An Isle of Man Ghostly Cozy Collection - DEF

by Diana Xarissa

  Paul nodded and then turned and walked away. He waved to her as the elevator doors shut in front of him. Fenella sighed and pushed her door shut.

  “That was quick,” Mona said. “Don’t tell me you ran out of things to talk about.”

  “His mother is in the hospital. He probably should have just cancelled altogether.”

  “What’s wrong with Phillipa?” Mona sounded concerned.

  “Her doctor wants to see what he can do about the sleeping pills and her reaction to them, I gathered.”

  “Perhaps she should just stop taking them.”

  “Apparently she’s still upset about her husband’s death. The recent accidents also have her unsettled and she’s having trouble separating reality from the dreams she’s been having. All in all, her doctor thought she could do with being under his care for a few days.”

  “Now you need to ring Daniel,” Mona reminded her.

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” Fenella replied. “He makes me nervous.”

  “If you don’t ring, he’ll be even more cross.”

  “I know,” Fenella sighed. She pulled out her mobile phone and sent the man a text, letting him know that she was home. “Maybe he’ll be busy and won’t be able to call back,” she said as she dropped the phone onto a table. A moment later her landline began to ring.

  12

  “I wasn’t expecting you home for hours yet,” Daniel said.

  “I had dinner with Paul Clucas, but his mother is in the hospital, so we didn’t dawdle.”

  “Why do you insist on spending time with suspects?” Fenella could hear exasperation in the man’s voice.

  “I wasn’t aware that he was suspected of anything,” she countered. “The last I knew, all three deaths were tragic accidents.”

  “I suppose it all depends on how you feel about coincidences,” Daniel replied. “I don’t like them.”

  “I don’t like them either,” Fenella said. “I wish you were here, handling the investigation.”

  “Mark’s a good investigator. If there is something going on, he’ll discover it.”

  “I feel so awful about Hannah,” Fenella admitted. “I feel as if I should have warned her.”

  “Hindsight is a wonderful and terrible thing. The last thing you wanted to do was worry an elderly woman who was already upset about losing two friends in a short space of time. It’s highly unlikely that anything you could have said to her would have made a difference. If she was murdered, all of the evidence suggests that it was by someone she trusted.”

  “That just makes me feel worse,” Fenella complained.

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “And I’m sorry to ask, but can you take me through your entire day yesterday? I want to hear all about your lunch with Hannah and the conversation afterwards with Paulette and Paul.”

  Fenella made a face and then sank down into the nearest chair and tapped the speakerphone button. Mona seemed to be listening intently as Fenella recounted everything she could remember from the previous day.

  “And now, if you don’t mind too much, can you take me through your dinner tonight?”

  Fenella obliged, feeling as if she were betraying Paul by repeating what he’d said over their meal.

  “So he knew that his father cheated, but he couldn’t find the memoirs that his mother claimed to have read,” Daniel said thoughtfully when she’d finished.

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “It seems as if his mother and his sister have the best motives for killing the three victims,” Daniel said.

  “Unless their deaths don’t have anything to do with Paul Clucas,” Fenella said. “I’ve been thinking about Herbert Smathers a lot. He died in a car accident, the same as his wife. I wonder if there was more to his death than meets the eye.”

  “I’ve read the police report on his death. Mark included it when he sent the report on Mrs. Smathers. It was investigated, but not in the same way we would do it now, of course. All those years ago, they didn’t have the technology that we have now when it comes to investigating accidents.”

  “So it could have been murder?”

  “It could have been, but as I said, it was a long time ago. Are you suggesting that someone is just now, all these years later, avenging the man’s death?”

  “I don’t know,” Fenella said with a sigh. “It’s just another instance of odd coincidence, Herbert and Anne Marie dying in the same manner in identical cars, that’s all.”

  “I’m not sure I can imagine Anne Marie, Margaret, and Hannah all being involved in the man’s death,” Daniel said. “Even if they were very close friends, murder has a way of getting between people.”

  “They weren’t friends,” Mona said. “Especially not when Herbert was alive. Anne Marie hated all of the women that he tried to take to bed, and that was pretty much every woman he met.”

  “They were little old women who used to drink and party together fifty years ago,” Fenella said. “Why would anyone start killing them now?”

  “We’re checking into as much of their pasts as we can,” Daniel told her. “None of the women ever worked, but they were all involved with various charities. It’s just remotely possible that there’s something there.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Mona said. “I can see Patricia being angry enough to murder someone if they didn’t appreciate the importance of the Manx Fund for Children. It is her life’s work.”

  “Charities? Maybe Patricia Anderson is killing them all because they didn’t donate enough to her pet project,” Fenella said.

  “That isn’t really funny,” Daniel said. “But hers is one of the charities that we’re looking into. Thus far we have no reason to suspect that we’re going to find anything, though.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Fenella demanded. “You suspect that someone is murdering a group of women, but you don’t know why they’re being targeted so it’s virtually impossible to work out who is behind it. Can’t you at least warn other potential victims?”

  “Can you suggest other potential victims?” Daniel asked. “As we don’t know what’s behind the murders, or even if all three women were murdered, it’s very hard to work out who else might be a potential victim.”

  “Patricia Anderson,” Mona said. “If the killer is targeting women who were involved with Paul Clucas, she could be next.”

  Fenella opened her mouth to reply, but remembered just in time that Daniel couldn’t hear Mona. “What about Patricia Anderson?” she asked. “She’s another woman from that social circle. She may be the only one left, actually.”

  “Mark was going to talk to her today,” Daniel replied. “He was hoping she might be able to suggest why her group of friends is being targeted and he was going to suggest that she be extra careful, as well. I haven’t spoken to him tonight to hear how it went.”

  “This is awful,” Fenella sighed. “I don’t suppose the police can keep a close watch on Phillipa and Paulette Clucas?”

  “You really think one of them is behind this?”

  “It seems like the most obvious answer,” Fenella told him.

  “You don’t think that you might be biased because Phillipa was so horrible to you when you met her?” he asked.

  Fenella stared at the phone for a moment. “I, no, I mean, I didn’t think,” she stammered.

  “Take a deep breath, and then tell him he’s an idiot,” Mona suggested.

  “She’s a confused elderly woman,” Fenella said. “The experience was uncomfortable, but it certainly didn’t make me hate her enough to start throwing unfounded accusations at her. Paulette has been nothing but nice to me, but I’m still suggesting she might be behind all of the deaths.”

  “I’m sorry, but I had to ask,” Daniel said. He sighed deeply. “Mark is doing his best, but he doesn’t have any reason to doubt what Paulette has told him. If the memoirs don’t exist, then neither does any motive for Phillipa or Paulette.”

  “Paul told me that his father did chea
t,” Fenella reminded him. “The motive remains, whether they found proof on the computer or not.”

  “I’ll suggest to Mark that he keep an eye on both women and also on Paul,” Daniel said. “But he won’t be able to have someone watching them all the time. At least he’ll be able to keep tabs on Phillipa while she’s in hospital.”

  “If the deaths don’t have anything to do with Paul Clucas, then Phillipa may well be another potential victim,” Fenella said as the thought occurred to her. “Maybe Mark should warn her as well as Patricia.”

  “I’ll suggest it to him,” Daniel said. “Aside from the unexplained deaths, how are you?”

  Fenella sighed. “I’m okay, I suppose,” she said. “I’m picking at my research and trying to start thinking about writing, but there are so many other things that seem to fill my days.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like reading fiction and watching television and taking long walks through Douglas,” Fenella replied. “It’s terrible because none of it is productive, but I can’t seem to work up any real enthusiasm for my writing at the moment.”

  “How is the driving coming?”

  “I’m dragging my feet on taking my test,” Fenella admitted. “Every time I think about it, I feel like I might throw up.”

  “It isn’t that bad,” Daniel chuckled. “If you haven’t taken it by the time I get back, I’ll take you out for a practice run. I know enough about how the test works to give you a similar experience.”

  “That’s just giving me more incentive to get the test over with,” Fenella said.

  “That’s good, too,” he replied.

  “How is your course?”

  “Fascinating, but challenging. It’s been a while since I was in a classroom for this length of time. It’s a little bit frustrating, if I’m honest, being stuck here dealing with lectures and exams when I’d rather be there, trying to work out what’s going on with these three deaths.”

  “Are you sure there are only three?” Fenella asked as an idea popped into her head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m sure that there have been other accidents on the island in the past week or so. Is it possible that some of them weren’t accidents, but we don’t know it yet because we haven’t spotted the common link?”

  “I believe Mark thinks you are the common link,” Daniel said. “But I understand what you’re saying. I’ll suggest to Mark that he have another look at all of the island’s accidents over the past seven days. Maybe there’s something else going on and we just haven’t worked it out yet.”

  “What are you learning about at the moment?” Fenella asked, not wanting to talk anymore about the local deaths.

  “We’re still doing body decomposition,” he said. “Although tomorrow, if there’s time, we’re going to start talking about defensive wounds.”

  “I think I’ll stick to Anne Boleyn,” Fenella said.

  “At least you know exactly how she died.”

  “Yes, and there wasn’t any question of it being an accident, either.”

  “I’d better go and get some sleep,” Daniel said after they’d chatted a while longer about nothing much. “If I’m not up by six, I’ll miss my turn in the showers.”

  “That’s one thing I don’t miss about my college days,” Fenella laughed.

  “At least once I’m through the shower, someone has breakfast ready for me,” he replied. “Every cloud, you know.”

  “He misses you,” Mona said after Fenella put the phone down. “And he’s worried about you.”

  “I miss him, too. But I’m worried about Patricia.”

  “Yes, maybe you should ring her. Make an excuse to see her and warn her yourself.”

  “I can’t do that,” Fenella said. “There’s no way to tell a woman that you think she might be murdered because she had an affair fifty years ago.”

  “It wouldn’t have been that long ago for Patricia,” Mona said thoughtfully. “She was very young when she married into our little group. Her husband left his first wife for her. She couldn’t have been much more than eighteen.”

  “Hannah said as much yesterday,” Fenella recalled.

  “Some of the other women in the group were rather horrible to her, at least at first. She was seen as a threat or maybe a reminder of how men could behave.”

  “But none of the other men decided to trade in their old wives for newer models,” Fenella pointed out.

  “I suspect they learned from George’s mistake. He and Patricia were miserable for the most part.”

  “Why?”

  “She was too young to settle down, really. She flirted outrageously with every man she came into contact with. It wasn’t until she fell pregnant that she finally settled down, at least a little bit.”

  “How old is Melanie?” Fenella asked.

  “Oh, maybe thirty or a bit older, but she wasn’t Patricia’s first child. She and George had a son only a few years after they married. Patricia was devoted to him, but he was born with some sort of problems and passed away when he was eight or nine.”

  “How awful,” Fenella exclaimed.

  “Patricia went crazy with grief. I’m sure that’s when she had her affair with Paul Clucas. It wasn’t long after that that she started her charity, and then after a while she fell pregnant with Melanie. She’s always smothered Melanie just a bit. I thought that might get better when Melanie got married, but I suspect Patricia runs her daughter’s life for her.”

  “Melanie told Donald that she and Matthew had split up, but I saw them together at the Tale and Tail,” Fenella said. “They didn’t look very happy together, but they were definitely together.”

  “Did Melanie say anything about why they’d separated?”

  Fenella tried to remember the conversation. So much had happened since then and she’d worked so hard to remember so many of the conversations that had come later in the evening that she had to struggle. “She said he wanted children and she didn’t,” Fenella said, giving herself a mental pat on the back.

  “I wonder if she’s concerned that her children might have the same issues that her older brother had,” Mona said thoughtfully. “Such things may be hereditary.”

  “She said something about working with abused and mistreated children, which made her not interested in having any of her own.”

  “I suppose that’s also a possibility. Still, it’s odd that you saw her and Matthew together only a few days later. Maybe they’re still working things out.”

  “Or maybe she was just flirting with Donald,” Fenella muttered.

  Mona laughed. “My dear, if you’re going to date a handsome and very wealthy man, you must expect other women to flirt with him, behind your back at least, but probably right in front of your face as well.”

  “Did other women flirt with Max in front of you?”

  “Of course they did,” Mona replied. “But Max had a way of pretending that he hadn’t noticed. He was very good at acting as if he didn’t understand the innuendos and whispered suggestions that came his way.”

  “Really?”

  “One night Anne Marie whispered a naughty suggestion in his ear. He turned around and asked me, in a very loud voice, what one of the words meant. Anne Marie only just laughed, of course, but it made it clear to her and everyone else that he wasn’t interested.”

  “What was the word?” Fenella had to ask.

  Mona shrugged. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” she said.

  Fenella was surprised to see how late it was. She got ready for bed as quickly as she could. “I should have known it was past bedtime,” she told Katie. “You’ve been in bed for hours, haven’t you?” Katie, who was fast asleep, didn’t reply.

  She’d done it. She’d finally arranged for her driving test and today was the day. Shelly gave her a ride to the test center, where a large and angry-looking man in a black suit was waiting for her. He led her to a small parking lot and motioned to a tiny black car that was park
ed in the middle of it.

  “You’ll be taking your test in this,” he told her gruffly.

  Fenella climbed behind the steering wheel and immediately tried to work out how to adjust the seat. It was far too close to the pedals. There was no way she could drive like this. While she was struggling, the man climbed in the passenger seat. Fenella felt the entire car sink on his side.

  “Let’s go,” he barked.

  “I need to adjust the seat,” she replied.

  “That’s as good as it gets,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”

  Fenella took the keys from the man and started the engine. With all of Mel’s instructions ringing in her head, she stepped on the clutch and the gas and slowly released the handbrake. After a slow start, she was soon following the man’s instructions as he had her drive around the island.

  “Now we’re going over the mountain,” he told her.

  “I didn’t think the mountain was part of the test,” she protested.

  “Turn left,” he said. A short while later she was driving faster than felt comfortable along the twists and turns of the mountain road. “You need to drive faster,” the man said. “I need to know that you can use all of the gears.”

  Fenella sped up as much as she could, but the little car didn’t seem to be able to go much faster. Suddenly, a sheep stepped into the road in front of her. She screamed and slammed on the brakes as the passenger door flew open and her examiner either fell or jumped out of the car. The car didn’t seem to be slowing down as she hit the brakes again and again. Just before she was about to hit the sheep, she turned the steering wheel to the left, desperate not to hit either the sheep or the mountain. The car skidded off the road and began to sail through the air. Fenella screamed again and then gasped as something landed on her chest. When she felt her cheeks being licked, she realized that her eyes were closed.

  Forcing them open, she gasped for air as she looked around her bedroom. Katie was sitting on her chest, looking at her with concern.

  “Merroowww?” she asked.

  “I’m okay,” Fenella said shakily. “It was just a bad dream.”