I logged on to my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, which I had opened years ago but rarely used, having no friends to add, and searched. I couldn’t remember my passwords and it took me nearly half an hour to get into them all, but in the end, I was there.
I hadn’t expected that name to be as common as it was, although the areas most densely populated with Tarquin Nobles seemed to be Texas and North Carolina, in the United States. It felt safe to rule them out. Following those eliminations, I spent some time scrolling through the Tarquin Nobles who had declared themselves to be in the UK, turning up nothing useful over and over again until I’d forgotten what I was looking for.
I scrolled on through “people you may know.” Mrs. Billings, dressed up for something, with a big smile and a glass of wine, Mr. Billings, wearing cricket whites, a bat in his hand. Then a parade of people from the village, the Chambers, the Faulkners, Mrs. Thorpe and Mrs. Thrussell and a separate page for The Two Ts teashop, with pictures of their mismatched tea sets and lopsided cakes. Their pages had photos of them all together at village events and nights in the King’s Head. May Day, the flower festival, the cricket league, the pub quiz. All those lives being lived, while I was up here counting out the days of mine.
I had a little look for Arty, but he didn’t seem to be on there, so I left it and returned to the subject of James and the police interview.
I wondered if he’d done one of those deals you see on American shows? Where you get a shorter sentence in return for droppingsomeone else in it. Did they do that here? I wanted to google it, but I didn’t dare. Yet, if he’d done one of those deals, surely they’d have done more yesterday than listen to me repeat the same story over and over again. And James wouldn’t want any sentence at all; he wouldn’t settle for a short one. I wasn’t confident of much that morning, but I was sure James wouldn’t agree to that.
As I skipped through my whodunits, unable to stick with any of them to the end, I couldn’t shift the leaden feeling in my heart. Even as I told myself it’s probably normal to feel down after being accused by the police of killing someone, however much they might struggle to prove it, I couldn’t fend off a growing sense of doom.
I went outside, thinking fresh air might do me good. I picked a few berries from a gooseberry bush and, on autopilot, scanned the rest of the garden for things you could forage, but it was only June. Then I went back indoors. I tried to sew a hem on a new dress I was making, but I couldn’t get it right, no matter how many times I stitched and unpicked it.
By the end of the afternoon I had come to no realizations or conclusions about James, but I’d begun to feel glad I’d thrown in my little tip about the bad blood with Mr. Newman. I’d given myself a small scare in doing so: I wasn’t used to standing up to James, but in the cold light of day, I thought I was right not to take what he had thrown at me lying down. Whatever it was he had thrown at me.
James came home in a normal mood that evening, but he had hardly started his Turkey Dinosaurs, Potato Smiles, and peas when his phone rang.
“It’s the police,” he said, sounding intrigued. Optimistic even. He answered it and listened for a minute. Then moved out of my earshot. I tried to eavesdrop, but from where he was standing he couldsee me, so I couldn’t move closer. When he came back, his mood had turned black.
“After everything I’ve done for you,” he said, before stomping off to his office, slamming every door on the way. He didn’t elaborate, but I was pretty confident he was talking about what I had told the police about Mr. Newman. I ate his Potato Smiles.
He was in a foul mood for the rest of evening and into the next morning, until it was even more of a relief than usual to see him leave. I didn’t risk hiding any of his possessions that day, but I felt a little thrill of pleasure that what I had done had had such an effect.
The atmosphere was still frosty when we turned on the TV that night.
Lennie’s funeral was item number three on the local news, and it gave me quite a turn to hear it. I would have liked to have gone myself, but it wasn’t advertised beforehand, so I didn’t know it had happened. Maybe it was for the best. The police often expect the killer to go to the funeral, assuming the killer knows it is taking place.
It was held in St. Margaret’s Church, Great Beadington, the news anchor told us, and we were shown footage of the mourners entering the church, the great and good of Somerset and a few from London, all well-cut clothes and elaborate hats.
Moira, his wife, whom I recognized from the fundraiser, followed the coffin, along with Anthony, Lennie’s son. Behind them were others, who I guessed to be other children/nephews/nieces/grandchildren. Among the dearly beloved, we were told, were beneficiaries of his philanthropy, and one young man stopped to tell the reporter all about it.
“I wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for Lennie,” he said, shaking his head theatrically, enjoying his moment. The truth of itwas that he wouldn’t be there that day if it hadn’t been forme, none of them would. It was my careless driving that brought us all to this.
Then they showed us snippets from the service, a eulogy from the pulpit, the congregation singing “The Lord’s My Shepherd,” and the pallbearers carrying the coffin out. I thought back over all I had seen of Lennie in YouTube videos over the recent weeks. I remembered our meeting at the party. I thought of Mr. Newman and the cruel twists of fate, and I found myself welling up.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” James said, as he caught me wiping a tear away. And I hated him.
Maybe I should have been grateful for James’s help on the night of the accident. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t grateful that he didn’t let me call 999. I wasn’t grateful that he made me hide Lennie in the mausoleum. And I wasn’t grateful for what happened with Mr. Newman.
Moreover, I wasn’t grateful for having my food constantly monitored; I wasn’t grateful for comments about my weight; I wasn’t grateful for the tasks he set me; I wasn’t grateful for £250 a month, which had seemed like a fortune when my needs were not much more than needle and thread, but I now realized kept me stuck here, with no way of supporting myself anywhere else for more than a few days.
And I certainly wasn’t grateful for the investment into his cryptocurrency, which had been sold to me as a get-rich-quick scheme and had morphed into a retirement plan and then the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Chapter Fifteen
“It’s Doug Newman’s funeral next Friday,” Mrs. Billings said to me, taking off her coat and hauling biscuits out of her bag. “Are you going?”
As much as I’d wanted to go to Lennie’s funeral, I felt repulsed by the idea of going to Mr. Newman’s. Maybe it was because I’d already seen Jo Newman, accepting sympathy at the Bone Bonanza, and Meg looking like her world had ended, and I knew the havoc we had wreaked. But Mrs. B continued.
“I think you should. I know Doug and Lord Langley had their ups and downs, but the Newmans have been linked to this hall for generations and they’re good village people. Lord Ashbury went to old Mr. Newman’s funeral. Wouldn’t be right not to pay your respects.”
“I’ll speak to James,” I said.
And so it was that, on the Friday of that week, we donned black outfits—I’d had to buy mine especially, not having had anything inblack. I’d spent £3,000 in the shop, then finished it off with a flower made from a stripey tea towel—and made our way down to the village church.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” James said. “Unless anyone speaks to you. We’ll go to the service and have a couple of sandwiches at the reception, then we’ll make tracks.”
In the pews, I looked around to see who was there. All of the village, it seemed, but the faces I was really looking for were those of Parker and Khan, here to see if they could spot the perpetrator amongst the mourners. I couldn’t see them in the rows to our left, I couldn’t see them in the rows to our right, I couldn’t see them in the rows behind, and I couldn’t see them in the rows in front.
