The Rhyme of the Magpie

by Marty Wingate

  A chain ran through the two sturdy metal handles, and a padlock secured the doors. I fished out my keys, but when I grabbed the padlock, I realized that I needed no key—the chain had been cut. I stared for a moment at its loose ends that had been drawn back through the handles. With a creeping dread, I tugged at the chain, and it slipped through and fell to the ground. I pulled the doors open—the garage was empty. Disbelief struck first—I stared at the space and looked behind the door in case the car was hiding. Outrage arrived next, but that emotional cocktail was outpaced by fear. Something had happened to my dad, and I needed to get to Cambridge—that one thought kept pulsing through my body.

  I pulled out my phone and stared at the screen. I couldn’t wait even the ten minutes it would take for the police to come out from Sudbury. We’d no taxi service in the village. Linus? I began searching my contacts for his private number, which he had insisted I have but that I had never used. I stopped as another thought struck. No, not Linus—someone closer.

  I ran back past the dark TIC and followed what I thought would be Vesta’s route home, down two streets to a lane of well-kept detached cottages, a fair bit bigger than mine. I knew her house number, but had never visited. I limped up her front path, hobbled by a stone digging into my left heel. When I reached the door, I leaned against the wall, took off my shoe, and shook out the pebble as I rang the bell.

  Vesta answered, dressed for yoga in midcalf stretch pants and a T-shirt. Behind her, a warm light spilled out of the sitting room. “Julia?” More startled pronouncement than greeting.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” I said, still clutching my shoe and suddenly unsure of myself.

  “Come in.” Vesta pulled me over the threshold and her nursing skills took over. She pushed me down gently onto the bench beside the umbrella stand. She felt my forehead and stared into my eyes—I thought she was about to whip out a thermometer and slide it under my tongue. “What’s happened?” she asked.

  This must’ve been what I needed. I felt my pulse slow and my thoughts clear. “It’s my car. It’s gone.” I told her what happened, and a shot of fear got me on my feet again. “It’s just that I do need to get to Cambridge, but now I’ve no way.”

  Vesta took a key off a hook on the stand and handed it to me. She put her hands on my arms. “It’s the Citroën, right there in front, the red one. You take it. There’s a bit of a wobble when you shift into second, but it’s all right otherwise. What do you need me to do? Do you need me to ring anyone?”

  “Oh, Vesta, thanks. This is so kind of you,” I said, at a loss for any other words. I gripped the key. “I’ll be fine now, and I’ll have your car back this evening, I promise. You’ve got my phone number?”

  —

  I drove home—my home, the home where Bianca and I grew up—keeping my mind in neutral, never getting near the fear that hovered in the corner. I would not let myself think one bad thought. I tuned the radio to an annoying rock music station and pumped up the volume.

  The journey into Cambridge could take an hour, but I turned down our road north of the city center forty-five minutes later as the sun came in at a low angle. Our house was a detached, brown stucco affair with green trim. It appeared neat and tidy in front, with a brick parking court that played off the brick arch around the entry, but the large back garden had always been a bit jungly. When I parked, Beryl stood at the open door.

  She was as she had always been, and my heart lurched. Beryl and my mum, best of friends. She still had a lovely figure, same as my mum—same as me, they all said. She and Mum used to trade clothes, they were built so much alike. She wore pale green wool trousers and a nubby jumper to match. Her thick hair was the color of winter grass and in the same style for as long as I could remember—just short of her shoulders and neatly turned under. Her eyes were golden brown, and she always wore a touch of red lipstick to bring some color to her face.

  When I walked up, I saw she was without lipstick. I also saw her silver wedding band. I couldn’t remember if Dad had taken his gold ring off and replaced it with a silver one. Beryl tried a smile and moved to let me through, not attempting a hug. Just as well. “You cut your hair,” she said.

  Up went my hand. “Yes.”

  I’d moved out of this house twice—the first time, seven years ago when I married Nick. After that petered out five years later, I moved back in until three months ago. Such a short time, three months, and although the house looked the same, it felt different, as if the world were out of kilter and couldn’t right itself.

  I stayed in the front hall, unwilling to act as if I knew the place. “Have you heard anything?”

  Beryl shook her head, her face drawn up in worry. “Please, let’s sit down.” She turned toward the kitchen, but I was a guest now and made my way to the sitting room instead. It was unchanged—the same red walls I’d helped my mum paint, and the same sofa, only two years old. Dad had joked about the wild floral pattern, saying he was afraid to sit on it because he might get a rose thorn in his bum.

  Beryl sat in an armchair, and I perched on the sofa next to the table with photos of Bianca and me, grown up, and one of Mum and Dad with us as girls.

  “Did he talk with you yesterday?” Beryl asked, and my mind traveled back to the cruel way I’d treated him. “About work, I mean.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t have any idea where he’s gone?”

  The look of worry morphed into a frown. Beryl looked at me and away. “He left a note.”

  Other emotions grabbed at my heart as what I had half-imagined would happen had come true. My dad had left Beryl—had written a note to explain—and now she’d brought me here as some sort of go-between to sort out their problems. I teetered between guilty triumph and indefinable pain. “What does it say?”

  “He’s gone away for a few days, he said. He doesn’t want me to worry.” Beryl took a slip of paper from the coffee table and handed it to me. I could see my dad’s writing. I flew off the sofa.

  “This was a cheap trick,” I said thickly, shaking the note in her face. “Get me over here for some sympathy, and you think that everything will be all right again. You scared me half to death, and for what?”

  Beryl shot up, too. “It isn’t a trick, Julia. I’m frightened.” We stood toe-to-toe, and a tear coursed down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away. “Something’s not right.”

  I dropped my eyes in shame and read over Dad’s brief note, seeking something to explain away her worry. “He goes away,” I said. “He goes off and stays at the cottage at Marshy End. He says it inspires him.” Of course, most of the time when he went off to Marshy End, where we did much of the filming for A Bird in the Hand, he would drag Mum and me along, too, for a brief holiday. “Has he…”—I really didn’t want to hear the answer to this question—“has he taken you there?”

  Beryl nodded. “Yes.”

  My head hurt.

  “There’s something else. It seems that Rupert left his Range Rover at the garage this afternoon. He thought there was something wrong with the brakes.”

  Dad’s twenty-year-old Range Rover had seen better days, but he wouldn’t give it up and had been babying it along for the last two or three years. It was an icon of sorts, even appearing on the television program, so that people often recognized its beat-up forest-green paint before they saw Rupert driving it.

  “Brakes today, carburetor tomorrow—that’s nothing new.”

  “Except that the garage rang just before you arrived. The fellow said the brakes were fine. So if the Rover is in the shop, what’s your father driving?”

  I searched for an answer and snatched at the first one that seemed agreeable. “He must have a loaner from the garage—did you ask them if he’d taken one?”

  Beryl frowned. “No, I hadn’t thought of that. Julia, will you switch the kettle on? I’ll go get his mobile. I want you to see it.”

  Beryl went upstairs, and I walked into the kitchen. They’d got a new fridge—just as well, the old on
e had started to wheeze. As I pulled the milk out, someone knocked at the door. It isn’t my house—why should I answer? I thought, noting with a twinge of discomfort the belligerence in my attitude. But when the knock came again and I didn’t hear Beryl, I trudged to the door.

  A man, about my age, perhaps older, stood on the step with his hands in the pockets of a peacoat. His black hair was a bit shaggy, and his eyes—they were so blue, like cornflowers.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re Julia,” he said, looking me up and down.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m you,” he said with a smile that pulled at one side of his mouth. “Michael Sedgwick, Rupert’s new assistant.”

  I blinked at the hand he held out and, after a moment, shook it as if we were closing some business deal. “I didn’t realize Rupert had hired someone already.”

  “There’s a great deal of work to be done,” Michael said, hands back in his pockets. “Was he supposed to wait?”

  “Michael,” Beryl said from behind me, “you two have met now? I rang Michael, too, Julia—I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? Certainly not,” I said. Tosser, I thought.

  “Come through to the kitchen.” Beryl waved us along, using Dad’s mobile like an usher’s torch. “Julia was just making us tea.”

  I knew what she was doing. Make me feel at home again, put me off my guard, and I’ll forget what’s gone on. “Yes, sure,” I mumbled, and went for the tea and pot, milk, mugs, and biscuits, all in their usual places.

  “I appreciate both of you coming over,” Beryl said, handing Dad’s note to Michael. “I know you probably think I’m being too anxious about this.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for worrying, Beryl,” Michael said. “You’re the one to know if Rupert’s actions are out of character.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say they were unusual,” I said, pouring the tea. “Did he say anything about it at your morning meeting yesterday?” Every weekday, first thing, Rupert wanted to go over the day’s schedule. Never took more than thirty minutes. It was a ritual with him.

  “I haven’t spoken to him since Tuesday,” Michael said. “He knows I can work on my own.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “A few focused minutes in the morning can mean a more productive day,” I said, which is actually something Dad had said to me. I meant to glance away from Michael in disdain, but instead I found myself looking straight into his eyes, because now they weren’t cornflower blue—now they were gray, like the sea. I tore my gaze away and looked at the table.

  “He wanted to talk with you,” Michael said, not looking away. “About a letter he got. Did he?”

  “From one of his followers?” I had not let Rupert talk with me about anything yesterday—I had sent him on his way in short order.

  “He’s been quite concerned about the wind-farm proposal,” Beryl said. “You know how he’s been working against it, Julia.”

  “The company is pursuing the application,” Michael said.

  “Presenting their own, one-sided view of plopping the turbines into an important wildlife habitat,” I said. “They’ve consulted no one who might disagree with them, so of course they think they’re right.”

  “But it’s no good only complaining—that won’t make a difference. We need solid information to back us up in the fight against it.”

  “Julia thinks,” Beryl said, and paused as Michael and I refocused our attention, “that Rupert may have gone up to Marshy End.”

  “Can’t you ring him there?” Michael asked.

  “We’ve no landline there, never have,” I explained. “Marshy End was our escape—and now that it’s used for A Bird in the Hand everyone has a mobile.”

  Beryl’s face lost its fear, as if she made a conscious decision to carry on. She’s always been a determined woman; it was something I admired her for as I was growing up. “Now that I think about it,” she said, “I’m sure Julia’s right. Rupert probably had a great deal to think about, with this wind-farm battle. Julia knows her father—that’s why I’m so grateful you could be here.” She reached across the table and came perilously close to grabbing my hand, but stopped just short. Still, she looked hopeful.

  “If he feels there’s something to pursue for the program or an article or a talk, then he’ll take a few days to study and think,” I said. “I suppose he could be anywhere. He spent a week on the south coast one year watching for little terns and planning an entire lecture series.”

  “I remember that now,” Beryl said with a tight smile. “Barely a note left behind, and he never rang the whole week. I thought that Anne had cured him of that.”

  I fixed her with a cold glare at her mention of my mother, and felt a tide of anger rising, but I managed to swallow it down. “You said he had started a text, Beryl,” I reminded her, and she handed me Dad’s phone.

  The message was there, but unsent: “Jools, the rhyme of the magpie.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows and nodded to the phone. I turned it for him to see. “Why didn’t Rupert send it?” he asked.

  I looked into my tea. “That’s my old number—he doesn’t have my new one.” No one had it, except my sister, and apparently that bit of information she’d kept quiet.

  “And the rhyme of the magpie—what does that mean?”

  I stared at the screen, and then it came to me. “Did Dad talk with Bianca?”

  Beryl shook her head. “Not since last weekend, I don’t think.”

  “Bee is pregnant,” I said.

  Beryl—who had only an unmarried son living in London—broke out in a smile. “That’s wonderful news,” she said.

  I felt tears sting my eyes at her happiness, wishing it could be my mum’s. I turned to Michael. “Bianca is my sister,” I said, and explained the history of the rhyme. “If Dad hadn’t talked with her, then he must’ve seen magpies—four for a boy. That’s what this is about.”

  “But still, it’s odd, isn’t it, Beryl—that Rupert would leave without telling you?” Michael asked.

  “We’re still…getting accustomed to each other’s habits,” Beryl said. “I was out for most of the day, and he must’ve wanted to be on his way. I suppose it startled me when I realized he didn’t have his car.”

  We had reached the bottoms of our mugs. Beryl took a deep breath. “This is just what I needed,” she said with confidence, “to sit here with two sensible people who would make me see that everything is fine. Your reminder, Julia, of that time before when your father went off to Hampshire—well, I know he does get wrapped up in his work. I’m sure he’ll ring soon. Now, could I persuade you both to stay to dinner?”

  At once, the walls started closing in on me, and I leapt out of my chair to escape. “I’m sorry, I can’t—I’ve borrowed a friend’s car and I need to return it.”

  “Of course,” Beryl said, with what sounded like equal parts disappointment and relief. “Michael, you needn’t stay, either. I’m fine. Both of you, now—on your way.” She stood up and made sweeping motions toward the door.

  “Here,” I said, pulling one of my TIC business cards out of my bag and scribbling on the back. “Here’s my number—you’ll ring if you need to?”

  You’d think I’d given her the prizewinning lottery ticket. “Yes, thank you, Julia.”

  —

  I walked out the door with my replacement. “Do you think she’ll be all right?” he asked.

  Glancing back at the house with windows aglow, I said, “She’ll be fine. Rupert didn’t realize he’d cause such trouble—he thought a note would be sufficient.” I drew up at the Citroën and Michael walked on toward a Fiat 500.

  “You’ve got the green,” I said, nodding to his car. “Mine’s blue.”

  “Are you having trouble with it?” Michael asked. “You said you had to borrow a friend’s.”

  “Trouble?” I said, ready to grumble about anything I could get hold of. “You could call it that—someone nicked it right out of my lockup.” I h
ad put off being really annoyed about it, but now I could lavish all my pent-up fear and anger on the situation. But there was more—I caught hold of the end of something and tried to pull it from my mind, like a thrush tugging and tugging on one end of a worm to pull it out of the ground. I was missing something. “I’ll have to ring the police and insurance tomorrow. Bloody hassle.”

  “Rupert said you live in Smeaton. I’m near Haverhill—easy for work.”

  My work. I wondered just how Rupert had found Michael. “Are you in television?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I gave him another moment, in case he wanted to offer up any more information. When he didn’t, I asked, “Are you a biologist?”

  “No.”

  “A birder?”

  Michael shook his head, and with a small smile said, “Not really.”

  “And so, just what qualifications do you have to be Rupert’s assistant?”

  “What qualifications did you have?”

  I hoped that the streetlight didn’t show my face, scarlet at his arrogance. “I had a lifetime of learning about both birds and Rupert Lanchester—those were my qualifications.”

  Michael shrugged, an easy, noncommittal movement that irritated me further. “I’m having no difficulty learning the job—bird biology, camera angle, three sugars in his tea.”

  “Three sugars?” My voice shot up to the stratosphere. “Are you mad? You can’t let him have three sugars—he’ll be borderline diabetic before you know it.”

  “I work for Rupert,” Michael said with a steely tone, “and if he says to put three sugars in his tea, then that’s what I do. I’m his assistant, not his mother—or his daughter.”