Aunt Bessie Volunteers Read online

  “They probably won’t be microwave safe,” Bessie cautioned him. “Things weren’t in those days.”

  “Or dishwasher safe,” someone added.

  “No, probably not,” Mark agreed. He counted the mugs in the box and then repacked them. “I’m not sure what to do with them, really. They’re too nice to throw away.”

  “I’m sure there are lots of people who would love to have them,” Bessie said. “Maybe you could even sell them. Maybe MNH should have a car boot sale.”

  “That isn’t a bad idea,” Mark replied. “I have some other things at the museum that we need to get rid of as well: mugs, plates, cuddly toys, that sort of thing. A car boot sale would help clear it all out and raise a bit of money for us at the same time.”

  “Or you could always give things away at Christmas at the Castle next year,” Bessie suggested.

  “That’s also a good idea,” Mark said. “We could give out raffle tickets for attending and give away all of the junk that’s cluttering up our buildings. It would be nice to raise a bit of money with it all, but car boot sales are hard work, too. I’ll have to talk to my supervisor and see which idea he prefers.”

  “He may have his own ideas as well,” Bessie said.

  Mark nodded. “For now, we’ll start a new pile of things we want to keep. This is the first box for that pile. It can stay here for today, although we’ll need to move it into Douglas eventually.”

  Hours later, they were finished with the room. There were about ten boxes of things that Mark wanted to keep, and the van was full to bursting with rubbish and recycling.

  “I’m going to take the van into Douglas and empty it,” one of the men said. “It’s full.”

  “We’ll break for lunch, then,” Mark told him. “Stop and get yourself something while you’re out.”

  The rest of them went to a nearby pub for soup and sandwiches. Bessie told them all about Onnee while they ate. The MNH staff were kind enough to pretend to be interested in her story, anyway.

  “So she’s pregnant, but her husband may be having an affair with his former girlfriend,” one of the women summarised. “I wouldn’t put up with that sort of behaviour. I’d be on the first boat back to the Isle of Man, I would.”

  “She’s eighteen, with no job and no money,” the other woman argued. “She doesn’t know anyone in the US except her husband and his family.”

  “And the family isn’t any help, as they are still letting her husband’s ex live with them,” the first woman snapped.

  “I keep hoping things will work out for her,” Bessie admitted. “I know she’s going to stay in America, because Marjorie said there are fifty years’ worth of letters. I really hope she’s wrong about her husband and his former girlfriend.”

  After lunch they went back to the castle. Now that the storage room was done, it was time to tackle some of the other, smaller spaces. There were a few boxes stacked up in the back of the tiny ticket booth.

  “Current maps,” Mark announced after he opened the first box. “And current tickets. They can stay.”

  “This one has tickets for that Shakespeare festival from a while back,” someone said as he opened a box. “There are loads of them. I’m guessing we printed a lot more tickets than we ended up needing.”

  “There were very small crowds at some shows,” Bessie said with a shiver, remembering how many hours she’d spent at the castle the night a man near her had been murdered during a performance.

  “They can go,” Mark said. “If we do anything similar again, we’ll need new tickets printed anyway.”

  The air was cold and the wind was blowing as they moved to one of the smaller structures on the site.

  “I didn’t know you stored things in there,” Bessie said as Mark unlocked the padlock that secured the door.

  “We shouldn’t, but you know how it is. Someone has a box of something and doesn’t know what to do with it, so it gets shoved into any empty space.”

  The small space was dark and everything inside it was covered in cobwebs and dust. Mark and the other men hauled three boxes out into the cold sunshine.

  “Is that all that was in there?” Bessie asked.

  “That and about a dozen broken chairs,” Mark sighed. “The guys are going to drag them to the van while we check what’s in the boxes.”

  The first box was full of papers that were water damaged and unreadable. The second was labeled “broken audio guides.”

  Mark shook his head. “Why would anyone keep broken audio guides?” he asked as he handed the box to one of the men.

  The third box had been at the bottom of the pile. Mark opened it, brushing away a spider as he did so. “More paperwork,” he sighed. “Water damaged and useless.”

  As the men carried away all three boxes to the van, Bessie and the other women followed Mark to the next small structure. There they found even more rubbish, along with a box of plates that commemorated Castle Rushen.

  “Why are those here?” Bessie asked.

  Mark shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find a box of Peel Castle plates at Castle Rushen when we do the same thing there.”

  Bessie wondered if she could find an excuse to miss that experience. Although, Castle Rushen had walls and a roof, so maybe it wouldn’t be as bad, she thought as the wind blew around her. “I believe they’re from the early eighties,” she told Mark. “I think there was an entire set, one for each historical site that MNH was managing at that point. You were meant to try to collect them all by visiting each site over the summer, I believe.”

  Mark made a note on the top of the box and then carried it back to the storage room. “Break time,” he told Bessie as she sank back into one of the chairs. “I think we all need a cuppa. It’s cold out there.”

  The kettle was in the ticket booth. Mark managed to find a packet of biscuits there as well. Bessie held her mug of tea tightly, letting the warmth soak into her fingers before she drank the tea.

  “That’s better,” she sighed as the tea began to warm her from the inside.

  “Maybe we should stop for today,” one of the women suggested. “We’ve done a lot already.”

  “But we only have a bit more to do,” Mark countered. “I think there are only two or three more places to check and I believe at least one of them is already empty.”

  “That’s good news,” Bessie laughed.

  After their tea break, they all headed back outside. At the next space, Bessie was able to help identify some cuddly toys as part of a promotion from the seventies. Sadly, all of the toys had suffered from the damp and were covered in spots of mould. The next small storage area was full of nothing but broken chairs and tables.

  “Last one,” Mark said cheerfully as they stopped in front of a small tower that was built into a section of the castle walls. The door was hanging at an odd angle, bending the bar into which the padlock was locked. Mark dug out his keys and inserted one into the lock.

  “Not working?” one of the men asked after a minute, as Mark struggled.

  “It’s the wrong key, I think, but it’s the only key I have for all the padlocks on site.”

  “That one is different from all of the others,” Bessie pointed out.

  Mark frowned at the lock. “You’re right. I wasn’t paying any attention. It looks older, actually, but I thought all of the locks were replaced at the same time.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to stop for today,” one of the women said happily. “You’ll have to work out where that key is, won’t you?”

  Mark shook his head. “I’ve been given all of the keys for the site. It must be on this ring somewhere.”

  As everyone shivered in the cold, Mark tried every key he had. None of them opened the old padlock.

  “Let’s go back to the storage room and warm up,” he said eventually. “I’ll ring the office and see what anyone can suggest.”

  While Mark was on the phone, Bessie made another pot of tea. When Mark rejoined them, he happily took a cup before he spoke.<
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  “It’s getting late. You lot should head back to Douglas and unload the van. I think nearly everything in there is rubbish.”

  “What are you going to do?” one of the women asked.

  “I’m going to cut that lock off the door and see what’s inside that space,” Mark told her. “We’ll leave clearing it out for another day, if there’s anything in there. I was told that one has been empty for years, though. I just want to be certain. I have an extra padlock that I can replace it with, once I’ve removed the one that’s there.”

  “Now I’m curious and I want to see what’s in there,” the woman said. “Maybe we should stay.”

  Mark shrugged. “It’s entirely up to you guys. You can go if you’d rather.”

  After a quick chat, everyone decided to stay. Mark went into the ticket booth to get the necessary tools and then they all trooped behind him back across the site.

  It took Mark and one of the other men several minutes to cut through the rusty old lock. When it finally broke, everyone cheered.

  Mark grinned. “I hope we find something exciting after all of that,” he said as he switched on his torch. Several others crowded behind him as he pushed open the door. A moment later, he turned back around, his face pale.

  “What’s wrong?” Bessie demanded.

  One of the other men looked into the space and then backed away quickly. “It’s a body,” he stammered.

  Bessie looked at Mark, who nodded slowly. Although she didn’t want to look, Bessie wanted to be certain of what they’d found. It was possible they’d simply rediscovered an old mannequin similar to the ones used at Castle Rushen. “Let me borrow your torch,” she told Mark.

  He handed it to her without comment. The others were silent as Bessie crossed to the door and stuck her head inside. When she emerged, she pulled her mobile phone out of her bag.

  “I’m going to ring 999,” she said. “You all need to stay here until the police arrive. They’ll have questions for everyone.”

  “With all due respect, Bessie, they can’t suspect that any of us had anything to do with that person’s death,” Mark protested. “There’s nothing more than a skeleton in there.”

  “They’ll still want statements from everyone,” Bessie replied. “They have a procedure they have to follow.”

  Everyone at the site was well aware that Bessie knew what she was talking about. In the past few years, she’d found more than her fair share of dead bodies. The group remained silent as she used her phone.

  “It’s Elizabeth Cubbon. I’m at Peel Castle with Mark Blake and some of the staff from Manx National Heritage. We’ve just opened up a storage area in one of the old towers in the outer wall and found a dead body.”

  “Are you quite certain?” was the reply.

  “It appears to be a skeleton. I suppose, when the crime scene team arrives, they may find that it was from a school’s biology department or that it’s not real, but I didn’t want to trample over any evidence while trying to determine that for myself.”

  “Very good.” The woman on the other end sounded bored. “I’m sending the nearest constable. He should be there soon.”

  “I’d better go and wait by the castle door,” Mark said when Bessie repeated the conversation. “We’ve been keeping it locked between trips to the van.”

  “Maybe the rest of us should wait in the storage room,” someone suggested. “It’ll be warmer and out of the wind.”

  A few people began to walk away, but Bessie shook her head. “I don’t want to leave whoever is in there alone,” she said, feeling slightly foolish.

  “Bessie is right,” one of the women said. “We shouldn’t leave him or her alone.”

  “Whoever it is has been in there, all alone, for decades,” one of the men argued.

  Bessie shrugged and then sat down on the nearby bench. A short while later, Mark was back with a uniformed constable. The constable took his torch and looked into the small space.

  “Could be a real skeleton, I suppose,” he said when he emerged. “I’d better ring for backup, just in case it is.”

  Experience meant that Bessie knew it wouldn’t be long before the castle grounds would be almost overrun by the hard-working members of a crime scene team. What she didn’t know was which inspector would be put in charge of the investigation. The head of the CID in Peel had retired recently and Bessie hadn’t heard who had replaced him. She was still wondering when she spotted a familiar figure walking across the castle grounds.

  Of all the men and women employed by the island’s constabulary, Inspector Anna Lambert was Bessie’s least favourite by a considerable margin. The fifty-something woman had worked for a time at the Laxey station, where she’d been hired to assist John Rockwell with the station’s administrative tasks. Eventually, she’d decided that she preferred investigative work over paperwork and had transferred to Castletown. Bessie hadn’t heard that she’d moved to Peel. The inspector stopped and had a word with the constable before walking over to where Bessie and the others were gathered.

  “Miss Cubbon, I should have expected to find you right at the centre of everything, shouldn’t I?” Inspector Lambert snapped.

  Chapter 2

  Bessie took a deep breath and then began to count slowly to ten. The last thing she needed to do was say something rude to the disagreeable inspector. She was only on nine when Mark spoke.

  “I’m afraid that’s entirely my fault,” he said. “I asked Bessie to come and help us today.”

  “You are?” Inspector Lambert asked.

  “I’m Mark Blake, head of special projects for Manx National Heritage.” Mark quickly introduced the rest of the MNH employees to the inspector, who was taking notes as he spoke.

  “Why are you here?” was her next question.

  “We were cleaning house, really,” Mark replied. “We’ve been clearing everything from the various storage areas around the site all day.”

  “And this was a storage area?”

  “It wasn’t meant to be, but neither were several of the other spaces that were being used for storage. We were just checking to make certain that it was empty.”

  “But it isn’t.”

  “No, it isn’t. There’s a skeleton in the back corner.”

  Inspector Lambert nodded. “I’ll take a look in a moment. In the meantime, is there somewhere a bit more sheltered where you all can wait?”

  “There’s a small storage room nearby,” Mark replied. “We set up a table and chairs in there earlier. We even have a kettle.”

  “Excellent. You and your coworkers go and have tea and relax. Someone will be in to take statements from each of you shortly,” she said.

  As Bessie got to her feet, the inspector gave her a cold smile. “Miss Cubbon, I’d prefer if you’d remain here, please. I’m sure I’m going to have a number of questions for you.”

  “It’s awfully cold out here for Bessie,” Mark protested.

  “It’s fine,” Bessie said firmly. While she agreed with Mark, she’d never admit such a thing to Inspector Lambert.

  The inspector waited until Mark and the other MNH staff had walked away before she switched on her torch and headed for the tower door. She was only inside for a minute, maybe less.

  “Get the crime scene team,” she told the constable with a sigh. “I’ll need a pair of trained constables to get statements from the witnesses, as well.”

  The constable nodded and then pulled out his mobile. As he was pushing buttons, the inspector crossed to Bessie and sat down on the bench. “Please sit,” she invited.

  Bessie sat back down and swallowed a sigh. The inspector stared at her for what seemed to be a very long time. Finally she spoke.

  “I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye on things,” Inspector Lambert said. “I know you didn’t approve of my techniques during some of the investigations I conducted in which you were involved. This one seems less likely to be contentious. The man or woman in there has been dead for a very long ti
me.”

  “Perhaps so long that it doesn’t even warrant an investigation,” Bessie suggested.

  “Everyone gets an investigation,” the other woman countered. “I suppose if the bones were Viking era, we might not investigate, but otherwise, I intend to do my best to work out whom we’ve found and how he or she ended up in that tower. I was hoping you might be able to help with that.”

  “Me?”

  The inspector looked amused. “You can’t be surprised that I’m asking for your help. If the body has been in there for ten, twenty, or thirty years, then you may know whom we’ve discovered. I know you helped Hugh with a similar case in Laxey not long ago.”

  “I was able to make him a list of men who’d disappeared from the island around the same time as the body was found,” Bessie replied. “I could do something similar for you if you can narrow down a date when this person died.”

  “Obviously, we’ll do our best. I don’t think it’s going to be easy, though. Do you have any initial ideas on who it might be?”

  Bessie shook her head. “None at all, not without some idea of a date. Men and women leave the island all the time. Most of them stay in touch with friends or family members, but not all of them choose to do so. Staying in touch is easier now, with mobile phones and e-mail, of course. Years ago, it took more effort.”

  “Start making a list of anyone and everyone who may be missing. We’ll narrow the list down once we have a date for the body.”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Bessie replied. “Give me a gender and an approximate date and I’ll do what I can to help, but that’s the best I can do.”

  The two women frowned at each other. Eventually, the inspector spoke again. “Of course, Laxey is your home. If the dead person was from Peel, you probably didn’t know him or her anyway.”

  Bessie nodded. “If he or she had any ties to Laxey, I may be able to help, but otherwise, you’re probably right.”

  “That’s unfortunate. I was hoping you’d be able to identify my body for me sooner rather than later.”

  “Mark may be able to help you with dating things. He had to cut the lock off the door. All of the other padlocks on the site use the same key, but this one was different. He reckoned it might have been older than the other locks, too.”