“We just want to ask him a few questions.”
“What about?”
“Oh, the weather, the Little Beadington bypass, the church bell fund. What do you think?”
“I don’t know where he is,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get hold of him.”
“We know. So have we, but he seems to have parted ways with his phone.”
Three cheers for the honest folk of Upper Iffley! And if they had the phone, they had the messages from Lennie. I tried not to smile.
“What’s happened to his office?” Parker asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“It’s gone. He emptied out all the rooms he used and left without paying the rent.”
“He did make the staff redundant,” I said, remembering the tale of Oliver Thrussell. “I suppose then he didn’t need the office, but he didn’t say anything to me.”
They gave me a look that said another interview was in the offing. They probably didn’t realize exactly how separately James and I had been living, but for now they left me alone.
“If you see him or hear from him, please let us know,” Khan said and with that, they left. Was it too much to hope, I wondered, that the tide was turning.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
James was gone, there was no news yet about my impending trial, and of course, the police now knew a bit more about James and Lennie Green. Mrs. Billings’s last shift was approaching.
She duly arrived on her final day and we went through our usual tea and biscuits routine, but for once, we had nothing to say. I’d thought we were friends, just as I’d thought I was more important to her than Jo Newman, innocent victim though Jo was. I knew it wasn’t friendly of me to have considered killing Mrs. B, but I was sure now I would never have done that. And she didn’t know about it anyway, so that hadn’t influenced her decision. I felt the rejection sharply.
Eventually, tea drunk in somber silence, Mrs. B took out a duster, while I went to catch up with Miss Marple. Before I settled down, I set out the shepherdess she had once taken and given to a charity shop, the one Arty had valued at seventy to eighty thousand. I wrotedown Arty’s estimate, tucked the paper into the basket of flowers she carried, and put it in the usual spot for pocketing.
“That will be me done, then,” Mrs. Billings said at the end of the morning, putting her coat on and picking up her bag. “Off to pastures new.”
“Thank you for your help here,” I said. “Altogether, I mean, not just the cleaning that we paid you for.”
She nodded. “Well, I can’t grumble about the biscuits…or the gifts.” She gave me a wry smile and left. When I checked the lounge, the figurine was gone, replaced with the key to Langley Hall I had given her when I first moved in.
***
Parker and Khan came round again. This time they brought with them a team of forensic investigators, and they set about tearing the rooms we lived in apart.
“What’s that smell?” Khan asked, as they made their way up the staircase. “Smells like teenage boys.”
“No teenagers here,” I said. “I can’t smell anything.”
They took away James’s laptop and all his gadgets.
Then they took away me and spent an afternoon asking me what I knew about his business. I told them about my own investment and how I hadn’t been able to get my money back and in the end, they explained to me, in as sympathetic a manner as they could muster, that the business was a fraud and I would probably never see my money again. I did my best to look shocked.
They asked me if James had any connections to Greater Manchester, so they must have discovered the Amazon purchases. I said no. They let me go.
They put out a bulletin asking for sightings of him, but they came to Langley Hall to search, just in case. They brought sniffer dogs, who paused and barked on the step above the priest hole, only to be told, “Come on, Monty,” or Dido, or Samson. “There’s nothing to see here. Think the ghosts are getting to them.”
***
So it were Lord Langley did it!Mrs. Billings started a thread on the forum.Killed Doug Newman in a fit of jealous rage, then ran away before they could put him in prison.
It does make him look guilty, Mrs. Faulkner replied, and everyone agreed.
