Aunt Bessie Goes (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 7) (18 page)

“Hi, Maggie,
how are you?” Bessie asked.

“I’m fine,”
Maggie said, waving the question away with her hand.
 
“But what’s going on in
Jurby
?
 
I
understand they found a body.”

Hugh took a
step forward.
 
“I’m afraid Miss
Cubbon
can’t answer any questions right now,” he said
stiffly.

Maggie looked
at Hugh and frowned.
 
“Is that Hugh
Watterson?” she demanded angrily.
 
“I remember you when you were in nappies.
 
I can’t believe you have the nerve to
try to stop Bessie from talking to me.”

“I’m not
stopping Bessie from talking to you,” Hugh countered, his voice calm.
 
“But I am asking you both to refrain
from discussing an active police investigation.”

“I know what’s
going on here,” Maggie said, narrowing her eyes.
 
“This is all because
it’s
Mary Quayle who was hiding the body, isn’t it?
 
She’s too posh to get arrested so you’re
trying to cover it all up, aren’t you?”

Bessie
laughed.
 
“Maggie, whatever else
you’ve heard, I can assure you that Mary had nothing to do with anything
criminal whatsoever,” she said firmly.
 

Hugh gave her
a warning look and Bessie clamped her lips together.
 
She’d try to stay quiet, but she knew
she couldn’t if Maggie kept accusing her friend of things.

“
Hmmph
, well, that’s not what I heard,” Maggie said
sharply.
 
She glanced from Bessie to
Hugh and back at Bessie.
 
“I don’t
suppose you can tell me who you found?”

Bessie shook
her head.
 
“I can tell you that I
didn’t know the man,” she said, earning another stern look from Hugh.
 
“And now I think I’d better stop
talking.”

“I’ve a
cottage to get cleaned.
 
I can’t
stand here chatting all afternoon,” Maggie announced, spinning awkwardly on her
heel in the wet sand and stomping back up the beach.

Bessie looked
at Hugh and sighed.
 
“Maybe having
you with me isn’t such a bad idea,” she said.
 
“If Maggie had dropped in to see me, I’m
afraid I might have told her a lot more than I should.
 
Imagine accusing Mary of hiding the
body, though.
 
As if that’s even a
remote possibility.”

“Now, Bessie,
you know that John will have to consider every possibility,” Hugh reminded her
as they headed back to Bessie’s cottage.
 
“Even the ones that seem highly unlikely.”

“He might have
to, but I certainly don’t,” Bessie replied.
 
“There’s no way I’m willing to give that
idea even a moment’s consideration.”

They’d only
just been back inside for a few minutes when there was a knock on the
door.
 

“I’ll get it,”
Hugh said, leaping up from his seat.

Bessie was so
surprised at seeing the usually languid Hugh jumping up that she didn’t
object.
  

A moment
later, Doona bustled into the room.
 
“You aren’t answering your phone,” she told Bessie.

“Hugh isn’t
letting me,” Bessie replied, smiling to take the sting from her words.

“Really?
 
He could have let you answer when I rang,”
Doona said.

“I’ve turned
the answering machine down,” Bessie explained.
 
“John doesn’t really want me talking to
anyone right now.

“Yes, well,
next time you should listen to who’s ringing and answer when it’s me,” Doona
told her.

“Was there
something important that you needed?” Bessie asked.

“No,” Doona
laughed.
 
“I just hate being
ignored.”

Bessie and
Hugh both laughed at that.

“Actually, I
was ringing to let you know that John’s bringing food,” Doona continued.
 
“He’ll be here around six, if all goes
well.”

Bessie glanced
at the clock.
 
“I suppose I can wait
an hour,” she said.
 
“Although lunch
seems like it was a long time ago.”

“And there’s a
lovely plate of biscuits in the middle of the table,” Doona said.
 
“Whatever shall we do?”

The trio
munched their way through the rest of the plate of biscuits, washing them down
with another pot of tea.
 
They
filled the time talking about the weather, Hugh’s girlfriend, and property
prices.
 
Everyone avoided mentioning
what
they
all really wanted to discuss.

It was nearly
six o’clock when Bessie remembered to ask Doona about her date.
 
“So how was dinner with Kevin?” she
asked.

Doona
frowned.
 
“Turns out he’s sort of,
but not exactly, separated from his wife.”

“What does
that mean?”

“It means his
wife is still across, but she may or may not be joining him eventually.
 
Really, it means he’s hoping to do some
cheating on her before she gets here, but if she finds out she might not come.”

Bessie shook
her head.
 
“What did you say when he
told you that?”

“Not much,”
Doona laughed.
 
“I just ate the most
expensive thing on the menu, had pudding and then walked out.”

It was only a
few minutes later when someone knocked on Bessie’s door.
 
Hugh was quickly on his feet.

“I brought Indian,”
John announced, handing several boxes to Hugh.
 
“And I stopped at
La
Terrazza
for one of those chocolate
chip cookies pizzas that they do for after.”

Bessie smiled
and got up to get out the plates and napkins.
 
A spicy smell began to fill the room and
she couldn’t help but feel that a giant chocolate chip cookie was a better
pudding than strawberry trifle.

Chapter Ten

When everyone
had their plates filled, Bessie looked at John with a dozen questions in her
eyes.
 
He shook his head.

“If you don’t
mind, I’d really like to eat for a few minutes before we talk,” he said in an
apologetic tone.
 
“I never got any
lunch and I’m starving.”

Bessie
nodded.
 
Hugh fetched cold drinks
for everyone and for several minutes they all
focussed
on the delicious food.
 
Eventually, having
cleared his plate twice, John took a slice of cookie pizza and then looked up
at the others.

“Okay, I’m
feeling better,” he said.
 
“How are
you feeling?” he asked Bessie.

“I’m fine,”
Bessie replied.
 
“A bit frustrated,
maybe, about being babysat all afternoon, but other than that, I’m fine.”

John
nodded.
 
“I’m sorry about that.
 
Any time George Quayle is involved in
anything, I get nervous.
 
The last
thing I need is his advocate sticking his nose in and refusing to let me speak
to either George or Mary.”

“I can’t see
what I have to do with George Quayle getting involved,” Bessie said.

“I was hoping
we could keep the whole thing quiet until I’d had a chance to talk to Mary at
length,” John sighed.
 
“As it is,
someone rang the newspapers and they rang George, and then he came rushing up,
screaming and shouting that he should have been notified immediately and
threating to have me fired.”

Bessie
sighed.
 
“I can ring him,” she
offered.

“It’s fine,”
John replied.
 
“Mary calmed him down
and even told him that she’d asked me not to ring him so that he wouldn’t be
disturbed at work.
 
Then she told
him to take his advocate and go sit in the car while she talked to me.
 
I didn’t know she had it in her to stand
up to him, but she was very strong.”

Bessie
nodded.
 
“She’s very shy and quiet,
but I’m certain there’s an incredibly strong woman hiding inside of her.”

“She didn’t
have that much to tell me, though,” John said.
 
“I didn’t ask her to look at the
body.
 
She was pretty sure that
nothing was disturbed into the unit, aside from the wardrobe that she didn’t
recognise
.
 
I’m
only telling you that because she told me she’d already discussed it with you.”

“Indeed, and
once she made the comment, I could see her point.
 
The wardrobe that fell out of the unit
was not the sort of quality that Mary Quayle would buy,” Bessie replied.

“We had George
take a look at the body, but he claimed he’d never seen the man before,” John
told her.
 
“I didn’t mention the
possible connection with Seaside Terrace.”

Bessie
nodded.
 
“I could be wrong about
that,” she said.
 
“But if it isn’t
the same man, they looked very similar, and they were wearing the same
clothes.”

“Are you sure
about the clothes?” John asked.

“As far as I
can remember,” Bessie said.
 
She
sighed.
 
“I’m sorry, I didn’t
realise
at the time that it would be important,” she told
John.
 
“Inspector
Corkill
might be able to help there.”

“I’ve rung
Pete,” John told her, referring to the Douglas area CID inspector by his
Christian name.
 
“He’s going to meet
me tomorrow to have a look at the body.”

“Do you have
any idea who he is?” Bessie asked.

“I have to
admit to suspecting that it’s Mark Carr,” John replied.
 
“He’s the only missing person we have on
the books that fits the body we found.”

“Has he been
on the island that long?” was Bessie’s next question.

“He was
released from prison in the last week of July,” John told her.
 
“His ferry ticket, which was used, was
for the 2
^nd
of August.”

“So I could
have seen him in Douglas in August, when I was there,” Bessie exclaimed.

“Indeed,” John
said.

“But I should
have
recognised
him,” Bessie argued.
 
“I knew him when he was younger and
there should have been a resemblance between him and his father, surely?”

John
shrugged.
 
“He left the island when
he was eighteen or nineteen and spent pretty much his entire adult life in
prison.
 
It’s hardly surprising that
he doesn’t look the same as you remember.”

“He doesn’t
look anything like his father, either,” Bessie mused.
 
“If anything, he rather resembled the
middle-aged Nicholas Lewis more than Michael Carr.”

John
frowned.
 
“Is it possible, that is,
could Joan Carr have had an affair with Nicholas Lewis?”

Bessie shook
her head and took a big bite of cookie.
 
She needed something sweet to wash down the unpleasant thought.
 

“I thought
Elinor
said that her husband cheated on her,” Doona said.

“She said a
lot of crazy things,” Bessie said.
 
She sighed.
 
“I suppose it’s possible,”
she admitted.
 
“And I suppose it
doesn’t much matter, does it?
 
Everyone concerned is dead now, aren’t they?”

“It doesn’t
matter unless it has something to do with why Mark Carr was killed,” John
corrected her.
 
“Assuming it was
murder, of course.
 
At this point we
can’t say anything for certain.”

“Of course it
was murder,” Bessie said.
 
“Someone
shoved his body inside a wardrobe, for heaven’s sake.”

“As I said, we
aren’t certain yet,” John repeated himself.

“And you
aren’t sure who it is, either,” Bessie said.
 
“Does anyone else see alarming parallels
between this and the other body we found recently?”

“If it is Mark
Carr, there’s another link,” John said.
 
“But first we have to be sure who we’ve found.”

“How long will
it take to find out?” Bessie asked.

“Not as long
as it’s taking for the other body, at least,” John said.
 
“We’ve taken fingerprints from the
corpse, and if it is Mark Carr we should know in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Did George
have any idea how the body got into his storage unit?” Bessie asked.

“Everything
Mr. Quayle said is privileged communication,” John said stiffly.

Bessie
nodded.
 
“I’ll have to ring George
tomorrow and ask him, then,” she said.

“I hope you
do,” John replied.
 
“I’d be
interested in hearing what he has to say, actually.”

“What about
Grant Robertson?” Bessie asked.

“What about
him?” John asked.

“Did you ask
him to look at the body?”

“No.
 
As far as we know, he doesn’t have any
connection to the storage units.
 
If
Pete identifies the body as the man who was found in the flat on Seaside
Terrace, we might ask him to have a look, since he owns that building, but at
the moment we’ve nothing that even remotely ties him to the body.”

“So, if we
assume it is Mark Carr, can we assume he was killed to keep him from talking
about what happened to Adam King?” Bessie asked.

John shrugged.
 
“You’re making a couple of very large
assumptions there, but I’m happy to have a chat about the situation based on
them, as long as everyone understands that we’re just making idle
conversation.”

Hugh and Doona
nodded while Bessie waved an impatient hand.

“If that’s the
case, if Mark was killed to prevent him talking about Adam, that suggests that
whoever killed Adam is still alive and still on the island,” she said.

“That’s
certainly one possibility,” John said.

“But if
someone else killed Adam, why did his parents hide his body in their home?
 
It simply doesn’t make sense,” Doona
said.
 

“Maybe George
Quayle killed him and gave Adam’s parents lots of money to hide the body,” Hugh
suggested.

“I can’t see
Nancy ever agreeing to that,” Bessie said.
 
“She might not have been the most loving mum in the world, but even she
wouldn’t cover up her own son’s murder for money, surely.”

“Maybe she
didn’t know about it.
 
Maybe George
paid Frederick to do it and he never told Nancy,” Doona speculated.

“I don’t know
that George had that much money in those days,” Bessie said.
 
“He was working for the bank, but he
wasn’t anywhere near as wealthy as he is now.”

“So who had
enough money in 1967 to persuade a man to hide his own son’s body?” Hugh asked.

“I don’t think
that’s what actually happened,” Bessie said.
 
“But, Grant Robertson was already making
quite good money by that time.
 
Not
only that, he was Frederick’s boss.
 
Perhaps he offered Frederick a promotion or something instead of money.”

“Or in
addition to money,” Hugh added.

“I don’t
remember the Kings ever having a lot of extra money,” Bessie said,
thoughtfully.
 
“They never took
fancy holidays or drove new cars or anything.”

“We can
request their bank records from the sixties,” John told her.
 
“But I doubt very much, if they were
paid to keep quiet about a murder, that they put the money into their bank
account.”

“Is there
anyone else who might have wanted Mark Carr dead?” Hugh asked.

“Who inherits
his mother’s estate?” Doona asked.

“Mark was only
getting a portion of the estate,” Bessie told her.
 
“Most of it was going to a couple of
cancer charities.
 
I believe, with
Mark gone, they’ll both get a slightly larger share, assuming Mark didn’t have
a will, I guess.”

“That’s one
for the advocates to fight about,” John said.
 
“We do know that Mark had virtually no
money of his own.”

“So where had
he been staying while he’d been here?”

“If he is the
man you saw in Douglas, it seems likely he was staying in that empty flat, at
least for a little while,” John said.
 
“Tomorrow we will be going through every storage unit at the
Jurby
site, looking to see if there’s any sign that anyone
was staying in any of them.”

“How did he
get to
Jurby
in the first place?” Doona asked.
 
“And why would he want to go to
Jurby
, anyway?”

“You’re
assuming he was alive when he went there,” John pointed out quietly.

“Oh,” Doona
said.
 
She took a deep breath and
then grabbed another slice of cookie pizza.
 
Bessie thought about it for a moment
before following her friend’s lead.
 
There was very little in life that a bit more chocolate couldn’t
improve, even if it only made things a tiny bit better.

“Is it
possible that Mark’s death has nothing to do with Adam’s?” Bessie asked.

“Anything is
possible at this point,” John replied.
 
“Mark was pretty much a career criminal.
 
He’s been in and out of
gaol
for his entire adult life.
 
I think his longest stretch outside was
about three months, and that was in the early eighties.
 
Prison is a tough place.
 
It’s possible that he made enemies in
there and came to the island to get away from them.
 
And it’s also possible that they
followed him.”

“He had to
have had help,” Bessie said.
 
“There’s no way he could have hidden himself on an island this small for
this long without someone helping him out.”

“We’re
checking into his known associates,” John replied.
 
“But we’ve been doing that since we
found the first body, as we were rather anxious to talk to Mark.
 
So far we haven’t turned up anything.”

“Why would
anyone help him?” Doona asked.
 
“
Elinor
said his own mother wasn’t looking forward to seeing
him.”

“Maybe he told
someone he was going to inherit everything from his mum,” Hugh suggested.
 
“Or maybe he blackmailed someone into helping
him.”

“I’m afraid
blackmail is one possibility we’re taking quite seriously,” John said.
 
“Especially in light of what happened to
him.
 
Always assuming it is Mark
Carr that we found, of course.”

“It can’t be
anyone else,” Bessie said.
 
She
poured herself more tea and sipped it, her mind racing.
 
“What was he doing at Seaside Terrace?”
she asked.

“Maybe he was
just taking advantage of an empty flat,” Doona said.

“Maybe, or
maybe someone put him in that empty flat for safekeeping,” Bessie
suggested.
 
“And where did Mark go
once he left Noble’s?
 
Was he
running away from someone or running to someone?”

“All excellent
questions,” John said.
 
“I hope we
can find answers to them eventually.”

“I can’t help
but feel as if Mark is the key to this whole thing,” Bessie said.
 
“I’m convinced that he knew what
happened to Adam.”