The Osborne Case

by Diana Xarissa

  “And since you’ve been here, all we’ve done is instigate a missing person’s investigation,” Janet pointed out.

  “Let’s not argue,” Joan interrupted. “We’ll have a nice pub lunch and then visit the ruins. After that, we can come back here and I’ll roast a chicken. That isn’t much work, and if we don’t eat the chicken in the refrigerator it will go off.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Bessie said.

  “Yes, but then tomorrow we’ll buy you both dinner somewhere nice,” Doona added.

  “We’ll get an early start tomorrow,” Joan said. “We can visit a stately home, have lunch somewhere, and then visit a second stately home before dinner. I’m sure we’ll be able to find somewhere for dinner on our way back towards Doveby Dale.”

  “Or we could simply go to the café up the road once we’re back,” Janet said. “It isn’t the fanciest place ever, but the food is excellent and the people who own it are worth a visit.”

  Joan nodded. “It is a very nice café,” she admitted. As Joan usually only liked her own cooking, her words were very high praise indeed.

  With the dishes loaded into the dishwasher, Janet went back upstairs to get ready to go out. “We’re going to talk to Beverly Osborne again,” she told Aggie. “Then we’ll be out for the rest of the day. You be a good kitty.”

  “Meeroow,” Aggie replied in a bored voice.

  “Do you have any idea what might have happened to Gretchen Falkirk?” she asked the kitten.

  “Meeooowww,” Aggie said, yawning.

  “I’m keeping you from your nap,” Janet laughed. “I am sorry. You get some rest and I’ll see you later.”

  Janet offered to drive, as she knew how to find the house now, but they took Joan’s car as it was more comfortable for the foursome. They chatted easily as they went, but Janet fell silent when they reached the house.

  “Isn’t that Robert’s car?” Joan asked as Janet pulled up next to the vehicle in question.

  Chapter 6

  “I hope everything is okay,” Janet said anxiously as they all climbed out of the car. She crossed to the front door of the house with the others right behind her. She’d only just reached up to knock when the door opened in front of her.

  “My goodness, I wasn’t expecting visitors,” Beverly said brightly.

  “We told you that we’d be back this morning,” Bessie reminded her gently.

  “Of course you did,” Beverly agreed, “but I didn’t believe you. People are always making promises they don’t keep.”

  “Maybe some people, but not me,” Bessie said firmly.

  “Do come in, then,” Beverly said. She took a step backwards, stepping right onto Robert’s foot.

  “Careful,” he said, putting out a hand to steady the woman as she wobbled.

  “I’d completely forgotten you were behind me,” she laughed. “That’s why I was at the door, of course. I was letting you out, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, you were,” Robert agreed. “Good morning,” he said to the others.

  “I hope everything is okay,” Janet said after they’d all replied to his greeting.

  “Everything is fine,” he assured her. “I was just in the area, so I thought I would pay Beverly a quick visit. We’re still looking for Miss Falkirk, but as I was just explaining to Beverly, these things can take time.”

  Janet raised an eyebrow. If he hadn’t found her yet, that suggested that she wasn’t in hospital or the morgue, at least.

  “And now I must get into the office and start my day,” Robert added. “I may pay you a visit at Doveby House later, if you’ll be at home.”

  “We’re doing some sightseeing this afternoon, but we should be home after five, or maybe even four,” Janet told him.

  “I’ll plan to visit after work, then,” he said. “Unless that will interrupt your dinner.”

  “If you come while we’re eating, you’ll simply have to join us,” Joan told him. “We’re having a roast chicken with the trimmings.”

  “We’ll see how my day goes,” Robert grinned. “Maybe I can time it just right to arrive for pudding, at least.”

  “We’ll be having apple crumble,” Joan replied. “With ice cream, as we have guests.”

  Janet grinned. She was already happy that Bessie and Doona were visiting, but apple crumble was her favourite. Now she had even more reason to be pleased that they’d come.

  Robert walked out of the house and climbed into his car while the women watched. As he drove away, Beverly laughed.

  “But where are my manners? Come in,” she said. She led them back down the dark corridor and into her sitting room.

  “I’d offer you tea and biscuits, but I seem to be out of everything,” she said as she waved them into seats. “I must get some shopping in, but I never seem to find the time.”

  Janet thought about reminding her that she’d said she was going to go shopping yesterday, but decided that it was best not to upset the woman. “We just had breakfast, anyway,” she said. “I don’t have room for tea and biscuits at the moment.”

  The others echoed her words, and then Janet introduced her sister to the woman.

  “Your sister?” Beverly echoed. “She does rather look like you, but that may just be because you have the same haircut and the same blue eyes. She’s much thinner, though, I must say.”

  Janet frowned. It had always bothered her that Joan could cook and bake for hours and never gain any weight, especially when it seemed that Janet only had to look at food to add a few pounds.

  “I assume you’ve not heard anything from Miss Falkirk,” Bessie said.

  “Maybe, or maybe not,” Beverly shrugged. “This morning my phone rang, but when I answered it there wasn’t anyone there. I suppose that might have been Gretchen, mightn’t it? The police constable wrote it down, anyway.”

  “Have you had any luck working out when you moved in here?” Doona wanted to know.

  Beverly shook her head. “The nice police constable wanted to know that, too. I hope he wasn’t too disappointed when I couldn’t tell him, but I simply can’t find my important papers anywhere. When we tidied up yesterday we must have buried them under something, I suppose.”

  “Let us help you look for them,” Doona suggested. “It’s the least we can do. We helped with the tidying up, after all.”

  Beverly protested for a moment and then shrugged. “Okay, if you truly want to help. We put everything in the bedroom, didn’t we?”

  Doona nodded and then they all followed the woman into the tiny bedroom. Doona opened the first box she came to and then smiled.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” she asked, holding the box out to Beverly.

  Beverly glanced inside the box and then clapped her hands. “Yes, indeed. All my important papers. I’m sure my chequebook is in there somewhere. I should be able to work out when I started paying rent here, shouldn’t I?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Doona said.

  They all filed back out into the corridor and then into the sitting room. Beverly insisted on carrying the box herself. She sat with the box on her lap and began pulling papers out of it.

  “This is an old shopping list,” she said in surprise as she studied the first sheet she’d removed. “How did that get in here?”

  Half an hour later, Janet had had enough. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to go now,” she said, trying to sound sorry. “I hope you find what you’re looking for soon, though.”

  Beverly looked up and then frowned. “I didn’t realise you were still here,” she said. “I’ve been so absorbed in everything. You can let yourselves out, can’t you?”

  Janet nodded and then she and the others headed for the door. Behind them, she could hear Beverly muttering over yet another piece of paper.

  “What do you think she’s found now?” Janet asked Doona as they walked down the steps to the car.

  “The receipt for that lovely chicken sandwich she had three years ago at that little shop in
Derby,” Doona suggested.

  “Or maybe her eyeglass prescription from 1972,” Janet said.

  “Be nice,” Joan chided her sister as they all climbed into the car. “Not everyone is as organised as they should be with their paperwork.”

  “How does she even pay her bills on time?” Janet asked. “She still hadn’t found her chequebook, or any bank statements, for that matter.”

  “Maybe she hadn’t been paying her bills lately,” Doona suggested. “Maybe she killed Miss Falkirk because she couldn’t pay her rent.”

  Janet shivered. “I didn’t want to mention murder,” she said softly.

  “Neither did I, but the thought had crossed my mind,” Bessie said. “Of course, with everything that has happened on the island in the recent past, it’s hardly surprising that murder is on my mind.”

  “After what happened there when we visited you, it’s on my mind, too,” Janet admitted. “It just seems so unlikely, really.”

  “I’m not saying I think that Beverly killed the woman,” Bessie told her. “She seems slightly confused, but not at all dangerous. Murder is one possibility we probably need to consider, though.”

  “Beverly does seem to be the only person with any sort of motive,” Janet said after a minute. “Of course, she’s the only person that we’ve met who even knew Gretchen.”

  “From whom did you get Gretchen’s name?” Doona asked.

  “From a woman called Harriet Lacey,” Janet replied. “She lives in Little Burton and recently retired. Now that she has time on her hands, she likes to visit stately homes, but she also likes to visit other historical homes, even if they aren’t open to the public. I actually met her in our gardens one day. She’d come to take a look at Doveby House and had managed to strike up a conversation with Stuart.”

  “That was lucky of her,” Doona remarked.

  “I don’t think luck had anything to do with it,” Janet replied dryly. “I think she was watching the house and when she saw Stuart she rushed over and started talking to him. I didn’t really like her, so I may be being unfair, of course.”

  “Why didn’t you like her?” Bessie wondered.

  “I felt as if she expected me to offer her a tour of Doveby House,” Janet replied. “She kept hinting about how she’d always wanted to see inside the house. She went on and on about how much she loved what we’d done with the gardens and asked a bunch of questions about what we’d done to the house.”

  “What did you do to the gardens?” Doona asked.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Janet laughed, “and that’s exactly what I told her. I said that the gardens were exactly as they had been when we’d purchased the house and that we hadn’t changed anything inside, either. Then I suggested that she should have taken a look around when it was up for sale.”

  Bessie and Doona both laughed. “What did she say to that?” Doona asked.

  “She muttered something about it not being convenient at that time. I just played dumb, as if offering her a tour never entered my mind. If she’d asked outright, I may have taken her around the public rooms, at least, but she wasn’t bold enough to ask.”

  “That was fortunate, considering you didn’t like her,” Doona commented.

  “I didn’t. She’d already talked Stuart into giving her a tour of the gardens and the carriage house. I felt as if she’d seen enough,” Janet replied.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll want to ring her to ask her about Miss Falkirk, then,” Bessie said.

  “I don’t have a number for her, but even if I did, I wouldn’t want to ring her. I should give her name to Robert, though, when he comes over tonight. He can talk to her if he thinks it will help,” Janet replied.

  Janet drove them to a nearby pub for lunch. Joan grumbled about everything from the menu to the prices, but Janet found it easiest to ignore her sister under the circumstances. Joan never believed that anyone else could cook as well as she could, and she was usually correct, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t get a perfectly good meal at a pub now and again.

  “That was delicious,” Bessie said as they walked back out to the car. “I haven’t had steak and kidney pie in a long time.”

  “I thought the pastry on my chicken and leek pie was too heavy,” Joan said.

  “Yours is definitely flakier,” Janet said, “but the filling was so good that I’m prepared to forgive them for the crust.”

  “For the prices they charge, I expected more,” Joan sniffed.

  Janet winked at Bessie and Doona. “And on that note, we should go and find our ruins, I think. As Joan doesn’t build ruins, she’ll have much lower expectations for those.”

  Joan frowned and then surprised her sister by laughing. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be difficult. I’m just too accustomed to my own cooking. I never truly appreciate anyone else’s, especially when I think it’s overpriced.”

  “I thought the prices were quite reasonable,” Doona said. “I don’t think we could have eaten on the island for that price.”

  “The puddings were certainly well priced,” Bessie added, “and they were exceptionally good.”

  “Joan’s are better,” Janet said quickly, “but this way we all got to have exactly what we wanted.”

  “You’ve been talking about ruins, but you haven’t said what was there that has been allowed to fall into ruins,” Bessie said as they all climbed into the car.

  “An old monastery,” Janet told her. “As I understand it, it was one of the largest in the area at one time, but it was already on the decline before Henry started shutting down all of the religious houses.”

  “One of the local noble families moved in for a short while after Henry did shut it,” Joan added. “They had property in both London and Scotland that they preferred, though. They simply allowed it to fall into disrepair for centuries.”

  “What a shame,” Doona sighed. “If I owned an old monastery, I’d love to do it up and live in it.”

  “Not if you had a dozen other properties that also needed doing up and modernising,” Janet suggested. “Anyway, at some point the family gave the whole estate to one of the historical preservation groups. They charge a small admission fee and have added a museum, and just recently a gift shop, to the site.”

  “I love gift shops,” Doona laughed.

  A few minutes later Janet pulled into the small car park for the site. There were only two other cars there. The entrance gate was only a short walk away.

  “Good afternoon,” the woman behind the counter inside the museum said brightly. “Welcome. Have you come to tour the museum or the site or both?”

  “Oh, both,” Bessie said happily.

  “And the gift shop,” Doona added with a grin.

  “Excellent, my favourite type of visitors,” the woman replied. She sold them admission tickets and persuaded Bessie to buy a guidebook as well.

  “You’re better off starting in the museum,” she told them. “There’s a full-scale model of what the monastery would have looked like when it was at its very best. That will help you understand what you see on the actual site.”

  “We’ll do that, then,” Janet said. “Thank you.”

  “The tour is self-guided, but there are plenty of explanatory signs,” the woman said. “Feel free to pop back and ask any questions you might have. I’m the only staff member here today, I’m afraid, and I can’t leave the desk, or I’d love to come with you and talk your ears off.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Bessie said, “but we do understand that you have to stay here.”

  “No one would probably notice if I did go with you,” the woman said. “It would be just my luck a tour bus would turn up or something and I’d lose my job, though.”

  “We don’t want that to happen,” Janet said quickly.

  “No, even if I am just a volunteer,” the woman laughed.

  The foursome followed Bessie’s guidebook as they walked through the museum, reading each sign carefully and discussing everything th
at they saw. When they reached the door that led out onto the actual ruins, Janet grinned.

  “I’m actually really excited to see the site now,” she said. “The museum has really brought it all to life.”

  They pushed open the door and began to walk along the carefully marked pavement. They’d only gone a few paces when they heard a loud voice.

  “I’m sure that was the kitchen,” a woman said in a strident tone. “Those would have been the bedrooms.”

  “Are you quite sure?” another, more hesitant voice asked.

  “Yes, I am. I’m something of an expert, you know,” the loud voice replied.

  Janet glanced at her friends. “I think I recognise that voice,” she whispered. “It sounds very much like Harriet Lacey.”

  Chapter 7

  It only took them a few more steps to confirm Janet’s words. Harriet was standing in the centre of what had once been the living quarters of the monastery. Another woman was with her, looking around with a frown on her face.

  “I do wish there was a way to tell what everything is,” the other woman sighed.

  “I thought the museum did a good job of explaining everything,” Bessie said.

  “Oh, yes, well, we didn’t go around the museum,” the woman told her.

  “It was too dear,” Harriet said sharply. “It’s bad enough they charge people to walk around all these old ruins. They’re barely interesting.”

  “I think they’re fascinating,” Doona told her, “but then, we went through the museum, so we have a good idea of what everything was back in the day.”

  “What was this room, then?” Harriet’s friend asked.

  “It was the kitchen,” Harriet said. “I already told you that.”

  “Actually, it was the abbot’s room,” Bessie told them both. “Here, you can see it on this drawing.” She held out the guidebook for them.

  Harriet glanced at it and then shrugged. “They may have made a mistake there,” she said.

  Janet bit her tongue to stop herself from laughing or saying something rude. Bessie caught her eye and raised an eyebrow. She wants me to ask her about Gretchen Falkirk, Janet thought. I don’t want her to remember who I am, though.