The Donaldson Case Read online

  The Donaldson Case

  A Markham Sisters Cozy

  Mystery Novella

  Diana Xarissa

  Copyright © 2016 Diana Xarissa

  All Rights Reserved

  For you, dear reader, because without you this book wouldn’t exist.

  Acknowledgements

  There are so many people who deserve thanks for their efforts.

  Firstly, 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

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  Letter to Bessie (part one)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Letter to Bessie (part two)

  Glossary of Terms

  Other Notes

  By the same author

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  I love to write (that may be obvious), and I love every book, story and novella I’ve ever written, even the really terrible stuff I wrote years ago and have buried in the bottom of my closet! There is something special about this series, though. I’m really enjoying spending time with the Markham sisters.

  Maybe it’s because I have a sister who is very close in age to myself, so I’m having fun with the relationship between Joan and Janet. It might be the idea that they’re doing something totally different with their lives in their “retirement” years. Or maybe it’s just because I have so many ideas for them going forward and I can’t wait to get them written.

  Whatever, welcome to the fourth 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. The Markham sisters first made their appearance in Aunt Bessie Decides, the fourth book in my Isle of Man Cozy Mysteries series.

  Since then, Janet (the younger sister) has stayed in touch with Bessie, and each novella opens and closes with parts of Janet’s letters to her new friend on the Isle of Man. I use the excerpts from the letters as a way to start and finish each story; you absolutely do not have to read the Bessie books to enjoy this series.

  Because of the setting of the story, I have used English spellings and terms. In the back of the book is a glossary and some notes designed to help readers outside the UK with terms that might be unfamiliar. 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 business 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. All of the information about subscribing or getting in touch is available on the About the Author page at the back of the book.

  12 November 1998

  Dearest Bessie,

  Your recent holiday sounds like it was more stressful than your everyday life. I’m glad you finally managed to get away for a few days, although I can’t imagine it was very restful, what with the murder and all.

  You know that you are always welcome here, if you feel the need for a break. While all manner of strange things seem to go on around here, we’ve yet to find any dead bodies.

  Speaking of strange things, we recently found another hidden panel, which led to an interesting discovery. Joan had her own little excitement early in the month as well, as Michael was very nearly arrested! Suddenly my sister was the one who wanted to play detective, which was quite unusual.

  Chapter One

  “I suppose so,” Janet said reluctantly, sliding a bite of her apple crumble around on the plate. Her favourite pudding didn’t taste quite as nice now that it was obvious that her sister was using it as a bribe.

  “We said we’d leave it a fortnight after our last guests left to talk about welcoming more guests,” Joan reminded her sister. “That was three weeks ago.”

  Janet sighed. She knew Joan was right. They’d bought the bed and breakfast with the idea of actually trying to run the business, even if the idea had been almost all Joan’s. Thus far, however, the guests they’d welcomed hadn’t exactly been ideal, and Janet wasn’t sure she wanted to see who else fate might send them.

  “I’ve had a lovely letter of enquiry from a married couple that sound ideal,” Joan told her. “They’re both artists and they’re looking for a quiet getaway so they can spend some time on their art.”

  Janet narrowed her eyes. “You’re hoping they’ll do a couple of paintings of the local area for our guest rooms, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Joan flushed. “We don’t really want to spend the money right now,” she defended herself. “And those guest rooms really need some artwork. It did cross my mind that the Nicholsons might use their time here to create exactly what we’re looking for to put in those rooms, but that isn’t the only reason I think we should accommodate them.”

  “So what else are you thinking?” Janet demanded.

  “Just that we should be booking guests on a regular basis. Word seems to be getting out that we aren’t taking guests and requests have almost stopped. If we’re going to run this place properly, we need people staying regularly.”

  Janet thought carefully about her answer. She’d been perfectly content, after she and Joan had retired from teaching the previous year, to rest, relax, and travel. It was Joan who’d suggested that they spend a small inheritance and the proceeds from the sale of their previous home on Doveby House, a beautiful seventeenth-century manor house in the small village of Doveby Dale. Janet hadn’t known then that her sister had been harbouring a secret desire to own her own bed and breakfast for her entire life. Now that Janet did know that, she felt as if she couldn’t stand in the way of her sister’s dream, even if the dream was not one that she shared with Joan.

  “I suppose the Nicholsons can’t be any worse than our previous guests,” Janet muttered. “Go ahead and tell them they can come.”

  “Thank you,” Joan said. “I expect they’ll be here on Monday. Maybe you can get the library finished by then?”

  Janet finished her last bite of apple crumble, swallowing a sigh with it. “I’ll get back to work now,” she told her sister as she got up from the table. “Unless you need my help with the washing up?”

  “No, you go and get to work. I’ll just load up the dishwasher with everything.”

  Janet nodded resignedly. The library was her favourite room in the house and she loved spending time in it. What she didn’t love was cleaning it, and that was what needed doing. She’d been slowly working her way around the room, taking row after row of books from the shelves and cleaning each shelf. While she was looking forward to classifying and organising the books themselves, she wasn’t allowing herself to start that
project until the basic cleaning was done.

  Inside the small room, she shut the door behind her and faced the far wall. She’d completed two walls previously and was nearly finished with the third. For a while she’d made good progress, but once their latest set of guests had left, she’d spent more time reading and relaxing than cleaning and tidying. Now she headed for the last tall section on the wall and began to remove the books from the top shelf. Humming softly to herself, she worked as rapidly as she could, doing a quick but mostly thorough job.

  About halfway down the wall, when she cleared yet another shelf, she felt a rush of excitement. This section of shelves against the wall had a small inset panel that looked identical to the one she’d found at the opposite end of that wall. She felt her way around the panel, but couldn’t find a way to open it. When she knocked on it, she could hear what she was certain was a hollow sound. After trying to slide the panel every which way and failing, she sat down at the desk and stared at the wall.

  There has to be a way to open that panel, she told herself.

  Joan had suggested, when Janet had found the previous one, that the panels were simply access points for power cables that needed to reach plug sockets behind the shelves. While it was a logical explanation, Janet wasn’t fond of it at all. In her mind, the panels must have been put in place to hide something valuable.

  “Why do I hear knocking?” Joan asked as she pushed the door open.

  Janet jumped to her feet. “I found another of those panels at this end,” she told her sister.

  “So?”

  “So, I still think they must be hiding something.”

  Joan and Janet both looked at the small picture in the middle of one of the shelves full of books. It was barely noticeable with all of the books around it, but behind it was a small wall safe. Unfortunately, the sisters didn’t have the combination to the safe.

  Their first paying guest, Edward Bennett, had known all about the safe. When he was getting ready to leave, he’d told Janet that he was some sort of government agent who had occasionally sent people to Doveby House as a safe house. He’d given Janet a combination, but when she tried it, it didn’t open the safe. Janet still talked to Edward once in a while, when he rang her, but she’d not yet managed to get the proper combination from him.

  “We’ve no reason to think Mrs. Appleton was hiding anything,” Joan said. The sisters had purchased Doveby House from Margaret Appleton’s estate after she disinherited her son and left everything to a local charity. The sisters had already discovered that “Maggie” was a colourful character and Janet believed that she had been capable of just about anything.

  “We’ve every reason to think she was hiding things,” Janet replied. “She had a hidden safe, after all, and she worked for Edward in some capacity.”

  “You only have Edward’s word for that,” Joan pointed out.

  Janet sighed. Joan was right. She’d believed everything the man had told her when he was leaving, but now, as time went on, she found herself doubting him more and more.

  “I wish I could work out how to open the panel,” Janet said, changing the subject.

  “It can’t be difficult,” Joan said. “It probably just slides up or down or something.”

  “I tried sliding it,” Janet told her. “And pushing it and pulling it and just about every other thing.”

  Joan shrugged and crossed the room. “You never got the other one open, did you?”

  “No. But I haven’t given up hope on that one, either.”

  Joan tapped lightly on the small panel and then on the wood around it. “It does sound different,” she admitted. “Almost as if it’s hollow behind the panel. But that makes sense if it’s removable for access.”

  “I’ll let you invite a hundred guests if you can get the stupid thing open,” Janet said.

  Joan grinned. “There’s an interesting challenge.” She pushed on the panel and then tried sliding it in every direction. “It seems to move slightly, but not enough,” she told Janet after a moment.

  “I think there was more movement in the one on the other end,” Janet said.

  “While we have a minute, let me have a look at that one,” Joan suggested.

  Janet quickly removed all the books from the middle shelf at the other end of the wall. The panel was still there and when Janet pushed on it, it still didn’t open.

  Joan walked over and took a good look. “It does move more than the one on the other end,” she agreed with Janet after a moment. “It really feels as if it should slide up or down.”

  “I know. I spent ages trying to get it to do just that when I found it. But then we had guests arriving and I had to work on the cleaning, so I left it.”

  The sound of their phone ringing interrupted the conversation. Joan went out to answer it while Janet went back to trying to work out how to remove the hidden panels.

  “After our chat over lunch, I rang the Nicholsons,” Joan told Janet when she walked back into the library a few minutes later. “I left a message on their answer phone. That was them ringing back.”

  “Have they decided to try the Lake District instead?” Janet asked hopefully.

  Joan smiled. “No, they’ll be here on Monday for a week-long stay. They’ll be having breakfast with us every morning, but prefer to get their evening meals out.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s something,” Janet said, trying to keep her tone light.

  “I didn’t enjoy having guests for dinner,” Joan told her. “I won’t be suggesting it to guests in the future. It was only because our last guests requested it specially that I agreed.”

  “So what do you know about our new guests?” Janet asked.

  “I think I told you just about everything already. They’re a married couple called Fred and Molly Nicholson, and apparently they are both artists. The letter they sent requesting a room said that they were hoping for something of a spiritual retreat.”

  “Did they say what sort of art they do? I mean, I know you’re hoping that they will paint something amazing for our guest rooms, but maybe they do pottery or sculpture or something.”

  “They didn’t say,” Joan replied. “And I didn’t really think about it.”

  Janet grinned to herself. Her sister had been so focussed on the idea of getting artwork for the guest rooms that she didn’t think the whole thing through. The next week promised to be quite interesting, even if it might not be enjoyable.

  “Now let’s sort out these panels so you can get back to work on the cleaning,” Joan said. She crossed to the panel that Janet had found first and pushed on it firmly.

  “There’s more movement in the top left corner than anywhere else,” she told Janet.

  Janet watched eagerly as Joan pushed on the corner and then tried to slide the panel. After a moment, the panel slowly began to slide sideways.

  “You’ve done it,” Janet gasped.

  “That means we can have a hundred guests,” Joan reminded her.

  “That was for the other panel,” Janet said quickly.

  Joan laughed and then crossed to the other panel. Using the same technique, she pushed and slid and wiggled the panel. Nothing seemed to work.

  “This one is stuck,” she announced after a moment. “But I’m sure it doesn’t matter in the slightest. They’re bound to be nothing but plug socket access points.”

  Janet walked over to the now opened panel and glanced inside. “It’s dark back there,” she told Joan.

  “Where’s the nearest torch?” Joan asked.

  Janet dug one out of the desk drawer and aimed the light into the space. “It’s not an access panel,” she told her sister excitedly. “It’s a small storage space.”

  “Is there anything in it?”

  “Just this,” Janet said, reaching into the space. She pulled out the oddly-shaped object and then turned and showed it to her sister.

  “It’s a piggy bank,” Joan said.

  “It’s a very unusual piggy bank,” Janet
replied. The small, white ceramic bank appeared to have been hand painted. There were brightly coloured blue flowers on each side of it, and the pig had enormous blue eyes.

  “It has ridiculous eyelashes,” Joan said.

  Janet looked it over and then laughed. “It’s rather, um, eccentric, but I think I love it.”

  “I’m glad you do. I think I hate it.”

  “Piggy can live in my room,” Janet replied.

  “You’re welcome to her, but maybe not what’s inside,” Joan said.

  Janet laughed. “I was so excited to find her, I didn’t even think about what might be inside.” She gave the pig a gentle shake and was rewarded by a jingling sound.

  “Sounds like there is definitely something in there.”

  “I just hope we don’t have to break Piggy to get it out,” Janet said worriedly. She turned the pig around in her hands and was relieved to find a small black rubber stopper in the bottom of the figure.

  “You can break it as far as I’m concerned,” Joan said dryly.

  Janet ignored her as she wiggled the stopper to try to get it out. After a minute, she gave up. “We need something to pry this open with,” she said. “Something that won’t break Piggy.”

  The pair went into the kitchen. Janet put the bank on the counter and the sisters dug around in drawers, looking for something that might work to remove the stopper. Janet tried sliding a knife around the edges of the stopper, but it did nothing but move it around.

  “Maybe some sort of screwdriver or something?” Janet suggested.

  “I think all the tools are in the carriage house,” Joan told her.

  Janet grabbed Piggy and the sisters quickly headed out to the carriage house, both equally eager to open the piggy bank and see what they’d found.

  Chapter Two

  The door to the carriage house was open when the sisters reached it.