Aunt Bessie Provides (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 16)

by Diana Xarissa

  “I am wonderful,” Richard said, sounding hurt. “And I’m doing what I can to make you happy. I’ll get out of the way, since you’re busy with customers. Let me know what it goes quiet again and I’ll come back and look at the cooker.”

  “No, you can look at the cooker now,” Bessie said, getting to her feet. “We’re done eating, so we’ll get out of the way. Everything was excellent, by the way. I’m sure we’ll be back soon.”

  Doona stood up and reached into her handbag. “How much do we owe you?” she asked Jasmina.

  Bessie was sure that Richard’s ears perked up at the question. No doubt Jasmina noticed as well. “You can go and get started, then,” she told Richard. “If you don’t have it working in the next hour, I’ll ring the little man who hooked up the hot water and get him to sort it. I hope you have some money on you to pay for it.”

  The man nodded and then stomped off into the kitchen. Jasmina shook her head. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Nothing like airing your dirty laundry in public as a way to drum up business.”

  “The food was excellent,” Bessie told her. “It will take more than a little unpleasantness to keep us away.”

  “Thank you,” the woman replied. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be staying, but I appreciate you coming in today, anyway.” She dug around in her pockets and then handed Doona the bill.

  Doona looked at the total and raised an eyebrow. “I think you must have missed something off of here,” she said. “This isn’t nearly enough.”

  The woman shook her head. “It’s right,” she said. “The puddings were my treat to thank you for giving me a try.”

  Doona looked as if she were going to argue, but instead she pulled out her wallet and dug out a twenty-pound note. Bessie handed her another one and then Doona gave them to Jasmina.

  “Oh, let me get you your change,” Jasmina said.

  “No change is needed,” Bessie said firmly. “Thank you for a lovely lunch.”

  Jasmina flushed and then glanced over at the kitchen door. It was still shut. She slipped the money into the pocket of her jeans and then smiled at Bessie and Doona. “Thank you both so very, very much,” she said. “I really do hope you’ll come back again.”

  “We will,” Bessie promised.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Doona said as she drove away from the café.

  “Yes, it certainly was. I feel sorry for Jasmina. I wonder what Richard told her to get her to move here.”

  “It sounds like he promised her quite a lot.”

  “Yes, and I doubt he’s delivered on any of his promises.”

  “She didn’t seem to think so, that’s for sure.”

  Doona drove through Laxey slowly, heading towards the houses on the beach beyond Bessie’s cottage. Although it was easy enough to walk from Bessie’s to the row of homes, the road that ran behind Bessie’s cottage didn’t connect to the road behind the new houses. Doona took the somewhat circuitous route down to the beach and then parked the car.

  “This is probably a waste of time,” she told Bessie. “I really don’t think I want to be this close to my neighbours, even if I am on the beach.”

  An hour later they were back at the car. “I’m sorry,” Doona said. “I was right before. There just isn’t enough space between the houses to suit me. Did you see how busy the beach behind the houses was?”

  “I think at least some of the people must have walked over from the holiday cottages,” Bessie said. “There were more people on the beach behind the houses than can possibly be living in those homes.”

  “Especially considering that three of them are empty,” Doona added. “I was tempted by the one on the very end, furthest from the holiday cottages, but the price felt too high. They were asking more than they paid for it, in spite of everything that has happened.”

  “It made the house where the murder took place look a real bargain. I’m not sure they’ll ever be able to sell that one, though.”

  “They’ve done a good job redecorating it, though. You’d never know what happened there from looking at it.”

  Bessie nodded. In spite of that, though, it was still going to be difficult to find anyone who wanted to live in a house where someone had been killed, no matter how low the price.

  Doona dropped her off at her door and Bessie headed back inside to ring more friends. She was hoping to have a good list for Hugh before she rang him back that evening. The list for Marjorie already felt long enough, at least.

  Chapter 3

  When Bessie finally put the phone down that afternoon, she felt as if she’d been talking for hours. She didn’t think her list for Hugh was going to be much help, but she’d done her best. Marjorie might be surprised with the long list of names she’d collected for her, though. Bessie had never really thought about the number of people who moved on or off the island in any given year, so she was rather surprised to see how long the list she’d been able to make for Marjorie actually was.

  Most of them came back, she reminded herself as she looked over the list again. In fact, nearly all of the people on the list had come back to the island eventually. The five or six names she had for Hugh were exceptions, of course. She didn’t really know for sure what had happened to any of them. It was possible she might track a few down if she tried, but she wanted to talk to Hugh before she rang anyone else.

  She was just staring into the freezer, wondering what to have for dinner, when the phone rang.

  “I was just thinking about you,” she told Hugh. “And dinner.”

  “Do you have any names for me?” Hugh asked.

  “I have some, but I’m not confident that any of them will turn out to be your unidentified body.”

  “If I bring fish and chips, can we talk about them over dinner?”

  “What about Grace?”

  “She’s having dinner with her parents tonight. I was invited, but having to see you is the perfect excuse to miss out.”

  Bessie laughed. “I thought you liked Grace’s parents.”

  “I do, really, but we eat at their house at least twice a week. I don’t mind missing now and again.”

  “In that case, you’re more than welcome. I’ll make a bread and butter pudding, I think, to have after.”

  “Oh, that sounds wonderful,” Hugh sighed. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Bessie put down the phone and glanced around the kitchen. It was, as usual, perfectly clean and tidy. It didn’t take her long to put the bread and butter pudding together. She was just sliding it into the cooker when she heard the knock on her door.

  “My goodness, that smells good,” Bessie said as she let Hugh into the cottage. “I haven’t had fish and chips in ages.”

  “No, me neither. It’s from the local chippy. I’d eat there more often if Grace would let me.”

  Bessie hid a smile as she pulled down plates and found drinks for them both. “Grace wants to keep you healthy,” she suggested as the pair sat down with full plates.

  “Oh, I know, but I want to be happy as well,” Hugh replied.

  “This is delicious. It’s certainly making me happy,” Bessie told him.

  She waited until she’d served the bread and butter pudding to bring out her list of names. “I’m sure I can find out more information about at least some of them, if you want me to,” she said. “But I didn’t want to start questioning people and getting in your way.”

  “Tell me who you’ve found,” Hugh suggested. “We may have information in the files on some of them.”

  Bessie nodded. “The first name on my list is Harry Jensen. His mother, Barbara, raised him on the island. She was from somewhere like Cumbria, I believe. Anyway, she moved back to wherever she’d come from when Harry was in his late twenties. He stayed here for a few years, but then followed her. I’m pretty sure he left in seventy-nine. He would have been about thirty then.”

  “Why did his mother decide to move back to the UK?” Hugh asked.

 
Bessie shrugged. “I believe her own mother had some health issues, or something like that. Harry had a good job here and wasn’t going to follow her. I’m not sure I ever heard why he changed his mind. I can try ringing one of Barbara’s former friends, though, to see what I can find out.”

  “Leave it for now,” Hugh replied. “I’ll see if I can track them down. If he was moving to be closer to his mother, you’d think she’d have raised the alarm if he’d never arrived.”

  “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?”

  “Who else is on your list?”

  “Clarence Witherspoon, although I don’t know how likely he is to be your body. His mother still lives on the island. She would have identified him, surely.”

  “Maybe she was away when the body was found,” Hugh suggested.

  “Surely she’d have noticed by now that the man was missing, then?”

  “Maybe she just thinks he didn’t bother to stay in touch. People do cut ties to their families sometimes.”

  Bessie nodded, thinking of her own life. When she’d lost Matthew, she’d blamed her parents and had never spoken to them again. She didn’t really believe in having regrets in life, but she would do things differently if she were ever given a chance to live her life over again. “Well, it should be easy enough for you to find out. Mabel lives in Ramsey now.”

  “What can you tell me about Clarence?”

  “He was just an ordinary man who grew up in Lonan and then moved to Douglas. I believe he worked for one of the banks, but I could be wrong about that. As I recall, he was an only child. I don’t think he went to university, but I could be wrong about that as well.”

  “Did Harry Jensen go to university?”

  “No. I don’t believe he’d ever left the island before he moved across after his mother. Assuming he really went, of course.”

  “Any idea why Clarence left?”

  “I believe I heard at the time that he’d been offered a job across, but that was twenty years ago. I may be remembering incorrectly. The person who mentioned him said something about him following a woman, but she couldn’t give me any more information than that.”

  Hugh made a note. “Who’s next?”

  “Christopher Marsh, although again, his family still lives on the island. His father passed away some years ago, but his mother and his siblings are still here.”

  “It seems unlikely that they were all away and missed hearing about the body,” Hugh mused.

  “That’s what I thought. He actually left the island earlier, in the mid-seventies, but then he came back for a short while before leaving again. There were rumours about him and a woman, or maybe even more than one woman, but I couldn’t pin any of them down when I tried.”

  Hugh pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it. “This is a copy of the sketch that was made when the body was found. Does it look like any of the men you’ve mentioned?”

  Bessie looked at the rather crude black-and-white drawing. “It isn’t very good,” she said softly.

  “No, I’d agree with that,” Hugh sighed. “From what I’ve seen in the files, the artist did the best he could with the remains, but there wasn’t much to work with.”

  “From what I can remember, this could almost be any of the men I’ve mentioned. They were all of a similar age, with brown hair and an average build. Harry was probably taller than the others, but not by much. It could be either of the other two men I haven’t told you about, as well.”

  Hugh sighed. “I should have known it wouldn’t be easy,” he muttered as he slid the picture back into the envelope. “Who else?”

  “Gary Cook. He’s probably my favorite candidate, really. He was an only child, and both his parents died when he was in his twenties. He was another one that didn’t go to university. He trained as a plumber and he was a good one, but once his parents were gone he decided he wanted to see the world. I remember hearing that he was planning to go across, and then one day he was gone. Maybe he never actually made it off the island.”

  Hugh flipped through his notebook and then shook his head. “He was still alive when the body was found,” he told Bessie. “Someone rang in with an anonymous tip that the body was his when it was first found. The inspector in charge of the investigation tracked Gary down in Salisbury. He was alive and well and had just started his own plumbing business there.”

  Bessie frowned. “I was really hoping he was the one,” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s any way the inspector at the time made a mistake?”

  “I can’t see how, but I will follow up on it, just in case. It shouldn’t take long to find the man again. I have all of his information from twenty years ago to work from.”

  “I don’t mean to make more work for you, but I really did think he was going to be the one,” Bessie sighed. “He’s the only man I’ve found who didn’t have any family left on the island after he went. Well, aside from Harry, I suppose. But his mother was still alive, just not on the island.”

  “Or maybe she wasn’t,” Hugh suggested. “Maybe she passed away at about the same time and missed hearing about her son.”

  “That would be sad.”

  “Unless Harry committed suicide when he heard about his mother,” Hugh said speculatively.

  “That would be terribly sad.”

  “I just hope we can find a living relative of whomever we end up thinking we’ve found,” Hugh said. “Comparing DNA samples is the only way we’ll ever prove whose body we have.”

  “I can’t imagine that Barbara’s parents are still alive,” Bessie told him. “Not if she moved to look after them twenty years ago. But she must have had cousins or aunts and uncles or something.”

  “It’s too early to worry about that anyway,” Hugh said, waving a hand. “I need to focus on making my list of possibilities and then work from there. It’s most likely that all of the possibilities will check out as absolutely fine, anyway.”

  “The last name I have is Craig Fox. He might be a good possibility, actually.”

  “The name is familiar. I’m sure it came up during the original investigation,” Hugh said, flipping through his notebook again.

  “The sketch does look a little bit like him,” Bessie said.

  “The inspector looked for the man but couldn’t find him,” Hugh told her. “But he noted that the man had reasons for disappearing. For whatever reason, the inspector decided that the body was unlikely to be his.”

  “He did have reasons for disappearing,” Bessie agreed. “He was from the island. I remember him as a fairly shy and quiet young man. His parents both passed away when he was in his twenties, and as far as I know he was just living a rather ordinary life when he met a woman called Miranda.”

  “Don’t stop there,” Hugh said as Bessie got up to put the kettle on.

  She smiled at him. “Sorry, and it’s just getting interesting, too. Miranda came over to the island for work. As I understand it, she set her sights on Craig the first time she saw him. Within a few weeks they were inseparable, and she hadn’t been on the island a month when he proposed. I don’t believe he’d ever had a girlfriend before he met Miranda, and I remember her being quite pretty. I know Craig went around telling everyone that he was the luckiest man in the world.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “After the wedding, Miranda revealed that she had three children. He invited them to come to the island as well, and they arrived a short while later, along with Miranda’s mother and Miranda’s older sister. They also brought something like three cats and five rabbits with them. They all moved into Craig’s two-bedroom semi-detached bungalow and expected Craig to support them.”

  “Poor Craig.”

  “Indeed. I will give the man credit, though, he did his best for about a year. He worked two full-time jobs. I often thought that he did that as much to stay out of the house as for the income. I don’t know how much longer he might have kept it up, but one day he came home from work and found another man in bed with Miranda.”


  “Why didn’t I see that coming?”

  Bessie nodded. “Except it wasn’t just any man. It was Miranda’s husband. Apparently, he’d been in prison for two years or more, so Miranda decided to find a new man. She never bothered to divorce her first husband, though. Anyway, he came and found her on the island.”

  “And they fell into bed together.”

  “Craig was understandably upset,” Bessie said. “I should add that Miranda’s husband was a huge and muscular man who I’m sure terrified poor Craig. He packed his bags and moved out of the house, even though it was his name on the rental agreement. As I recall, he sold his car and everything else he had that had any value and disappeared about a week later.”

  “I can understand leaving Miranda, but why leave the island?”

  Bessie shrugged. “Maybe after his long year with her he just wanted to escape completely,” she suggested.

  “And no one knows what happened to him?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “What happened to Miranda?”

  “She sold all of the furniture in the house and the jewellery that Craig had given her, and then they all moved back to the UK. I heard that her husband ended up back in prison a short while later, but I don’t know anything beyond that.”

  “What was his surname?”

  “She was Miranda Blakeslee when she first arrived on the island. I assume that was his surname as well.”

  Hugh made a few notes and then looked up at Bessie. “Do you know his Christian name?”

  Bessie thought for a minute. “It was something like Jacob or Jason, or something common like that, but I’m not completely certain.”

  “And did Miranda leave before the body was found?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bessie said. “Craig left in May or June in seventy-nine. When was the body found?”

  “July second,” he told her.

  “Miranda may have been gone by then as well. I don’t believe she stayed here for very long after Craig left, but she may have been here in July. I simply don’t remember.”