Farewell, My Cuckoo

by Marty Wingate

  “There’s where you caught yourself in your mother’s roses when you jumped off that brick wall. Robin Hood escaping from the sheriff. ‘I can do it, Lottie—watch!’ you said.” She shook her head, and tears spilled over. “My Bob—where did that boy go? What were you doing here—did you come back for me at last?”

  “Lottie.” I laid a hand on her arm. “Would you like to sit down? Do you want me to lock up for you, and I’ll put the kettle on?”

  “Bob Brightbill—that’s his name. And he never wished anyone harm.” She wept, her voice thick. “Who would do this to him?”

  “The police are working on it,” I said. “You’ll talk to them, won’t you? About how you know him. Whatever you can tell them might help.”

  Lottie watched me for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite understand why I was there. “I don’t know what I could tell the police. It was all so long ago. Oh, Julia.” She plunged her hand in a pocket and came up with a wadded tissue. “Here now, let me nip upstairs for a moment. You’ll watch the door for me.”

  She climbed the stairs, and I considered my options. Ring Tess? Ask Willow to return immediately to take care of her aunt? But surely I could hear Lottie’s story first. And she looked set to tell it, returning a minute later, her tears dried, with a bottle of whisky under her arm and two glasses in her hand.

  “Sit with me,” Lottie said. “I packed those memories away long ago—and yet, here they are again fresh as ever. But it’s been so long since I’ve spoken about him, I’m out of practice. I can’t imagine the police would care about this.”

  Tony Brightbill—he would care. Shouldn’t he be told? And if Lottie knew Bob, then she must know his brother. But I said nothing, because I wanted to hear her tale, and I knew things would change drastically as soon as one of those calls was made.

  We sat behind the counter where we’d drunk tea the week before, and she poured us each a tot of whisky, taking a swig of hers before reaching in a pocket and pulling out an old rusted OXO tin, identical to Bob’s. She opened it, and inside, nestled by cotton wool, were several pieces of birds’ eggs.

  “You each had one?”

  “A matching pair.” Lottie laughed and sniffed. “I grew up in the country near Doncaster—we were neighbors to the Brightbills, although not nearly so well off. Bob was the younger son, and I, the younger daughter. As we grew, we became inseparable. We were each of us the wild child in our families, you see—my sister certainly had no interest in climbing trees or collecting frog spawn and hatching out tadpoles, and neither did Bob’s brother. And so we were a pair, Bob and I, equal in every way. Although, when all was said and done, I was named the instigator—the cause of all the woe.”

  I stayed silent, watching the tension of her memories draw up Lottie’s face into a grimace. But it dissipated, and she smiled. It made me sad.

  “When he was thirteen, Bob had an accident—fell off the limb of a beech tree and hit his head.” She frowned at the memory. “He lay there so still. At first, I thought he was having me on, but he wouldn’t wake up, and I became frightened, and so, I ran for help. The doctor came and the ambulance—it must’ve taken an hour or more for them to arrive. As they were at last putting him into the ambulance, he woke up. He called my name, and I remember shouting ‘Hurrah!’ or some such nonsense.

  “And he was fine after that, you know—no broken bones. He knew us all, remembered everything, and so the family didn’t send him to hospital, only kept him in for a week or so. They were like that, the Brightbills, always thinking they could take care of things better than anyone else. It was a miserable time for the two of us, I can tell you that—I’d sit by his bed with a cup of tea and his mum alongside us. She didn’t want me there, but Bob insisted, and she would always give in to him.”

  Lottie swirled the whisky in her glass, reminding me to take a sip of mine. I swallowed three drops, suppressed a gasp, and took three drops more.

  “Yet, after the accident, although he was all right, still he was different. Something had shifted in him. School was no problem—at least the learning part. But before, he’d give up his adventures when it was dinnertime or bad weather. After the accident, he wasn’t that interested in listening to his family’s common sense. It was as if he remained an innocent, you know, oblivious to the practicalities of the world.”

  She poured herself a bit more whisky before continuing.

  “That didn’t sit well with the Brightbills, and so, they sent him away to school when he was fourteen. It might’ve been a special school, but no one would tell me. Before he left, we made up these tins and divided up empty eggshells we found on the forest floor. ‘That way,’ he said, ‘you and I will remember the same things. You look for me, Lottie,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back, and we’ll have more adventures.’ But that never happened.”

  “His family wouldn’t let you see him?”

  “They no longer had a say. Bob ran away from the school. I don’t recall that his family did much about it, but that can’t be right—they must’ve looked for him, don’t you think? But that didn’t matter, because I knew he’d come back for me—he’d promised. I waited, at the ready to join him. But he never came. And so in another year, I left home myself.”

  “And you never went back?” I asked, imagining a teenage Lottie wandering Europe like a Romany.

  “Not for a long time. Eight years later, I stopped in for a visit, and after that, I went back when our parents died.” Lottie’s eyebrows rose. “I missed my sister’s wedding, and that didn’t go over too well. But I visited not long after Willow was born, and occasionally after that.”

  No wonder Willow adored her aunt—with each visit Lottie brought back the scent of a wider world, the promise of adventure.

  The door of the wool shop rattled open, and I found myself yanked from Lottie’s story back to the present.

  Tony Brightbill stood next to a display of three miniature sheep, hands in the pockets of his Burberry raincoat, his face gray.

  “Hello, Lottie,” he said.

  She looked at him a moment, and her eyes grew veiled. “Hello, Tony. It’s been a great while, hasn’t it?”

  In the stifling silence that followed, I downed the rest of my whisky, hoping for a bit of courage. A fit of coughing ensued.

  “Ms. Lanchester?” Brightbill asked.

  “Hello” was all I managed.

  “How is Tara?” Lottie asked, her voice polite and even. I held my breath. The wife.

  A spasm of pain crossed Tony’s face. “She died,” he said. “Last year. Cancer.”

  “Oh,” Lottie replied, losing the stiffness. “I am sorry.”

  “I didn’t know you lived here,” Tony said. “I only found out yesterday when Nuala mentioned your name. I’ve been trying to get up the nerve to stop in.”

  “I didn’t know you were in the village. I didn’t know Bob was here.”

  “I came looking for him—I wonder, was he here because of you?”

  They were quiet, and in my mind, the story became clear. Bob had discovered where Lottie lived, and he’d come for her just as he said he always would. My eyes filled with tears.

  “Had you never seen him again?” Lottie asked Tony.

  “No, no, we saw him—he would come home a couple of times a year. Did you not know?”

  The warm sympathy vanished from Lottie’s face. “And how would I know that?”

  Tony heaved a sigh. “No one meant to keep it from you, but you’ve been away so long…”

  Lottie remained still, and Tony drew his hands out of his pockets and plunged them back in again.

  “I’m sorry for that,” he added.

  She accepted the apology with a slight nod.

  “They weren’t real visits he made, only stopping by. He’d ask for a bit of money. He could’ve had more, he knew that. We hadn’t seen him si
nce autumn, and so I started looking. Last known sighting was Thetford. I began there and then Brandon and—”

  “And you saw me at Minty’s?” I asked.

  “I hope you can understand, Ms. Lanchester, that I never intended to disrupt your village life. It seemed an easy way to search for Bob, by carrying out a bit of business. It goes over better than storming into a town and asking, ‘Have you seen an older fellow with no visible means of support hanging about?’ I thought I might hear of him, but my brother wasn’t the easiest man to track. Especially when he didn’t want to be found.”

  “But I saw you in Sudbury,” I pointed out. “Were you there to ask the police to help look for him?”

  “I didn’t need the police to help me find my brother,” Tony replied, and I thought that this time he certainly had. “No, I was there for the café at Winch & Blatch.”

  My phone dinged with a text. “Sorry,” I whispered and grabbed for it. A message from Pammy: r u near cottage?

  It was as good an excuse as any. Let these two catch up, and perhaps I could hear the rest of the story later.

  “Lottie, will you phone Detective Inspector Callow?”

  “Why?” she asked. “What could I tell them that would help?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems as if the police should know.”

  With a swift glance at Tony, Lottie replied, “Yes, I will tell the police.”

  Chapter 23

  The day had been interminable, but here at its end, the rain let up, and off to the west, I could see a wood pigeon cut across a clear band of blue just above the horizon. There is life after the storm.

  I continued up the high street to Pipit Cottage and saw a dim form waiting outside, but only when a car’s headlights reflected off the figure did I realize it was Pammy.

  She still had her hood pulled up and stood awkwardly, holding her arms away from her body and her feet apart.

  “Have you been waiting long?” I asked, in a hurry to unlock the door. “Gosh, that was a long day. I hope it all went well.” I hoped Gavin had abandoned the twitching and taken her for a good long lunch, that’s what I hoped. As we stepped into the cottage and I switched on a light, I asked, “So now, the short-toed eagle?”

  “Gone to Dorset,” she said, a quaver in her voice.

  “Pammy?”

  She pushed off the hood and I gasped. Her black hair, combed up into its untidy bun, lay plastered to her head. Her eyes were dark and her skin pasty.

  “Oh no, what happened?” I asked as I helped her out of the jacket. Underneath, her T-shirt—purple with HELLO, GORGEOUS! scrawled in gold—looked as if it had been put through the wash but not wrung out. “God, Pammy, you’re soaked.”

  Like a sleepy child at bedtime, she passively allowed me to undress her, putting a hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she stepped out of her waterproof trousers. Her legs were covered in gooseflesh, and her microskirt held water like a soggy bath towel. I took hold of one arm and felt her shiver.

  “You’re freezing! How could Gavin do this to you—I really thought he’d seen sense, but if this is the way he treats you, then I’m with Michael, you should drop him right now.”

  “I didn’t tell Gavin about my waterproofs leaking.” She wiped her nose with the back of a hand. “He was so excited, and it was all right at first. We had sandwiches and a flask of tea and found a dryish place under an oak. But it kept raining. When we finally packed up and left, he ran out of petrol and we had to walk and he was late for work and we had to wait for the bloke from the garage and so I said I’d go on because there was a bus stop not far. But it only took me as far as Harrow Green and then it turned off in the wrong direction for me and so I got off and walked the rest of the way.”

  She wrapped her arms round herself as she spoke. Her voice became weaker and weaker, and her teeth chattered.

  “Why didn’t you ring me or Michael?” I demanded as I looked round for a place to hang her clothes.

  “I didn’t want to be a bother.”

  My head whipped round and for a second our eyes met—Pammy’s filled with dark hesitancy.

  I sighed. “Don’t be daft. Come on, straight upstairs you go and have a nice hot bath. I’ll find something for you to wear.”

  Wordlessly, Pammy pointed to one of her plastic bags. I grabbed it and herded her toward the stairs. She had enough life left in her to stop at the bottom and notice my shoes.

  “New look, is it?” she asked with a faint smile.

  “They aren’t mine,” I replied, kicking them off. “Now, get moving.”

  I wrung out Pammy’s top and skirt and draped them over the radiator, even though it was cold. I considered chucking her waterproofs in the bin, but instead, I rolled them up and stuffed them into one of her empty shopping bags. With Pammy occupied, I got back to my other business, and rang DI Callow.

  “Tess, I thought the most awful things about Tony—I feel dreadful.” I hadn’t intended to cry, but when the words came out of my mouth and I thought about a sibling dying in this terrible way and Lottie never seeing her Bob again, the whole story engulfed me with sorrow and the tears flowed. “I thought he might’ve done it—killed Bob.”

  “And what makes you think he didn’t?” the DI asked.

  “But”—my voice broke, and I swept the flood of tears off my cheeks—“his brother.”

  “That may take Anthony Brightbill off your suspect list, but it puts him on mine. Brother killing brother? It’s an old story.”

  I snuffled loudly and searched my sleeves for a tissue. “Well, I can’t imagine.”

  “A person can lose all sense of reason in a fit of rage.” Hard words, but she offered them in a kind voice.

  I blew my nose, and said, “But it was the weekend. Pammy saw Bob late Saturday afternoon. Tony wasn’t here over the weekend. Was he?”

  “He said he wasn’t, and we’re checking his alibi.”

  “It’s hard to believe Bob was so close and no one who knew him realized it—not Tony, not Lottie.”

  “Lottie?” Tess asked.

  “Finch. Willow’s aunt—she runs the wool shop, Three Bags Full.”

  “And she knew the victim? How? And how did you know this?”

  Tess shifted between caring friend and sharp investigator with such ease I sometimes had trouble following her.

  “I only just found out—Willow remembered seeing an OXO tin like the one Bob had in his pocket stuck away in a drawer at Lottie’s. Lottie and Bob knew each other as children—well, teenagers, too—and he made up the tins as keepsakes.”

  “And Lottie Finch neglected to report this to the officers who were canvassing the village?”

  “She didn’t neglect anything. Yesterday the shop was closed, and she was away.”

  “DS Glossop and DC Flynn were in the village today.”

  “But they were at the farmers’ market, not in the shops.”

  “Yes, the farmers’ market, where they discovered you had already been asking about Bob.”

  “I was doing my shopping,” I pointed out. “And there was no harm in me asking the other farmers if they knew him.”

  “We can conduct our own investigation, you know.”

  I ignored the remark. “Lottie and Bob hadn’t seen each other in forty-odd years, but they had been quite close, and this has really hit her hard. She knew Tony, too, of course—he’s older than his brother.”

  “By six years.”

  “She’d no idea Tony was here,” I said, rummaging in the fridge and setting a pan of milk to heat on the stove. “He walked in the shop just as Lottie finished telling me her story.”

  “The murder victim’s brother just visited the murder victim’s former girlfriend? That’s convenient.”

  “Yes. I’ve left them to talk things out…hang on, Tess, you can’t be suspicious
of the two of them.”

  “It’s my job to be suspicious, Julia.”

  “What about Guy Pockett—have you abandoned him?”

  “I have not. We’ve found Bob Brightbill’s fingerprints in Pockett’s barn, but not the cottage. The thing is, it’s difficult to pin down a farmer concerning his whereabouts. ‘Out in the asparagus field.’ ‘Harvesting broad beans.’ It’s little help. And none of them have any idea where Brightbill lived. We’re searching woods for a campsite.”

  “Guy’s upset about it all coming out—what he did to his field, that is. I think he partly blames me. He was waiting for me outside the market this morning.”

  I put my hand on my forearm where Guy had gripped me.

  “Did he make you feel unsafe?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Come into the station tomorrow morning. It’s time we got a full statement from you. And, Julia—bring Pammy along with you.”

  * * *

  —

  I stirred chocolate in the milk and poured up a mug just as Pammy padded downstairs wearing thick socks and oversized flannel pajamas, her hair hanging in straggly tendrils.

  “Warmer now?” I asked, setting a mug on the coffee table for her.

  She nodded and sipped her cocoa. “Thanks.”

  “Gavin should’ve seen you home,” I said. He should’ve done a lot more than that.

  “No, it’s all right. He couldn’t be late for work. He’s not got a good record with jobs, and he’d started this one just the day before we met. He’s determined to stick it out.” Pammy took her bedding from under the coffee table and shook out a sheet.

  “Where is it he works?”

  “A pub on the A140 near Dickleburgh. Gavin closes and then cleans—it’s one of those big places, and sometimes he’s working until three o’clock in the morning. Makes evenings difficult.”

  That Gavin Lecky would put up with such a situation for more than one day was remarkable. I saw Pammy and her influence in a new light.