The Cat That Got the Cream

by Fiona Snyckers

  “Mrs. Baines seems to take a big role in the management of the farm. Has that always been the case?”

  “She always took an active role, but it’s only recently that she has taken over completely as farm manager. I don’t think her husband is capable of making important decisions at the moment.”

  “It seems that way.”

  “Mind you, he is always scheming to find a way of saving the farm, when what he should be doing is supporting Maria. She is perfectly capable of saving the family business, if only he would help her.”

  “Her brother turned up a few weeks ago. He was a solicitor specializing in sales of land. How did Mr. Baines react to that?”

  “He was the one who invited his brother-in-law to stay. Maria was happy to see her brother but didn’t seem overly pleased when he stayed on so long. She thought he and Danny were up to something. There were nights when neither of them came to bed. Or they would disappear for a couple of days.”

  “And a few weeks later, he was dead. I’m still trying to figure out why.”

  “I thought that had something to do with his fencing hobby. After all, it was a fencing sword that killed him.”

  Fay finished her tea. “I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Somehow, there’s a connection between what he was doing at the fencing studio and what was happening on the Baines farm. I just don’t know what it was yet.”

  “You should speak to Bob Haggit. He’s the foreman on the farm and is very much in Maria’s corner. He should be able to tell you if Danny and his brother-in-law were planning something behind Maria’s back.”

  “Where would he be at this time of day?” Fay stood up and took her cup to the sink.

  “The harvest has just started, so he’ll probably be in one of the lower fields.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see if I can find him now. You’ve been a big help.”

  Lolly smiled. “Thank you for persuading me to have my canvasses valued. The extra money will make a big difference to us.”

  Baines Farm was a hive of activity.

  Extra staff had been hired on. Vehicles moved to and fro, almost causing a traffic jam on the dirt roads that spiderwebbed across the farm. The harvest was well underway.

  Fay drove past the farmhouse first, curious to see how everything looked after the fire. The electrical company that Duncan McCloud worked for had done a good job of restoring order. The hum of a washing machine told her that electricity was flowing to the house. She looped past the front door with her foot on the clutch, trying to keep the noise of the Volvo’s engine to a minimum. As she glanced back at the house, a sad tableau met her gaze.

  Danny Baines was sitting on the porch swing. He had his head in his hands. His clothes were unkempt, and he didn’t seem to have visited a barber in a couple of months. A half-empty bottle of whiskey stood at his feet.

  Maria Baines watched him from the kitchen window. She held a soapy plate in her hand. Lines of sorrow pulled at her face. As she gazed at her husband, there was longing in her eyes and - unless Fay was much mistaken - love.

  Shaken by the poignancy of the scene, Fay continued down the road towards the lower fields.

  Bob Haggit was perched on top of a tractor shouting orders to the farm hands. He was easy to spot in his distinctive red ball cap. He greeted Fay with a nod as she got out the car.

  “You’re the lass that helped me with Danny Baines the night of the fire, aren’t you?”

  Chapter 25

  Fay shook his outstretched hand. “That’s right. That night has been troubling me ever since. I think I told you at the time that Danny Baines confessed to me that he was the one who started the fire.”

  Bob Haggit climbed down from the tractor and lowered his voice. “Yes, I’m afraid that has been confirmed. We’re trying not to advertise it too widely. Maria – Mrs. Baines, that is – has had enough to deal with.”

  “I’m sure she has. The only thing that puzzles me is how the fire got started in two separate locations at the same time.”

  Bob frowned. “What do you mean? The fire jumped from one place to the other. Even Chief Barlow said so.”

  “It seems like quite a distance for a fire to jump.”

  “You wouldn’t think so if you had seen how many flare-ups there were all over the farm that night.”

  Fay had to admit that this was true. “The Baineses have had a lot of trouble lately, what with Maria’s brother being killed and then the fire starting up. It’s no wonder poor Danny has turned to alcohol to cope.”

  Bob’s lips tightened. “Alcohol is not a solution to anything. All it does is give you another problem to deal with. And soon that becomes the biggest problem of all.”

  Again, Fay couldn’t help but agree.

  “Was Edward on the island at Danny’s invitation or Maria’s?”

  “At Maria’s, of course,” said Bob. “She was his sister. It’s only natural that she would invite her brother to stay.”

  “She told me he spent most of the visit closeted with Danny, talking business.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. Since he started drinking, Danny has been full of get-rich-quick schemes to save the farm. Maybe that’s what they were talking about.”

  “Did you ever hear them arguing?”

  Bob hesitated. “I … yes. To be honest, I did. That’s another thing that has changed about Danny. He flies into terrible rages when he’s been drinking. His aggression is out of control. I know Maria is quite afraid of him when he’s like that.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that he might have attacked Edward in a fit of rage?”

  Bob waited a fraction of a second too long before replying. “Of course not. That’s a terrible thing to say. I don’t believe that Danny’s personality could change that much.”

  “Are you saying it didn’t even cross your mind?”

  Bob rubbed his nose with a forefinger, leaving a streak of dirt across his face. “I would never have thought of it until …”

  “Until what?” Fay asked.

  “Nothing. Forget I said anything.”

  “Until someone suggested it?” she guessed. “Was it Maria?”

  “It’s not true.” His voice had turned fierce. “She wasn’t herself when she said that. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She had just lost her brother and was lashing out in pain. It couldn’t possibly be true, and so I told her.”

  “Things must be strained between them since the fire.”

  Bob shook his head. “It’s worse than that. Whatever love she once had for Danny has evaporated. She feels nothing for him now. It’s sad, but their marriage is over.”

  Fay remembered the way she had seen Maria looking at Danny through the kitchen window. That wasn’t the look of someone who felt nothing. But what did she know? A one-second snapshot of someone’s life was no substitute for a real knowledge of their circumstances.

  “How long have you known the Baineses?” she asked.

  “Good question.” He thought for a moment. “It must be coming up for two years now. I used to work on a farm in Cornwall until it was bought up by a much larger commercial farming enterprise. The Baineses were advertising for a senior farmhand, so I applied. I was very happy here until the trouble started.”

  Fay’s next stop was the town hall. All public records were housed in the archives, including sales of land.

  She announced herself at the desk and was admitted to a basement where she could search to her heart’s content under the bored gaze of a records clerk. Frustratingly, no amount of searching turned up any transactions involving Baines Farm over the past five years. Fay had convinced herself that a land deal was at the heart of what Edward Mayweather had been doing on Bluebell Island. It was annoying to be proved wrong.

  Then she had a thought.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the records clerk. “Do you only keep records of completed sales of land, or do you record offers to purchase as well?”

  “Anything over twenty hectares of land, the offer to
purchase has to be lodged with us.” He nodded at a set of filing cabinets by the window. “You’ll find them over there.”

  This time she had better luck. Fay found an offer to purchase dated from three weeks earlier for a piece of land on the southern border of the Baines Farm. The prospective purchaser was Argyle Holdings. Fay recognized that name as belonging to a local land developer - the company that owned Sunset Acres retirement estate, among other properties. She imagined that they wanted the land for a high-end housing estate.

  The conveyancing solicitor was named as Edward Mayweather. The purchase amount listed in the offer ran into tens of millions of pounds. A cash injection like that would have been significant for Baines Farm.

  Fay sat back and thought about the ramifications of what she was seeing.

  An offer to purchase without a deed of sale was nothing more than that – an offer. It was due to expire on the thirty-first of October, so by midnight tonight this offer would be void.

  Baines Farm had recently hit a rocky patch due to mismanagement by Danny Baines who had developed a problem with alcohol about eighteen months earlier. He apparently saw the land sale as a chance to recoup the farm’s fortunes. His wife believed that they could ride out the rough patch, especially now that she had taken over management of the farm. Danny had contacted his brother-in-law to negotiate the sale, without telling his wife what he was up to.

  Now Edward Mayweather was dead, stabbed through the chest with a fencing sword.

  The farm’s foreman reported that Maria was finished with Danny – the marriage over in all but name. But what Fay saw that morning didn’t gel with this assessment.

  What she needed, she decided, was more information.

  Her next stop was at the fire station situated on the corner of the High Street and Mountain View Road. Chief Jon Barlow was outside on the forecourt rubbing polish lovingly onto the right rear bumper of the fire truck.

  “Morning, Chief,” said Fay.

  “Morning, Fay. Thanks for your help at Baines Farm the other night. If you ever want to train as a volunteer, you know where to come.”

  “Maybe one day when life calms a little. I wanted to ask if you have completed your investigation into the fire. It’s not confidential, is it?”

  “Not at all. My fire reports are a matter of public record. In the case of the Baines Farm fire, I’m afraid to say that someone started it deliberately.”

  “Really? I heard that Mr. Baines had been drinking and smoking and fell asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand. When he woke up, the fire had already started.”

  Chief Barlow shook his head as he bent to apply more polish to the bumper. “That’s not what happened. I don’t care if he accidently set fire to a whole bottle of whiskey – it couldn’t have caused that blaze. This was a deliberate act.”

  “You found traces of accelerant?” she asked.

  “We certainly did. I suspected it from the beginning. We’ve had a fair amount of rain lately, which is normal for this time of year. The trees and grass weren’t wet when the fire started, but they weren’t dry either. For the fire to have burned that fiercely and that hot, it had to have had some help. And it did – a chemical accelerant had been sprayed over a wide area to ensure that the burn would quickly get out of control.”

  “I must admit, I did wonder how the fire got started in two different locations a quarter of a mile apart, at the same time. It didn’t seem possible that a lit cigarette could have caused that.”

  “That’s right,” said Chief Barlow. “It couldn’t have.”

  “Do you have any theories on who might have done this?”

  “You’re a former police officer, so you know we always look at the owners of the property first in these cases. The trouble is, I’ve known the Baineses for years. And Maria was right in the thick of things all night working hard to get that fire extinguished before it reached her livestock. Is there any chance that Danny Baines is not as much of a drunk as he makes himself out to be?”

  Fay thought about this. She remembered meeting him around the side of the hen house with an almost empty bottle of whiskey in his hand. She had helped him to stand up. The smell of alcohol coming off him had been overpowering.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “If so, he’s a better actor than I gave him credit for.”

  “Well, it’s something Sergeant Jones will have to consider when he looks at my report. It should be in his inbox already.”

  “Thanks for your time, Chief,” said Fay.

  She checked her watch. If she hurried, she could still catch the Dyers during their lunch break.

  Fay got back to Penrose House more than an hour later, after a lunchtime strategy session with David and Doc Dyer.

  It hadn’t been easy getting them to come around to her way of thinking. But in the end, they had to agree to trust her even though she wasn’t sure that she trusted herself. She had a theory about what had happened to Edward Mayweather, but until she had proof it would remain nothing more than speculation.

  “What if I’m wrong?” she asked Spooky who was curled up on a corner of her bed. “No, it doesn’t matter. Even if I am wrong, Doc Dyer will be able to handle it. And if it gets too much for him, he can call in Sergeant Jones.”

  She double-checked the riddle on her phone as Spooky curled into a tighter ball, tucking his nose under his tail.

  “I don’t think I’ve missed anything, but it’s worth checking to make sure.”

  As she shifted her weight on the mattress, Spooky shot up into the air, bounded off the bed, and disappeared under a chair.

  “Calm down, my boy. It was just a creak of a bedspring.”

  He was still hyper-reactive at times, but it was becoming less frequent. Fay expected that behavior to fade as he began to trust his environment.

  A moment later, Spooky emerged from under the desk and settled on the bed again.

  Fay whiled away the afternoon doing admin and serving tea to her guests in the residents’ lounge. The first trick-or-treaters began to arrive around five-thirty as twilight fell. Fay doled out candy and exclaimed at their outfits as their parents hovered nearby. It was fun, but by seven o’clock she handed the job over to Morwen.

  “You’ll be okay on your own this evening?”

  “I’ll be great,” said Morwen. “We have plenty of candy – so much that we’ll probably have leftovers. And Maggie is coming over in a minute to help me. You go and do your thing and don’t worry about us.”

  Fay left her grandmother’s old Volvo in its garage. She couldn’t afford any mishaps this evening. Instead, she took the Land Rover that was usually reserved for taking guests on sight-seeing tours of the island.

  When she stopped at the bottom of the street that led up to the surgery, she got out of the driver’s seat and climbed into the passenger side.

  “Am I driving?” David slid behind the wheel.

  “Just this once.”

  “Because I’m a better driver than you are.”

  “Pfft. No.”

  “Say it. Say I’m a better driver.”

  “Oh, please.” She was silent for a moment. “Let’s just say - hypothetically speaking – that I have a flaw…”

  “Just the one?”

  “One single, solitary flaw. It might be that I am not, in fact, the world’s best driver. You can take the wheel tonight.”

  David smiled. “I am a better driver than you are.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  “Okay, let’s do this.” He put the car in gear and pulled out onto the road.

  “Is your dad in position?” she asked as they picked up speed.

  “He is. He knows exactly what to do. And he is quite disproportionately excited about the whole thing.”

  Fay gave David a sideways glance. His eyes were shining, and his lips kept tugging upwards into a smile. “Apparently he’s not the only one.”

  When they reached their destination, David pulled the car over into the shadows and
cut the engine. There was nothing for them to do but wait. The wait could take five minutes or five hours, or it could end up being a waste of time. They were prepared for any contingency.

  In these situations, Fay liked to go into stake-out mode. She kept her body very still and her eyes watchful. Her mind was disengaged, with just enough concentration to stay alert. David twitched and fidgeted. He was not a man who enjoyed waiting. Fay remembered this from the last time they had done a stake-out together. That had been in a cold and damp sea-cave. At least this was more comfortable.

  She couldn’t help remembering how much had happened between them since. David had gone from being in a relationship to being single, while Fay had gone from keeping her distance to tacitly admitting that she was interested in him.

  The atmosphere in the car was charged with tension. Fay knew she wasn’t the only one who felt it. It became more and more difficult to maintain her Zen-like detachment. Even David had stopped fidgeting and was now sitting still, one hand grasping the steering wheel.

  Fay took a deep breath and tried to slide back into her zoned-out state.

  Then David’s hand came down to clasp hers and her heart began to thunder so loudly it felt as though it was trying to escape through her throat. She turned to face him, her eyes gleaming in the dark. Her hand turned under his so that they were palm to palm, their fingers threading together as though they had been doing it for years.

  “I want to kiss you,” he said. “But I’m afraid we’ll miss something if we take our eyes off the target.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’ll hear a car pulling out. I’m willing to risk it if you are.”

  His other hand came up to touch her cheek and their lips met in a long kiss.

  It was different to that first time. That had been frantic and hurried and tinged with guilt. They had been wet and shivering - lying on the deck of a boat pitching on a restless sea. This felt right. It felt like the rightest thing in the world.