Chapter Two #3
“Got a pair of old trainers in the van,” he said to Mrs. B.
“That’ll do for now. Keep me feet dry at least.” And he marched off to his van, in one boot and one sock, which must have been soaking within a few paces.
He returned a minute later with his trainers and an old Tesco carrier bag, the flimsy plastic type we used before bags for life were common.
He put the old boots in the carrier and changed into his trainers.
Then he shuffled back into the garden, leaving the boots in the bag by the door, the “danger of suffocation” warning staring me in the face.
I thought about holding it over James’s head and watching as his breaths grew smaller, until he breathed no more.
But I’m not a total fantasist; James would have no trouble at all in reaching up and lifting me off before I did any damage.
He wouldn’t miss more than a breath. I’d need to get him really drunk first or drug him with something, but James rarely drank in the house and if I had something to drug him with, I’d have done it long ago.
“One day our ship will come in,” Mrs. B said, as she watched Mr. B cross the lawn. “I have no doubt about that.”
Mr. and Mrs. Billings had a nest egg she sometimes alluded to, and one day soon it was going to allow them to retire in comfort. But until then they were slaves to James’s dime. “Penny for your thoughts, Lady Langley, love?” she asked, turning back to me as I stared at the bag.
“I was just thinking about another biscuit,” I said.
“You dig in.” She pushed the packet toward me.
“There’s not a scrap on you,” she said, which wasn’t strictly true.
She continued on a different subject, one I didn’t really like.
“I saw the Newmans in the King’s Head the other day.
They’re not happy about the farm—they’re going to see about taking legal advice. ”
The Newmans were tenant farmers on the farm on the west side of our estate.
They’d been there for generations, and no one could imagine the farm as anything else.
No one except James, that was, and a company that wanted to build warehouses on the fields, which for hundreds of years had grown barley or wheat or corn or grazed sheep.
They had made an offer to buy the land. The Newmans had made a counteroffer, but they couldn’t match the warehouse people, and the fact that those fields are the first thing you see of Upper Iffley, as you approach it from Tippington, didn’t sway James.
“No farms, no food,” Mr. Newman had said when he came to discuss it.
“No warehouses, no internet shopping,” James replied.
“We can manage without one farm.” Then he slammed the door in Mr. N’s face.
And there things stood between us and the Newmans.
Secretly, I agreed entirely with the Newmans, but business is business and money is money, and as things stood, everything was James’s.
When the tea had been drunk, the supply of biscuits dented, and the village gossip imparted, Mrs. Billings rose stiffly from her chair and said, “Anyway, Lady Langley, better show willing,” then she shuffled up the stairs to the rooms on the first and second floors that James and I used as living quarters.
While she cleaned, I shut myself in my sewing room and finished the seams on James’s shirt, which took me up to Mrs. B’s finishing time. When she had gone, I had a rummage through the drawers to see what she had taken.
Mrs. Billings is a kleptomaniac. I usually put something out for her to pinch; I have a collection of cheap knickknacks that I buy especially for this purpose.
It usually satisfies her light fingers and keeps her away from the priceless antiques.
Usually, but not always; I once found a figurine of a shepherdess with a lamb and a basket of flowers that was supposed to sit on the ledge that ran along the landing of our second floor in a charity shop in town, priced up at a fiver.
But sometimes I forgot to leave an offering and I had to go looking to see what she took. Just a corkscrew this time, no big deal. We had five—four now. I put a new one on the shopping list in case James noticed.
Then it was time for lunch, and Bargain Hunt, after which I returned to my sewing and took James’s trousers in slightly at the waist; I resisted the temptation to take one of the legs up.
The secret to successful trickery is not to overplay your hand: You only have to go a little bit too far to give yourself away.
I left it there for the time being. I still had the jacket to do and that, with its lining, was a more difficult job. But he wouldn’t be wearing it until the next day. I would come to it fresh in the morning.
After that, I spent some time on the other project I had on the go: I was making myself a cocktail dress from a selection of frocks I had found in local charity shops.
I had a small bet with myself that I would blend the different colors and fabrics together so well, James would never know I had made it with my own hand.
Although half the fun was seeing his face at the moment he realized.
Then I was tired. By my standards it had been a busy morning, and for now death was beckoning in the form of another murder mystery. It had been quite some time since I’d bothered the little gray cells of Hercule Poirot, and there was a whole series where I couldn’t remember whodunit.