“I was only four at the time.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It was your age that got you off.”
I laughed with them. Siblings—one second they bicker, the next they laugh. Seeing these two reminded me it had been days since I’d talked with Bianca; I’d send her a text before bed.
“Dad and I built a real toad house after that,” Michael said to me.
Pammy turned thoughtful. “Does it matter how big the door is for a toad’s house? Because Gavin says that birds are quite particular about the little doors for their houses.”
Michael threw his napkin on the table. “That’s fine. Are we to be regaled with lessons from Gavin Lecky now? The world’s smartest twitcher.”
Pammy grabbed her phone in a huff and moved to the sofa. “Other people can know things, too—you aren’t the only one.”
Yes, siblings. I reached over and stroked the back of Michael’s hand. “The segment on twitchers, it’ll be quite good.”
He grabbed my hand and gave it a kiss. “Yeah, it will. And then he’ll be more insufferable than ever.”
I saw Pammy lift her gaze at the challenge. But I wasn’t up for continuing the brother-sister battle, and so I veered off in another direction.
“Pammy, I believe you’re right about that fellow being married. The one who’s after Nuala. It’s despicable, it really is.” I held my breath for a moment, remembering Pammy had just exited a relationship with a married man.
“Too right,” she said. “Have you warned her?”
“Not yet, but I asked him a few pointed questions today, which he deftly sidestepped.” I could feel my ire rising, and I needed to vent. “Making himself right at home, he is, and worming his way into Nuala’s good graces. Well, I can tell you this—Mr. Anthony Brightbill is not going to get away with it.”
Michael frowned. “Tony Brightbill?”
I frowned back. “Yes, Tony Brightbill. Do you know him?”
“Sure, I—”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’ve only just now said his name,” Michael pointed out.
“Oh, right. How do you know him?”
“We had his account. I mean, HMS had it.”
HMS, Ltd.—the Sedgwick family’s public relations firm Michael had quit when he took up the post as Rupert’s personal assistant and producer.
“Brightbill owns three or four tea rooms in the north,” Michael continued. “Upscale places. He wants to unseat Bettys, and he’s giving good chase, I’ve got to admit.”
I shot out of my chair, my mouth opening and closing like a marionette. At last, I stammered, “Tea…tea rooms? Is that what this is about?”
Michael held out his hands to me. “Look, Julia—”
“Because I can tell you right now, Nuala has no idea it’s about her tea room. She thinks he’s…well, we all thought he….Wait—is he married?”
“Well, Pammy,” Michael said, turning to his sister. “Is he?”
She had kept to her phone during our exchange, but now her head snapped up. “It wasn’t like that and you know it. Bit of harmless flirting, that’s all. I wouldn’t have anything to do with the bloke—he’s a bloody Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that one. All charm one second, and the next, he turns into a monster.”
“There’s no excuse for how he treated you,” Michael said, “but—”
Pammy cut her brother off. “No excuse for how Miles fired his own sister over one little slip.” Pammy slammed her phone down on the coffee table, her face flushed.
“One little slip?” Michael repeated, his eyebrows shooting up.
I wiggled a few fingers in their direction. “Am I allowed to hear the whole story?”
Michael gestured to his sister that the floor was all hers.
“I confused a couple of his appointments,” Pammy said in a small voice.
“Let me translate for you,” Michael said. “First, Pammy wore Miles down until he gave her a job as receptionist.”
“Receptionist,” Pammy scoffed. “General dogsbody, you mean.”
“And when she begged for more responsibility, Miles assigned her the task of typing up and sending out the schedule HMS had created for the grand opening of Tony’s latest tea room. Somewhere along the way, the details went awry—all of them.”
“The phone wouldn’t stop ringing,” Pammy said, tears in her eyes, “and I got mixed up.”
“HMS totally bollocksed an important day for him,” Michael persisted. “He missed the launch of his shop in Ilkley—no owner to cut the ribbon—which meant he not only stood up the community, but also the local BBC camera crew. All while he spent a good part of the day arriving at three radio stations across the county at the wrong times. Oh, and let’s not forget he stood up the food editor from Yorkshire Life magazine. He canceled his contract with us on the spot. Walked out.”
“My God,” I whispered as the horror of it all became clear. “Now I see what he’s up to—oozing into our village. He’s trying to lure Nuala away. Does he think she’d give up her home and her friends to run one of his places?”
“It’s just the sort of thing he would think,” Pammy said. “Tosser.”
Michael only shook his head.
“So, that’s what he’s been on about all along.” I paced a couple of steps to and fro. “Perhaps he wants to set her up as head baker in one of his tea rooms. Or, would he dangle an even larger scone in front of her—director of all menus and creator of recipes for…What are they called, his places?”
“Tara’s Tea,” Pammy said. “That’s his wife.”
Chapter 15
“What time does he arrive at Nuala’s?” Michael asked me the next morning, as we dressed upstairs.
“I’m not sure, three o’clock, four maybe. He stays forever, doing his crossword puzzle and chatting up Nuala. He’s probably working his way through her menu. Yesterday, he told me he was actually going to try the Battenberg.”
“The nerve,” Michael murmured.
My fury, quiet overnight, had rekindled the next morning, and I trembled as I tried to button my blouse. Finally, Michael brushed my hands away and took over, but we both laughed when we saw that instead of buttoning, he’d unbuttoned—a more common activity.
I sobered up again quick enough. “Battenberg is Linus’s favorite—Brightbill’s making it look like a direct personal challenge, and he doesn’t even mean it. He’s toying with us. Them.”
“Why don’t I meet you at Nuala’s at four o’clock?”
“Would you? Thanks. You know him, so you’d be better at sorting it out and sending him packing. I’m afraid I’d just shove his face into a bowl of double cream—and that would be a terrible waste.”
As we left the cottage, I waved at Pammy and said, “See you later.” Outside on the pavement, I gave a thought to how easily the days had worn me down. What had happened to my former life?
At the TIC, I unlocked the door and Guy Pockett followed in on my heels.
“Tuesday, you know,” he said, bouncing a little in place. “With the market tomorrow, I’ve a great deal to do.”
“I would’ve come out to you,” I reminded him, handing him his stack of papers.
“No, s’all right. Thanks.” He took them and set them down on the table by the computer while he pulled several other weathered sheets out of his portfolio. “And for you—I don’t suppose you’d noticed these had gone missing. Must’ve picked them up with my stuff the other day.”
At first, I thought the papers he handed me were more farm business, speckled with dried mud as they were. But I gasped when I saw the bold heading on one sheet: JOIN US! SMEATON-UNDER-LYME ENEWSLETTER SIGN-UP.
Guy’s brain shot off in another direction. “Have you done a market feature in the newsletter?” he asked. “Shouldn’t it be a regular thing—feat
uring a different vendor each time? Do you want me to write one up? I’ll put something together and send it off to you, all right? And say, you’ll let me know when you want to talk about the market manager position? I’m off now.”
None of his words registered—none of them mattered. “Cheers,” I called mindlessly as he disappeared out the door.
I stared at the paper. Here it was—the missing page of sign-ups. It started with the date of last Saturday week—the day before the family came in. My trembling finger slowly went down the list. The email address had been written by a girl not more than nine years old—surely I would recognize it. “Be firm,” her mum had said.
“This one!” I raised my arms in victory.
Yes, a nine-year-old girl’s handwriting was different—she wrote more carefully than adults. [email protected]—this had to be the one.
Vesta arrived as I switched on the kettle. “You’ll never guess,” I said, dancing a jig on the spot. “I might know of someone who met That Poor Man.” I started in on the whole story. “It’s a long shot, I know, but it could be something.”
“So, this family—they met a fellow, but only know him as ‘Bob’?”
I nodded, staring at the kettle as it rattled its way to boil. “Come on, come on.” I glanced at Vesta. “I’ve had no tea yet, and I’m gasping.”
“Running late this morning?”
“Out of milk,” I admitted, dropping tea bags into our mugs. “Again.”
“Do you have a photo of the victim?”
“Tess promised one today. I’ll email this family first thing—they may be able to come out and look at it. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if I could say to the police, ‘Look, I’ve found an eyewitness for you’?”
“You could turn the email address over to DI Callow,” Vesta suggested, popping open the biscuit tin.
Avoiding the knowing gaze of my co-worker, I paused with the milk jug suspended over my mug. “But what if this isn’t the family? I wouldn’t want to waste police time.”
* * *
—
“Listen and see how this sounds,” I said to Vesta after I finished the last bite of a digestive biscuit. A visitor had just departed, and it was quiet. I cleared my throat. “Thank you for visiting the Fotheringill estate…blah blah blah…Have I reached the family that mentioned meeting a man named Bob? If so, I hope you might do us an enormous favor by helping to locate…” I frowned. “ ‘Locate,’ do you think, Vesta, or ‘identify’? I don’t want to say he’s dead, because we don’t know it’s him, do we?”
Vesta suggested “tell us more about him,” and I went with it. I hit “send,” and was about to follow up with a call to Tess, but the door jingled, and I had no more time to think of That Poor Man, as four Girl Guide leaders arrived to arrange an evening owl walk in August. It was twelve o’clock before I checked our email and found a more enthusiastic reply than I had anticipated.
“Remembering our lovely time and would be happy to assist. I’m free today and will drive up to see you. Best, Tommy Pears.”
What—now? Breathless, I rang Tess and got her voicemail. “I might know who the victim is—that is, was. Not me, but someone’s stopping by. It’s the dad of this family who met a man on the estate—it occurred to me it might’ve been That Poor Man. And the dad may be here soon, because I don’t really know where he’s coming from and we’ve no photo to show him. And also, well, I suppose you may want to talk with him. So…let me know.”
Not terribly coherent, but that’s what happens when you anticipate a scolding for acting without police consent.
* * *
—
Vesta and I sat at the back table over our sandwiches when the bell jingled. I jumped when I saw it was DI Callow, looking as official as ever—not only her neat black trouser suit and sleek black satchel, but also the icy look on her face.
“So,” I said with great cheer, “I’d say you got my message. Tea?”
Vesta busied herself dusting the front window as I gave Tess a clearer explanation about the family and the possibility of an ID.
“Not bad, eh?” I asked, eager for teacher’s approval.
“You should’ve phoned me first,” Tess said.
“But see, I didn’t need to, did I? Tommy Pears is on his way and you’re here and you have…do you have a photo?”
Tess took a file folder from her satchel, and pulled out a close-up of a face. I looked away, getting a first impression only in my peripheral vision. Slowly, I dragged my eyes over to the color photo of a man—mid-fifties, possibly older—with receding dark hair. His face was pallid and he looked tired, with lines around his eyes and thick eyebrows. One earlobe was all but missing. Oh God, I hope that wasn’t done by one of the crows. No mud and certainly no indication of what the back of his head looked like.
He had brown eyes.
“His eyes are open,” I said quietly.
“Computer. It’s always best to make the body look as alive as possible—doesn’t put people off that way.”
“Is that from”—I swallowed hard and nodded at the missing earlobe—“being out there for days?”
The DI shook her head. “It’s an old scar—perhaps a childhood accident.” Tess studied the photo. “The FME has decided it was most likely later on Saturday he died, judging from the deterioration of skin and—”
“Will you circulate the photo?” I broke in, uninterested in the progression of body decomposition. The kettle came to a boil, and I poured the water and took the milk out of the fridge.
“I’ve shown it to Ms. Wynn-Finch—just now at her school. It was the children’s break time.”
I would need to check on Willow later.
“How did she take it?”
“She didn’t know him.”
“But was she all right?”
“She was a bit emotional, but there was another teacher there who took her in hand.”
Tess reached for her tea. “We’ve a pair of uniforms starting here in the village and another pair going to the hamlets you told the sergeant about.” As she poured milk, she added, “That was good thinking about the family.”
Rather pleased with myself at the compliment—the DI gave out few of them—I became modest. “Well, just a hunch,” I said.
I cleared the table, shifting things to beside the computer, and as I did so I discovered that the papers Guy Pockett had come to retrieve had been left behind—again.
“Would you look at that?” I asked no one in particular. “I don’t see how he keeps anything straight. Well, I’ll not be the cause of wrong deliveries of soil or seed or whatever this all is,” I muttered, stuffing them in my bag. “I’ll run them out this afternoon.”
Tess copied down the family’s email address as we heard the door, announcing the arrival of a tall woman, mid-thirties, dressed in slim ankle trousers and a thin cardigan. She had her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Hello,” she said to Vesta. “I’m looking for Julia Lanchester. I’m Tommy Pears.”
Chapter 16
“You are Tommy Pears?” I asked, coming round the counter. “I’m sorry, I thought—”
“It’s Thomasina, actually,” she said and laughed. “You can see why I go by Tommy. But you thought I was my husband, Noel. It happens a lot. That was our family email address Tilly wrote down, and we can all check it. I hope you don’t mind I came out straightaway—it’s actually a bit of a break for me.”
“We’re delighted to see you; thank you so much for returning.”
DI Callow came from behind me, held out her badge and warrant card, and introduced herself.
“Oh dear,” Tommy said, her eyes darting from the inspector to me. “Is there a problem?”
“Mrs. Pears, I would like you to come with me to the police station in Sudbury,” Callow said.
“Why?” Panic showed on the woman’s face, her pupils dilated, her breath rapid. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” the DI rushed to say, “it’s only that we hope you can help us with an enquiry.”
“Have you come far, Mrs. Pears?” I asked.
Her eyes flickered to me. “London—Dagenham.”
“Well, there’s no need for you to get back in your car again and drive off to Sudbury—you can chat here at the back table.” Tess threw me a suspicious look—accusing me of trying to hijack her investigation, I thought—but Tommy’s relief was so clear, the DI relented.
Vesta and I formed a solid front at the counter, screening the worktable. We kept busy—she chatted with visitors about the opening times at the Hall while I painted a glowing picture of our summer supper, noting tickets would go on sale soon. All the while, I kept an ear out for the quiet conversation behind me, picking up snatches of phrases—“…yet to identify…” and “the man you met…” and “we would like you to look at a photo….”
Soon I heard a small cry, followed by “Yes—that is him. How dreadful!”
Dreadful, yes, but a relief of sorts. Now, That Poor Man had a name—although only one. Bob. As my attention was taken by two history buffs, engaging me in a discussion about airfields of the Second World War, I listened hard to the inspector’s questions. Exactly where had the family met him? What time of day? Did he mention where he lived, what he did, where he came from, anyone he knew, if he had any family? She received precious few answers.
When the TIC emptied of visitors, I switched on the kettle again as Tommy told Tess, “We didn’t see him at all the second time we visited.” She became teary and said to me, “And now I know why. Dead all that time, it’s so sad. I thought this was about the award you wanted to give him. He was such a kind man—respectful, too, you know. He said what a lovely family we were and how he always liked to see a dad and a mum and the children enjoying their time together.”
Farewell, My Cuckoo Page 12
