But I’d heard enough. I took a big gulp of my tea and scalded my mouth.
“You alright, Lady Langley, love?” Mrs. B asked. “You look like you’ve swallowed a wasp.”
***
“Has anyone said anything to suggest they think there is any connection between Lennie and our old bones?” James asked me when I told him. “Have they found Doug Newman yet?”
“I’ve only spoken to Mrs. Billings,” I said. “She didn’t say anything about a connection, to us or to Mr. Newman.” It was far from a final word on the matter, but no news was good news.
“Maybe they won’t,” James said and he looked hopeful, the hopeful look of an intelligent man following a logical thought through to a logical conclusion. “Compared to those old bones, Lennie is a pretty fresh kill. Why would they link them together?”
That was a very good point. I flushed with hope myself, but that hope was still tinged with concern about the body of Mr. Newman, which surely could only be days, if not mere hours, away from rising from the depths and traumatizing more children. The rumor of debts and an escape, which I hoped I had started and trusted Mrs. Billings to spread around the village, would not outlast that discovery.
***
I stitched Arty’s new T-shirt together, a dazzling mix of reds, with a recurring sunshine yellow running through. It took me a day and a half. Sewing a patchwork T-shirt was something I could do in my sleep; it only took as long as that because of the unfamiliar measurements. But I waited before I delivered it. I didn’t want him to think I had nothing better to do.
In the meantime, the archaeologists turned out to be friendly. It really was likeTime Team, and I started making trips down to their site, ostensibly to see if they needed any biscuits—which turned out to be absolutelyessentialon an archaeological dig—but really for their company. And to check they weren’t examining anything Lennie-related that I’d failed to find before. I was glad now that I’d put his bag in the priest hole and not in the mausoleum with him, for the contents of that to be scattered all over the place would have been a disaster.
“What’s the best thing you’ve ever dug up?” I asked a grizzled old veteran of the trenches, and he talked at length about skeletons through the ages.
“What would be your dream corpse?” I asked a student, and she talked of how she’d like to go to Egypt and see mummies in situ.
“We did a project on ancient Egypt at junior school,” I told her. Of all the projects we had done, it was one of the most memorable; we’d had a model of a body, and we’d had a go at mummifying it. The student nodded along as I described to her what we’d done, then she gave me a bit more detail I could’ve done without.
I saw Arty leaning over a half-complete skeleton and I went to look. He didn’t hear me approach—he had earbuds in and he jumped a mile in the air when I tapped on his shoulder. When he took them out I could hear Boney M blasting from them.
“Best band ever,” he said, when he saw me looking at the buds. “They were my mum’s favorite and they kind of seeped into my blood, or my DNA, or something.”
I looked at the bones he was piecing together. “It’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, isn’t it?”
Arty’s expression said “no” when I asked that question, but his words were “Quite like a jigsaw puzzle.”
Then he straightened up, stretched, and accepted a Nice biscuit from me; Mrs. B didn’t know I had them and was still being strictly rationed to Rich Tea. “It’s funny, it wasn’t really archaeology I wanted to do, but this seemed liked the best choice when it was time to decide. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I really wanted to work in antiques.”
“So did I!” I told him. “I worked at the bric-a-brac shop in town when I left school. I loved it there. I was going to be trained on the antiques side, but it closed down and then…stuff happened.”
“And now you’re lady of the manor. You must have antiques everywhere you look,” he said. “So things seem to have turned out alright.”
Which made it sound as if I’d achieved something.
“What’s the best item you have?” he asked me.
“A partial suit of armor from Elizabethan times,” I said.
“I said the best, not the oldest.”
“There’s a Victorian carriage clock; it’s very ornate,” I tried again, but he still wasn’t convinced.
“What is here that you think is beautiful and unique and could never be replaced?”
I bit my lip and thought again of the original family tree.
***
The body that was found by the river was, of course, formally identified as Lennie. The reporter stood by the riverbank he had washed up on. Behind him, the ground was bedecked with flowers, soft toys, and handwritten notes bewailing the loss. More pilgrims approached to lay a wreath as the reporter spoke. You would’ve thought Princess Di had died again.
The camera closed in on some of the notes, and I saw “We will never forget you. Eric and Brenda.” Eric and Brenda Billings, I had no doubt. The camera shot changed and we saw crime scene tape close to the flowers.
