Chapter 12 Birdy
BIRDY
Six months earlier
“Olivia Bird is dead,” says the handsome young police officer standing on the doorstep.
Overconfident, underprepared, but good-looking enough to get away with both.
He’s the kind of guy I would have gone after when I was younger.
These days I much prefer the company of dogs.
“Can I see some ID, please?” he asks, and I think I’m going to enjoy this.
“The Olivia Bird that died was my grandmother. I was named after her, so we share the same name. She died, I inherited this house, case solved, good night.”
The solicitor informed me that my grandmother liked to be known as Mrs. Bird even though she never married.
My mother—who also never married—preferred to be known as Ms. Bird, as though she thought the slight difference was sufficient to tell them apart.
They both had a daughter outside of marriage, and neither of them ever said who the father of their child was.
That section on my birth certificate was blank.
I imagine it was quite the scandal back then.
I am not a fan of titles. I go by Bird or Birdy, and have never felt the need to label myself for the benefit of others.
What other people choose to call me is up to them.
The boy cop looks a little less sure of himself. “I’d still like to see some ID,” he says.
My insufficient stockpile of patience expires.
“So would I.”
Not because I don’t believe this pretty pipsqueak is a police officer, I just want to know his name.
He shows me his badge and it still looks shiny and new.
I make a mental note of the name—Carter—and rank—sergeant.
He’s very junior, nothing I need to worry about.
I show Carter my driver’s license and he seems satisfied.
“Sorry to have disturbed you,” he says then, looking a little sheepish and stepping back from the door.
“I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. We have zero tolerance of crime here in Hope Falls and Blackmoor National Park, which borders the village. So much so they are advertising for a new detective to cover the area. It’s statistically one of the safest places to live in England and we want to keep it that way.
Now that I know who you are I’ll leave you to it. ”
He starts to walk away and at first I’m glad. But there is something he could help me with, given he has lived in Hope Falls for so long.
“Did you know her? My grandmother?” I ask.
He stops and turns back to face me. “I’m not sure anyone knew her.
Your grandmother was a woman who liked to keep herself to herself.
She lived in the village longer than anyone else; I think she was born here, and was almost one hundred years old when she died.
I know she had a live-in carer—I’d see their red Mini parked outside—but nobody ever saw much of either of them.
I didn’t know your grandmother but I knew of her. ”
“Was she a good person?” I find myself asking without meaning to.
He shrugs. “I don’t think she was a bad one.
Like I said, I never met her. She didn’t like to leave the house and I don’t think she ever had any visitors.
Strange how you can live in the same place as a person and know almost nothing about them.
I guess some people are very private. Or maybe she just felt the need to shut the rest of the world out. ”
I can relate to that.
“Do you know the name of the live-in carer?” I ask him.
“Sorry, no.”
“At least there was someone with her when she died.”
“Actually, she was alone. I was the one who found her. But if it’s any comfort, I think she died in her sleep.”
Something about that doesn’t quite add up no matter which way I do the sums.
“How come you found her if she had a live-in carer?”
“The carer was on holiday for a couple of days and your grandmother wouldn’t accept any replacement. Insisted she could cope for forty-eight hours on her own.”
“Then how did you know she was dead?”
“She wrote me a letter.”
I can’t tell if he’s yanking my chain.
“What do you mean, she wrote you a letter?”
“Three days before she died, your grandmother sent a note addressed to me to the police station. Her carer said she couldn’t walk very far on her own, but she could clearly walk far enough,” he says, nodding toward the red post box built into the dry stone wall in front of the house.
“She wrote that she knew she was going to die, and when, and that she had sent her carer away because she wanted to die with dignity and in privacy. The letter said that she had left the back door open so I could let myself in, and that she would be dead when I did. Obviously I didn’t believe any of it when I read the letter.
I thought perhaps she’d had too much Cornish gin, but sure enough, when I did come to check on her, the door was open and she was dead in her armchair.
She’d sent the letter second class or I’d have come up here sooner. ”
“Evidence of foul play?” I ask.
“None. The coroner concluded natural causes.”
Well, that’s clearly bullshit.
“Obviously she can’t have known the exact day she was going to die from natural causes,” I say, suddenly feeling protective of an elderly woman I didn’t even know had existed until recently. “Are you sure it wasn’t suicide?” I ask, aware of that dark river running in the family.
He shakes his head. “That’s what I thought, but the coroner insisted no. She died peacefully, in her sleep, in her library, wearing her reading glasses and with a book in her lap.”
“Which book?”
He stares at me as though that is a strange question.
“Frankenstein. I remember because her story choice surprised me. I’m sorry, I don’t know how your grandmother knew it was her time, but she did and she was right.”
I remember the letter I found claiming to predict the day a person will die.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, and turns to leave again.
I retreat inside myself a little bit when he says that.
It’s what people said when my mother died and it used to make me so angry.
I didn’t lose her. The word loss suggests I mislaid her, forgot where I left her, as though perhaps if I went to a lost-and-found desk she’d be there waiting for me.
What my mother did dismantled me. I didn’t lose her, but I have felt lost since she died.
Untethered. Alone. This is not the same as that.
“Thank you, but I didn’t really know my grandmother. Sounds like the people in Hope Falls didn’t either.”
“We might not have known her, but everyone in the village knew the stories about her. The mysterious old woman living at Spyglass has always been a bit of a local legend.”
“What stories?”
“I don’t want to upset you—”
And I don’t want to rearrange your face.
“Tell me.”
“Your grandmother was the woman who died twice.”