21st July, 1939
My dearest Bobby,
Ah! You left me alone yesterday, darling, with the lovely ring to comfort me. I kiss it every passing minute, and now my lips are golden. Thank you for your kindness. I will not let HIM find it. It will stay in a secret place until I am rid of HIM and we are together.
All my night was sleepless, dreaming of playing with my beloved. Are you feeling as if I am by your side, darling? God bless your thoughts for me. I do not know what more to say but hope to write a long one next time.
Good-bye darling
A big kiss to you,
Bessie
“I like the old-fashioned language,” Dawson said with a smile. “By ‘HIM,’ I assume she was referring to Tiberius?”
“Yes, evidently.”
So, by at least 1939, and maybe even earlier, Dawson reasoned, Bessie had been having an affair with R.E. Obviously he had been a dashing, attractive man, but surely it would have taken more than that to drive Bessie into his arms? What had been going on in her marriage that had encouraged her to stray? Another thought struck Dawson. “What about children?” he asked Eileen. “Did Bessie have any with Tiberius?”
She looked up at him from the letter, which she had been studying. “Only one that I know of-Richard Sarbah. I was told he had at least one sister, but I haven’t confirmed that. Have you met Jason Sarbah?”
“Yes, I have.”
“That’s Richard’s son-Charles’s cousin. Richard lives not far away in New Amanful, a suburb of Takoradi. On one occasion several years ago, I tried to approach him for more information about Bessie, but he said he couldn’t help me. He seemed bitter and resentful-angry, even-and I know the probable reason.”
She went to the window and looked out at the street through the dusty patina and then turned to face Dawson with a look of distress. “R.E. and Grandma Bessie were killed in 1952, more than ten years before I was born. They were murdered-hacked to death late one night as they slept.”
Dawson was shocked. “Oh!”
“A brutal, bloody killing, Inspector,” she said quietly, with so much emotion that the murder scene could have been right before them. “I can show you some newspaper articles I got from the archives at the university library.”
She picked through some boxes until she found three clippings from a daily paper called Gold Coast Times. In the first, the murder of Bessie and R.E. Aidoo, “who met their ruthless and tragic death while in slumber,” was a front-page news item.
