“We’re wondering if Daisy is really in a fit state to drive these days, and if she was in a fit state to drive on the night of the accident,” DS Khan said. “These things can be taken into account at sentencing.” For better or for worse, I suspected.
“I’m fit to drive and I’m fit to be left in charge of a sewing machine,” I said. “I did not run Lennie Green over. If you think anyone in this house is mad, think of James.” And I told them about the family tree—ten children—and the cheap coat of arms, made in Nevada, and the titles he had bought. I told them all about it.
DC Parker smiled. “It’s nice to set up a family heirloom.”
“Ten children!” I repeated, but he ignored me.
“That is a lot,” Tarquin agreed. “I’m exhausted with three.” But Parker ignored him as well.
They wrapped the interview up there, but as they got ready to leave, Khan said, “Is it OK if I use the toilet? Do you have one downstairs?”
Of course we did. I pointed her in the right direction and a minute later she returned, her hands in gloves, asking Parker for an evidence bag. She was carrying Lennie’s wallet! It was wrapped in plastic, which was dripping wet.
She looked at me. “Do you know whose this is?” she asked. I shook my head. “When we check this for fingerprints, we’re not going to find yours, are we?”
I stared back. Of course they were going to find my fingerprints.
“Yes,” I said. “You will. I found it when I was walking out in the fields. I didn’t look inside. I just brought it back here and James said he’d drop it into the SPAR on his way to work and they could put it in their lost property locker.” Lost property was an unofficial service offered by most of the local businesses in the village. “He must have forgotten. Where did you find it?”
“In the cistern in your downstairs toilet. James said he’d been having some trouble flushing it and when he looked in the cistern, he found out why. He didn’t say anything about you finding it in a field.”
James never used that bathroom. I stared at the wallet. Yes, they were going to find my fingerprints, but they were also going to find James’s. He been through everything in it. Then I remembered the wine I had drunk and the times I had been out of the room that night. And at the end of the evening, he got me to put the wallet and addressbook in the case with the keys for the classic cars. Had he been planning this even back then?
I shrugged. “Nothing to do with me,” I said.
And she said, “Nothing to worry about then.” She smiled. Then she arranged for me to nip into Tippington police station to have my fingerprints taken, for comparison.
I thought I’d held my nerve, but as they left, I feltveryshaken. I looked at Tarquin, but his expression wasn’t giving anything away. Had my husband and my solicitor cooked this up between them, I wondered? Tarquin hadn’t said much during the interview and now that I thought about it, the side-eye he gave me might have been a look of victory at my mistake. I wished his face would move to give me an idea of what he was thinking. It’s hard knowing who to trust when you don’t know whether or not your solicitor is corrupt.
I watched him walking to his car with a sign on his back saying “kick me.” It must have been there all day because I hadn’t stuck it on him, and for all their faults, I didn’t think Parker or Khan had either. It was hard to reconcile a hapless father with a corrupt solicitor.
Then I went to the key case and unlocked it. One good thing about the accident and following incident was that, in the aftermath, James seemed to have forgotten about his plan to install cameras in the house to monitor me, so I still had unfettered access to the priest hole. The address book was still in the key case. I took it and hid it in the priest hole.
Chapter Nineteen
“When did anyone last vacuum under here?” James asked. He was looking under the coffee table for a shoe I’d hidden from him.
“Mrs. Billings’s days are Monday and Thursday,” I said.
“But when did anyone last clean under the coffee table? There’s loads of dust. And here and here.” He forgot about the shoe and took himself on a dust inspection, running his finger over surfaces that neither Mrs. Billings nor I could reach without standing on something.
“She’s more of a cleaner than a polisher,” I said.
“I’m paying her to do both, aren’t I? When was this last done?” He was peering behind the stereo.
“She’s nearly seventy. You can’t expect her to get behind there.”
“I’m paying her to do a job. If she can’t do it, I can’t pay her for it.” He stood up and looked at me. “Why am I paying her anyway? What do you do all day?”
I couldn’t lose Mrs. Billings! “We need her,” I said.
“Things need to improve around here if we’re keeping her on,” he said. “Tell her that, and tell her it’s her final warning.”
When Mrs. B arrived that morning I told her nothing of the sort. Instead, I waited until she’d been and gone, then I did her usual route, finishing the bits she’d missed. After that I did all the dusting James had found to do that morning. I wasn’t used to the effort; I was exhausted. I had to message James and ask him to bring a takeaway.
“We have food in the house,” he replied. That sounded more like my mum, back in the days of scrimping and saving, than my husband, who would gladly pay an extra grand just because he could.
James phoned again a couple of hours later. “What’s all this money you’ve been giving Brenda Billings?” he asked. He must have been going through the joint account, which I had access to, so that I could do day-to-day errands for him. I’d been hoping that amongst all the outgoings, a few extra pounds for the Billingses wouldn’t be noticed.
