‘If you don’t believe me, ask your daughter,’ Cathy said. ‘Here she comes now.’
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.