Meg won’t care.
Meg probably knew. They should get Meg to sniff Lady Langley and see how she reacts.
I’m not sure she’s keen on dogs, she’d probably react by saying “get off me,”Mrs. Billings said.
How Meg reacts, to see if she recognizes Daisy.
It would work.
Doesn’t Meg know Daisy anyway, just from being around here?Mrs. Thorpe asked.
I don’t know that she does, Jo Newman replied.We hardly ever see Daisy out in the fields, and we don’t tend to go up as far as Langley Hall ourselves.
That allayed any fears that the experiment would be compromised.
I think it’s a very good idea, Mrs. Chambers said.
It’s miraculous what dogs can do, Mrs. Thrussell replied.
BigDreams got the gossip back on track.I think Lennie was going to tell their spouses, so they killed him.
The forum fell silent and I fumed. I’d previously been wary ofentering the fray, but now, disguised as LooseEnds, I made my first foray.
That theory has more holes than a box of Cheerios, I wrote.For a start, how did they know Lennie? He was from Great Beadington. And why would he care? Why would he tell anyone about it?
Yes, Mr. Chambers said.If they were having an affair, isn’t it more likely that James Dixon found out and killed Doug Newman?
Thank you!
So, where does Lennie Green come into it?Mrs. Faulkner wrote.
Collateral damage.
But how? And why?
I waited a while to see what the response to that would be, but BigDreams seemed flummoxed. The forum went quiet and I logged off. I needed some aspersions of my own to cast.
***
If James was going to plant evidence to make me look guilty, he was going to find that two could play that game.
Clearly, I couldn’t shove something into the plumbing and get the police round to find it as he had, that would unravel in seconds, but I had a secret weapon: Mrs. B. And so, before she arrived, I went to the priest hole and from Lennie’s bag, I took the inhaler. I went to James’s room, wiped my fingerprints from it, and left it on his bedside cabinet. James was not asthmatic, I didn’t know if Mrs. B knew that, but I hoped the sight of a new medication would attract her curiosity anyway.
We went through the usual tea and biscuits routine and I learned from her that Archie Thorpe, son of Mrs. Thorpe from The Two Ts teashop, had a new job in America and would be leaving here withinthe next few weeks. Once we’d finished marveling over that, Mrs. B went to make a start on the cleaning and I put out a paperweight for her to take. Then I retreated to my sewing den and waited for her to go into James’s room and make her discovery.
I waited, until…
“Toodle-oo, Lady Langley, love. I’ll be off now,” and I heard her making her way down the grand staircase. I’d expected her to come to alert me to the critical evidence I had planted; it wasn’t like her to keep something like that to herself. Irked, I made my way out of my sewing room to see what I could see.
The first thing I saw was the paperweight, exactly where I had left it. I stared at it for a moment, then, with a sinking feeling, made my way to James’s room.
The inhaler was gone, and the top of the cabinet was clear. Admittedly that had been the plan, but the presence of the paperweight and the lack of commentary on the finding convinced me that Mrs. B had taken the inhaler for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t definitive; she could be taking it straight to the police without telling me, and they could be sending it off for forensic tests later today. But in my heart, I knew the truth. Oh, that perfidious woman! I would kill her, if I hadn’t already made the decision not to do that.
Why would you steal someone else’s inhaler?For the first time, I googled kleptomania and learned that it is merely the compulsive urge to take things. It doesn’t have to be valuable, it doesn’t have to be of any use to the thief. It just has to be not theirs. That is why you would steal someone else’s inhaler. I wondered if she’d taken the vertebra Mrs. Faulkner said Great Beadington had pilfered from the Bone Bonanza.
“Aaargh!” I shouted, and I threw the paperweight. It bouncedoff the wall and left a chip in the paint. That infuriated me even more, and I threw my phone across the room. It landed harmlessly on James’s armchair and with it went my fury.
I sat down to think and after some time was able to console myself with the thought that this was just a trial run. It had gone badly, but I had other items to leave. Sooner or later something would be flagged as suspicious. Anyway, the inhaler didn’t exactly scream “Lennie!” I would’ve been lucky if anyone had seen it and made the connection. On reflection, it was a poor choice. I put the paperweight away and went back to see what else was in his bag. I still had the sense that this was a realistic way forward.
