I stood and brushed off my knees, remembering this wasn’t my first encounter with a rook that day. “Do I know your Alfie?”
Alfie turned his head to give me his strong profile as if I needed to identify him in a police lineup.
“He may have paid you a visit this morning after I was in school,” Tennyson said, dropping her schoolbag on the floor. “We’ve walked by several times this week, and we wanted to come in, but you all looked quite busy and we didn’t want to be a bother.”
“It’s never a bother, you’re welcome anytime,” I said, getting a vague notion of what this was about but becoming distracted by Alfie, who had started to rummage round in the tray of key rings. “How can I help you today?”
A cluster of children passed the window, the boys with white shirts half pulled out of trousers, girls with skirts hitched up an extra inchall dragging their schoolbags behind them as they laughed and called to another group across the road. They wore the same uniform as Tennyson—green plaid skirts or trousers and green pullovers from the village school—and looked about her age. They glanced in the window and Tennyson looked back, but neither side waved.
“My mum and I moved here last month, you see,” Tennyson said, explaining—perhaps unintentionally—the non-exchange with her schoolmates. “And she works for Dot in her dress shop and Dot told my mum who you are. That is, who your father is.”
Just as I thought—a Rupert fan. “Do you watch A Bird in the Hand?” I asked.
Tennyson grinned, the first one she’d offered, full of girlish charm and teeth. “I mostly catch up with the programs when I can stay after school in the computer room. Or I go to the library. The program is quite good—I’ve learned loads.”
“That’s just what Rupert likes to hear. Look, I’m sure I’ll be seeing him soon, and I know he’ll be interested to hear about you and Alfie. I could bring you a copy of the booklet that tells about the program; I’d say he’d be happy to autograph it for you.”
“Oh yes, thank you, that would be lovely,” Tennyson said politely, but hurried on. “Actually, I’d like Rupert’s advice. You see, I want to study to become an ornithologist—I’ve always wanted to. At least, since I’ve known Alfie. I’m quite interested in the interaction between birds and people—how it changes each of us, you know, and alters our perception of nature. I’m hoping to get as much field experience as possible, and if I work hard, I may qualify for a bursary to uni. That would be the only way I could do it, you see.”
Field experience? University? “Aren’t you a bit young to worry about that?” I asked.
“I’m almost eleven. There’s no time to waste.”
Alfie chortled—a rather self-satisfied sound—and returned to the end of the counter. I glanced in the tray, which had been one heap of key rings and was now sorted into two smaller heaps according to type—miniature Hoggin Halls here, Fotheringill coats of arms there. I looked at Alfie and then at Tennyson.
“He likes to keep busy,” she explained.
At that, Alfie ruffled his feathers, flapped his wings, and did what birds do—right on the glass counter. Splat.
“I’ll get that,” Tennyson said in a matter-of-fact tone. She unbuckled her book bag and took out a roll of kitchen towels and a spray bottle of Dettol, the all-purpose cleaner. In no time, she had taken care of the situation. Alfie hopped to the back of a chair in our work area and eyed the kettle.
“Is your mum expecting you home?” I asked.
“Mum’s working at the Stoat and Hare, but I told her where I’d be. She said it would be all right for me to visit you, because you’ve been vouched for—on account of Dot knowing you. And Peg and Fred at the pub. In fact, everyone knows you.”
“Well, in that case, fancy a cup of tea?”
—
Given a choice, Alfie preferred ginger biscuits to bourbon creams, dropping half into his mug of tea and occupying himself the rest of the time by finding a proper hiding place for the other half. First, he stashed it behind the rubbish bin. He returned to his seat, but a moment later he retrieved the hidden morsel and, after some consideration, chose instead the pocket of my mackintosh.
As Tennyson and I drank our tea, I felt the minute hand of the clock edging its way toward five. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and I couldn’t show the girl out just so I could be on my way to a weekend break. And, too, I couldn’t help but be concerned, thinking that my sister, Bianca, wouldn’t let Emmy wander the streets of St. Ives with only a bird for a companion and no one waiting for her at home.
“I haven’t met your mum yet, have I? She works at the pub?” I asked.
“Well, she works on the hotel side in the mornings, but helps out in the kitchen three times a week in the early evening,” Tennyson said, looking into the biscuit tin and pulling out the tail end of a wrapper. “There are two chocolate digestives left.”
“Why don’t we each take one?” Hotel side. Peg and her husband, Fred, were proprietors of the Stoat and Hare, and I now recalled Peg saying they’d hired a new cleaner. “Did you say your mum works for Dot as well?”
“A couple of evenings a week and early on Saturday. But she’s home the other evenings, because she’s busy with ironing.”
This was beginning to sound quite Dickensian.
“Is Smeaton very different from where you lived before?” I tried to make it sound like a casual question, but it didn’t come off well. Tennyson’s face darkened and she paused for a moment.
“We lived with my gran before, but she died.”
Great work, Julia, make the little girl cry. Alfie, on the back of Tennyson’s chair, stuck his beak in her hair and murmured.
Tennyson smiled. “I found Alfie two years ago; he was just a fledgling, and he’d fallen from his nest. Although”—she leaned forward, her voice dropping—“we realize that it might have been deliberate. Sibling rivalry, you know. I took him home, and Gran told Mum that I should take care of him. Well, we say ‘him,’ but of course, Alfie could be a ‘her’—we’re not sure about that, either.”
True, male and female rooks looked the same—no colorful plumage for the boys and drab feathers for the girls.
Good humor restored, Tennyson popped the last of the biscuit in her mouth and said, “We’ve been friends ever since.”
—
Girl and bird left just after five o’clock. We should all have a friend like Alfie, I thought as I fished the ginger biscuit out of my mackintosh pocket. I had enjoyed Tennyson’s company, but it made me miss my eldest niece as well as the younger ones—Enid and Estella. And nephew, Emmet, too, poor sausage, only boy stuck in the middle of a load of female siblings. All lived far away in Cornwall.
My departure was delayed a further half hour while I wrote up notes for Vesta and Willow, who would fill in for me Saturday and Sunday—the TIC closed on Monday, our only true day of rest. My last task put to bed and the TIC tidied, I switched off the lights, turned the sign to “Closed” and locked up. At last, the weekend had arrived.
—
The evening before, I had stashed my little Fiat just round the corner from the TIC. It usually lived in a lockup beyond my cottage, in the lane behind Nuala’s Tea Room, but I hadn’t wanted to delay the start of my journey even the ten minutes it took to walk up there. I tossed my bag in the boot, but hesitated. I was a bit peckish. It occurred to me that it would be ages before I arrived at our weekend digs, and so I took a brief detour into the corner shop run by Akash Kumar—Vesta’s significant other—for a packet of crisps and a coffee for the journey.
As I headed out the north end of the village—past my cottage, past Nuala’s—I inched along with the other cars creeping up the London road and tried to enjoy the cowslips that had started to bloom in the verge. Just past the long gravel drive on my right that led to Hoggin Hall, I glanced left to the Stoat and Hare. The lane that ran from the church to the pub and hotel was clogged with parked cars. The rain had let up, and a crowd congregated on the pavement, while at leas
t a dozen small children dashed about, chasing one another round the clusters of adults. Everyone well dressed, laughing and talking. Had there been a wedding? I preferred to know when there was any sort of celebration in the village, because it might include visitors who could be tempted to return. It wasn’t that I was a nosy parker—it was important for the manager of the TIC to keep her finger on the pulse of the estate. I made a mental note to ask Peg.
—
I arrived in Dunwich ahead of Michael and lugged my bag up the stairs. He’d booked us a lovely room that had a view to the east, out across the marsh and to the sea beyond.The sunrise would be gorgeous—not that I intended either of us to be up and about for it. I filled the kettle, switched it on, and opened a packet of Hobnobs from the tea tray. I drank my tea as I watched the sky over the water dim. I had stretched out on the bed for only a moment when, the next thing I knew, I awoke to a darkened room and a man beside me.
I giggled and leaned over, bumping my nose on his cheek before nipping at his earlobe. “Took you long enough.”
“Yeah,” Michael said, slipping his arms round my waist and pulling me close. He sighed deeply. “Late—that was my day. Late for everything. Couldn’t get the crew scheduled at Marshy End until Basil Blandy arrived, spent two hours in a foundation meeting in Cambridge—we should’ve been going over grant applications, but turned out they hadn’t been copied yet—harassed by one of the applicants in the pub, got all the way to the village before I remembered we weren’t driving here together, and pulled up in front of the visitors’ center at Lackford Lakes outside of Bury to find Rupert blaming me that he’d missed a short-eared owl.”
“It isn’t wise to stand between Dad and a short-eared owl,” I commiserated. Michael sighed, reached over, and switched on the lamp. We both blinked.
“Look, Julia, I want to tell you something else….I got an email.”
“Wait.” I pressed my fingers to his lips. “For the next three days, no more talk of work or schedules or emails. We need this weekend to ourselves, no outside interruptions.” There, I’d said it. This proposal had been simmering at the back of my mind, and I sighed with relief at letting it out. If both of us had something to explain, this was a good idea all round. Although, I’d say my email would be the bigger surprise—it had certainly stunned me. But this wasn’t the time.
I gasped as inspiration struck. “Let’s switch off our phones so no one can bother us. What do you say?”
The corner of Michael’s mouth pulled up and his blue eyes were like midnight. “I say yes to that.”
—
We lazed our way through the weekend, spending most of Saturday strolling the promenade at Southwold and snapping photos of the long line of colorful beach huts.
“Look now,” Michael said, pointing to one painted with red-and-white stripes. “For sale—only a hundred thousand.”
We peered in the windows. “I could barely turn round in there,” I said, but then realized it looked about the size of my cottage’s sitting room.
We ate ice cream on the pier—a bit on the chilly side for it, but it seemed the thing to do—had a lovely lunch at Two Magpies Bakery on the high street, and when we returned to Dunwich and our room in the late afternoon, we didn’t come out again until time for dinner. Cod-and-salmon fish cake with fresh spinach for me, and pork belly for Michael. He gave me a taste—it was quite good.
Sunday morning we spent hours wandering the paths at Minsmere. I wanted Michael to see a firecrest—such a lovely, tiny bird with that band of orange right on the top of its head. One had been spotted in the wood not far from the visitors’ center. We didn’t find him, but we were not short of bird sightings. At the feeders—goldfinch, chaffinch, chiffchaff, robin, dunnock, blue tit, long-tailed tit, coal tit. Marsh harriers in the sky with eyes on the ground, hunting. And on the water, avocets, widgeons, teals, all manner of gulls, and greylag geese.
We were in the south hide, sitting on stools with elbows on the wooden bar, propping up our binoculars. Down the other end, two couples chatted about sand martins.
“Too bad we won’t see a bean goose,” I said. “I’d say they’ve all gone back to Russia by now.”
“Does a bean goose eat beans?” Michael asked.
I snorted. “Yes, beans on toast—every morning. Really, you know, you’ve learned a great deal about birds in only a year.”
“Rupert’s a good teacher.” He nudged my shoulder with his. “I have two good teachers.”
“Who’s the other one?” I asked. “Basil Blandy?” Michael caught me up and with a grin gave me a quick kiss. “This is lovely,” I whispered.
He watched me for a moment. His eyes were that iridescent turquoise of a kingfisher. “Come away with me,” he said.
If we’d been alone, I would’ve thrown myself in his arms at this invitation.
“A holiday,” he continued. “A real one.” His eyes sparked. “Where would you like to go?”
“Far away,” I said. Having been off this island home only once in my life—and that for a weekend in Paris—I took a stab at a remote and secluded spot. “John o’Groat’s?”
Michael laughed. “We’ll have to do better than that to escape work; Rupert wants to do an entire program up there on puffins.”
I looped my arm through his. “We’ll have to think on it, then.” We returned to scanning the scrape as a dozen lapwings came in to land. “They saw a Slavonian grebe here not long ago,” I said. “Rare and a real surprise. But, of course, it’s spring migration. At this time of year, anything can happen.”
—
Outside the pub, we stamped our feet to get the sand off before going in and tramping up the stairs.
“I could just do with a bath,” I said over my shoulder.
“Ms. Lanchester?” The fellow from the bar popped his head round the corner. “You had a phone call earlier—from your father.” Dad was no stranger to these parts or this pub, and so no one needed to get all aflutter when Rupert Lanchester was on the other end of the line.
I rolled my eyes at Michael. “Busted.”
“He asked that you ring him as soon as possible.”
“Right, thanks,” I said cheerfully to the fellow, but out of the corner of my mouth I grumbled to Michael, “We shouldn’t be made to work on our holiday.”
“Our working holiday,” he reminded me.
“And you, Mr. Sedgwick, you had a phone call as well.”
“Rupert?” Michael asked.
“No, sir, Sudbury Constabulary, a Detective Inspector Callow.”
Chapter 3
Detective Inspector Tess Callow—that name stunned my senses and froze me to the spot. Sudbury, the nearest town to Smeaton, was only ten minutes down the road, and home of our local constabulary. Michael and I had met her in the autumn when she investigated a “suspicious” death at Hoggin Hall. I was in temporary residence at the time as my cottage was undergoing a repair, and I had found the body—along with Thorne, the butler; Linus, the Earl Fotheringill; and his son, Cecil, who had been a friend of the victim’s. I’d mostly put all that behind me until this moment.
Michael called out thanks to the fellow from the pub, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up the stairs to our room. Inside, we both dived for our phones, and as we waited for them to fire up, he said, “It might be nothing. Your dad, Callow—it might not be related at all.” But we both knew better. My heart thumped in my chest.
The moment the phones were live, beeps, chirps, and dings chastised us. Seven texts on mine, nine missed calls, and four voice messages. Listen or read? I couldn’t seem to make up my mind, and I saw Michael, too, staring at his screen. When my phone rang with a real call, I jumped as if I’d been slapped.
“Dad?” I asked. “What is it?”
He said something I couldn’t understand; the sound was muffled as if he’d turned away. In the background I heard another voice. Beryl, I think—Dad’s wife and my stepmum. He came back on the line, his voice strained and tired. �
��Julia? Where are you? Are you still in Dunwich? Why haven’t you been answering?”
“We were only having a bit of a break, that’s all.”
Michael’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and up at me, nodding once. Callow. He walked into the bathroom to answer.
A pricking sensation like little needles crept up my arm. “Dad, is something wrong?”
I tried to listen to Michael’s side of his conversation, hoping to understand why the police would need him. “Friday,” I heard him tell Callow.
“There’s a bit of bad news,” Rupert said to me, “but I—”
I jumped in feetfirst, assuming the worst. Something had happened to my sister. “Is it Bee? The children? Paul?”
“No, it isn’t Bianca or any of them—”
“Are you ill? Is Beryl?”
“No, we are both fine, but I need to—”
“Stephen?” I asked. If it wasn’t my sister or Dad or his wife, it must be my best friend from childhood, who was also Beryl’s son.
“Jools, listen to me.” I could hear the frustration in his voice. “We are all well, but there’s been an unfortunate event on the estate.”
Another one? My heart leapt into my throat. The police. “Oh God, not Linus.”
In the bathroom, I heard Michael say, “No, I don’t know him.”
“Not Linus,” Dad said. “Or Cecil. Julia, you must let me say this. The police found Nick near the Hall. He’s dead.”
In some creepy time warp, I was transported to four years ago—no five—and saw a slight figure with mousy brown hair that he kept cut short and that odd bend to his nose where he’d broken it in a fall. And I heard him saying, “Well, see ya,” before he left for St. Kilda in the Outer Hebrides. The image was dull and colorless. The last time I saw my ex-husband, Nick Hawkins.
I felt nothing. It was as if my mind had been shot with Novocain—my entire body, too.
“Yes, I can come in,” Michael said, his eyes on me. “Does it need to be today?”
Every Trick in the Rook Page 2
