Dan.
Standing down here and looking up at the dimly lit window, seeing a tall man with light hair in the room that held Daniel’s piano and where he wrote his music, of course she thought it was Dan.
It was easy enough to make the mistake, wasn’t it? No, not really, if there was no music. That alone should have told her. She would have heard the piano. God, if only she had heard it!
It had seduced her before she’d ever seen him, that music, even though she’d never thought of herself as an ingrained music lover. She listened to it, of course, and liked it. (She was afraid her taste might be somewhat banal.) But music had never affected her like that, never.
That day she had brought boxes of pastries for a children’s party-the little boy’s birthday-and while she’d been standing in that huge marble and granite foyer, the piano, from somewhere at the top of that magnificent staircase, had started. Thundered, really thundered, making her sway where she stood. The rolls, the flourishes, the arpeggiated chords were so beautiful she had to keep her eyes on the marble floor to keep from doing something really stupid-weeping or something.
“My husband,” said Karen Bletchley in uninflected tones, by way of explanation, as she tore off the check she’d been writing for the pastry.
Chris’s mouth went dry as she took it. She knew that Karen Bletchley was looking at her as if she was used to women swooning on her doorstep.
And was she, Karen, so used to that music, to hearing it, she could define it simply with “my husband”?
Chris could think of no excuse to linger; she wasn’t much good at the kind of conversation that would allow her to do so, especially with this woman who was so smooth and so cool. Ash-blond hair architecturally cut, as if the face had been born with this hair framing it. But the gray eyes were as opaque as the pottery itself. They had no depth.
So Chris had left quickly and got in her car, parked thankfully out of range of the front door but not out of range of hearing. With the window rolled down, the music came as vividly as the sound of the waves. How could a person do that? How could a mere man split you open, rearrange everything, heart lungs flesh bone?
She had rested her forehead on her hands, crossed over the steering wheel. So she was (and it amused her to think this) a goner even before she’d met him. If he’d been the Red Dwarf she’d have followed him to hell. And Dan Bletchley was anything but the Red Dwarf. Was it because she’d romanticized him so completely that she was bound to find him physically beautiful? No. He simply was.
When she finally met him-by accident, thank God, and alone, thank God again-the same feeling came over her as when she’d heard him playing. She’d come apart again, everything got rearranged again.
A goner. Then, a double-goner.
Heart lungs flesh bone.
The face disappeared from the window-had he seen her?-and Chris looked down at the ground, crunching some gravel around with the toe of her shoe, one of the several habits she had that had made Dan smile and put his arms around her. Chrissie. No one had ever called her that but Charlie. Chrissie.
“Hey, Chris,” Johnny had said, “hey, Chris, you look weird, you look enthralled you look like you’re in the kingdom of thralldom.”
Johnny. She should have gone directly to the village, but she had felt compelled to stop here at this house that no one had lived in since the Decorators, an appellation that always made her smile. The house had been standing vacant, but Morris Bletchley didn’t have to sell it and, she suspected, really he couldn’t. He couldn’t turn over the place where his grandchildren had died. Keeping it might mean to him keeping hold of some part of them. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to Morris Bletchley.
It was what had ended them, of course, ended Chris and Dan. He’d been with her that night and she knew-though he’d never said it because it might seem he was blaming her for being there-that he believed, somehow, it had been his fault.
Up to then, they had been so buoyant; for that year they had known one another she had felt untethered, not bound to earth. They had been weightless and guiltless. Until the children.
A door opened and slammed shut in the wind.
Well, he had seen her.
Trespasser, she tried on a smile. After midnight; no wonder this man thought it odd somebody was out here, on his property (even if rented), staring at the sea, staring up at the music room.
Who was he? He, too, was handsome, another reason she might have confused him with Dan. But he was slightly taller, slightly thinner, and looked mad as a hatter.
He was downstairs and out the back door in a shot.
She was still standing there; the face that had been turned toward the sea (as if it had comforts to offer beyond the scope of what humans had to offer) was now turned toward him.
The wind blew her black hair across her pale skin, and he saw how much she looked like her nephew, the coloring a genetic trait, like the straight nose and narrow, squared chin.
He wondered as he came through the door why that look of happiness had flashed across her face as if light had struck warmth into marble; he wondered now, walking up to her, why the look was just as suddenly withdrawn and she stopped and took root where she stood.
His feelings were a total muddle. He was genuinely-even rapturously-glad that she was alive, but at the same time was only too aware that he had been, all along, daydreaming about this woman, or about some woman, from the moment he’d set foot in this house. And now it was as if a dream had thickened to flesh and blood, only to mock him.
His mounting anger surprised him, but he let it mount. Melrose was not a rash person, nor did he make rash judgments, but he was growing angrier by the second over this woman’s nonchalant reappearance and her failure to see she wreaked havoc in people’s lives. How could she simply turn up like this and stand gazing seaward?
He knew the anger showed in his clumsy attempt to grab her arm. That she was genuinely shocked and bewildered by his movement was plain. That she had not carelessly mislaid herself was equally plain. He knew that and knew at the same time that when she had seen him so briefly before he turned from the window above, the moonlight on his light hair, she had thought he was Daniel Bletchley. And this was intolerable, but why? It had been clear three days ago when Bletchley spoke of her where his sympathies lay-his heart, his music, his past, but not (the music said) his future. Chris Wells had been the woman Daniel had been with but had never named (despite the fact she would have provided him an alibi).
If she was anywhere, anywhere as charming as her young nephew-and she was certainly as handsome-Melrose could easily understand why Bletchley had wanted her, and just as easily understood why she had wanted him. All of this went through his mind in the seconds it took him to walk up to her and grab her arm.
“Where in the hell have you been?”
Her astonishment robbed her, for a moment, of speech. Then she laughed uncertainly and said, “Who are you?”
Melrose dropped her arm and felt the spread of a furious, adolescent blush. He smiled and answered, “The Uninvited.”
The first thing he did was lead her to a telephone so she could call her house. No one answered.
“Could he be out in his cab? There’s a dispatcher, isn’t there? Try calling there.”
“Shirley. Yes. But it’s after midnight.”
“Try anyway.” He stood over her as she placed the call, as if fearing she might disappear again.
Chris still did not know what was going on, but she took him at his word and made the call to Cornwall Cabs. Shirley was speechless for a few moments, so that Chris had to keep saying Hello, hello.
Finally, Shirley found her voice and told Chris, Yes, she would make every effort to get hold of Johnny. He’d borrowed one of the cars to go to Seabourne, but that was nearly three hours ago. “But where’ve you been, love? Are you all right? Johnny’s frantic.”
“He is? But-I’m fine, Shirley. There’s just some kind of misunderstanding. Try and find the cab, will you?” She hung up and said to Melrose, “I’ll call the Woodbine. Brenda-”
“No. Leave that.”
Melrose had been sincere in his apologies for his abrupt treatment of her when she had no idea who he was or why he was here. And why he was surprised that she was here.
They were sitting down in the library, still the only really warm room downstairs, when he finally asked her, “Look, why did you disappear like that? Your nephew has been worried sick.”
She frowned. “Disappear? Well, I didn’t exactly do that. Didn’t he get the note?” She sat back. “Obviously he didn’t. I should have called from Newcastle.”
“Newcastle? You’ve been in Newcastle all this time? We thought you might be dead. Same thing, I imagine.” He did not add or guilty as hell.
She was still frowning, and deeply. “I have a friend there who’s very ill-but that’s hardly important. What’s happened?”
“Haven’t you been reading the papers? There was a murder in Lamorna Cove. A woman you apparently knew: Sada Colthorp.”
Her face went even paler. “Sadie? Murdered?”
“Her body was found on the path between Lamorna and Mousehole.”
Chris seemed to be having a hard time taking this in. “Well… but she came back four or five years ago…”
“Does this suggest anything to you?”
“What? No. What should it suggest? Please stop talking in riddles.”
“I’m sorry. But it is one. Someone murdered her, and police have you down as a suspect.”
She knocked over the telephone in rising from the chair. She was open-mouthed with astonishment.
“The point is, what happened to that note? Who did you give it to?”
Chris shook her head. “To nobody. I left it on top of the card table where I knew he’d be sure to see it.” She made a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, Johnny knows I’d never go off without telling him where I’d gone. How could he doubt?”
“Ah, but he didn’t. He kept insisting you wouldn’t. And we should have paid attention. If we’d paid more attention to his insisting you would have left word, rather than coming to the conclusion you didn’t and he must be wrong, God knows how much would have been saved. So, who took it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine. Brenda was supposed to make sure he knew why I’d left-”
Her face went white. Then she was suddenly out of her chair and the white was replaced by heat. She was angry. “In thirty seconds or less. Tell me. Because I’m leaving. In thirty seconds.”
Melrose stood up too. He managed it in under that.
But it didn’t keep her from leaving. She ran. She ran through the huge foyer, out the door, and to her car.
Melrose followed, running too. By the time he’d got his own engine going, she was down the drive and out of sight.
It was called “the card under glass trick”; Charlie had taught it to him. He still hadn’t got it quite right, but that made no difference to his purpose. Instead of a glass, he would extemporize with the gun, as she’d just set it down again. All he needed was to get her eyes off him in such a way they’d stay off for that bit of time, long enough for him to unwind the cord, which he hoped wasn’t wrapped around the fixture more than once.
He fanned the cards out across the top of the trunk and asked, “You want to pick a card?”
“Do you think I’m getting that close to you?”
“Probably not. I’ll have to do it for you again, then.” With his index finger he flipped the entire half-moon of cards face up. “Full deck, just wanted you to see.” Then he shuffled, cut the deck twice, fanned the cards again, and, in spite of the fix he was in, enjoyed the irony of doing all of this on top of the trunk. It was like that Hitchcock movie, Rope. But this was the saving grace of knowing what you wanted to do in life and being able to do it. It blotted out everything else when you were doing it.
He picked the Ace of Spades from the half-moon, held it up, flicked it with his finger before returning it to the fanned-out cards. He swept the cards together, shuffled, cut several times quickly, fanned the cards out again.
“Ace of Spades? Gone.”
“I’ll take your word for it, sweetheart. Where is it?”
“Look under the gun, Brenda.”
That made her flinch and focus.
He could have told her anywhere, to look at the floor, or the chair itself, or the door. But, he reasoned, only the gun would do it, would distract her long enough. She would have (as did most people) the primitive fear, some half-formed belief-it was this that magic played on-that he could make the gun disappear. And in the split second she looked away to the gun on the table beside her, he unhooked the cord that held the curtain taut and jerked the heavy material across the embrasure.
The first shot went through the curtain just as he threw the ashtray through the glass and kicked open the French door. To confuse her was what he wanted. The second shot followed as he raised the lid of the trunk, and the third as he jumped in, closed the lid, and pulled down the false bottom. He knew she’d look in the trunk, but not before she’d got to the open French door, through which she’d think he’d left the house.
Her bafflement was almost palpable. The lid of the trunk opened upon a second of silence when she saw nothing. There was no explanation for her except to assume he’d gone by way of the French door.
But she’d be back; she’d have had time to realize that he was, after all, a magician and this trunk was big enough to hold a body.
Lying in the dark, he smiled and listened to the rain blowing in the door. He’d been too focused before to realize it was raining. But he heard it now as if it were riveting the lid of the trunk closed. Much as he would have liked to stay in it (for it created even for him the illusion of invisibility), he would have to move before she came back, and he knew that would be soon.
Yet might it work, staying here? He finally scotched that idea; it was too uncertain. Much better to be able to move about the house. He was afraid to leave until she came back inside; she could be making a circle of it, and this time he might not be lucky and run right into her. Better to wait and see which way she came in-probably the front-and he could slip out the back.
He was out of the trunk now and had never realized before how bright ordinary lamplight could be. To avoid being seen through the windows, he crouched and, in this position, made his way as quickly as he could across the living room. He went to the kitchen. He opened the little gray metal door of the panel box, pulled the main circuit breaker, and plunged the house in darkness.
He stood listening. The hard rain was letting up. Somewhere, a car door slammed.
First, she walked swiftly from her car down the street, wondering what instinct told her that it would be dangerous to park in her usual space, that she should park some distance from the house. She walked quickly by the Woodbine, momentarily tempted to go in and shout for Brenda to explain, to fix things. But Chris knew it was inexplicable. The note she’d left on the card table for Johnny, the word she’d left with Brenda… It was incomprehensible.
Why Brenda would have failed to tell him was beyond her, utterly beyond her. What her, Chris’s, supposed running away was meant to accomplish was just as mysterious. She didn’t care about the mystery at this moment; she cared only about letting Johnny know she was back and she was all right.
Lights shone through the windows of their house and then, suddenly, they didn’t. Suddenly, and all at once, both downstairs and upstairs went dark. That the lights were not being turned off one at a time, that the house was abruptly thrust into darkness really frightened her. She stopped. In the diminished light along the street she heard a car in the distance, getting closer, perhaps his-Plant’s-for she knew he had made for his car when she was leaving. Perhaps she should wait… oh, but this was ridiculous, holding back this way.
She shoved her fisted hands down into her pockets. Fear fueled her anger. How dare Brenda do this? Chris walked, but slowly, toward her house, which had grown unfamiliar to her without even the fixture on the porch lighting the way.
Chris saw that someone was standing in front of the Drowned Man, hands cupping a cigarette, sheltering the match against the wind and what was left of the rain-mist mostly. Someone. Was she seeing him everywhere now, having seen him nowhere for so long?
Dan. She shrank back into a doorway. How could he possibly be here now? Then she remembered what Melrose Plant had said about Tom Letts and his funeral. Dan would of course come to help his dad. No matter how painful or what memories the place stirred, Dan would do that. He really loved Morris Bletchley.
Another figure, stocky and wearing a dark robe, had come out to join Dan. It must be Mr. Pfinn. She heard their voices, drowsy through the mist, floating toward her. She could make out nothing they said as they looked off down the street, in the direction of her house.
Chris stared at the fragment of Dan’s face the cigarette coal illuminated when he inhaled. She needed help; she was sure she needed help. She should not have come by herself; she should have brought Mr. Plant with her.
But she turned away from help and started walking again toward the house, now little more than fifty feet away. Only a few doors down the street. What had they been looking at, Dan and Pfinn? Why had they come out to the pavement? She had left her own sheltering doorway only when the two of them had turned to go back into the pub.
Not sure why she wanted to avoid the front door of this house that lay in a total, unnatural darkness and silence, she made for the French door around the right-hand side and soon found her feet crunching gravel, but something else. Glass. The cloudy moon showed her the door was broken. She moved through the French door and found an even darker darkness than outside. When she reached out she felt the heavy curtain, loosened from the fixture that usually held it back.
She heard a noise, at once far away and shatteringly close, felt something like a heavy and violent hand shoved against her chest, jerking her back, and then tripped over the heavy curtain that was dropped before her. No, she hadn’t tripped. Pain only flickered at first and then gathered a hideous strength.
“Johnny!” Chris thought she screamed it, but heard little more than a whisper, less than the hiss of the sea against rocks which she could almost hear, even at this distance, less even than the lovely voice of Dan over across the road. Johnny! She knew she hadn’t said it aloud, not this time. He was in her mind with the blinding, searing light, as if the whole house had suddenly and completely been lit with the sun.
That was all.
Melrose saw Wiggins coming out the door of the Drowned Man just after what sounded like a shot was fired. He ran toward him.
“Sergeant! Was that-?”
Wiggins stopped. “It came from the Wells house.”
Light flooded the house before they reached the end of the path to the Wellses’ front door, which was open.
“I’m going round back,” said Wiggins. “You’d best stay out of sight.”
He didn’t. Melrose waited for a moment, then moved toward the door.
Brenda Friel was backed up against the doorjamb between kitchen and living room, her rigid arms extended, hands holding a gun as steady as a cross beam. It was aimed at Johnny.
Melrose urged himself on: Do something, do something, damn it! But what? He was paralyzed when he saw Chris Wells lying in the little alcove at the back of the room.
“I’ll kill you, I swear to God.”
Johnny hadn’t shouted this, but the intensity with which he’d uttered the words left no doubt that he would.
Brenda said nothing. Her face was wiped clean of expression.
Then Melrose saw Wiggins approaching silently, coming through the kitchen and up behind her. He brought the side of his hand down on her arm. The gun discharged, and simultaneously a knife flew across the room and lodged in the wood of the doorway at exactly the spot where Brenda’s heart had been.
Johnny moved to his aunt’s body and did not so much kneel as drop down. He put an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her. Then he wept.
Wiggins held on to Brenda Friel, who struggled to get out of his grasp.
And, frozen in the doorway, stood Daniel Bletchley, staring at Johnny and his awful burden. He was cradling his aunt’s body, rocking it back and forth. Dan was wide-eyed, unable to move.
Hoping she’s only fainted, Melrose thought.
For one could see no damage to Chris. The blood that had seeped into the dark carpet had now collected beneath the dark curtain at her back. Her equally dark clothes showed no wound. It was as if Johnny, in passing his hand above Chris’s body, had rendered the damage invisible.
The blood was on Johnny. When he sat back Melrose could see his T-shirt was covered, from where he had pulled her close.
Daniel Bletchley walked over to Johnny and knelt down, putting an arm around the boy and saying nothing.
For anything said, any word of comfort or false cheer, would have been a lie.
The service was held in the little Bletchley church, conducted by a rector of about the same age Tom had been. All youth, to Melrose, now looked sad, this age that old people so much envied but through which, he thought now, it would have been better not to pass. Standing with this little group of mourners, he watched the casket being lowered into the ground and bowed his head, thinking he had seen enough of death in the past twenty-four hours to last his lifetime.
Whatever occupants of Bletchley Hall were able to leave their beds were there, along with staff. The Hoopers, black-suited, stood next to Morris Bletchley, on whose other side stood Daniel and Karen. Little Miss Livingston, her acorn face obscured by a small black veil, seemed more bent than even before. Beside her stood Mrs. Atkins; Mr. Bleaney and Mr. Clancy were on the other side of the grave.
Melrose stood beside Johnny, who had insisted on coming, despite his having to endure, in the following days, his aunt’s own funeral. Her body now lay in the police morgue in Penzance. It would be released to “the family” (the medical examiner speaking here) when the autopsy was complete.
The first person to step forward and let fall a handful of earth onto the coffin must have been Tom’s sister, Honey; she was a slight, very blond, and pretty girl. She stood back, and Morris Bletchley stepped forward, repeating the sad ritual. Then the rector of Bletchley’s single church finished the ceremony.
It would probably have been no compliment to tell Honey Letts that black became her, as if she’d been designed for sad occasions such as this. It made her fragile blondness more intense, deepened the blue of her eyes to black.
She was only sixteen, but she had the composure of a woman decades older. He wondered how it had been bred in her, certainly not by her mother and father, given what Tom had told him.
The mother and father were not even with her today. Melrose found it difficult to believe that parents could be so hard and unforgiving.
“Honey,” said Melrose, looking down at her, “I didn’t know Tom for long, but I still felt I knew him.”
She nodded and looked up at him out of those bottomless dark blue eyes.
“You have no idea how much you did for him,” Melrose said.
“No, people don’t, usually. But it certainly wasn’t any sacrifice on my part. I don’t know many people and certainly no one as interesting as Tommy.” She looked off toward the bottom of the garden and Tom’s grave. For some moments she held that silent pose, a young person who could bear silence.
“Your parents didn’t come.” It was as close to accusation as he could get; that they hadn’t come made him furious.
With her eyes still on the grave, she shook her head. “They couldn’t get over that Tommy had AIDS. They couldn’t get past it. It’s the way some people are; they get stuck and can’t go on. The really tragic thing is that Tommy wasn’t gay.” Honey turned to look up at Melrose. “He didn’t bother telling people because they wouldn’t believe it; besides that, he didn’t think it should make a difference. He told Mum and Dad, finally, but they didn’t believe him either. After all, he had the mark, so what difference did it make if he was or wasn’t gay?”
Melrose remembered what Johnny had told him. He said, “I’d have believed him, Honey. I think I’d have believed anything he told me. He was that kind of person; you believed him, that’s all.”
A tear ran straight down Honey’s cheek. “Thanks. Thanks. It was only this one fellow-would you like to hear about this?”
She asked this as a real question, not a rhetorical one. Honey, apparently, took things seriously.
“Of course I would, Honey. Of course.”
“It was just one time, a long time ago-it must’ve been fifteen or sixteen years. It was with a friend of his who’d got really sick; he died just after Tom was diagnosed. This was his best friend since childhood. They’d been through school together, dated together; he’s always been popular with girls-they’d been through just about everything together. After Bobby got the virus it was hardly any time, less than two years, before he had full-blown AIDS. He was dying and Tom went to visit him. He stayed for less than two weeks. He told me about it when he got sick himself; he’d wanted to comfort Bobby, Tom said. That’s all, just comfort. It was only a few times. He told me he’d gotten tested afterwards, more than once after Bobby died, but there wasn’t any sign Tom had it. Not until three years ago.” Honey had to look away. “It’s awful this should happen to Tom because of that, and yet I wonder if Tom’s being that sort of person, if it didn’t make all of us better somehow. If you know what I mean.”
The little eulogy was so heartfelt that Melrose could say nothing; he simply nodded.
There was another silence, shared. Then Melrose said, “You see that boy over there?” He nodded in Johnny’s direction.
“Yes. He looks really sad.”
“He is. His aunt was murdered last night.” Melrose would have thought it impossible for Honey’s face to grow even paler, but it did.
“What?”
“Police think the same person’s responsible.” But that’s hardly a consolation to Honey.
“Poor boy. How awful for him. Do you think I should go talk to him?”
Melrose smiled. If anyone could infer human need well enough to answer that question, it was Honey herself.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
And she did. Melrose watched. He saw Johnny turn to face her and watched as Johnny listened. Honey talked for a little while, leaving her hand on his arm as she looked up at him.
Melrose watched as Johnny’s expression changed. It was as if the lid of a coffin had opened and the person who lay there, mistaken for dead, at last could breathe again.
Honey had the touch.
Murder or no murder, funeral or no funeral, Agatha could not be avoided forever. Melrose was to have tea with her that afternoon and he talked Richard Jury into coming along.
It surprised him that the Woodbine Tearoom was open and full, as it usually was, at four o’clock. That it was open for business at all was in part owing to the efforts of Mrs. Hayter, whom Melrose recalled saying that she often baked her popular berry pies for Woodbine, and that when Brenda was called away she would come in and help out.
Brenda had certainly been “called away.” And, Mrs. Hayter declared, “Enough said on that subject, I’m sure.”
Melrose could see tears forming on her lower lids, but her mouth was pinched with barely contained rage. But it wasn’t “enough said,” judging from the whispers flying from behind hands at the other tables.
And God know it would never be “enough said” for Agatha. She was so eager to get down to it she could barely spare a hello for Richard Jury, whom she was usually all over like a fishnet. “I knew the first time I had dealings with that woman Brenda that something was wrong.”
“What dealings, Lady Ardry?” asked Jury, as he sipped his tea. There were still things that didn’t add up, that made no sense-most important, the murder of Tom Letts.
“No dealings,” said Melrose. “Unless you count your vain attempt to pry her recipe for Sweet Ladies out of her.” Melrose watched as Johnny came through the swinging door, a boy who shouldered his responsibilities as if they were the heavy tray he carried. It was piled high with cups, pastries, and buns.
“Don’t be absurd,” said Agatha. That being the brunt of her rebuttal, she changed the subject. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “With his aunt shot just last night, I’m surprised to see that boy working.”
Melrose watched him. His movements were heavy and his smile a mere remnant of yesterday’s. “I’m not surprised. Do you think he’d be better off lying about in bed, thinking of her and how she died?”
“Work,” said Jury, “is the best antidote for what ails you, at least according to my boss, who has little experience to back him up. I’m sure Sergeant Wiggins would disagree about the best antidote, he having a great deal of experience to back him up.”
Johnny came over to their table. He was introduced to Jury, who stood up to shake his hand. “Johnny, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
He looked at Jury and seemed in danger of crumpling. Jury often had that effect on people; he could project an empathy that breached their defenses and frequently had them turning away, weeping. This was one thing that made him so good with witnesses.
“Thanks,” said Johnny. Then, as if this response might be too perfunctory, he said it again: “Thank you.” He blinked several time. “Chris was great, wasn’t she?” he asked Melrose.
Melrose had told Johnny about Chris’s visit to Bletchley House. “The greatest, Johnny.” He had only been with her for a very short time, but he felt that he spoke the truth. “The greatest,” he repeated.
Even Agatha managed to mumble a few words meant to console. “Sorry… great pity… awful for you.”
Melrose asked, “Where’s Honey? Did she go back to Dartmouth?”
Johnny looked over his shoulder. “No, actually. She’s in the kitchen.”
And to Melrose’s surprise and as if she were waiting for her cue, Honey came through the door, butting it with her hip; she was carrying both a pot of tea and a tiered cake plate. Both of these she set on Melrose’s table.
“This is for you, compliments of the house,” said Honey, as if she’d worked here for years. Her smile was brilliant.
Agatha’s was hardly less so when she saw the selection of cakes and meringues. “My goodness, thank you.”
Johnny said, “It’s for all your help.”
“We do what we can,” said Agatha, taking credit.
“What help?” asked Melrose, quite sincerely. “I don’t feel I was much help.”
“You certainly were, Mr. Plant,” said Johnny. “For starters, it was you got police here by knowing Mr. Macalvie.”
“I don’t think he’d claim to have been much help, either.”
“Okay,” said Jury. “I’ll make the claim for Sergeant Wiggins and give you his recipe for herbal tea so it’ll be ready for him when he comes in.”
Seeing that Johnny was distinctly brighter when Honey was around, Melrose asked her how long she was staying.
Honey sighed. “I’d like to stay longer, but I’ve got to go back to school. I got excused for three days and tomorrow’s the third day, so that’s when I have to leave.”
“I want her to come and work here during the summer.” As if he needed a reason for this, Johnny said, “There’s only Mrs. Hayter and me to run this place, and I’d like to keep it going. It was Chris’s life, after all.”
Honey said, “I’d really like to but I promised this family that’s going to the south of France I’d go along to watch the kiddies. You know, as an au pair. But I might be able to get out of it if I can find someone to take my place. I hope so, at least. I always did like Bletchley, and maybe I can take Mr. Bletchley’s mind off things by being around.”
Melrose had stopped listening. He was staring off across the room, his mind elsewhere; he was trying to remember. Something Tom had said. Or Moe Bletchley. Had they been talking about the south of France? He frowned. No, that wasn’t it. His look at Honey must have been so probing, she asked if something was wrong.
And then he had it.
The au pair!
He stood up, setting the teacups to rattling. “Come on,” he said to Jury.
“Come on where? I’m not finished.”
“Now! Agatha can take care of the bill.”
Jury rose. There’s a first time for everything, he thought.
Mr. Bletchley,” Jury said, “I’m Richard Jury, New Scotland Yard.”
Morris Bletchley shook the proffered hand. “You’re a little late, aren’t you, sir?” He could not keep his face from clouding over. “A little late.”
“I’m sorry,” Jury said, with all the earnestness of one who felt he really should have appeared earlier.
“He’s been in Northern Ireland,” said Melrose, as if he had to justify Jury’s dereliction of duty, and that a stint in Northern Ireland would justify anything.
“Of course,” said Moe Bletchley. “Just a little black humor and not very funny at that. Let’s sit down.”
They’d been standing in the wide hall between the blue and red rooms. Moe led them into the blue room and asked if they’d like something: tea? whisky? Both declined.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” said Melrose. “Tom described your house in Putney, said it wasn’t very big, three bedrooms, one of them for the au pair. You had one for when the children came to visit.”
Moe’s gaze was puzzled. “That’s right.”
“Who was she?”
Morris Bletchley looked very unhappy. “Mona Freeman was the name she gave me. She was actually Ramona Friel.” Moe looked at them and gave a helpless little shrug. “I wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t told me, much later, just before she came back to Bletchley.” His frown deepened. “I was completely surprised. I didn’t know Ramona by sight because she’d been away at school for years, and hardly ever went into the village the times I was at the house. Wouldn’t’ve seen her anyway because she’d been away, like I said. She never told her mother she was working for me-well obviously, since she’d changed her name to hide the fact. Brenda didn’t want her in London, working.
“All Ramona wanted from me was to help her-not an abortion, mind you, but just to sustain her until the baby was born. I told her she really should tell her mother, but she didn’t want to. Finally, though, she did. I guess Mona just had to have her mother’s support. And that’s the last I ever saw of her until I heard the poor girl had died. I could certainly feel for Brenda, I’ll tell you.”
“Did she tell you who the father was?”
Sadly, Moe shook his head. “No. I knew it was Tom. But that, I’m sure, Ramona didn’t tell her mother; she swore me to secrecy on that score. I’d have known anyway, wouldn’t I? She refused to tell him, adamantly refused. If she had, Tom would have done something; he’d have married her. But she didn’t want to marry anyone. Very stubborn girl.” He smiled slightly but then looked from Plant to Jury, as if he feared what was coming. “I was told she died of that non-Hodgkins leukemia.”
“That’s what Brenda Friel told people. But I’ll bet you any amount of money that Ramona Friel died from some complication of AIDS. If not AIDS directly, then indirectly. Whatever was wrong with Ramona was exacerbated by this virus. Didn’t Brenda know Tom Letts? Didn’t he drive you here from London?”
Moe shook his head. “Maybe once or twice. It’s a hell of a drive from London. No, Brenda didn’t know Tom; she certainly didn’t know he’d worked for me in London.”
“Brenda Friel didn’t know who the father was and found out only recently about this Putney arrangement. Then she knew the father must have been Tom Letts.”
Morris Bletchley looked away then sharply back again. “Brenda Friel’s the one who shot him? Jesus.” Moe leaned over, his head in his hands.
“She had a motive, certainly.” said Jury. “She found out somehow.”
His head still in his hands, Moe shook it back and forth, back and forth. “A couple of weeks ago-feels like years-Tom was talking to her about Putney. She said she had family-some cousins, whatever-in Fulham. You know, right next door. Brenda’s not stupid. Ramona’d worked in Putney and Ramona’d died of AIDS.”
Melrose and Jury were silent, watching him.
Finally Moe asked, “And Chris Wells? What did she have to do with all this?”
“I’m guessing again, but I’d say Chris Wells presented a danger after Tom was murdered. Chris would have been the only person who knew Ramona had the virus. So it was not what Chris knew then, it’s what she would know if Tom Letts were suddenly murdered.”
Morris Bletchley set his head in his hands again, shaking it. “Poor Ramona, that poor girl. Ramona was so good with Noah and Esmé.” He stood up. “It’s too much. You know whom I suspected: my daughter-in-law. I’ve never really liked Karen. She’s just so plausible.”
Melrose knew exactly what he meant. Plausible. He remembered that enjoyable evening at Seabourne, marred by a moment of discomfort, when she’d shown her resentment of Morris Bletchley and a certain banal turn of mind. Small things, and perhaps he’d been small-minded, but he supposed a person should attend to his intuitive responses to small things.
“And I’ve always known she married Danny for his money. Danny”-he looked at them sadly-“never wanted to leave here. Karen was the one who was always agitating to go back to London.”
“She told me,” said Melrose, “just the opposite. She told me a story that was half fact and half fantasy. I think she wanted to make sure police understood there were other people on the scene because she was afraid your son would come under suspicion.”
“You mean that she would.” Moe sighed. “She’d want to convince the world she’s the inconsolable mother. It’s Danny who’s inconsolable.” He looked around the beautiful room as if the blue had fled from it, as if it were drained of color. “Will we ever know what really happened?”
Plant had gone to call the Penzance police station, where Jury now imagined Macalvie questioning Brenda Friel. He said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Bletchley. We’ll know.”
He’d been here in one of the interrogation rooms of the Penzance police station for half an hour, waiting for her to say something.
Brenda Friel hadn’t gotten beyond hello and asking for a cigarette.
“Where are the video tapes, Brenda?”
Macalvie assumed she wasn’t going to answer that question, either. She surprised him, even though the answer was a question.
“What tapes?”
“The film Simon Bolt took for you and for himself, presumably to peddle over the Internet. A good crossover between snuff film and kiddy porn. The one Sada Colthorp had when you shot her.”
Her smile was all for herself. Hemmed in, parsimonious, nothing left over, not even bad humor, for anyone else. God knows not for him.
Despite her relentless silence, Macalvie was getting to her; he could feel it. It was an odd chemistry; he’d felt it before with suspects. It wasn’t his experience as a policeman or his cleverness that was getting through. It was something else, some quality in himself that the person under question seemed to think they shared. Macalvie hated the feeling. Not that he empathized, not that he understood. Some killers he did come to understand. Brenda wasn’t one of them. It made him uncomfortable to sense she didn’t believe this. That’s your problem, boyo.
“Yeah, a real classic,” he went on, “that film. I can see the pedophiles slobbering all the way from Bournemouth to John o’Groat’s.”
Her eyes were sparking now, live wires touched to some electrical source. Anger? Good.
“But it didn’t start out that way, Brenda.” He got up and walked over to a little window, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, holding back his raincoat. “Before Ramona died you wouldn’t in a million years have thought of having a sociopath like Bolt follow those kids to their deaths. I can see it, I can just see it. Noah and Esmé-” He looked round at her, sitting there, not looking at him. The children’s names touched off nothing in her-no sympathy, no remorse. At least, these emotions weren’t present on her face.
He went on. “You know what I’ve been wondering? How it is you didn’t send the tape to Morris Bletchley. Wasn’t that the idea? Make him suffer as much as you had?”
“No.”
Macalvie kept himself from turning round, from registering surprise. He was surprised the film hadn’t served the double purpose as instrument of death and sadistic revenge.
“Not knowing is worse. Now, though, I would. I’d like to rub his face in it,” said Brenda. “By taking Ramona into that house, he killed her as surely as if he’d held a gun to her head.”
Fucking melodrama, thought Macalvie. “Seems to me Mr. Bletchley provided your daughter with safe harbor. Would you rather have had her wandering all over London? You never wanted her to go, and she didn’t communicate with you.” That Bletchley could be seen as a savior, Macalvie knew, would fuel her rage.
“Safe harbor? Throwing Ramona into bed with a bloody gay chauffeur who’d got AIDS?” She made a noise in her throat of disgust, dismissal.
Macalvie did turn around then. “Morris Bletchley-” No. Don’t defend him anymore, even though God knows the man deserves someone’s defending him. “I guess that wasn’t very smart of him.”
Her sour laugh was more a snarl.
“He paid a heavy price, Brenda. His grandchildren.”
“No price could have been too heavy.”
She was not crying, but tears were clotting her throat. It was thick with them. Wait. Wait for a moment. Macalvie leaned wearily against the cold wall, as if sick of death. The weariness was not an act. He was drowning in it.
Her only child. He could sympathize with that part of it, certainly. Then it occurred to him, and he was surprised by the conviction. “You didn’t see it. The film. You didn’t watch it.” Now he was leaning on the table, arms rod-straight. She looked up at him, disclosing nothing. He said, “You weren’t there when Simon Bolt shot that film. You didn’t see it.” He could have hit her. You bitch!
And then he realized she’d finally admitted her tie to Simon Bolt. She’d forgotten herself enough to do this, just as he’d forgotten himself enough to want to kill her. “Tell me how he did it.”
She actually shrugged, as if it were really no affair of hers, since she hadn’t been there. “He had what I guess you’d say was an assistant. I imagine Simon Bolt had a string of assistants, including Sadie May. They met up with the Bletchley children in the woods just beyond their house, several times. He took pictures, Polaroid shots, which he showed me. Nothing nasty, of course. They might have reported that to the grown-ups back at the house. He merely took pictures of them playing. Told them he was a filmmaker and showed them one. He had this little telly, you know, screen hardly as big as your hand. Anyway, he told them he could do one of them, if they fancied it. He found out a lot about the Bletchleys, about the boat down at the bottom of the stone steps. I expect he just made up a story to get them to go down there, or the girl did. Or the girl led them down there just when the tide was coming in. I don’t know. I didn’t ask for details.” Her voice took on a colorless, hollow quality, as if she were forever removed from what she was describing.
She was, thought Macalvie. She had arranged this but hadn’t had the courage to look at it. That way, perhaps in her own mind, it had happened without her. “He would have given you a tape. A copy. He’d keep a couple for himself.”
“Oh, he did. Said it was for proof. Well, I didn’t need proof, did I? They were drowned. Proof enough there. The Bletchleys left Seabourne. End of that marriage for all intents and purposes.”
“Yet Morris Bletchley didn’t leave. He stayed. He would have stayed through hell rather than desert his grandchildren. He must have looked at it that way.”
She didn’t comment.
“Sada Colthorp put you in touch with Bolt.”
“She told me about him. I’d never have used her as a go-between. She couldn’t be trusted. Obviously.”
“Sada came back a couple of weeks ago and tried to blackmail you. She had a copy of that tape, or maybe it was Bolt’s copy that she found in the house. Only there was nothing on that tape to link you to the children. You’d been very careful. It was only her word against yours. You thought she’d be believed instead of you?”
“Her word was what she intended to whisper in Morris Bletchley’s ear. Along with giving him that tape. Him seeing that tape? Why, he’d have turned heaven and earth upside down to discover who was responsible, and if she told him it was my idea, he’d concentrate on me. He’d have had me investigated in a way police don’t have time for-they’ve got a hundred other people, a hundred other murders to deal with. Morris Bletchley would only have me. Even if he couldn’t prove it, even if he couldn’t satisfy himself, Moe Bletchley would’ve hounded me the rest of my life.”
“But Chris Wells?” Macalvie didn’t have to frame a question or a conclusion. She had reached that point where it was in for a penny, in for a pound. She was even more tired than he was; she figured she might as well tell the rest of it. Finally, suspects wanted to. They wanted someone else to know either how clever they’d been or how much they’d suffered. Finally, Brenda Friel wanted him to know.
She said, “If Chris were all of a sudden to leave the village at the same time there was a murder in Lamorna Cove, and if it was someone Chris had been known to hate-well, how else could police look at it except the way you did? The minute she set foot back in Bletchley, you’d have arrested her. My word against hers. Right?”
Her smile was like something engraved in acid. He wanted to slap it off her face. He asked, “But why? Why did you want Chris Wells out of the way?
“She knew, didn’t she? About the AIDS? She was the only one I told. She was no danger to me until I killed Tom Letts. I had to get her out of the way because she would have sorted it. It wouldn’t have taken long for Chris to do that, not her; she’s as clever as her nephew.”
“Why did you wait so long to kill Tom Letts? Four years.”
“Why? Because I didn’t know it was him. I only just discovered it a few weeks ago. Ramona never told me who the da was.”
They sat in silence for a few moments.
Then Macalvie said, “The Bletchleys had children, Chris had Johnny. Not only did she have Johnny, he was always there, in your face, the kind of kid every parent hopes his kid will be like.”
She didn’t reply to this, only looked off at the wall as if she could see through it.
For a couple of minutes they sat that way, Macalvie staring at her, she staring off into nothing.
“Where’s the fucking tape, Brenda?”