“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.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, James got up and went to work, as ever, as if nothing had happened.
“You’ll need to get back out there and look for his bag,” he said as he left. It took me a minute to work out what he meant, but of course, James thought Lennie’s bag had been in the mausoleum with him, so he now thought it was out there, evidence waiting to be found. I waved him off promising I would not rest until it was safely back in the house, then I fetched some early-morning chocolate from the priest hole, tucked away behind Lennie’s satchel, and watched some cartoons for a change.
But the cartoons could not stop me from rerunning the events of the night before in my head, wondering if I could have done something differently, such as, be more accurate with the spade. Then I could’ve been a merry widow that morning, maybe even a local hero, depending on the tale Mr. Newman chose to tell, or believe.Instead, I was involved in the death and disposal of not one, but two casualties.
I made myself go through the usual routine: shower, breakfast, sewing, and tea and biscuits with Mrs. Billings, trying to sound interested in the goings-on at the amateur dramatics society. As she talked, I kept an anxious eye on Mr. Billings and his shed, having realized we’d forgotten to check the spade for blood the night before, but he was busy with a trowel and a flowerbed, so it seemed we’d have a second chance at hiding that evidence.
Then a knock on the door, which Mrs. Billings answered before I could run away. On the doorstep were a young police constable and an older man wearing a tweed suit with a waistcoat and an old Victorian-style watch hanging by a chain from his top pocket. At the sight of the police uniform, my knees went a little weak and I wonderedhow did they know so soon?I’d have thought that even in the worst-case scenario, I’d still have a day or two of freedom left to me, at least until they found the bodies.
The police officer introduced himself as PC Applegate and the older man as Mr. Earnest Winkleman, who was the local coroner. The coroner! Imagine! Although it was not my first experience of a coroner.
“Are you the property owner?” PC Applegate asked me, and I wasn’t sure how to reply.
“My husband,” I said in the end.
The coroner did the rest. “You may have heard about a number of bones that have appeared in Upper Iffley?” He was smiling, so either it wasn’t all that bad, or he enjoyed delivering bad news.
“I saw it on TV,” I said, then taking my inspiration from Mrs. Chambers: “It’s a mystery.”
“Perhaps not quite such a mystery as it seems. I believe there’s a graveyard attached to this property?”
I nodded; I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“We think that’s where they may have come from.” He took an Ordnance Survey map from his pocket and began unfolding it. “I believe the river runs along the edge of it.”
I nodded again.
“We’d just like to nip down and take a look?” he said, making it sound like something I could say no to.
I felt myself starting to shake. This was it. They were going to arrest me and lock me up for life.
“Don’t you need a warrant to search the property?” Mrs. Billings spoke up.
“There’s a public right-of-way through it,” I said to her.
No doubt they already knew that from their Ordnance Survey, and I realized at that moment that there had never been a chance it was all going to go unnoticed. It was only a matter of time—and not a long time—before another dog walker strolled past the ruined mausoleum and on, back to his house, where he mentioned to his wife that the tomb up by Langley Hall had come down and there was a skull in the river. And the wife would look at the pelvis in their vegetable patch and say, “I wonder if that’s where this is from?”
“We like to speak to you first as a courtesy,” the coroner said.
“Are you going to arrest poor Lord Langley?” Mrs. Billings asked the police officer.
Or “Lady Langley” I thought, feeling the blood drain from my head.
Mr. Winkleman gave a short laugh. “Goodness me, no! It’s time and tide will have shifted those bones, no one’s being arrested.”
