1 Aunt Bessie Assumes (8 page)

“And now she's got it,”
Bessie said.

“Not if Mr. Pierce and Mr. Donny
have anything to do with it,” Bahey whispered.  “Oh, they still seem to think
she’s wonderful, but they’re businessmen first.
 
They don’t think Miss Vikky should
inherit everything after just a couple days of marriage.
 
They're hinting that they might contest
the will unless Miss Vikky takes a small payoff and goes away quietly once all
the fuss has died down.”

“Really?” Bessie shook her
head.
 
“I guess I should be glad
that there was never enough money in my family to cause these sorts of fights.”

“Aye, mine either,” Bahey
shrugged.
 
“I got a little bit of
money when me mum and dad passed on, but I let my sister have everything
else.
 
I was across and being looked
after by the Pierces well enough.
 
Now that I’m back on the island, she’s given me some of me mum’s old
furniture to make my apartment feel more like home.
 
It’ll all go to her son anyway, when I
go, but at least we never had to fight over it.”

“I remember your sister as
well,” Bessie said.
 
“She was a
school teacher in Foxdale for many years, right?”

“Aye, she’s still there.
 
Foxdale don’t suit everyone, but she
seems to like it.
 
Her husband
passed about nine years ago, but she reckons she’s happy enough on her own now
that her boy is grown and gone.
 
But
enough of this reminiscing
.
 
You’ll have to come and visit me soon so
we can catch up properly.
 
You came
to see the Pierces.
 
Come through to
the great room and I’ll let Mr. and Mrs. Pierce know that you’re here.”

Bessie followed Bahey down a
long corridor from the garage wing into the main house.
 
There was so much to see that it was
hard for her to take it all in.
 
The
house appeared spotless and perfectly maintained.
 
Walls looked freshly painted and carpets
didn’t look as if anyone had ever walked on them.
 
Bessie tried to peek into as many rooms
as she could as they walked along, but Bahey walked too fast for her get more
than a vague impression of expensively furnished but soulless spaces.

At the end of the corridor,
Bahey flung open a door and switched on some lights.
 
“Here we are,” she told Bessie.
 
“The great room,” she said in a hushed
tone.
 
She ushered Bessie inside,
turning on more lights as they walked into the space.
 

Bessie turned around slowly
as she studied the room.
 
It was
huge, certainly larger than the whole ground floor of her cottage, with
massively high ceilings as well.
 
It
was informally divided into several areas, each containing groups of chairs and
tables.
 
The back wall of the room
was almost entirely made up of windows that stretched at least two-stories
high.
  
There was a long bar
covered in black granite just in front of the windows, with bar stools dotted
along in front of it.
 
While Bahey
had turned on several lights, with the overcast skies outside, the room felt
cold and unwelcoming.

Bessie turned to Bahey.
 
“It’s sort of a grim room, isn’t it?”

Bahey laughed.
 
“I’ve always thought so,” she
agreed.
 
“But the family loves it in
here.
 
Anyway, I’ll just tell Mr.
and Mrs. Pierce you’re here.”

Bahey disappeared back
through the door and Bessie took another slow look around the room.
 
She didn’t like it any better the second
time.
 
Unwilling to choose which
area to sit in, she made her way over to the wall of windows.
 
She could just about make out her own
cottage, a tiny dot on the horizon.
 
The police tape still blocked off the beach and Bessie could see a
single uniformed officer walking slowly along the perimeter of the tape.
 
Whether he was looking for evidence or
just guarding the area, she couldn’t tell.

Bessie swung around when she
heard the door open behind her.
 
She
immediately recognised Mr. and Mrs. Pierce from their annual summer
visits.
 
Mr. Pierce was tall and
grey-haired, with broad shoulders and an almost military bearing.
 
His wife was petite and looked exhausted
and much older than the late fifties that Bessie knew was her age.
 
The couple took a few steps into the
room and stared at Bessie.

“Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, please
accept my deepest sympathies for your loss,” she said as she crossed to them
across the large room.

Mrs. Pierce looked at her
with unfocussed eyes.
 
“Do you have
children?” she asked in a shaking voice.

“No, I was never blessed with
children of my own,” Bessie replied, taking the woman’s hand as she reached her
side.
 
“I can’t begin to imagine the
pain you’re suffering.”

“It’s unbearable,” the woman
told her, squeezing Bessie’s hand painfully.
 
“I can’t bear it.
 
The doctor has had to give me piles of
pills just so that I can breathe.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“I am so very sorry,” she repeated.
 
“I’m not sure if you even remember me,
but I live in the cottage just down the beach from you.”
 
Bessie waved her hand vaguely in the
direction of her home.

“Of course we remember
you.
 
Everyone who spends any time
in Laxey at all knows Aunt Bessie,” Daniel Pierce, Sr., answered
brusquely.
 
“It’s kind of you to pay
your respects.”

Bessie nodded and pulled her
hand away from Mrs. Pierce just long enough to shake hands with the dead man’s
father.
 
Although Mr. Pierce seemed
steady enough, when she was close enough to shake his hand Bessie realised that
a lot of his strength was currently coming from whisky.

“And of course you found the
body,” a voice from the door startled them all.
 
Bessie turned to find a heavy-set man of
about thirty-five staring at her.

“Ah, Donny, there you are,”
Mr. Pierce waved the man into the room.
 
“Aunt Bessie, this is our younger son, Donny.
 
Donny, Aunt Bessie is a neighbour who
came to pay her respects.”

“And she’s the one who found
the body,” Donny repeated himself.

“Are you?” Daniel said,
looking at Bessie with confusion on his face.

“Well, yes, technically,”
Bessie admitted, not knowing why she should feel guilty about that.

“I didn’t realise,” Daniel
told her.
 
“I don’t know that it
really matters.”
 
He shook his head
and then headed towards the bar.
 
“Anyone else need a drink?”

“You shouldn’t be drinking
this early in the day,” Donny told his father.
 

“I’ll have a nice glass of
white wine.”
 
Mrs. Pierce had
followed her husband to the bar.

“And you shouldn’t be
drinking at all,” Donny said in an exasperated tone.
 
“You’ve been given a load of medication
that doesn’t mix with alcohol.”

“I’ll only have one,” Mrs.
Pierce promised her son as she reached for the glass her husband held out to
her.

“But….”

“Oh, leave them alone,” a
bored
voice
sounded from the doorway.
 
“Let them get drunk if they want,
they’re in mourning.”

Bessie studied the young
woman who now entered the room.
 
She
was young, maybe twenty-five, blonde and very pretty, but she had a spoiled and
petulant look about her that rather ruined her natural attractiveness.
 

“You aren’t helping, Sam,”
Donny sighed.

“I wasn’t trying to help.”
 
The woman shrugged her shoulders and then
turned to Bessie.
 
“So who are you
then?”

“I’m Elizabeth Cubbon,”
Bessie answered.
 
“I live just down
the beach from here and I came to pay my respects to Mr. and Mrs. Pierce.”

The girl raised an
eyebrow.
 
“Being neighbourly, not
nosy?”

Bessie found herself almost
liking the young woman.
 
“Just
neighbourly,” she assured her.
 
“You
haven’t told me your name,” she added.

“Oh, I’m Samantha Blake, but
everyone calls me Sam,” the woman shrugged.
 
“I’m Donny’s girlfriend, I guess.”

Donny made a sound that
Bessie couldn’t even begin to interpret.
 

“The children all came for my
husband’s birthday,” Mrs. Pierce told Bessie.
 
“He turned sixty on Sunday and we had a
small family party here.
 
There was
supposed to be a bigger affair back in London next month, although I don’t
think we’ll go ahead with that now.”

“We never should have come,”
Daniel Pierce muttered darkly into his drink.
 
“Danny would be okay if we had just
stayed home.”

“Really?” Bessie couldn’t
keep the doubt from her voice.
 
There was no polite way to press the issue, though.
 
Luckily, Daniel continued.

“He must have stumbled across
some homeless person or maybe a drug deal or something on that beach,” the man
told Bessie.
 
“And he got stabbed
because of it.”

Bessie counted to ten before
she replied, carefully working to keep her voice even.
 
“I’ve lived on that beach since before
you were born,” she told the man just a little sharply.
 
“We don’t have homeless people or drug
dealers spending time there.”

Daniel shrugged and then swallowed
the rest of his drink.
 
“We should
have insisted that they honeymoon somewhere warm,” he muttered.
 
“And we should have insisted on a proper
wedding, too.”

“Was the wedding a small
event, then?” Bessie asked, letting the subject change.

Samantha laughed and then
answered for Daniel.
 
“The wedding
wasn’t much of anything,” she said.
 
“Vikky dragged poor Danny off to the registry office and got him locked
down before he knew what hit him.”

“Sam, that’s enough,” Donny said
tersely.
 
“Danny loved Vikky very
much.
 
They dated for six months or
so before they got married and they were going to have a proper bash in a few
months, once the weather was nicer.
 
The thing was, neither one of them wanted to wait to actually get
married and start their lives together.”

“Didn’t turn out to be much
of a life together, though, did it?” Samantha drawled.

“Sam!”
 
Donny looked at her furiously.
 

“I don’t know why you have to
be so horrible about me.”
 
This time
Bessie recognised the voice from the doorway.
 

“Vikky, please don’t pay any
attention to Sam.” Donny rushed over to Vikky’s side and took her arm.
 
“How are you feeling?” he asked in a
concerned tone.

“I’m okay,” Vikky answered
softly.
 
“I think I’m still in
shock.”

“That isn’t surprising under
the circumstances,” Donny said soothingly.
 
“Come and sit down and rest.”

“I didn’t know we had a
guest,” Vikky said as she suddenly noticed Bessie.

“I just came to pay my
respects.”
 
Bessie was tired of
repeating herself.
 
“I do hope
you’re feeling better today,” she added.

“Oh, you’re the woman from
yesterday, aren’t you?” Vikky asked.
 
“You were there when I found Danny.”

“Yes,” Bessie said
gently.
 
“I was there and then you
came back to my house for tea, remember?”

Vikky wrinkled her nose and
Bessie could see her trying to concentrate.
 
“I guess so,” she said eventually.
 
“The doctor was here earlier and he gave
me something to make me feel better.
 
I’m sort of out of it a bit.”

“Never mind,” Bessie told
her.
 
“You’ve had a huge shock.”

Donny led the young widow to
a seat near the window and then sat down next to her, still holding her hand
tightly.
 
Bessie glanced over at
Samantha, who rolled her eyes and sighed deeply.

Mr. and Mrs. Pierce seemed
oblivious as they sipped their drinks.
 
They were both staring into space in different directions.
 
Bessie shook her head.