The Donaldson Case
Read The Donaldson Case Online
Authors: Diana Xarissa
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #British Detectives, #Cozy, #Traditional Detectives
The Donaldson Case
A Markham Sisters
Cozy
Mystery Novella
Diana
Xarissa
Copyright
©
2016 Diana
Xarissa
All Rights Reserved
For you, dear
reader, because without you this book wouldn’t exist.
Acknowledgements
There are so many
people who deserve thanks for their efforts.
Firstly, I want to
thank my readers.
You are the
reason I keep doing this, even when I’d rather be eating chocolate in front of
the television.
(Which is what
hubby thinks I do all day, anyway.)
I need to (always)
thank my editor, Denise, who puts up with all my grammar foibles and still
keeps editing!
My beta readers for
this series, Charlene and Janice, are a huge help in so many ways.
I always get great feedback from them
both and truly enjoy the fact that we’ve become friends over the course of many
books.
I’d love to hear from
you.
My contact details are in the
back of the book.
Thank you for
your continued support.
Table
of Contents
Author’s Note
I love to
write (that may be obvious), and I love every book, story and novella I’ve ever
written, even the really terrible stuff I wrote years ago and have buried in
the bottom of my closet!
There is
something special about this series, though.
I’m really enjoying spending time with
the Markham sisters.
Maybe it’s
because I have a sister who is very close in age to myself, so I’m having fun
with the relationship between Joan and Janet.
It might be the idea that they’re doing
something totally different with their lives in their “retirement” years.
Or maybe it’s just because I have so
many ideas for them going forward and I can’t wait to get them written.
Whatever,
welcome to the fourth novella in the series.
I suggest you read them in
(alphabetical) order, but you don’t have to; each novella should stand on its
own.
The Markham sisters first made
their appearance in
Aunt Bessie Decides,
the
fourth book in my Isle of Man Cozy Mysteries series.
Since then,
Janet (the younger sister) has stayed in touch with Bessie, and each novella
opens and closes with parts of Janet’s letters to her new friend on the Isle of
Man.
I use the excerpts from the
letters as a way to start and finish each story; you absolutely do not have to
read the Bessie books to enjoy this series.
Because of the
setting of the story, I have used English spellings and terms.
In the back of the book
is
a glossary and some notes designed to help readers
outside the UK with terms that might be unfamiliar.
The longer I live in the US, the greater
the likelihood of Americanisms sneaking into the text, although I do try to
eliminate them.
This is a work
of fiction and all of the characters are fictional creations.
Any resemblance that they may share with
any real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The sisters live in a fictional village
in Derbyshire.
Although some shops
or business may bear some resemblance to real-life businesses, that is also
coincidental.
Please feel
free to get in touch with any comments, questions, or concerns.
I have a monthly newsletter that
provides updates on new releases.
All of the information about subscribing or getting in touch is
available on the About the Author page at the back of the book.
12 November 1998
Dearest Bessie,
Your recent holiday sounds like it was more
stressful than your everyday life.
I’m glad you finally managed to get away for a few days, although I
can’t imagine it was very restful, what with the murder and all.
You know that you are always welcome here,
if you feel the need for a break.
While all manner of strange things seem to go on around here, we’ve yet
to find any dead bodies.
Speaking of strange things, we recently
found another hidden panel, which led to an interesting discovery.
Joan had her own little excitement early
in the month as well, as Michael was very nearly arrested!
Suddenly my sister was the one who
wanted to play detective, which was quite unusual.
Chapter
One
“I suppose
so,” Janet said reluctantly, sliding a bite of her apple crumble around on the
plate.
Her
favourite
pudding didn’t taste quite as nice now that it was obvious that her sister was
using it as a bribe.
“We said we’d
leave it a fortnight after our last guests left to talk about welcoming more
guests,” Joan reminded her sister.
“That was three weeks ago.”
Janet
sighed.
She knew Joan was
right.
They’d bought the bed and
breakfast with the idea of actually trying to run the business, even if the
idea had been almost all Joan’s.
Thus far, however, the guests they’d welcomed hadn’t exactly been ideal,
and Janet wasn’t sure she wanted to see who else fate might send them.
“I’ve had a
lovely letter of enquiry from a married couple that sound ideal,” Joan told
her.
“They’re both artists and
they’re looking for a quiet getaway so they can spend some time on their art.”
Janet narrowed
her eyes.
“You’re hoping they’ll do
a couple of paintings of the local area for our guest rooms, aren’t you?” she
asked.
Joan
flushed.
“We don’t really want to
spend the money right now,” she defended herself.
“And those guest rooms really need some
artwork.
It did cross my mind that
the
Nicholsons
might use their time here to create exactly
what we’re looking for to put in those rooms, but that isn’t the only reason I
think we should accommodate them.”
“So what else
are you thinking?” Janet demanded.
“Just that we
should be booking guests on a regular basis.
Word seems to be getting out that we
aren’t taking guests and requests have almost stopped.
If we’re going to run this place
properly, we need people staying regularly.”
Janet thought
carefully about her answer.
She’d
been perfectly content, after she and Joan had retired from teaching the
previous year, to rest, relax, and travel.
It was Joan who’d suggested that they spend a small inheritance and the
proceeds from the sale of their previous home on
Doveby
House, a beautiful seventeenth-century manor house in the small village of
Doveby
Dale.
Janet hadn’t known then that her sister had been
harbouring
a secret desire to own her own bed and breakfast for her entire life.
Now that Janet did know that, she felt
as if she couldn’t stand in the way of her sister’s dream, even if the dream
was not one that she shared with Joan.
“I suppose the
Nicholsons
can’t be any worse than our previous
guests,” Janet muttered.
“Go ahead and
tell them they can come.”
“Thank you,”
Joan said.
“I expect they’ll be
here on Monday.
Maybe you can get
the library finished by then?”
Janet finished
her last bite of apple crumble, swallowing a sigh with it.
“I’ll get back to work now,” she told her
sister as she got up from the table.
“Unless you need my help with the washing up?”
“No, you go
and get to work.
I’ll just load up
the dishwasher with everything.”
Janet nodded
resignedly.
The library was her
favourite
room in the house and she loved spending time in
it.
What she didn’t love was
cleaning it, and that was what needed doing.
She’d been slowly working her way around
the room, taking row after row of books from the shelves and cleaning each
shelf.
While she was looking
forward to classifying and
organising
the books
themselves, she wasn’t allowing herself to start that project until the basic
cleaning was done.
Inside the
small room, she shut the door behind her and faced the far wall.
She’d completed two walls previously and
was nearly finished with the third.
For a while she’d made good progress, but once their latest set of
guests had left, she’d spent more time reading and relaxing than cleaning and
tidying.
Now she headed for the
last tall section on the wall and began to remove the books from the top
shelf.
Humming softly to herself,
she worked as rapidly as she could, doing a quick but mostly thorough job.
About halfway
down the wall, when she cleared yet another shelf, she felt a rush of
excitement.
This section of shelves
against the wall had a small inset panel that looked identical to the one she’d
found at the opposite end of that wall. She felt her way around the panel, but
couldn’t find a way to open it.
When she knocked on it, she could hear what she was certain was a hollow
sound.
After trying to slide the
panel every which way and failing, she sat down at the desk and stared at the
wall.
There has to
be a way to open that panel, she told herself.
Joan had
suggested, when Janet had found the previous one, that the panels were simply
access points for power cables that needed to reach plug sockets behind the
shelves.
While it was a logical
explanation, Janet wasn’t fond of it at all.
In her mind, the panels must have been
put in place to hide something valuable.
“Why do I hear
knocking?” Joan asked as she pushed the door open.
Janet jumped
to her feet.
“I found another of
those panels at this end,” she told her sister.
“So?”
“So, I still
think they must be hiding something.”
Joan and Janet
both looked at the small picture in the middle of one of the shelves full of
books.
It was barely noticeable
with all of the books around it, but behind it was a small wall safe.
Unfortunately, the sisters didn’t have
the combination to the safe.
Their first
paying guest, Edward Bennett, had known all about the safe.
When he was getting ready to leave, he’d
told Janet that he was some sort of government agent who had occasionally sent people
to
Doveby
House as a safe house.
He’d given Janet a combination, but when
she tried it, it didn’t open the safe.
Janet still talked to Edward once in a while, when he rang her, but
she’d not yet managed to get the proper combination from him.
“We’ve no
reason to think Mrs. Appleton was hiding anything,” Joan said.
The sisters had purchased
Doveby
House from Margaret Appleton’s estate after she
disinherited her son and left everything to a local charity.
The sisters had already discovered that
“Maggie” was a
colourful
character and Janet believed
that she had been capable of just about anything.
“We’ve every
reason to think she was hiding things,” Janet replied.
“She had a hidden safe, after all, and
she worked for Edward in some capacity.”
“You only have
Edward’s word for that,” Joan pointed out.
Janet
sighed.
Joan was right.
She’d believed everything the man had
told her when he was leaving, but now, as time went on, she found herself
doubting him more and more.
“I wish I
could work out how to open the panel,” Janet said, changing the subject.
“It can’t be
difficult,” Joan said.
“It probably
just slides up or down or something.”
“I tried
sliding it,” Janet told her.
“And
pushing it and pulling it and just about every other thing.”
Joan shrugged
and crossed the room.
“You never
got the other one open, did you?”
“No.
But I haven’t given up hope on that one,
either.”
Joan tapped
lightly on the small panel and then on the wood around it.
“It does sound different,” she
admitted.
“Almost as if it’s hollow
behind the panel.
But that makes
sense if it’s removable for access.”
“I’ll let you
invite a hundred guests if you can get the stupid thing open,” Janet said.
Joan
grinned.
“There’s an interesting
challenge.”
She pushed on the panel
and then tried sliding it in every direction.
“It seems to move slightly, but not
enough,” she told Janet after a moment.
“I think there
was more movement in the one on the other end,” Janet said.
“While we have
a minute, let me have a look at that one,” Joan suggested.
Janet quickly
removed all the books from the middle shelf at the other end of the wall.
The panel was still there and when Janet
pushed on it, it still didn’t open.
Joan walked
over and took a good look.
“It does
move more than the one on the other end,” she agreed with Janet after a
moment.
“It really feels as if it
should slide up or down.”
“I know.
I spent ages trying to get it to do just
that when I found it.
But then we
had guests arriving and I had to work on the cleaning, so I left it.”
The sound of
their phone ringing interrupted the conversation.
Joan went out to answer it while Janet
went back to trying to work out how to remove the hidden panels.
“After our
chat over lunch, I rang the
Nicholsons
,” Joan told
Janet when she walked back into the library a few minutes later.
“I left a message on their answer
phone.
That was them ringing back.”
“Have they
decided to try the Lake District instead?” Janet asked hopefully.
Joan
smiled.
“No, they’ll be here on
Monday for a week-long stay.
They’ll be having breakfast with us every morning, but prefer to get
their evening meals out.”
“Well, I suppose
that’s something,” Janet said, trying to keep her tone light.
“I didn’t
enjoy having guests for dinner,” Joan told her.
“I won’t be suggesting it to guests in
the future.
It was only because our
last guests requested it specially that I agreed.”
“So what do
you know about our new guests?” Janet asked.
“I think I
told you just about everything already.
They’re a married couple called Fred and Molly Nicholson, and apparently
they are both artists.
The letter
they sent requesting a room said that they were hoping for something of a
spiritual retreat.”
“Did they say
what sort of art they do?
I mean
,
I know you’re hoping that they will paint something
amazing for our guest rooms, but maybe they do pottery or sculpture or
something.”
“They didn’t
say,” Joan replied.
“And I didn’t
really think about it.”
Janet grinned
to herself.
Her sister had been so
focussed
on the idea of getting artwork for the guest rooms
that she didn’t think the whole thing through.
The next week promised to be quite
interesting, even if it might not be enjoyable.
“Now let’s
sort out these panels so you can get back to work on the cleaning,” Joan
said.
She crossed to the panel that
Janet had found first and pushed on it firmly.
“There’s more
movement in the top left corner than anywhere else,” she told Janet.
Janet watched
eagerly as Joan pushed on the corner and then tried to slide the panel.
After a moment, the panel slowly began
to slide sideways.
“You’ve done
it,” Janet gasped.
“That means we
can have a hundred guests,” Joan reminded her.
“That was for
the other panel,” Janet said quickly.
Joan laughed
and then crossed to the other panel.
Using the same technique, she pushed and slid and wiggled the
panel.
Nothing seemed to work.
“This one is
stuck,” she announced after a moment.
“But I’m sure it doesn’t matter in the slightest.
They’re bound to be nothing but plug
socket access points.”
Janet walked
over to the now opened panel and glanced inside.
“It’s dark back there,” she told Joan.
“Where’s the
nearest torch?” Joan asked.
Janet dug one
out of the desk drawer and aimed the light into the space.
“It’s not an access panel,” she told her
sister excitedly.
“It’s a small
storage space.”
“Is there
anything in it?”
“Just this,”
Janet said, reaching into the space.
She pulled out the
oddly-shaped
object and then
turned and showed it to her sister.
“It’s a piggy
bank,” Joan said.
“It’s a very
unusual piggy bank,” Janet replied.
The small, white ceramic bank appeared to have been hand painted.
There were brightly
coloured
blue flowers on each side of it, and the pig had enormous blue eyes.