Chapter 46
GRAHAM
‘Should we show the police what we’ve found?’ asks Stephen as he grabs his coat from the hook by the door. ‘I know they just left, but …’
Graham huffs. He knows it’s counterproductive and hypocritical of him to think so, but involving the police right now is the last thing he wants to do.
After their earlier visit, even if he does call them back to explain what they found, he doubts they will believe a word he says.
Dead bodies don’t disappear from trees. They would accuse him of tampering with a crime scene.
He knows that, but without solid proof, the police are often blind to whatever is in front of their eyes, especially if it suspends disbelief.
He used to be like that too. Things change.
Graham scratches his chin. ‘Let’s leave the police out of this now,’ he says. ‘Let’s move. We’ll have to walk into the village to fetch your car, since mine is still incapacitated and I don’t fancy walking all the way to Blackberry Farm again. We’re on a deadline now.’
‘Wait, I need to grab something first.’
Once Stephen has grabbed what he needs, they waste no time in walking into the village to The Fox pub where Stephen had been forced to abandon his car last night.
He has to admit that while Stephen still looks a little pale, he does appear more with it this morning.
Graham is glad there’s another explanation for Stephen’s odd symptoms. He would hate to think there was something genuinely, medically wrong with him. He doesn’t want to lose another friend.
Upon arriving at the car, Graham drives while Stephen searches through the pages of one of the diaries he grabbed before following him out of the door, but Graham is having issues with the gear box. Every time he changes gear, it makes a loud, clunking noise.
‘Go easy on the clutch, Graham,’ says Stephen. ‘It needs a light touch.’
‘This car is bloody ancient. Have you had it serviced recently?’ Graham grumbles as he shifts into third, accelerating down the narrow lane.
‘It’s slipped my mind.’
‘Clearly. What are you looking for exactly, Stephen?’ asks Graham, only taking his eyes off the road ahead for a moment, but it’s not long enough to catch what Stephen is doing.
‘These diaries we found in the hidden room at Rosemore Cottage … I saw some blueprints somewhere. Not blueprints, but drawings. I didn’t take any notice of them before, but now I keep thinking about them, what they could mean …
here.’ Stephen stops talking for a moment.
He’s using the light from above the passenger side visor to see better as the gloomy early afternoon is playing havoc with his vision.
‘At first, I thought they were sketches of barns, but I think they’re more than that.’ Stephen leans closer to the page while Graham navigates the car around a tight corner.
‘Talk to me,’ says Graham. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘John Hammel’s family also owned Blackberry Farm that now belongs to Frank Hammel. It’s been in their family for years. The place we’re driving towards this very moment.’
‘Okay …’
‘And they had a barn where they kept animals and hay or possibly farm equipment.’
‘That’s not exactly ground-breaking stuff …’
‘But it had a secret room underneath the floor.’
Graham sucks in a breath as he slams on the brakes to avoid a collision with an oncoming car, which sounds its horn. ‘Come again?’
Stephen holds up the pages so Graham can glance at them. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking at here …’
‘Well, I do … when we get there, we need to find a barn that looks like this and I think that’s where we’ll find the answers we’ve been looking for.’
‘What are you expecting to find down there?’ asks Graham.
‘I believe we’ll find Sophia.’
‘Her body …’
‘No, I believe Frank has been keeping his own daughter locked away underneath his barn floor in a secret room for the past decade.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I am.’
Graham mutters a few indecent words. ‘What about the scarecrow and the clues we’ve found inside the pockets of the coat? What does your unique brain think about that after everything that’s happened over the past few days?’
Stephen is silent for a moment. ‘How heavy would you say the scarecrow was, Graham?’
Graham frowns at his odd question, but knows better than to question him. ‘Not that heavy. Just … cumbersome.’
‘Hmm. Would a man be able to get it up high into the tree by himself?’
‘Not unless he had some sort of pulley system set up to help. Even a full-grown man would struggle to haul it up into the tree without a rope.’
‘So, what you’re saying is that it would take at least two adults to drag that scarecrow up into the tree without a rope or a pulley system?’
Graham nods. ‘I’d say that’s a fair assessment.’
‘Hear me out for a moment.’ He holds up his hand to signal silence, even though Graham hasn’t made a move to speak.
The tarmac is rushing past them, the white lines a blur.
‘According to John Hammel’s diaries and journals, he was collecting information about the village council and wrote it all down, which he then hid behind a secret wall in your cottage.
Sophia also hid her drawings in the tree.
The diaries and the secret room were never found, which means that none of the members of the council knew about it, not even Sophia’s father who owned the cottage at the time.
Or, perhaps he did, and decided to keep it hidden, away from the other council members, I don’t know. ’
Graham’s aware that Stephen is repeating what they already know, but saying it out loud obviously helps him compartmentalise all the pieces, which, at the moment, are flying around his own brain with nowhere to go. He, like Stephen, needs to catch them all and force them to be still.
‘A hundred years ago, this all started because of one man – John Hammel. He was the first to be hung in the tree. Someone killed him, but why? Because he knew too much. I believe that other members of the village committee wanted to do the same thing to Sophia. To hang her in the tree as a human sacrifice to help stop the curse on them and their farms and livelihoods. But Sophia knew too much and you can’t just string up a person in a tree anymore without any repercussions – so Frank made her disappear instead, but I don’t believe he did it with malicious intent. ’
‘How is locking someone up in a barn for a decade not considered malicious intent?’
‘Because I think he did it to save her from her fate …’