“I was just thinking about another biscuit,” I said.
“You dig in.” She pushed the packet toward me. “There’s not a scrap on you,” she said, which wasn’t strictly true. She continued on a different subject, one I didn’t really like. “I saw the Newmans in the King’s Head the other day. They’re not happy about the farm—they’re going to see about taking legal advice.”
The Newmans were tenant farmers on the farm on the west side of our estate. They’d been there for generations, and no one could imagine the farm as anything else. No one except James, that was, and a company that wanted to build warehouses on the fields, which for hundreds of years had grown barley or wheat or corn or grazed sheep. They had made an offer to buy the land. The Newmans had made a counteroffer, but they couldn’t match the warehouse people, and thefact that those fields are the first thing you see of Upper Iffley, as you approach it from Tippington, didn’t sway James.
“No farms, no food,” Mr. Newman had said when he came to discuss it.
“No warehouses, no internet shopping,” James replied. “We can manage without one farm.” Then he slammed the door in Mr. N’s face. And there things stood between us and the Newmans. Secretly, I agreed entirely with the Newmans, but business is business and money is money, and as things stood, everything was James’s.
When the tea had been drunk, the supply of biscuits dented, and the village gossip imparted, Mrs. Billings rose stiffly from her chair and said, “Anyway, Lady Langley, better show willing,” then she shuffled up the stairs to the rooms on the first and second floors that James and I used as living quarters.
While she cleaned, I shut myself in my sewing room and finished the seams on James’s shirt, which took me up to Mrs. B’s finishing time. When she had gone, I had a rummage through the drawers to see what she had taken.
Mrs. Billings is a kleptomaniac. I usually put something out for her to pinch; I have a collection of cheap knickknacks that I buy especially for this purpose. It usually satisfies her light fingers and keeps her away from the priceless antiques. Usually, but not always; I once found a figurine of a shepherdess with a lamb and a basket of flowers that was supposed to sit on the ledge that ran along the landing of our second floor in a charity shop in town, priced up at a fiver.
But sometimes I forgot to leave an offering and I had to go looking to see what she took. Just a corkscrew this time, no big deal. We had five—four now. I put a new one on the shopping list in case James noticed.
Then it was time for lunch, andBargain Hunt, after which I returned to my sewing and took James’s trousers in slightly at the waist; I resisted the temptation to take one of the legs up. The secret to successful trickery is not to overplay your hand: You only have to go a little bit too far to give yourself away.
I left it there for the time being. I still had the jacket to do and that, with its lining, was a more difficult job. But he wouldn’t be wearing it until the next day. I would come to it fresh in the morning.
After that, I spent some time on the other project I had on the go: I was making myself a cocktail dress from a selection of frocks I had found in local charity shops. I had a small bet with myself that I would blend the different colors and fabrics together so well, James would never know I had made it with my own hand. Although half the fun was seeing his face at the moment he realized.
Then I was tired. By my standards it had been a busy morning, and for now death was beckoning in the form of another murder mystery. It had been quite some time since I’d bothered the little gray cells of Hercule Poirot, and there was a whole series where I couldn’t remember whodunit.
Chapter Three
On Wednesday morning I woke to the sound of James slamming around in the lounge and smiled, knowing he was looking for his keys, which I had hidden behind the stereo cabinet.
“Daisy, help me look,” he shouted and seconds later we were both marching around the flat, upending cushions, peering behind cases and stands, which is quite a boring activity when you know the object you’re looking for isn’t there, although I did find a scrunchie that had gone missing a year or so before.
Later, when he got home that night, he would find the keys in a jacket pocket, which he could haveswornhe’d looked in.
Eventually, he went to the small cupboard that housed the keys for his classic cars, along with a spare for the garage.
“I haven’t got my house keys,” he shouted as he left. “Make sure you’re in when I get back.” I would be. “And don’t forget we have to be out by eight tonight!” was his parting shot as he raced out of thefront door. We had one of his networking events that night. “And you need to look like you’re married to a successful fucking businessman. At least shave your fucking legs.”
The door slammed shut, then opened again. “And make sure you’re wearing something that was bought in a shop!” The door slammed once more and he was gone.
I pulled the bed foward and added another line to my tally of days. Like any good prisoner, I kept a countdown to the day I could be set free. I’m twenty years into this marriage, but I didn’t start the tally until after the first decade; it took me some time to fully fathom my situation. I have to wait for the end of my sentence because we have a prenup.
When James first mooted the idea of a prenuptial agreement, not long after we got engaged, I found it rather hurtful, as if he thought I was in it for the money.
But he said, “It’s for both of our benefits. So that if the worst happens—and I’m sure it won’t—we both know what to expect and it can all be dealt with without acrimony. We’ll have children by then; it would be good for them if everything went smoothly. It’s like insurance: It’s there in case the worst happens, but it’s usually a waste of money.”
I still wasn’t keen—it felt like admitting defeat before we’d even started—but I took his point about the insurance and I was excited about children, so I agreed to it.
When I told Mrs. Billings what we were doing, she suggested I have my own solicitor go through it, instead of relying on James’s.
“It’s not that Lord James would do you wrong,” she said, “but those solicitors can be sly foxes. They could stitch you up good and proper, and there’d be nothing either of you could do about it.”
I didn’t have money for my own solicitor. By then I’d moved into Langley Hall and sold my mum’s house, and all the money from the sale was tied up in James’s cryptocurrency. I didn’t want to ask James to pay—it would make it sound as if I didn’t trust him—but Mrs. B was very set against me signing it without advice.
“I told Lorna I’d keep an eye out for you,” she kept saying of my mum; Mrs. B lived across the road from us when I was growing up, and she and my mum had been friends for as long as I could remember. In the end she persuaded a lawyer who lived in one of the new houses on the outskirts of the village to look at it for free.
He read it over and he didn’t think it was nearly as good as James’s lawyer had thought. He sent him an email.
“This document gives everything to Mr. Dixon from the beginning to the middle to the end. It leaves Miss Langley in an unfair position and treats her as no more than a lodger.”
