***
Arty duly brought his girlfriend to the house to be measured. She was pretty and petite, and when I got to speak to her I found she was incredibly likable. Mrs. Billings thought so too, when they found out they were distantly related.
“That’s what it’s like round here, though,” Arty said. “You can’t go anywhere without meeting someone from your family tree.” I kept quiet and thought about our empty tree in the hall and how James was the only person I was related to, which suddenly felt wrong, while hearing about all their relatives. But then again, I was from Langley Hall, which, really, trumped all of it.
I saw them off at the back door, where a pane of glass had fallen out of one of the panels in the top half. Mr. Billings had already covered it with newspaper.
***
By the end of the afternoon, the fact of Arty’s imminent departure and the reality of his girlfriend had deflated me. I went to the priest hole and took out a multipack of Chipsticks. But I’d forgotten to keep an eye on the time.
“WHAT IS THAT YOU’RE EATING?” James’s voice boomed across the great hall, making me jump out of my skin. I dropped Chipsticks all over my lap. I was still shaking as he noticed the priest hole that was open next to me. “What the hell isthat?” he asked, striding up to see. He peered into it. “Did you cut a hole in the stairs?”
I stayed silent, looking at him. “Well?” he shouted.
“It’s a priest hole,” I whispered and I began to explain about the religious kettle of fish they’d found themselves in, in the sixteenth century, but he wasn’t listening, he was too busy pulling out everything I had in there.
With every item—my Monster Munch, my Hobnobs, my Cadbury’s Mini Rolls—he turned and stared at me with incredulity, until he got to Lennie’s satchel. He tipped it out onto the floor and started going through the contents. He picked up the pages of the memoir and scanned them.
“This is his, isn’t it? Lennie Green’s. How long have you had it?” I stared at him, trying to think what the right answer would be. “How long!”
“I found it,” I whimpered. “In the field. I knew we couldn’t leave it there, so I brought it here.”
“You didn’t think to tell me? I was out there looking for it for days on end.” He didn’t expect a reply and he didn’t ask me anything else. He just took the whole lot, bar one packet of Jaffa Cakes that he missed.
“You could hide a body in this,” he said of the priest hole, beforestomping off with my goods. Yes, James, I thought, as my heart rate returned to normal, that was rather the point of it. Which he would have known had he listened to my explanation.
He threw all the snacks in the bin, shoving them deep down into the depths of the waste. I don’t know where he took the satchel. I didn’t see it in the house again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It had been a while since I checked in on the forum. When I did, I found Mrs. Billings regaling them all with the news that James and I had separate rooms, which she may well have told them before, and that apart from James, and her to clean, no one had been in my husband’s bedroom for a very long time.
It was humiliating and it fed into the earlier theory I was having an affair. Subsequently, the idea of the Meg-test, whereby Mr. Newman’s dog, Meg, would be brought to sniff me to see if she recognized me, was gaining support.
I didn’t much care for that line of gossip. Jo Newman was only a couple of years older than me, and she bucked the trend at school by sometimes being quite kind. There had been occasions on which it was a relief to get onto the school bus and see her move her bag so that I could sit down and be sheltered for a little while by her popularity. She deserved better from me than an affair with her husband.
We’d all been surprised when she married Mr. N. He was widowed and already had sons who were well on their way to adulthood, so it was an age-gap relationship. But marry they did and Jo stepped into the role of farmer’s wife, up with the lark and out in the fields. Rather her than me. And if I’m being honest, rather her than me for Mr. N as well.
However, I was starting to see the lie of the land in the forum, and the idea that James had killed Mr. N in a fit of jealous rage was gaining traction. Could I tolerate Jo Newman’s animosity for the benefit of staying out of prison? It was a sacrifice I was sorry to make, but I thought I could do it.
I heard Daisy likes older men.I cringed as I wrote, but it worked and they began to dig in on their new favorite subject once more.
Probably because she didn’t have a male role model when she was growing up, Mrs. Faulkner wrote.It’s a common thing.
She made a pass at my dad once, Samantha Saunders said, and I gasped because that was an out-and-out lie. But it was greeted withNo!andReally?andWhen?andWhere?Samantha, however, didn’t answer their questions. Because she couldn’t. Unfortunately, her dad was now on the other side, so we would need a séance to clear my name.
Jo, you really should get over there with Meg, Mrs. Chambers wrote.That would settle things.
I don’t know that I’d want to stir up trouble, Jo wrote.
But don’t you want to know?said Samantha, who very much did want to stir up trouble. Jo didn’t answer.
I’d want to know if it were me, Mrs. Thrussell said.And in this case, it could lead to a conviction.
The idea of justice for Mr. N helped to tip the scales in that direction.
The Meg-test wasn’t the most scientific research I could think of, but it seemed to be the gold standard amongst the witchfinders of Upper Iffley. I gave them one final shove:
