Aunt Bessie Invites (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 9)

by Diana Xarissa

  Bessie grinned. “Of course you may bring someone,” she said, forcing herself to keep her curiosity in check. “I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”

  “Thanks,” he said, still not looking at her.

  That conversation gave her something to think about in the taxi on the way back to Laxey. Henry seemed both excited and nervous about bringing his friend. As far she knew, he’d never had a steady girlfriend. Bessie couldn’t wait to see who accompanied him to her event.

  There were another dozen messages on her machine when she got back, and Bessie listened to them as she fixed herself a light snack that would substitute for her evening meal after the large lunch she’d enjoyed in Douglas. Most were repeats of earlier calls, but she was happy to hear Doona’s voice as well.

  “I’m home,” Doona said. “Ring me when you get in.”

  Bessie was quick to place the call. Doona had sounded tired and stressed, which just added to Bessie’s eagerness to speak to her.

  “How are you?” she asked as soon as Doona answered.

  “I’m fine,” was the automatic reply.

  “It’s me, Bessie. How are you really?”

  Doona chuckled. “I’m fine, really,” she said firmly. “I ended up working quite late last night and today was total madness at the station, so I’m quite tired, but otherwise, I’m fine.”

  “I rang and someone called Joan answered,” Bessie told her.

  “She told me you’d rung,” Doona replied. “She’s on loan from Castletown at the moment as they were the only station that could spare anyone.”

  “She seemed nice enough on the phone,” Bessie said.

  “She’s very nice, but irritatingly cheery all the time,” Doona told her. “Not that I got to talk to her much. I was pretty much tied to my phone all day.”

  “I gather everyone in Laxey has a guess as to who was found at the Clague farm,” Bessie said.

  “Everyone in Laxey, Lonan, Ramsey and just about every other place on the island,” Doona replied. “It was crazy this morning, and then after the paper came out, the phone lines just exploded. Joan and I couldn’t keep up, and it was a huge relief when five o’clock rolled around and I got to come home.”

  “So people recognised the watch?” Bessie asked.

  “People seem to think they’ve recognised the watch,” Doona replied. “But I did get given different names by different people.”

  Bessie sighed. “It does look very familiar,” she said. “I’m certain I’ve seen it somewhere before. I’m sure if I hear the right name it will all come back to me.”

  “I can bring you a list,” Doona said. “I was given maybe a dozen names and I suspect Joan probably has a similar list as well. We’re just handing everything over to Hugh, who’s coordinating the efforts, but I bet he’d be happy to have you look through the names.”

  “Maybe there will be some duplicates when he compares the lists and he’ll be able to start narrowing it down.”

  “Maybe,” Doona sighed. “By the end of the day I’d just about forgotten my own name, let alone any and all of the ones people had been suggesting to me. At least I only have to talk to the people who ring, Hugh has to follow up on their suggestions.”

  “Poor Grace, he’ll never find time to see her,” Bessie said.

  “She brought him lunch today,” Doona said. “It was very sweet, really. She brought him a bunch of sandwiches and a cold drink, and she brought a huge box of chocolate biscuits for everyone in the station to share.”

  “She’s a lovely girl,” Bessie said happily. “I hope he realises how lucky he is to have found her.”

  “If he doesn’t, she won’t have any shortage of volunteers to take his place,’ Doona remarked. “All of the other young constables were very impressed with her.”

  Bessie laughed. “I wish he’d just propose and get it over with.”

  “I think Grace would agree with you on that,” Doona replied.

  “Is there anything you can tell me about the case?” Bessie had to ask.

  “If you’ve seen the evening paper, you know just about everything I know,” Doona replied. “Everyone seems to think the watch is the key, but after all of the calls I took today, I’m not so sure.”

  “Do they know how old it is?” Bessie asked. “Surely that will help with figuring out when the man died.”

  “John is working on tracking that down,” Doona told her. “At this point, he seems to think that the watch may be even older than the remains.”

  “How is John doing?” Bessie asked.

  “I was going to ask you that,” Doona countered. “I gather he came to see you last night.”

  “He did,” Bessie agreed. “We had a nice visit, but mostly we talked about the dead man, rather than anything else.”

  “He doesn’t really talk to me at the moment,” Doona said.

  Bessie heard the catch in her friend’s voice. “He’s coping with a lot right now,” she said. “Moving house and the divorce are huge life changes.”

  “And he’s angry that I told him I was divorced when I wasn’t,” Doona added.

  Bessie sighed. “I don’t want to be in the middle of this,” she said firmly. “But at the same time, if you feel like you need to talk to John and want to do it on neutral territory, you’re welcome to arrange to meet him here. You could take a walk on the beach and talk it all out. You’d have the beach to yourselves this time of year.”

  “It’s complicated,” Doona said. “I like John so much. He’s a wonderful boss and a great person. I hate knowing that he thinks I lied to him, but I didn’t mean to lie. It was all just too difficult to explain and I assumed that the divorce was going to go through soon anyway, so I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “At this point it might be better to wait until the Clague case has settled down before you try to speak to him,” Bessie suggested. “I’m sure it’s adding a lot of stress to his life.”

  “It’s adding a lot of stress to everyone’s lives,” Doona countered.

  They chatted for a few minutes more before Bessie let her friend go. “Get some sleep,” she counseled. “Tomorrow is going to be another busy day, I’m sure.”

  She was just debating what to do with her evening when someone knocked on her door.

  “John, do come in,” she invited. “I can’t remember the last time you visited me two nights in a row.”

  “I can’t either, but it was probably in the middle of a murder investigation,” John replied.

  “That’s a rather unfortunate comment on our friendship,” Bessie said tartly.

  John flushed. “I love coming to visit you,” he told Bessie. “But it’s difficult to find the time. During murder investigations, I can visit you and convince myself that it’s work, not play.”

  Bessie shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s much better, but let’s not argue,” she said. “You look tired.”

  “I feel as if I’ve spent the day chasing ghosts,” he told her. “Although a great many of the ghosts turned out to be quite alive and well.”

  “Does that include Maggie Shimmin’s old friend Harvey Snow?” Bessie had to ask.

  John laughed. “He wasn’t hard to track down, as he was still living at the address he’d given Maggie when he left. Unfortunately for her, he has absolutely no recollection of her, but I didn’t tell her that, of course.”

  Bessie laughed. “Better she not know,” she agreed.

  “Anyway, I don’t want to stay long. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure you have better things to do as well, but I wanted to show you a list of names and see if any of them rings a bell.”

  “Is this the list of people who might have owned the watch?” Bessie asked. “Doona said she had about a dozen names suggested to her. I’m sure I’ve seen that watch somewhere before, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to pick out the right name.”

  “There are only ten names on my list,” John told her. “Some are possible watch owners and others are just men that might have gon
e missing in the last sixty or so years. There were some duplicates on the lists that Doona and Joan took, and Hugh was able to track down some of the men quite quickly. I dug a little deeper to find a few more. What I’m left with is a list of ten names of men who may have once owned a watch like that and who can’t be easily located.”

  “I can’t be sure I’ll pick the right name,” Bessie said.

  “If you aren’t sure, that’s fine,” John assured her. “I’ll settle for you selecting a handful that seem like they might be possibilities. There are only so many hours in a day and I hate chasing around in the dark. If you think three or four of these men might be the one you remember as owning that watch, I’ll dig deeper into them first. If none of them matches up, we’ll go back to the list.”

  Bessie nodded. “I’ll do my best,” she said.

  John pulled out the list and Bessie read the first name. “My goodness,” she exclaimed. “I haven’t thought about Richard Staunton in fifty years.”

  “Is he a possibility?” John asked.

  “Oh, goodness, I don’t think so,” Bessie replied. “He moved to Cumbria and started a bed and breakfast. You could try looking there for him. He may have moved a dozen times since then, of course.”

  John made a note and then smiled at Bessie. “I should have rung you every time we got a call,” he said. “I’ll bet you could have eliminated most of the names for me without any effort at all.”

  Bessie read the next name and shook her head. “He moved to America,” she said definitely. “He actually went and stayed with my cousins there for a short time in the sixties before heading out west to look for gold. I seem to recall that he passed away somewhere in Oregon, but I’m not positive.”

  They worked their way down the list methodically. Bessie was able to give John suggestions for places to look for several others on the list, although there were a few that she wasn’t sure about and one that she didn’t remember at all. The last name on the list had her catching her breath.

  “Jacob Conover,” she said softly. “He’s the man who owned that watch.”

  Chapter Five

  “Are you sure?” John asked, his voice tense.

  “I’m positive,” Bessie replied. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember his name, now that I think about it. People used to tease him for being a ‘comeover’ named Conover.”

  “What about the watch?”

  Bessie sat back in her chair and tried to remember events from forty or more years earlier. “It was his father’s,” she said eventually. “I remember he was very proud of it. His father gave it to him on his eighteenth birthday, if I’m remembering correctly.”

  “Maybe you could just start at the beginning and tell me all about him,” John suggested.

  “I think I need a cuppa,” she said. While Bessie bustled around her kitchen, she cast her mind back and tried to remember everything that she could about Jacob Conover. She was hoping to have everything in a nice neat order for John when she began, but she wasn’t sure that was possible after such a long time.

  She fixed tea for them both and then sat down again. “He came over to the island some time in the mid-fifties,” she began. “Nearly everything I can tell you is hearsay. I only met the man a couple of times myself, but he was the talk of the village when he was here.”

  “I’m happy with hearsay at this point,” John told her.

  Bessie nodded. “He had some money, but no one ever heard the same story as to where he’d acquired it,” she said. “I gathered, at the time, that his family was wealthy and the money had come from his father. Supposedly, he’d come to the island to buy a farm and raise sheep. At least I think that was the plan.” She shook her head. “It was a long time ago,” she said.

  “Don’t worry if you can’t remember things perfectly. I’m happy with anything and everything you can tell me. If it turns out he was planning to raise cattle instead, I would be surprised if that had anything to do with his death.”

  “I seem to recall that he stayed in Douglas for a while. Most people did when they came to the island. Laxey didn’t have much to offer for young single men, at least not when compared to Douglas.”

  “But he moved to Laxey after that?” John asked.

  “He did,” Bessie confirmed. “He was looking at farms all over the island and there were a few in Laxey that caught his eye. None of them were actually on the market, you understand, but he moved up here and set about trying to persuade one of the farmers to sell to him.”

  “And the Clague farm was on his list?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bessie said, feeling confused. “I can’t imagine that Niall would have considered selling at that point. He was in his prime and the farm was thriving.”

  “Tell me more,” John said.

  “After a while, he began to develop something of a reputation for, well, having an eye for the ladies, I suppose you could say,” Bessie told him.

  “How old was he?”

  “Maybe twenty-five,” Bessie said.

  “And the women he went out with?”

  “I don’t think it would be much of an exaggeration to suggest that he went out with just about every woman in Laxey between the ages of eighteen and thirty in the summer he was here.”

  “Wow, that’s some accomplishment,” John said.

  “He was very good-looking, seemed to have an endless supply of money and he drove a new car,” Bessie told him. “The girls in the village had never really met anyone like him before. He seemed worldly and sophisticated to girls and young women who’d never been further from home than Douglas.”

  “And how did he seem to you?”

  “I was a little bit older and I’d seen a great deal more of the world,” Bessie replied. “I thought he was flashy and arrogant.”

  “So he was trying to buy a farm and take out every woman in the village. What happened next?”

  “The longer he was here, the less talk there was about him buying a farm,” Bessie recalled. “He was here for three or four months and after the first few weeks I don’t remember hearing any more about it. At the time I thought he’d either found a property and was keeping the negotiations secret, or he’d given up and decided to just have some fun before he went home.”

  “And then he disappeared?”

  “That sounds so dramatic,” Bessie said. “But it wasn’t like that. He told everyone he was going. I think there was even a small gathering at the local pub before he went. I’m sure he sold his fancy car and packed up his things. I’d always assumed he’d simply left as planned.”

  “But maybe he didn’t,” John said with a sigh.

  “He wouldn’t have given or sold that watch to anyone,” Bessie told him. “He loved showing it off and telling people about it. I barely knew him and he told me all about the thing. It’s coming back slowly, but I think he said his father bought the watch in Germany, from a little watchmaker on a back street somewhere. Jacob seemed to think there weren’t more than a handful like it in the world. I’d be very surprised to learn that someone else on the island had one like it. If that isn’t Jacob that you’ve found, whoever it is must have stolen Jacob’s watch.”

  John nodded. “I told you that there were some duplicate names on the lists that Joan and Doona made. Jacob’s name came up several times, actually, once we’d published the photo of the watch. Everyone that I’ve spoken to has said the same thing. That he was very fond of that watch.”

  “Well, if it is him, he wasn’t buried there before Niall put Marion’s things into the barn,” Bessie said. “Marion died many years before Jacob came to the island.”

  “We’re working on finding the man’s family,” John told her. “We’re hoping we can get a DNA match so we can be certain who we’ve found.”

  “I can’t imagine why they never reported him missing,” Bessie said. “Surely he was missed?”

  “Remember, we aren’t even sure it’s him,” John said. “Maybe the watch isn’t as rare as Jacob thou
ght it was, or maybe he was robbed before he left the island. From what you’ve said, he was definitely planning to leave, so maybe he did just that.”

  “Maybe,” Bessie said, doubtfully. The more she thought about the young man, the more convinced she became that the remains were his. She closed her eyes and could picture him, walking into a small café in Laxey, some young girl on his arm. He’d taken every excuse to check the time and she could hear him bragging to his companion that his watch was never wrong. She shuddered.

  John got up and poured Bessie some more tea. He handed her the cup and then squeezed her other hand. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Bessie nodded and took a sip of her drink. She set it down before she spoke. “I’m fine,” she said. “I wasn’t even all that upset when we found the body yesterday. Somehow putting a name to the remains makes it seem much more awful for some reason. I barely knew the man and I didn’t really like him, but when I think about him I can picture him. He was loud and brash and so very full of life.”

  She sighed and then got up to find a tissue. After wiping her eyes, she sat back down. “I’m sorry. What else can I tell you?” she asked the inspector.

  “What was his connection with the Clague farm?”

  Bessie thought for a moment and then shook her head. “I don’t know that there was any connection between them,” she said. “As I said earlier, I can’t see Niall even discussing selling the farm with him.”

  “What about Fenella?”

  “Oh,” Bessie exclaimed. She sat back in her chair and thought hard. “She would have been in her teens. I can’t remember exactly what year he was here. I suppose she might have been old enough to catch his eye, but I don’t remember hearing that she was seeing him. Then again, he went through women very quickly. I’m sure I didn’t hear about most of them.”

  “He never helped out on the farm?”

  “He never did any work, as far as I know,” Bessie said. “He wanted to buy a farm, but he didn’t intend to work on it himself. I doubt he’d have been any help to any of the hardworking farmers on the island.”

  “Who do you remember him going out with, then?” John asked.