“Who are you?” Vivian snapped after a minute of uncomfortable silence.
“You aren’t Susan, are you?” the woman shot back. “Goodness, I hope not.”
“I’m Susan,” Susan said, getting to her feet. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“I should have recognised you from your father’s photos,” the woman said brightly. “You don’t look like your father, but that can only be a good thing, right?” She laughed and then stopped abruptly. “I was so looking forward to meeting you, but under different circumstances.”
“Who are you?” Susan repeated.
“Oh, darling, I’m Clara Rhodes, your stepmother.”
Susan looked as stunned as Bessie felt. For a long moment the room was completely silent as everyone stared at the new arrival.
“Your father didn’t mention me?” the woman asked, eventually breaking the silence. She sounded hurt.
“No, no, he did not,” Susan said slowly, clearly struggling to keep her emotions under control.
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that. I thought you knew. I thought Jerry would have told you.”
“Don’t call him that,” Susan said tightly.
“Oh, that’s right, that was your mother’s pet name for him, wasn’t it? I am sorry. He did tell me not to call him that in front of you, but, well, I mean, it was my pet name for him, too.”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t know who you are, but I don’t believe you’re who you claim to be. I think you should leave.”
“Oh, you poor little thing,” the woman said. “Jerry, er, Jerome really didn’t tell you anything about me? Not even a hint?”
“Not even a hint,” Susan repeated in an icy tone.
“I have our wedding photos, if you’d like to see them,” the woman offered. “I brought a copy of the marriage license, too, for the police. They were meant to meet me at the airport, but I changed flights at the last minute. I simply couldn’t wait to get over here and meet you.”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t want to see photos or anything else. I want you to leave.”
“Oh, but I can’t leave. The police want to speak to me about Jerry. They need to know if he had any enemies and that sort of thing,” the woman replied.
“Quit calling him that!” Susan shouted. “Elizabeth, make her leave before I drag her out of here myself.”
Elizabeth stood up and took a step towards the woman. “Maybe it would be better if you left,” she said softly, “or at least waited in another room, if you want to talk to the police.”
“But I want to talk to Susan,” the woman wailed. “She’s the daughter I’ve always wanted, and I’m sure she’ll come to care about me, given time.”
Susan burst into tears as Elizabeth tried to take the woman’s arm. “Let’s find you a nice quiet corner where you can wait for now,” she said. “You can talk to Susan later, when she’s recovered from the shock.”
“Jerry promised me he was going to tell you as soon as he saw you,” the woman said. “I’d been nagging him about telling you for such a long time.”
Susan’s eyes were wild with rage. “Get out!” she shouted.
“Good afternoon,” John Rockwell said to the new arrival in a low voice. “I’m sorry, but we haven’t met. I’m Inspector John Rockwell.”
“Oh, yes, you were going to meet my plane, but I decided I simply couldn’t wait to get here. I found an earlier flight and here I am.”
“I see,” John said.
“I’m Clara Rhodes, of course, Jerry’s wife. I’m ever so devastated by his sudden death. I came as soon as I heard so that I could help my poor stepdaughter with her grief, even though I am grieving terribly myself.”
“I’ll leave you to work that out with your stepdaughter,” John said.
“She’s not my stepmother,” Susan snapped. “I don’t know who she is, but she’s not who she claims to be. My father wouldn’t have married again, and if he did, it wouldn’t have been to a woman like her.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that, but it sounded like an insult. I’m going to overlook it, though, since you’re still upset about your father’s death and all. But I can assure you that your father and I were married, and we had been for the past three years,” Clara said sounding triumphant.
“Three years?” Susan echoed. She sat back down in her seat and put her head in her hands. Mary, who had come back into the room with John, found a box of tissues and put it next to the girl.
Clara looked around the room and then smiled at John. “It appears she didn’t know about me. That’s rather sad, but knowing Jerry, not all that surprising. He did like to keep secrets, that man.”
“Perhaps you’d like to tell me more,” John said, offering his arm.
“I’m a bit peckish,” the woman replied. “They don’t do food on planes anymore, you know, and I was so busy rushing over here that I missed lunch.”
“I’ll have someone bring you some sandwiches,” Mary said, “and a cuppa.”
“Oh, that would be nice,” Clara beamed. “Thank you, my dear.”
John turned around and led the woman out of the room. Bessie felt as if everyone else simply watched in shock as they disappeared.
“Well, there’s a turn-up for the books,” Sean said after a moment. “One has to wonder if the secret wife had a motive for murder.”
“She just arrived, though,” Vivian said. “She couldn’t have killed her husband.”
“Flights go back and forth all the time,” Sean replied. “She could have come over and killed him and then flown back home, ready for the police to ring her and tell her the bad news.”
“Surely the police would be able to find evidence of that,” Vivian said.
“Maybe, but maybe she used a different name or something,” Sean suggested.
“We would have seen her around the house during the party, wouldn’t we?” Vivian asked.
“Maybe Jerome let her in and hid her somewhere. Maybe he was going to tell Susan about her after the party was over. Or maybe she pretended to be one of the maids. I never notice maids,” Sean replied.
“I hope you weren’t counting on inheriting a fortune from your father,” Vivian said to Susan. “It will be his wife who inherits, no doubt.”
“She wasn’t his wife,” Susan said dully as she lifted her head. “I don’t know who she is or what her game is, but she wasn’t married to my father, and I’ll never believe otherwise.”
“She doesn’t have to convince you, though, just the courts. The police inspector seemed to believe her, anyway,” Sean said.
“I’m going to my room,” Susan announced. “If the police want to speak to me, they can speak to me there. I won’t be coming back out and I definitely don’t want to see that woman.”
Mary nodded. “As soon as she’s finished with the inspector, I’ll have her taken elsewhere. I’ll get her contact information in case you want to get in touch with her another time, but I won’t share yours with her.”
“I will never want to talk to her,” Susan said firmly. She walked out of the room with her head held high and with tears still streaming down her face. Bessie was tempted to follow her, to offer a sympathetic ear, but she didn’t want to miss the conversation in the dining room, either.
“I’m going to make sure that Susan gets to her room safely.” Elizabeth solved the problem by following the other woman out of the room.
“How sad for Susan,” Madison whispered.
“We all have stepparents,” Sean said. “She didn’t seem any worse than that father of Susan’s, to be honest.”
“He was a drunk,” Ernest said. “She seemed exactly like the type of woman he’d be attracted to.”
“What does that mean?” Norma asked.
“Oh, nothing, really,” Ernest replied. “I’m just bored and desperate to get out of here. Oh, not out of your lovely home,” he added, nodding at Mary, “just off this island.”
&
nbsp; “I can’t imagine my father getting remarried and not telling me about it,” Sean said. “He’s on his fourth wife and I’ve been at every one of his weddings, well, except for the first, when he married my mother.”
“I didn’t get the impression that Susan and her father were close,” Ernest said. “Let’s face it, if she rang him to play the police inspector, she must have been desperate. She could have chosen a homeless person at random to do the job, and he or she probably would have done it better.”
“That’s harsh,” Norma said. “He might have been good at the interrogation part of the evening; we just never got around to it.”
“He was too drunk to interrogate anyone,” Ernest replied. “Stabbing him was probably unnecessary. His liver probably would have given up soon anyway.”
When the butler walked back in a short while later, Vivian and Norma were talking desultorily about some daytime soap that no one else watched. Bessie was contemplating leaving when he spoke from the doorway.
“The inspector is ready for Mr. McCormick,” he said.
As Ernest left the room, Bessie looked over at Mary. “I think I’ll go home now,” she said. “Do you want to come over for a cuppa?”
“I wish I could, but I think I need to stay here,” Mary replied. “I need to find out what happened to Clara Rhodes, though.”
She and Bessie both stood up. No one else seemed to notice as they walked out of the room together. Mary picked up the nearest telephone and pressed a number.
“Jonathan? Is the inspector finished with Mrs. Rhodes?”
Bessie couldn’t hear the response, but a moment later Mary said “thank you,” and put the phone down.
“She finished her conversation with Inspector Rockwell and was given permission to leave,” Mary told her. “She left all of her contact information in case Susan wants to get in touch.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Bessie sighed.
“No, I don’t believe that it will,” Mary agreed.
“Thank you for lunch. It was, well, interesting.”
Mary shrugged. “I hope John gets this case solved quickly. I’m not sure how much longer I can stand having all of these people here.”
“I’m sure John wants it solved as badly as you do,” Bessie replied. And I’m doing what I can to help, she added to herself.
Mary walked Bessie to the back door and then opened it for her. “It’s still raining,” she sighed.
“I have an umbrella here somewhere,” Bessie said.
Mary found Bessie’s umbrella and rain jacket. “Let me find someone to walk you down the stairs,” she said. “You know how slippery they are when they’re wet.”
“I’m fine,” Bessie said firmly. “I’ll hold onto the railing and take my time. It’s not a problem.”
She walked out into the rain as quickly as she could so that Mary couldn’t argue any further. While she was apprehensive about the steep and slippery steps, she was eager to get some fresh air and to get away from Thie yn Traie and its unhappy occupants. The stairs weren’t as bad as Bessie had feared. She held the railing with one hand and the umbrella with the other as she wound her way down to the beach below.
“You should have had someone ring me,” the constable at the bottom said. “I would have come up and walked you down. Those stairs aren’t safe.”
“They were fine,” Bessie told him. “You have a job to do down here.”
“I don’t know about that. Mostly I’ve just been standing around all day. You’re the only person I’ve spoken to since I’ve been here.”
“If the weather was better the beach would be full of tourists,” Bessie told him. “They probably wouldn’t speak to you, but at least you’d have something to watch.”
“That would be nice. I was watching the waves going in and out, but that only made me drowsy.”
Bessie laughed. “Oh dear, we don’t want you falling asleep on the job.”
“No, that wouldn’t be good. Dan Ross would probably sneak right past me as soon as my eyes were closed, too, knowing my luck.”
“He’s probably back in Douglas writing a lurid headline about someone’s speeding ticket or something,” Bessie said. “Do you need any more biscuits?”
“Oh, no, I’m good,” the man assured her. “I’m only eating one each hour, so I have more than enough to get me through the day.”
Bessie smiled and then walked away, wishing she’d put more biscuits in the man’s bag. If he was stationed there again tomorrow she’d give him an entire packet, she decided.
She was nearly back at her cottage when she heard her name being called.
“Bessie, oh, Bessie,” the voice shouted across the sand.
Forcing a smile onto her face, Bessie turned around and greeted Maggie Shimmin. “Maggie, how are you today?” she asked.
“I’d be a good deal better if we hadn’t had another murder on the beach,” Maggie snapped as she joined Bessie under her umbrella. “Having a uniformed police constable standing there all day has been raising all sorts of questions from our guests.”
The woman was in her mid-fifties and plump. Bessie found herself holding the umbrella over Maggie more than herself. She swallowed a sigh. “No one was murdered on the beach,” she said.
“No, I know that, but that isn’t the way it looks when the police are on the beach, is it?” Maggie demanded.
“If someone had actually died on the beach, there would be more than a single constable out here. You know that.”
“I do, but our guests don’t. I don’t believe any of them have ever had the misfortune to be caught up in a murder investigation.”
“Yes, well, it’s a good thing you’re here to set their minds at rest, then.”
“Hurumph,” Maggie said, “but at least I was right about Thie yn Traie.”
“Right about what?”
“It’s cursed, clearly.”
“Thie yn Traie has been there for a great many years,” Bessie said. “I’ll admit a few bad things have happened lately, but that does not mean that the house is cursed.”
“George and Mary Quayle will never be able to sell the place, not now, not with all the murders associated with it. It’s a good thing they got a low price from Mr. Pierce, but even so, the value of the property has plummeted, I’m sure.”
“I don’t believe that George and Mary are interested in selling the house, so it doesn’t much matter,” Bessie said. “What are you doing about that last cottage?” she changed the subject.
Maggie flushed. “Yes, well, that’s another problem, isn’t it? The curse on Thie yn Traie must have extended to that cottage. It is the one closest to Thie yn Traie, after all.”
“Except there is no curse,” Bessie said softly.
“Whatever the reason, someone died in that cottage and now no one wants to stay there. The letting agent that we are using in Douglas keeps on telling potential guests about the unfortunate incident that happened there, and no one will take it, even at a discount. We can’t get her to stop, though.”
“People really should be informed, don’t you think?” Bessie asked.
Maggie shrugged. “I mean, I suppose I’d like to know, if I were hiring a holiday cottage, but people do die every day. I can’t see why anyone has be told outright. I’m not suggesting that she lie to anyone, but if they don’t ask, she shouldn’t tell them.”
“Have you worked out what you’re going to do with that cottage, then?” Bessie asked.
“I think we’re going to have to tear it down,” Maggie sighed. “Thomas is trying to get planning permission for a larger cottage in its place. We could do with two or three more as well, but I’m not sure we’ll get permission. I wish I’d known how successful the cottages were going to be. We’d have had better luck getting permission for the whole thing at once, I think.”
“Well, good luck to you,” Bessie said.
“Thanks, but what actually happened at Thie yn Traie? I heard that Elizabeth Quayle was having so
me sort of murder mystery party and that one of the guests got stabbed.”
“I haven’t seen the local paper today,” Bessie replied.
“But you were at the party,” Maggie challenged. “What really happened?”
“You know I can’t talk about active police investigations,” Bessie told her. “I’m sure Inspector Rockwell will make a statement as soon as it is appropriate for him to do so.”
“I’m sure, but you can tell me,” Maggie said. “Just tell me who died, at least. The police aren’t releasing any details yet. It wasn’t Elizabeth, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t,” Bessie told her, “or Mary or George, but beyond that I can’t comment.”
“Bessie, I thought we were friends,” Maggie sighed. “You know I always share everything I hear with you.”
Maggie always shared everything she heard with everyone she knew. That was just one of the reasons why Bessie wasn’t willing to tell her anything. “I’m truly sorry,” she said, “but I simply can’t tell you anything.”
Maggie protested again, but Bessie turned on her heel and took a step forward. She nearly tripped over the man who had been standing right behind her without her realising it.
“Dan Ross!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Hoping for an exclusive interview with the woman who keeps finding all of the bodies,” the obnoxious reporter from the Isle of Man Times said with a nasty grin.
“You were eavesdropping,” Bessie said angrily. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I’m sorry, Bessie,” Maggie said. “I didn’t see him behind your umbrella.”
Bessie glanced at the woman. “It’s not your fault,” she said. She turned back to the reporter and glared at him. “I have no comment for you,” she said firmly.
“Oh, come on,” the man replied. “Do you have any idea how many bodies you’ve found in the past eighteen months? I counted them all up and it’s quite an impressive total.”
“I’m sure it’s a good deal higher in your count than in reality,” Bessie said coldly. “You tend to credit me with finding any body that turns up in the north of the island.”
“Okay, I suppose some of them you didn’t actually find, you simply happened to be there when they were found, but still, it’s starting to look a bit odd. And then I got to thinking, what if you started to get a bit bored and thought you would liven things up a bit by murdering someone yourself?”
Aunt Bessie Remembers Page 11
