Aunt Bessie's Holiday (30 page)

“Right, that’s everyone then,” Andrea said
from the doorway.
 
“Here we
go.”
 
She perched on the stairs as
the driver pulled away from the village centre.
 
Everyone fell silent as they made their
way out of the holiday park and into the countryside.
 

“Do you think we’ll see any ghosts?” Doona
asked Bessie in a quiet voice.

“I doubt it.
 
I do believe we can’t explain everything
in our world,” Bessie answered.
 
“But whether that includes people’s spirits coming back to haunt the
living or not, I don’t know.
 
I know
when Matthew died I felt as if I could feel his presence for a long time
afterwards.
 
It made me feel better,
so I don’t see any harm in it.”

Doona patted Bessie’s arm.
 
“I’d much rather believe in benevolent
ghosts than the scary sort.”
 

“Me, too,” Bessie agreed.
 
“But from what I’ve read, if there are
ghosts at Torver Castle, they aren’t the friendly kind.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m crazy, but I
keep worrying that we’ll bump into Charles’s ghost,” Doona whispered.
 

“He won’t be at Torver Castle,” Bessie said
firmly.
 
“If he’s haunting anywhere
it will be his office at Lakeview, because that’s where he was killed.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Doona said.
 
“But I’m still not sure about this
tour.”

“We can wait on the bus while the others
take the tour, if you want,” Bessie offered.

Doona shook her head.
 
“I don’t want you to miss out on the fun
just because I’m sort of skittish at the moment.”

Bessie took her friend’s hand.
 
“I can tour a haunted castle anytime I
want back at home,” she said.
 
“Actually,
both Castle Rushen and Peel Castle are haunted, so I even have a choice.
 
Your mental health is more important
than seeing another old stone building.”

Doona laughed and then sighed.
 
“I’m being silly,” she said.
 
“I’ll take the tour.
 
I can always head back to the bus if I
start to feel spooked.”

A strange noise from the seat behind them
interrupted their conversation.
 
Bessie glanced back and shook her head.
 
Herbert Howe had fallen asleep and was
now snoring loudly.
 
A moment later
Jessica’s heels clicked back down the aisle.
 
She glanced at her husband and then
dropped into the seat next to Bessie and Doona, where John and Andrew were
sitting.
 
She nearly landed on
John’s lap, and he quickly slid over to make room for her.

“Oops,” she said, giggling.
 
“Sorry, handsome stranger.
 
I didn’t mean to land on you.”

“I’m John Rockwell, Doona’s friend,” John
replied.
 
“We met earlier.”

“I can’t believe I don’t remember meeting
you,” Jessica cooed.
 
“I didn’t have
that much to drink.”

Bessie glanced over at Doona and found her
friend staring intently at the exchange across the aisle.
 

“Is your husband okay?” Bessie asked the
woman pointedly.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s fine,” Jessica replied,
waving a hand.
 
“He’ll probably just
sleep on the bus while we do the tour.”
 
She turned her attention back to John.
 
“Maybe you could hold my hand as we go
around, in case I get scared,” she suggested, licking her lips.

“I don’t think so,” John replied stiffly.

Jessica giggled.
 
“You can’t blame a girl for trying,” she
said, pouting slightly.

“Surely your husband will want to go around
the castle,” Bessie said.

Jessica shrugged.
 
“Maybe,” she said.
 
She glanced over at Doona and smiled
nastily.
 
“I’m surprised the police
let you go,” she said.
 
“It seems like
you had the best motive for murdering poor Charles.”

“I didn’t have any motive,” Doona countered
in a cool voice.
 
“He was no longer
part of my life.”

“But it looks like he left you a fortune,”
Jessica said.

“I highly doubt that,” Doona replied.
 

“He really did care about you, you know,”
Jessica told Doona.
 
“He was actually
going to break up with me right after your wedding.
 
I had to work hard to make sure that
didn’t happen.”

Bessie squeezed Doona’s hand, hoping the
woman’s nasty words weren’t upsetting her friend too much.

“You sent me the photos, didn’t you?” Doona
demanded.

“What photos?” Jessica asked, giving Doona
what Bessie assumed was meant to be an innocent look.

Doona opened her mouth to reply and then
snapped it shut again.
 
She turned
her head and looked out the bus window.

“He cared for you, but he would never have
stayed faithful,” Jessica said loudly.
  
“He wasn’t faithful to me, even
when we were together.
 
He always
had to have at least two or three women at his beck and call.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“I don’t know why I put up with him for
so long.”

Doona didn’t reply, but Bessie could feel
that she was taking long and slow breaths, trying to control herself.

“I think that’s quite enough,” Bessie said
to Jessica.
 
“Why don’t you head
back to your seat and leave us alone?”

“Ah, but I’d miss my handsome new friend if
I went back there again,” Jessica said, patting John’s knee and then running
her hand slowly up his thigh.
 
The
hand didn’t get far before John pushed it firmly away.

“I think you need to move,” he said tightly.

Jessica laughed lightly.
 
“You know, it’s a big castle with lots
of tiny, dark rooms.
 
I’m sure we
could find a place to slip away and get better acquainted.
 
Do think about that,” she said before
she got back to her feet and wandered back down the aisle.
 

“Hello, gorgeous man,” Bessie heard her
saying to someone further back in the bus.

“He’s very married,” an angry voice
replied.
 
“And I’ll thank you to
stay well away from him.”

Bessie heard Jessica laugh again and then
Andrea’s voice came over the tannoy.
 

“We’re just about to arrive at the
castle.
 
We will be the only guests
here tonight.
 
When we arrive, a
tour guide from the castle will be coming on board to share the history of the
site, and then you are welcome to either take a guided tour or simply explore
the castle on your own.
 
We will
meet back at the bus at exactly half nine.
 
Please don’t be late, as the site will be shutting down at that time.”

“I thought we were meant to finish at nine,”
Bessie murmured to Doona.

“Maybe they extended it because we got such
a late start,” Doona replied.

A moment later they passed through the
castle’s gates and pulled up in front of the building itself.
 
A woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in
Elizabethan garb, climbed on board the bus as soon as it stopped.

“Welcome to Torver Castle,” she began.
 
“The first settlement on this site has
been dated to the Iron Age, with the earliest fortified buildings being started
in the Roman era.
 
We’re quite close
to the Scottish border, of course, and we suspect….”

Bessie tuned her out.
 
She’d read the history of the site in a
guidebook when she knew she’d be coming, so now she turned her thoughts to the
things Jessica had said.
 
If Jessica
was right and Charles was always involved with more than one woman, whom had he
been seeing when he died?

There were many attractive young women on
the staff at the park, and Bessie could only assume that they’d all been
questioned.
 
As far as she knew, no
one had admitted to being involved with the boss.
 
She still wondered about the exact
nature of Charles’s relationship with Monique Beck, but now she started thinking
about Mai and Andrea as well.
 
She
was startled when everyone around her began to stand up.
 
The costumed tour guide was leaving the
bus and everyone was getting ready to follow her.

“The history is fascinating,” Doona
said.
 
“But I’m still not sure I
want to go in there.”

“We’ll be fine,” Bessie said
confidently.
 
“We’ll take a proper
tour and stick together.
 
Ghosts
hate that sort of thing.”

Doona laughed, but it sounded forced.
 
There were several guides available for
tours and Bessie selected an older woman who looked kindly.
 
She pointed out a few things in the
courtyard area and then led the foursome into the castle itself.
 

As they walked through the castle, their
guide kept up a steady stream of information.
 
It felt to Bessie as if nearly every
room
was said to be haunted
by some spirit or
other.
 
It took them an hour and a
half to tour the entire building, and when they got back to the courtyard,
there was no one else around.

“That was interesting,” Bessie said.

“And not at all creepy,” Doona added
happily.
 
“I didn’t see or hear or
feel any ghosts.”

There were several benches spread out around
the space, so they sat down and waited for the rest of the group.

“Tomorrow is meant to be our last full day,”
Doona said.
 
“We’re supposed to go
home on Sunday, but I’m not sure that Margaret will let us.”

“I’m going to talk to her in the morning,”
John said.
 
“I’m hoping to persuade
her to let you go home, as long as you promise to come back if circumstances
warrant it.”

Jack and Nancy were next out of the castle
and they were quick to join Bessie and the others.

“I saw him,” Nancy said excitedly.

“Who?” Andrew asked.

“Sir William,” Nancy replied.
 
“The ghost in the chapel.
 
Only the most famous ghost in the whole
castle.”

“How exciting,” Bessie said politely.

“It was only a glimpse,” Nancy
admitted.
 
“Sort of out of the
corner of my eye, but I’m sure it was him.”

Jack shook his head, but didn’t speak.
 
Within minutes, other groups began to
arrive.
 
Andrea appeared from
somewhere and she knocked on the bus door.
 
When the driver opened it, she suggested that everyone might want to
climb back inside.

“I’ll just start checking you all in,” she
said brightly.
 
“And if we’re all
here, we can head back.”

Bessie and her friends joined the
queue.
 
While Bessie waited, she
tried to work out if anyone was missing or not.
 
She wasn’t surprised to find that
Herbert and Jessica weren’t anywhere to be seen.

“I’m not sure where my husband has wandered
off to,” the woman at the front of the queue was telling Andrea.
 
“We split up because he was bored and
wanted to skip half the rooms.
 
I
assumed he just came back here.”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Andrea said,
making a mark on her list.
 
“You can
go ahead and find a seat.”

Bessie was back in her seat near the front
when Herbert Howe wandered into the courtyard.
 
From where Bessie was sitting, he seemed
to have come from the road, rather than from inside the castle.

“Nice little pub across the street,” he
announced as he lurched down the aisle.
 
“No ghosts there.”

Andrea climbed in after him.
 
“We’re just waiting for two more
people,” she said, looking and sounding quite tired.
 
“I’m sure they’ll be along shortly.”

“As my wife is one of them, I’d be willing
to bet the other is a man,” Herbert shouted from his seat behind Bessie.
 
“He’ll be younger and better looking
than me, that’s for sure.”
 
He
laughed bitterly and then shut his eyes.
 
Within seconds he began to snore.

“What a strange marriage those two have,”
Bessie whispered to Doona.

“Whoever is with Jessica might find
himself
divorced,” Doona replied, looking down the aisle at
the woman whose husband hadn’t arrived back at the bus yet.