Aunt Bessie Invites (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 9) (2 page)

“And they farm turkeys?” Doona asked.

“They farm wheat and oats,” Bessie told
her.
 
“And they keep some animals as
well.
 
They used to only keep
animals for their own consumption, but many years ago, not too long after I
first returned to the island, I persuaded Niall Clague to sell me a turkey from
their farm.
 
It’s pretty impossible
to buy turkeys in November, you see.
 
Nearly everyone has turkey for Christmas
dinner, which
means all of the farmers, both here and across, are
working to that time
frame.
 
They’re still busy fattening
up their birds in November.”

“But Niall sold you a turkey?”

“Actually, he gave me a turkey,” Bessie told
her.
 
“I went all over the area, to
just about every farmer, and begged and pleaded for a turkey.
 
For the first few years I just ate
chicken, but it wasn’t the same.
 
I
really missed the US in those early years after my return, you see.”

“But you stayed here anyway.”

“I didn’t feel as if I had any choice,”
Bessie replied.
 
“Travelling back
would have been expensive and young women didn’t make trips like that on their
own.
 
Anyway, if I had gone back I
would have had to go and stay with my sister, and she was already being
overwhelmed with children.
 
There
wasn’t room for me there.”

“So you went around and begged for a
turkey,” Doona repeated.

“I did,” Bessie replied.
 
“There weren’t actually many farmers
that even had turkeys, and those that did were mostly raising them for
themselves.
 
Niall didn’t even have
any turkeys, but I went around in the spring, figuring that one of the farmers
might be willing to get them and get one ready early if I asked at just the
right time.
 
Anyway, Niall had just
found himself with half a dozen baby turkeys that were sent from across by
mistake with some chickens he’d ordered.”

“That was lucky,” Doona said.

“Our turkeys for this year are descendants
from those original birds,” Bessie said.
 
“Niall decided to have a go at raising them and they’ve done really well
for him.
 
The farm sells quite a few
to the big grocery store chain on the island every year at Christmas, but he
always gets some ready for me for Thanksgiving.”

“Did I hear you say you’ve ordered four?”
Doona asked.

“Yes, I think that’s about right,” Bessie
said.
 
“They should be nice and
plump, around fifteen to twenty pounds each, so they should feed forty or so
people, especially with all the trimmings.”

“Now I’m getting hungry again,” Doona
laughed.

Bessie told her friend where to turn.
 
“The entrance to the farm is about
another four or five miles along here,” she told Doona.
 
“But then it’s another mile or more from
the road to the farm house.”

“Is Niall Clague still running the farm?”
Doona asked.

“No,” Bessie said.
 
“Unfortunately, he isn’t very well.
 
Physically he’s still reasonably fit, I
understand, but mentally he’s not doing well.”

“How sad,” Doona replied.
 
“How old is he?”

“Oh, somewhere near eighty, I think,”
Bessie
replied.
 
“His parents had the farm before him, but his father died young.
 
Niall pretty much took over when he was
eighteen or nineteen and ran the place for fifty years or more.”

“So this Eoin that you mentioned, he’s Niall’s
son?”

“Eoin Faragher is his son-in-law,” Bessie
corrected her.
 
“Niall and his wife,
Marion, only had one child.
 
Their
daughter, Fenella, was only two or three when her mother died.
 
Niall never remarried.”

“How old is Fenella?”

“She must be sixty,” Bessie said thoughtfully.
 
“Eoin is a few years older.
 
He’d been working on the farm for a few
years before he married Fenella.”

“And do they have children ready to take
over?” Doona asked.

“They don’t, actually,” Bessie said.
 
“Fenella always wanted children, but
they simply never arrived.
 
I
remember when she and Eoin first got married everyone teased her about when the
babies might start arriving, but for some reason they never did.”

“And medical science couldn’t do much about
it in those days,” Doona added.

“No, there wasn’t much that could be done,
and women didn’t feel comfortable talking about such things with their doctors
either.
 
If you didn’t get pregnant
you just accepted it and got on with your life.
 
I’m sure it was hard for Fenella, maybe
for Eoin as well, but it was just how it was.”

“So what happens to the farm when Fenella
and Eoin pass away?” Doona asked.
 
She shook her head.
 
“What a
morbid question,” she said.
 
“Maybe
you should just ignore me.”

Bessie smiled.
 
“It’s a natural question, after the
conversation we’ve been having,” she said.
 
“I told you the farm has been in the family for hundreds of years, but
I’m not actually certain who might be in line to inherit it after Fenella and
Eoin.
 
Of course, they’re still
relatively young.
 
I’m sure they’ll
be around for many years to come.”

“Did Niall have any brothers or sisters?”
Doona asked.

“Actually, he was an only child, the same as
Fenella,” Bessie said.
 
“His mother
nearly died delivering him and I gather she couldn’t have any more children
afterwards.
 
As I said, his father
passed when Niall was in his teens.”

“What about Eoin?
 
Does he have brothers or sisters?”

“You’re quite worried about this, aren’t
you?” Bessie teased her friend.

“Having been unexpectedly named the main
beneficiary of someone’s will quite recently, the question of inheritance is
probably on my mind too much,” Doona replied.
 

“Yes, well, that makes sense,” Bessie told
her.
 
“As for Eoin, he had a brother
and a sister.
 
His sister died in
childhood of some sort of fever.
 
I
don’t know that I ever heard more than that, really.
 
It happened when I was in the US, but it
wasn’t unusual in those days before antibiotics were readily available.”

“And his brother?”

“His brother led a very colourful life,”
Bessie said.
 
“He moved across as
soon as he was eighteen and managed to get himself into all manner of trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Mostly with the law,” Bessie said.
 
“Now you’re really testing my memory,
though.
 
I haven’t thought about
Nicholas Faragher for years.”

“Is he still across?” Doona asked.

“I’m not sure,” Bessie said, trying to
remember events from many years earlier.
 
“I heard that he spent some time in prison.
 
I think he’d stolen a car and some other
things.
 
There was some talk about
him moving to the US or even Australia, so that he could start over once he was
out, but I’m not sure that I ever heard what happened to him.”

“He didn’t marry or have children?” Doona
asked.

Bessie looked curiously at her friend.
 
“You’re very curious about all of this,”
she said.

Doona flushed.
 
“I’m being nosy,” she said.
 
“I think I’m just talking to keep my
mind off my own troubles.”

“Is everything okay?” Bessie asked.

“It’s fine, really,” Doona said.
 
“There’s just a lot going on with the
solicitor from across coming over on Friday, and having to work with him and my
advocate here.
 
Then there’s Anna at
work, which isn’t fun.”
 
Doona
sighed.
 
“I suppose hearing about
other people’s problems make mine seem less serious.
 
Just ignore me.”

“Of course, I won’t ignore you,” Bessie
replied.
 
“As for Nicholas, I don’t
know if he ever married or had children.
 
Niall and I weren’t exactly friends.
 
Farmers are very busy people and he was
bringing up Fenella on his own.
 
I
only really ever saw him around Thanksgiving time, and he wasn’t the sort to
spread stories about the younger brother of one of his farmhands.”

“But I thought everything that happened on
the island became common knowledge,” Doona teased.

“Nearly,” Bessie replied.
 
“Most of the farms are quite remote, so
they had a measure of privacy.
 
And
then Nicholas moved across or maybe even abroad.
 
Fenella never spoke of him when I
happened to see her in town and I probably went years at a time without seeing
Eoin except for when I visited my turkeys.”

“So we don’t know what happened to
Nicholas,” Doona concluded.

“I’m sure he’s alive and well somewhere,”
Bessie said emphatically.
 
She
couldn’t help but think of another person who everyone had thought had left the
island many years earlier.
 
That
young man’s body had recently been found and there were still unanswered
questions about his death.

“I’m sure he is,” Doona agreed quickly; no
doubt her thoughts were running along the same lines as Bessie’s.
 
“The turning is coming up, right?”

“Yes, just beyond those trees,” Bessie
pointed.
 

A moment later Donna signaled to no one and
turned slowly through the open gates.
 
They passed over a cattle grid and through a second open gate.
 

“You probably want to turn left here,”
Bessie
said.
 
“You can go the other way if you’d like to drive all the way around the
farm, but if you turn left the road goes straight to the farmhouse.”

“Left it is,” Doona said.

“It’s still a mile or more and you’ll need
to go slowly, as the road isn’t paved,” Bessie warned her.
 
After a moment she sighed.
 
“You know, the more I think about it,
the more you have me wondering who Fenella and Eoin will leave the farm
to.
 
I’m sure there must be distant
relatives.
 
It’s possible that
Marion had brothers or sisters, but I can’t recall any.
 
Then again, my fortune, such as it is,
will all go to my family in America, even though I’ve never met any of
them.
 
Perhaps Nicholas is settled
there now and he and his children will inherit.”

“And then you’ll have to persuade them to
sell you turkeys,” Doona said.

“Yes, well, as Fenella is probably twenty
years younger than I am, I suspect I’ll still be getting my turkeys from her
for the rest of my life.”

“But where will I get mine?” Doona
asked.
 
“I’m getting to quite like
the whole Thanksgiving idea.”

Bessie laughed.
 
“I’m sure you’ll work something out,”
she replied.

They crossed another cattle grid and then
found themselves driving through a large field full of sheep.
 
Doona slowed down to a crawl as the
sheep wandered back and forth across the dirt road.

“I thought you said they only kept a few
animals,” she said to Bessie as half a dozen sheep walked in front of the car
and then stopped.

“Last year Fenella said that they were
considering taking on more sheep,” Bessie said.
 
“
These
are
Manx Loaghtan
.
 
Their meat is considered a delicacy in some circles and their wool is
valuable as well.”

Doona narrowed her eyes at a sheep that was
slowly advancing towards the now stopped car.
 
“Those four horns make them look quite
dangerous,” she said to Bessie.
 
“I
don’t want to get into a fight with a sheep.”

“I’m surprised Eoin hasn’t come out and
rescued us,” Bessie said.
 
“I told
him we were coming.”

“Maybe I should get out and try to encourage
them to move,” Doona said after a minute or more.

“But I can’t drive,” Bessie reminded her.
 
“I’m sure by the time you got back in
the car they’d have wandered right back into the road.
 
Why don’t I get out and see if I can
persuade them to go?”

Doona glanced at Bessie.
 
Bessie could see the doubt in her
eyes.
 
“You don’t think I can scare
a couple of sheep away?” Bessie asked, lifting her chin.
 
“I can be quite scary, really.”