The Ellsworth Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella Book 5)
Read The Ellsworth Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella Book 5) Online
Authors: Diana Xarissa
The Ellsworth Case
A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella
Diana
Xarissa
Copyright
©
2016 Diana
Xarissa
All Rights Reserved
For Mom, who loves everything I write.
Acknowledgements
There are so many
people who deserve thanks for their efforts.
First, I want to thank
my readers.
You are the reason I
keep doing this, even when I’d rather be eating chocolate in front of the
television.
(Which is what hubby
thinks I do all day, anyway.)
I need to (always)
thank my editor, Denise, who puts up with all my grammar foibles and still
keeps editing!
My beta readers for
this series, Charlene and Janice, are a huge help in so many ways.
I always get great feedback from them
both and truly enjoy the fact that we’ve become friends over the course of many
books.
I’d love to hear from
you.
My contact details are in the
back of the book.
Thank you for
your continued support.
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
I’m having way too much fun writing these
novellas.
Don’t get me wrong, I
love, love, love writing about Bessie and her friends, and there’s nothing
better than helping a couple find their “happily ever after” when writing a
romance, but there is something especially fun about this series.
(For me, anyway.)
I don’t know for sure what it is, but I
hope all of you are enjoying it as much as I am.
Having said
that, this is the fifth novella in the series.
I suggest you read them in
(alphabetical) order, but you don’t have to; each novella should stand on its
own.
Those of you who have been
with me from the first book will already know that the Markham sisters first
appeared in
Aunt Bessie Decides
in my
Isle of Man Cozy Mystery series.
Janet, the
younger of the two sisters, continues to write regularly to Bessie.
This lets me open and close each novella
with excerpts from those letters.
I use this method to introduce and wrap up each story.
You don’t need to read the Bessie books
to enjoy this series.
As the
novellas are set in Derbyshire, England, I have used English spellings and
terms.
In the back of the book is a
glossary of terms and some notes designed to help readers outside the UK with
words that might be unfamiliar to them.
The longer I live in the US, the greater the likelihood of Americanisms
sneaking into the text, although I do try to eliminate them.
This is a work
of fiction and all of the characters are fictional creations.
Any resemblance that they may share with
any real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The sisters live in a fictional village
in Derbyshire.
Although some shops
or businesses may bear some resemblance to real-life businesses, that is also
coincidental.
Please feel
free to get in touch with any comments, questions, or concerns.
I have a monthly newsletter that
provides updates on new releases and information about promotions and giveaways.
All of the details for subscribing or getting
in touch are available on the About the Author page at the back of the book.
15
th
December,
1998
Dearest Bessie,
A very Merry Christmas to you.
I do hope that you are enjoying the
festive season.
Joan and I have
been enjoying decorating our new home for the very first time.
I’m sure my sister thinks I’ve gone
rather overboard, but I have insisted on putting trees in several different
rooms.
We have so much lovely
space, compared to the tiny cottage where we used to live.
If it were up to me, we’d have a tree in
every single room in the entire bed and breakfast.
Joan isn’t complaining as much as she might,
though, as she’s busy with guests.
We’ve had someone staying with us nearly all the time since my last
letter.
So far everything has gone
fairly well, although I still haven’t become used to having strangers in the
house.
We finally got around to getting the coins
we found inside Piggy looked at by an expert.
We were ever so surprised with what we
learned about the coins, but then we found ourselves learning a great deal
about notes as well.
Chapter One
“I can’t believe we both forgot about those
coins,” Janet said over breakfast one morning in early December.
“You were rather more interested in the
key,” Joan reminded her.
“Yes, well, that turned out to be a waste of
time, didn’t it?” Janet said glumly.
“Perhaps the coins will be worth a bit
more,” Joan suggested.
“We should at least have someone look at
them,” Janet replied.
“Do you think
they’d be able to tell us anything at the local bank?”
“I suppose we could start there,” Joan
said.
“There aren’t any coin
dealers in
Doveby
Dale.
I suspect we’d have to drive to Derby to
find a specialist.”
“I don’t mind driving up there, if we need
to,” Janet told her.
“But I’d
rather not make the effort if the coins are worthless.
I do hope the bank can at least give us
some idea of their value.”
Half an hour later, Joan fixed breakfast for
the young couple
who
were their current guests.
The couple was heading to the nearest shopping
mall for the day.
The seventeenth-century
manor house that the sisters had purchased some months earlier was in a quiet
village, but it was close enough to several large cities to provide their bed
and breakfast guests with various options if they were interested in shopping
or big city nightlife.
“Imagine, driving all the way from London to
Derbyshire and then going to a shopping mall,” Joan
tutted
as she shut the front door behind them.
Janet shrugged.
“I guess, having driven this far,
another thirty or forty minutes to get to a shopping mall isn’t much.”
“But why would you want to shop?” Joan
demanded.
“There are so many
wonderful historical sites to see in the area, not to mention the beautiful
outdoors to explore.
Surely they
have shops in London.”
Janet laughed.
“Not everyone enjoys touring historical
sites,” she told her sister.
“And
not everyone likes wandering around outside.
It is December, after all, and the
weather isn’t great.”
“It’s only a little rain,” Joan replied.
“Let’s not argue,” Janet suggested.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bradford didn’t ask us
what we thought they should do while they’re here.
Anyway, they’re going home tomorrow.”
“Yes, and we have two new couples arriving
tomorrow as well,” Joan told her.
“Two?” Janet asked.
“I didn’t
realise
.
Isn’t it awfully close to Christmas for
people to be doing all this travelling?”
Joan shrugged.
“Why don’t you ask our guests when they
arrive?” she suggested.
Janet laughed again.
“I might just do that,” she replied.
The sisters quickly worked their way through
the handful of chores that needed doing.
Once those were out of the way, they were ready to head for the nearby
bank.
“I do love our new house,” Joan said as
Janet drove their car from the small car park onto the road.
“I love the house, too,” Janet told
her.
“I’m still not sure about the
business, though.”
The sisters had both recently retired from a
lifetime of teaching primary school.
After doing some travelling, Janet had been surprised when Joan suggested
that they sell their small cottage and purchase a bed and breakfast.
When the pair found
Doveby
House, with its fully stocked library, it seemed like the perfect
property.
Joan, the older sister by about two years,
had always wanted to run a bed and breakfast, and as an excellent cook and
baker, she was happily responsible for the “breakfast” part of the
business.
The sisters shared the
rest of the jobs associated with keeping their guests satisfied between
them.
Janet felt as if she was
still adjusting to their new lifestyle, but it was obvious to her that Joan was
enjoying it a great deal.
A few weeks earlier, hidden in the library
behind a sliding panel, the sisters had found a small piggy bank.
The bank had held a key as well as a
handful of unusual coins.
Joan had
put the coins on a tray in her bedroom while Janet worked to find out what the
key was for.
Both women had pretty
much forgotten about the coins until Joan spotted them on her dresser while she
was looking for something else.
Now
both sisters were eager to find out their value.
The nearest bank was a small branch of one
of the large chains and was located in the tiny
centre
of
Doveby
Dale.
Janet parked behind the small strip of retail shops and they crossed the
street to the bank.
“I don’t know,” the young girl behind the
teller’s
window
told them, wrinkling her nose.
“I’ve never seen anything like them
before.”
“Is there someone else here that might know
more?” Joan asked.
The girl shrugged.
“I can ask,” she said, her tone doubtful.
Joan and Janet exchanged glances.
“Please do,” Joan said after a minute.
The girl got up from her seat, seemingly
reluctantly.
“No points for customer service,” Janet
muttered.
“You’d think she’d be happy to have
something to do,” Joan suggested, glancing around the nearly empty room.
A second teller was filing her nails at a
window a few feet away.
They could
see a few men and women working at desks behind the teller stations, but no one
seemed especially busy.
When a
telephone began to ring, it seemed as if everyone jumped.
A moment later a man in a dark business
suit walked towards them, the young teller at his elbow.
“How can I help you ladies?” he asked when
he reached the window.
“We were wondering if you could tell us
anything about these coins,” Janet told him.
The man nodded and then picked up the coins
from the counter in front of him.
After studying them for a moment, he smiled at the sisters.
“I’m going to get an associate, if
that’s okay with you,” he said.
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and
walked back into the maze of cubicles behind him.
The teller sat back down on her seat and
glanced at the coins again with slightly more interest.
“Where did you get them?” she asked.
“They were in a piggy bank,” Janet replied.
The girl looked as if she might ask more,
but seemed to decide not to bother.
Instead, she looked down at her nails and frowned.
The first man returned a moment later
with another man in tow.
“Ladies, this is Jack Hawkins,” he said.
The new arrival was probably in his
mid-forties.
When he smiled, Janet
wondered if he might be American.
His teeth were bright white and perfectly straight.
He was handsome in a sort of bland and
boring way, with dark hair and eyes.
The suit he was wearing appeared to have been made for him and Janet
wondered how an employee of a small bank branch could afford such an expensive
outfit.
“Good morning,” Jack said.
When he spoke, Janet discarded the
notion that he might be American.
His accent was definitely a London one.
“Thank you for stopping in.
Let’s see what you have here, then,” he
continued.
As he examined the coins, Janet found
herself watching him closely.
It
wasn’t that she didn’t trust him exactly, but something about him made her
uneasy.
After a full minute, she looked
over at Joan and found that her sister was staring hard at the man.
“We aren’t actually able to offer you a
formal valuation,” Jack said eventually.
“But I’m something of a collector myself, so I can tell you a little
about what you have here.”
Janet felt her eyes glazing over as the man
began to describe each coin in detail.
She was just about interrupt when Joan saved her the trouble.
“I’m sorry, but we really don’t need all of
the details,” Joan told him.
“We
can get them from the proper valuations when we have them done.
We were just hoping for a rough idea of
their value.”
The man flushed.
“I am sorry,” he said with a small
chuckle.
“I’m so interested in my
little hobby that I often forget that other people aren’t.
Valuing coins is difficult, though.
If you were to send them to an auction,
they could go for very little or a great deal, depending on who is in the
audience, as it were.”
Janet sighed.
“I guess what we need to know is whether
we are talking about coins worth tens of pounds, hundreds of pounds or
thousands of pounds,” she said bluntly.
The man nodded.
“I would suggest that thousands is the
closest estimate.”
Janet gasped, but Joan simply nodded.
“Excellent, thank you for your time,” Joan
said, holding out her hand.
The man
put the coins in it, clearly reluctantly.
“If you want to sell any of them, you should
be careful,” he said.
“I’d suggest,
if you want the best price, that you place them with a coin dealer in
Derby.
I can give you a few names.”
The sisters waited while he wrote on a piece
of paper.
“Thank you again for your
time,” Janet said, once Joan had slipped the paper and the coins into her
handbag.
“You’re very welcome,” he replied.
“Did you know they were that valuable?”
Janet demanded as she and Joan headed towards the car.
Joan shook her head.
“Michael noticed them the other day and
he said he thought they might be worth something.
He collected coins as a child, but he
didn’t keep it up.”
Janet nodded.
Joan was cautiously working her way into
some sort of romantic relationship, her first ever, with the handsome retired
chemist who lived across the road from them.
Michael Donaldson had been widowed many
years earlier and he seemed quite happy to let Joan set a very slow pace for
their courtship.
“So I guess we need to plan a trip to
Derby,” Janet said.
“I suppose so,” Joan replied.
“Maybe after Christmas,” Janet
suggested.
“It must be awfully busy
there during December.”
“You’re probably right,” Joan said.
“I suppose it won’t hurt to wait.”
“I wonder if William could tell us more,”
Janet remarked as they reached the car.
“William Chalmers?” Joan asked.
“What made you think of him?”
“Well, his shop is right there,”
Janet
pointed out.
“And he deals in antiques.
He might know something about coins.”
Joan was silent for a moment and then she
shrugged.
“I suppose we could ask
him,” she said.
“Although I’m not
sure I’d trust anything he told us.”
Janet laughed.
“Okay, that’s true,” she agreed.
“But since we’re already here, why don’t
we stop in and see what he says.
If
nothing else, if he tells us the coins are worthless, we’ll know we’re right to
not trust him.”
“While I don’t like the notion that we’re
testing the man, I wouldn’t mind getting a second opinion,” Joan said.
“Especially as we are already here and
I’ve been thinking about stopping at WTC Antiques anyway.
I want to see how he’s doing with the
painting we wanted to buy and I have to find you a Christmas present as well.”
“And I you,” Janet replied.
WTC Antiques had only been open for a month
or so and the sisters were still wary of its owner.
William Chalmers had been in trouble
previously for overvaluing antiques, and Joan and Janet had already met some of
his questionable friends.
It didn’t
help that the man could be abrasive and rude as well as pompous.
Only recently the women had discovered
that he loved to paint but had no confidence in his abilities.
Both sisters felt he had some real
talent and Joan was determined to purchase some of his art to hang on the walls
at
Doveby
House.
The problem was persuading William to actually finish a piece.
