Aunt Bessie Joins (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 10) (23 page)

“I dream of living inside an enormous
library,” Bessie joined in.
 
“I
could have a little bed in one corner and I suppose I’d have to have someone
bring me food three times a day, but all I would have to do is read all day
long.”

“You could have a spa tub in one corner,
with some sort of shelf above the water level to hold your book while you
soaked,” Natasha suggested.
 

She opened the sketchpad she was carrying
and began to draw.
 
Before Bessie’s
eyes, her dream library began to take shape.

“This would be the sleeping corner,” Natasha
said.
 
“We could put a small bed,
maybe with a canopy and curtains so you could shut out the world if you wanted
to.”
 
Natasha sketched a bed, piled
high with enormous pillows.
 

“That looks wonderful,” Bessie gasped.
 

“Then, in the opposite corner, a sumptuous
bathtub.”
 
The woman drew the huge
tub and then added water and bubbles to it.
 
Bessie could almost feel herself sinking
into it.

“Of course, we’d curtain off the tub area
and probably add a small water closet in its own room as well,” Natasha said,
almost to herself.
 
“A sink in with
the water closet would be good.
 
In
another corner, you’d want a refrigerator and some cupboards for snacks and
drinks in between those meals that will be magically delivered.”

Bessie laughed.
 
“You’re far too good at this,” she said
as she looked at the sketch.
 
“I’ll
just take this drawing to the planning board and see what they think of it as
an extension to my cottage.”

Natasha carefully pulled the sheet out of
the book.
 
“I know you’re only
teasing,” she said.
 
“But you may as
well keep this.
 
Maybe you will find
a use for it some day.”

“I should think you’d want to keep it,”
Bessie protested.
 
“Surely you might
be able to use it for someone?”

Natasha shook her head.
 
“I don’t think many of my clients want
to live in libraries,” she laughed.

“Now you must design my cottage,” Mary said.

The trio talked about various floor plans
for the imaginary cottage while Mary poured the tea and passed around biscuits
and mince pies.
 
Natasha sketched
several different ideas while they debated.

“I think having everything on one level
would be perfect,” Mary said.

“But I’d worry about security,” Natasha
argued.
 
“Maybe it’s the Londoner in
me, but I like to be at least one flight of stairs away from intruders.”

“I don’t think you’d have to worry about
that on the island,” Bessie said.
 
“It’s very safe here.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Natasha muttered.

Bessie flushed.
 
“I know Mr. Hart was murdered here, but
I suspect his killer was someone from across who came over specifically to kill
him.
 
And we don’t know what
happened to Michael.”

“I think Michael killed himself,” Natasha
said sadly.

“Why?” Bessie asked.

“He was very, well, depressed, just before
he died,” she replied.
 
“He wouldn’t
really talk to me about anything.
 
I
thought we were becoming friends, but then he started drinking so much and
hanging all over Carolyn
Teare
.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“I don’t know what happened, but he
certainly changed just in the short time I knew him.”

“You don’t think he killed Mr. Hart, do
you?” Bessie asked.

“I can’t imagine why he would have,” Natasha
answered.
 
“Unless Christopher was
serious about the blackmail.”
 

“What blackmail?” Mary asked, looking
confused.

“Michael told me that Christopher threatened
to press assault charges against him unless Michael paid him some money,”
Natasha explained.
 
“Michael was
worried that if Christopher did press charges he’d lose his job and find it
impossible to find another one.”

“I didn’t know that,” Mary exclaimed.
 
“Poor Michael.”

“Murdering the man seems a bit extreme,
though,” Bessie said.

“Maybe it was an accident?” Natasha
asked.
 
“The police haven’t said
anything about what they found in Christopher’s hotel room.
 
Maybe Michael and Christopher had another
fight and Michael hit him too hard or something like that.
 
I can’t see Michael killing Christopher
in cold blood, but I really didn’t know him all that well, either.”

“I barely knew him at all,” Mary said.
 
“I thought he seemed like a nice young man,
and if he had lost his job because of the altercation with Mr. Hart, I’d have
found him a position somewhere else.”

“Too bad he didn’t know that,” Natasha said
sadly.

“He did,” Mary replied.
 
“We had a little chat right after the
fight.
 
I told him to come to me if
he found himself in any trouble and I’d make sure it all worked out.”

Natasha frowned.
 
“He never told me that,” she said.
 
She stood up abruptly.
 
“I really should get back to work.
 
I’m drawing up the final plans for
Elizabeth’s bedroom.”

“Can you leave the plans for the rest of the
house with us so I can show them to Bessie?” Mary asked.

“As long as she promises not to talk about
them with anyone.
 
I’ve worked too
hard on them to have them stolen at this point,” Natasha answered.

“I won’t say a word,” Bessie promised.

Natasha nodded and then strode out of the
room, leaving her sketchpad behind.
 
For another half hour, Bessie admired the beautiful drawings that
Natasha had made of the various spaces within
Thie
yn
Traie
.

“It all looks wonderful,” Bessie said.
 
“Before today, the only room I’d been in
previously was the great room.
 
Did
I miss the sketch for that one?”

“There isn’t a sketch for that one yet,”
Mary said.
 
“It’s just such a huge,
cold and unwelcoming space, even Natasha hasn’t been able to come with any
ideas for fixing it.”

“Maybe you should divide it up,” Bessie
suggested.

“George doesn’t want to do that, and I
understand his point.
 
It’s a
wonderful room with fabulous sea views and adding walls anywhere would make it
feel chopped up somehow.
 
We’re
leaving it as it is for now, but I have high hopes that inspiration will strike
at least one of us before the rest of the house is completed.”

“How long will that take?”

“Oh, a year or more,” Mary replied.

“That’s a long time for Natasha to be over
here,” Bessie remarked.

“Oh, she’s not going to stay here for the
entire project,” Mary replied.
 
“She’s
spending Christmas here, and much of January, and then she’ll go back to London
and start work on something else.
 
The plan is that she’ll fly over once a month after that to make sure
things stay on track, but we’ll hire a local project manager to work on-site as
well.
 
Between them, things should
go smoothly enough, and when everything else is just about finished, then we’ll
worry about the great room space.”

Bessie nodded.
 
She’d had her cottage updated and
extended a couple of times since she’d bought it, but she’d never done anything
on the sort of scale Mary was undertaking.
 
“Well, I wish you good luck,” she said.
 

“Thank you.
 
I think we’re going to need it,” Mary
laughed.

Bessie turned the pages of Natasha’s
sketchbook, admiring the beautiful drawings a second time.
 
Towards the back of the book there were
a few pages of notes, written in beautiful handwriting.

“What exquisite writing,” Bessie exclaimed.

“Natasha does calligraphy,” Mary told
her.
 
“Sometimes she writes out
quotes and the like and then frames them as decoration in some of the rooms she
designs.”

“I’ve always wished I’d spent more time on
my handwriting,” Bessie said.
 
“I’m
just not patient enough.
 
I want to
write everything down as quickly as I can, but what I end up with is often
illegible, even to me.”

Mary laughed.
 
“I know what you mean.
 
I write lists for George of little
chores that need doing, but he can’t ever read them.”

“Or maybe that’s just what he tells you,”
Bessie suggested.

Mary laughed again and then insisted on
taking care of the tidying up
herself
.
 
“That’s what I love about being out
here,” she told Bessie.
 
“There
isn’t any staff, aside from Natasha, so I can do a bit of my own
housework.
 
I’m sure I’ll soon grow
tired of it, but for now it’s quite the novelty.”

Bessie walked the short distance home
thinking about Mary’s words.
 
Housework certainly wasn’t Bessie
favourite
thing to do, but she did love taking care of her little cottage.
 
Having staff would feel uncomfortable to
her, she
realised
as she let herself into her
home.
 
She glanced around, noticing
that the floors needed a good vacuuming.
 
I suppose it’s just as well I don’t want staff, she thought to herself
as she pulled out the vacuum.

Chapter Twelve

Bessie woke up on Tuesday morning feeling
like Christmas was suddenly much too close for comfort.
 
After her shower, she dressed and had a
quick breakfast of cereal and fruit and then headed out for her walk.
 
It was raining heavily, so she kept the
walk short, turning around as soon as she’d reached the holiday cottages.

It’s a good thing I have lots to do today,
she told herself as she stood dripping in her kitchen.
 
She hung up her wet things and dried
herself off as best she could.
 
She
then stood in the middle of the kitchen lost in thought for a moment.

Somewhere, in one of the bedrooms upstairs,
she had a box of Christmas decorations.
 
Most years she didn’t bother with them, but this year she felt as if she
should make an effort.
 
Perhaps all
the beautifully decorated trees at Castle
Rushen
had
inspired her.

As she sorted through several boxes, most of
which were filled with books, she thought about the Christmases she’d
celebrated over the years.
 
Christmas had been a much quieter affair when she’d been a child growing
up in America than it was today.
 
It
had been mostly a religious celebration with less emphasis on shopping and
presents and more on celebrating Christ’s birth.
 
When she’d first moved back to the
island, she’d usually spent Christmas with one or another of her friends and
their families.
 
As those friends
grew older and married and had families of
their
own,
Bessie began to celebrate the holiday on her own, which she didn’t mind in the
slightest.

Bessie firmly believed that Christmas was
for families and that those families could best enjoy their holiday if they
didn’t have to entertain guests.
 
She had no shortage of places she could go if she’d wanted to; her
advocate and his family invited her over every year, as did a number of other
friends around the island, but she was quite content at home with a few good
books.
 
For the last two years,
she’d had
Doona
over for Christmas dinner.
 
Doona
had
grown up on the island, but didn’t have any family still living on it.
 
The two women enjoyed a traditional
Christmas dinner together and exchanged small gifts in the afternoon, leaving
Bessie to enjoy her alone time in the morning and evening.
 
Nothing had been said yet, but Bessie
assumed that
Doona
was planning on joining her again
this year.

“Won’t she be surprised when she sees the
tree,” Bessie chuckled to herself when she found the right box.
 
It was right at the back, as it had been
at least five or six years since she’d opened it.

Bessie carried the awkward box down into the
kitchen and set it on the counter.
 
After she cut through the tape she’d used to seal it, she opened
it.
 
Inside everything was neatly
packed, just as she’d remembered.

The small artificial tree came out
first.
 
It was very old, one of the
first artificial trees that she’d seen on the island many years earlier.
 
She’d bought it on impulse that year,
excited by the idea of having a tree that would last for years to come.
 
It had definitely seen better days, even
though it had been only used occasionally.
 
After sliding it into the stand, Bessie did her best to straighten out
the branches.
 
With some effort, it
began to look a little bit better.
 

Decorations will hide the worst bits, she
thought eventually.
 
She’d been
working on the tree with it on the kitchen table, but it was just a little bit
too big to remain there.
 
Lifting it
down to the floor, she looked around the small space.
 
There didn’t seem to be any good place
to put it.
 
Carrying it carefully,
she headed into the sitting room, eventually standing it in one corner,
partially blocking a bookshelf.
 

“It’s only for a few days,” she muttered to
herself, suddenly seized with an irrational desire to rescue the hidden
books.
 
“You’ll be fine back there,”
she told the books.
 
“I haven’t
forgotten you, I promise.”

Shaking her head at her foolishness, she
went back into the kitchen to find the tree’s decorations.
 
An hour later the little tree was
sparkling and festive.
 
Bessie stood
back and gave it a critical look.

It could do with Natasha’s magic touch, but
it didn’t look too bad, she decided.
 
Back in the kitchen, she pulled out a few other decorations, which she
scattered around the house.
 
At the
very bottom of the box she found her childhood Christmas stocking.
 
It was tattered and threadbare, and she
was almost afraid to pick it up in case it simply fell to bits, but apparently
it was sturdier than it looked and it held together while she inspected it.

It was plain red with a strip of white at
the very top, exactly like Christmas stockings ought to be.
 
Bessie was sure that her mother had sewn
it herself.
 
Her name, “Elizabeth,”
was stitched across the top in tipsy letters that Bessie remembered her older
sister stitching for her when Bessie had been about five.
 
Not wanting to put the stocking back
into the now empty box and leave it as the only decoration not being used,
Bessie wondered what she should do with it.
 
Eventually she set it on top of another bookcase
in the sitting room before she carried the empty box up to the spare bedroom
and then headed back down to see how it all looked.

Deciding it was just about perfect, Bessie
went back upstairs and pulled out rolls of wrapping paper.
 
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the sheer
number of ornaments she’d purchased, she measured the first box and then cut
several sheets of paper to size.
 
Some considerable time later she sat back and surveyed the huge pile of
brightly wrapped gifts.
 
It had
taken far too long, but the job was done and she was relieved.
 
She carefully packed all of the ones for
the people at Castle
Rushen
into a box and then piled
everything else under her Christmas tree.
 

“Now it truly looks like Christmas in here,”
she said aloud.
 
While she ate her soup
and sandwich, she wondered what she wanted to do with her afternoon.
 
The rain was still pouring down, which
limited her options.
 
She’d just
finished the washing-up when an idea popped into her head.

I’ll make Christmas cookies, she thought to herself.
 
I haven’t done that since I can’t
remember when.
 
While not an English
or Manx tradition, Bessie mother had added Christmas cookies, which were becoming
an American custom at the time, to their family holiday when Bessie had been
small.
 
Over the years, Bessie’s
sister had often sent her different recipes that they had enjoyed at their home
in the US.
 
Now Bessie pulled down
her recipe box and began to look through it.

An hour later, with sugar cookie dough in
the refrigerator and butter softening on the counter for chocolate chip
cookies, Bessie decided to take a short walk.
 
She walked as far as
Thie
yn
Traie
and then turned
back for home.
 
She’d only gone a
few steps when she heard something behind her.
 
Turning around, she saw someone climbing
down the steps from the house above.
 

“Miss
Cubbon
?
 
I was wondering if I could have a word
with you,” Natasha called.

Bessie stopped and waited for the girl to
join her.
 
“How are you?” she asked
when Natasha had crossed to her.

“I’m okay, but I sort of wanted a bit of
advice,” she replied.

“It’s too cold to stand still,” Bessie said,
shivering.
 
“Why don’t you walk back
to my cottage with me?
 
We can talk
there.”

“I suppose Mary won’t miss me if I’m only
gone for a short while,” Natasha said.
 
“She’s gone into Douglas for something, anyway.”

Back at the cottage, Natasha paused in the
doorway.
 
“
Treoghe
Bwaaue
,” she read from the small sign at the
door.
 
“Is that Manx, like
Thie
yn
Traie
?”

“It is,” Bessie told her.
 
“It means Widow’s Cottage.”

“Oh, I didn’t
realise
you were a widow.
 
I thought Mary
said to call you Miss
Cubbon
.”

“I’m not a widow,” Bessie explained.
 
“I’ve never married.
 
The cottage had the name when I bought
it.”

“Oh, I see.”

“But you didn’t come over to talk about my
cottage,” Bessie said.
 
“What can I
help you with?”

“It’s Richard
Teare
,”
Natasha said.
 
“I suppose I was
flirting with him a little bit at Castle
Rushen
the
other night, but he seems to have taken me rather more seriously than I’d
intended.
 
He keeps ringing me and I
can’t seem to find a polite way to discourage him.”

“Why be polite?” Bessie asked as she put the
kettle on.

Natasha laughed.
 
“I’m tempted not to be, of course, but
he’s a very wealthy man with wealthy friends and my business relies heavily on
word of mouth.
 
I can’t afford to
anger him, but I don’t intend to have an affair with him, either.”

Bessie busied herself with teacups and
saucers while she thought.
 
“I
assume you aren’t answering his calls,” she said eventually.

“I answered the first time he rang.
 
He was talking about having me do some
design work in his offices and I could really use the job.”

“But that wasn’t why he rang?”

“Oh, he started off talking about that, but
then he asked me to have dinner with him and it became clear that he was hoping
to, well, have more than just a professional relationship.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I told him I don’t get involved with
married men,” Natasha replied.
 
“He
gave me some line about his marriage being a mess and how Carolyn had been
cheating on him, but I said that didn’t matter.”

“Carolyn was cheating on him?” Bessie asked.

“Apparently,” Natasha replied.
 
“He said he’d been all wrong about that,
though.
 
He told me that he thought
she was having an affair with Christopher Hart, but then he found out it was really
Michael Beach that she was seeing behind his back.”

“Really?” Bessie gasped.

“I don’t know how true any of it is,
though,” Natasha added.
 
“The man
was trying to persuade me to start an affair with him.
 
He might have just been making
accusations to try to win my sympathy.”

“I suppose so,” Bessie said thoughtfully.

“Anyway, I don’t suppose you have any advice
for dealing with him?”

“I don’t, really,” Bessie told her.
 
“The best thing you can do is avoid him,
but if you really want that job with him, that won’t be easy.”

“I do really want that job,” Natasha said
fiercely.
 
“It could open a lot of
doors for me if he tells people he hired me to fix something that Christopher
did for him.”

“Did Mr. Hart leave behind a lot of unhappy
customers?”

“Christopher did elaborate designs that told
a story or painted a picture or some such thing,” Natasha explained.
 
“But a lot of what he did was totally
impractical for day-to-day use.
 
He
charged ridiculously high prices, though, so no one was about to start making
changes after he’d finished, at least not right away.”

“I can only suggest that you try to limit
any meetings you have with the man to very public places,” Bessie said.
 
The kettle boiled and Bessie poured them
both
tea
.

Natasha sipped hers before she answered.
 
“I can certainly try,” she said.
 
“I’ve told him I’m really busy at
Thie
yn
Traie
for now, which is true.
 
We’re meant
to be meeting in the
new year
.
 
Maybe he’ll have found someone else by
then.”