Aunt Bessie Invites (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 9) (20 page)

Bessie laughed and sat down in the chair
opposite him, after passing him the box of chocolate biscuits she’d brought.
 
“We both have, Niall,” she replied.
 
“Growing old isn’t so bad.”

“I don’t know,” Niall said.
 
“I think I’d rather be young again, if I
had a choice.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“Unfortunately, we don’t get that
choice,” she said.
 

“I’ll just leave you two for a short visit,”
Noreen said, her tone still perky.
 
“I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”

Niall watched her go.
 
“She’s too bloody perky,” he told Bessie
after she’d disappeared from view.
 
“I think she’s helping herself to something from the drugs cabinet when
no one is looking.
 
It’s not
possible for someone to be that happy all the time.”

“She seems like a very nice girl,” Bessie
replied.
 
“But how are you?”

“Eh, I’m old and my mind has gone,” he told
her.
 
He set the box of biscuits on
the table next to him and sighed.
 
“I
miss my farm and the animals and I don’t know why Marion never visits.
 
Can you tell her to come and see me,
please?”

Bessie felt her smile falter.
 
She’d been thinking that Niall seemed
perfectly normal up until then.
 
“I
was just at the farm yesterday,” she said, choosing her words carefully.
 
“Eoin showed me the birds he’s put aside
for my Thanksgiving feast.”

“Ah, is it that time again?” Niall asked.

“It is, and I’d love for you to come this
year,” Bessie told him.

“They don’t let me out,” Niall replied.
 
“I can’t go anywhere.
 
They’re afraid I’ll get lost, you see.”

Bessie wasn’t sure how to respond to
that.
 
“I’m sure, if you’d like to
come, we can work something out,” she said after an awkward pause.

Niall seemed to think for a moment.
 
“No, that’s okay,” he said
eventually.
 
“I’m hoping Marion will
come and live with me here soon.
 
If
I go away for a day, I might miss her.”

Bessie nodded, her mind racing.
 
She wanted to bring the conversation
around to Jacob Conover, but she didn’t want to upset the man who was clearly
struggling with reality.

“I hope Eoin is taking good care of my
farm,” Niall said now.
 
“Once I’m
well again, I’ll be taking it back over and he’ll have to go, of course.”

“That would be difficult for Fenella,
wouldn’t it?” Bessie asked, wondering where the man’s mind was wandering.

“Difficult for Fen?
 
Why?” Niall demanded.

“Well, since she’s married to Eoin,” Bessie
explained.

“She is?” Niall asked.
 
“When did that happen?”

“Oh, some time back,”
Bessie
said vaguely.

“The police were here, you know,” Niall said
suddenly.

“Were they?” Bessie asked.

“They wanted to talk to me about some man
who disappeared a long time ago,” he replied.
 
“I said I couldn’t remember him.
 
My memory isn’t very good, you see.”

“Never mind, I’m sure it doesn’t matter,”
Bessie said soothingly.

“I do remember him, though,” Niall told her
in a whisper.
 
“He wasn’t a nice
man.
 
He chased after all the
girls.
 
I wasn’t going to have him
chasing after Fen, though.
 
I told
her to stay away from him.
 
She was
a good girl.”

“You did a good job bringing her up,” Bessie
told the man.

“It was hard,” he replied.
 
“She never liked farming.
 
She wanted to be a nurse.”

“She did?” Bessie asked in surprise.

“She did what?”

“Fenella wanted to be a nurse?”

“Did she?” the man replied.
 
“I didn’t know that.”

Bessie shook her head.
 
She could only hope that Anna Lambert
had had a similarly odd conversation with the man and had realised that she
couldn’t rely on anything he’d said.
 

“What was that man’s name?” Niall asked
Bessie.

“What man?”

“The one that police lady kept asking me
about.
 
I can’t seem to remember his
name.”

Bessie took a deep breath.
 
“Maybe it was Jacob Conover,” she said.

Niall frowned.
 
“That doesn’t sound right,” he
replied.
 
“I remember Jacob
Conover.
 
He said he wanted to buy
my farm, but I didn’t want to sell it to him.
 
He didn’t care, though.
 
He was going home, back across, where
he’d come from.”
 
Niall stopped
talking and looked out the window.

Bessie sat back in her chair and wondered
how much of what Niall had said was true.
 
The man was clearly confused about many things, but other times he
seemed lucid.
 
His comments on Jacob
matched what Bessie already knew about the man.
 

“Ah, Bessie Cubbon?
 
What brings you here?” he said suddenly,
looking at Bessie as if he’d just noticed her.

“I came to invite you to my Thanksgiving
dinner,” she told him.

“Ah, you know I have a farm to run,” he
replied, shaking his head.
 
“Maybe
in another twenty years, when I’m retired and have nothing else to do.”
 
Before Bessie could reply, he went back
to looking out the window.
 
Within
minutes, he fell asleep, leaving Bessie wondering what to do with
herself
.
 

“How’s the visit going?” Noreen asked from
the doorway.

“Niall’s fallen asleep,” Bessie told her.

“He does that,” Noreen replied, her voice
still relentlessly cheerful.
 
“When
he wakes up, he’s sometimes quite disoriented.”

“Oh, dear,” Bessie exclaimed.
 
“He’s been rather confused anyway.
 
I’m not sure how much he really
remembers and how much is muddled.”

“On good days, he’s about fifty-fifty,” the
girl told her.
 
“On bad days he
doesn’t even remember his own name.”

Bessie sighed.
 
“It’s such a shame,” she said.
 
“At least he’s getting good care here.”

“We do our best,” the girl replied.
 
“He’s a sweet man and we all enjoy
looking after him, at least most of the time.”

Niall made a sudden noise and then sat up in
his chair.
 
“Who’s that?” he
demanded.

“It’s just me,” Noreen said soothingly.
 
“It’s Noreen.
 
I was just talking to your guest.”

“My guest?” Niall looked at Bessie.
 
“Who are you?”

Bessie smiled and got to her feet.
 
“I’m an old friend,” she said.
 
“But I really must be going.
 
It was lovely to see you.”

“I’m awfully tired,” Niall said to
Noreen.
 
“Could I take a nap?”

“Of course you can,” Noreen told him.
 

Bessie walked towards the door.

“If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll show you
out,” Noreen told her.
 

Bessie watched as the girl helped Niall
climb into bed.
 
She fussed over him
for a minute, adjusting his blankets and pillows until he was satisfied.
 

“Sleep well,” she whispered as she
straightened and turned to go.

“Will there be ice cream at dinner?” Niall
asked.

“I’m sure we can find some for you,” Noreen
told him, patting his hand where it rested on top of the blankets.

“Oh, good,” Niall muttered.
 
He closed his eyes and seemed to fall
asleep almost instantly.
 

“I doubt that he’ll remember you were here
when he wakes up,” Noreen told Bessie.
 
“But you never know.
 
He
certainly remembers that policewoman who was here a few days ago, but that’s
probably because she upset him so much.”

“Did she?
 
How sad,” Bessie murmured.

“Yes, we actually had to ring the doctor to
come and check on Niall.
 
He was so
upset by her visit,” Noreen told her.
 
“I understand she’s investigating a murder, but even if Niall did it, he
certainly doesn’t remember it now, at least not reliably.”

“I can’t believe that Niall ever killed
anyone,” Bessie said.

“You should have seen him when the police
were here,” Noreen said.
 
“He was
furiously angry.
 
I saw a side of
him I didn’t know existed, and it was a little bit scary.
 
Anyway, I do think just about anyone can
kill someone else if they feel they have enough of a reason.”

“Sadly, you may be right,” Bessie said.

Noreen held open the door to the reception
area and Bessie walked through it.
 
“Thank you,” she told the girl.

“It was my pleasure,” the girl replied.
 
“It’s always nice to have a bit of
variety in our day.”

Bessie turned to leave, but stopped as
Fenella came in through the building’s front door.

“Bessie?
 
You did say you were going to visit my
father.
 
How is he?”

“He’d just settled in for a nap as I was
leaving,” Bessie told her.

“I might as well get tea and a cake, then,”
Fenella said with a sigh.
 
“He won’t
thank me for waking him up.”

“Is there a café here?” Bessie asked.

“In that corner,” Fenella replied, waving
towards the opposite corner of the room.

Bessie glanced over and saw a glass door
with a sign that read “Garden Café.”
 
“Let me buy you a cuppa and a slice of cake,” she told Fenella.
 

“I can buy my own drink,” Fenella said
crossly.

“But why not let me treat?” Bessie said
persuasively.
 
“I’m simply returning
the favour after our visit together yesterday.”

Fenella looked as if she might argue, but
after a moment she shrugged and headed towards the door to the café.
 
Bessie followed.
 
The room only had a dozen or so tables,
but most were empty.
 
In one corner,
a woman in a bathrobe and slippers was sipping a drink, and at another table
two women in nurses’ uniforms were eating sandwiches.
 
Fenella chose a table in the centre of
the room and dropped into a chair.
 
Bessie joined her.

“The food here is edible, but not spectacular,”
Fenella told Bessie in a soft voice.
 
“But the cakes are excellent.”

Bessie glanced at her watch.
 
It was nearly time for dinner, so she
really shouldn’t have cake.
 
She
looked over the menu and sighed.
 
There was no way she was going to be able to resist the sticky toffee
pudding, no matter how indulgent it was.
 
The waitress was efficient, but not friendly.
 
Both women ordered tea and cake.

“Do you visit your father often?” Bessie
asked after the waitress had delivered their tea.

“When I can,” the other woman replied.
 
“The farm is a lot of work, of course,
but I like to see him at least once or twice a week.”

“He seemed to remember me, at least at
first,” Bessie told her.

“He has good days and bad days, and some
days he has good and bad hours or even minutes,” Fenella replied.
 
“The doctors aren’t sure if he truly has
dementia or if he’s simply having problems with his memory due to all the
different medications he’s on.”

“I didn’t realise he needed medication,”
Bessie said.

“He has high blood pressure and heart
problems as well as liver issues and partial kidney failure,” she sighed.
 
“Actually, I should probably just tell
you what is working in his body rather than what isn’t.
 
The simple answer is nothing.”

Bessie patted her hand.
 
“I’m sorry,” she said.
 
“He was always so much larger than life
when he was younger.
 
It must be
hard to see him this way.”