Chapter Fifteen #2
Emma looked surprised and I expect I did as well: She would have to be a very good writer indeed to make a day in my life interesting enough for a Western Bugle article. Until recently, anyway, but I didn’t want to discuss that.
“I came to see if you wanted to talk about Lennie Green,” she said. “We’re doing a feature on him.”
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Billings said, and she began to tell Emma of how she’d been a lifelong fan, she’d had posters of him when she was a teenager, she’d watched all his TV shows.
She told her about the encounter in The Two Ts teashop.
As she spoke, I tried to sidle away, but Emma turned to me every time I moved and I understood, for the first time, what the phrase “pinned me down with her stare” really meant.
“Goodness, you must be devastated,” Emma said, as Mrs. Billings paused for breath. She turned to me. “And how are you feeling, Lady Langley? Or can I call you Daisy?”
“Oh, she didn’t even know who he was!” Mrs. Billings said. “She were at a party with him the night before, and she didn’t recognize his name on the radio the next day.”
“You were at a party with him just before he went missing?” Emma asked me, her eyes wide. “And now the police are digging on your estate?”
It did sound bad when you put it like that.
“Talk about coincidence!” Mrs. Billings said.
“Alright if I record this?” Emma said, putting her phone on the table. “Did you know Doug Newman?”
“Everybody knows everybody round here,” Mrs. B said. “He was one of the tenant farmers on this estate.” Emma looked at me and I nodded.
“We don’t have much to do with them,” I said. “They pay their rent, we don’t get involved with the farming.”
“But you’ve had all that argy-bargy with the Newmans about the warehouse people,” Mrs. Billings said, and Emma’s eyebrows shot up.
“I wouldn’t call it argy-bargy,” I said. “We were in discussion about it. It’s a private matter.”
“Not down the King’s Head, it’s not,” Mrs. B said, and I looked for something to brain her with.
“Do you have any theories about what might have happened to Lennie Green?” Emma asked me.
“None.”
“Even though the police are digging on your property?”
“Nope.” I was starting to relax; this was going to be no different to the police interview. In fact, it was going to be easier, with no concern that Emma was going to put me in a cell at the end.
“You want to look on Whatever Happened to Lennie Green?” Mrs. Billings said. “It’s a little internet group we’ve got going in the village. Loads of ideas there. We’re all on it at Silver Surfers.”
I nearly fell off my chair! Mrs. Billings was going from here to a group dedicated to gossiping about Lennie Green and, no doubt, what was going on at Langley Hall. I recovered myself enough to lean in, as she took her phone from her bag and called up the forum.
Everyone was there: the Billingses, the Faulkners, the Chamberses, the Thrussells, the Thorpes, the vicar, Mary Bishop, who was a founding member, Mrs. Dobson from the primary school, people from the new estate, and a few suspected Great Beadingtonites.
There were a fair number who used aliases as well.
“They’re the ones that say the most scandalous things,” Mrs. Billings told us. “Look, you can see who’s in here when you log on.” And she showed us a list of names along the side, with green dots by them to show they were there as well.
The forum was full of speculation about what had happened to Lennie, some vague and obvious: “He came to a bad end.” Some specific, but inaccurate: “He was chopped up into tiny pieces and thrown to the fishes.” The replies to that one pointed out that a) he was found in one piece; b) so far, only Mary Bishop had mentioned foul play; and c) the plural of “fish” is “fish.” Then the original poster said that, actually, “fishes” is correct if it’s more than one type and the thread descended into a row about which fish—or fishes—could be found in the river here.
It got back on track soon after, though, with an allegation that Lennie was a drug kingpin and James was his minion. It was an interesting idea, but judging by Lennie’s house, in comparison to James’s, unlikely.
They should track down where his phone went, an anonymous poster wrote and my heart started racing. Did they know something, or was that just the only intelligent comment we’d seen? No one goes anywhere without their phone these days.
We scrolled for a few minutes longer, until Emma announced she had to get going and thank you for the tea, she’d see herself out.
A few minutes later, there was a new member on the forum, AllEars.
I put away the plain digestives we’d palmed off on Emma and brought out the Jaffa Cakes.
Now that Mrs. B was back to her normal hours, I’d reinstated the decent biscuits—or cakes, in this case.
“I think she liked you,” Mrs. Billings said, helping herself to a couple. “It’ll be interesting to see her article.”
“Won’t it just?” I set up an alert on my phone for The Western Bugle Online.
Then, we put the radio on and listened to an interview about the much-longed-for Little Beadington bypass, followed by Duran Duran, then Lady Gaga, then the national news headlines, followed by the local news, in which the local corpses, once more, were the hot topic.
This time they were talking to some kind of river specialist who was saying he could work out exactly where they had gone into the water. That would be very interesting to see, but I hoped he was wrong.
“It would be a good idea if the police set up a stall at the craft fair, asking for information,” Mrs. B said. “They could put it next to the partisan beer tent; people tell the truth when they’ve had a few.” I think she meant the artisan beer tent.
We finished our Jaffa Cakes and Mrs. Billings rose to begin her work. Between Emma and the river specialist, it had been quite a difficult morning and I was feeling a bit shaky; as I took the mugs to the sink, I knocked mine against the worktop and it broke.
“Oh,” I said. My nice Midsomer Murders mug, with “What would Barnaby do?” written on it.
Mrs. Billings looked around. “Accidents happen with you, don’t they,” she said, and she shuffled off toward the hall.
I was left wondering what was meant by that.
Was it a warning? A threat? Or just a comment?
I hoped, once more, that Mrs. B wasn’t going to become another loose end I had to tidy up.
Not that she didn’t deserve it after her performance with Emma.