Aunt Bessie Invites (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 9) (6 page)

“Oh, we wouldn’t miss that,” Thomas assured
her.
 
“We had such a nice time last
year and the year before that.
 
It’s
one of our favourite holidays now, even if it is an American one.”

“Well, if I don’t see you before, I suppose
I’ll see you at The Swing Bridge, then,” Bessie said.

“Yes, indeed, although I’m sure you’ll see
me before.
 
I plan to start painting
tomorrow and it will probably take a couple of weeks to do the whole lot.”

Thomas headed back to cover more furniture
while Bessie continued on with her walk.
 
She was nearly home now and as she reached her door she stopped to run
her fingers over the sign on the side of the house.
 
“Treoghe Bwaane,” it read.
 

“Widow’s Cottage,” she murmured to
herself.
 
Of course she wasn’t a
widow, having never married, but when she’d found the cottage all those years
ago when she’d first returned to the island, she’d felt as if she were.
 
Matthew Saunders had swept her off her
feet, and she’d been devastated when her parents insisted that she return to
the island with them rather than let her stay in the US and marry Matthew.
 
She was only seventeen; she wasn’t
really given any choice in the matter.
 
Matthew had followed her a short while later, but illness had swept
through the boat he was sailing on and he’d died just before his arrival in
Liverpool.

Bessie smiled sadly as she remembered how
she’d been convinced that her life was over when she’d heard.
 
She’d not been able to forgive her
parents, and thanks to a small legacy from Matthew, she’d bought herself her
very own home.
 
The legacy had
provided just enough income, thanks to some very clever investing by her
advocate, for Bessie to live frugally in her small cottage ever since.
 
In the last few years, she’d been able
to be less careful with her money and had mostly indulged herself with an
ever-growing collection of books.
 
While there were times when she wondered what her life might have been
like if Matthew had survived, for the most part she was satisfied with the way
her life had turned out.
 
She loved
her small home and she was content with living on her own.

Now she fixed herself a bowl of soup and ate
that with a few pieces of toast and a cup of tea.
 
By the time she’d taken care of the
washing up, it was quite dark outside, so rather than think about another walk,
Bessie curled up with an old Sherlock Holmes novel that she hadn’t read for
many years.
 
Holmes was just
explaining things to Watson when someone knocked on her door.
 
Bessie slid a bookmark into the book and
walked to the door.
 

She’d never worried about opening her door
at any time, day or night, until rather recently.
 
Now she stood and stared at it, wishing
that there were a window in the door.

“Of course, if there was, whoever it was
would see you standing here, talking to yourself,” she muttered to
herself.
 
Taking a deep breath, she
pulled the door open.

“Inspector Rockwell, how lovely to see you,”
she said, smiling delightedly at her visitor.

The man on the doorstep smiled back.
 
“Surely, after all this time, you can
call me John?” he asked as she ushered him inside.

Bessie grinned.
 
“Sometimes you look more official than
others,” she told him.
 
“Tonight you
look quite inspectorial, if that’s a word.”

“I’ve just come from an entire day of
meetings,” John replied.
 
“I almost
stopped home to change, but I wanted to see you and I was afraid that if I did
stop at home I might not want to go back out again.”

Bessie smiled.
 
John was a very handsome man in his early
forties.
 
He had brown hair and
stunning green eyes that Bessie was certain were natural.
 
He’d lost weight recently, as he worked
his way through his relationship troubles, but Bessie was pleased to see him
looking more like his old self tonight.
 
The expensive suit he was wearing fit him well, although Bessie fancied
that she could see tension in shoulders and his eyes were tired.

“You should have gone home and changed and
gone to bed,” Bessie scolded the man.
 
“You look tired.”

“Moving is hard work,” John replied.
 
“And the kids are coming next weekend,
so I’ve been cleaning a lot as I go, not to mention shopping.”

Bessie nodded.
 
John was in the middle of moving from a
small rental property into a renovated home in the same neighbourhood.
 
Sue, his wife, had taken most of their
furniture back to Manchester, where she’d moved with the pair’s two children
after she’d filed for divorce.
 
Now
John was trying to furnish his new home as inexpensively as possible on his far
from generous police salary.

“I’m so glad that Thomas and Amy are going
to be able to join us for Thanksgiving,” Bessie said.
 
“It’s always nice to have children
there.”

“I’m not sure you’ll want Amy at the
moment,” John said with a catch in his voice.
 

“What’s wrong with Amy?”

“She’s taking the divorce badly,” John
explained.
 
“And she seems to think
it’s all my fault, even though her mother is the one who, ah, never mind.”

“Children can’t possibly understand all of
the things that go into a marriage or why marriages fail,” Bessie said.

“And I can’t exactly tell my daughter that
her mother never really loved me, she just married me because the man she did
love didn’t want to marry her,” John added.

“Perhaps you can tell her, one day, when
she’s much older,” Bessie said.

“If I survive her teens, you mean.”

“I thought she was only twelve,” Bessie
said.

“She’ll be thirteen in February,” John
replied.
 
“But she’s definitely
behaving like a teenager.
 
Worse,
actually, Thomas is nearly fifteen and nowhere near as much trouble.”

“I’m sure she misses you,” Bessie suggested.

“I miss them both terribly,” John
replied.
 
“But my career is here now
and I can’t afford to get that wrong.”

“And they’ll be here for Thanksgiving,”
Bessie said.

“They will.
 
I just hope they’re both on their best
behaviour.”

Bessie laughed.
 
“We used to have thirty or more for
dinner every year when I was a child,” she told him.
 
“There was always a fight, someone
always had too much to drink, and at least one of the teens always shouted that
they hated everyone at some point in the day.”

John grinned.
 
“That sounds like a family occasion.”

“But you didn’t come to talk to me about
Thanksgiving,” Bessie guessed.
 
“What can I really do for you?”

“I spent half an hour with Anna hearing
about what she found on the Clague farm.
 
I was hoping you might be able to fill in some background before
tomorrow.”

“Are you taking over the case?” Bessie
asked, holding her breath while she waited for his reply.

John hesitated and then shrugged.
 
“Let’s say Anna and I are sharing the
responsibility for this one,” he said.
 
“While she’s meant to be doing much of the paperwork associated with
running the station, she does want to keep her hand in in terms of
investigative work as well.”

Bessie frowned, but nodded.
 
“I suppose that makes sense,” she
said.
 
“But let me make some tea and
then we can talk about everything.”

While Bessie refilled the kettle and
switched it on, she had a sudden thought.
 
“I haven’t heard anything from Doona,” she said.
 
“I’m surprised she didn’t ring me once
she left the farm.”

“She’s at the station,” John told her.
 
“Anna asked her to go in and start
digging out missing person reports.”

“But it’s her day off,” Bessie argued.

“I’m sure she’ll get paid for any overtime,”
John replied.
 
“Obviously, we’re
anxious to get the remains identified as quickly as possible.”

“Of course,” Bessie agreed.
 
She poured the tea and set a plate of
biscuits down in front of her guest.
 

“Ah, this is a treat.
 
I didn’t have time to eat this evening.”

Bessie pulled the plate away from him.
 
“Then you need something a good deal
more substantial than biscuits,” she said.
 

John tried to protest, but Bessie ignored
him as she dug through her cupboards and refrigerator.
 
“I have some chicken breasts, if you’d
like me to fix one quickly.
 
Everything else will take too long, I think.
 
Otherwise, I can do some tinned soup and
toast.”

“Soup would be fine,” John replied.
 
“It’s perfect for a cold and damp
night.”

Bessie opened a tin and poured the contents
into a pan.
 
She set the pan on the
heat and then pulled down a toast rack.
 
When the bread was in the toaster, she turned back to John.

“So, what can I tell you about the Clague
family?” she asked.

“Anything and everything, really,” John told
her.
 
“I’ve never actually met any
of them.
 
That’s my first job
tomorrow.
 
I’m going to drive up to
the farm in the morning and talk with Mr. and Mrs. Faragher.”

“Is Eoin back?” Bessie asked.
 
“Fenella said he was across for some
medical tests or something.”

“He flew back late this afternoon, which was
as scheduled.
 
Fenella insisted that
we not tell him anything about what was happening over here until he returned,
which, considering the age of the remains, seemed a reasonable request.
 
Anna stayed at the farm to have a quick
chat with him when he got home, but according to her, he was simply shocked and
confused by the news.
 
Our first job
is figuring out how long the remains have been there, of course.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“The farm has been in the family for
hundreds of years,” she said.
 
“When
I moved back to the island, Niall Clague and his wife Marion had just taken
over the farm.
 
I remember when
Fenella was born.
 
Marion was very
poorly after and I’m not sure she ever properly recovered.
 
She passed away a few years later and
left poor Niall to bring up Fenella on his own.”

John nodded.
 
“This is exactly what I need,” he told
her.
 
“The more background you can
provide, the better.”

Bessie slid slices of toast into the toast
rack and set it on the table next to John.
 
She added the butter dish and a jar of strawberry jam to the table and
the poured hot soup into a bowl.
 
John was already halfway through his first piece of toast when Bessie
set the bowl in front of him.
 

“Go on,” he encouraged her after he’d
swallowed a bite.

“I didn’t see them more than once or twice a
year,” Bessie said.
 
“Like most of
the farmers, they kept to themselves, really.
 
Fenella went to school here in Laxey,
but I suspect she missed as many days as she attended.
 
Book learning wasn’t really a priority
for farmers’ wives in those days.”

“When did Eoin arrive in the area?” John
asked.

“He grew up on a nearby farm,” Bessie
said.
 
She frowned as she struggled
to remember.
 
“His father was the
livestock manager for the Kelly farm, which was just to the north of the
Clagues.
 
I think he retired back
across when Matthew Kelly sold the farm.
 
He didn’t like the new owners or they didn’t like him, one or the
other.”

“But Eoin stayed here?”

“Oh, yes, he and Fenella were married by
then.
 
They started seeing one
another almost as soon as Fenella turned eighteen, and were married by the time
she was twenty.”

“No children?”

“No, they were never blessed with children,”
Bessie said.
 
“I’m sure Fenella
wanted them, but it just never happened.”

“I know Fenella was an only child; what
about Eoin?”

“He has a brother, Nicholas.
 
I actually asked Fenella about him
today.
 
Apparently he’s happily settled
across with a wife and some children.”