Chapter Eight #3
“What did you do that for?” he shouted at James, and Mr. N and I waited, both curious to hear the answer.
James said nothing. So, Mr. Newman stepped up to the bank and tried to climb out, but the riverbank was steep and slippery there.
He was going to have to make his way farther downriver.
Or upriver, if he preferred to wade past Lennie and back in the direction of Langley Hall.
Unsurprisingly, he went in the direction of his home.
Then James launched himself. He leaped off the bank and onto Mr. Newman. They both fell backward and under. A moment later, they emerged fighting.
Although he wasn’t young, James was a younger man than Mr. N and he had kept himself in shape—the mind games I played with altering his clothes notwithstanding—but Mr. N was bigger and I knew from local gossip that he could handle himself in a fight.
It was anyone’s guess who would win. It would be decided by stamina, luck, and, maybe, a woman on the riverbank, holding a spade.
I didn’t know what would happen if I weighed in on the side of Mr. Newman.
The story up to that moment was already a difficult one to explain away, but Mr. N disliked James and this escapade wouldn’t be doing anything to change his mind on that front.
My mum and the first Mrs. Newman had always got on well.
Perhaps a helping hand from me here would be enough for him to believe me if I said I knew nothing about how Lennie had got into that state and that James had made me float him down the river.
If I weighed in on the side of James, I would probably be in line with the “for better, for worse” part of my wedding vows, but James would still be a thorn in my side, and anyway I’d been looking for a chance like this…
I raised the spade and waited for them to come close enough to the bank. I waited, waited, waited, and as James’s head came near, I brought the spade down as hard as I could and hit…Mr. Newman.
“Aargh!” I shouted in frustration as Mr. N wobbled. I hadn’t hit him hard enough to kill him, or even knock him out, but it unbalanced him long enough for James to push his head under and hold it there, with me screaming, “Stop! You’ll kill him!” even though I was sure that was the point.
But Mr. Newman wasn’t done for; he rose again. James grabbed the spade from me and battered him until he ceased to protest and fell back into the water, where James held him down again.
I watched the spot as the body sank, hoping for Mr. N to rise up one more time, with renewed strength and fury, and put an end to James, even though that would be disastrous for me now. But Mr. N didn’t rise up, and after a while it was clear he wasn’t going to. Instead, bubbles rose and burst.
“You took long enough, he nearly had the better of me,” James said.
“What have you done!” I shouted. “What have you done?”
“What else could I have done, Daisy? We couldn’t just let him walk away.”
“But you’ve killed him.”
“And you killed Lennie Green. Looks like one begets another. I just wonder: Who’s next?” And he gave me a look I didn’t much like.
“There was no need. We could have told him something.”
“What like?”
“I don’t know. We were taking Lennie to the police station?”
James looked at me but didn’t speak.
“You’ve killed a man!” I squeaked at him as he reached for the rake and calmly began shepherding Lennie’s body past the spot where he’d drowned Mr. N—sunk for now but sure to rise up again soon enough.
“You’ve killed a man too,” he said. “Come on now, I need you to check there’s no one at the Newmans’ house.”
With my only other option being to go back to Langley Hall and wait for whatever would come next, I crept toward the house and peered over the fence. There was no sign of anyone being in, the house was quiet, twilight was starting to fall, and the windows were dark. There was no sound.
So we went on down the river, until Lennie’s body was well away from Langley Hall. Then we squelched back in our wet clothes across the fields to the spot we had left Mr. Newman in.
“We’re going to have to move him,” James said. “Get him farther away from Langley Hall and closer to where we left Lennie Green. At least then it will look like an accident. It will look like Doug Newman saw him floating past and stopped to have a look, then fell in and drowned himself.”
I sighed. I knew you couldn’t just leave corpses lying around, but I’d had enough of moving them for one day.
Then a light came on in the farmhouse, so we couldn’t be shunting a body along in the river next to it.
Even if the body would be below the surface, we would be above it, behaving in a way that would definitely attract curiosity and questions and would stick in people’s memories.
Instead, we went back to Langley Hall, dried ourselves off, and waited until midnight.
Then we went back down to the river, entering the water at the shallow bit that went under the bridge, and waded down until we found the body.
There was still a light on in the farmhouse.
I wondered if they were sitting up waiting for Mr. Newman to come home while we were dragging his body along the riverbed, which is not much fun but is easier than carrying a body across land.
We left him close to where we had left Lennie and went home.