Aunt Bessie Joins (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 10) (15 page)

“No one was hurt?” Pete
Corkill
asked when Bessie finished telling him about the room.

“No, but the room has been pretty well
destroyed.
 
At least, the
decorations have been.”

“I can’t see how this connects with Mr.
Hart’s murder, but I’m going to come down and have a look anyway,” he told
Bessie.
 
“I’ll ring the local
constabulary and let them know I’m on my way.”

“My wife and I are tired,” Richard announced
a moment later.
 
“We’ll just be
going.”

“I’m sorry sir, but I’ve been told to ask
everyone to remain here for the time being,” the uniformed constable said.
 
“One of our inspectors will be coming
over to ask you all a few questions.”

“Someone didn’t like the
colour
theme and tore the room up a bit,” Richard said.
 
“That’s hardly a police matter.”

“Criminal damage,” the man replied.
 
“MNH could press charges.”

“But they won’t,” Richard said.
 
“I’ll pay for any damage to the castle
itself, although there doesn’t actually appear to be any.
 
The decorations were all my wife’s
property and she won’t want to press charges, I’m certain.”

“Some of those figurines were valuable,”
Carolyn protested.

“But we won’t be pressing charges,” Richard
repeated loudly.

“MNH would like a thorough investigation,”
Mark said quietly.
 
“A lot of hard
work has gone into this event and we can’t afford to worry about vandalism.”

The man that walked into the room now was a
stranger to Bessie.
 
He was in his
thirties and he was wearing a dark suit that matched his dark hair and eyes.
 
He looked around the banquet room and
then
focussed
on the uniformed constable.

“What?” he demanded.

“It’s down here, sir,” the man said, walking
down the corridor.

Bessie watched as the uniformed man gestured
towards the still open door.
 
The
man in the suit glanced inside and then shrugged.

“I take it that wasn’t a design choice?” the
man asked the room at large.

“Of course not,” Carolyn snapped.
 
“The room was beautifully decorated as a
tribute to Christopher Hart, the wonderful designer who helped so much with
getting the rooms throughout the castle decorated.”

“I see,” the man said.
 
“Seems like your little tribute made
someone angry.”

Carolyn gasped.
 
“Whoever murdered poor darling Christo
must have done this,” she exclaimed.
 
“They hated Christo and couldn’t stand to see such a beautiful tribute
to his memory.”

She glanced over at her husband, and snapped
her mouth shut.

“Last I knew, the murderer was still at
large,” the policeman replied.
 
“I
suppose it’s just possible he or she was responsible for this mess.”

Bessie had been thinking along the same
lines, but really, she thought, anyone who didn’t like Carolyn might have
destroyed the room just to get at her, and that included an awful lot of
people.

“I’m Inspector Armstrong,” the man told them
all.
 
“Let’s see if we can work out
when this happened.”

It was quickly established that the room had
been locked at around four, and as far as anyone knew, not opened again until Mark
had done so and discovered the damage more than five hours later.

“Now I suppose we should talk about alibis,”
Inspector Armstrong suggested.
 
“I
know the castle was open to many hundreds of guests tonight, but as you are all
still here, I’d like to be able to clear as many of you as possible.”

That may have been his intention, but it
quickly proved impossible.
 
With
everything that had been going on around the site, no one was able to prove
where
they
were at any given time, let alone for the
entire period that the room had been locked up.

“Who knew where the keys were kept?” the
inspector asked after several frustrating minutes of trying to work out
people’s movements.

“All of the MNH staff, everyone on the
committee, and probably all of the volunteers,” Bessie supplied.

The inspector groaned.
 
“It’s too late at night to get involved
in this mess,” he said.
 
“Especially
as it seems nothing is missing and no one was hurt.
 
For tonight we’ll just lock the door and
I’ll come back in the morning and start investigating.”

“I’d like to ask a few questions before
everyone leaves,” a new voice said from the doorway.

“Inspector
Corkill
,
no one told me you were coming down,” Inspector Armstrong said, his cheeks
reddening.

“I informed your office,” Pete said
easily.
 
“I gather they never passed
the message along.”

“No, they didn’t,”
Armstrong
said coldly.

Bessie felt sorry for whoever had failed to
informed Inspector Armstrong of Pete’s interest in the case.
 
She was sure they were going to be in a
good deal of trouble when the inspector next saw them.

“I’ll just take a look, if I may?” he asked.

Inspector Armstrong waved a hand.
 
“It’s fairly hopeless,” he said.
 
“The room is a mess, but everyone here
and about two hundred other people had access to it during the relevant
time.
 
It’s not on the path through
the museum for the Christmas thing, so sneaking back here would have been
easy.”

Pete stuck his head in the door to the room
and then came back to the banquet room.
 
“It looks as if several of the nativity figurines are missing,” he
said.
 
“I couldn’t quite make out
what the smashed figures were, but there doesn’t seem to be enough of them for
a full nativity scene.”

“It wasn’t a nativity scene,” Carolyn told
him.
 
“It was the four horsemen of
the apocalypse.”

“Happy Christmas,” Pete muttered under his
breath as he turned and looked around the crowd.
 
“Ah, Miss
Cubbon
,
there you are,” he said as his eyes met hers.
 
“Can I have a quick word?”

Bessie nodded and followed him out of the
room, down the corridor towards the damaged room.

“Any thoughts?” Pete asked her as soon as
they were out of earshot of the others.

“Anyone could have done it,” Bessie told
him.
 
“At least anyone associated
with the event.
 
We all knew where
the keys were kept and we all knew how to access this room through the back
corridors, as well.”

“Motive?”

“Anger at Christopher Hart?
 
Anger at Carolyn?
 
Just tired of the whole ‘Christmas at
the Castle’ event?”
 
Bessie rattled
off the first three things that crossed her mind.
 
“I don’t think anyone liked what Carolyn
did with that room.
 
It was dark and
depressing, and it actually could have generated some negative publicity for
us.
 
I wasn’t the least bit
disappointed when Mark told me it had been left locked up, I will say that.”

“But you weren’t tempted to destroy it all.”

“No, of course not, but clearly someone
was.”

“Did you find out what happened to Michael?”
Pete asked.

“He said he fell and tore his trousers and
had to go home and change.”

“And did he?”

“How should I know?”

“I mean, did he return wearing different
clothes?”

Bessie shrugged.
 
“I didn’t pay any attention to what he
was wearing this morning,” she said.
 
“I’m not even sure I could tell you what he’s wearing now.”

Pete nodded.
 
“How was the grand opening?”

“The guests seemed to have a good time, but
Carolyn, Michael, Richard, and Natasha seemed to be having some sort of
elaborate battle amongst themselves.”

She gave the inspector a brief run-through
of the evening, which left him shaking his head.
 

“Maybe I should take a few of them in for
questioning,” he suggested.
 
“Although I can’t touch Richard or Carolyn.
 
They have friends in high places.”

“That isn’t fair,” Bessie complained.

“I doubt anyone would tell me anything at
this point,” he said.
 
“Most of them
probably don’t know anything and the person who does is too well covered.
 
I think we’ll have to leave it for
tonight and see if we can pick up any fingerprints tomorrow.”

“Everyone here had a hand in decorating that
room,” Bessie told him.
 
“You’re
going to have fingerprints on top of fingerprints.”

“Ah, but I’m hoping we might find a few on
the insides of the broken pieces of those figurines,” Pete said.
 
“Only one person could have touched the
insides, I reckon.”

“That’s why you’re the police inspector and
I’m just a nosey middle-aged woman,” Bessie said with a laugh.
 
“That never crossed my mind.”

Pete walked Bessie back to the banquet
room.
 
Everyone looked at them
expectantly.
 

“As Inspector Armstrong pointed out, it’s
getting late.
 
As nothing seems to
have been stolen and no one has been hurt, as far as I’m concerned we can leave
the investigating until tomorrow,” Pete announced.
 

“Thank goodness for that,” Carolyn
muttered.
 

“Everyone is free to go,” Inspector
Armstrong announced.
 
“I’ll expect
to see all of you here in the morning.”

“I have nothing to do with this mess,”
Richard objected.
 
“If you want to
talk to me, you’ll have to do so at my offices in Douglas.”

“I’m sure we can arrange something that will
be convenient for everyone,” Pete murmured, looking at Armstrong for
confirmation.

“Of course,” the man said, nodding curtly at
Richard.

“Excellent,” Richard replied, smiling
smugly.

Bessie stood back and watched as everyone
slowly filtered out.
 
Carolyn and
Richard left together, whispering back and forth.
 
Michael said something to Natasha, who
shook her head and then swept out alone.
 
Mary hurried after her, leaving Michael to walk out behind them.
 

“That was not how I wanted the evening to
end,” Mark complained to Bessie as they made their way out, locking every door
they could behind them.

“No, but at least it was just us when the
mess was found,” Bessie pointed out.
 
“No one else need know about it.”

Chapter Eight

They were both too tired to talk on the
journey home.
 
Bessie wasn’t sure
what she could say to the man who’d put so much time and effort into “Christmas
at the Castle,” only for this to happen.
 
Aside from confirming what time he would collect her in the morning,
Mark didn’t speak at all.

It was only half ten, but it felt like
midnight when Bessie finally got to bed.
 
She pulled the covers up over her head and tried to forget about
everything that had happened at Castle
Rushen
.
 
Her brain refused to cooperate, instead
insisting on replaying the various conversations she’d overheard or been a part
of.
 

“What were Carolyn and Richard playing at?”
she demanded as she sat up in bed.
 
“And why did Natasha and Michael get in the middle of it all?”

She slid back under the covers and
sighed.
 
Even with all of her years
of experience, she still didn’t really understand how people could treat other
people so badly.
 
She could only hope
that everyone went home and calmed down, and that they would all behave better
on Saturday.
 
The more she thought
about Michael, the more puzzled she became.
 
He’d acted as if he was really drunk
some of the time, but he hadn’t sounded all that intoxicated later in the
evening.
 
Neither had Carolyn,
really.
 

“This isn’t helping,” she said loudly.
 
Giving up on sleep, she grabbed the
first book she came to on the closest shelf and found herself rereading an old
favourite
.
 
Nero
Wolfe never suffered from sleepless nights, she thought, as the overweight
detective played with his orchids and sent Archie out into the big bad world to
detect things.
 
By chapter four she
was yawning.
 
She’d read the book
too many times to lose sleep over it, so she set it down on her nightstand and
slid under the covers.
 
She was
asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Her internal alarm gave her an extra twenty
minutes of sleep the next morning, which meant Bessie had to hurry to be ready
when Mark arrived to collect her.
 

“Good morning,” he said as Bessie buckled
her seatbelt.

“Good morning,” Bessie replied.
 
“Let’s hope the police can work out what
happened in Carolyn’s room quickly so we can just get on with having ‘Christmas
at the Castle
.
’”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Mark said, “but I’m not
the least bit sorry this happened, assuming the damage remains confined to
Carolyn’s room.
 
I hate what she did
with it and I don’t think it adds anything to our event.”

“I’d have to agree with that,” Bessie told
him.
 
“I didn’t like the room
either, and I’ve no idea what the four wise men of the apocalypse were doing
there.”

Mark laughed.
 
“You do make me feel better,” he told
Bessie.
 
“I couldn’t sleep last
night for worrying about our vandal.”

“I’m sure whoever it was deliberately targeted
that room,” Bessie assured him.
 
“I’d be tempted to suggest that Mr. Hart’s murderer was behind it, but
I’d rather think that whoever killed him is long gone back across.”

“I was thinking something similar,” Mark
said.
 
“Whoever destroyed the room
had to know where the keys were kept, which makes it seem likely that it was
someone connected to the event.”

“So maybe it has nothing to do with the
murder,” Bessie said cheerfully.
 
“Maybe someone just got tired of doing Carolyn’s work for her and threw
a fit.”

“A pretty dramatic fit,” Mark said.
 
“I only glanced into the room, but it
looked as if just about everything was broken or damaged.”

“That had to take some time,” Bessie mused.

“I don’t know,” Mark replied.
 
“Smashing things doesn’t take all that
long.
 
Someone could have pulled
down the wall fabric in seconds, pushed over all the trees and then spent less
than five minutes with a hammer on the figurines.”

Bessie sighed.
 
“After all of our hard work, it’s sad
that it could all be destroyed that quickly, but I think you’re probably
right.”

“I’ll have Henry check today to see if any
hammers are missing.”

“But if someone took it, they could have
simply returned it when they were finished,” Bessie said with a sigh.
 
“I noticed you have a few small hand
tools in the ticket booth.
 
It would
have been easy enough for someone to take the hammer when they took the keys
and then return both when they were finished.”

“Maybe the hammer will have fingerprints on
it,” Mark said.

“Haven’t we all borrowed that hammer in the
last few weeks?” Bessie asked.
 
“I
know I used it at least a couple of times.”

Mark sighed.
 
“Maybe someone will simply confess,” he
said tiredly.

“Anything’s possible,” Bessie said, patting
his arm.

Mark parked near the castle and the pair
walked up the stone steps together.
 
Mark unlocked the first door and Bessie followed him inside.
 

“We’ll just wait here for Henry,” Mark
said.
 
“He can send up the committee
and the volunteers as they arrive and keep everyone else out.”

“What time do we open today?” Bessie
asked.
 
She flushed.
 
“I know I ought to remember, but I
don’t.”

“We’re open from one to five today, and then
again tonight from seven to nine,” he reminded her.
 
“That is assuming we have police
permission to carry on.”

“Oh, I do hope they don’t make us cancel,”
Bessie said.
 
“We’re raising an lot
of money for all of the good causes with every ticket we sell.”

“I just hope people don’t stay away when
they hear what happened,” Mark said.

“Maybe we can keep it quiet,” Bessie
suggested.
 
She and Mark exchanged
glances and Bessie laughed.
 

“Okay, there’s no way we can keep it quiet,
not on this island, but why would it keep people away?
 
A little light vandalism in a room that
wasn’t even open to the public shouldn’t bother anyone.”

“I hope you’re right,” Mark replied.

Bessie patted his arm again.
 
She hoped she was right as well.
 
They’d put too much time and effort into
the event to see it fail now.

Once Henry was in place at the door, Bessie
and Mark headed up to the banquet room.
 
Mark unlocked doors as they went, and both he and Bessie inspected each
room along the way.

“Everything looks perfect,” Bessie
said.
 

“I don’t suppose we ought to open up
Carolyn’s room,” Mark said.

“You can, as I’m here,” Pete
Corkill
said from the doorway behind them.

“I was rather expecting Inspector
Armstrong,” Bessie told the man.

“He’s agreed to leave it with me,” Pete told
her.
 
“He’s very busy with other
things and there might be a connection between this and my murder, so he was
happy to turn the whole thing over to me.”

Bessie doubted that happy was the right
word, but she didn’t question the man.
 

Mark unlocked the door.
 
“The switch for the overhead light is on
the left,” he told Pete.

Pete turned on the light and sighed
deeply.
 
“I suppose it looked a lot
better before everything was smashed,” he said, looking at Bessie.

“I thought it was rather awful,” Bessie
admitted.
 
“It certainly didn’t look
festive or merry.”

“I have a crime scene team coming to start
processing the mess,” Pete told them.
 
“In the meantime, I’m going to start working on trying to work out some
other things.”

Bessie and Mark walked back to the banquet
room and took seats at the long table.
 
“What do we need to do today?” Bessie asked.

“Nothing much,” Mark replied.
 
“I originally asked everyone to come in
this morning so that we could tidy everything up.
 
I thought the rooms would be more
disturbed than they are.
 
I was
surprised at how good everything looks this morning.”

“I suspect we’ll have more work to do after
the afternoon hours,” Bessie predicted.
 
“We should get lots of families through this afternoon and small
children are far more likely to want to touch things than the adults were last
night.”

Over the next half hour the charity
volunteers and the rest of the committee slowly trickled in.
 
By the time Pete’s crime scene team
arrived, everyone was there except for Michael.

“Is everyone here, then?” Pete asked from
the doorway.

“Michael isn’t,” someone answered.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted Natasha,” Mary
said hesitantly.
 
“She was planning
to fly back across this morning to spend the weekend at home, but I suggested
she probably shouldn’t.
 
She didn’t
feel like coming back down here again, though.
 
She’s at her hotel in Douglas, working
on the plans for
Thie
yn
Triae
, if you want her.”

“I’ll have someone talk to her there,” Pete
said, sounding unconcerned.
 
“I’m
already accommodating Richard
Teare
in that way.”

“I’m not sure why I had to come back,”
Carolyn grumbled loudly.

“You’d be here anyway to help us get ready
for the afternoon opening,” Mark reminded her.

She frowned and looked down at the table in
front of her.
 
Bessie thought she
looked older today, and far less attractive, even though her outfit probably cost
more than Bessie spent on clothes in several years.

“I’m sure those of you who weren’t here last
night have been informed as to what was discovered when we opened the door to
the room that Mrs.
Teare
decorated,” Pete said.
 
“For now we’re assuming that everyone
associated with the event knew where to find the keys and how to get into the
room unseen.
 
What I’d like to do is
take everyone’s fingerprints so that we can compare them with the prints that
we know we’ll find on the ornaments and other decorations.”

“Finding our prints in there won’t prove
anything,” Harriet argued.
 
“We all
did at least some of the decorating in there.”

“Exactly, and I’m hoping, once we can
eliminate all of you, that we have a set of prints we can’t identify,” Pete
told her.

Harriet didn’t look like she believed his
explanation, but she didn’t argue further.

“If we could just set up on a table
somewhere?” Pete asked Mark.

Mark rang Henry at the gate and asked him to
send up a spare table and some chairs with one of the staff on duty.
 
Everyone watched silently as the table
was set up on one side of the room with two chairs behind it and one in front.

“Who’d like to go first?” Pete asked.

“I’m happy to,” Mark said, stepping forward.

Bessie watched as everyone took their turn
to have their fingerprints taken.
 
Pete asked each person a few questions before sending them away to wash
their hands in the nearest sink.

“Miss
Cubbon
, I
think you’re next,” Pete said eventually.

Bessie walked over and sat down.
 
“I’m sure you have mine on file,” she
said as she offered her hands to the man on the opposite side of the table.

“It’s easier for us if we take a fresh set
today, if you don’t mind,” Pete told her.
 
“That way we can do comparisons on the spot.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Bessie said.

“Do you know who took Michael home last
night?” Pete asked as the man pressed each of Bessie’s fingers into the ink and
then on to the cards.

“No,” Bessie replied.
 
“He left after Carolyn and Richard,
walking out with Natasha, but I don’t know what happened once they all got
outside.
 
Mark and I were quite a
bit behind them because Mark was locking up.
 
Everyone was gone by the time we got to
the street.”

“The man seems to have disappeared again,”
Pete said grumpily.
 
“He isn’t
answering his home phone or his mobile.”