The Cuckoo's Calling(141)

A faint smell of lime blossom pervaded the atmosphere, but did not entirely eclipse that of disinfectant and bodily decay; smells that recalled, to Strike, the hospital where he had lain helpless for months. A second large bay window had been raised a few inches, so that the warm fresh air and the distant cries of the sports-playing children could enter the room. The view was of the topmost branches of the leafy sunlit plane trees.

“Are you the detective?”

Her voice was thin and cracked, her words slightly slurred. Strike, who had wondered whether Bristow had told her the truth about his profession, was glad that she knew.

“Yes, I’m Cormoran Strike.”

“Where’s John?”

“He’s been held up at the office.”

“Again,” she murmured, and then: “Tony works him very hard. It isn’t fair.” She peered at him, blurrily, and indicated a small painted chair with one slightly raised finger. “Do sit down.”

There were chalky white lines around her faded irises. As he sat, Strike noticed two more silver-framed photographs standing on the bedside table. With something akin to an electric shock, he found himself looking into the eyes of ten-year-old Charlie Bristow, chubby-faced, with his slightly mullety haircut: frozen forever in the eighties, his school shirt with its long pointed collar, and the huge knot in his tie. He looked just as he had when he had waved goodbye to his best friend, Cormoran Strike, expecting to meet each other again after Easter.

Beside Charlie’s photograph was a smaller one, of an exquisite little girl with long black ringlets and big brown eyes, in a navy blue school uniform: Lula Landry, aged no more than six.

“Mary,” said Lady Bristow, without raising her voice, and the nurse bustled over. “Could you get Mr. Strike…coffee? Tea?” she asked him, and he was transported back two and a half decades, to Charlie Bristow’s sunlit garden, and the gracious blonde mother, and the iced lemonade.

“A coffee would be great, thank you very much.”

“I do apologize for not making it myself,” said Lady Bristow, as the nurse departed, with heavy footfalls, “but as you can see, I am entirely dependent, now, on the kindness of strangers. Like poor Blanche Dubois.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, as though to concentrate better on some internal pain. He wondered how heavily medicated she was. Beneath the gracious manner, he divined the faintest whiff of something bitter in her words, much as the lime blossom failed to cover the smell of decay, and he wondered at it, considering that Bristow spent most of his time dancing attendance on her.

“Why isn’t John here?” asked Lady Bristow again, with her eyes still shut.

“He’s been held up at the office,” repeated Strike.

“Oh, yes. Yes, you said.”

“Lady Bristow, I’d like to ask you a few questions, and I apologize in advance if they seem over-personal, or distressing.”

“When you have been through what I have,” she said quietly, “nothing much can hurt you anymore. Do call me Yvette.”

“Thank you. Do you mind if I take notes?”

“No, not at all,” she said, and she watched him take out his pen and notebook with a dim show of interest.

“I’d like to start, if you don’t mind, with how Lula came into your family. Did you know anything about her background when you adopted her?”

She looked the very picture of helplessness and passivity lying there with her limp arms on the covers.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t know anything. Alec might have known, but if he did, he never told me.”

“What makes you think your husband knew something?”

“Alec always went into things as deeply as he could,” she said, with a faint, reminiscent smile. “He was a very successful businessman, you know.”

“But he never told you anything about Lula’s first family?”

“Oh no, he wouldn’t have done that.” She seemed to find this a strange suggestion. “I wanted her to be mine, just mine, you see. Alec would have wanted to protect me, if he knew anything. I could not have borne the idea that somebody out there might come and claim her one day. I had already lost Charlie, and I wanted a daughter so badly; the idea of losing her, too…”

The nurse returned bearing a tray with two cups on it and a plate of chocolate bourbons.

“One coffee,” she said cheerfully, placing it beside Strike on the nearer of the bedside tables, “and one camomile tea.”

She bustled out again. Lady Bristow closed her eyes. Strike took a gulp of black coffee and said:

“Lula went looking for her biological parents in the year before she died, didn’t she?”

“That’s right,” said Lady Bristow, with her eyes still closed. “I had just been diagnosed with cancer.”

There was a pause, in which Strike put down his coffee cup with a soft chink, and the distant cheers of the small children in the square outside floated through the open window.

“John and Tony were very, very angry with her,” said Lady Bristow. “They didn’t think she ought to have started trying to find her biological mother, when I was so very ill. The tumor was already advanced when they found it. I had to go straight on to chemotherapy. John was very good; he drove me back and forth to the hospital, and came to stay with me during the worst bits, and even Tony rallied round, but all Lula seemed to care about…” She sighed, and opened her faded eyes, seeking Strike’s face. “Tony always said that she was very spoiled. I daresay it was my fault. I had lost Charlie, you see; I couldn’t do enough for her.”