Aunt Bessie Invites (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 9) (4 page)

Fenella nodded and then rose to her
feet.
 
She pulled her mobile out of
her pocket and walked a few steps away from the others.

“How’s Grace?” Bessie had to ask Hugh while
Fenella was occupied.
 
Hugh had been
going out with Grace Christian, a pretty blonde primary schoolteacher, for
several months now.

Hugh blushed and looked at the ground.
 
“She’s good,” he said after a minute.

“Still thinking about proposing at
Christmas?” Bessie asked.

Hugh nodded.
 
“I’m saving up for a ring,” he told her.
 
“I want everything to be just
right.
 
I thought maybe I’d ask
after I go with her family to midnight mass.
 
Or I might wait until all the presents
are opened and then tell her that I have one more thing for her and give her
the ring.
 
Or maybe I’ll wait until
Christmas night, after dinner when everyone is just relaxing and enjoying
themselves.”

Bessie shook her head.
 
“Just don’t wait for Boxing Day,” she
said, a little sharply.
 
“The
occasion doesn’t matter nearly as much as the question, anyway, remember.”

“I know,” Hugh nodded.
 
“But I want it to be special for
her.
 
I’m hoping I’m the only one
who will ever ask her that question, after all.”

Bessie smiled.
 
“You could always ask her at our big
Thanksgiving feast,” she suggested.

“I won’t have the ring by then,” Hugh
replied.
 
“I love my job, but sometimes
I do wish it paid a bit better.”

Hugh’s mobile phone rang, interrupting the
chat.
 
He frowned as he turned away
from Bessie to answer it.
 
She
couldn’t hear anything from his end except monosyllables.
 
After a moment he disconnected and
turned back to the women.

“The inspector should be here in a minute,”
he said.
 
“Then we’ll see where we
go from there.”

A moment later a large lorry rumbled down
the road.
 
Hugh had a word with the
driver, who then drove well past the barn and parked on the side of the
road.
 
He handed the keys to the
vehicle to Fenella and then headed back up the road on foot.
 
He was just out of site when a plain
black car rolled into view.
 
Bessie
watched as the driver parked behind Hugh.
 
The passenger door opened, but the person who climbed out was a stranger
to Bessie.
 

Beside her, Doona gasped.
 
“What’s she doing here?” she whispered.

Bessie studied the new arrival.
 
She was dressed in a black suit with a
long straight skirt.
 
A dark grey
shirt was just visible under the jacket.
 
Her low-heeled shoes were black.
 
Grey hair was twisted into a tight bun on the top of her head and her
grey eyes were cool and appraising as she approached them.

“Ms. Moore,” the woman said.
 
“I would have thought you’d have found
more pleasant things to do with your day off than finding dead bodies.”

Bessie could almost see Doona biting her
tongue.
 

“And you must be Miss Elizabeth Cubbon,” the
woman continued.
 
“Of course finding
bodies is nothing new for you, is it?
 
Inspector Rockwell has quite an extensive file on you, I must say.”

Now Bessie found herself swallowing hard
before she said something she might regret later.

“What have you found?” the woman snapped at
Hugh.

“Exactly what was reported,” Hugh said.
 
“In the back of the barn there is a part
of a skeletal arm visible on the ground.
 
Not wanting to compromise the crime scene, I did no more than verify the
initial report.”

“So we might have just found someone’s old
medical school training skeleton or an old movie prop or something,” the woman
said.

No one spoke.
 
After a moment she sighed deeply.
 
“Let’s see what we have then.
 
Watterson, bring a torch.”

As the pair disappeared into the barn,
Bessie let out a long breath.
 

“And now you’ve met Anna Lambert,” Doona
said quietly.

“I thought she was meant to be handling the
paperwork while John did all of the investigating,” Bessie whispered.

Doona shrugged.
 
“I’m not going to ask,” she said.

“Me, either,” Bessie agreed.

Hugh and the inspector were back a moment
later.
 

“Right, who found the, um, remains?” she
asked.

“I did,” Fenella replied.

“I’ll start by talking to you, then,” Anna
told her.
 
“Ms. Moore, Miss Cubbon,
if you’d like to wait here, please, I’ll get to you in a few minutes.”

Bessie exchanged glances with Doona while
Anna led Fenella over to the police car.
 

“She’s going to interview people in her
car?” Bessie asked after the pair climbed into the backseat.

“I suppose there aren’t a lot of options out
here,” Doona replied.

Bessie looked around.
 
She could just make out another small
building in the distance.
 
Besides
that, fields surrounded them in every direction.

“John’s tied up in Douglas at a meeting,”
Hugh whispered out of the side of his mouth, his eyes never leaving the car where
Anna had gone.

“He didn’t tell me he was in Douglas when we
spoke,” Doona said.

“I gather he’s going to try to get here
soon, but obviously this sort of investigation can’t wait,” Hugh said.

“Whoever it is has waited a long time
already,” Doona replied.
 
“I’m sure
they wouldn’t mind waiting another hour or two for a proper investigator.”

“Inspector Lambert is an excellent
investigator,” Hugh said.
 
“I, well,
I rang a friend of mine across who used to work with her.
 
She’s very good at police work, she just
isn’t always the easiest person to get along with.”

“I still don’t know why we got stuck with
her,” Doona complained.

Before Hugh could reply, Anna emerged from
the back of the parked car.
 
Fenella
came out after her.

“I have a farm to run,” Fenella was saying
angrily.

“And I have an investigation to conduct,”
Anna told her.
 
“It looks as if it
might just turn into a murder investigation, at that.
 
I’m sure you can spare a few hours for
the sake of the poor man or woman who was buried in your barn, can’t you?”

Fenella pressed her lips together.
 
Anna turned and said something to the
young police officer
who
had driven Anna to the
site.
 
He nodded and walked a few
steps away to ring someone on his mobile.

Anna turned towards the others.
 
“Miss Cubbon, I might as well talk to
you next.
 
Ms. Moore won’t mind
waiting.”

Bessie winked at Doona, knowing that her
friend normally hated waiting.
 
In
this instance, though, the policewoman was probably right.
 
The longer Doona had to wait, the better
the chances were that John would arrive in time to take over.
 
Bessie frowned as she climbed into the
car.
 
John was going to take over,
wasn’t he?

“I’m not sure I identified myself, but I’m
sure Ms. Moore corrected my oversight,” the inspector said after she’d shut the
car door.
 
“Please call me
Anna.
 
I know you have a good
working relationship with John Rockwell and I’d like to think that we’ll be
able to work well together as well.”

Bessie was suspicious of the woman’s
friendliness, but she smiled anyway.
 
“You must call me Bessie,” she said.
 
“Everyone does.”

Anna nodded.
 
“I hope you don’t mind if I record this
conversation.”
 
When Bessie shook
her head, the woman continued.
 
“Why
don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

Bessie took a deep breath and then launched
into an explanation about her traditional Thanksgiving feast.
 
After no more than a sentence, Anna held
up a hand.
 

“I’m sure there is a lot of very interesting
history behind today, but I’m not really interested in that.
 
Can you tell me why you’re here in no
more than, say, a dozen words?”

Bessie swallowed several replies before
clearing her throat.
 
“I came to see
the turkeys I have ordered,” she said succinctly.

Anna made a note.
 
“You had an appointment?”

“I did.”

“With whom?”

Bessie shrugged.
 
“I’ve always met with Eoin in the past,
but I was happy enough to see Fenella or just about anyone, really.”

“With Eoin, then?”

“I suppose so,” Bessie agreed, just
resisting the urge to sigh.

“What time did you arrive?”

“Around half one, I think.
 
I wasn’t really paying close attention.”

Anna frowned.
 
“What time was your appointment scheduled
for?” she demanded.

“Oh, any time this afternoon,” Bessie said,
waving her hand.
 
“I told Eoin that
I would be up after lunch.”

“So he didn’t know exactly when to expect
you?”

“I suppose not,” Bessie said.

Anna shook her head and Bessie wondered if
she lived her entire life to a strict timetable.
 
Clearly the vague nature of Bessie’s
appointment bothered her for some reason.

“Where had you arranged to meet with Eoin?”
Anna asked now.

“We hadn’t really discussed it,” Bessie
said.
 
“I’d planned on just stopping
at the house.
 
Fenella was always
home and she could have rung Eoin and asked him to meet us at the turkey pens.”

“But you didn’t plan to meet at the turkey
pens?” Anna checked.

“No, because I wasn’t sure when I would get
here.
 
I didn’t want Eoin to have to
spend the day at the pens waiting for me.
 
He has a very large farm to run.”

“Why didn’t you set a specific time?
 
Surely that would have been more
efficient for both you and Eoin?”

Bessie smiled to herself.
 
This was clearly a woman who never made
last-minute plans.
 
“I wasn’t sure
how the day was going to go,” she explained.
 
“I didn’t know for certain that Doona
was going to do the driving.
 
I
don’t drive and Doona usually works on a Monday.
 
Things might have gone very differently
if I’d had to catch a taxi out here.”

“And you didn’t mind keeping Eoin waiting
for your arrival?”

“He didn’t mind leaving the appointment time
vague,” Bessie corrected her.
 
“I
knew that once I arrived I might have to wait a bit for him to join me, but
that was fine with me.”

“I seem to recall from your file that you
don’t work,” Anna said.
 
“Perhaps
that’s why you have such a casual attitude towards time.”

Bessie simply stared at her for a moment.
 
She felt as if she’d been insulted, but
she wasn’t sure why.
 
“Perhaps,” she
murmured eventually.
 

“So you arrived around half one and then
what happened?”

Anna was silent as Bessie told her about the
drive to the farmhouse, finding it empty, and the subsequent phone call to
Fenella.
 

“Were you surprised that Eoin wasn’t here?”
Anna asked when Bessie paused.

“I suppose so,” Bessie replied.
 
“I didn’t really think about it.
 
Everyone knows about the problems with
his knee, so I wasn’t too shocked to hear that he’d gone across for treatment.”

“Has he ever been absent when you’ve visited
before?”

Bessie sat back in the seat and tried to
think.
 
After a few minutes she
shook her head.
 
“I have no idea,”
she said.
 
“For many years, I used
to see Niall about the turkeys.
 
Sometimes Eoin would be with him, but not every time.
 
Then when Niall started having health
problems, I started to see Eoin more.
 
But really, I only visit once a year and I’ve simply never paid that
much attention to who was here or not here.”