1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“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.”