In recent years, that remarkable piece of history had been used for hiding snacks from James and, now, evidence from a crime. I put Lennie’s satchel and the treats Mrs. Billings had brought that morning inside and closed the priest hole up again.
The effort drained the last of my energy from me; this was the busiest day I’d had for years. And the most stressful, but there was one more job to do. I took the clothes we’d been wearing that night, all dry clean only, and set them to soak, with the stained cloth, in cold water. A couple of hours later, I put them on a hot wash.
After that, I retreated to the sofa and thought about how, if I did kill James, I knew now I could hide him in the mausoleum, if I couldthink of a way to get him down there. But that was a question for another day. I typed out a WhatsApp message: “I can’t cook tonight, I’m too tired. Can you get a takeaway, please?” and pressed send. From my pocket, James’s phone beeped on receipt of the message. Oh yeah.
Chapter Six
It rained toward the end of the afternoon, so I put buckets out in all the top-story rooms where they leaked. That was the routine when it rained in this house. Meanwhile, in town, James was unable to get the roof of the Rolls Royce up. He arrived home soaked through, telling me the upholstery would have to be cleaned, possibly replaced.
Neither of us felt like eating much and the Potato Smiles I’d bought seemed inappropriate now anyway, so we had toast while we waited for the evening news to begin, needing to know where they were with the search for Lennie. Watching the news was not normal for us, but there was no one around to witness it.
“Where did you find this?” James asked, checking his phone for messages.
“In the mausoleum. You dropped it when you were in there last night.”
“You went down there by yourself?” he said. “Didn’t think youhad it in you. What about these?” He was looking at the wallet and the address book.
“Same place. I found them in Lennie’s pockets.”
He spent a moment paging through the address book, then picked the wallet up and looked inside. He pulled out a bank card, then another, then a library card and a bus pass. He found a £20 note and pocketed it, as a reflex action when he saw money. Then he put the wallet back down where I had left it.
Then I gave him the bad news about Lennie’s phone being missing, I didn’t tell him I thought Mrs. Billings had taken it. He didn’t know she stole things, and I didn’t want him to know; it would almost certainly lead to a sacking, and Mrs. Billings needed the job, while I needed our chats and snacks.
“Where have you looked?” he asked.
“In his pockets and in his bag.”
“I’ll look in the car.”
Of course; why didn’t I think of that? We paused the TV and I followed him to the garage. I watched, filled with hope, as he searched the car for a phone. Twenty minutes later the car had been searched several times and there was nothing.
“Don’t panic,” he said. “He could have lost it anywhere. What did you do with that bag he had?”
I hesitated.
“What?”
“I put it with his body,” I fibbed.
“Good. You’re sure the phone wasn’t in it?”
“Absolutely sure.”
We went back to the lounge to watch the local news. Lennie’s disappearance was the lead story, along with a look back at hiscareer, which was varied and mostly successful, spanning the sixties, seventies, and eighties, with a small blip in the nineties. Now that he was all over the news, I realized I had seen him on the odd TV show. He’d fallen out of fashion for a while and had, apparently, been involved in a number of disastrous business deals that, at one point, saw him homeless. He had a renaissance around the turn of the century, following an appearance on a celebrity reality TV show, but had then drifted into retirement, living in a cottage in Great Beadington. From there he headed up a number of local charities. His life after showbiz, it transpired, had been devoted to good works.
In contrast, I divided my time between watching TV and plotting to kill my husband, and James managed investments no one could get their money out of.
His neighbors were out in force, singing his praises and praying for his swift return, harping on about how it was the not knowing that was the worst. I hoped they’d be able to come to terms with the not knowing; the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Although we were going to have to atone somehow—you can’t just run someone over and forget about it.
A neighbor wiped away a tear. Did she know something she shouldn’t? “It’s just not like him,” she said. “He’s usually in by ten o’clock with his hot chocolate and his slippers.”
“He’s the center of this community. It won’t be the same if something’s happened to him,” another said.
A man stepped up. “Japanese knotweed in his garden,” he said, “and he’s refusing to do a damn thing about it. It’s taking thousands off the value of my property.”
“Dangerous words,” James said. “If the police decide to progressthe case, he’ll be a prime suspect.”
Oh lord, if that neighbor was blamed, it would mean that not only had we killed a local hero, but someone else would go to prison for it. I wondered at what point I would draw the line and confess on behalf of us both.
