Aunt Bessie Joins (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 10) (28 page)

“Yes, maybe he wants a room or two in his
house redesigned or something.”

Bessie watched the couple for another
minute.
 
“It seems like she wants to
do more than decorate for him,” she muttered as Natasha leaned in closer to
Mark and whispered in his ear.

“I didn’t approve when she flirted with
Michael and Richard
Teare
, but it wasn’t really my
business,” Mary said.
 
“But flirting
with George is going too far.”

“She was flirting with George?” Bessie
gasped.

“We’ll talk about it another time,” Mary
told her.
 
“For now I’m just trying
to work out a way to get rid of her without upsetting her.”

“She deserves to be upset,” Bessie said.

“But I’d rather not deal with a lawsuit for
breach of contract,” Mary replied.

“I can’t believe there isn’t champagne,” a
voice announced from the doorway.

Richard
Teare
was
standing there, his arms full of champagne bottles.
 

“Oh, darling, what a wonderful idea,”
Carolyn called, crossing to him quickly.

“It was a good idea,” Natasha purred.
 
She turned away from Mark, quickly
walked over to Richard, and grabbed a bottle.
 
“Glasses?” she shouted.

A member of MNH staff quickly brought in
some of the glasses that were meant to be for guests later in the evening.
 
Within minutes, everyone was being
handed a glass full of the bubbly drink.

Bessie thought about refusing, as she didn’t
really want to drink, but it would have seemed rude to not take it.
 
Intending to dump it out as soon as she
could find a safe place to do so, she took the glass and joined in a toast to
Mark.
 
As everyone chatted, she
worked her way around to Natasha.

“Are you okay?” she asked the woman.

“I’m fine, why?” Natasha shot back.

“You just don’t seem yourself,” Bessie
replied.

“Mary’s been complaining about me, hasn’t
she?” Natasha demanded.
 
“I didn’t
mean to upset her, though.
 
It was
all a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“I’m sure it was,” Bessie replied.
 

“You’ll have to excuse me now, though,” the
woman added.
 
“I’ll see you later.”

“Where are you going?” Bessie asked.

“Oh, I need to freshen up before the crowd
gets here,” she replied.

Bessie watched her leave and then
shrugged.
 
It seemed as if everyone
was acting oddly tonight.
 
She took
another sip of her drink as her phone began to buzz.

“I’m here,”
Doona
announced happily.
 
“I’m in the
courtyard and it’s magical.
 
I can’t
believe how beautiful it looks.”

“We’re up in the banquet room,” Bessie told
her.
 
“Come on up and have some
champagne.”

She barely finished speaking when something
somewhere in the castle made a horrible crashing noise.
 
As everyone stopped talking, another
bang was followed by a short silence.
 
Before anyone spoke, a third booming noise came as the lights went out
and everything went completely dark.

“Um, Bessie?
 
Are you still there?”
Doona’s
voice startled Bessie.

“I am,” Bessie replied.
 
“In total darkness, but here.”

“It’s only very dark in the courtyard,”
Doona
told her.
 
“It’s pretty cloudy, so there isn’t much natural light.
 
What’s going on?”

“I have no idea, but I’m sure Henry and Mark
are working on it,” Bessie replied.

“Well, what shall we talk about?”
Doona
asked with a laugh.

Before Bessie could reply, she heard a
scream from
Doona’s
end of the conversation.
 
“What was that?” she demanded.

“I’m not sure,”
Doona
replied.
 
“I’m afraid someone might
have just fallen down the stairs.”

“You should stand still,” Bessie told
her.
 
“Wait until someone with a
torch arrives to find out what happened.”

“I’m just going to walk towards the stairs,”
Doona
told her.
 
“Someone might be hurt.
 
I’m
putting you on speaker phone so you can hear what’s going on.”

Bessie pressed the phone to her ear, trying
to hear what was happening in the courtyard.

“Hello?” she heard
Doona
shout.
 
“Is there someone
there?
 
Are you hurt?”

“Too bloody right I’m hurt,” a voice
snapped.

“Who’s there?”
Doona
asked.

“What difference does it make?” the voice
shot back. “Do you have a torch?”
 
Bessie
recognised
the other voice as Natasha’s.

“No, I’m afraid not,”
Doona
said.

“I might have broken my ankle,” Natasha
said.
 
“And I really need to get out
of here.”

“I think we’ll just have to wait for the
lights to come back on,”
Doona
said.

Bessie could hear Mark somewhere behind her
on his mobile, issuing instructions to the various staff members who were
on-site.
 

“I hit my head, too,” Natasha said.
 
“I’m feeling quite dizzy.”

Bessie covered the bottom of her mobile with
her hand and spoke loudly.
 
“Someone
needs to ring for an ambulance.
 
It
sounds as if Natasha is hurt.”

“My mobile doesn’t give off much light,”
Doona
was saying in Bessie’s ear.
 
“I’m afraid I’m going to trip over
something if I keep walking towards you.”

“I’m due on a flight at seven,” Natasha said
angrily.
 
“I have important business
meetings to get back across for.”

“If you’re hurt, you might not be able to
fly,”
Doona
said.
 
“Anyway, it’s Christmas tomorrow.
 
Surely you won’t be having meetings on
Christmas.”

“This is all Christopher Hart’s fault,”
Natasha raged.
 
“Try to do a little
long-range career planning and you end up with a broken ankle.
 
My head hurts.”

“Maybe you should keep talking,”
Doona
suggested.
 
“I don’t know how hard you hit your head, but I know they say you
shouldn’t go to sleep with a concussion.”

“It would be just my luck I’d end up with a
concussion,” Natasha replied.
 
“All
my careful planning was wasted, wasn’t it?
 
Did you ever play with dolls when you were little?”

“Um, yes,”
Doona
replied, sounding puzzled.

“I didn’t,” Natasha said.
 
“I played with doll houses.
 
All I ever wanted to do was be a designer.
 
Do you know how hard it is to make it
big in this business?”

“Very hard?”
Doona
guessed.

“I don’t mean finding jobs.
 
It’s easy enough to find people who want
a few rooms doing over, especially now when half the shows on
telly
are about redecorating.
 
I’m talking about making it big, being
on one of those
telly
shows and designing rooms for
the rich and famous.”

“That must be very difficult,”
Doona
replied.

“It’s nearly impossible,” Natasha told
her.
 
“You can’t blame a girl for
eliminating a bit of the competition now and then, can you?”

Bessie wasn’t sure she’d heard that
correctly.
 
She tapped the nearest
person on the shoulder.
 
“We need
the police, too,” she whispered.
 
“Ask them to send John Rockwell and Pete
Corkill
.”

Bessie
recognised
Liz’s whispered “okay,” before she went back to listening to the conversation
that was happening in the courtyard.

“…
difficult
getting
noticed is,”
Doona
was saying.

“There’s just too much competition,” Natasha
replied.
 
“And men like Chris Hart
get all the publicity because they do outlandish things that everyone secretly
hates, but no one wants to admit that they hate it because it’s meant to be
artsy and conceptual and whatever other stupid description the designer can
come up with.”

“So what happened to Christopher Hart?”
Doona
asked.

Bessie pressed the phone to her ear and held
her breath.

“Oh, I killed him,” Natasha said with a
laugh.
 
“We were staying in the same
hotel, so it was easy enough to find him.
 
Mary sent me an email to ask if I would be prepared to help out down
here if Carolyn and Christopher didn’t make up in time, so I heard about their
disagreement.”

“You killed him because he was a
competitor?”
Doona
asked.

“Well, yeah.
 
I’ll do anything to get ahead in this
business.
 
Sometimes you have to do
things you don’t want to do in order to further your career, you know?
 
Like sleeping with old men or combining
colours
that don’t go together because that’s what the
client wants.
 
Or maybe even making
sure that the star of the show you work on keeps being told the wrong start
time every day.”

“Or killing someone,”
Doona
added.

“That was really unpleasant,” Natasha
said.
 
“I didn’t
realise
how hard it would be, and it was messy, too.
 
I planned better for the next one.”

“You killed Michael, too,”
Doona
said sadly.

“I just put a bunch of tablets in his
wine.
 
He just fell asleep and
didn’t wake up.
 
That was much
better.
 
That’s what I’ll do next
time, too.”

“You’re planning to kill more people?”

“I’ve made a list.
 
I’ll just keep taking them out, one at a
time, until I start getting the recognition I deserve,” Natasha said.

“What about the vandalism here?”
Doona
asked.

“Oh, that was Michael,” Natasha told
her.
 
“I suggested it.
 
I was hoping it would make him look like
he hated Christopher, you see, and make his motive look stronger.
 
Besides, it was an awful and ugly room.”

“So you got Michael to smash everything in
it.”

“I told Michael that I hated Christopher and
I hated the idea of a tribute to him.
 
He was already drinking a lot.
 
He was an alcoholic, you know.
 
He quit drinking a few years ago, but when Christopher threatened to sue
him he went back to it.”

“It sounds like he confided in you,”
Doona
remarked.

“Oh, yes, he thought we were friends, and
was hoping for more,” Natasha replied.
 
“He wasn’t a bad guy, really, but I needed someone to take the blame for
Christopher’s murder, you see.
 
I got
him to smash up that horrid room and then I arranged to meet him at the empty
house.”

“And the suicide note?”

“Oh, I can fake just about anyone’s
handwriting if I try.
 
I spent years
mastering calligraphy.
 
I had him
write down the address and directions to the house where we met, so I would
have something to work with.”

“The poor man,”
Doona
muttered.

“I’m sure he would be happy to know that his
death wasn’t in vain,” Natasha said.
 
“His suicide note explained how he killed Christopher, so the police can
close the investigation and I get away with it.
 
Michael did say once that he’d do
anything for me.”

Bessie thought she’d seen a lot in her many
years on the planet, but what she was hearing now shocked her deeply.
 
Natasha seemed to be completely without
a conscience.
 

“How are you feeling?”
Doona
asked Natasha.

“Sleepy,” Natasha replied.
 
“My head and my ankle hurt too much to
let me sleep, though.”

“I’m sure help is on the way,”
Doona
assured her.