All Things Undying (18 page)

Cradling his broken thumb in one hand, Bailey winced. ‘That damn cat that's been hanging around the barn ran across the lane, and I went to hit the brake, but I think I got the accelerator instead.'

Alison pulled her cell phone out of her handbag. ‘I'm going to take you to the hospital, but first, I'm going to call the AA and have them come for the car.'

‘No!' Bailey ordered. ‘Leave it. Tom'll fetch it with the tractor.'

‘You pay for breakdown coverage, you old fool. You should use it.'

‘Tom'll haul it up to the barn so I can think about it. Just had some body work done, remember. If I file another claim, I'll have a rise in premium. Can't afford that. Not at my age.'

Alison shrugged, capitulating. ‘It's your car, so you can do what you bloody well want with it, you old fool.'

‘Who's Tom?' I asked as Alison fastened the seatbelt around her father and prepared for the long drive to Dartmouth Hospital.

‘He's one of the lads who helps with the chores. Works part-time at a body shop in Plymouth, so Dad probably figures Tom can pop the airbags back in, pound out the dents, and repaint for pence on the pound.'

‘What will I do about the people who are coming to see the house?' Alison's father said wearily.

Alison raised both eyebrows and shot me a pleading look.

I took the hint. ‘Don't worry about that, Mr Bailey. I'll stay at the house until you and Alison get back. What time are you expecting the estate agent?'

‘Half two.'

‘No problem. I'll wait. Is Tom working today?'

‘He'll be in the barn.'

‘And I'll see to it that Tom takes care of the car, then.'

While Alison and her father were at the hospital, and after speaking with Tom, I moved through the house like a whirlwind. Tossed two sweat-stained T-shirts, a pair of grimy khakis and half a dozen mismatched socks into the washing machine and slammed the door closed. Threw two pairs of shoes and some slippers into the bottom of a wardrobe. Made the bed. Washed, dried and put away a sinkful of dishes using detergent from a half bottle of Fairy Liquid I found while rummaging under the kitchen sink. Bailey hadn't been out of it after all.

As I stood at the sink holding the bottle of Fairy Liquid in one hand and a dishtowel in the other, I watched Tom, perched high in the driver's seat of his tractor, tow Stephen Bailey's damaged car past the kitchen window. I felt a chill, not entirely explained by the blast of air conditioning blowing on the back of my neck from the small window unit over the kitchen table. Scrapes and scratches cut a wide swath along the entire passenger side of the Prius, and the left front fender was curved around the tire. If Alison's father had staged the accident in an attempt to cover up damage to his vehicle from a hit and run, he couldn't have done a better job of it.

But what possible motive could he have had to mow Susan Parker down?

I shrugged, draped the dishtowel over the oven door handle to dry, and moved on to the farmhouse's single bathroom. Old folks were mistaking accelerator pedals for brakes every day of the week, I reasoned as I swished a rag around the rim of the bathroom sink. Add eighty-six-year-old Stephen Bailey to that statistic. I decided that cleaning the toilet was way above and beyond the call of duty, so I closed the lid on the offending rust stains and hoped for the best. Then I sat down to watch TV and wait.

By the time Alison returned with her father a few minutes after four, a butterfly bandage on his chin and his hand in a splint, I'd learned a whole lot about converting a garage into a granny annexe, but not a single estate agent or Hooray Henry from Manchester or anywhere had showed up expecting a tour of Three Trees Farm.

FOURTEEN

Grace Bradbeer,
The Land Changed Its Face: The Evacuation of the South Hams, 1943–44
, Devon Books, 1973, pp.59–60

‘
H
elp me, Hannah.'

It was inevitable. The old Beach Boys classic ‘Help, Help Me, Rhonda' started running through my head, and I knew the tune would stick with me all day.

Alison was pushing a trolley down the dairy aisle of the Sainsbury's superstore on the outskirts of Dartmouth, and I'd just tossed three pots of full-cream yogurt into my section of her cart.
Fruits des bois
, Paul's fave. Our husbands were due home the following day, and I was stocking our mini-fridge with treats.

‘Hmmm?' I drawled, the wicked beat of a Beach Boys' bass drumming hard in my head.

Alison turned a corner and brought the trolley squeaking to a halt in front of a cold case of cheeses. ‘Your dad is in his seventies, right?'

I found a wedge of red Leicester and tossed it into the cart along with the yogurt. ‘Yes.'

‘Do you ever worry about him?'

‘Well, sure, but he's been on the wagon now for almost ten years, Alison.'

‘That's not what I meant. I'm talking about dementia, Hannah. Maybe even Alzheimer's.' She paused, and I saw that she was gripping the handle of the trolley so hard that the veins stood out, bold and blue, on the back of her hands.

My father spent his so-called retirement designing sophisticated missile tracking devices for the US Navy, so I presumed he was still operating with a full complement of brain cells.

Alison frowned. ‘Dad's accident the other day?'

‘That would worry me, too.' Her hand felt cold under mine, and it wasn't from the air conditioning. ‘When we get older, our reflexes aren't what they used to be.'

‘It's not just that, Hannah,' she rattled on. ‘Those people from Manchester showed up, all right, but their appointment was for Friday, not Wednesday. He'd got it all mixed up. And when I went back to check on Dad's car this morning, Tom told me that he's been worried about Dad, too. He seems distracted, Tom says. Misplacing his tools. Tearing the house apart looking for his keys, only to find he'd left them in the ignition. And last week, he was supposed to take delivery of a shipment of seed, and he forgot all about it. When they got to the farm and found nobody home, the delivery men dumped the bags in the courtyard instead of stacking them in the barn.'

‘Gosh, Alison, I'm so sorry.' We walked only a few more steps before I decided I needed to add to the misery by telling her about the Fairy Liquid, too. ‘It didn't seem significant at the time, but I discovered he wasn't out of Fairy Liquid, either. I found a bottle half full of the stuff under the sink.'

‘Christ on a crutch,' Alison said, giving the trolley a savage push to get it going again. ‘Three Trees can't sell fast enough for me. I want him in that retirement home so
someone
will be keeping an eye on him. I can't do it from Dartmouth.'

‘He shouldn't be driving, Alison,' I said gently.

‘Don't I know it! But Tom says the damage to the Prius was mostly cosmetic.'

‘If my face were as bunged up as that car, I'd need the help of a skilled plastic surgeon.'

‘Yes, but like that car, you'd still be drivable, or so Tom says. Clever boots put it back together with duct tape and chewing gum.' She seemed to brighten. ‘Well, if my father wants to drive around in a vehicle that looks like it's been through the wars, that's fine with me, as long as he stays on the farm. That way, nobody else is likely to get hurt.'

‘If only you could guarantee that he'd stay on the farm.' I sighed. ‘In the old days, we'd simply remove the distributor cap.'

‘Cars don't have distributor caps any more.'

‘Pity.' I engineered a detour down the aisle where they carried the Hob Nobs and snagged two packets of the chocolate-covered kind. ‘What does your father's doctor say?'

‘He refuses to see one.'

‘His vicar?' I asked, remembering a cute little church in the village.

‘Dad? Don't make me laugh. He hasn't darkened the door of a church since the day I was baptized.' She aimed the trolley for one of the checkout aisles. ‘Mum was such a steadying influence. It's been very hard since she died.'

My stomach lurched.
Been there, done that.
‘Well, as you say, getting him into that retirement home is a number-one priority. Have you thought about lowering the asking price on the farm?'

Alison tossed a cello pack of tomatoes on the conveyor belt, followed by two heads of romaine and a bunch of radishes. ‘Give it another week. I need to discuss it with Jon. Then we'll see.'

The following afternoon, a bright, sunny Sunday, we met Paul and Jon at the Dart Marina Hotel and Yacht Basin. The guys were sitting at a table outside under a blue umbrella, looking fit, tan and full of good cheer, primarily the amber liquid kind.

On the spot, Alison invited Paul and me to dinner, allegedly to celebrate
Biding Thyme
's triumph at Cowes, where our team came in first in three races out of seven, and placed second overall. But as soon as we arrived at the Hamilton home that evening, bottle of wine in hand, I knew that something else was on the agenda. A white damask cloth covered the table, candles flickered in silver candlesticks, a name card sat in front of each place – all that was missing was the paper streamers and party hats.

While Jon, with Paul assisting, twisted a corkscrew into the bottle of wine we'd brought to the party, I followed Alison into the kitchen, eyeing her suspiciously. ‘OK, what gives?'

She smiled mysteriously, and handed me a plate of cheese straws.

When we got back to the sitting room, Jon reached behind the sofa and produced a silver ice bucket draped with a damask napkin. Holding the bucket in one hand, he removed the napkin with a flourish. ‘Tah dah! Champagne all round!'

Champagne flutes materialized just as magically, and when all the glasses were full, Alison raised hers high. ‘A toast!' she crowed, beaming in the direction of her father who sat, solemn as Buddha, in a straight back chair. ‘We've sold the farm!'

‘Hear, hear!' said Paul.

‘Super!' said I.

‘Fools!' growled Stephen Bailey. By tacit agreement, everyone decided to ignore him.

‘To who? Whom?' I corrected.

‘That pair from Manchester,' Alison announced. ‘Offered the asking price for it, too.'

‘Hobby farmers,' Bailey sneered. ‘Don't know a bloomin' thing about farming. Turn up with a copy of
Pig Farming for Dummies
in their manbags, and think they know it all.' The way he said ‘manbags' made it clear what he thought about men who carried shoulder bags. ‘Just wait till winter sets in. They'll be driving out to Tesco soon enough.'

Jon raised his glass. ‘Another toast! Goodbye to mud, muck, manure and misery!'

Alison punched him in the arm. ‘It wasn't
that
bad!'

‘So, what are they going to raise?' I asked, thinking that with all that acreage it could be anything.

‘Bees or cheese,' mumbled Alison's father. ‘Hard to tell with that Mancky accent.'

Paul raised an eyebrow. ‘Mancky?'

‘They're Mancunian, aren't they? Manc. From Manchester. Need bleeding subtitles crawling across their chests.'

I laughed so hard that I spit wine out my nose. Put my cocktail napkin to good use before I asked, ‘So, Mr Bailey, what does a Mancunian sound like?'

‘Ever seen
Life on Mars? Cracker
?'

‘Yes. We had them on PBS or BBC America, I think. Enjoyed them a lot.'

‘Like that.'

‘They mumble, you mean?'

‘Sound like they just stepped off the special needs bus.'

‘Dad!' Alison flushed crimson, and shot me a you-can-dress-'em-up-but-you-can't-take-'em-out look of embarrassment.

Political correctness aside, I had to laugh. I found myself wondering if any nineteenth-century Mancunians had settled in rural Kentucky where a gas station attendant had once inquired, ‘Youoioh?' My college roommate-slash-interpreter had informed me that he was merely wondering if we came from Ohio.

Paul eased the champagne out of the ice bucket. ‘More bubbly?' As he topped off our glasses he said, ‘So, when do you close?'

‘It's a cash offer, and there's no chain, so it should happen relatively quickly,' Jon said.

Alison grinned. ‘Then, as you Americans are wont to say, it's a done deal!'

But as anyone who has ever bought property in the UK will tell you, it's definitely not over until it's over.

FIFTEEN

Tunku Varadarajan,
www.Forbes.com
, 2 February 2009

T
he next morning after breakfast, I nipped back upstairs and managed to catch the news on the tiny flat-screen television in our room. Susan's death was still a major story, but there had been no progress on the case: