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

“Do they know how old it is?” Bessie
asked.
 
“Surely that will help with
figuring out when the man died.”

“John is working on tracking that down,”
Doona told her.
 
“At this point, he
seems to think that the watch may be even older than the remains.”

“How is John doing?” Bessie asked.

“I was going to ask you that,” Doona
countered.
 
“I gather he came to see
you last night.”

“He did,” Bessie agreed.
 
“We had a nice visit, but mostly we
talked about the dead man, rather than anything else.”

“He doesn’t really talk to me at the
moment,” Doona said.
 

Bessie heard the catch in her friend’s
voice.
 
“He’s coping with a lot
right now,” she said.
 
“Moving house
and the divorce are huge life changes.”

“And he’s angry that I told him I was
divorced when I wasn’t,” Doona added.

Bessie sighed.
 
“I don’t want to be in the middle of
this,” she said firmly.
 
“But at the
same time, if you feel like you need to talk to John and want to do it on neutral
territory, you’re welcome to arrange to meet him here.
 
You could take a walk on the beach and talk
it all out.
 
You’d have the beach to
yourselves this time of year.”

“It’s complicated,” Doona said.
 
“I like John so much.
 
He’s a wonderful boss and a great
person.
 
I hate knowing that he
thinks I lied to him, but I didn’t mean to lie.
 
It was all just too difficult to explain
and I assumed that the divorce was going to go through soon anyway, so I didn’t
think it mattered.”

“At this point it might be better to wait
until the Clague case has settled down before you try to speak to him,” Bessie
suggested.
 
“I’m sure it’s adding a
lot of stress to his life.”

“It’s adding a lot of stress to everyone’s
lives,” Doona countered.

They chatted for a few minutes more before
Bessie let her friend go.
 
“Get some
sleep,” she counseled.
 
“Tomorrow is
going to be another busy day, I’m sure.”

She was just debating what to do with her
evening when someone knocked on her door.

“John, do come in,” she invited.
 
“I can’t remember the last time you
visited me two nights in a row.”

“I can’t either, but it was probably in the
middle of a murder investigation,” John replied.

“That’s a rather unfortunate comment on our
friendship,” Bessie said tartly.

John flushed.
 
“I love coming to visit you,” he told
Bessie.
 
“But it’s difficult to find
the time.
 
During murder
investigations, I can visit you and convince myself that it’s work, not play.”

Bessie shrugged.
 
“I’m not sure that’s much better, but
let’s not argue,” she said.
 
“You
look tired.”

“I feel as if I’ve spent the day chasing
ghosts,” he told her.
 
“Although a
great many of the ghosts turned out to be quite alive and well.”

“Does that include Maggie Shimmin’s old
friend Harvey Snow?” Bessie had to ask.

John laughed.
 
“He wasn’t hard to track down, as he was
still living at the address he’d given Maggie when he left.
 
Unfortunately for her, he has absolutely
no recollection of her, but I didn’t tell her that, of course.”

Bessie laughed.
 
“Better she not know,” she agreed.

“Anyway, I don’t want to stay long.
 
I’m exhausted, and I’m sure you have
better things to do as well, but I wanted to show you a list of names and see
if any of them rings a bell.”

“Is this the list of people who might have
owned the watch?” Bessie asked.
 
“Doona said she had about a dozen names suggested to her.
 
I’m sure I’ve seen that watch somewhere
before, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to pick out the right name.”

“There are only ten names on my list,” John
told her.
 
“Some are possible watch
owners and others are just men that might have gone missing in the last sixty
or so years.
 
There were some
duplicates on the lists that Doona and Joan took, and Hugh was able to track
down some of the men quite quickly.
 
I dug a little deeper to find a few more.
 
What I’m left with is a list of ten
names of men who may have once owned a watch like that and who can’t be easily
located.”

“I can’t be sure I’ll pick the right name,”
Bessie said.

“If you aren’t sure, that’s fine,” John
assured her.
 
“I’ll settle for you
selecting a handful that seem like they might be possibilities.
 
There are only so many hours in a day
and I hate chasing around in the dark.
 
If you think three or four of these men might be the one you remember as
owning that watch, I’ll dig deeper into them first.
 
If none of them matches up, we’ll go
back to the list.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“I’ll do my best,” she said.

John pulled out the list and Bessie read the
first name.
 
“My goodness,” she
exclaimed.
 
“I haven’t thought about
Richard Staunton in fifty years.”

“Is he a possibility?” John asked.

“Oh, goodness, I don’t think so,” Bessie
replied.
 
“He moved to Cumbria and
started a bed and breakfast.
 
You
could try looking there for him.
 
He
may have moved a dozen times since then, of course.”

John made a note and then smiled at
Bessie.
 
“I should have rung you
every time we got a call,” he said.
 
“I’ll bet you could have eliminated most of the names for me without any
effort at all.”

Bessie read the next name and shook her
head.
 
“He moved to America,” she
said definitely.
 
“He actually went
and stayed with my cousins there for a short time in the sixties before heading
out west to look for gold.
 
I seem
to recall that he passed away somewhere in Oregon, but I’m not positive.”

They worked their way down the list
methodically.
 
Bessie was able to
give John suggestions for places to look for several others on the list, although
there were a few that she wasn’t sure about and one that she didn’t remember at
all.
 
The last name on the list had
her catching her breath.

“Jacob Conover,” she said softly.
 
“He’s the man who owned that watch.”

Chapter Five

“Are you sure?” John asked, his voice tense.

“I’m positive,” Bessie replied.
 
“I can’t believe I didn’t remember his
name, now that I think about it.
 
People used to tease him for being a ‘comeover’ named Conover.”

“What about the watch?”

Bessie sat back in her chair and tried to
remember events from forty or more years earlier.
 
“It was his father’s,” she said
eventually.
 
“I remember he was very
proud of it.
 
His father gave it to
him on his eighteenth birthday, if I’m remembering correctly.”

“Maybe you could just start at the beginning
and tell me all about him,” John suggested.

“I think I need a cuppa,” she said.
 
While Bessie bustled around her kitchen,
she cast her mind back and tried to remember everything that she could about
Jacob Conover.
 
She was hoping to
have everything in a nice neat order for John when she began, but she wasn’t
sure that was possible after such a long time.

She fixed tea for them both and then sat
down again.
 
“He came over to the
island some time in the mid-fifties,” she began.
 
“Nearly everything I can tell you is
hearsay.
 
I only met the man a
couple of times myself, but he was the talk of the village when he was here.”

“I’m happy with hearsay at this point,” John
told her.

Bessie nodded.
 
“He had some money, but no one ever
heard the same story as to where he’d acquired it,” she said.
 
“I gathered, at the time, that his
family was wealthy and the money had come from his father.
 
Supposedly, he’d come to the island to
buy a farm and raise sheep.
 
At
least I think that was the plan.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“It was
a long time ago,” she said.

“Don’t worry if you can’t remember things
perfectly.
 
I’m happy with anything
and everything you can tell me.
 
If
it turns out he was planning to raise cattle instead, I would be surprised if
that had anything to do with his death.”

“I seem to recall that he stayed in Douglas
for a while.
 
Most people did when
they came to the island.
 
Laxey
didn’t have much to offer for young single men, at least not when compared to
Douglas.”

“But he moved to Laxey after that?” John
asked.

“He did,” Bessie confirmed.
 
“He was looking at farms all over the
island and there were a few in Laxey that caught his eye.
 
None of them were actually on the
market, you understand, but he moved up here and set about trying to persuade
one of the farmers to sell to him.”

“And the Clague farm was on his list?”

“I don’t think so,” Bessie said, feeling
confused.
 
“I can’t imagine that
Niall would have considered selling at that point.
 
He was in his prime and the farm was
thriving.”

“Tell me more,” John said.

“After a while, he began to develop
something of a reputation for, well, having an eye for the ladies, I suppose
you could say,” Bessie told him.

“How old was he?”

“Maybe twenty-five,” Bessie said.

“And the women he went out with?”

“I don’t think it would be much of an
exaggeration to suggest that he went out with just about every woman in Laxey
between the ages of eighteen and thirty in the summer he was here.”

“Wow, that’s some accomplishment,” John
said.

“He was very good-looking, seemed to have an
endless supply of money and he drove a new car,” Bessie told him.
 
“The girls in the village had never
really met anyone like him before.
 
He seemed worldly and sophisticated to girls and young women who’d never
been further from home than Douglas.”

“And how did he seem to you?”

“I was a little bit older and I’d seen a
great deal more of the world,” Bessie replied.
 
“I thought he was flashy and arrogant.”

“So he was trying to buy a farm and take out
every woman in the village.
 
What
happened next?”

“The longer he was here, the less talk there
was about him buying a farm,” Bessie recalled.
 
“He was here for three or four months
and after the first few weeks I don’t remember hearing any more about it.
 
At the time I thought he’d either found
a property and was keeping the negotiations secret, or he’d given up and
decided to just have some fun before he went home.”

“And then he disappeared?”

“That sounds so dramatic,” Bessie said.
 
“But it wasn’t like that.
 
He told everyone he was going.
 
I think there was even a small gathering
at the local pub before he went.
 
I’m sure he sold his fancy car and packed up his things.
 
I’d always assumed he’d simply left as
planned.”

“But maybe he didn’t,” John said with a
sigh.

“He wouldn’t have given or sold that watch
to anyone,” Bessie told him.
 
“He
loved showing it off and telling people about it.
 
I barely knew him and he told me all
about the thing.
 
It’s coming back
slowly, but I think he said his father bought the watch in Germany, from a
little watchmaker on a back street somewhere.
 
Jacob seemed to think there weren’t more
than a handful like it in the world.
 
I’d be very surprised to learn that someone else on the island had one
like it.
 
If that isn’t Jacob that
you’ve found, whoever it is must have stolen Jacob’s watch.”

John nodded.
 
“I told you that there were some
duplicate names on the lists that Joan and Doona made.
 
Jacob’s name came up several times,
actually, once we’d published the photo of the watch.
 
Everyone that I’ve spoken to has said
the same thing.
 
That he was very
fond of that watch.”

“Well, if it is him, he wasn’t buried there
before Niall put Marion’s things into the barn,” Bessie said.
 
“Marion died many years before Jacob
came to the island.”

“We’re working on finding the man’s family,”
John told her.
 
“We’re hoping we can
get a DNA match so we can be certain who we’ve found.”

“I can’t imagine why they never reported him
missing,” Bessie said.
 
“Surely he
was missed?”

“Remember, we aren’t even sure it’s him,”
John said.
 
“Maybe the watch isn’t
as rare as Jacob thought it was, or maybe he was robbed before he left the
island.
 
From what you’ve said, he
was definitely planning to leave, so maybe he did just that.”

“Maybe,” Bessie said, doubtfully.
 
The more she thought about the young
man, the more convinced she became that the remains were his.
 
She closed her eyes and could picture
him, walking into a small café in Laxey, some young girl on his arm.
 
He’d taken every excuse to check the
time and she could hear him bragging to his companion that his watch was never
wrong.
 
She shuddered.

John got up and poured Bessie some more
tea.
 
He handed her the cup and then
squeezed her other hand.
 
“Are you
okay?” he asked.

Bessie nodded and took a sip of her
drink.
 
She set it down before she
spoke.
 
“I’m fine,” she said.
 
“I wasn’t even all that upset when we
found the body yesterday.
 
Somehow
putting a name to the remains makes it seem much more awful for some reason.
 
I barely knew the man and I didn’t
really like him, but when I think about him I can picture him.
 
He was loud and brash and so very full
of life.”
 

She sighed and then got up to find a
tissue.
 
After wiping her eyes, she
sat back down.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
What else can I tell you?” she asked the
inspector.

“What was his connection with the Clague
farm?”

Bessie thought for a moment and then shook
her head.
 
“I don’t know that there
was any connection between them,” she said.
 
“As I said earlier, I can’t see Niall
even discussing selling the farm with him.”

“What about Fenella?”

“Oh,” Bessie exclaimed.
 
She sat back in her chair and thought
hard.
 
“She would have been in her teens.
 
I can’t remember exactly what year he
was here.
 
I suppose she might have
been old enough to catch his eye, but I don’t remember hearing that she was seeing
him.
 
Then again, he went through
women very quickly.
 
I’m sure I
didn’t hear about most of them.”

“He never helped out on the farm?”

“He never did any work, as far as I know,”
Bessie said.
 
“He wanted to buy a
farm, but he didn’t intend to work on it himself.
 
I doubt he’d have been any help to any
of the hardworking farmers on the island.”

“Who do you remember him going out with,
then?” John asked.

“Everyone and no one,” Bessie said with a
sigh.
 
“I remember that he went out
with a lot of women, but I’m not sure I could put names to any of them
now.
 
I suppose, if I really work at
it, I can come up with some names, but as I said, he didn’t stay with anyone
for long.
 
I don’t recall hearing
that anything serious ever developed between him and anyone on the island.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d try to make a
list for me,” John said.
 
“Hopefully,
we’ll be able to identify the body before I start going through it.”

“It was so long ago, I can’t imagine it will
help, but I’ll try.”

“It was a long time ago,” John agreed.
 
“But someone killed the man and hid the
body.
 
Somewhere, forty or so years
ago, someone felt strongly enough about him enough to kill him.
 
My job it find out who that was and
why.”

“Whoever it was could be long dead
themselves,” Bessie pointed out.
 
“Or they could have moved away.”

“I just have to do my best,” John
replied.
 

“And, of course, Niall should be the first
person you question, but he’s not going to be any help.”

“Anna went and talked to him today,” John
told her.
 
“He wasn’t very lucid.”

“What about Eoin and Fenella?” Bessie asked.

“Neither of them recognised the watch,” John
told her.
 
“I didn’t specifically
ask about Jacob Conover, because we aren’t sure it’s him.
 
Neither of them could offer any
explanation for why there was a dead body in the barn, either.”

“Poor Fenella, it must be very upsetting for
her,” Bessie said.

“Thank you for your time,” John said
now.
 
“I think I’d better go and let
you get some sleep.
 
Let me know
when you’ve had time to put that list together for me.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“I’ll go back through my diaries and see
if I can find anything relevant.”
 

“That would be a great help,” John said.

“I’m not sure I have any from the right time
period, but I’ll see what I can find,” Bessie promised.
 

She walked him to the door and locked it
behind him.
 
Mechanically, she
cleared up the tea things and did the washing up.
 
It was only as she climbed the stairs to
bed that she realised she’d never offered the poor man any biscuits to go with
his tea.
 
Clearly, she was more
upset than she’d realised.

Bessie’s sleep was restless and she woke at
six feeling tired and anxious.
 
Going through her old diaries was an emotional job and she didn’t quite
feel up to it.
 
A long walk on a
cold and rainy beach did little to improve her mood.
 
Pancakes with maple syrup, a reminder of
her childhood in the US, washed down with milky tea, helped calm her.

Before she went in search of her diaries,
she sat down to start the list of women whom she could recall had gone out with
Jacob Conover.
 
After listing a few
names, she gave up.
 
She’d start
with the diaries and make the list from them, assuming they were any help.