1 Aunt Bessie Assumes (21 page)

Chapter Twelve

Everything hurt. Bessie winced as she wiggled a single
toe and a stabbing pain shot through her leg. She moaned softly.

“Oh, Bessie, are you awake?”

Bessie heard Doona's voice, but she didn't feel
like answering.  She could tell that she was in a bed somewhere and from
the noises she could hear she reckoned it must be a hospital.  She sighed
to herself as she realised that her nose was so itchy she was going to have to
move.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes and looked
around.  The first thing she spotted was Doona's worried face.

“Oh, Bessie, you’re awake then,” Doona said
happily. “Let me get the doctor.
 
I’ll be right back.”

Before Bessie could speak Doona had leapt up and
run to the door.
 
Bessie could hear
her talking excitedly to someone in the hallway.

“The nurse is going to get the doctor,” Doona announced
when she returned to Bessie's bedside.  “He wasn't expecting you to wake
up until at least tomorrow.”

As Bessie took a mental inventory of her aches
and pains she thought that perhaps the doctor was right. Perhaps she would've
been better off sleeping until the next morning.

“Everything hurts,” she said softly. “And the
end of my nose is itchy.”

Doona chuckled as she reached over and gave
Bessie's nose a quick scratch.  “Your nose is one of the few spots that
isn't bumped and bruised,” she told Bessie as she patted her arm.

Bessie cautiously tried moving first one arm and
then the other and was relieved to find that the pain was mostly bearable.
 She shifted her legs back and forth a little bit and again felt satisfied
that there would be no lasting damage.

“What happened?” she asked Doona. 

“Well, that's what we all want to know,” Doona
told her.  “Hugh found you at the bottom of the stairs leading from Thie
yn Traie to the beach.”

Bessie nodded slowly. “Someone pushed me,” she
said.

Doona drew a sharp breath. “Are you sure?”

“I'm positive,” Bessie answered.  Before
she could go any further the door swung open and a man, who looked all of
fifteen to Bessie’s eyes, strolled in casually.

“How are we feeling, then?” the man said to
Bessie, patting her hand and then taking her pulse.

“I'm feeling pretty miserable,” Bessie told the
man with sandy-blonde hair and a very boyish face.

“That’s hardly
surprising.
 
You took a nasty tumble
down those stairs,” the man replied. “With your age I was expecting quite a few
broken bones when they brought you in, but it appears you've escaped with only
minor bumps and bruises.”

Bessie bristled at the
reference to her age, but held her tongue.
 
“It’s all pretty painful,” she said.

“We didn’t want to fill you
up with pain medication until you regained consciousness,” the man told
her.
 
“I’m Dr. Mark Cannell, by the
way.
 
I’ll be looking after you this
evening.”

“How long do I have to stay?”
Bessie asked.

The doctor laughed.
 
“Why does everyone always want to leave
as soon as they arrive?” he asked, not expecting a reply.
 
“I want to keep you overnight for sure.
 
We’ll see how you’re feeling in the
morning before we decide anything past that.”

Bessie frowned but then realised
that she was in too much pain to argue.
 
“One night,” she told Dr. Cannell firmly.
 
“I’m going home in the morning.”

“We’ll see in the morning,”
the doctor answered her cheerfully, his clear green eyes meeting her pain-filled
ones.
 
“For now, I’ll send the nurse
in with some pain medication and maybe something to eat as well.
 
The police are waiting to take a
statement, but I suggest you have me tell them that they have to wait until
tomorrow.”

Doona had slipped out of the
room while the doctor was checking Bessie over; now she returned and grinned at
her friend.

“Who’s here waiting to see me?”
Bessie asked her.

“Inspector Rockwell and
Hugh,” Doona told her with a grin.

“I’ll see them tonight,”
Bessie told the doctor.
 
He looked
as if he might argue with her, but then shook his head and left the room.

A few minutes later Hugh and
Inspector Rockwell stuck their heads around the door to Bessie’s small
room.
 

“How are you?” the inspector
asked as he entered.

“Confused,” Bessie answered slowly.
 
“Before I answer your questions, you
need to answer mine.”

“Certainly.”
 
The inspector smiled at her and then
pulled up a chair from along the wall.
 
He sat down next to her bed and patted her hand gently.
 
“Go ahead, then; what do you need to know?”

“Well,” Bessie sighed.
 
“For a start, where am I?
 
If I had to guess, I would say Ramsey
Cottage Hospital, but I thought I knew all the doctors there and this Mark Cannell
is a stranger.”

Doona smiled.
 
“You are at Ramsey Cottage Hospital,”
she told her friend before Inspector Rockwell spoke.
 
“Dr. Cannell transferred here from Noble’s
last month.
 
He’s replacing Dr.
Martindale, who’s moved back across to somewhere near Leeds.”

“Ah,” Bessie smiled.
 
“I never liked that man anyway, so good
for us and good luck Leeds.”

Doona laughed.
 
“I don’t think anyone liked him,” she
remarked.
 
“He had no idea about
bedside manner.
 
Why, my neighbour
brought her….”

Inspector Rockwell coughed
softly.
 
“I hate to interrupt, but I
still have some murders to solve here and every reason to think that the
murderer is someone at Thie yn Traie.
 
If we could focus on that for just a few minutes, I’ll get out of your
way and leave you to your chat.”

Doona looked apologetically
at the man.
 
“Sorry, I forgot,” she
muttered.

“It’s fine,” Inspector
Rockwell told her with a smile.

“So how did I get here?”
Bessie interjected her next question.
 
“I remember talking to Bahey and then Robert showing me around the back
of the house.
 
I was walking down
the steps and I could hear someone behind me, but every time I looked back,
there wasn’t anyone there.”

“The paths and stairs wind
around a great deal,” Rockwell told her.
 
“And there are plenty of trees and shrubs and other landscaping to hide
behind as well.
 
Doona said you
thought you were pushed when she came out to see me.”

“I was definitely pushed,”
Bessie said firmly.
 
“I heard
someone behind me again just as I started down the long flight of stairs.
 
I was debating whether I should turn
around or not when, suddenly, two hands gave me a shove from behind.”

Doona gasped again, as if she
were hearing it for the first time.
 
Bessie shot her an exasperated look.
 
“What I want to know,” Bessie said, “is
what happened next.”

Hugh cleared his throat
self-consciously.
 
“I guess that’s
where I come in,” he told Bessie as he approached the side of her bed.
 
“I was down on the beach, taking down
the rest of the crime scene tape.
 
Well, actually, first I was taking it down and then I was putting it
back up.”
 
He sighed.
 

“Inspector Kelly and I had
something of a difference of opinion as to whether or not it was time to take
the tape down,” Inspector Rockwell said smoothly.
 
“He gave orders for the tape to be
removed, and then I suggested that it might be best if we left it up for just a
short time longer.”

“Aye, and you could hear his
‘suggestion’ from about a mile away,” Doona told Bessie with a chuckle.

Inspector Rockwell
flushed.
 
“Poor Hugh was stuck out
in the rain almost all afternoon, taking down and then replacing the tape.”

“And it’s lucky I was,” Hugh
returned to his story.
 
“I was just
about finished when I looked up and saw you walking down the steps towards the
beach,” he told Bessie.
 
“Of course,
I didn’t know it was you.
 
I just
saw someone walking down the steps.
 
I figured it was one of them Pierces and I was going to have to tell
them that the beach was still a crime scene and they couldn’t walk on it.
 
But then,” he paused dramatically, “I
spotted someone coming up behind you.
 
Well, I thought they were just going to catch up to you for a chat or
something, and I got on with what I was doing, but the next time I looked up,
you were in a big heap at the bottom of the stairs.”

“So you didn’t see me get
pushed?” Bessie asked in a disappointed voice.

“No, sorry,” Hugh said.
 
“I had no reason to think you were going
to get pushed,” he tried to explain.
 
Bessie could tell that he felt terrible.

“Of course you didn’t,” she
answered, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze.
 

“Well, anyway, once I
realised that you’d fallen, I called the ambulance crew and I ran over to
you.
 
I was scared, when I saw it
was you, that you’d broken your neck or something.
 
I tried to wake you up, but I couldn’t.”
 
He stopped and Bessie could see how
upset he had been by the look on his face.

“But I was okay,” she
reminded him.
 
“I guess the fall
just knocked the wind out of my sails.”

“The doctor said you were
amazingly lucky,” Doona told her.
 
“Somehow you managed to fall at just the right angle to protect your
head and not break any bones.
 
It
helped that you landed in sand, rather than anything harder.”

“I don’t feel so lucky right
now,” Bessie admitted.
 
“I ache
everywhere.”

A middle-aged nurse, with
black hair that was obviously coloured, chose that opportune moment to peek her
head in.
 
“Are we ready for a wee
pain tablet now?” she asked in a cloying voice.

“I suppose so,” Bessie said
reluctantly.
 
“I don’t really like
to take such things,” she told the nurse.

“Now, now, doctor’s orders,”
the nurse clucked.
 
“We wouldn’t
want to make nice Dr. Cannell unhappy, now would we?”

Bessie bit back a dozen replies
and simply swallowed the medicine she was offered.
 

“Can I get you some toast or
a cup of yoghurt?” the nurse asked.
 
“Are you hungry at all?”

Bessie shook her head.
 
“I’m
fine
, just
very tired.”

“Well now, in that case, I
think it’s time to chase away your visitors so you can get some rest,” the
nurse told her.

“We still have some
unfinished business,” Inspector Rockwell told the woman.
 
“We won’t stay long.”

The nurse clucked again.
 
“Make sure that you don’t.
 
This patient needs a lot of rest.”
 
Disapproval was evident in every word,
even as she smiled ingratiatingly at the handsome inspector.

“Ten more minutes,” Rockwell
promised her.

“If you must,” the nurse
answered, giving Rockwell a wink, before she swept out of the room.

“She’s fun,” Doona drawled as
the door swung shut.

Bessie laughed and then
stopped.
 
“Oh, don’t make me laugh,”
she moaned.
 
“It hurts to laugh.”

“No worries, that ‘wee pain
tablet’ will sort you out,” Doona grinned.

Bessie smiled at her
friend.
 
“So Hugh called an
ambulance and they brought me here,” she picked the story back up where Hugh
had left off.
 

“Yes, and he called me as
well.
 
I met the ambulance in
Accident and Emergency, where the doctor checked you over and said nothing was
broken, but you might not come around until morning,” Doona told her.
 

“Hrmph,” Bessie said.
 
“Shows what he knows.”
 
Doona and the others laughed.

“I just have one question for
you, then, before the nurse comes back and throws us out,” Inspector Rockwell
told her.
 
“Who pushed you?”

Bessie shook her head slowly,
trying to think.
 
The painkiller was
already starting to cloud her thinking, but even before she had taken it she
had been trying to figure out the answer to that question.
 
“I have no idea,” she finally admitted.
 
“It could have been just about anyone
from the house.
 
Did you get to question
them all?”