anyone.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Mark replied.

  Bessie patted his arm again. She hoped she was right as well. They’d put too much time and effort into the event to see it fail now.

  Once Henry was in place at the door, Bessie and Mark headed up to the banquet room. Mark unlocked doors as they went, and both he and Bessie inspected each room along the way.

  “Everything looks perfect,” Bessie said.

  “I don’t suppose we ought to open up Carolyn’s room,” Mark said.

  “You can, as I’m here,” Pete Corkill said from the doorway behind them.

  “I was rather expecting Inspector Armstrong,” Bessie told the man.

  “He’s agreed to leave it with me,” Pete told her. “He’s very busy with other things and there might be a connection between this and my murder, so he was happy to turn the whole thing over to me.”

  Bessie doubted that happy was the right word, but she didn’t question the man.

  Mark unlocked the door. “The switch for the overhead light is on the left,” he told Pete.

  Pete turned on the light and sighed deeply. “I suppose it looked a lot better before everything was smashed,” he said, looking at Bessie.

  “I thought it was rather awful,” Bessie admitted. “It certainly didn’t look festive or merry.”

  “I have a crime scene team coming to start processing the mess,” Pete told them. “In the meantime, I’m going to start working on trying to work out some other things.”

  Bessie and Mark walked back to the banquet room and took seats at the long table. “What do we need to do today?” Bessie asked.

  “Nothing much,” Mark replied. “I originally asked everyone to come in this morning so that we could tidy everything up. I thought the rooms would be more disturbed than they are. I was surprised at how good everything looks this morning.”

  “I suspect we’ll have more work to do after the afternoon hours,” Bessie predicted. “We should get lots of families through this afternoon and small children are far more likely to want to touch things than the adults were last night.”

  Over the next half hour the charity volunteers and the rest of the committee slowly trickled in. By the time Pete’s crime scene team arrived, everyone was there except for Michael.

  “Is everyone here, then?” Pete asked from the doorway.

  “Michael isn’t,” someone answered.

  “I wasn’t sure if you wanted Natasha,” Mary said hesitantly. “She was planning to fly back across this morning to spend the weekend at home, but I suggested she probably shouldn’t. She didn’t feel like coming back down here again, though. She’s at her hotel in Douglas, working on the plans for Thie yn Triae, if you want her.”

  “I’ll have someone talk to her there,” Pete said, sounding unconcerned. “I’m already accommodating Richard Teare in that way.”

  “I’m not sure why I had to come back,” Carolyn grumbled loudly.

  “You’d be here anyway to help us get ready for the afternoon opening,” Mark reminded her.

  She frowned and looked down at the table in front of her. Bessie thought she looked older today, and far less attractive, even though her outfit probably cost more than Bessie spent on clothes in several years.

  “I’m sure those of you who weren’t here last night have been informed as to what was discovered when we opened the door to the room that Mrs. Teare decorated,” Pete said. “For now we’re assuming that everyone associated with the event knew where to find the keys and how to get into the room unseen. What I’d like to do is take everyone’s fingerprints so that we can compare them with the prints that we know we’ll find on the ornaments and other decorations.”

  “Finding our prints in there won’t prove anything,” Harriet argued. “We all did at least some of the decorating in there.”

  “Exactly, and I’m hoping, once we can eliminate all of you, that we have a set of prints we can’t identify,” Pete told her.

  Harriet didn’t look like she believed his explanation, but she didn’t argue further.

  “If we could just set up on a table somewhere?” Pete asked Mark.

  Mark rang Henry at the gate and asked him to send up a spare table and some chairs with one of the staff on duty. Everyone watched silently as the table was set up on one side of the room with two chairs behind it and one in front.

  “Who’d like to go first?” Pete asked.

  “I’m happy to,” Mark said, stepping forward.

  Bessie watched as everyone took their turn to have their fingerprints taken. Pete asked each person a few questions before sending them away to wash their hands in the nearest sink.

  “Miss Cubbon, I think you’re next,” Pete said eventually.

  Bessie walked over and sat down. “I’m sure you have mine on file,” she said as she offered her hands to the man on the opposite side of the table.

  “It’s easier for us if we take a fresh set today, if you don’t mind,” Pete told her. “That way we can do comparisons on the spot.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” Bessie said.

  “Do you know who took Michael home last night?” Pete asked as the man pressed each of Bessie’s fingers into the ink and then on to the cards.

  “No,” Bessie replied. “He left after Carolyn and Richard, walking out with Natasha, but I don’t know what happened once they all got outside. Mark and I were quite a bit behind them because Mark was locking up. Everyone was gone by the time we got to the street.”

  “The man seems to have disappeared again,” Pete said grumpily. “He isn’t answering his home phone or his mobile.”

  “I hope he’s okay,” Bessie said, feeling slightly worried for the man, but only cautiously so after his disappearing act the previous day.

  “You don’t know if he has a girlfriend or anything like that?” Pete asked.

  Bessie shook her head. “I really rarely spoke to him,” she explained. “He came and decorated his room the first day we were open for decorating, and then he didn’t come back until the day Mr. Hart arrived to assess everything.”

  “When did his relationship with Carolyn begin?”

  “I don’t know that they have a relationship,” Bessie replied. “There seemed to be something going on between them last night, though.”

  “Did they meet when Michael came to decorate his room?”

  Bessie thought back. “I don’t think so,” she said after a moment. “I don’t think Carolyn was spending much time down here then. She came to committee meetings but otherwise, she wasn’t here. Mark and I are the only two committee people who’ve been on site pretty much nonstop since early December.”

  “I’m going to let you go because I don’t want people to think I’m spending more time with you than I am with everyone else,” Pete told her. “But I’d really like to talk to you again later today.”

  “I’m here all day,” Bessie told him. “Although I’ll probably be quite busy when the castle is open.”

  “Maybe I can buy you dinner between sessions,” Pete suggested.

  Bessie nodded. “I can pay my own way,” she told him.

  “But you’ll let me buy anyway,” Pete added.

  Bessie stood up. Before she could walk away, Pete had one final question.

  “Do you have any idea where we might find some of Michael’s fingerprints?” he asked.

  Bessie laughed. “I think I might, actually,” she said, sounding as su
rprised as she felt. “In the room he decorated, there might be at least one really good set of prints, now that I think about it.”

  Pete frowned. “I’ll have you show me after we’re done here,” he said.

  Bessie nodded and walked away.

  “Mrs. Teare, I believe you’re the only one we’ve missed,” Pete said.

  “I was just speaking with my advocate,” Carolyn replied. “He says I don’t have to give you my prints.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Pete agreed easily. “But we would greatly appreciate your cooperation.”

  Carolyn frowned and stared at her mobile. Bessie could see indecision etched across the other woman’s face. When the mobile buzzed, everyone in the room seemed to jump.

  “Yes, yes, I see, okay, thank you,” Carolyn said on her end.

  “Richard would prefer it if I decline,” she said stiffly. “He won’t be providing his either.”

  Pete nodded, clearly unsurprised by the news. “Miss Cubbon, if you could show me what we were discussing, then?” he asked.

  Bessie stood up and the pair left the room. She could feel the curious stares that followed her out of the space. When they reached it, Michael’s room felt weirdly empty to Bessie. She scolded herself for her overactive imagination and led Pete to the large tree in the back of the room.

  “All of the ornaments on this tree were donated by the families of men and women who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease,” Bessie told Pete. “Michael was here when we opened that first morning, and just after lunch I came up to see how he was doing. He’d finished the entire room, except for this tree. As you can see, many of the ornaments are old and some of them were quite dusty. Michael was polishing them, one at a time, before hanging them on the tree.”

  “Was he now?” Pete asked.

  “See that shiny silver one at the top?” Bessie asked. “I teased him about getting fingerprints on it, because it’s so shiny.”

  “So he was extra careful not to,” Pete guessed.

  “No, he grabbed it with both hands, pushing his fingertips against it,” Bessie said. “We were both laughing about how if he robbed a bank, we had all the evidence we needed.”

  Pete nodded. “I do hope he didn’t give the ornament another polish after you left,” he muttered. He took gloves and a plastic bag from his pocket and carefully put the ornament into the bag.

  Bessie followed him back to the banquet room, where Mark was anxiously looking at his watch.

  “It’s just about midday,” he said as Bessie walked in. “We open in about an hour. I didn’t have lunch catered today, because I didn’t realise we were going to be tied up all morning.”

  “The pub across the street has excellent food,” Bessie suggested.

  “And I’ll treat because we’ve all been working so hard,” Mary added.

  A few people cheered and then everyone headed for the exit. Bessie waited while Mary had a quick word with Pete and then they followed the others out of the castle and across the road.

  Lunch was delicious but rushed. It was a small pub that wasn’t used to unexpected and large groups at that time of day, but they managed to get everyone happily fed with five minutes to spare. Mark thanked Mary repeatedly, until he had to hurry back to the castle to make certain everything was ready. Mary had insisted on including Henry and Laura as well as the three young MNH staff members who were helping at the castle that day in the invitation to lunch, and they were all quick to follow Mark back across the road. The charity volunteers and the committee members were a bit slower.

  “I should hurry,” Marjorie said as she swallowed her last bite of sticky toffee pudding. “I’m MNH staff, after all.”

  “But today you’re ‘Christmas at the Castle’ committee, really,” Bessie said. “Knowing MNH, you aren’t getting paid for all the extra time and effort you’ve put into this little event.”

  “I’m not,” Marjorie agreed. “But I love it anyway.”

  “If I had to work for a living, I certainly wouldn’t give up my free time,” Carolyn sniffed.

  “When you work for a non-profit, you often find that your desire to help them succeed overrides your self-interest,” Marjorie replied.

  “If you say so,” Carolyn said doubtfully.

  “You do a lot of volunteer work,” Bessie said. “Surely you get a great deal of satisfaction from that.”

  Carolyn raised her eyebrows at Bessie. “Satisfaction? Hmm, yes, I suppose so,” she replied. “But really, I do what I have to as a result of my husband’s position in Manx society, that’s all. Mary understands, don’t you, my dear.”

  Mary smiled thinly. “I only volunteer for projects I’m interested in and where I think I can actually make a difference,” she told the other woman. “I’d like to think I was a real help with ‘Christmas at the Castle.’”

  “You were,” Bessie said emphatically.

  Carolyn looked at Bessie expectantly, but Bessie couldn’t bring herself to say what she knew Carolyn wanted to hear. Fortunately, the waitress interrupted before she could reply.

  “I have everything you ordered ready to go,” the girl told Mary as she handed her the bill.

  Mary glanced at it and then gave the girl a stack of notes. “Thank you,” she said.

  The girl brought three large and very full carrier bags over to them. “Here you are,” she said brightly. “Was there anything else today?”

  Bessie assumed, from the girl’s suddenly increased enthusiasm, that she’d counted the money she’d been given and just realised that Mary had added a very generous tip. Mary always did.

  Marjorie insisted on carrying two of the bags, leaving just one for Bessie and Mary to fight over.

  “I paid for it,” Mary argued.

  “All the more reason for me to carry it,” Bessie replied. “But what is it all for?”

  “Inspector Corkill and his men,” Mary told her. “He wouldn’t let any of them take a break to join us, so I told him we’d bring lunch to them.”

  Bessie smiled at her friend. Unlike many wealthy women, Mary was always thinking of others. She’d also allowed Pete to take her fingerprints without a murmur.

  A long queue had built up in front of the castle, so Bessie and the others headed around to the side door. They slipped inside quickly and took the back stairs to the banquet room.

  “We’re just about to open for business, so you really can’t eat in here,” Mark said apologetically when he walked through as Mary was handing the feast over to Pete. “We can open another room for you, though, and move the table you were using in there.”

  “That would be great,” Pete said. “And we all truly appreciate your kindness,” he told Mary. “I could get into a lot of trouble for accepting gifts from a suspect,” he added.

  “It’s only lunch,” Mary told him. “And I promise not to expect special treatment because of it.”

  “You won’t get it,” Pete told her seriously.

  Mary laughed. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she assured him.

  Two policemen quickly moved the table into the small room that Mark unlocked for them.

  “I’ll have a member of staff stationed in here,” Mark told Pete. “They’ll keep our guests from taking a wrong turn into this corridor.”

  “I appreciate that,” Pete told him. “The crime scene is enough of a mess without adding to it.”

  The sound of a bell ringing alerted everyone that the castle was now open for business. Bessie rushed down to the courtyard to help greet the afternoon’s guests. For the next four hours, she had little time to do anything but answer questions and thank people for coming. When five o’clock finally arrived, she was grateful to see the last of their afternoon guests leaving.

  “That was exhausting,” she said to Laura as they made their way back to the banquet room. Mark had requested that everyone attend a very short meeting to discuss how things had gone before they all took a much deserved break before the evening session.

&nbs
p; “I think it went brilliantly,” Agnes said. “Our little donation box was stuffed so full that we had to empty it twice. And it wasn’t all one-pound notes and coins, either. There were fives and tens in there as well.”

  “We must have three or four hundred cards for sick children and our military personnel,” Margaret said. “And at least that many letters to Father Christmas. The children were all very excited about that.”

  “I was wondering if we ought to have Father Christmas visit the site,” Mark said thoughtfully.

  “Not this year,” Bessie said emphatically. “We have quite enough going on for this year.”

  “I’m with Bessie on that one,” Marjorie said. “We can add it to the list of things to do differently next year, but let’s not complicate things now.”

  After a quick check that no one had any concerns or problems, Mark sent them all away to rest and relax until half six. “All of the rooms will probably need a bit of straightening up,” he said. “But go and have something to eat and relax for a while first. The committee members will come around starting at half six to help anyone who needs it as you fix up your rooms.”

  The group slowly began to disperse. Bessie waited to see if Pete still wanted to have dinner with her.

  “Ah, Bessie, I’m a bit too busy with, um, something, to leave right now,” he said when she stuck her head in the room where he was working. “Maybe I could drive you home later and we can talk then.”

  “I’m happy with whatever works for you,” Bessie assured him.

  As everyone else seemed to have disappeared, Bessie took herself off to a small café she liked that was only a short distance away. She’d been something of a regular for lunch during the last month while she’d been working at the castle, and she couldn’t help but think that she’d miss their warming comfort food after the next week when she would be back to rarely visiting the south of the island.

  She ate cottage pie with jam roly poly for pudding and drank several cups of tea. Having lived alone for all of her adult life, she was quite content to eat on her own, but it hardly felt like she was alone, as all of the different waitresses who’d looked after her during the month made a point of stopping to chat. She returned to the castle feeling content and surprisingly well rested, all things considered.