Aunt Bessie Joins (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 10) (16 page)

“I hope he’s okay,” Bessie said, feeling
slightly worried for the man, but only cautiously so after his disappearing act
the previous day.

“You don’t know if he has a girlfriend or
anything like that?” Pete asked.

Bessie shook her head.
 
“I really rarely spoke to him,” she
explained.
 
“He came and decorated
his room the first day we were open for decorating, and then he didn’t come
back until the day Mr. Hart arrived to assess everything.”

“When did his relationship with Carolyn
begin?”

“I don’t know that they have a
relationship,” Bessie replied.
 
“There seemed to be something going on between them last night, though.”

“Did they meet when Michael came to decorate
his room?”

Bessie thought back.
 
“I don’t think so,” she said after a
moment.
 
“I don’t think Carolyn was
spending much time down here then.
 
She
came to committee meetings but otherwise, she wasn’t here.
 
Mark and I are the only two committee
people who’ve been on site pretty much nonstop since early December.”

“I’m going to let you go because I don’t
want people to think I’m spending more time with you than I am with everyone
else,” Pete told her.
 
“But I’d
really like to talk to you again later today.”

“I’m here all day,” Bessie told him.
 
“Although I’ll probably be quite busy
when the castle is open.”

“Maybe I can buy you dinner between
sessions,” Pete suggested.

Bessie nodded.
 
“I can pay my own way,” she told him.

“But you’ll let me buy anyway,” Pete added.

Bessie stood up.
 
Before she could walk away, Pete had one
final question.

“Do you have any idea where we might find
some of Michael’s fingerprints?” he asked.

Bessie laughed.
 
“I think I might, actually,” she said,
sounding as surprised as she felt.
 
“In the room he decorated, there might be at least one really good set
of prints, now that I think about it.”

Pete frowned.
 
“I’ll have you show me after we’re done
here,” he said.

Bessie nodded and walked away.
 

“Mrs.
Teare
, I
believe you’re the only one we’ve missed,” Pete said.

“I was just speaking with my advocate,”
Carolyn replied.
 
“He says I don’t
have to give you my prints.”

“Of course you don’t,” Pete agreed
easily.
 
“But we would greatly
appreciate your cooperation.”

Carolyn frowned and stared at her mobile.
 
Bessie could see indecision etched
across the other woman’s face.
 
When
the mobile buzzed, everyone in the room seemed to jump.

“Yes, yes, I see, okay, thank you,” Carolyn
said on her end.

“Richard would prefer it if I decline,” she
said stiffly.
 
“He won’t be
providing his either.”

Pete nodded, clearly unsurprised by the news.
 
“Miss
Cubbon
,
if you could show me what we were discussing, then?” he asked.

Bessie stood up and the pair left the
room.
 
She could feel the curious
stares that followed her out of the space.
 
When they reached it, Michael’s room felt weirdly empty to Bessie.
 
She scolded herself for her overactive
imagination and led Pete to the large tree in the back of the room.

“All of the ornaments on this tree were
donated by the families of men and women who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
disease,” Bessie told Pete.
 
“Michael was here when we opened that first morning, and just after
lunch I came up to see how he was doing.
 
He’d finished the entire room, except for this tree.
 
As you can see, many of the ornaments
are old and some of them were quite dusty.
 
Michael was polishing them, one at a time, before hanging them on the
tree.”

“Was he now?” Pete asked.

“See that shiny silver one at the top?”
Bessie asked.
 
“I teased him about
getting fingerprints on it, because it’s so shiny.”

“So he was extra careful not to,” Pete
guessed.

“No, he grabbed it with both hands, pushing
his fingertips against it,” Bessie said.
 
“We were both laughing about how if he robbed a bank, we had all the
evidence we needed.”

Pete nodded.
 
“I do hope he didn’t give the ornament
another polish after you left,” he muttered.
 
He took gloves and a plastic bag from
his pocket and carefully put the ornament into the bag.
 

Bessie followed him back to the banquet room,
where Mark was anxiously looking at his watch.

“It’s just about midday,” he said as Bessie
walked in.
 
“We open in about an
hour.
 
I didn’t have lunch catered
today, because I didn’t
realise
we were going to be
tied up all morning.”

“The pub across the street has excellent
food,” Bessie suggested.

“And I’ll treat because we’ve all been
working so hard,” Mary added.

A few people cheered and then everyone
headed for the exit.
 
Bessie waited
while Mary had a quick word with Pete and then they followed the others out of
the castle and across the road.

Lunch was delicious but rushed.
 
It was a small pub that wasn’t used to
unexpected and large groups at that time of day, but they managed to get
everyone happily fed with five minutes to spare.
 
Mark thanked Mary repeatedly, until he
had to hurry back to the castle to make certain everything was ready.
 
Mary had insisted on including Henry and
Laura as well as the three young MNH staff members who were helping at the
castle that day in the invitation to lunch, and they were all quick to follow
Mark back across the road.
 
The
charity volunteers and the committee members were a bit slower.
 

“I should hurry,” Marjorie said as she
swallowed her last bite of sticky toffee pudding.
 
“I’m MNH staff, after all.”

“But today you’re ‘Christmas at the Castle’
committee, really,” Bessie said.
 
“Knowing MNH, you aren’t getting paid for all the extra time and effort
you’ve put into this little event.”

“I’m not,” Marjorie agreed.
 
“But I love it anyway.”

“If I had to work for a living, I certainly
wouldn’t give up my free time,” Carolyn sniffed.

“When you work for a non-profit, you often
find that your desire to help them succeed overrides your self-interest,”
Marjorie replied.

“If you say so,” Carolyn said doubtfully.

“You do a lot of volunteer work,” Bessie
said.
 
“Surely you get a great deal
of satisfaction from that.”

Carolyn raised her eyebrows at Bessie.
 
“Satisfaction?
 
Hmm, yes, I suppose so,” she
replied.
 
“But really, I do what I
have to as a result of my husband’s position in Manx society, that’s all.
 
Mary understands, don’t you, my dear.”

Mary smiled thinly.
 
“I only volunteer for projects I’m
interested in and where I think I can actually make a difference,” she told the
other woman.
 
“I’d like to think I
was a real help with ‘Christmas at the Castle.’”

“You were,” Bessie said emphatically.

Carolyn looked at Bessie expectantly, but
Bessie couldn’t bring herself to say what she knew Carolyn wanted to hear.
 
Fortunately, the waitress interrupted
before she could reply.

“I have everything you ordered ready to go,”
the girl told Mary as she handed her the bill.

Mary glanced at it and then gave the girl a
stack of notes.
 
“Thank you,” she
said.
 

The girl brought three large and very full
carrier bags over to them.
 
“Here
you are,” she said brightly.
 
“Was
there anything else today?”

Bessie assumed, from the girl’s suddenly
increased enthusiasm, that she’d counted the money she’d been given and just
realised
that Mary had added a very generous tip.
 
Mary always did.

Marjorie insisted on carrying two of the
bags, leaving just one for Bessie and Mary to fight over.

“I paid for it,” Mary argued.

“All the more reason for me to carry it,”
Bessie replied.
 
“But what is it all
for?”

“Inspector
Corkill
and his men,” Mary told her.
 
“He
wouldn’t let any of them take a break to join us, so I told him we’d bring
lunch to them.”

Bessie smiled at her friend.
 
Unlike many wealthy women, Mary was always
thinking of others.
 
She’d also
allowed Pete to take her fingerprints without a murmur.

A long queue had built up in front of the
castle, so Bessie and the others headed around to the side door.
 
They slipped inside quickly and took the
back stairs to the banquet room.

“We’re just about to open for business, so
you really can’t eat in here,” Mark said apologetically when he walked through
as Mary was handing the feast over to Pete.
 
“We can open another room for you,
though, and move the table you were using in there.”

“That would be great,” Pete said.
 
“And we all truly appreciate your
kindness,” he told Mary.
 
“I could
get into a lot of trouble for accepting gifts from a suspect,” he added.

“It’s only lunch,” Mary told him.
 
“And I promise not to expect special
treatment because of it.”

“You won’t get it,” Pete told her
seriously.
 

Mary laughed.
 
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she
assured him.

Two policemen quickly moved the table into
the small room that Mark unlocked for them.
 

“I’ll have a member of staff stationed in
here,” Mark told Pete.
 
“They’ll keep
our guests from taking a wrong turn into this corridor.”

“I appreciate that,” Pete told him.
 
“The crime scene is enough of a mess
without adding to it.”

The sound of a bell ringing alerted everyone
that the castle was now open for business.
 
Bessie rushed down to the courtyard to help greet the afternoon’s
guests.
 
For the next four hours,
she had little time to do anything but answer questions and thank people for
coming.
 
When five o’clock finally
arrived, she was grateful to see the last of their afternoon guests leaving.

“That was exhausting,” she said to Laura as
they made their way back to the banquet room.
 
Mark had requested that everyone attend
a very short meeting to discuss how things had gone before they all took a
much deserved
break before the evening session.

“I think it went brilliantly,” Agnes
said.
 
“Our little donation box was
stuffed so full that we had to empty it twice.
 
And it wasn’t all one-pound notes and
coins, either.
  
There were
fives and tens in there as well.”

“We must have three or four hundred cards
for sick children and our military personnel,” Margaret said.
 
“And at least that many letters to
Father Christmas.
 
The children were
all very excited about that.”

“I was wondering if we ought to have Father
Christmas visit the site,” Mark said thoughtfully.

“Not this year,” Bessie said
emphatically.
 
“We have quite enough
going on for this year.”

“I’m with Bessie on that one,” Marjorie
said.
 
“We can add it to the list of
things to do differently next year, but let’s not complicate things now.”

After a quick check that no one had any
concerns or problems, Mark sent them all away to rest and relax until half
six.
 
“All of the rooms will
probably need a bit of straightening up,” he said.
 
“But go and have something to eat and
relax for a while first.
 
The
committee members will come around starting at half six to help anyone who
needs it as you fix up your rooms.”

The group slowly began to disperse.
 
Bessie waited to see if Pete still
wanted to have dinner with her.

“Ah, Bessie, I’m a bit too busy with, um,
something, to leave right now,” he said when she stuck her head in the room
where he was working.
 
“Maybe I
could drive you home later and we can talk then.”