I peered down from behind the curtain. A young woman was standing outside the house. She was wearing combats, with a yellow T-shirt that was just the wrong shade for her pink hair; I felt my retinas start to burn. Once again, she had a camera around her neck: Emma Beddoe.
I ignored her. She knocked again. I ignored her again. I was still wearing pajamas, so I went to get washed and dressed to take my mind off it all, while I waited for Emma to give up and go away. But when I came back, wearing a dress fashioned from two ponchos, it was to the sound of tires on gravel and Emma asking Mr. and Mrs. Billings if Lady Langley was in.
“Should be, love,” I heard Mrs. Billings say. “Follow us round.”
I watched as Emma trailed their van to the back of the house and headed down to meet my fate.
“Morning,” I said to them all as I opened the back door and Mrs. B walked in. “Come in,” I said to Emma. “Come one, come all.” What else could I say? I was going to invite Mr. B as well, but he was already off to his shed.
I took three cups from the mug tree, aPoirot, aDeath in Paradise, and aMidsomer Murders, and set the kettle to boil, with extra water for our guest. I looked at Emma, feeling a headache coming on as she settled herself down.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Billings stared hard at our new companion until she told her, “My name’s Emma Beddoe; I work forThe Western Bugle Online,” and handed her a business card.
Mrs. B looked at it for a long time. “Have you come to do one of those ‘day in the life of the rich and famous’ articles?” she asked her.
Emma looked surprised and I expect I did as well: She would have to be a very good writer indeed to make a day in my life interesting enough for aWestern Buglearticle. Until recently, anyway, but I didn’t want to discuss that.
“I came to see if you wanted to talk about Lennie Green,” she said. “We’re doing a feature on him.”
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Billings said, and she began to tell Emma of how she’d been a lifelong fan, she’d had posters of him when she was a teenager, she’d watched all his TV shows. She told her about the encounter in The Two Ts teashop. As she spoke, I tried to sidle away, but Emma turned to me every time I moved and I understood, for the first time, what the phrase “pinned me down with her stare” really meant.
“Goodness, you must be devastated,” Emma said, as Mrs. Billings paused for breath. She turned to me. “And how are you feeling, Lady Langley? Or can I call you Daisy?”
“Oh, she didn’t even know who he was!” Mrs. Billings said. “She were at a party with him the night before, and she didn’t recognize his name on the radio the next day.”
“You were at a party with him just before he went missing?” Emma asked me, her eyes wide. “And now the police are digging on your estate?”
It did sound bad when you put it like that.
“Talk about coincidence!” Mrs. Billings said.
“Alright if I record this?” Emma said, putting her phone on the table. “Did you know Doug Newman?”
“Everybody knows everybody round here,” Mrs. B said. “He was one of the tenant farmers on this estate.” Emma looked at me and I nodded.
“We don’t have much to do with them,” I said. “They pay their rent, we don’t get involved with the farming.”
“But you’ve had all that argy-bargy with the Newmans about the warehouse people,” Mrs. Billings said, and Emma’s eyebrows shot up.
“I wouldn’t call it argy-bargy,” I said. “We were in discussion about it. It’s a private matter.”
“Not down the King’s Head, it’s not,” Mrs. B said, and I looked for something to brain her with.
“Do you have any theories about what might have happened to Lennie Green?” Emma asked me.
“None.”
“Even though the police are digging on your property?”
“Nope.” I was starting to relax; this was going to be no different to the police interview. In fact, it was going to be easier, with no concern that Emma was going to put me in a cell at the end.
“You want to look onWhatever Happened to Lennie Green?” Mrs. Billings said. “It’s a little internet group we’ve got going in the village. Loads of ideas there. We’re all on it at Silver Surfers.”
I nearly fell off my chair! Mrs. Billings was going from here to a group dedicated to gossiping about Lennie Green and, no doubt, what was going on at Langley Hall. I recovered myself enough to lean in, as she took her phone from her bag and called up the forum.
Everyone was there: the Billingses, the Faulkners, the Chamberses,the Thrussells, the Thorpes, the vicar, Mary Bishop, who was a founding member, Mrs. Dobson from the primary school, people from the new estate, and a few suspected Great Beadingtonites. There were a fair number who used aliases as well.
“They’re the ones that say the most scandalous things,” Mrs. Billings told us. “Look, you can see who’s in here when you log on.” And she showed us a list of names along the side, with green dots by them to show they were there as well.
