“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 isit,” 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 ofAgatha 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. Bhad 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.
