She walked through an arched hedge opening and came upon three white-haired men leaning on shovels. This was the planned site for the folly. Once an old summer house she played in as a child stood there, but Pamela said it fell to pieces during the war and had been knocked down. Turf was turned up in a hexagonal, roped-off area, but the men stood outside it near a neat stack of painted splintered wood and a few mossy shingles. They stopped talking and lifted their caps when Addie stepped through the bushes.
“Good morning!” she said brightly. “What a lovely day!” She hoped they wouldn’t think her callous. Their mistress was, after all, dead. She noted they all wore black armbands in her memory.
“Is it true there’s someone from Scotland Yard up at the house?” one of them asked.
“Yes. A detective inspector and his sergeant.”
“Better go fetch them then, Bert.”
The man called Bert put his shovel down and pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, distributing the dirt on his face more evenly. “Are you sure, Barry? What about Sir Hugh? He’ll need to know.”
“And so he will, eventually, if he doesn’t already.”
“Barry! Shut up!”
Addie’s senses were on alert. She tried to peer around the men into the overturned earth. “What is it you’ve found? Buried treasure?”
“A body, my lady. A soldier, by the look of him. Go on, Bert. We’re not getting any younger. And don’t bandy it about everywhere, not to that busybody butler Amos Trim nor nobody. The coppers won’t like it. Just tell whoever’s in charge, and you do the shutting up.”
Bert disappeared through the hedge. For an elderly man, he was sprightly.
A few spots rolled in front of Addie’s eyes, but she willed them away. Now was no time to be missish and faint, even if she knew just how to do it without anyone getting a glimpse of her French knickers.
She was amazingly lucky so far. Despite helping the police in two murder investigations, she did not see any of the bodies. And there had been six! Six! Half a dozen souls whose lives were cut short by two murderers. After getting a very quick glimpse of the seventh—poor Pamela—Addie had scuttled away yesterday as far across the conservatory as she could waiting for the doctor, until Rupert came for tea.
She now debated whether she should peek into the trench the men had dug and decided against it. She had no forensic knowledge, and might disgrace herself by fainting, falling into it, or worse, losing her breakfast.
“Is it, um, a fresh body?” Addie tried not to breathe in too hard.
“No, ma’am. And I bet I know who it is.”
“Really?”
Barry turned to the other man. “Charlie, you remember that fellow who came to visit on leave after Sir Hugh was invalided home? The one who deserted? There was a hue and cry and the muckety-mucks were all over the estate for a day or two asking a thousand questions. They even interviewed me.”
“Aye. You’re not sayin’ that’s him.”
“I’ll bet you it is. Should be easy enough to tell—he’s still in his uniform.”
“Did you go through his pockets?” Addie felt somewhat grisly speaking up.
Barry gave her a withering look. “’Course not. He’s still half-buried anyway. We’re gardeners, not gravediggers.”
“The grounds are truly lovely.” Addie wanted to make up for her faux pas.
“We do our best. Been at it here for forty or more years, the three of us. Wait, I remember you—you’re the Merrill girl from over to Broughton Park. The older one.”
“That’s right. I used to visit Sir Hugh when we were children. Mr. Dunn, right?”
“One of ’em. Haven’t seen you lately.”
“No. I was out of the country for five months.” And before that, in mourning, but she really didn’t want to get into that with Mr. Dunn, who had once chased her with a rake after she’d jumped into a pile of leaves and scattered them across the county.
“Well, you’ve grown up.”
“Yes.”
He gave her a look. Yes, he remembered. “Still getting into mischief?”
He didn’t know the half of it.
She was saved from responding by the emergence of Inspector Hunter from the boxwood. “I understand you’ve found a skeleton?”
“Over here. Watch your step. The ground is uneven, and there’s some loose debris under the dirt. A nail or two too.”
Mr. Hunter climbed over the rope and dropped into the beginnings of a foundation hole. He stood, hands in pockets, his face impassive.
“You discovered him just now?”
“Young Lady Fernald had asked us to get started on the folly last Friday, and we thought it was the least we could do for her. Had her heart set on the improvements, she did.”
“There was a building here before, wasn’t there?” Addie asked.
“Wood rot got it, and Sir Hugh’s mother had it knocked down. Nothing was salvageable, not even the screening. Tears you could drive a lorry through. We burned up the worst of it at the harvest bonfire, and the odds and ends was used to help fill the hole.”
“When was that?” Mr. Hunter’s notebook was out.
“Fall of ’16,” Barry said promptly. Of the three Mr. Dunns, he seemed to be the one in charge. “I remember especially ’cause a friend of Sir Hugh’s went missing after his visit here right before that—a lieutenant. Can’t remember his name, but there was a scandal. Desertion, they said. Upset Sir Hugh something fierce, said the fellow would never do such a thing.”
Addie tried to recall if she’d heard anything about this missing friend nine years ago and drew a blank. She was in London most of that year, volunteering with her mother on various committees. She liked to think she made a difference in the war effort, but her work was insignificant compared to those who’d trained as nurses and hello girls.
“And you think this might be the man?”
“Stands to reason, don’t it?”
“I agree it’s quite a coincidence, and I don’t much believe in them. I think you’re done digging for the day. It goes without saying that you must not touch anything else. And please don’t mention your suspicions about this fellow’s identity to anyone, the family or the staff. It might impede the investigation. Can one of you stay here until the team from Cirencester shows up?”
“Sure. We’ll all stay. Have our lunch.”
Addie spotted the metal lunch pails in the shade of the hedge and shuddered. The thought of a picnic next to a dead body, newly buried or not, was not on her agenda today or any day in the future.