Aunt Bessie's Holiday (29 page)

“Maybe we could just do a quick introduction
and then go and get Chinese,” Andrew replied.

Monique stomped back into the dining room
before anyone else spoke.
 
She
handed John his drink.

“The sommelier will be here in a moment with
your wine,” she announced before returning to the kitchen.

“Did they have a sommelier the last time we
were here?” Bessie asked Doona.

“I don’t think so,” Donna said with a
shrug.
 

When Harold Butler appeared a moment later,
Bessie couldn’t help but glance at Doona and grin.
 
He was carrying their wine and he made a
big fuss of the opening and tasting.
 
Andrew gave his approval and Harold served everyone.

“You don’t normally act as sommelier here,
do you?” Bessie had to ask.

“Nathan wants to make
L’Ex
périence Anglaise
feel more
like a proper restaurant and less like a holiday park,” Harold told her.
 
“And we really want to keep Nathan happy
right now.”

“Why?” Doona demanded.

“He’s an excellent chef,” Harold said.
 
“He’s had offers from several other
holiday parks and a few restaurants in London as well.
 
I was always warning Charles not to
upset him, but Charles was all about the bottom line.
 
He kept cutting corners and Nathan was
increasingly unhappy here.”

“I thought Charles liked Nathan,” Bessie
remarked, trying to remember everything she’d heard.
 

“Charles liked anyone who could make the
guests happy,” Harold retorted.
 
“But mostly he liked people who could make the guests happy
cheaply.
 
That wasn’t ever going to
be Nathan.”

“So why did Nathan stay?” John asked.

Harold shrugged.
 
“I suppose Monique likes it up
here.
 
Even though he was getting
other offers, apparently no one quite matched up to what he has here.
 
It was just a matter of time, of course,
before someone did, but Charles didn’t see it that way.”

“Harold?” a voice roared from the kitchen.

“I’d better get back,” Harold said, looking
around nervously.
 
“I’m helping out
in the kitchen as well as serving the wine.”

He was gone before Bessie could ask why.

It felt like a long time before Monique came
back to take their order.
 
Bessie
was just about to suggest that they pay for the wine and leave when Monique
swung back out from the kitchen.
 
Everyone ordered from the specials menu, hoping that would be best,
considering that Nathan seemed to be having another bad day.

As Monique turned away, the hostess showed a
party of eight into the dining room.
 
Monique made a face at her before returning to the kitchen.

The new group had clearly just arrived and
seemed intent on having fun.
 
They
were all adults in their early to mid-twenties and Bessie immediately realised
that they had already been drinking before dinner.
 
When Monique reappeared to take their
drinks order, they requested four bottles of wine between them.
 
Bessie thought she looked relieved that
Harold was going to have to deal with them.

Although they had been seated on the
opposite side of the room from Bessie and her friends, the new group was so
noisy that conversation proved almost impossible for Bessie’s table.
 
Instead, Bessie sipped her wine and let
her mind wander.
 
It was hard to
believe that it was less than week since the first time she’d sat in this
restaurant, having just met Doona’s not-quite-ex-husband.

She looked around the room, wondering if
something that had happened that evening had been the catalyst to Charles’s
murder.
 
A momentary lull in the
conversation on the other side of the room let Bessie and others hear yet
another crash from the kitchen.

“What is he doing in there?” Bessie asked.

“Banging pots for effect,” Doona suggested.

Monique brought out their meals not long
after Harold delivered the other table’s wines.
 
The room felt strangely quiet as Bessie
and her friends began to eat and the other group began to work their way
through their bottles.
 

“This isn’t bad,” Bessie said after a few
bites.

“Neither is mine,” Doona said.
 
“Still not as good as the first night,
but not bad.”

“I’m enjoying mine, but I didn’t get much
lunch,” John said.

“I’m enjoying the company and the wine more
than the food,” Andrew said.
 
“But
I’ve had worse food.”

“That’s hardly a compliment to my husband,”
Monique said angrily from behind Bessie.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Andrew said calmly.

“He’s working ever so hard,” Monique told
him, tears forming in her eyes.
 
“It
isn’t easy, with all the things going on around us.
 
First Charles was murdered and now
Lawrence has been arrested.
 
I don’t
know how Nathan can work at all under the circumstances.”

“He’s doing fine,” Bessie assured the
girl.
 
“Everything is good.”

“Hey, waitress,” a man from the other table
shouted.
 
“Where’s our food, then?”

Monique rolled her eyes and then hurried
over to the other table.
 
Bessie
watched her go.

“She’s very quick to defend her husband,”
she remarked to the others.

“I still want to meet Nathan,” John said.

The foursome watched as Monique spoke to the
other group for several minutes before heading back to the kitchen.
  
A few minutes later, Nathan
himself stormed out.

“I understand you have a problem,” he said
loudly to one of the men in the large group.

The man looked at the powerfully built chef
and shook his head.
 
“No, we’re
good,” he said quickly.
 
“Just
hungry.”

“Your food will be out when it’s ready,”
Nathan replied.
 
“I can’t rush
proper preparation.”
 
He turned and
glanced over at Bessie’s table.
 
After a brief hesitation, he walked over to them.

“I hope you’re enjoying your meal,” he said
stiffly.

“It’s fine,” Bessie said.
 
“Quite good, actually.”

“Great,” Nathan muttered, turning to leave.

“You should meet our friend, John,” Bessie
said loudly.

Nathan turned and smiled vaguely.
 
“I didn’t know you had a friend joining
you,” he said.

John held out a hand.
 
“John Rockwell,” he said.
 
“I’m
good friends
with both Bessie and Doona.”

“Welcome to Lakeview Holiday Park and
L’Ex
périence Anglaise
,”
Nathan said.
 
“I hope you enjoy your
holiday.”

They all watched silently as the man walked
away.
 

“He’s seems off tonight,” Bessie
murmured.
 
“Like he’s drunk or
something.”

“Drugs?” John said, looking at Andrew.

“Could be,” Andrew replied.

By the time Monique came back with the sweets
menu, the group had decided to get ice cream at the little stand outside, which
was right next to where the bus to Torver Castle was collecting them.
 

“Dinner is on Nathan,” she told them when
Andrew asked for the bill.
 
“He
feels as if he isn’t doing his best right now and he doesn’t want Lakeview’s
guests to pay for that.”

“That’s going to get expensive,”
Bessie
commented as she looked at the large group whose food
had just been delivered by the hostess.

“Oh, they’ll pay,”
Monique
said with a shrug.
 
“They’re too
drunk to know if the food was good or not.”

Bessie decided she couldn’t argue with that,
so she and her friends headed out.
 
Andrew and John fell into step together, chatting in low voices while
Doona and Bessie followed at a slower pace, talking about nothing much as they
enjoyed the night air.

They were only a short distance from the ice
cream stand, and from there they were only a few steps away from the sign for
the castle tours.
 
With fifteen
minutes to fill before the bus was due, Bessie and Doona started to discuss the
books for the next day’s book club.
 
Doona hadn’t had much time to read and Bessie was happy to give her a
quick summary of each book.

The bus arrived a few minutes early, and
when the doors opened, Bessie was surprised to see Andrea climb out of it.

“Hello again,” she greeted Bessie.
 
“And before you ask, this is meant to be
one of Mai’s jobs as well, but she’s still not around.
 
I used to do this, before Mai arrived
and started taking all of my favourite jobs away from me, so don’t worry about
me not knowing what I’m doing.”

“But what’s happened to Mai?” Bessie asked.

Andrea shrugged.
 
“No idea, but I suspect it has something
to do with Lawrence.
 
Maybe she thinks
with both Charles and Lawrence gone she’ll get fired anyway.
 
Harold isn’t her biggest fan, after
all.”

Before Bessie could ask any more questions,
Jack and Nancy Strong came rushing up.

“Oh, thank goodness we didn’t miss the bus,”
Nancy said.
 
“I’m so excited about
this tour.”

“Because we’ve only been around Torver
Castle twice before,” Jack muttered from behind her.

“Last time I felt something,” Nancy said in
a confiding tone.
  
“I’m sure
it was one of the ghosts.”

“I’m sure it was something you ate,” Jack
said.

“Oh, hush,”
Nancy
admonished him.
 
“Just because you
don’t believe in ghosts doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

“If it did, I’d try not believing in your
sister,” Jack whispered just loudly enough for Bessie to hear.
 
She quickly turned her head so that
Nancy wouldn’t see her laughing at the man’s words.

“If you’d all like to board the bus, I’ll
check you off my list as you do so,” Andrea said.

Bessie and her friends climbed on board,
with Andrea making a note that John Rockwell had joined the party.
 
They took seats near the front of the
bus and watched as a dozen or so other people joined them.
 
Nancy and Jack were the last to board
and they took the seat right behind the driver.

“We’re just waiting for two more people,”
Andrea announced from the doorway.
 
“If they aren’t here in a few minutes, we’ll go without them.”

“We should go now,” a loud voice called from
the back.
 
“We’re already late and
I’d hate to miss any of the show.”

“It’s a tour, sir, not a show,” Andrea said,
coming up the steps into the bus.
 
“You’ll have plenty of time to tour the castle.
 
It isn’t a long drive.”

“Yeah, but the spooky ghost noises and
flashing lights and all that are pre-arranged, right?
 
I don’t want to miss that stuff,” he
said.

“I can assure you that nothing is
pre-arranged,” Andrea replied.
 
“Whether the ghosts are active or not is entirely up to them.”

“Ooooh, scary,” the man said mockingly.

“Ted, stop it,” the woman next to him
said.
 
“You don’t want to upset the
ghosts.”

The man laughed and then glanced at his
watch.
 
“If we don’t get moving,
they’ll have all gone to bed when we get there.”

Andrea smiled tightly and then climbed down
out of the bus.
 
From her seat,
Bessie watched the girl look around anxiously.
 
After a moment, she shook her head and
turned back towards the bus.

“We’re here,” a voice called out
loudly.
 
“We’re here.
 
Don’t go without us.”

Bessie frowned when she recognised Jessica
Howe as the woman stumbled towards the bus.
 
Herbert wasn’t far behind her.
 
Jessica stopped just outside the bus and
took a deep breath.
 
She
straightened her very tight and short dress and then ran a hand through her
hair.

“We were having a nap,” Jessica said to
everyone from the bus doorway.
 
She
shimmied down the aisle, winking at John Rockwell on her way.
 
Herbert followed, clearly out of
breath.
 
Bessie looked at his red
face and wondered how strong his heart was.
 
He fell heavily into the seat behind
Bessie and Doona, shaking the entire bus as he did so.