“No, of course not. That’s what I’m telling you. I’m not allowed to talk about it.” She took a long slurp of her tea, then she asked me, “Where did you find that bag? That brown bag that I found downstairs? You said it was Lord James’s, but I don’t think it was.”
I took a custard cream myself and dunked it for as long as I dared, but not for as long as Mrs. B because, when biscuits break off into my tea, the memory of the sludge it creates at the bottom stays with me for hours.
“I thought it was James’s bag,” I said in the end. “He has one just like it, but you probably haven’t seen it because he takes it with him to work.”
I waited to see if she was going to tell me anything else.
“Have you still got it?” she asked, and it took me three gulps of tea to decide whether to say yes or no.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I haven’t seen it since.”
Mrs. B picked up her duster and polish and headed for the stairs. Did she know about Lennie or not? Did she know it was his bag? I thought so. But did she know I knew it was his bag? I didn’t know. And what about the phone? Had she taken the phone? What had she done with it? Had she told the police? Again, I didn’t know. I wanted to scream. The one thing I did know was that there was probably no point in killing her now; presumably she had already done her worst. I found that was quite a weight off my mind.
My next question was, who was that knocking on the door? My first guess turned out to be correct: It was Parker and Khan again.
This time, they wanted to ask me all about my fragile mental health. There was no need for us to go to the station this time, so presumably they wanted to poke their noses around the house. I offered to give them the tour, but they said they didn’t need the tour. All they needed to know at that moment was, did I want my solicitor present? I phoned Tarquin, and he arrived half an hour later.
“James told us you’ve had some psychological issues,” DS Khan said, leaning forward and speaking quietly to try to make herself sound sympathetic.
“Not really,” I said, and when Tarquin gave me the side-eye, I wondered why I’d said that. I corrected myself. “Not at all.”
“He said you were in quite a state when he first met you.”
“My mother had recently died. I was upset. Isn’t that normal?”
“It is normal, yes, but he said you’d had a complete breakdown.”
“I hadn’t.”
“He said the house was in a state of chaos. Most of the appliances were broken, the housework was never done. There had been a fire; he thinks you may have set it yourself.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“He said you were clearly not coping and wondered if he should phone social services.”
I had to take a minute at that. He was going to phone social services? I wasn’t a child.
“I didn’t have the money to replace things and I was working long hours, trying to make ends meet, so I got behind with the housework. It was a long time ago. What’s it got to do with now?”
“James says he decided not to get outside agencies involved because you seemed to turn a corner when you met him, but you never quite recovered and you’ve deteriorated since. He says you shut yourself away in the house, never seeing anyone except him.”
“I see Mrs. Billings.”
“The cleaner?”
“Some weeks I see Mr. Billings.”
“He says that you’re keeping some kind of tally on the bedroom wall and that lately you have been wearing increasingly bizarre outfits…”
Everyone took a moment to appreciate the dungarees I was wearing that day, handmade from a selection of old jackets. Their silent appraisal and the withering description James must have given them stung.
“I don’t shut myself in the house,” I said. “I go into the village sometimes. I went to the Bone Bonanza.”
“Wearing those clothes.”
“It was just a T-shirt I’d modified slightly on that day. And a skirt.”
“What does this have to do with your investigation?” Tarquin asked, speaking up for the first time. “I assume that’s why you’re here.”
