Chapter Five
I didn’t get up when James did the following day. I lay in bed, my eyes closed, delaying the moment I would have to rise and face reality.
I heard him a couple of rooms away, going through his usual routine as if this were any other morning and not the morning after our lives changed out of all recognition—and Lennie’s as well.
He went into the main living area and began banging about in his usual manner; he sounded like he was looking for something.
I thought back, trying to remember if I’d hidden anything from him the night before.
My memory was hazy on the details; mostly my thoughts were of images of the scene, the airbag flying up in my face, the toy spider on the passenger seat, Lennie lying in the road, on the back seat of the car, on the chaise longue, his eyes closed, his skin pale.
For all that I could and couldn’t remember, I was sure I hadn’t hidden anything. For once, it was the furthest thing from my mind. He must have mislaid whatever it was without my help.
“Daisy, have you seen my phone?” he asked, barging into my room. I sat up in bed and looked around.
“No.”
He began opening drawers and looking under the furniture. I stood up and shook the duvet out, thinking back to when I’d last seen him with it, but I hadn’t been watching that closely. And anyway, he hadn’t been in my room.
“Call it, will you?” he said, standing up.
I took my own phone from the bedside cabinet, scrolled down to his name, and pressed call. I put it on loud and we waited as the ringing began. One ring, two, three… We listened for the hum of his phone in reply.
“It’s not in here,” I said, as the bedroom remained silent. When voicemail kicked in we left the room and I dialed again.
In the main house we couldn’t hear it. I tried a third time as we roamed through every room we’d been in the night before, our necks stretched long, as if that would help.
“When did you last see it?” I asked.
“Can’t remember.”
He headed to the lounge and opened his laptop.
“What’s my number?” he said, opening up a “find my phone” website, and I read his number out to him.
James tutted. “It says it’s here somewhere.” We both looked around us and for a final, hopeless time, I tried calling him. Nothing. “Have a look for it while I’m at work,” he said. “I’m already late.”
“I think if there’s one occasion on which you can be late, this is it,” I said.
“Yeah, so that everyone remembers I did something out of the ordinary the morning after that man went missing. Brilliant idea. And make sure you check there’s nothing out of place before Mrs. Billings comes.”
Then James took a key from the bureau and opened up the case that contained the keys for his classic car collection. He lifted one out.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Well, I can’t take the Audi. It has an enormous dent in the hood, a crack in the windshield, a smashed headlight, and no bumper.”
He left, and from the window I could see him crunching across the gravel to the garage. A few minutes later he emerged behind the wheel of a classic 1940s Rolls Royce, roof down, looking every bit the part with a driving cap, goggles, and gloves.
I drank a cup of tea and gazed out of the window, watching to see if the police were coming yet, even though I knew that was impossible.
I dressed and began tidying the house, remembering what James had said about making sure nothing was out of place before Mrs. Billings arrived.
After all he had done to clear up the accident the night before, the least I could do was to hold the fort at home.
I stopped when I realized nothing would look more suspicious than to present Mrs. B with a show home, instead of the bombsite she was accustomed to.
So I messed the room back up again and settled down to watch an episode of Agatha Raisin, an old favorite that I could speak the words along with. For once, it didn’t calm me.
I began another lap of the house, but it would be strange for me to be wandering round the house in my nightwear when Mrs. Billings got here, so I went to have a shower. By the time I’d finished, Mrs. B had arrived.
“Hello, Lady Langley.” Her voice floated across the room as I entered the old kitchen. She was sitting at the table going through the contents of a brown leather satchel. Lennie’s satchel. “Is this yours, love?” she asked me, holding up the bag. I remembered hiding it away.
“Where did you find that?” I asked, my voice slightly shaky.
“In the drawing room,” she said. “Looked like it had fallen out of that cupboard on the back wall. The catch on the door isn’t working; it was hanging open.”
Those pieces of furniture were meant to be examples of flawless craftsmanship; even after centuries, the catches should be working.
I tried to think back, wondering if we’d not closed it properly, but it was pointless.
She had the bag now, and it was clearly too late to complain to the cabinetmaker about the catch.
Then I felt a stab of panic, wondering if we’d somehow not closed the mausoleum door and if Lennie was lying half in, half out.
But I remembered clearly James turning the key in the lock before we made our way back.
“Is it yours?” Mrs. Billing asked again.
I shook my head. “James’s.” Why was she going through it?
“Thought it was Eric’s,” she said. Eric, Mr. Billings to me, usually carried his property around in carrier bags. “Interesting pages he’s got in here.” Mrs. Billings pushed the sheets of paper I’d seen the night before toward me. “Is he writing a book?”
I flicked through the papers and, yes, it looked as if Lennie had been working on his autobiography.
“James is writing his memoir,” I said. “He thought it might be interesting, local boy done good and all that.”
“I didn’t know he’d met Winston Churchill,” Mrs. Billings said. “He doesn’t look old enough.”
He wasn’t old enough.
“I think he means a different Winston Churchill,” I said. “Quite a common name really.”
I shoved the pages back into the bag and put it on the floor, propped up against a table leg, out of her sight. But that didn’t mean out of her mind.
“What’s this?” she asked, reaching down. She raised her arm and, pinched between her thumb and forefinger, was the bloody cloth I’d held against Lennie’s head in the car. I think I stopped breathing.
Yet, having nearly brought about the end of the world, Mrs. Billings went on to save the day. “Has somebody had a nosebleed?” she asked. “You should soak it in water.”
Gratefully, I took it from her, also pinching it between my thumb and forefinger, and turned on the tap.
“Cold water for blood,” Mrs. Billings said. “Soak it in cold water for a couple of hours, then put some Vanish on when you put it in the washing machine. That’ll get rid of it.”
“Thank you,” I said. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I turned the hot tap off and the cold tap on. I didn’t think we had any Vanish, though, or any other kind of stain remover. James always bought new stuff if anything got stained. “Cuppa?”
“Please, love,” Mrs. Billings said. She said no more, but she didn’t take her eyes off the bag as I nudged it farther out of the way, set the kettle to boil, and put the biscuits out.
I ate one, then I ate another in one bite.
Then another. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and I was starving.
As soon as I ate one biscuit, I found I couldn’t stop.
“Cravings, Lady Langley, love?” Mrs. B asked me, with a glint in her eye, although she must have known almost as well as I did how unlikely that was.
The chances of cravings became less every day; I was at an age where every time I had to take my cardigan off, I wondered if this was the first hot flash.
“Peckish,” I said. I couldn’t tell her I hadn’t had breakfast—that would be so unheard-of. It would be enough on its own to bring the police running round. Mrs. B grabbed a couple for herself before there were none left.
Then she turned the radio on. The Billingses listened to a local community radio station while they worked and that was what it was tuned to.
They were playing requests; we listened to a recent chart topper, followed by Frank Sinatra, then an eighties classic, and then, the news bulletin, a national overview, followed by an update for the county.
My blood ran cold as I heard the headline for the local news.
“Concern is growing as to the whereabouts of TV personality Lennie Green, who was last seen at a charity event near his home in Great Beadington.”
Mrs. Billings leaped to her feet with a speed I didn’t know she had and turned the volume up. She stood there, hovering over it for the rest of the item, but there wasn’t much more.
“No one has seen or heard from him since he left the event, which family say is out of character. Police are asking him to make contact, or for anyone with any information to come forward.”
“Goodness me,” Mrs. Billings said, looking white as a sheet. “I hope he’s alright.”
“Did you know him?” I asked, wincing at the past tense, but Mrs. Billings didn’t notice.
“Not personally, but he was quite the heartthrob when I was a young girl. Been a fan all my life.”
“Was he famous, then?” I reminded myself too late: is he famous. That could be why he’d looked familiar when I’d first seen him.
“Oh yeah. Probably before your time,” Mrs. Billings said. “He must be getting on a bit now. I do hope they find him safe and sound. Done all sorts for the area.”
Mrs. B took another biscuit to steady herself after the shock. She offered the packet to me, and I trembled as I reached for it.
“Are you alright, Lady Langley, love?”