Aunt Bessie Finds (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 6) (4 page)

“Hello?” Howard called again, taking a hesitant step into the flat.

Bessie fought the urge to push the man, instead following behind
him so closely that he quickly took another step.
 
Bahey looked around before joining
them.
 
With Bessie impelling him from
behind, Howard slowly made his way down the short hall and into the living area
of the flat.

“Oh, dear!” he exclaimed.

Bessie gasped.
 
In the
centre
of the otherwise empty room, lying on the ugliest
orange and brown carpet Bessie had ever
seen,
was a
man who looked as if he’d been beaten to death.

Chapter Two

“Ring 999,” Howard said, rushing to the man.

“Don’t disturb the crime scene,” Bessie said, trying to catch his
arm.

“I’m not worried about the scene; I’m worried about the man,”
Howard told her.

Bahey was talking to the emergency operator, giving out the
address.
 
Bessie watched Howard as
he tried to find the man’s pulse.
 

“He’s alive,” Howard announced, looking up at the women.
 
“But he needs an ambulance.”

Time seemed to stand still for Bessie as they waited for the
ambulance, but it was really only a few minutes later that Bahey let the
paramedics into the building.
 
They
quickly had the man loaded onto a stretcher, checking his vital signs and
ignoring the onlookers.
 
There was
still no sign of Nigel and it seemed as if no one from the other flats on the
floor was at home.
 
If they were
home, apparently they weren’t curious as to what was happening in flat five.

“What can you tell me about him?” one of the men asked Howard.

“Nothing at all,” Howard said.
 
“We just found him here.
 
We
have no idea
who
he is or how he got here.
 
You should speak to the building
manager, but I don’t know where he is at the moment.”

The man shrugged.
 
“I’m
more concerned with getting him taken care of than anything else.
 
We’ll let the police investigate why he
was here, if anyone cares.
 
We’re
going to take him to Noble’s now.
 
He’s badly beat up, but I think he’ll survive.”

They’d only just pushed the stretcher out the front door of the
building when Bessie spotted a man with a familiar face getting out of a car in
the car park.
 

“Inspector Corkill, what brings you here?” she asked as the man
approached.

“I might ask you the same question,” he replied, giving Bessie a
thoughtful look.
 
Corkill was in his
mid-forties and his hair seemed to have more grey now than the last time she’d
seen him.
 
He also appeared to have
put on a few extra pounds.

Bessie had met the inspector just after finding a body a few months
earlier.
 
At least this time the man
she’d found was still breathing.
 
She could only hope he’d stay that way.
 

“I was having lunch with friends,” she told the inspector.
 
“We heard a strange noise from the flat
under the one we were in, so we went down to investigate.”

“Who owns the flat where the man was found?” he asked.

“As far as we know, it’s empty and up for sale,” Howard replied.
 
“The building manger, Nigel Green, is
who you need to talk to.”

Corkill nodded.
 
“And
where is Mr. Green?”

Bessie exchanged glances with the others.
 
“We don’t know,” she said after a pause.

“Is he meant to be working?” Corkill asked.

“He might be taking a lunch break,” Bahey suggested.
 
“From what I understand, his arrangement
with the owners of the building is somewhat flexible.
 
He’s on call all the time, so he doesn’t
really have to stay at the foyer desk for any set hours.
 
I gather his biggest responsibility is
letting the postman in every morning.”

“Which flat did you find the man in?”

“Number five,” Howard supplied the answer.

“Right, I’ll just go and have a look around, then,” the inspector
told them.
 
“At the moment we don’t
know if a crime has been committed or not, but it won’t hurt for me to have a
look around and maybe take a few photos.”

“It’s just an empty flat,” Howard remarked.
 

“There’s a folding sort of bed in the bedroom,” Bahey said.
 
She flushed when everyone looked at
her.
 
“I was trying to find a quiet
corner to talk to the emergency operator,” she explained.
 

“I’ll check it all out.
 
From what the paramedics said, they didn’t find any identification on
him.
 
If there isn’t anything in the
flat and the manager doesn’t know about him, we’ll have to wait until he wakes
up to find out who he is,” Corkill said.
 
“I don’t suppose any of you
recognised
him?”

The trio exchanged glances.

“I certainly didn’t,” Howard replied after a moment.

“I didn’t either,” Bahey said.

“Sorry, but he didn’t look familiar to me, either,” Bessie chimed
in.
 
“I didn’t get a very good look
at him, though,” she added.

Corkill nodded.
 
“We’ll
figure out who he is eventually.”

“Do you want formal statements from us?” Bessie asked.

“Not at this point,” he replied.
 
“Let’s wait and see what happens next.”

The foursome walked back into the building.
 
At the lift, Bahey, Bessie and Howard
headed back upstairs while the inspector continued to flat five.
 
Back in
Bahey’s
flat, Bessie felt unsettled.

“Well, whatever else is happening here, that was definitely odd,”
Bessie
said to Bahey.

“It certainly was,” Bahey agreed emphatically.
 
“Are you still willing to investigate or
do you think I should talk to the inspector about my concerns?”

Bessie shook her head.
 
“I don’t know,” she said after a moment.
 
“Let’s see what the mystery man has to
say when he wakes up.”

“Maybe he’s homeless and he saw the empty flat and decided to crash
there,” Howard suggested.

“How did he get beaten up, then?” Bessie asked.

“Maybe Nigel found him there and they had a fight,” Howard said.

“I can’t see Nigel successfully fighting anyone,” Bahey
laughed.
 
“The man looked to be
about Nigel’s age, but he also looked in much better shape.
 
He’d have flattened Nigel.”

An hour later, after talking themselves in pointless circles for
the whole time, Bessie finally decided to head for home.
 
She noticed that the inspector’s car was
already gone from the car park when she walked past.
 
She’d have to ring him in the morning
and find out what was happening, she decided, after she’d rung for a taxi.

Dave was still in Douglas and the taxi ride home was uneventful, as
was the evening that followed it.
 
Bessie took herself to bed hoping that the mystery man was doing well.

The next morning Bessie was up at six again.
 

Firmly pushing the injured man and
Bahey’s
concerns from her mind, she enjoyed her beach walk even more than normally as
she let her mind play with the idea of a holiday in Derbyshire.
 
She looked at the beach differently, experiencing
it as if the change of scenery were actually planned.
 

As ever, she walked past the row of holiday cottages, glancing in
where curtains were open.
 
She never
ceased to be amazed at how untidy they all looked.
 

Small children were already rushing about in several of them and
Bessie shook her head as one small boy threw his breakfast cereal bowl at his
mother.
 
With the sliding patio door
shut, Bessie couldn’t make out exactly what was being said inside the cottage,
but she was pretty sure she could guess what the mother might be saying.
 
Bessie hurried on towards the mansion
that was just visible in the distance.
 

From the
beach, all that could be seen of the
Pierce mansion,
Thie
yn
Traie
, was the huge wall of windows that faced out
towards the sea.
 
Bessie knew that
the house itself was much larger than it appeared from where she was standing.
 
It had been empty since March, as
several potential buyers had made offers that had fallen through for a variety
of reasons.
 
Bessie had heard a
rumour
that yet another offer had been made and she was
hoping this time the sale might actually happen.
 
She was still hoping the new owners
might settle there for good, rather than use the enormous house as a summer
home the way the Pierces had.

At the base of the wooden stairs that ran up the cliff face to the
home, Bessie stopped.
 
She
considered going further, but the August morning was already growing warm.
 
With a sigh, she turned and headed for
home.
 
She had work to do,
anyway.
 
She needed to contact the
listing agent for the flat in
Bahey’s
building and
make arrangements to see it.
 
The
sooner she did that the better, and then she could get on with planning her
holiday.

Bessie sat down at her kitchen table to make the phone call.
 
The three estate agencies on the island sent
their monthly listing magazines to every house and Bessie was pleased to
discover that she hadn’t yet thrown the most recent ones away.
 
She flipped through them, looking for
the flat in
Bahey’s
building.
 
After going through them all twice, she
gave up and rang Bahey.

“Who’s listing the flat?” she asked Bahey when her friend
answered.
 
“I’ve been through the
listings for all three agencies and I can’t find it anywhere.”

“It’s being sold through ‘Island Choice Properties,’” Bahey
replied.
 
“And before you ask, I’d
never heard of them before, either.
 
As far as I can tell, the flat in my building is their only listing,
although I haven’t been all over the island looking for others, so they might
have more that I don’t know about.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything about it,” Bessie
said.
 
“A new estate agency is
pretty big news.”

“I don’t know about that, but I have the phone number here.
 
I wrote it down off their ‘For Sale’
board that’s posted in the foyer here.
 
I told you I rang, but they wanted too much information and I had to
give up.
 
I’m sorry I didn’t think
to give you the number yesterday,” Bahey said.

“It’s no problem,” Bessie assured her.
 
After a few minutes of idle
conversation, Bessie hung up and rang the number Bahey had given her.
 
The phone rang many times and Bessie was
about to hang up when an answering machine suddenly picked up.

“You’ve reached Island Choice Properties and IC Mortgage
Services.
 
Please leave a message
after the tone and someone will ring you back.”

Bessie sighed deeply and then complied.

“My name is Miss Elizabeth
Cubbon
, and
I’m interested in seeing the flat you have listed in Douglas on
Seaview
Terrace.”
 
She left her phone number and hung up feeling annoyed.
 
Surely an estate agency should have office
staff available at half nine on a Wednesday morning?
 
And what was IC Mortgage Services?

She did a few little chores around the house, starting a load of
laundry and tidying the downstairs.
 
It was more than an hour later when her phone finally rang.

“Mrs.
Cubbon
?
 
This is Alan Collins from Island Choice
Properties, returning your call.”

Bessie bristled instantly at the oily salesman’s voice that came
down the phone to her ear.
 
Even
though he’d only introduced himself, Bessie felt an irrational dislike for the
man.

“It’s Miss
Cubbon
, actually.
 
I’m interested in the flat on
Seaview
Terrace in Douglas,” Bessie replied.
 
“I’d like to arrange to have a look at
it, please.”

“Certainly, Mrs.
Cubbon
.
 
I’d be happy to arrange that for
you.
 
Let me get a few details from
you before we make that appointment.
 
If I could just get your address, please?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to put a brochure in the post to you with some of the
particulars of the building and the flat.
 
I’ve found, in the past, that some clients discover that they are no longer
interested in a given property once they’ve seen the particulars.”

“I have a friend who lives in the building,” Bessie told him.
 
“I already have a pretty good idea of
what to expect.”