Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, I listened through the wall as James rose, showered, and dressed.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what I would do when I got up and how I was going to get to the end of the day, knowing what had happened in the graveyard the day before and what must surely be to come.
“I’ll phone the police when I get to the office,” James said as he prepared to leave. “I’ll see if I can get the lie of the land and decide where to take it from there. Are you going to loaf around in bed all day?”
I shook my head. “It’s only just gone six.”
He sighed theatrically, said something about “the best part of the day,” and left.
The sound of the front door slamming as he exited the house was the best part of the day, after the sound of the car moving off the drive.
I stood up, yanked the bedstead forward slightly, and made another mark on the wall before setting forth to wander aimlessly around the house.
I watched the breakfast news; house prices were down and cases of syphilis were up. Then I went to get dressed, a sleeveless top made from one of James’s old shirts and a simple skirt made from a curtain, something I could have knocked together by age twelve.
Mrs. Billings would soon be arriving for her self-authorized overtime, but as yet, no word from James about what had been discussed with the police, and no sight of the police themselves.
I put out a decorative plate for Mrs. B to pinch and hurried downstairs, just as she appeared in the old kitchen.
***
“It were murder,” Mrs. Billings said, draping her raincoat over a chair.
“What was?” I asked, hoping she was going to say the journey home after the police had blocked the road, but she didn’t.
“Lennie Green.”
“Murder? Who said that?” I clutched the table to steady myself, while thinking that actually, it wasn’t murder, it was an accident, a complete accident. But that would be beside the point if the police had decided it was murder.
“All over the village,” she said. “It’s all they’re talking about.” And she burst into tears.
I didn’t know what to do. I’d never seen her cry before; I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone of her generation cry. I looked around for tissues. There were none, but we had kitchen roll. It was gratefully received.
I had a hundred questions, but I didn’t know which ones were appropriate to ask: Who said it was murder?
Who exactly? Was it a shameless gossip or someone connected to the investigation?
How could they tell? Surely he was a lump of mush by the time they found him.
Do they have any suspects? Who? If not, why not and when will they have suspects?
And who will those suspects be? Did Mrs. Billings actually know him and, if not, why was she so upset?
I tentatively started with a very good question. “Couldn’t he have just fallen in the water?”
Mrs. Billings looked at me, thinking. “Wouldn’t the police have said so, if he’d just fallen in?”
“Maybe it didn’t occur to them that someone would say it was murder. Maybe that’s so far-fetched they didn’t think anyone would think for a minute it was murder.”
She frowned. “No smoke without fire.” And she returned to her tears.
I dared another question. “But who said it?”
“Mary Bishop,” Mrs. B said.
And I breathed again. Mary Bishop, the ancient matriarch of the amateur dramatics society, so old it was believed she did her training in the theaters of ancient Greece, was as sticky a beak as you could find in this village, and an absolute fantasist to boot. The claim was probably baseless.
“Did you know Lennie Green, Mrs. Billings?” I asked next.
She shook her head. “Not as such, but when you’ve grown up with someone on the TV and the radio, you feel like you know them. And with him being local. I met him one time. He came over to The Two Ts teashop and he signed a napkin for me. ‘To Brenda,’ he wrote…” and she trailed off there.
“He’ll be a big loss,” I said, wondering how I’d come so far in life only having the vaguest idea who he was.
“He will. It will never be the same.” She clutched her kitchen roll and gazed into the distance. “To think, he’ll never be on another Christmas special.”
“Never, but they’ll have repeats.”
“That would be too sad. I couldn’t watch him back in happier days.”
I stared at the table top. We sat in a silence I wanted to break.
I wanted to move, to put the kettle on and go back to normal, but I didn’t dare to.
I also wanted to ask what they were saying about Mr. Newman, but I was wary of drawing attention to the matter.
I wondered if we were observing an unofficial two minutes silence and if it would be broken soon and we would go back to our lives.
And to my relief, that was exactly what happened. Mrs. B sniffed, stood, threw the kitchen roll in the bin, washed her hands, and put the kettle on.
“Did I tell you,” she said, putting our drinks on the table, “the book club has a stall in the village hall now, selling off all their old books, but one of them was a library book. Mrs. Harris went spare when she saw it.” Mrs. Harris ran the mobile library and I was fond of her because once, when I was a young girl, she gave me copies of The History of Langley Hall and The Ghosts of Langley Hall.
They were old copies the library was discarding and selling for a pound, but she gave them to me for free.
That is why I am such an expert on the matter, although James and I had added one, or possibly two, ghosts to the house since it was published.
Mrs. Harris was less generous with the book club. “She took the book back and took all the money they’d made as a fine,” Mrs. B said. “Now the book club is trying to find out who brought it, and they’re going to be booted out. Bringing their club into disrepute.”
“How exciting!” Never let it be said that village life was dull.
It almost took my mind off Lennie, Mr. N, and the activity in our graveyard, until Mrs. B ate a final biscuit, rose from her seat saying, “Anyway, Lady Langley, love, better show willing,” and shuffled her way out toward our living quarters.
I was left with my thoughts and my worries.
I waited, so as not to embarrass us both by overtaking her on the stairs and being sat watching Monk when she arrived, gasping for breath. After enough time had elapsed, I washed the mugs in the sink and headed for the stairs, but as I reached the entrance hall, there was a knock on the door.
I froze. Apart from Mrs. Billings, there were no cleaners in that day. There were no deliveries expected. It was rare, although not unheard of, to get door-to-door traders. But there was one cohort of visitors I wouldn’t be surprised to see. My fingers fumbling the catch, I answered the door.
It was two detectives. The man introduced himself as DC Parker.
He was slightly chubby, with pale skin, blue eyes, and the most amazing red hair that stood up straight from his head, as if he’d had an electric shock.
A woman in a suit stood next to him. She was introduced to me as DS Khan.
She didn’t smile; in the weeks ahead I’d wonder if she could smile or if her unnaturally thin lips precluded it in some way.
She had a dark complexion, long, straight hair, very deep-set eyes, and a beaky nose.
“Daisy Dixon,” DC Parker said, “we’d like you to accompany us to the station.”
“Why?” I asked.
“We’ll discuss that with you when we get there.”
I felt panic rising and I dug my heels in. “Why can’t you tell me now?”
“Are you refusing? We could arrest you.”
That was the phrase that changed my mind. “Can I let my cleaning lady know where I’m going?” I asked. “She’ll be worried.” They rolled their eyes but let me speak to her, following me upstairs as I made my way.
“Better get a solicitor,” Mrs. Billings advised as I whispered the news to her. She looked grimly over my shoulder at them.
“But won’t that make me look guilty?” I said, remembering to add: “I haven’t done anything. And I haven’t been arrested.” Yet.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Always get a solicitor.”
I stood up straight and pulled my shoulders back. “I’d like a solicitor, please,” I said to the detectives.
DS Khan spoke for the first time. “We’ll sort that out at the station.” They really were keen to get there; it must’ve been nearly time for their break.
When we arrived, I phoned James about the solicitor. Then I sat for hours in a cold, uncomfortable cell that smelled of bleach overlaying something I chose not to think about, while I waited for the solicitor James appointed to finish with all his more important clients.
Finally:
“Hello, I’m Tarquin, Tarquin Noble.” A man, aged around forty, held his hand out. He looked slightly frazzled; his tie was askew and his hair was so untidy, I wondered briefly if we were related. “I’m your solicitor,” he said.
“Do you know why you’re here, Daisy?” DC Parker asked me as we all sat in the interview room.
“No.”
“Really? After all that was going on at your property yesterday? We’d like to ask you about Lennie Green.”
Beside me, my solicitor reached for his briefcase to take out a notepad. As the briefcase swung open, glitter scattered across us and over the table. “Sorry,” he said. “Kids got into it. They think this is hilarious.”
Instinctively, I started to wipe it off the table, but I transferred most of it onto myself, and for the rest of that day, everything I touched shimmered afterward.
“Lennie Green,” DC Parker repeated, getting back to the point. “Tell us about him.”
“I didn’t know him. Don’t know him.”
“You don’t have to know someone to run them over. The majority of victims and perpetrators in these incidents are strangers to each other.”
My heart dropped to my feet and, I think, further. How did they know?
“I didn’t run him over,” I said, telling myself it wasn’t quite a lie. “Run over” suggested to me that the wheels went over him, when that wasn’t exactly how it was. “I don’t know what happened to him.”
“That’s not what your husband said.”