“No one’s seen Doug Newman for days,” Mrs. Billings said on Monday morning. “Jo took the kids to karate last Wednesday evening and when she came home, Meg was there, but no sign of Doug.” Jo was Mrs. Newman, Mr. Newman’s second wife, and Meg was Mr. N’s favorite sheepdog.
“Oh,” I said, reflecting, with relief, on the fact that Meg hadn’t been there that night. Would James have drowned her as well? I didn’t like to think.
“He never leaves Meg if he’s going to be more than a few minutes.”
“Oh,” I said again. “Do you think he’s racked up gambling debts and run off?”
“That would be more than a few minutes,” Mrs. Billings said, then: “Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell Jo. Still strange he didn’t take the dog.”
***
The archaeologists’ plan was that they would set up a tent with a generator in the graveyard, and they would do as much as they could from there before taking everything to the university. There was a short delay while James tried to negotiate the bill we were liable for down. He thought it would arouse suspicion if he went meekly to the checkbook and paid up without a quarrel. So negotiations commenced, but he was soon convinced that this would keep the costs down as far as possible, and work began.
By now, a collection point had been set up in the village hall andpeople were bringing them, bone by bone, as they found them in their streets and gardens.
“It’s quite a party,” Mrs. Billings told me. “They’ve decorated the table and the box they’re collecting the bones in. There’s bunting all over the place. The church choir’s doing a turn and the teashop’s set up a refreshments stall, so you can go there and have a cake and a natter.”
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Mrs. Thorpe and Mrs. Thrussell from The Two Ts teashop; they had declined to take my cakes after my mum had died and I needed a bit of extra income. A lot of extra income, if the truth be told. And it wasn’t due to their quality, I knew, because they took some from the local Brownie pack and they blended their ingredients with all the finesse of a cement mixer. I was no expert, but I’d been making Victoria sponges, just the odd one here and there, since before the Brownies were born.
“They’re talking about having a raffle if it goes on into the weekend,” Mrs. Billings continued. “To raise money for the church bell appeal. They might have some music and a little disco for the kiddies. They’re calling it the Bone Bonanza and are thinking to mark it every year.” She sounded quite excited by this addition to the village calendar, which presumably would fall between the May Day celebrations and the village fete in July.
“If they raise any money it should go to me. To pay for all of this,” James said when a delegation came to the house to tell him, firsthand, about the collection for the church bells and to ask him if, given the link to the hall and grounds, he would like to make a contribution. So, far from being the recipient of the fundraising, James had to fork out another grand to avoid looking churlish. Regardless, the envoys were hardly able to conceal their disappointment at receiving only one thousand of the billions of pounds James had as they departed.
And he’d have been even more annoyed had he known that the generator the archaeologists set up was not all it could be and they began trekking up to the house, asking favors.
“Young gentleman wanting to use the electricity, Lady Langley, love,” Mrs. Billings shouted to me when the first one knocked on the kitchen door.
I’m not sure James is going to like that, I thought, imagining he’d come to plug the generator in, which may not have gone well for our dilapidated wiring, but all the man standing in the doorway had in his hands was a kettle.
He was young, about thirty, muscular, with long blond hair and an Aussie-surfer style about him. He had colored string bracelets tied around his wrist. We’d called them friendship bracelets when I was at school; he must have had a lot of friends judging by the number he had. With that, he wore loose shorts, trainers, and a T-shirt that wouldn’t have looked out of place hung up next to mine.
“Sorry to intrude,” he said. “But I wondered if I could boil up in here, please? We blew a fuse when we tried to do it from our own power. It was just that bit too much for the generator.”
“Of course,” I said, standing back to let him in and gesturing to the nearest socket. As he saw the full splendor of my outfit—a T-shirt made from other T-shirts, it was a wardrobe staple, and a skirt made from an old throw—he stared, astonished.
“Kaboolu?” he said.
“What?”
“Are your clothes from Kaboolu? I’ve never seen anyone else wearing Kaboolu clothes before. Where did you find them?”
I’d never had a reaction like that to my clothes. He sounded almost impressed, and it was a minute before I answered. In mybefuddlement, I nearly said, “Yes, Kaboolu,” but I recovered myself and told the simple truth: “No, I made them myself.”
“Really?” He sounded slightly awestruck. “Did you base it on their designs?”
“No, I’ve never heard of them.”
Then he took out his phone and showed me a website for a clothes company based in New Zealand, which did have a few T-shirts similar to mine, but the rest of their merchandise was pretty mundane. There was nothing that looked as if it had once been a curtain, a tablecloth, or a pet blanket.
“Hmm, they’re as loopy as you,” Mrs. Billings said to me, looking at the website.
“I love their stuff,” the man said. “But it costs an arm and a leg. They make them to order, and then I have to get them sent all the way over here.”
I looked at the prices, and yes, some of them gave James’s designer gear a run for its money.
I looked more closely. “I could make them,” I said, looking at a page full of T-shirts.
He looked over my shoulder. “Which one?”
