Aunt Bessie Goes (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 7) (27 page)

The
conversation at lunch felt stilted to Bessie.
 
Grant seemed tense and nervous, but
perhaps he was just excited about his holiday.
 
George kept asking him questions about
various business issues that Bessie knew nothing about.
 
Grant’s answers all seemed vague and
unhelpful to Bessie, but perhaps she simply didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry,”
Mary whispered as they started on the main course.
 
“I didn’t know Grant was going to be
here.”

“It’s fine,”
Bessie
said, politely untruthful.
 
“We can talk after lunch.”

“Definitely,”
Mary said, patting Bessie’s hand.

“So, do you
think Doona will miss me?” Grant asked suddenly.

“I suppose
we’ll all miss you,” Bessie said, meeting Grant’s eyes with false bravado.

Grant laughed.
 
“You’ll be glad to see me go,” he
said.
 
“But we need to have a quick
chat after lunch, you and I.
 
I have
some things I want to tell you.”

Bessie
frowned.
 
“Why not tell me now?” she
asked.
 
“I really need to get home
after lunch.”

“Oh, no, we
need to talk privately,” Grant said.
 
“I’m sure you can spare a few minutes for me.
 
We can skip pudding if you’re really in
a hurry.”

Bessie
flushed.
 
She wasn’t in a
hurry,
she simply didn’t want to talk to Grant.
 
But there was no way she was missing
pudding for him.
 

“I suppose, if
you keep it short, I can find the time,” she muttered.

“Excellent,”
Grant said, smiling broadly.
 
He
then launched into a long story about some of his previous travels that took
them through the rest of the meal.
 

“Your chef is
wonderful,” Bessie said as she scraped up the last of her Eve’s pudding.
 

“She’s very
good,” Mary agreed.
 
“And she did a
great job today.”

Bessie pushed
back her chair.
 
“I’ll just freshen
up, if I may?”

Mary showed her
to the closest loo where Bessie washed sticky custard off her fingers and
touched up her lipstick.

“I don’t want
to talk to Grant,” she told her reflection.

“Be brave,”
her reflection said firmly.
 
“Whatever he says, he’s going away soon and you won’t have to see him
again for a while.”

Bessie stuck
her tongue out at herself and then sighed.
 
She grabbed her bag and walked back outside.
 
Grant was standing on the terrace,
looking out towards the sea.

“Ah, there you
are Bessie.
 
Let’s have a short
stroll, shall we?”

He offered
Bessie his arm and she took it, trying to hide her reluctance.
 
There was a path that ran from the
terrace to the edge of the cliff that overlooked the sea below.
 
They walked along slowly.
 
Grant paused near where workmen had been
installing the stairs to the beach below.
 
The stairs were in place, but no handrail had been installed yet, and
the top of the stairs was blocked off by a small amount of fencing.

“There’s
something about you that invites confidences,” Grant told Bessie as they both
watched the waves.
 
“I feel the need
to tell someone a few important things and you seem like the best candidate.”

“There are
professionals who are better qualified….” Bessie began.

Grant held up
a hand.
 
“I don’t need a
professional,” he said.
 
“And I
don’t want the police either, although I was tempted to share a few things with
the Chief Constable.
 
He thinks
we’re good friends, so much so that he tells me things he really
shouldn’t.
 
It would have been fun
watching his face as I told him a couple of interesting facts about my past.”

“If you’re
going to confess to crimes, you should definitely be talking to the police,”
Bessie said, taking a step backwards.
 

Grant
laughed.
 
“I hope you don’t think
I’m going push you over the edge,” he said mockingly.
 
“I could, I suppose, but I don’t intend
to.
 
I’m rather counting on you to
tell people what I’m going to tell you.
 
I may be getting soft in my old age, but I do think the King family
ought to know what really happened.”

“You know what
happened to Adam?” Bessie asked.

“I do, and no
doubt the family will be relieved to learn that it was just an unfortunate
accident that took young Adam’s life.”

Bessie
nodded.
 
“I’m sure that will make
Sarah feel much better,” she said.

“Perhaps she’d
be less pleased to hear all of the details, but I’ll leave it up to you as to
how much you tell her,” Grant said.

“I don’t need
to know,” Bessie insisted.

“I went to
work for the bank right out of school,” Grant said, staring out towards the
sea.
 
“I wasn’t there for very long
when I
realised
that a small but steady amount of
money was disappearing from the Laxey branch, under the supposedly capable
management of Frederick King.”

Bessie
gasped.
 
Grant glanced at her and chuckled.
 
“You didn’t see that coming?” he asked.

“No,” Bessie
replied.

“I did some
investigating and I discovered that Frederick had a rather expensive
habit.
 
Her name was Elizabeth and she
had a real fondness for rubies.
 
Frederick was very carefully and cleverly siphoning off just a little
bit of money from various accounts at the bank in order to buy costly trinkets
for his lover.”

“Poor Nancy,”
Bessie murmured.

Grant
laughed.
 
“Exactly.
 
I didn’t want to break up Nancy’s happy
home, now did I?
 
Instead I had a
little chat with Frederick and we worked together to find a way to make sure
that we both profited from his little scheme.
 
I was able to scale it up and use it at
all the branches eventually, as well.
 
As I said, it was a very clever system.”

“But where
does Adam fit into all of this?” Bessie asked.

Grant
chuckled.
 
“Adam found out about
Elizabeth, you see, and he blackmailed his father into giving him a job at the
bank.
 
Adam was a very smart young
man.
 
It didn’t take him long to
figure out what his father was doing, and of course that meant that he wanted a
share of the money.
 
I kept out of
their arrangement, figuring it wasn’t any of my business, until Adam dragged me
in.”

Of course, it
was going to be Adam’s fault, Bessie thought to herself.
 
Grant seemed like the type to blame
everything on other people.

“Adam
realised
what his father was doing, and then he dug a
little deeper and discovered that I’d extended the enterprise to the other
branches.
 
Adam was prepared to keep
quiet, of course, for a price.”
 

Grant shook
his head.
 
“He could have had a very
successful career, that boy.
 
He was
very smart, but mostly lazy.
 
Always
looking for shortcuts and ways to make money fast.
 
We met at the Kings’ home that night in
September 1967.
 
Adam made
ridiculous demands and I laughed and made a counter offer.
 
He swung first, but I hit him hard.
 
I’ll admit I was angry, but I didn’t
mean to kill him.
 
He hit his head
on something when he fell and died instantly.”

Bessie
shuddered.
 
Grant was talking
calmly, as if he
were
discussing the weather or
something, but she couldn’t help but picture the angry scene and poor Adam
crashing to the ground.

“It was very
sad, of course,” Grant said in a bored tone.
 
“We discussed ringing the police, but
that was risky.
 
We didn’t want
anyone looking into reasons why I might have been fighting with young
Adam.
 
It was easier to just hide
the body and move on.
 
I have to
say,
it worked far better than I ever expected it to.
 
For years I was sure we were going to
get found out.”

“So Frederick
and Nancy hid the body?” Bessie asked.

“Frederick did
the dirty work,” Grant said.
 
“Nancy
knew all about it, of course, but she only knew part of the story.
 
Obviously, she didn’t
realise
just how much money her husband was stealing or
else she would have wanted to know what he was doing with it all.”

“So they
packed his bags and told everyone he emigrated to Australia,” Bessie said.
 
“And no one ever questioned it.”

“Oh, Mark Carr
questioned it,” Grant told her.
 
“In
fact, he very nearly discovered the truth.
 
He was waiting for Adam at the pub and he walked over to the house to
see what was keeping Adam just minutes after, well, after the unfortunate
accident.”

“So Mark was
involved,” Bessie said.

“Yeah, he knew
we were lying about something, but he wasn’t sure exactly what.
 
Frederick told him that Adam had left
and that he didn’t know where he’d gone and then, a few days later, they
started telling everyone about Australia, but Mark never believed it.”

“But then Mark
moved across and got sent to prison,” Bessie said.

“That was some
very clever planning on my part, though I say so myself,” Grant said with a
smug grin.
 
“I pretended to take an
interest in Mark and offered to help him out.
 
I sent him across, having found him a
job at a bank over there.
 
I showed
him how to set up a scheme very similar to the one we were using in
Laxey
.
 
Then I
set him up with the police.
 
Poor
Mark never knew how he got caught, but that got rid of that particular threat,
for a while anyway.”

“I’m surprised
he didn’t tell the police everything when he was arrested,” Bessie said.

“He couldn’t
actually prove anything, and besides, he still thought I was on his side,”
Grant explained.
 
“I paid for his
high-priced solicitor and made sure he was supplied with money and cigarettes
and that sort of thing.
 
If he’d
been careful, he’d have been out after a few years and I would have given him
another job to do.
 
Instead, every
time he got out for a few days, he just got himself into trouble and sent back
to prison.
 
I was starting to relax,
lately.
 
I figured he’d just be in
prison forever.”

“And then,
when he finally did get out, you put him up in the flat on Seaside Terrace,”
Bessie said.

Grant
chuckled.
 
“Not one of my better
ideas,” he said.
 
“First he got into
a fight with Nigel about the flat.
 
I didn’t
realise
that Nigel was using it for
his mother.
 
Then he managed to pass
out and get discovered and taken to hospital.”
 
Grant sighed.
 
“I should have just sent him to
Australia or something,” he said.

“Where did he
go when he left Noble’s?” Bessie asked.

“Who knows?”
Grant replied.
 
“I gather he spent
some time trying to find a hiding place of his own, but he couldn’t.
 
By the time he
realised
what a mess he was in, Nigel had been arrested and Mark wasn’t sure where to
turn.
 
Luckily he rang my office and
I was able to get him and tuck him up in Nigel’s storage unit before he did
anything stupid.”

“So what happened
to him?” Bessie asked.

“He managed to
get his hands on a local paper,” Grant answered.
 
“He found out that Adam’s body had been
found and he went a little crazy.
 
I
tried to explain that it was an accident, but he wouldn’t believe me.
 
I, well, I ended up having to defend
myself against him.”

Bessie bit her
tongue.
 
John had told her that Mark
had been drugged and stabbed.
 
She
didn’t trust herself to say anything at that point.
 
After a long pause, Grant continued.

“Anyway, I
left Mark in Nigel’s unit.
 
When my
advocate secured Nigel’s release on bail, I told him to take care of it.
 
The last thing I expected him to do was
put the body in George’s unit, but then Nigel isn’t the smartest man I’ve ever
worked with.”

“What happened
to Nigel?” Bessie asked.

“Oh, he’ll be
here soon,” Grant answered.
 
“He’s
being very useful at the moment.”

“So why tell
me all of this?” Bessie wondered.

“Your friend
Inspector Rockwell is poking his nose in,” Grant said.
 
“The Chief Constable informed me that
he’s bringing in a specialist auditor to inspect the historical records at the
bank.
 
While I know Fredrick and I
were very clever, it still won’t take an expert long to figure out what we did.
 
By the time that’s done, though, I’ll be
long gone.
 
This way you can tell
everyone what really happened.
 
I
don’t want people to think I actually killed anyone, now do I?”