All Things Undying (27 page)

I glanced over my shoulder.

Alison was indeed chugging up the drive. ‘There you are, Dad!' Her tone was cheery, impossible to tell that she'd just spent the last four hours worrying about her father, searching bus, train and ferry terminals that offered service from Dittisham to points out in all directions. ‘Hi, Cathy,' she added with a friendly wave.

Her father looked like a little boy lost in a large department store. ‘She says I don't own the farm anymore, Alison.'

Alison reddened, but skirted the issue. ‘You sold it to Mrs Yates, remember?'

‘I did no such thing!' he blustered. ‘I agreed to sell it to some bloke in London, going to grow organic vegetables or something daft.'

‘Agrishare Limited is my company, Mr Bailey.'

Bailey froze, back ramrod straight, his arms dangling. He glared at Cathy, then turned to his daughter and gave her a look so malevolent that if looks were arrows, she'd have dropped dead on the spot.

‘Busted!' I teased.

Alison grinned sheepishly, and we watched her father slump and stalk off to the barn.

‘Do you . . .?' Cathy began. ‘Maybe somebody should go and talk to him? I might have been a little harsh just now.'

Knowing, or rather suspecting, what Stephen Bailey had been up to lately, I had no inclination to raise my hand. He could pout in the barn forever, for all I cared, or at least until the police came to cart him away.

‘No, no,' Alison told her. ‘He'll sulk for a bit, then he'll be fine. And who knows? The way his memory's been lately, he may forget that the whole thing ever happened.'

With Stephen Bailey temporarily out of the picture, Cathy hefted her spade and began another assault on the foundation of the old dairy barn. ‘I can tell there used to be steps here.' Her spade took another bite out of the soil.

I had a very good idea why Bailey didn't want Cathy, or anybody, digging in this particular spot, so when Cathy looked up and said, ‘Hunt up another shovel, will ya, Hannah, and lend a poor working girl a hand?' I spread my arms helplessly and shrugged in a
who-me?
sort of way.

I was saved by the reappearance of Stephen Bailey.

At first, I was relieved. Then I saw he was carrying a shotgun over his arm, almost casually, break action open. As he walked, he fed a shell into each chamber, then flipped the gun closed with an ominous clack.

Bailey was closing with single-minded intent on Cathy Yates who had her back to him and was digging with such concentration, accompanied by her own incessant chatter, that she was oblivious to the danger he represented.

Her spade bit into the ground. ‘Well, what's this?' She tossed the tool aside, bent at the waist to get a closer look, and peered into the hole.

‘Dad!' Alison's voice was low, urgent.

‘You stay out of this, Alison.' He took several more steps in Cathy's direction, but she still didn't see him. ‘Stop digging. Now!'

Cathy jumped into the hole, bent over for a moment, thrust her hand into the dirt. ‘There's something down there, Mr Bailey, and I . . .' Her head came up and she sucked air, finally noticing the shotgun pointed straight at her chest.

‘Climb out, and move away from the hole,' Bailey instructed, motioning her aside with the business end of the gun. When Cathy didn't budge, he tugged on the bolt and slammed the shell home.

She raised a hand in surrender. ‘Now look, Mr Bailey . . .'

‘I said
move
!' His finger twitched where it rested on the trigger.

Cathy's fists migrated to her hips, her arms akimbo. ‘You lied to me, Mr Bailey. You told me there were no bodies here. But what am I looking at right now, huh? Tell me that?'

The woman had chutzpah, but I already knew that.

She held out a fist, slowly uncurled her fingers. ‘What's this, then?'

From where I stood, something glittered like a cat's eye on her open palm. I moved my head slightly to the right. Another flash.

‘And down in this hole?' Cathy continued, her eyes still locked on Alison's father. ‘There's a bit of khaki fabric in that hole, that's what. I don't know what else I'll find down there, but if that fabric is a piece of uniform, then it could belong to somebody's son, or husband, or father.'

‘Alison, where did your father get the gun?' I whispered.

‘Oh, God, he kept one in the barn,' she whispered back, her voice quavering. ‘I completely forgot about it.'

I grabbed her arm and squeezed reassuringly. I touched my lips with an index finger, then indicated that I was going to work my way around behind her father. His attention was so focused on Cathy that I hoped he wouldn't notice me.

‘Put the spade down,' Bailey ordered.

Cathy obeyed, thrusting the tool into the pile of dirt. ‘You don't really want to hurt anybody, do you, Mr Bailey? Why don't you put the gun away?'

Suddenly, the shotgun exploded. Alison's father staggered back with the recoil, his eyes wide in astonishment.

Alison screamed.

Cathy seemed paralysed with shock. She clutched her left arm, hugging it against her body as a scarlet stain began to leak through her blouse and between her fingers. ‘Well, got down sat on a bench! That crazy old fool just shot me!'

Even with blood running down her arm, Cathy Yates managed to keep her profanity clean.

‘I – I – I . . .' Bailey stammered, drooping like a rag doll. ‘I didn't mean . . . my finger just . . .'

I shoved past him, heading straight for Cathy, peeling off my jacket as I ran, thinking I could use it as a tourniquet. Lessons learned at Girl Scout camp die hard. ‘Call 999!' I yelled at Alison whose shoes seemed riveted to the ground.

‘Dad?' she wailed.

‘Your cell phone, Alison! For Christ's sake, call an ambulance! Your father can wait.'

I was ripping Cathy's sleeve open to check the seriousness of her wound, and Alison was busy punching numbers into her phone, so neither one of us noticed when Stephen Bailey, still carrying the shotgun, disappeared into the barn.

Alison charged into the house to fetch some clean cloths, while I stayed with Cathy. ‘Do sit down, girl. You've got buckshot in your arm.' I propped her up against the pile of dirt, using her sweater as a cushion.

Alison was back in a moment carrying some dishtowels and a can of Coca Cola. ‘I can't believe my father . . . Oh, God, Hannah, is she going to be all right?'

‘I think so,' I said as I wrapped my jacket tightly around Cathy's arm in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.

Alison held out the Coke.

‘What's that for?'

She shrugged. ‘I thought Cathy could use the sugar or something.'

Cathy forced a smile. ‘Thanks. Maybe later. First, I've got something to show you.' She uncurled her fingers. A man's signet ring, set with a red stone that reflected the sun like tiny tongues of fire, sat on her open palm, both stained with blood.

It's a signet ring of some sort, with a red stone
, Susan had said. Once again, Susan Parker had been tee-totally right.

‘You should recognize this, Hannah.'

I bent down to get a closer look. ‘May I?' When Cathy nodded, I picked the ring off her palm and examined it.

‘It's from the Naval Academy,' I explained to Alison. ‘Class of 'thirty-nine. See here on this side? It's incised with the initials USNA. And on the other, there's a thirty-nine.'

In spite of her wound, Cathy was still on task, her face bright with victory. ‘Ken Small was right all along! Americans
are
buried here!'

‘No, I don't think so. That bit of fabric you found in the hole? Land Army Girls wore khaki uniforms, too.'

Cathy and Alison exchanged glances that suggested that I'd lost my mind.

I turned the ring, now drinking up the sunlight for the first time in sixty years, so they could read the inscription I suspected I would find inside: Anthony J. Rockefeller.

‘Rocky,' I said aloud.

‘Who?' Cathy sounded confused, and I couldn't blame her.

‘I'll have to explain later,' I said. ‘But in the meantime, if he's still alive, I think Rocky would like to know that a beautiful young girl named Violet didn't simply walk out on him.'

The keening of sirens split the air. Followed by a deafening boom.

Stephen Bailey had sat on a milking stool in Feckless's stall, put the barrel of the gun under his chin, and used the remaining shotgun shell on himself.

TWENTY-FOUR

Mary Roach,
Spook
, Norton, 2005, p.295

A
fter an overnight stay in the hospital, Alison was released to the care of her husband, daughter Kitty, and a competent therapist, all of whom encouraged her to take a long vacation with a drastic change of scene.

After her father's funeral, of course.

Alison and Jon and been secretive about their trip, but we volunteered to drive them to the airport. From Heathrow, we'd head north to the outskirts of Cambridge, to the American Cemetery at Madingley. Cathy Yates would come along, too, although her arm was still cradled in a sling.

Just before leaving, we learned that Violet Johnson's body had been positively identified from her ration book and identity card contained in the brown leather handbag that had been found with her body on Three Trees Farm. Violet had been claimed by a distant cousin living in Kent and would be buried there, next to her entire family, all of whom, it turned out, had perished in the war.

‘Was there anything else in her handbag?' I wondered aloud.

Alison glanced at Jon, as if seeking his approval. When he nodded, she said, ‘There was a letter, addressed to my father, but apparently it never got delivered.'

‘You were right, Hannah,' Jon said, continuing the story. ‘It was a Dear John. Violet was throwing Stephen over for a Navy pilot from Connecticut.'

‘How did she die?' Cathy wondered from the back seat as we hurtled north up the M5.

‘Strangulation,' Jon said, reaching for Alison's hand. ‘Her hyoid bone had been crushed. Alison and I are still having a hard time coming to terms with the idea that her father was capable of such a violent act.'

Cathy tugged on her seatbelt, easing it out a few inches and arranging the strap more comfortably across her injured shoulder. ‘What I don't understand is why your father agreed to sell the farm at all, Alison. He must have known it increased the risk of Violet's body being discovered.'

Alison shivered, leaned closer to her husband who wrapped his arm around her, drawing her close.

‘That's why he went AWOL from Coombe Hill,' Jon explained.‘He needed to move the body. When the police searched the property, they found a little flatbed trailer behind the barn, hooked up to the tractor. There was a tarp in it, and a pickax and a shovel.'

I turned around to face our friends. ‘Your father wasn't senile at all, was he, Alison?'

She shook her head sadly. ‘Nothing was wrong with Dad's noodle, I know that now. He staged that whole “accident” for our benefit, simply to hide the damage sustained to his car when he drove it up the Embankment and mowed Susan down.'

‘So the people coming for a viewing were a lie just to get us there. The Fairy Liquid a bogus errand.'

‘Right. My father set us up – two perfect witnesses.'

‘Are you going to be OK, Alison?' I asked.

‘In time. Yes, I think so.' Alison smiled up at her husband. ‘Jon and I have had a long talk, and I think we can
both
lay the past to rest now.'

Jon caught Paul's eye in the rearview mirror. ‘You were right, Ives. I was the luckiest man in the world the day this woman walked into my life.'

Alison rested her head on Jon's shoulder, smiling modestly. ‘Did you tell them where we're going?'

‘I thought you'd like to, Al.'

‘Well, Gretna Green being totally out of fashion, we're going to . . .' She paused for dramatic effect, like those irritating shows on the House and Garden channel: if we were to list this house today, we'd list it for . . . long pregnant pause, then cut to an ad.

‘Alison, you are going to make me rip off all my clothes and run around the countryside screaming and tearing out my hair!'

‘I'm surprised you can't guess, as it was your suggestion.'

I drew a blank. ‘How about a hint?'

‘The Bahamas? Eleuthera? Something special on a pink sand beach?'

I sat up straight. ‘You're getting married!' I threw kisses through the air into the back seat.

For the first time in weeks, Alison actually laughed. ‘Jon suggested we elope to Las Vegas and be married by an Elvis impersonator. I quickly vetoed that.'

‘Oh my God, I almost wish you had. I would have paid anything to see the videos!'

Jon launched into the chorus of ‘Love Me Tender', but was quickly subdued by Alison's hand clamped firmly over his mouth. When he was free to speak again, he asked, ‘When do you and Paul go home, then?'

I answered for both of us. ‘The day after tomorrow.'

‘Safe travels,' Jon said. ‘And come back again soon.'

Paul's eyes cut to the rear-view mirror. ‘You mean we haven't worn out our welcome?'