Aunt Bessie Believes

by Diana Xarissa

  Bessie took a step away from the man and studied him in the light from the headlamps. She immediately recognised Anne’s son, Andy. Although he was a few years older than when she had last seen him, he looked almost the same. He had the same brown hair and eyes as his mother, although they were somehow more attractive on him. Bessie had never been able to see anything of his father in his appearance. He was taller than she remembered, and he’d put on a few pounds, but it appeared to be mostly muscle.

  His smile was bright and Bessie found herself forgiving his unkind comments about her age when she saw how genuinely pleased he was to see her. He’d spent more than a few nights in her spare room during his teen years. Andy had a difficult relationship with his father and Anne never seemed quite sure how to mother a boy only sixteen or so years younger than herself. Bessie had provided a strange sort of stability for him, letting him stay with her for over a month at one point when Jack was drinking heavily and Anne was too busy working to pay attention.

  “It’s good to see you as well,” she told him now. “You’ve grown both taller and broader.”

  “I’ve been doing lots of manual labour,” he told Bessie. “Lots of heavy lifting builds up muscles without you even trying.”

  “Well, it suits you,” she said. “But when did you get back to the island?”

  Andy exchanged a look with his mother. “Not long ago, a few days,” he said vaguely. “Mum called and said she was in a spot of bother, like, with Ms. Teare demanding all that money, like, so I came back.”

  “That was good of you,” Bessie said. “I hope you’ve been doing well across.”

  “Not bad,” Andy told her, not quite meeting her eyes. “I’ve been thinking about going back to school, like, though. I could get ahead faster if I had some good qualifications.”

  Bessie grinned. “That sounds like a great idea.”

  Andy flushed and gave her a sheepish smile. “Thanks for not saying I told you so,” he grinned. “I know you always told me that I wouldn’t get far without any qualifications and I thought I knew more than you. Hel..., heck, I just wanted to get away, you know? But you were right, all along. The problem is, school is expensive.”

  “I told you we’d figure something out,” Anne told her son. “You find the course you want to take and I’ll worry about paying for it.”

  “Anyway, I shouldn’t be keeping all of you out here. It isn’t all that warm tonight, is it?” Andrew asked.

  “Did you come to give your mum a hand with the cleaning, then?” Bessie asked sweetly.

  Andy flushed again. “Well, I was supposed to be meeting some old friends down at the pub,” he said. “But I guess I could give you a quick hand, mum, if you want.” The last remark was addressed to Anne, who was busy shooting nasty looks at Bessie. Bessie simply pretended to be completely unaware of the looks.

  “I suppose I’ll finish quicker with a bit of help,” Anne said grudgingly.

  “Great,” Andy said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. He walked back over to the car and climbed back inside to turn off the lights and engine.

  “I’d better get going.” Liz used the interruption as an excuse to get away.

  “Yes, me too.” Henry was quick to follow.

  Joney grinned at Bessie. “I’m not in any rush,” she laughed. “Andy’s return home will be tomorrow’s big news.”

  Anne sighed. “I really hate being talked about,” she told Joney in a tired voice.

  “At least having your son visiting is a nice thing, much nicer than when everyone was talking about your fight with Moirrey.” Joney was blunt but honest with the other woman.

  Anne sighed again. “Maybe Jack and Andy both have the right idea, getting off this rock and starting over across.”

  “Jack is still across?” Bessie asked.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Anne snapped, “but yeah, he is.”

  Andy rejoined the group now, giving Bessie another hug. “I’m going to stop by one day soon for shortbread and tea,” he told Bessie.

  “I’ll look forward to it,” she replied.

  Anne and Andy headed into the building and left the others in the car park.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Joney said. “I guess I should get home now.”

  Marjorie said her goodbyes in Manx and that left Bessie and Doona to climb into Doona’s car and head for Bessie’s cottage.

  “What a strange evening it’s been,” Bessie remarked.

  “I hope every class doesn’t end with odd car park confrontations,” Doona told her.

  “I think we’ve had enough strange car park conversations to last us a good long time,” Bessie agreed.

  Back at Bessie’s cottage, Doona insisted on carrying out her quick check of the space before she left Bessie to get to bed.

  Bessie locked up her doors and then checked her kitchen cupboards. She could just about manage another batch of shortbread, but she was running low on flour. She added it to the shopping list she kept by the phone, checked that its ringer was switched off and headed to bed.

  She had another beautiful spring morning for her walk the next day and she thoroughly enjoyed strolling past the new cottages to the Pierce property and beyond. Back at home, she frowned at the blinking message light on her answering machine. What could anyone possibly want this early in the morning?

  She switched the ringer back on and the phone rang almost immediately.

  “Hello?”

  “Bessie? It’s Doona. This time you really need to sit down. Are you sitting down yet?”

  Bessie slid into a chair and frowned at the receiver. There was no way that this was going to be good news, was there? “I’m sitting down,” she told her friend.

  “Moirrey was murdered,” Doona hissed.

  Chapter Seven

  Bessie sighed. If she could have, she would have rewound time and let the call go to the answering machine. Having just about recovered physically from everything that had happened the previous month, she didn’t even want to think about another real-life murder. After the second attempt on her life, she hadn’t even wanted to read about fictional murder for several weeks.

  “What’s happened?” she asked Doona.

  “You know those tablets that Hugh sent away by mistake? It turns out they weren’t what they were supposed to be. Someone switched Moirrey’s medication for some other drug.”

  “Really? I guess that means Hugh isn’t in trouble anymore?” Bessie suggested.

  “He isn’t, but Inspector Rockwell and Dr. Quayle both are,” Doona told her. “Hey, look, I have to go, but how about if I stop over at lunchtime and bring you up to date? At least I can tell you the things that the police are sharing with the press. That’s about all I get to find out about anyway.”

  Bessie laughed. “I’m sure you know everyone’s secrets in that station,” she told her friend. “But I’ll take whatever information you can share safely and I promise not to push you for more. I’d hate for you to lose your job because of something you told me.”

  Bessie’s phone kept ringing all morning, as somehow the news had already leaked out. Everyone on the island seemed to want Bessie’s thoughts on who the murderer might be.

  “I’ve absolutely no idea,” she told everyone who asked. “I don’t know enough about what happened to even begin to form an opinion. Ask me again once the police have released more information.”

  By lunchtime, Bessie had turned the phone’s ringer back off and shut herself up in her sitting room with a good book. Unusually for her, though, she found she simply couldn’t lose herself in the story. Instead, her mind was racing as she tried to imagine who could have killed Moirrey. She was relieved when Doona finally knocked on the door and took her away from the same page she had read at least a dozen times without comprehension.

  “I brought bacon butties from the shop across from the station,” Doona told Bessie as the delicious smell of bacon filled her small kitchen. “And chips, of course.”


  Bessie grinned. “I suppose I shall have to eat extra veggies at dinner, then.”

  Doona laughed. “Okay, maybe I didn’t pick the healthiest of options, but I wanted to get something quick. I don’t dare take a long lunch today. The rumour is that the chief constable himself is coming up this afternoon to talk to John about, quote, ‘the mistakes made in the investigation,’ end of quote.”

  “Oh dear, how’s Inspector Rockwell coping with all of this?” Bessie asked, worried about her new friend.

  “He’s surprisingly fine,” Doona said. “What I mean is that he’s much more calm than I would be under the circumstances. Dr. Quayle was the one who ruled it a natural death, so John was perfectly justified in not doing any formal investigating. I suppose we’re just lucky that he decided to use it as a training exercise and that Hugh did what he did. If it weren’t for that, Moirrrey would have been dead and buried and no one would ever know that she had been murdered.”

  “Okay, tell me exactly what happened then,” Bessie demanded.

  “I told you how Hugh sent the bottles across. Apparently, when they analysed them they found the wrong drugs in the one bottle,” Doona answered.

  “What do you mean, the wrong drugs?” Bessie asked.

  “Instead of something that was supposed to be good for her heart, there was some strong painkiller, I guess. Something strong enough to be fatal to someone with a heart condition, although I gather that simply missing the tablet she was supposed to have taken could have been enough to make her pretty sick or even kill her.”

  “How hard would it have been for someone to get access to that type of painkiller?”

  “Apparently the drug was pretty common for many years, both in the UK and the US.”

  Bessie frowned. “So, in theory, just about anyone could have acquired the tablets to switch with Moirrey’s regular drugs?”

  “Pretty much,” Doona answered. “And once they got them, they just to find which of her real tablets looked most like the substitute ones. They had nine different bottles to choose from, after all. Now the police just have to figure out exactly how the tablets got switched.”

  “I hope no one is blaming poor old John Corkill for mixing things up.” Bessie said. “He’s got enough to worry about, having been dragged back from his retirement to fill in while the shop owners look for a new chemist.”

  “Oh no,” Doona assured her. “John Rockwell is as sure as he can be that this wasn’t a simple mix-up.”

  “All of the tablets that were left in the bottle were the wrong thing?” Bessie asked.

  “Yes, although there were only two left, apparently, and it originally held a month’s supply. She only took them once a day, at bedtime, and actually, from the dates, it was probably Jack White who last refilled the bottle.”

  “Could he have had something to do with the switch?” Bessie asked, eager to believe that the man, already in gaol for drug offenses, might also be a murderer.

  Doona shrugged. “I suppose the inspector will take a good look at him, but I can’t imagine what his motive could have been.”

  Bessie shrugged. “I’d rather think it was him than anyone else. I already don’t like him.”

  Doona laughed. “I don’t think that will stand up in court,” she told Bessie. “But I sort of agree. All of the other suspects are rather closer to home, aren’t they?”

  “Indeed,” Bessie frowned. “If whoever did it only changed a few of the tablets, they could have done so any time in the last month. That makes for an awful lot of possible suspects. Moirrey would insist on carrying her bottles of tablets with her everywhere she went,” Bessie sighed.

  “But if they were in her handbag, surely that would limit access,” Doona suggested.

  “Maybe,” Bessie said. “But really, she was always leaving her bag somewhere. If you remember the first class, when we did our first round of talking to one another, she left her bag on her table and went all around the room talking to everyone. I think she might have even gone off to the loo without it. I’m sure I saw her do that more than once in restaurants and cafés, anyway. Getting access would have been pretty simple for anyone who knew her habits.”

  “So I guess we need to focus on motive and means rather than opportunity,” Doona said.

  Bessie smiled. “Surely just about everyone who knew Moirrey had a motive,” she said dryly.

  Doona laughed. “Certainly just about everyone disliked her,” Doona agreed. “But it’s a long way from dislike to murder.”

  “I’m not sure it’s that long,” Bessie told her. “But some people definitely had stronger motives than others.”

  “And I need to get back to work,” Doona sighed.

  “Never mind, you go. Maybe we can continue this chat tonight?”

  Doona blushed. “I wish we could,” she told Bessie. “But I promised Andrew I’d have dinner with him tonight. As you can well imagine, he’s taking the news quite hard. It was bad enough that his sister died before he saw her, but to discover that she was murdered? It’s just about broken his heart.”

  “Indeed,” Bessie murmured.

  “And of course, now they may have to exhume the body. This whole conversation is totally premature, actually. Just because they found that her medication had been tampered with doesn’t actually prove anything. It’s possible that only the tablets still in the bottle were switched and that she really did die of natural causes.”

  “That seems unlikely,” Bessie remarked.

  “It does, but it is possible. Anyway, Andrew is devastated that they’re talking about re-examining Moirrey. He was pushing to have her cremated. He insisted that she always said that was what she wanted, but Matthew Barnes wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “It’s hard to believe that Andrew talked to his sister about cremation. She was only two when he started at boarding school,” Bessie said.

  “He said they had the conversation when he was back here before his gap year, when she was more like eight. Apparently she’d had been having nightmares about her mother being trapped underground and she made Andrew promise that he’d never let her be buried alive, that he’d have her cremated and sprinkle her ashes somewhere sunny and warm.”

  “Moirrey’s mother died when she was only four or five,” Bessie argued. “I can’t believe that she’d remember her and dream about her several years later.”

  Doona sighed. “I don’t know why we’re arguing,” she told Bessie. “I’m just telling you what Andrew said. I think it felt important to him because it was one of the few things he remembered talking about with Moirrey. Anyway, it’s just as well he didn’t get his way, because if she’d been cremated they would have a more difficult time proving it was murder.”

  Bessie shook her head. “I’m not sure I understand how they’re going to prove it anyway,” she told Doona.

  Doona frowned. “John said something about testing some of the samples that were taken before she was embalmed. Apparently the coroner took samples before Dr. Quayle signed the death certificate. John said that the painkiller should be easy to pick up, especially because it was quite a high dose. If they can do that, they might not have to exhume the body.”

  “Poor Moirrey,” Bessie said sadly. “I hope she didn’t realise that she was dying.”

  “From what I’ve heard, she would have just taken her tablets and gone to bed as normal. She simply never woke up.”

  “While that’s sad enough, it’s better than the alternative.”

  “It isn’t such a bad way to go,” Doona said. “I don’t mind if that’s how I go, in about sixty years.”

  Bessie laughed. “I wouldn’t mind another sixty years myself,” she told Doona.

  Doona grinned at her. “I hope you get them,” she told her friend.

  Once Doona left, Bessie tidied up the kitchen, and then she felt restless. The news about Moirrey had left her feeling unusually unsettled. A trip into Ramsey didn’t appeal and as it was nearly two o’clock it felt too late to think abou
t going any further afield. She thought about calling a friend and arranging to meet for dinner, but she really didn’t want to talk about Moirrey and no one in Laxey would be talking about anything else.

  She’d just decided to take a long walk on the beach, regardless of how busy it might be, when someone knocked on her door.

  “Andy Caine, what a lovely surprise,” she said when she pulled the door open.

  “I tried to call,” the young man told her, “but you haven’t been answering your phone. I figured I would try just dropping in since I was going past.”

  “Oh that’s right,” Bessie laughed. “I turned the ringer off on the phone. I was tired of talking about Moirrey,” she explained.

  “Well, that suits me,” Andy answered. “If I never hear her name again, that would be just fine by me.”

  Bessie gave him a sympathetic smile. “I know she was making your mother’s life miserable lately,” Bessie said. “But she didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

  “She was murdered?” Andy exclaimed, shock flashing across his face.

  “Sorry,” Bessie said. “I just assumed you’d heard. It’s all anyone is talking about.”

  “I hadn’t heard,” Andy replied. “And I don’t think my mother will have heard either.” He gave Bessie a questioning look. “Do you think I should call her?” he asked.

  “Is she at home?” Bessie asked.

  “No, she’s at the restaurant. She goes in early to help with the prep work.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t bother her at work,” Bessie suggested.

  “I’m just worried that someone will say something to her about it and upset her. Everyone knows she was fighting with Moirrey. What if someone asks her if she did it?”

  “I don’t think anyone would be that rude,” Bessie said. “But it would probably be better if she knew, I suppose.”

  Andy took out his mobile. “I’ll send her a text and tell her to call me when she can,” he said.

  Bessie watched as his fingers flew across the tiny number pad, presumably making words and a sensible message from what seemed to be random tapping.