1 Aunt Bessie Assumes (13 page)

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Authors: Diana Xarissa

BOOK: 1 Aunt Bessie Assumes
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“Um, sure, yeah.”
 
The girl was trying to mop up the
spilled drink and collect the broken pieces of cup.
 
“You can use the back room,” she finally
offered as she stood up with hands full of soaked paper napkins and cup
fragments.
 
“Just through the
arch.
 
We use it for parties and
stuff.”

The Inspector nodded once.
 
“I think some privacy is in order,” he
told Bessie, gesturing for her to follow him into the back.

Bessie rose slowly, picking up her
shopping bag and using the time to gather her thoughts.
 
She wasn’t feeling terribly impressed
with Inspector Kelly at the moment, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t prepared to
tell him everything.

In the end, though, she wasn’t given a
chance.
 
The Inspector sat down at a
table right inside the door and motioned for Bessie to join him.

“Hugh reported that you went into the
mine, saw that it was empty and then heard a mobile phone ringing, is that
correct?” he began.

“Yes,” Bessie answered, surprised at the
detailed question.

“You then tried to find the phone and
found the body instead, correct?”

“Well, technically, I found both the body
and the phone,” Bessie answered.

The man rolled his eyes.
 
“Yes, all right, whatever,” he
muttered.
 
“Do you have anything to
add to your statement?”

Bessie sat back and studied him for a long
minute.
 
“I don’t recall making a
statement,” she said finally.

The man sighed.
 
“I’m a very busy man,” he told
Bessie.
 
“I have Hugh’s statement
and you’ve just confirmed what he reported.
 
If you stop by the station tomorrow,
Mrs. Moore will have what we discussed typed up and ready for you to sign.”

He was gone before Bessie could frame an
appropriate reply.
 
“Well, he’s
never going to solve the crime that way,” she muttered to herself as she got to
her feet.
 
“Fancy not even asking me
why I was at the mine,” she shook her head and made her way back through the
pub, heading for the door.
 
It swung
open before she reached it and Bessie took a step backwards to allow the man
coming in some space.

“Ah, Aunt Bessie,” the man said
brightly.
 
“Just the person I wanted
to see.”

Bessie grinned up at Inspector Rockwell.
 
“I’m awfully popular right now,” she
remarked.
 
“Inspector Kelly just
left.”

“Did you give him a statement?” Rockwell
frowned.

“Not exactly,” Bessie answered.
 
“He already had Hugh’s statement, so he
just wanted to verify a few things.”

“I’d like to do a bit more than ‘verify a
few things,’” the inspector told Bessie.
 
“Maybe we should grab a table and some tea.”

“You’re welcome to use the back room,” the
same waitress said brightly.
 
“I’ll
bring some tea through in a minute.”

Rockwell nodded and offered Bessie his
arm.
 
Feeling somewhat more
appreciated,
Bessie took with a small smile.

The inspector waited until the tea had
been delivered before he spoke.
 
“I’d like you to run me through your day,” he told Bessie, after he’d
added milk and sugar to his cup and taken a long drink.
 
“Actually, start with when I left your
cottage last night, if you don’t mind.”

Bessie smiled and settled back in her
chair; Inspector Rockwell now rising even further in her estimation.

“After you left, Doona went home and Hugh
and I went to bed.
 
Well,” she
corrected herself, “I went to bed.
 
Hugh is insisting on sleeping on the couch.”

The man nodded and made a small note on a
pad of paper that he had pulled from his pocket.
 
“Go on,” he said encouragingly.

“Right, so I got up at six, as usual, had
a walk and then did some cleaning.
 
After that I took a taxi into Ramsey and did some shopping.
 
The taxi brought me back to Laxey and dropped
me here for some lunch.
  
After
lunch I walked over to the wheel and climbed up.
 
Mark Blake from the Manx Museum was at
the top, along with his brother, and we exchanged a few words.
 
The only other person there was Donny
Pierce.
 
I chatted to him for a
short while and then headed back down the stairs.”

“I want a complete account of your conversation
with Mr. Pierce,” the inspector told her.
 
“But that can wait until after you finish your general statement.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“I headed for the mine, but when I got
inside it was empty, so I turned around to go.
 
Then I heard a mobile ringing.
 
I tracked the phone down to the mine
cart and when I looked inside I found Samantha’s body as well.
 
I immediately left the mine and called
Hugh.
 
Once he arrived I came over
here and had tea and sticky toffee pudding while I waited for whoever wanted to
talk to me.”

Inspector Rockwell nodded and made a few
notes before he spoke.
 
“Sticky
toffee pudding sounds wonderful.
 
I
still haven’t had any lunch and now it looks like it might be some time before
I get any.”
 
He ran a tired hand
over his face before he continued.
 
“Anyway, your statement matches what Hugh has reported, but I’m much
more interested in what you haven’t said than in what you have.”

“Meaning what exactly?” Bessie asked.

“Well, firstly, meaning what on earth were
you doing climbing the Laxey Wheel on a wet and cold day in March?
 
I can almost understand why Donny Pierce
and the others were here, but why you?”

Bessie sighed.
 
She hoped she wasn’t about to make the inspector
angry or get Hugh into trouble.
   
“I was supposed to be
meeting Samantha here,” she said reluctantly.
 
“When I was at Thie yn Traie yesterday
we arranged to meet here at one o’clock today.”

Inspector Rockwell nodded slowly, his face
flushing with what Bessie assumed was repressed anger.
 
He took a long slow breath before he
spoke again.
 
“I see,” he said
tightly.
 

Bessie smiled innocently at him, sipping
her tea so that she wouldn’t start apologising.
 
In her mind she had done nothing wrong,
but the look on John Rockwell’s face suggested that he didn’t agree.

“If you had thought to mention that to me
last night,” he said eventually, “we might have been able to have some people
in place here.
 
We might even have
been able to prevent Samantha’s murder.”

Bessie shook her head.
 
“I was meeting an upset young woman who
was having a hard time with her boyfriend and his family.
 
She just needed someone to talk to, not
a police bodyguard.”

“And yet she’s dead.”

Bessie frowned and then felt unwelcome
tears welling up in her eyes.
 
Was
it possible that Samantha had been murdered because of their plans to meet
today?
 
“I can’t believe that our
planned meeting had anything to do with her murder,” she said eventually, as
much to herself as to the Inspector.

“Why not?”

“Well, why would it?” Bessie
demanded.
 

“Why don’t you take me back through your
conversation with her yesterday?” Inspector Rockwell suggested.
 

Bessie closed her eyes and tried to
remember exactly what had been said.
 
“She walked me to the door,” Bessie began.
 
“We were talking about Daniel Pierce’s
theory, about the killing being random.
 
I suggested that she must have her own theory and she admitted that she
did, but she didn’t want to discuss it then.
 
She suggested the meeting time and
place.”

“Who could have overheard your
conversation?”

“I don’t think anyone could have,” Bessie
tried hard to remember.
 
“We’d left
the family in the great room.
 
Donny
came out while we were talking, but he was too far away to overhear anything
except our goodbyes.”
 
Bessie paused
and shook her head again.

“What is it?” Inspector Rockwell asked.

“Robert Clague,” Bessie said slowly.
 
“He suddenly appeared next to me in the
hallway as I was leaving.
 
I suppose
he might have been able to overhear the conversation.
 
But he didn’t have any reason to kill
anyone.
 
He’s only
just been hired by the family for security
.
 
I doubt he even knew the younger Daniel
Pierce and he must have just met Samantha yesterday when he came to work for
the family.”

Rockwell nodded absently, making notes in
his notebook.
 
“Interesting,” was
his only comment.

The Inspector took Bessie through her day
several times over, checking and rechecking her story.
 
Then they spent a very long time
discussing her conversation with Donny Pierce at the top of the wheel.

“Donny gave his statement to Inspector
Kelly,” Rockwell said after Bessie had completed the third retelling of the
conversation.
 
“I think Kelly is
quite fond of the idea that all of this trouble is drug-related.”

“Why?
 
I hate thinking that there might be drug problems on this island.”

Rockwell shrugged.
 
“I think he’s hoping to catch a murderer
and break up a drug cartel in one fell swoop.
 
He’s angling for a promotion into
Douglas.”

“I hope you aren’t planning to move to the
capital as well,” Bessie said with a sigh.
 

“No, ma’am,” Rockwell grinned at her.
 
“I really like it up north.
 
Ramsey already feels like home, for me
anyway.”
 
Something flashed across
his face that Bessie caught and would wonder about later.
 

“I’m glad you like it here,” Bessie
replied.

“I really do,” the man assured her.
 
“I also enjoy being head of my own small
investigative division.
 
The Douglas
CID is bigger
but,
dare I say it, more
convoluted.
 
Up here I get to run
things the way I see fit.
 
Of
course, if I don’t get this murder solved, I might find myself out of any job.”

Bessie frowned.
 
She was starting to like the man, in
spite of his origins.
 
Well, not
everyone could be born Manx.
  
“I hope that doesn’t happen,” she told the man.
 

Before Rockwell could answer, his phone
buzzed insistently.
 
He pulled it
from a pocket and frowned at it.

“I have to take this,” he told Bessie
apologetically.
 
“It’s the Chief
Constable.”

Bessie nodded as he rose and walked
towards the far corner of the room.
 
Within seconds, however, he was back.

“And now I have to run,” he said, his tone
somewhere between apology and exasperation.
 
“I’d like to stop by and visit with you
tonight,” he told Bessie.
 
“Hopefully, around the same time as last night, if that’s okay?”

“Certainly,” Bessie agreed.
 

“I’m sure Hugh and Doona will be there as
well,” he grinned at her.
 
“We can
bash around a few ideas and see what we come up with.”

Bessie grinned back at him.
 
Yes, she was definitely starting to like
him.

She finished her tea and then sat back in
her chair.
 
Neither inspector had
actually told her that she was free to go, but she was sure she had outstayed
her welcome at the small pub.
 
She
rose to her feet and headed slowly towards the front room, hoping there might
be a taxi waiting at the rarely used taxi rank outside.
 

She was only halfway to the door, carrying
the shopping bag that now seemed to weigh a ton, when it burst open and Hugh
bounced in, seemingly full of an unusual amount of energy.

“Ah, there you are, Aunt Bessie,” he said
brightly.
 
“I’ve been instructed by
Inspector Rockwell to see you home safely.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“It was kind of the inspector to think
of me,” she remarked as they made their way out of the pub after Bessie had
settled her bill and exchanged a few words of thanks with the proprietor.

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