“Really?” Bessie asked.
Anne shrugged. “She had three small children to look after, her husband was in prison, and she was a bit desperate. The way she told the story, she met Craig and fell head over heels for him, mostly because he was nothing like her Jackson.”
“But she was still married to Jackson,” Bessie pointed out.
“Yes, but she was trying to get a divorce,” Anne told her. “She actually came to the island to get away from Jackson’s associates. Jackson was meant to be locked up for a long time and she was hoping she could divorce him and move here with her kids. She was hoping he’d never find her. That’s why she brought her mother and her sister with her. She knew they’d tell Jackson where she was if he got out and found them.”
“But he found them anyway.”
“Yeah. Her sister kept him informed as to their whereabouts, even though Miranda asked her not to,” Anne replied.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because Jackson funded a better lifestyle for the whole family than Craig was able to do, at least when he wasn’t in prison, anyway. Miranda was always cast as the bad guy, but her sister and her mother were the ones who ruined her life, as far as I could see.”
“I’d heard that Craig found Miranda and Jackson together in, well, in a compromising position,” Bessie said.
Anne shrugged. “Miranda was terrified of the man. I’m sure she did whatever she had to do to keep herself and her children safe.”
“Why didn’t she ring the police when he turned up?” Bessie demanded.
“He hadn’t broken any laws. They were still legally married and he could have argued that he had every right to see his children, even if he and Miranda weren’t getting along.”
“And then Craig disappeared and Miranda and Jackson weren’t far behind him.”
“But Craig left of his own accord,” Anne said. “Miranda went back across with Jackson because he made her go. Her mother and sister were happy to leave. They never liked the island.”
“Did Miranda?”
“She liked that she felt safe here, right up until Jackson knocked on her door. She talked about missing the shops and clubs and other things, but I truly believe that she loved Craig and would have stayed and tried to make their marriage work if she’d had the chance to do so.”
“It sounds as if you were good friends,” Bessie said.
“Our children played together,” Anne told her. “While you’re pushing swings together, you talk. We both had our own challenges, although mine seemed minor by comparison, at least in those days.”
“I don’t suppose you kept in touch with her?”
“I wish I had,” Anne sighed. “But they left rather suddenly in the end. I saw her at the park one day and the next day I heard that they’d gone.”
“She didn’t tell you they were leaving?”
“No. In fact, she told me that they were going to wait for the end of the school term before they moved. Her oldest two were in school by that time and she didn’t want to pull them out in the middle of the term.”
“But then she did. I wonder why she changed her mind.”
“I’m sure Jackson decided that he wanted to go back across and simply didn’t give her any choice,” Anne replied. “He wouldn’t have cared in the slightest about what the children wanted or needed.”
“How sad,” Bessie sighed. She wasn’t completely convinced that Miranda had been an innocent victim in everything that had happened to her, but it was interesting to hear her story from a different perspective.
“And now it’s all getting dragged up again, thanks to Hugh’s new investigation.”
“Maybe if Hugh finds Craig all of the gossip will stop,” Bessie suggested.
“Maybe. I don’t know why I care, really. I haven’t spoken to Miranda in twenty years, but I really wish I could have done more to help her when she needed it. I hate remembering how helpless I felt at the time.”
“As I said, hopefully Hugh will find Craig. Do you have any other suggestions as to who the body might be?”
Anne shrugged. “I’ve always wondered what happened to Christopher Marsh.” She grinned. “I had a huge crush on him when I was about ten and he was around twenty, maybe. He used to work at the market stall and I used to go down and stand and stare at him for hours.”
“I understand he and his brother had a fight and he left,” Bessie told her.
“He and Adam fought all the time. I learned dozens of new cuss words every time I was at the market when the two brothers were at the stall together,” Anne told her. “If Brian was there, they behaved better, and they all pretended to get along whenever Dorothy was helping out, but I always thought that Adam and Christopher really couldn’t stand one another.”
“Surely Agatha knows where Christopher is, at least.”
Anne shrugged. “I asked her about him once when she came in here. That was maybe fifteen years ago, and she wouldn’t even discuss him with me. She simply pressed her lips together and then walked out of the shop without buying anything.”
“That’s odd, but maybe she just found talking about him difficult, considering he left the island.”
“That’s probably it. I can’t really believe that the body is his. Someone from his family would have identified the remains, surely.”
“You’d think so, anyway,” Bessie said.
“Harry Jensen left around the same time, but I’m sure he simply moved across to be closer to his mother. And there was Gary Cook, too. I remember hearing that he moved close to London, but I can’t remember why he left.”
“As I understand it, Gary wanted to see more of the world,” Bessie told her. “I believe he made it as far as Salisbury, where he started his own plumbing business.”
“He was a good plumber. That’s why I remember him. He used to do all of the plumbing work at the Teare mansion and it always needed a lot of work, being so old. Mr. Teare was sorry when Gary left. He never did find another plumber that was half as good as Gary had been.”
The pair chatted together for another half hour before Bessie realised that the day was getting away from her. “I’d better get home. My answering machine is probably full,” she told Anne, giving her a hug. “Tell your son to come and visit me one day.”
“I will, for sure,” Anne replied.
Bessie paid for a few magazines and a bar of chocolate and then headed back down the hill for home. Her answering machine light was blinking frantically when she let herself into Treoghe Bwaane. Sitting at the kitchen table, she played through the messages, deleting call after call about Craig Fox. The last message was different, however. Bessie had to play it through several times before she was able to understand it all. Then she rang Hugh.
“I’ve had an odd phone call,” she told the man. “Someone left a message on my machine, but it’s terribly muffled and hard to understand. I had to listen to it over and over again, but I think I know what it says now.”
“Which is what?”
Bessie took a deep breath. “’If I were you, I’d be looking for Christopher Marsh,’ or maybe it’s ‘If I were Hugh,’ but the meaning is the same, really,” she told the man.
“Have you had anyone else ring with any ideas?” Hugh asked.
“Oh, goodness, yes,” Bessie replied. “Thus far, I’ve had sixteen people tell me that the body belongs to Craig Fox, against that one suggestion that it might be Christopher Marsh.”
“Tracking down Craig Fox is my priority at the moment,” Hugh told her. “In the limited amount of time I’m allowed to devote to the case.”
Bessie told Hugh everything that Anne had said about Craig, Miranda, and Jackson. “I don’t know how much of what she told me is true, of course. Her opinion of Miranda is very different from what everyone else on the island seems to have thought of the woman, but I thought you should know,” she concluded.
“Maybe finding Jackson Blakeslee would be a good place to start,” Hugh mused. “I might jus
t spend some time on that now, actually.”
Chapter 7
Bessie put the phone down and then sighed as it immediately rang.
“Hello?”
“Ah, Bessie, it’s Elizabeth Quayle. Do you have a minute?”
“Of course. What can I do for you?”
“You can persuade your friend Helen to let me help her,” Elizabeth said, sounding exasperated.
“I thought she wanted your help?”
“She does, but she feels weird about it. She feels as if she should pay me for my time and she really can’t afford to do that. I can’t seem to convince her that my time simply isn’t that valuable.”
Bessie laughed. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short,” she told the girl. “But I understand what you mean. You haven’t anything else that you need to be doing right now and you’d like to help Helen.”
“Exactly. The thing is, I was talking with my mother and, well, I was thinking that maybe, if I do a good job on this wedding, then eventually I could start charging for my time and doing it for other people. Wedding planners and party planners are very popular in London. Maybe the island could use one. What do you think?”
“You could be right. It’s a small island but there are a number of wealthy people here who seem to give a lot of parties. And there must be hundreds of weddings every year as well. Of course, not everyone could afford a professional party planner, but at least some people might welcome getting someone else to deal with all of the hard work.”
“That’s exactly it. And I could actually save people some money, as well. If I’m planning dozens of parties every year, I could probably get discounts from some of the larger venues, caterers, and florists. Couples could end up having the wedding of their dreams for less than it would have cost them if they’d planned it themselves, even after paying me for my time.”
“When you put it that way, it sounds like a wonderful idea,” Bessie told her.
“But the thing is, I need some practice,” Elizabeth replied. “I need to try planning a wedding to make sure that I can handle all of the details. Helen’s wedding would be perfect, as it’s pretty small and she isn’t all that worried about every little thing.”
“So you want me to ring her and try to persuade her to let you do the planning as a practice exercise?”
“Could you? I tried to explain it all to her, but I don’t think she was really listening. She seemed to think that I was only doing it because I feel sorry for her or something.”
“I can try talking to her, but I can’t promise that I’ll get better results,” Bessie said. “I’ll ring her now and see if I can catch her at home. If not, I’ll keep trying.”
“Oh, Bessie, thank you so much,” Elizabeth gushed. “I’m really excited about the idea of my own party planning business. This could be the perfect job for me.”
Bessie put the phone down and made herself a cup of tea. While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, the phone rang. If it’s Helen it would be serendipitous, she thought as she reached for the receiver.
“Bessie, it’s Camilla Hargreaves. How are you?”
“I’m well,” Bessie replied. She hadn’t spoken to Camilla in many months, not since the woman had been rude to a mutual friend about a rather unfortunate haircut. Bessie could only imagine why the woman was ringing her now.
“When I saw the local paper today, I knew I had to ring you,” Camilla said. “No doubt you’re investigating this dead body that Hugh Watterson was talking about on the front page.”
“I’d hardly say I was investigating. I’ve spoken to Hugh, of course, and shared my thoughts on who the man could have been, but investigating is a job for the police.”
Camilla laughed. “Of course, Bessie, dear,” she said. “Anyway, I hope you’ve been looking long and hard for Craig Fox. I’d stake my life that the body is his. And I’m pretty sure I know how it ended up in the sea, as well.”
“Really?” Bessie said, wishing she’d let the call go to the answering machine.
“Miranda killed him, or rather that husband of hers did. Then they got into her car, the one that Craig bought her, I must add, and drove away with the body in the boot. Once they were halfway across the Irish Sea on the ferry, all they had to do was drag the body out of the boot and drop it into the sea. I’m sure they never imagined that it would eventually wash back up on the island, but they may not even know that it did. I’m sure they took off for Australia or New Zealand or someplace like that as soon as they got away from here.”
“Really? Why?”
“What else would they do? They couldn’t stay in the UK. There was too much risk that they’d get caught if they did that. No doubt they wanted to put as much distance between themselves and poor dead Craig as they possibly could.”
“But if I’m remembering correctly, Miranda was still on the island when the body washed ashore,” Bessie said.
“That only proves that she and Jackson found a different way to dump the body, nothing else. It’s easy enough to borrow a small boat from someone and head out to sea. Knowing those two, they probably didn’t borrow one, anyway. They probably just stole a boat, loaded the body onto it and sailed away. Once they were far enough out, splash, poor Craig drops into the water and Miranda and Jackson sail home. If they put the boat back, the owner might not have even noticed that it was missing.”
“Someone else suggested that the dead man might have been Gary Cook,” Bessie said.
“Oh, I hardly think so,” Camilla told her. “He just moved away. He wanted to see more of the world, that’s all.”
“I understand he left rather abruptly.”
“I believe he ran up a few gambling debts and didn’t have the means to pay them. He probably left when he realised the debts were going to catch up to him, that’s all.”
“What about Harry Jensen?”
“What about him? He left because he was totally dependent on his mother and she’d gone. I’m sure if you track down Barbara Jensen, you’ll find Harry.”
“Another name that was suggested to me was Christopher Marsh,” Bessie said.
For a moment the other woman was silent. “I’m sure Agatha knows where Christopher is,” she said eventually. “He moved across years before the body washed ashore, anyway. I know he came back for a short while, but I’m pretty sure he was long gone before the body appeared.”
Bessie wasn’t going to argue. All she really wanted to do was end the phone call. Her kettle had boiled, which was all the incentive she needed to excuse herself. “I’m sorry, Camilla, but I have to go.”
“Having your circle of friends over tonight for a chat through the suspects?” the woman asked. “Are John Rockwell and Doona Moore a couple yet or are they still just friends?”
“As far as I know, they’re just friends,” Bessie said. And I don’t gossip about my friends, she added to herself.
As soon as Camilla rang off, Bessie rang Helen. She went straight to an answering machine.
“Helen, it’s Bessie. I need to talk to you about something, but it isn’t urgent by any means. Please give me a ring when you have a minute.”
As she sipped her tea, Bessie suddenly realised that she was starving. A look at the kitchen clock showed her that her usual time for lunch was long past. She made herself a sandwich and washed it down with the rest of the tea. It was getting too close to dinner to eat any more than that, she decided as she nibbled her way through a biscuit. She’d let her phone go straight to the answering machine while she’d eaten and she didn’t feel up to ringing any of the callers back. Instead, she headed out for a walk, resigned to having to fight her way through crowds of holidaymakers.
It was every bit as bad as she’d feared. Bessie swallowed a dozen sighs as she made her way between groups of small children, teenagers, and what seemed to be a large number of adults who were napping in the sunshine. When she reached the stairs to Thie yn Traie, she breathed out a sigh of relief. As she didn’t feel as if she’d actually d
one any real walking yet, she continued on.
There was a smaller crowd behind the new houses and Bessie was surprised to see an even larger crowd a short distance beyond them. What was odd about that crowd was that everyone in it was wearing normal clothes rather than being dressed for the beach. As Bessie got closer, she noticed the uniformed police constable at the centre of the group. It was a young man she knew slightly, but that was all the excuse she needed to keep walking.
“Constable Clague, what a surprise,” she said when she reached him. “I hope nothing awful has happened on the beach.”
The man shook his head and smiled at her. “Not at all,” he said reassuringly. “At least not recently. About twenty years ago, though, a body washed up on the shore around here. All of these good people came out to take a look at the site.”
Bessie raised an eyebrow and then looked around at the crowd. She didn’t recognise anyone. “I see,” she said. “It isn’t really something I’m interested in revisiting, so I’ll get out of the way.”
“You must have been around when it washed up,” a man of about forty with dark hair and eyes said loudly. “How is it possible that no one was able to identify the body?”
“The body could have come from anywhere,” Bessie said. “I’m sure the police did everything they could to work out who he was, but if he’d washed up here from a fishing boat or from the UK, well, that would have complicated things.”
“Or maybe the police knew who it was, but they covered it up,” a woman said loudly.
Bessie turned to look at the woman, who appeared to be in her sixties. She was wearing a long black cloak in spite of the mild weather. “I don’t think that’s the case,” Bessie said.
“Maybe the man in question was someone who was plotting against the Queen or the government or something,” the woman retorted. “Maybe MI6 killed him and sent the body over here to hide it.”
“I believe that sort of job would have been carried out by MI5,” a man said.
“Whichever it was, that would explain why the body was never identified. Someone made sure it never could be,” the woman said.
Aunt Bessie Provides (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 16) Page 10
