“I’m just here as a precaution,” PC Applegate said.
“A precaution for what?” Mrs. Billings asked, but we never got to the bottom of that.
Well, at least I wasn’t going to be arrested. For now—Lennie and Mr. Newman were still out there somewhere—but I was still apprehensive as the “all will be revealed” moment approached. I kept imagining that somehow their bloated corpses might have made their way back upstream and would be found lying just to the side of a skull.
Nevertheless, I said, “No problem.”
“Well, if you’re sure, Lady Langley,” Mrs. Billings said. “But we should go down with them and keep an eye on things.”
“It’s quite a walk,” I said, thinking of her creaky knees and wondering if we’d have to get the wheelbarrow out for her, as we should have done for Lennie.
“I’ll manage,” Mrs. B said. And so she did, moving over the lawn, through the copse, and across the field to the graveyard with a speed and surefootedness that eluded her in the house. We picked up Mr. Billings en route, Mrs. B feeling sure this was a spectacle he wouldn’t want to miss, and nor did he. I marched ahead of them, leading the way, practicing my surprised face as I went.
When Mr. Billings saw the toppled mausoleum, he whistled in amazement. “Never thought I’d see the day,” he said. “Thought this would outlast the pyramids.” He bent down to pick something up off the ground and rose with a small bone in his hand. He crossed himself and muttered something under his breath.
“Makes you wonder what’s next,” Mrs. Billings said, and she cast a wary eye back toward the house.
“When did this happen?” the coroner asked. “Are you alright?”
I closed my gobsmacked mouth. “Just surprised,” I said. I think I might have overdone it. I hoped the dog walker wasn’t going to appear and reveal that I’d known about it for days. And ask after Tibs.
The coroner asked me again when the mausoleum had collapsed, and I said I didn’t know. He picked his way through the overgrown grass, scanning the ground for more bones as he went. Occasionally he would stoop and pick one up. He went to the entrance of the mausoleum and looked inside. I waited, breath baited, but he came away showing no sign of anything untoward. Or more untoward than he expected it to be.
He wandered to the riverbank, and we all held our breath in case he slipped in the mud and was washed downstream to the village, proving his own theory as to where things that entered the water here ended up.
But he didn’t slip; he made his way back to us, a small collection of bones in his hands. “Yes,” he said. “I think we’ve found the source. There’s a fairly recent-looking coffin still in the ruins, do you know whose that would be?”
“That’d be the old lord,” Mr. B told him. “He passed a few years ago.”
“Thirtysomething years ago,” I said.
“Aye,” Mr. Billings said, “a few years.”
The coroner nodded. “Well, that’s the only one looks like it might be recent, so PC Appleby, I think we’re done with your services after today, just as we expected.” He turned to me. “Who’s responsibility is it to maintain that building?”
I did my best to look shamefaced as I said, “The property owner.”
“So, what happens now?” Mr. Billings asked as we made our way back to the house.
“The archaeologists come into it,” the coroner said. “They’ll gather together the bones and try to identify which goes with which. Then, they’ll need a proper reburial.”
“Will we be haunted?” Mrs. B asked.
“You’d have to ask the vicar about that,” the coroner said. He turned to me. “Do you have a record of who was buried in that mausoleum?”
“It’s on the wall, if you can read it,” I said. We walked round to where the slab with the names and dates on it had fallen. It was there but in pieces.
“Never mind. We might be able to put it back together. If not, there’ll be something somewhere. Maybe in the church logbooks, if we have an idea of the dates we’re looking at.”
And I thought of the original family tree, which, at least, would have given us the years. Mrs. B led them back to the house, with promises of tea and biscuits. I stayed a moment; I’d seen the skull James had thrown in anger the night before, still lying on its side in the long grass. I picked it up and examined it for damage. It had hit a rock and was fractured. There was nothing I could do, other than to set it carefully on its jaw beside the mausoleum.
“Sleep tight, Richard, Eleanor, Edward, Catherine, Margaret, Mabel, Henry, or Hugo. You probably didn’t expect to see sunlight again,” I said, before following the others back to the house.
After the Billingses had gone that day, I fetched the spade and the rake and gave them a wash, then I stuck them into the soil a few times to stop them looking too clean.
When James came home that night, he insisted we go back out and look for Lennie’s bag and its contents. I told him I’d been out there looking countless times that day and I was exhausted, and in the end,he went by himself. That set the pattern for the following days, until he decided that wherever it was, it must be far away from Langley Hall.
***
