Aunt Bessie's Holiday (8 page)

She paused for a sip of wine.
 
Bessie leaned over and patted her
arm.
 
“If this is too painful, we
can talk about the weather,” she suggested.

Doona laughed.
 
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
 
“I’ve had two years to recover, after
all.”

“And you’ve had no contact with the man in
all that time?” Bessie checked.

“None, but let me get back to the story,”
Doona said.
 
She sat back again and
took a deep breath.
 
“Charles had to
head back to London after that weekend, but we talked on the phone all the time
until he could visit again.
 
We got
engaged on that next visit and married about two weeks later.
 
It was all such a whirlwind, and I was
the happiest I’d ever been on our month-long honeymoon.”

“Didn’t you tell me that you travelled
around Europe for the month?” Bessie asked.

“We did,” Doona confirmed.
 
“We visited many of the company’s finest
properties and were treated like VIPs everywhere we went.”

“Sort of like now,” Bessie muttered.

“Exactly like now,” Doona said.
 
“I didn’t think about it before, but
maybe I should have suspected something.”

“You thought you’d won a very special
prize,” Bessie reminded her.

“Yeah, but all the fussing over us is
extreme.
 
I wish I knew what Charles
was up to.”

“What happened after the honeymoon?” Bessie
had to ask.

“Charles suggested that I stay on the island,
as he travelled so much he was never in his London flat anyway.
 
He used to fly across to visit whenever
he could, or at least that’s what he told me.
 
Then one day, about two months after our
honeymoon, I got a letter.
 
Well, it
was more like a package.
 
Inside was
a letter telling me exactly why Charles had married me, along with photos,
copies of restaurant receipts and telephone bills and a lot of other things.”

Bessie reached over and squeezed Doona’s
hand.
 
“I can’t imagine how awful
that must have been,” she said.

“It hit me really hard,” Doona
admitted.
 
“According to the letter,
Charles was involved with Jessica Howe, the blonde we saw earlier.
 
The letter said that her husband,
Herbert, was starting to get suspicious, so Charles had quickly married me to
try to hide the affair.”

“And there were photos and things that proved
that?”

“There were photos of them together,
including some where he was wearing his wedding ring,” Doona told her.
 
“But I didn’t believe the letter, or
rather, I didn’t want to believe the letter.
 
I didn’t tell Charles I was coming, but
I took a few days off work and flew across to Leeds, where he was working at
the time.
 
I checked into a room at
the hotel where he was and then I went into the bar to wait for him.”

Bessie quickly poured some more wine into
Doona’s glass.
 
“You don’t have to
tell me all the horrible details,” she said.

“I can’t believe I never told you them
before,” Doona countered.
 
“All
those weeks and months I spent crying on your shoulder and I never told you the
whole story.”

“In the early days you weren’t always all
that coherent,” Bessie teased.
 
“And
once you started to recover, I wasn’t going to drag it all up.”

Doona laughed and took a drink.
 
“It all feels rather long ago now,” she
said.
 
“Even with seeing Charles
again tonight.
 
Or maybe I’m just
comfortably numb from too much champagne and wine.”

“You’ll have a headache in the morning,”
Bessie predicted.

“It’s worth it,” Doona told her.
 
“Anyway, I sat in the bar and then this
blonde woman walked in.
 
I knew who
she was from the photos, but she didn’t seem to have any idea who I was.
 
As we were the only two people in the
place, she sat down next to me and we started talking.”

“Jessica Howe?”

“Indeed.
 
We started out chatting about life in
general, but after a few drinks she told me all about her husband, who is much
older than she is and very wealthy.
 
She was his trophy wife.
 
His
first wife had given him three children, and he didn’t want any more as he was
still paying a fortune in child support.
 
At least that’s how she saw it.
 
Anyway, she was bored with him and their life together but she didn’t
want to divorce him and lose out on all the wonderful things his money could
buy.”

“Yikes, what a lovely woman,” Bessie
muttered sarcastically.

“After another round of drinks, she told me
all about her lover,” Doona said tartly.

“Charles?”

“Exactly.
 
It seems the pair had met at a party
about a year earlier.
 
Now she spent
her time travelling around the world, staying wherever Charles was currently
working.
 
She knew her husband was
suspicious, but she was sure they were discreet enough that he couldn’t prove
anything.”

“And all the while, you’d seen the proof,”
Bessie said.
 

“Yeah, I might not have mentioned that to
the lovely Jessica, though,” Doona said dryly.
 
“Anyway, she even told me how incredibly
clever her lover was.
 
He’d recently
married some stupid woman who had no idea what her husband was up to behind her
back.”

“Oh dear,” Bessie gasped.
 

“A few minutes later Charles himself came
in.
 
He didn’t recognise me from
behind in the dark bar.
 
He simply
called to Jessica and she rushed over to him.
 
I watched the whole thing in the mirror
behind the bar.
 
They hugged and
then hurried out of the room together, clearly heading to bed.
 
I told the bartender that my drinks were
meant to be on Jessica’s tab and then went up to my room and cried until
morning.”

“I wish I’d known all of this earlier,”
Bessie said.
 
“I wouldn’t have been
nearly as polite to that man.”

“Thanks, Bessie,” Doona said with a sad
smile.
 
“Anyway, I flew home the
next day and made an appointment with my advocate.
 
Charles rang repeatedly until I changed
my number.
 
I don’t know what his
game is now, but I don’t trust him, not even a little bit.”

“I don’t blame you,” Bessie replied.
 
“I think we should just ignore him and
enjoy our holiday.”

“I’m going to go and see him tomorrow
morning,” Doona told her.
 
“Our
woodland walk starts at eight, so we were going to have an early breakfast
anyway.
 
It won’t take me five
minutes to explain to him exactly how I feel now that the shock of seeing him
has worn off.
 
Once I’m done with
him, he’ll leave us alone for the rest of the week.”

Bessie could only hope that her friend was
right.
 
But Charles had gone to a lot
of trouble to get Doona to Lakeview.
 
He must have some reason for having done so, and he might not be as
easily
deterred
as Doona seemed to think.

“We never opened our books,” Doona said,
gesturing towards the two boxes on the small dining table, just inside the door.

Bessie grinned.
 
“I was just thinking that I need
something to curl up with tonight,” she told her friend.

“I’ll go get the boxes,” Doona said.
 
She was in and out of the cabin in a
moment, returning to the table with the two small boxes.
 
“They’ve taped them shut,” she told
Bessie.
 
“I wonder if there are
scissors in the kitchen?”

“There’s just about everything else,” Bessie
told her.

Doona disappeared into the kitchen while
Bessie tugged uselessly on one of the box lids.
 
Whoever had sealed them had done a good
job.
 
Doona was back only a moment
later.

“Did you find scissors?”

“Nope, but I found a knife,” Doona replied,
holding up a kitchen knife with a long blade.

“Do be careful,” Bessie said as her friend
waved the knife in the air.
 
“It
looks really sharp.”

“It isn’t, actually,” Doona replied with a
laugh.
 
“Although it’s very fancy,
with our address engraved on the handle.”
 
She’d tried slicing at the packaging tape with the blade, but it didn’t
seem to cut through it.

“Let me try,” Bessie suggested.

Doona turned the blade sideways and slipped
it under the lid.
 
Now she could
slide it along the seal, slicing through the tape as she went.
 
It only took her a few seconds to open
both boxes.

“So, what do we have?” Bessie asked.

They opened their boxes together and Bessie
read out the titles.

“Jane Austen’s
Emma
, Helen Fielding’s
Bridget
Jones’s Diary
, Bill Bryon’s
Notes
from a Small Island,
and Agatha Christie’s
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
.
 
It’s an interesting collection,” she said.

“I know I read
Emma
when I was at school,” Doona replied.
 
“But I’ve not read the others.”

“I’ve read
Emma
and absolutely everything by Agatha Christie, but the other
two are new to me,” Bessie told her.
 
“I think I’ll try one of them tonight and see how it goes.”

Doona yawned.
 
“I’m too tired to read tonight,” she
said.
 
“I was thinking about trying
out that fabulous bathtub, but I think I’m just going to go to bed.
 
I’ll see you in the morning.”

Bessie gave her friend a hug and then they
went into their bedrooms, each carrying their own box of books.
 
Bessie got ready for bed and then read a
chapter of the Helen Fielding book.
 
When she found herself dropping off to sleep over the pages, she gave up
and switched off the light.
 

It seemed a long night for Bessie in the
strange place.
 
The sound of doors
opening and closing woke her repeatedly as their neighbours made their way in
and out.
 
By five, Bessie was ready
to give up on sleep and start her day, even though she felt more tired than she
had when she’d gone to bed.

Chapter Four

Bessie took a shower and then got
dressed.
 
As she patted on her
rose-scented dusting powder, she took a moment to think about Matthew Saunders,
the man she’d once loved.
 
He never
would have cheated on me, she told herself firmly.
 
Her reflection looked uncertain, so
Bessie turned her back on it.
 
In
the kitchen, she filled the kettle and found the jar of instant coffee.
 
She needed the caffeine this morning
after her restless night.

A short time later, Doona joined her.
 
“Ah, coffee,” she muttered, stumbling
into the kitchen.
 
“I could smell it
from my room.”

Bessie handed
her the
mug she’d just filled and then fixed a second cup for herself.
 
She didn’t try to speak to her friend,
who was still in her robe and slippers.
 
 
Doona sank down in a chair and
sighed deeply.

“I shouldn’t have finished that last bottle
of wine,” she said, resting her head in her hands.

“Do you need headache tablets?” Bessie asked
sympathetically.

“Yes, please,”
Doona
replied
  
“I thought I had
some, but I can’t find them in my bag.”

Bessie passed her the bottle of
tablets.
 
Doona was quick to shake
two into her hand,
then
wash them down with a sip of
coffee.
 

“We don’t have to be at breakfast for at
least an hour, right?” Doona asked.

“That should be about right,” Bessie
answered.
 

“I’m going to take a long, hot shower,”
Doona told her.
 
“I’ll be out when
my headache is gone.”

Bessie nodded.
 
Doona shuffled off slowly, leaving
Bessie to wash the two mugs and then tidy up the small kitchen.
 
With nothing else to do, Bessie took her
book out onto the small patio.
 
There
were walls on either side of the patio that were tall enough to give them
privacy.
 
A shorter wall, maybe
three or four feet high, across the front of the patio was presumably meant to
keep guests from walking across the grass to get to the path below them.
 
It also made the small patio feel cosy
and Bessie settled in happily.

She made it through the second chapter and
then gave up.
 
Bridget Jones’s life
just wasn’t something Bessie could relate to and she set the book to one side.
 
Bessie sat back and watched the wildlife
moving around behind their cabin.
 
She saw a few rabbits and an abundance of squirrels dashing about.
 
As time moved forward, they began to be
replaced by people.

People watching was
one of Bessie’s favourite activities.
 
She often sat on the rock behind her
cottage and watched the families and individuals on Laxey beach.
 
Those people were nearly always
holiday-makers
, no different from the groups that now
surrounded her here.
 
Several large
groups went by on their bikes, weaving in and out around one another.
 
Small children pedaled hard, their
stabilisers keeping them from crashing to the ground.

A very large group stopped on the road right
behind Bessie and began to wave.
 
Bessie wondered if she should wave back, but luckily stopped herself
just before one of the men shouted.

“Granddad, come down and join us.”

A voice came from the patio next to
Bessie’s.
 
“I’ll be down when I’m
ready,” it called.
 
“I’m having a
quiet cuppa by myself.
 
We said we’d
meet for breakfast at seven.
 
I’ll
see you then.”
 

The adult members of the group exchanged
glances and then they all moved away, heading towards the centre of the
village.
 

“Ten minutes’ peace and quiet,” the voice on
the next patio muttered.
 
“Is that
too much to ask?”
 

Bessie smiled to herself.
 
The man was only just out of sight from
where she was sitting.
 
He sounded
quite fed up with the large group, who were presumably his family.
 
While she sometimes wondered what her
life might have been like if she’d married Matthew and had children, she never
really felt as if she’d missed out by not having a family of her own.
 
Now, as she sat back in her seat, she
was content with the knowledge that she could have as much peace and quiet as
she liked on her holiday.
 
A few
minutes later, Doona joined her.

“You’re looking much better,” Bessie told
her.

Doona had obviously taken some time over her
appearance.
 
Her highlighted brown
hair had been washed and brushed until it shone.
 
She was wearing more makeup than Bessie
was used to seeing on her, and her green eyes seemed to sparkle.
 
There was no hint now of the hangover
that Bessie knew Doona was suffering from.

“I feel better,” Doona replied.
 
“The tablets have kicked in, and the
shower helped as well.
 
I’m feeling
weirdly confident, so let’s get over to the centre before I lose my nerve.”

Bessie nodded and rose to her feet.
 
She quickly picked up her handbag from
where she’d left it by the door and followed Doona out the front door.
 
A man of maybe seventy was just emerging
from the cabin next to theirs.
 
Bessie smiled at the man, whose bearing was almost military in spite of
his age.
 
He was completely bald and
his brown eyes gave both women a quick once-over that left Bessie feeling as if
she’d been thoroughly inspected.

“Good morning,” she said brightly.
 
The man had no way of knowing that she’d
overheard his early morning conversation with his family.

“Good morning,” he replied curtly.
 

The trio all turned and began to walk
silently towards the village.
 
After
a moment, Doona spoke to the man.

“I’m Doona Moore,” she said.
 
“And this my friend Bessie Cubbon.
 
It seems as if we’re neighbours, so it
seems silly not to at least introduce ourselves.”

The man smiled and then paused and gave them
a small bow.
 
“I’m Andrew Cheatham,”
he replied.
 
“It’s a great pleasure
to make your acquaintance.”

Before the conversation could continue, a
huge crowd of people suddenly hastened towards them.

“Granddad, I fell off my bike,” a small boy
shouted.
 

“Granddad, are you going to sit with me at
breakfast?” a little girl asked.

“Gwandda,” a tiny toddler shouted from her
mother’s arms.

Bessie smiled at Andrew.
 
“You seem to be very much in demand,”
she remarked.
 

“It was nice to meet you,” Doona said.

Andrew smiled vaguely in their direction as
he was swallowed up in the crowd.
 
Bessie and Doona continued on their way without him.

“Have you worked out what you’re going to
say to Charles?” Bessie asked as they reached the door to the main building,
called the Squirrel’s Drey.
 
It
contained a large food court with a spacious area with seating in the
middle.
 
It also housed the swimming
complex and the ten-pin bowling centre.

“Nope, but I’m sure it will be interesting,”
Doona said grimly.

Charles had told Doona that the executive
offices were next to the food court, so Bessie got herself a full English
breakfast and sat down at one of the tables.
 

“I’ll be back in ten minutes or less,” Doona
told her.

“If you aren’t, I’ll come in after you,”
Bessie replied.

Doona nodded and then marched resolutely
towards the door marked “Staff.”
 
She knocked once and then pushed it open.
 
Bessie glanced at her watch and then
started to eat.
 
She was startled
less than a minute later when her mobile phone buzzed.

It seemed to take her forever to find the
phone, which had, as ever, found its way to the very bottom of her bag.
 
She frowned when she pulled it out and
saw that it was Doona who was ringing her.

“Hello?”

“Bessie?
 
Could you come back here, please?”
 
Doona’s voice sounded odd.
 

Bessie was on her feet at once.
 
“I’m on my way,” she told her
friend.
 
Her breakfast forgotten,
Bessie knocked once on the door and then pushed it open exactly as Doona had
done.
 
She found herself in a long
corridor.
 
Doona was waving to her
from the end of it.
 
She hurried
towards her friend, feeling dread in every step.
 
When she reached Doona, she hugged her
tightly.
 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at
Doona’s pale face and frightened eyes.

“Charles has been murdered,” Doona
whispered.

Later Bessie would wonder why she wasn’t
shocked by Doona’s announcement, but at the time it never occurred to her.

“Did you ring the police?” she asked her
friend.

“I did,” Doona replied.
 
“They’re on their way.”

“Ladies, I really don’t think you’re meant
to be back here,” a friendly voice called down the hall to them.
 

Bessie smiled at Harold Butler as he joined
them.
 
“Good morning. How are you
this morning?” she asked.

“I’m fine.
 
Thank you so much for asking,” he
replied.
 
“But really, this area is
for staff only.
 
If you need to talk
to Charles, I can let him know that when I next see him.
 
There’s no point in standing around here
waiting for him.
 
He could be
anywhere.”

“He’s in his office,” Doona told the
man.
 

“Oh?
 
Did he tell you to wait out here?” Harold asked.

“No, he’s, well,” Doona sighed and then
shook her head.
 
“He’s dead,” she
said flatly.
 
“I’m just waiting here
for the police.”

“Dead?
 
The police?
 
But what on
earth?” he took a deep breath.
 
“Sorry, I’m rather flummoxed.
 
I’d better ring Lawrence.”

Harold walked back down the corridor and
disappeared into one of the offices along it.
 
Bessie and Doona exchanged glances.

“Are you okay?” Bessie asked her friend as
Doona leaned back against the wall.

“No, really I’m not,”
Doona
replied.
 
“I’m upset and angry and
frustrated and I’m still hung over and I feel like
hel
,
er, miserable.”

Before Bessie could reply, the door at the
end of the hall swung open and Lawrence Jenkins came rushing towards them.

“What’s this nonsense about Charles, then?”
he demanded harshly.

“He’s dead,” Doona said.

“I didn’t realise you were a doctor,”
Lawrence said in an aggressive tone.

“Now, Lawrence,” Harold muttered from where
he had just arrived behind the other man.

“I think I’d better check on Charles,”
Lawrence said.
 
He tried to push
past Doona, but she stood firmly in front of the office door.

“We don’t want to disturb the crime scene,”
she said sharply.

“Crime scene?” Lawrence shouted.
 
“Look, lady, I don’t know what’s going
on in there or what your game is, but you need to get out of my way.
 
It sounds as if Charles needs some
help.”

Doona shook her head.
 
“He’s well beyond that,” she told
him.
 
“And I’ve assured the police
that I’ve secured the crime scene.”

“Except it isn’t a crime scene.
 
If Charles did suddenly pass, well,
that’s sad, but it isn’t a crime.
 
Now move out of the way,” he said.

“I work for the Isle of Man Constabulary and
I think I know a crime scene when I see one,” Doona explained.
 
“If I’m wrong, I’ll apologise to the
police when they get here.”

“You’ve already rung them?” Lawrence
asked.
 
He shook his head.
 
“Stupid, crazy, hysterical women, who
needs them?” he muttered under his breath.