Every Trick in the Rook

by Marty Wingate

  I pulled open the door, and Glossop put his hand out like a traffic cop.

  “Don’t come out, Ms. Lanchester. Step back.”

  I threw myself against the wall as the door swung wide and I saw, protruding from its center and covered with an all-too-familiar reddish-brown substance, a long, slender knife.

  Chapter 14

  Police poured in—Glossop, Callow, PC Flynn, three other uniforms. I watched as if from a distance, one of those out-of-body experiences you hear about. I saw two plainclothes men stop at the door, pull on gloves, and begin to examine the knife. I shivered from the cold air that came in with them, and Callow tried to lead me away, but I refused to budge when I heard one of the men suggesting they remove the entire door and take it with them. I heard myself shouting something about destruction of private property and how this was a Grade II–listed building and I’d have Historic England down their throats in a second if they touched a single hinge. That was when Tess suggested I go upstairs and dress.

  PC Flynn stood at my bedroom door when I came out, straightening the skirt on my uniform. She smiled encouragingly, then dropped the smile in favor of a neutral police face. Just like Natty Glossop—how sweet. Those two were a pair, weren’t they?

  “You’ve been questioning the people at the funeral, haven’t you?” I asked her. Her eyes darted down to the kitchen. “It’s all right; DI Callow told me that.”

  “Oh yes, ma’am, I am. And door-to-door as well. Asking if anyone saw something unusual. Showing everyone a photo of the vic—Mr. Hawkins.”

  Door-to-door meant the Stoat and Hare plus the line of cottages that ran up the lane to the church, as well as Hoggin Hall.

  “Have you found out anything?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m afraid not—seems everyone had a grand old time that afternoon but didn’t pay much attention to anything else. Sorry.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  I peered over the banister at the crowd in the kitchen and sitting room. It looked as if we were trying to best the record for the number of people crammed into a red phone box. Linus had arrived and stood examining the hole left in the door when police had removed the knife—not the entire door, thank God. Commuter traffic on the high street crawled by, giving everyone a good view into my cottage.

  Nuala—looking, as always, like a dancer in black flats and long, full skirt, her wiry black hair streaked with gray and somewhat secured in a bun—busied herself in the kitchen making tea while Sergeant Glossop guarded the table, which held two plates of hot cross buns studded with sultana raisins. Other sundry police loitered nearby.

  “Julia.” Linus rushed up to me. “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, thank you, I’m fine.”

  Tess finished a phone call and came over.

  “Who did this?” I asked her. “Is that the knife that killed Nick?”

  “The knife fits what we’re looking for, but—we won’t know for certain until we’ve examined it further.” Tested the blood, that’s what she meant. “I need you to tell me what happened.”

  “Tea’s ready,” Nuala called over in a stage whisper.

  I looked at Tess, and she nodded. “The rest of you are finished here,” she said to her team, checking her watch. “I’ll see you at the station for the briefing at nine o’clock.”

  I noticed a bit of foot dragging and said, “Why don’t you all take a bun with you—that’s all right, isn’t it, Nuala?”

  It wasn’t that I was being overly generous—I had counted buns and counted police and knew that those of us staying behind would come out ahead.

  Nuala passed a plate, and the rest of us settled at the table. When I took my first sip of tea, I felt the world begin to right itself. I tore open a bun, breathed in the cinnamon, and stuffed a piece in my mouth—licking off the icing that remained on my fingers. I felt eyes on me and glanced up to see that Callow, Glossop, Linus, and Nuala sitting—or standing, as there weren’t enough chairs—silently. Waiting.

  I took another drink of tea before I began. “I woke up in the night, about three-thirty, because I’d heard a noise. I thought it was the door. I thought”—I had thought it was Michael—“but I got up and looked. I’d put the chain on and all. There was no one here.” I tore off another hunk of roll, but before I filled my mouth, I asked Callow, “How did you know about it?”

  “We got a tip,” she replied. “At 4:23 this morning.”

  “Another anonymous call?”

  “Not quite—a text. From Mr. Hawkins’s mobile.”

  —

  Although I went over my story again, we gained no new information. I saw nothing, no one who passed saw anything, the village had no CCTV—this was a modernization Linus had resisted, insisting, “I will not spy on my tenants.” I could see that changing soon.

  In return, DI Callow told me that they’d not been able to trace the text from Nick’s phone—whoever used it had switched it on and then off again.

  “Julia, why are you wearing your uniform?” Linus asked as Inspector Callow and her sergeant examined the French doors and I boxed up one of the remaining buns for my morning tea break and one more, just in case. “You can’t think of going in to work today.”

  “I can and I will.” I attempted to sound confident, not defiant. Linus was a dear friend who had put up with a great deal—and he was my employer. “How could there be any safer place than in plain sight—in public with ramblers and picnickers and archaeology students continually streaming in and out of the TIC?”

  “Well…” He obviously saw the logic in my argument.

  “I want you to come stay at the Hall,” Linus said firmly, trying to catch me from a different direction.

  “I’m perfectly safe here. Really, Linus, I live on the high street. This was only someone trying to scare me, that’s all.” Someone with the murder weapon, I added to myself. I so wanted to blame this on the journos and get them out of my hair for good, but couldn’t quite figure out how to turn it on them. And then an idea struck.

  “Tess?” I called, and saw Sergeant Glossop take note of my casual tone.

  “Inspector,” I corrected myself, “wouldn’t it be just like one of those journos to do something like this? Perhaps it’s all a prank and it won’t be the actual knife. Or if it is, maybe one of them ran across it—if they found evidence and kept it from you, that would be a crime, wouldn’t it? You could arrest the lot of them.” I liked this idea.

  “Or perhaps the murderer left you his own message—you’ve thought of that one, too, haven’t you?” Tess asked, although sans icy tone.

  “You see there, Julia,” Linus said, pouncing on this. “The inspector is right.” He turned to Callow. “I believe Julia should move in to the Hall for the time being.”

  “No!” I took a deep breath. As fond as I was of Linus and the butler, Thorne, and housekeeper-cook Sheila Bugg, I had no desire to reenact my residence at the Hall that had lasted for months the previous summer and autumn. “I’m sorry, Linus, but I won’t. I live here—I won’t be frightened away.”

  We both looked to Callow to act as judge. Her eyes moved from us, around my cottage, out the window to the street. I followed her gaze and saw Alfie on a chimney across the road. Tennyson must be in school already—time for me to open the TIC.

  “Right,” Tess said. “I’ll put a foot patrol on in the village during the day, and a patrol car will come through regularly overnight.”

  “Well, if the police are on it,” Linus said, looking defeated.

  “Thank you, Inspector,” I said, relief rushing through me, because I wouldn’t be put in a cage and watched. “Thank you, Linus. We can’t let our visitors down; it’s spring, the estate has so much to offer, and I’ve loads of work to do to get ready for upcoming events. The farmers’ market, less than a week away. Oh, and a meeting in the church hall this evening for the summer supper.”

  All eyebrows rose. Linus opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Tess filled in.
“We’ll have someone there.”

  “Yes, right, good idea—those chefs, you never know what they might get up to,” I said with a smile, which spread to no one.

  I took up my bag to leave but stopped at the centuries-old oak door, which still stood open with a PC on guard outside on the pavement. I took a close look at the gouge the knife had left.

  “We’ll need to get some wood filler,” I said. Dad loved these DIY projects; perhaps I could ask him to do it. Dad.

  “Linus, Inspector—you won’t say anything to Rupert about this, will you? There’s really no need to worry him. I’m all right. Everything’s fine.”

  They exchanged glances, and Tess gave a single nod, conceding my victory.

  “For the time being,” she said.

  —

  I unlocked the TIC door and turned the sign to “Open.” I had left the cottage only when satisfied that the DI would keep this incident from not only Dad, but also Michael. Tess pursed her lips at this but hadn’t said no, and I left the cottage with the conviction that, if Michael was watching out for me, I would do the same for him. He was away in Exeter, and there was no need to make him worry from afar. Although the absence of worry wasn’t enough—I knew that. Michael had taken action to protect me; I should take action, too. But what?

  The morning opened just the way I liked it—the sun shining, several phone calls about campsites over the Easter holiday, which seemed to be flying toward us, only the next weekend but one. I switched the kettle on, feeling almost optimistic until I remembered the knife sticking out of my cottage door.

  I shook the thought out of my head, and when the bell jingled, looked up in happy anticipation of greeting a rambler. Instead, Thorne walked in.

  The sight of the butler—black suit, cotton-ball hair, silver-framed glasses—caused me to lose my train of thought. I couldn’t recall that he’d ever set foot in the TIC before, and I was poised to take an immediate leap to the conclusion something else had happened. But he smiled at me—a reassuring, don’t-worry-a-fig sort of smile.

  “Good morning, Thorne,” I said, coming round the counter. “This is a lovely surprise—what brings you to the TIC?”

  “Good morning, Ms. Lanchester,” he said as he admired the wall of maps and leaflets. “As it happens, I needed to collect an item from the chemist and I thought, as I was so close to you, I would put my head in and say hello.”

  Such a coincidence—I didn’t buy it for one moment.

  “Linus sent you, did he?”

  Thorne’s shoulders stiffened slightly. “You are quite important to us, you know,” he said. “To everyone here on the estate. His Lordship would do anything—”

  “It’s all right, Thorne,” I said. “Would you like a cup of tea—and a hot cross bun?” I knew the extra one would come in handy.

  “I wouldn’t want to disturb you,” he said with a hopeful tone.

  “Nonsense, come round.” Out the window, I saw two uniformed PCs stroll by across the road. Right, everyone on duty.

  As I poured up our tea, I glanced at the computer screen and noticed six emails from the BBC had come in, two others with “Rupert Speaking Engagement Offer” in the subject line, and one with “Problem with Electrics for Farmers’ Market.”

  I closed the lid and, over tea, Thorne and I caught up on all the estate gossip, nimbly avoiding any mention of Nick Hawkins.

  —

  I waited until ten-thirty to ring Dad, beginning the conversation cautiously. But there was no need—I could tell from his tone he knew nothing about the earlymorning events. We settled into our meeting, but had made it only halfway through the agenda when the five-year-olds class from the village school trooped in looking adorable in their uniforms. They came bearing gifts—crayon drawings titled “Our Walk with Willow in the Wood,” the results of an outing the previous week. I ended my conversation with Dad and spent the next hour taping up pictures with copper beeches that looked like enormous clouds of pink candy floss, robins bigger than sheep, and—in one case—what was identified for me as a boa constrictor.

  Before lunch, while I engaged in a rather heated phone conversation with someone at Health and Safety about hand-washing facilities at the farmers’ market, Sheila Bugg arrived, her brown hair swept up into an untidy bun, and wearing her usual quasi-uniform of plain dress in a dark hue. She carried a large brown paper bag.

  “I’ve been cooking such a heap of food these last two evenings; I’ve not quite adjusted to the fact that the young master and Willow aren’t sitting down to dinner these days. I was hoping you could help me out.” She held up the bag.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place to leave extra food, haven’t you?” I took the bag and couldn’t resist a peek. “There’s certainly a fair bit.”

  “Just a beef sandwich for your lunch and chicken and the rest of the roast potatoes. And a bit of rhubarb crumble.”

  We sat down over mugs of tea, and Sheila reached over and patted my hand. “You’ve had a terrible shock.”

  “I’m all right. Really,” I said, my voice catching in my throat.

  “And you’re working too hard to cover it up,” Sheila said. “You look a bit…weary.”

  I supposed I couldn’t continue to blame the lighting for the dark circles under my eyes.

  “I’ll be fine. Linus doesn’t need to order you all to keep an eye on me, you know.”

  “His Lordship doesn’t order us anywhere—you know that. It’s only that he wanted to look in on you himself, but realized he had a meeting up near Diss today. He nearly canceled until Thorne said we’d pop round and see how you’re doing. I think it eased his mind.” Sheila glanced out the window to see the PCs stroll by outside the window. “And that’ll ease his mind as well.”

  —

  My sister rang, but swamped as I was with a constant stream of visitors, I couldn’t talk. Good thing, too, because I always told Bee everything, but I couldn’t tell her what had happened at my cottage. Not yet anyway.

  Amid the normal visitor foot traffic into the TIC, the cavalcade of Linus’s spies continued. Midafternoon, Akash walked down from his shop to tell me Vesta had arrived in New Zealand and Debra was doing fine—which he could easily have done by text. Nuala returned my cottage key. Between friendly visits and PCs on patrol, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

  It was a relief when Tennyson and Alfie arrived in the late afternoon. She held the door open for the rook, and he flew straight past me to my mackintosh with a beakful of something dark. My pocketful of treasures could wait—Tennyson carried a pink bakery box. I knew what lay within.

  I switched the kettle on and dropped tea bags into the pot while the girl told me about Alfie’s latest triumph.

  “Mum writes out her ironing schedule for the week on a card and she’d set it on the fridge, but it slipped off and fell behind. She couldn’t reach it, but Alfie had been watching, so I said, ‘Let’s see if Alfie can get it,’ because, you see, I’d watched a video online. We had a bit of wire that had been holding one of the windows shut. I gave the wire to Alfie, and he took it and bent it so there was a hook on the end. He put it in his beak and dragged the card out from behind the fridge. And also a bit of my toast from breakfast that he’d hidden there.”

  “That’s quite good problem-solving, Alfie,” I said to the rook. He nodded his head and dropped a custard cream into his tea.

  I finished up my chocolate cake while I took a call from one of the chefs canceling a meeting that evening, because of an emergency at his upscale bistro in Stoke-by-Clare. He begged me to keep him on the list and made abundant promises to bring samples of his wild mushroom risotto to the next meeting. I told him I’d allow it this time, just as the bell above the door jingled and Gwen walked in.

  Tennyson ran to her mother, who hugged her, losing one of her tiny hair clips in the effort. That sent a short, straight hank of hair across her forehead. Alfie bounded to the counter and chortled.

  “These two keeping you fr
om your work?” she asked, one arm around her daughter, the other holding an enormous cloth bag stuffed with fabric.

  “Not a bit of it,” I said. “I enjoy their visits.”

  “Look now, Ten,” Gwen said to her daughter, giving the bag a shake, “curtains and sheets from Mrs. Collier on Mill Street. How do you like that? A new customer. So now, I’d say we need to let Julia finish her work. Dot’s waiting for you—she’s got a few things her granddaughter has grown out of and they might just fit you. On your way now, you and Alfie, and I’ll nip down to the shop and catch you up in a bit.”

  Girl and bird said goodbye, and I stood on the pavement with Gwen to watch them as they walked and strutted off in the spring sunshine. They stopped and looked carefully when they came to the corner where a road took off to the left—leading to The Holly and the Ivy shop and their flat—before crossing to continue up the high street.

  “Tennyson told me of Alfie’s latest feat—retrieving lost items from behind the fridge. He’s a smart one, that bird.”

  “Mmm,” Gwen replied. “Although he gets funny ideas in that brain of his. Lately, he’s taken against any of us that go into the shed out back of the pub. He perches right on the corner of the roof and complains something fierce when we haul a bag of rubbish or kitchen peelings out that way to the bins. Today, when Peg opened the shed door, Alfie flew straight in.”

  “Maybe he’s a hoarder and that’s where he keeps his trinkets. He’s left me a few,” I said.

  Gwen laughed. “Yesterday, I found five acorns stuck in the middle of a stack of bedsheets. But he’s a good companion to my Tennyson, and she needs that right now. Although I dearly wish she had a few human friends as well.”

  —

  Gwen continued to the shop and I returned to work, jotting down a note at the bottom of my agenda with Dad. Truly, he would love this whole Alfie business—and what fun it would be for Tennyson to see her own rook on the telly.

  I stared at the computer screen, hoping to get my brain back in gear, gazing at the long list of emails to return and attempting to refresh my memory on the topics for the Smeaton’s Summer Supper meeting. But it had grown quiet—the TIC, the high street—and given a moment of quiet, my energy level plunged to the floor. I let my mind drift. Nothing from Callow or Glossop about the knife. No journos today—perhaps the presence of the police had scared them off. Had Michael identified them? Michael was looking out for me. What would I do for him?