Jury and Plant were standing on the pavement in front of the Drowned Man when a white Rolls hove into view and continued its glide down Bletchley’s main street. The late sun lapped about its bonnet and boot, dazzling pedestrians who, like Plant and Jury, stopped to watch.
“What in hell’s that?” asked Jury.
“Moby Dick. What are they doing here?”
Jury squinted as the car got closer. “Doesn’t look like a whale. I think it’s Marshall Trueblood driving.”
“Same thing. Ye gods.”
The car drew abreast of them and the passenger window whispered down. A white silk-sleeved arm was thrust out and a hand waved. The car glided to a stop. “Richard Jury! Oh, what a treat!” called out Diane Demorney. Melrose, the non-treat, got only a perfunctory “Hello.”
Like a cork from a champagne bottle, Marshall Trueblood popped from behind the wheel. Champagne was the color of his Armani suit; his shirt, pocket handkerchief, and tie were all done in watery Monet-garden pastels-pinks, blues, lemons-bringing to mind more a box of saltwater taffy than the gardens at Giverny. Still, he was, as usual, sartorial perfection.
Trueblood could barely contain himself. After opening the passenger-side door he extended a hand toward Diane, who took about the same amount of time as Cleopatra did getting off her barge.
Diane was dressed to match the Rolls: white, slick, and moneyed. But she made tracks from car to curb when it looked as if Trueblood was about to steal all the storytelling thunder. He said, “Wait until you hear about Viv!”
“Marshall!” Diane could really crack the whip when she wanted to. Indeed, this was Diane at her energetic best, talking without a martini to hand, but that lack was about to be filled.
Jury said, “There’s a nice little tearoom right behind you on the other side of the street.”
If a look could shrug, hers did. “There’s a nice little bar right in front of me on this side.” When it came to bars, Diane was a radar gun; she could pick them out faster than cops could target speeding cars.
As they filed into the Drowned Man, Jury asked, “But what about Vivian? What’s going on?”
“Viv-Viv’s going to-” Trueblood’s answer was cut short by the heel of Diane’s shoe grinding down on the instep of his Hugo Boss one.
“Can we get a room here?” asked Diane “Or is there a boardinghouse?”
“You can join Agatha in Lemming Cottage. It’s a B and B.”
Diane shuddered.
“Listen,” said Melrose, annoyed. “Is this related to all of that stuff you were gibbering about a couple of nights ago when you woke me up at two A.M.?”
“Never mind,” said Diane, homing to the bar.
When they were seated round a table and had been served by the unenthusiastic and underemployed Pfinn, Melrose said, “You should have taken the train from Paddington station instead of doing all that driving.”
Diane actually stopped the first martini on its way to her blood-red lips. “Taken what?” She had never been one to explore alternative modes of travel.
“You made good time if you left Long Pidd this morning.”
“We didn’t. We left on Tuesday.”
“Tuesday? But that’s three days ago!”
Trueblood smiled stingily at Diane. “Despite the need for haste, Diane insisted on stopping at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. You know, that restaurant where Raymond Blanc is the chef.”
Jury frowned. “But isn’t that place near Oxford? I was on a case once very near it.”
Trueblood pounded his drink on the table. “Here, here! A Scotland Yard man who’s a bon vivant. Yes, it is near Oxford.”
“Oxford’s north, Diane. Cornwall’s south,” said Melrose.
“Don’t I know it,” said Trueblood. “We stayed there two nights. Food’s a rave, I’ll give it that.”
This time it was Jury who pounded his pint on the table, uncharacteristically for him. “So, give. What’s this prodigious news you haven’t been telling us?”
Plugging a cigarette into her long ebony holder, Diane said, “Our Vivian’s going to marry the count.”
“Count Dracula,” offered Trueblood, in case Jury had forgotten.
Which he hadn’t. “Oh, for God’s sake. That’s news? She’s been going to marry him for-what? Eight years? Nine?” Complacent now, he drank his beer.
“No, old sweat, you don’t understand: Dracula’s here. The ship’s landed, the coffin’s ashore, and all over Northants there’s a shortage of crosses and garlic.”
“Oh, do bloody shut it,” said Diane, who occasionally reverted to her Manchester upbringing. She turned to Jury and Melrose. “He’s in Long Pidd. The wedding’s in two weeks’ time, and she’s in the process of sending out invitations. So we’ve come to collect you,” she said to Melrose. To Jury, she added, “You too, except you’re not so easily collected.” She sighed. “You work for a living.” She said this as if it had a strange and alien ring to it. “Naturally, I’ve been doing what I can, writing warnings into her horoscope. Things like ‘Beware any venture requiring new clothes.’ ”
“Oscar Wilde said that,” Melrose informed her.
“Oh, hell, I thought I did. Then ‘You are about to embark on the darkest journey of your life’ and ‘You will escalate fatuousness into a fatal fall.’ ”
“Sounds good,” said Melrose. “What does it mean?”
“Who cares as long as it sounds good? Anyway, none of this has had any effect, as far as I can tell.” Diane crooked a finger at Pfinn, who paid the table even less attention than Dick Scroggs would have done. Melrose got up and went to the bar, first en-joining Diane to say nothing more until he got back. He didn’t want to miss a word.
As if taking Melrose literally, there wasn’t a word spoken until Trueblood nodded toward the dimly lit doorway and asked, “Whose dogs?”
They were out in full force, all five of them lined up and solidly together, staring at the newcomers’ table. “Pfinn’s,” said Jury. “They line up like that.”
“Okay, go on,” said Melrose, depositing the round of drinks and salt-and-vinegar crisps in the middle of the table.
“As I was saying, our Vivian didn’t appear to be paying much attention to the horoscopes.”
“The only thing we could think of was sabotaging something or other,” said Trueblood, as he tore open one of the crisp packets.
“Sabotage?” Melrose forgot his fresh pint of Old Peculiar and leaned forward, all ears.
Trueblood was searching his pockets and found what he wanted in an inside coat pocket. He unfolded a small square of white cardboard and laid it in front of Jury and Plant. “Of course, all she has to do is hand in fresh copy. Still, I see it as delaying things for a while. One has to give the person ample time to respond.”
They both looked at it, Jury and Plant. It said:
The pleasure of your company
is requested at
the marriage of Miss Vivian Rivington
and Count Dracula on
the fifteenth of October at two o’clock
at the church of St. Rules
Melrose sniggered. “Did she get them?”
“Of course. The shop delivered.”
Melrose sniggered again.
Jury looked from one to the other of them. “Of course, she would have absolutely no idea who did this, you simpletons.”
Trueblood raised his Campari and lime. “Oh, I expect she’ll sort that out. I’ve been avoiding her lately.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Jury.
Diane said, languidly, “As Marshall says, it only delays things for a while, for her to get fresh invitations printed up. I’ve been wracking my brain-”
Which didn’t put up much of a fight, thought Melrose.
“-for some solution, but I can’t come up with anything short of killing him. That is of course a possibility for us, but it would be much better were Vivian to call a halt to this thing of her own accord, which I’m sure she wants to do anyway.”
“What makes you so sure?” asked Melrose.
“Mel-rose, try to engage your mind, will you? Because she’s having the wedding here, of course, I mean in Long Pidd instead of Venice. She’s counting on us stopping it.”
Jury said, “Come on, Diane, Vivian’s not that spineless.”
“Yes, she is,” said Trueblood, though not unkindly. “Spineless is too harsh a word, perhaps, but by now the poor girl’s totally intimidated by the fact she’s let this engagement go on for donkey’s years.”
“What’s he like, then: Dracula?” Melrose asked. But when Trueblood opened his mouth to speak, Melrose said, “I mean, really. I saw him once, so don’t try telling me he looks like a toad.” To Jury, he said, “You remember him, don’t you? We were in Stratford-upon-Avon, in the Dirty Duck.”
“Vaguely,” Jury said.
“In addition to being fairly tall, fairly dark, and fairly handsome, he’s politeness on a platter and usually seems to be lost in contemplation of a world beyond the Jack and Hammer.”
“Is there one?” asked Diane, tapping ash from her cigarette. “And am I in it?” She looked vaguely, dreamily around the room.
Trueblood went on. “I think he’s intelligent, but since he doesn’t talk much, it’s hard to say. It’s all so-irregular.”
“What does that mean?” asked Jury.
“Vivian shouldn’t marry a foreigner. She shouldn’t even marry a person we don’t know. He won’t fit, you know, our little routines.”
Said Diane, “He won’t be around for our little routines, Marshall. I expect they’ll want to live in Venice instead of Long Pidd.”
“Good lord!” said Jury. “Prefer Venice to Long Piddleton? What philistines!”
Trueblood took him seriously. “It’s the truth, though. We don’t like it at all.”
“Tell me, who’s we?”
“Who? Why the Long Piddletonians. Ada Crisp is dead against it, as is Miss Twinney. Jurvis the Butcher is all out of sorts. Dick Scroggs doesn’t think this foreigner has any business just marching in here and carrying off Vivian. Trevor Sly’s beside himself-”
“No,” said Jury. “Richard Jury’s beside himself listening to this twaddle. Trevor Sly? Since when did any of you ever give a bloody damn what he thinks? And how did you collect these opinions anyway? Do a door-to-door canvass?”
“Well, no, not exactly…”
“Not exactly. What you did was buttonhole anybody you could and talk about Franco Giopinno in most unflattering terms. The point being,” Jury went on, just as testily, “how do you know she isn’t in love with him?”
Three pairs of eyes looked at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses.
Love?
Love was quickly jettisoned. “I hope you’re intending to come back with us, old sweat,” said Trueblood to Plant. “We’ve got to fix up-you know-something, some way to get Viv-Viv out of this.”
Jury’s tone was sarcastic, something he rarely reverted to. “I hope it’s as successful as your trip to Venice to announce my impending wedding.”
They had done this but preferred not to be reminded.
Trueblood said, “It did work, Superintendent, remember? It got her back to Northants, didn’t it? C’mon, Melrose, think, will you?” He tented his hand over his brow as if his brain wattage was about to blow.
Melrose sighed. “Why bother? Look who’s here to do it for us.” He nodded in the direction of the doorway.
Lady Ardry, accompanied by her doppelganger, Esther Laburnum, filled the spot recently vacated by the five dogs. It wasn’t, Melrose decided, much of a trade-off. They stood, arm in arm, then moved forward toward the table, still arm in arm, as smoothly as a couple in a ballroom dancing contest.
Said Agatha, “Well! Here’s half of Long Piddleton come like the mountain to Muhammad. I’d like to introduce my good friend Esther Laburnum.” She did so, coming round to Jury. “And this is my great friend Superintendent Richard Jury, who’s solved more cases than you could shake a stick at, but like your typical policeman is never around when you need him.” Agatha laughed at her little joke. “Thank you,” she said to Jury, who had politely risen to pull two chairs up to the table.
Esther Laburnum, who could talk a blue streak selling real estate, was silent; but, then, Agatha would make up for it, as she was always worth two people talking. They sat down and she ordered large sherries for both of them.
“Superintendent, this is a bad thing, isn’t it? I was astounded when I heard it was that Friel woman-”
Melrose interrupted. “I thought you said you suspected her right along, Agatha.”
“More or less. Yes, my heart does go out to that boy, having his aunt killed in that way.”
Was she, Melrose wondered, delivering a message to this boy, Melrose?
“What will happen to him?”
Esther Laburnum drank off her sherry in one go and, thus lubricated, found her faculty of speech had not deserted her. “The Woodbine is heavily in debt. Of course, it belongs to young John now, or the controlling interest does. Brenda Friel’s interest in it-well, who knows who that’ll go to.” She looked round the table as if she expected someone there to cough up an answer. “She’s no family I know of, except some distant relations in London; her life revolved around that girl of hers, Ramona. Oh, such a tragedy, such a tragedy. I expect John’ll have to sell up to pay off the debts, but property such as that tearoom is not in demand.”
While Esther handed down this litany of woe, Agatha sat there smiling approval as if Esther were a wind-up doll set to present the opinions of its mistress.
“The dear boy,” Esther continued, “seemed not to want to heed my advice, but then I expect he’s too upset to think of practical matters. I told him that perhaps he could induce Mrs. Hayter to help run the place as long as her sympathy was involved-”
Even Marshall Trueblood was taken aback, listening to such blatant cynicism.
“-to do the baking and so forth, but I couldn’t imagine her doing all of it, and advised him again, quite firmly, to sell up.”
“Who’s the buyer?” asked Diane Demorney, narrowly regarding Esther through a scrim of cigarette smoke.
Esther sat up straight, her hands fluttering about her throat-her pearls, her neckline. “What? What are you suggesting?”
Diane shrugged. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely saying you must have a buyer. You seem to be so anxiously advising this boy to sell his property. Sounds like there’s scarcely a moment to lose, I, mean, seeing how you intrude upon his grief this way.”
There was dead silence, as there so often is if one speaks a hugely embarrassing truth. Diane looked at Melrose and then away again with a tart little smile. A speech like this from Diane came around as often as a chorus of caroling goldfish at Christmas.
Esther Laburnum looked to Agatha for something- support, Melrose imagined. And pigs might fly. Esther then took the only course open to her: she changed the subject. In a simpering manner, she said to Melrose, “Lord Ardry, I don’t imagine you had any idea what you were in for when you took Seabourne House.”
This innocuous observation called forth nothing from Melrose but “No, I didn’t.”
“It was so dreadful, what happened to those poor Bletchley children. Unimaginable.”
“Not, unfortunately, unimaginable. Someone was very able to imagine it.”
“But it’s still a mystery. Had she-you know-anything to do with it?”
She-you-know meaning Brenda Friel. Hers was now a name one best not speak, as if it carried in it some black enchantment that might lead other innocents down to the sea.
Melrose answered, “Not that I know of.”
Esther kept going. “And that poor young man at Bletchley Hall. I heard she was the one who shot him. Good heavens! Her mind was obviously disturbed, wasn’t it?”
Jury said, “There was a great deal of disturbance.” He rose. “I’m going to collect my things. Got to head back to London.”
“Now? Oh, surely not!” said Esther Laburnum, as if she were fully conversant with Jury’s job.
“I’m afraid so. As soon as I can find Sergeant Wiggins.”
“But-” Diane paused. “You can at least stop in Long Piddleton. It’s right on your way.”
“For anyone who thinks Oxford is on the way to Cornwall, yes, I guess it is.” Jury smiled.
“But we’ve been absolutely counting on you.”
Jury laughed. “Not too much, Miss Demorney. You only saw me an hour ago.”
Diane wasn’t giving up. “But that’s the effect you have on people, don’t you know? The minute one sees you, one begins to count on you. One begins to undertake all sorts of supposedly impossible schemes because you can pull one through.”
Jury laughed harder. “You can certainly take a compliment and run with it.”
Melrose said, “I’ll be cutting my visit short, Miss Laburnum; I’ll be returning to Northamptonshire with my friends.”
“I, myself,” said Agatha, “will be staying on in Bletchley a bit longer.”
Was that a collective sigh of relief Melrose heard? “Esther here is giving me a crash course in selling real estate. She seems to think I’ve a natural aptitude for it.”
Melrose felt like resting his head in the peanut bowl. Agatha couldn’t sell anyone a winning lottery ticket. Imagine her trying to sell a house. He felt weak with held-back laughter.
“Well, I don’t see what’s so amusing about that! I’ve nothing more to say to you, Melrose, nothing at all.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You could say you’ve been to Bletchley, but you’ve never been to you.” Melrose tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth and smiled.
Jury was upstairs packing (“my meager belongings”); Trueblood was valuing the furniture (“A George First bureau, by God; do you think this Bletchley fellow would let it go?”); and Diane and Melrose were standing in the foyer as she gazed round and round and finally landed on the staircase.
“Melrose, did you ever see an old film… what was its name? It was before my time of course-most things are-but it’s on video. It’s about this old house…”
Diane recounted the entire story of The Uninvited as Melrose stood rooted, mouth agape, absolutely bamboozled by the idea that he and Diane shared a common memory.
“It always made me feel-”
Diane feeling?
“-rather queer, rather off.”
Even if the feelings hardly reached beyond the murky depths of “queer” and “off.”
“As a matter of fact, Diane, yes, I do know it. The Uninvited, it’s called. I thought of it the first time I saw this house.” He was prepared to explore this strange coincidence of his and Diane’s being, possibly, the only two people in the world besides Dan Bletchley who had seen and remembered The Uninvited. “Now, the music, if you recall-”
“But the girl, Melrose. That dreadful white dress!”
So much for exploration; they were back safely in Demorney territory of paper tigers and cardboard alligators and designer wardrobes. She was plugging a cigarette into her foot-long holder, which he then lighted.
“What are you going to do about Vivian, Melrose?”
“Do?”
“Yes, do.”
“Oh… Trueblood and I will think of something.”
Diane heaved a great sigh. “I’m not talking about one of your daffy schemes. Good God, I still remember that black notebook business.”
Melrose preferred to forget it. To pay her back, he smirked and said, “You wouldn’t be interested in Count Dracula yourself, would you?”
Diane looked pained. “Don’t be absurd. And I don’t want to live in Venice. All that wine and water.”
“You make it sound like quite a religious experience.”
Looking round, as if she expected the doors of a drinks cabinet to fly open on seeing her, Diane asked, “You wouldn’t have any vodka about, would you?”
“Oh, I’m sure we can find some.”
Martini in hand-or, rather, vodka in hand, vermouth having eluded their search, “as if it mattered”-Diane trailed after Trueblood, making unschooled comments about the carpets and sideboards and silver and never shutting up, no matter how many times he told her to.
Jury had come down with his duffelbag.
“Three weeks in Ireland and that’s all you took?”
“Since one might not survive three days, I didn’t see the sense in packing for a long and happy life, right?”
“Did you call Macalvie? You said you were going to.”
“No. I thought we’d stop in Exeter. Unlike Oxford, it is on the way.”
Melrose pulled him aside (as from an unseen audience) and said, “Listen, you really should stop off in Long Piddleton.”
“And like Oxford, that is not on the way.”
“Come on. Vivian would listen to you.”
Jury laughed. “No, she wouldn’t. And who the hell are we to tell her what to do? It’s her life.”
“Oh, please. You’re not going to resort to that old cliché, made up for people who want to abnegate responsibility?”
“She’s my responsibility? Moi?” Jury clapped his hands to his chest.
“Certainly. It’s not ‘her’ life.”
“It isn’t? Then whose?”
“All of ours. You’ve got to do something, Richard. She’d listen to you.”
Jury just gazed at him.
“Don’t give me that look. It’s your what a chump look.”
“It is indeed.”
Brian Macalvie did the search himself.
He’d been permitted a “limited” warrant to search only for this tape, and for this tape only. Anything else found in the course of the search could be appropriated. Her rights, thought Macalvie. He was only glad there wasn’t anything else he wanted, at least not at the moment.
The tape was in a kitchen cupboard that Brenda reserved for over three dozen prettily wrapped packages of ginger biscuits waiting to be apportioned half to Bletchley Hall and half to a home for abused wives and children in Truro.
How fucking thoughtful, Macalvie thought.
The two packages were the same size as all the others and wrapped in identical colorful paper, the only difference being that these two did not wear one of the WOODBINE TEAROOM silver stickers. That was to tell Brenda which packages held the tapes. Damned funny if someone was expecting biscuits and found that film instead.
Damned funny, thought Macalvie.
Brenda had sat three hours longer in that scarred and straight-backed wooden chair. She was not going to give up the tapes. She looked at him and exhaled smoke from the last cigarette in her pack into the already smoke-filled room.
“What’s the difference?” she said. “Why would you want to know anything more than the fact Simon Bolt did film it. It’s what I already told you. I shouldn’t think the details of their deaths would be very pleasant to watch.”
“I’m sure.” Macalvie had risen and was pacing in the room’s semi-darkness. The only available light was that coming from the shaded bulb hanging above the table, casting a pool of bleached light over her hands. Shadows played tricks with her face.
Macalvie stopped pacing. “The thing is, Brenda, it’s not past. It’ll never be past for the Bletchleys. It will never be past for Morris Bletchley.”
“May I have a cup of tea?”
Macalvie ignored this as he had every request she’d made, except going to the loo. A WPC had escorted her. She had also been given water. The police code no doubt dictated a certain amount of consideration should be given the witness, but Macalvie didn’t give a damn.
He continued. “Morris Bletchley has been living in a sort of limbo-you yourself predicted that-not knowing exactly what happened: how they got down there, what made them stay. Not knowing is a kind of hell. You must have experienced something like though hardly to the extent Bletchley did.” He stopped and waited.
“You’re not going to show that tape to Morris Bletchley, for God’s sake!”
It was the only time in this interrogation she had actually shown some emotion. And what she apparently felt was shock and gratification. And hunger, a hunger to enlarge upon the old man’s suffering. It showed in her face, which appeared to lose some of its pliant smoothness and take on a bony, chiseled gauntness, as if a death’s head were showing through. The tricks of shadows.
Macalvie said, “Don’t you think Bletchley deserves to know what happened? Now, you’ve got nothing to lose if he knows.”
She actually tilted that skeletal face back and laughed, the laughter like some residue of a saner time, even a carefree time, when her daughter was alive. But it was just that: a residue, quickly used up. Nothing to laugh about now, except-
“Morris Bletchley.” She sighed. “How I wanted to send it to him! But that wasn’t the purpose of the film; that would have been icing on the cake.”
Icing on the cake. Macalvie turned away.
“I knew I wasn’t clever enough to outwit the army of investigators he’d hire.”
Macalvie interrupted. “You told me all that.” He splayed his arms on the table and leaned close to her. “So you can make this your dying wish, can’t you? Poor old Bletchley watching that tape.”
Brenda smiled that thin death’s-head smile.
She told him.
Macalvie sat in Brenda Friel’s little sitting room watching a hand-held camera panning the dark cliff and the shiny-wet stair down to the water behind Seabourne. That little oblong that fit the top of the plastic casing was missing, but it still fit in the VCR.
Some sort of light arrangement had been set up near the stone steps, which would have revealed this little drama had anyone else been there to see it. But there was only Mrs. Hayter, whose room was on the other side of the house.
Moonlight augmented the artificial, making the latter almost superfluous. The camera followed a pretty girl-how old? teens, most likely-wearing a dress made diaphanous by the moon, and Macalvie wondered what uses beauty could be put to. The whole scheme needed a woman, any woman, to go down the steps with them, to make them feel at all safe. Macalvie could only speculate on the little kids’ feelings; he imagined daring was outweighed by the adventure of it all.
The stone steps, after all, were utterly familiar. It certainly wasn’t the first time they’d gone down them. Of course, they’d been told never to go down them without an adult. Well, here was an adult to make it safe.
They stood either side of the older girl. She was holding their hands as they stood, posing for the camera, at the top of the stairs. The little girl Esmé’s sharp giggle startled Macalvie. He had expected the sound of the sea, but not of the children.
The three of them started down the steps in a sort of awkward single file, the girl in between, holding both of the children’s hands. Esmé, the older, was in front; Noah was behind.
The camera followed close behind. There was only a bit of wind and Mounts Bay was almost calm, water insinuating itself under the boat and gently washing over the steps at the bottom. The Bletchleys’ boat rocked peacefully in the slurred waves, tethered by a long rope anchored by a ring in the cliffside.
Even as Macalvie watched, he could swear another step, farther up, was now sluiced by water. It was as if the tide were obliging Bolt’s camera work, a fake sea against fake rocks. But there was no denying the power of this terrible film as Macalvie watched the children get farther and farther down the steps and the camera move farther and farther back, as if it did not want to chance going down to those bottom steps.
But the camera could make out what was happening at the bottom. The children were now into water that covered their feet but still delighting in this game, one part of which seemed to be something the young girl had taken from her sling bag, but whatever it was, was hidden by her back.
Macalvie leaned closer, squinting as she turned and the viewer could see what she was doing. A bracelet winked in the light. No. A choke chain, something a dog owner would put on an unruly pet. His mouth went completely dry. How could he have missed it, for God’s sake? Looking at what she was doing: two chains, one for Noah, one for Esmé, gone around their wrists and then hooked to the ring that kept the boat moored. Esme’s right wrist, Noah’s left, their other two hands free.
The water was up their legs now. They had stopped laughing. Bolt now dared the slippery steps (fucking coward, afraid he’d get wet?) and the camera honed in on their faces. The faces were beginning to crumple. Both of them wanted to stop the game, to go back up the cliff.
But it was the young woman who went back up, and then of course they knew. They were trapped at the bottom in water now waist high and they couldn’t move more than a few feet. They wept; they began to howl with fear. The girl kept walking upward.
And then Esmé became aware of the boat, shoved a little closer to the cliff by the waves. She grabbed Noah’s hand and lunged for it. If they could reach the boat, it would buoy them up.
Macalvie was standing now. He was watching the kids maneuvering toward the boat (and the boat, as if in silent assent, rocking toward them); he was watching as if this were a story whose ending was as yet unknown. As if the little kids really were actors and the scene was counterfeit.
She made it. Esmé was close enough to haul herself into the boat and then to drag Noah in after her, once she-
But the girl went back down the steps as quickly as the slippery surface permitted. She went into the waist-deep water and pulled Esmé and Noah out and shoved at the boat, which then turned and floated out of reach.
The children screamed. Macalvie shook his head at this visceral image. They’d been so close to saving themselves. He looked, then, to see their faces, the last view he’d get of their faces before the waves washed over them, and then their two free hands, holding onto each other, raised above the water-
And that was all.
That was the end.
Macalvie crossed his arms on the table, lowered his head to them, and wept.
Melrose might have said that Count Franco Giopinno pretty much lived up to expectations, except for his ability to cast a reflection in a mirror and appear without apparent difficulty during the daylight hours and in public at the Jack and Hammer.
That was where Melrose had first seen him, entering with bright daylight at his back, dramatically silhouetted in the doorway through which Vivian Rivington had just preceded him.
Franco Giopinno paused there to light a cigarette he’d extracted from a gold case. If he was posing, it was effective. The contours of his face looked sculpted, chiseled, hardly flesh.
“At least,” said Diane, seated at their favorite table in the window, “he smokes.”
“But what,” asked Joanna Lewes, their local writer of romance stories, “does he drink?”
Trueblood immediately whisked out his money clip, clapped down a note, and said, “Fiver says Campari and lime.”
Melrose pulled out a ten-pound note and slapped that down, saying, “Dry dry dry dry dry sherry. A glass of dust.”
Joanna put down a twenty. “Gin and tonic.”
Diane covered those two bills with a ten-pound note of her own. “Definitely dry dry dry dry, but a martini”-she pondered-“olive, rocks. Though God only knows why anyone would want to water down vodka.”
Even Theo Wrenn Browne, not ordinarily at their table and certainly not ordinarily a betting man (as it cost money), carefully extracted two pound coins from his change purse and put them down. “Red wine, probably burgundy.”
“Theo,” said Diane, “that’s only two pounds.”
“It’s only red wine, too.”
“We’re not buying, we’re betting,” said Joanna.
Diane said, voice low, “He knows how to dress, that’s certain.”
The count had now met two of the Demorney criteria for “amusing.” It was true; he did know how to dress. His suit was of such a fine material that it aroused one’s tactile sense, as if one simply had to touch it. It was a fine soft gray, the color of the ash hanging from the end of Diane’s cigarette.
“Um-um, um-um, um-um,” murmured Diane.
“Armani, Armani, Ar-man-i,” murmured Trueblood.
“He’s coming,” whispered Browne. “Don’t stare!”
Theo then looked everywhere else, as if not seeing this Armani-in-the-flesh bearing down on them, an ashen angel whose presence Vivian didn’t seem to register, for she walked straightaway to the table.
She did remember to introduce him, and quite graciously. One could hardly blame poor Vivian’s nervousness and reticence; she’d taken so much over the years on this man’s account.
The table needed one more chair, so the count wheeled one around and placed it beside Vivian’s.
Small talk about Italy, about Venice, occupied them for the few moments it took Dick Scroggs to make his way over to the table for orders.
“Just a sherry,” said Vivian.
And the count? “Pellegrino.”
Scroggs asked, “You mean the fizzy stuff? That mineral water, like?”
Giopinno nodded.
Scroggs started to move away when Diane said, “And what?”
“Pardon?” The count’s smile was a trifle supercilious.
“Pellegrino and what?”
“Nothing. I always drink water minerale. Good for you.”
Looking at Diane Demorney’s expression, one might challenge that last statement. Melrose hoped she had not gone into a coma, and that hers was merely like that look of wild surmise that Keats attributed to Cortez, or perhaps that seaward look on the face of Hardy’s heroine, “prospect impressed.”
For that of course was what “water” meant to Diane-the sea, a river, something to swim in, to boat on, to idle by. One might wash in it, dip one’s pedicured toes in it, give one’s flowers another measure of it. It even had its uses in tea or coffee, which then ceased to be “water.”
The only thing one didn’t do was drink it. The count contravened that rule, airily pouring the bubbly stuff into the tall glass Dick Scroggs had brought him, and drank it down.
They all looked at the money on the table.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Today was Melrose’s second encounter with Vivian’s intended.
“Where’s our Viv?” asked Trueblood of Franco Giopinno as they sat round the table in the window of the Jack and Hammer.
Giopinno’s smile was knowing and proprietary. “Gone to London.” He exhaled a stream of smoke, thin as his smile. “To see about her dress.”
“Ah,” said Diane. “Then she isn’t going to wear her mother’s?”
Not only did Giopinno raise a questioning eyebrow, Trueblood and Plant did as well.
Diane also blew out a dragonlike puff of smoke. “Mad Maud’s.”
The eyebrows went higher all around the table.
“Well, surely she told you about her mum.”
“No. No, she didn’t,” said Giopinno.
When both Trueblood and Plant seconded this “no,” Diane gave them a blistering look as if she’d seen quicker uptakes. “Don’t tell me you two don’t know about Vivian’s mother.” This was said in such a slow, lesson-for-idiots way that both of them wiped the confusion from their countenances and said, Oh, yes, of course. Sad little story, that.
“And what might that sad little story be?” asked Giopinno.
“Oh, it’s just the family, you know, with this strain of madness which only turns up in the women, for some reason,” said Diane, who then quickly, falsely, took Vivian off the hook of this crazy streak in the Rivington ladies. “I don’t mean that Vivian-”
Pompously, Trueblood put in, “Of course not, no, not Viv-Viv. I certainly wouldn’t say that little episode last year had anything to do with the mother and so forth.”
“Episode?”
“Oh, never mind,” said Diane. “It was nothing.”
“Nothing at all. Hardly worth the mention. I wonder you even bring it up, Diane. I mean, after all, it’s Vivian’s business-”
“Let’s just drop it,” said Melrose. “It’s nothing, anyway.”
Franco Giopinno looked from one to the other, chillingly. “There is probably some level of madness in every family. Certainly, there is in mine.” He excused himself and walked over to the bar, where Scroggs was apparently giving him directions to the gents’.
“Oh, bloody great,” said Trueblood. “Certainlythere-is-in-mine! How condescending, how fatuous.”
“They both can sit around going crazy together. What a lark.” Melrose watched Giopinno’s elegantly suited figure disappear into the dark environs of Scroggs’s back rooms.
Diane looked at Melrose “Vivian, darling, is not crazy. God, you two.”
“A brilliant idea, though, Diane.”
Trueblood had plucked a stub of pencil and an old envelope from one of his pockets. “We must make a list.” Trueblood loved lists. “A list of anything that might provoke some anxiety in old Drac. Now”-he scrunched down over the bit of paper-“money is notorious in provoking it. I’ll just put that down.” He wrote. Then, “Okay, what else?”
“Property,” said Melrose.
Trueblood paused for a beat. “But wouldn’t that be covered by money? It’s part of the estate, after all.”
“Yes, but it’s not liquid. There’s her house, probably bring in a million quid on today’s market, but there’s no cash flow there.”
Trueblood grunted, nodded. “Okay, I have ‘Property’ down under ‘Money’ as a kind of subheading.”
Diane screwed another cigarette into her ivory holder and said, “Cohorts. Friends and cohorts.”
Trueblood frowned. “But that’s us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Marshall. I’m talking about anyone around who might be considered unsavory. Tonight, the two of you could begin by taking him to dinner. Somewhere rather awful; that should be easy around here.”
“You mean the three of us. You too.”
“Melrose, I have no intention of eating at someplace awful. No, you two must do it. Three of us would be too threatening. Anyway-” She sat tapping her fingernail on her glass. Ordinarily, she only did this when she wanted her glass refilled, so she must have been thinking hard. “We’ll divide it up: You two take, ‘friends and cohorts’ and I’ll take ‘money and property.’ ” She sat up straighter. “Hush. Here he comes.” She whispered. “Remember, dinner tonight, someplace awful.”
“Awful” was probably the first word that came to mind in describing the Blue Parrot, Trevor Sly’s one or two acres of Mojave or Sahara. The gaudy sign on the main Northampton Road pictured a smoky room, a belly dancer, dark-featured and festooned gentlemen in turbans and golden chains in a scene meant to depict a place such as Tangier. The sign pointed the thirsty traveler down a rutted, narrow road, at the end of which was what one might have taken for a mirage: a bright blue building sitting in a waste of stubble and sandy gravel.
Leaving behind him the scorching Arabian sun (or so it must have made the count feel) and entering the cooler environs of the pub, Franco Giopinno stood for a while staring at the camel.
Trueblood gave him a little dig in the ribs. “Clever, that. Sly has so much imagination.”
“Sly? You confuse me, dear man.”
“Trevor Sly’s the owner.”
“And is the owner a foreigner, then?”
“Only if you consider Todcaster foreign.”
Said Melrose, “Many do, I’m sure.” He was scanning the menu on the chalkboard set into the papiermâché camel’s middle. It was the same as always. Half a dozen unpronounceable Middle Eastern or Lithuanian dishes. He was familiar with only one, one being enough.
Trueblood said, “The Blue Parrot is way off the beaten track-”
The count choked up a derisive laugh. “I can well imagine.”
“-but it’s Vivian’s favorite place to dine.”
“That I can’t imagine.”
Melrose, who had left the camel to make its own way, was standing now at the bar. “Hey! You two!” He was at the bar, waving them forward. “We want to order before he closes the kitchen.”
Joining Melrose, the count looked at his watch in astonishment, pointing out that it was but six-thirty.
“Sly is eccentric; he shuts down the food by seven.”
Again, astonishment from the count. “But that is very early to dine. Does this Sly have to feed the camels?”
Melrose and Trueblood whooped with laughter. Only “whooping” could describe the breathy, braying noises that came from their throats. It was such staged laughter that Melrose was amazed the man could be taken in.
Trevor Sly made his angular entrance, his sharp shoulder blades separating the beaded curtain, which tinkled behind him, his thin gnarled hands washing each other in the insincere supplication Melrose was used to. This tendency toward deference greased all the joints of his tall body. He was a study in seeming submission.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, so honored.” His hands kept washing away. “Mr. Trueblood, Mr. Plant, and-?” Sly raised a quirky eyebrow as he looked at the count, who bowed slightly and tendered his name.
He pronounced it, thought Melrose, almost as well as Diane, hitting those first two syllables with a hammer so that they came out Gee-yp-peen-o, almost with the unfractured sound of gyp.
And now, as if the gods looked down for a good laugh, Sly asked, “And how is Miss Rivington? Always enjoy seeing Miss Rivington.”
For once, Trevor Sly’s trying to convince his listener that everybody in the English-Arab-speaking world loved nothing more than a drink and a meal at the Blue Parrot (“Tony Blair only just missed the turnoff; I’ll have to do something about the placement of my sign”)-for once Melrose welcomed Sly’s name-dropping. They might have dragged Vivian here once, but certainly once had been enough for her. Melrose had never been able to sort out just how Sly managed to keep the place running, for in all the times he’d been here he’d never seen more than one or two other people.
“You’ve not run out of the Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi, now?” said Melrose, turning to the count. “You must have that,” he said, clamping his hand on Giopinno’s shoulder. He and Trueblood had been doing a lot of clamping, punching, and shaking of the count.
Trevor Sly had drawn their beer-a Cairo Flame for the count-despite the man’s preference for Pellegrino. Trueblood insisted. “Good lord, you don’t expect our old drinking buddy Vivian to quaff mineral water!”
Sly had helped himself to a tot of cognac after Melrose told him to have a drink on them and was sitting on his high stool, legs wound round its legs like ivy. Now he said, “There’s been a real run on that today, Mr. Plant.” To the count, he said, “You see, it’s my specialty-of-the-house-”
If no one was ever in the house, how could the kitchen have had a run on anything?
“-but I’m sure I can eke out one order of Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi, seeing it’s you, Mr. Giopinno.” Sly had it rhyming with Geronimo.
“Eke-ing out” was about all the Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi could do.
Mr. Giopinno said he would gladly give up the order to Mr. Plant or Mr. Trueblood, Mr. Plant and Mr. Trueblood waved away his most generous offer.
“No, no,” said Trueblood. “You must have it; that dish is Vivian’s favorite and she makes it now herself, having got the recipe from Trevor here.”
Trevor looked about to interrupt, and Trueblood hurried on.
“Miss Rivington is soon to be married, Mr. Sly, and this is the lucky man!” He punched Giopinno’s shoulder.
Sly was all astonishment. “Well, I never… well, that’s good news, isn’t it, gentlemen? And when’s the happy event to be?”
“Next month,” said Trueblood. “October… tenth? Is that it?”
Giopinno seemed a bit reluctant to confirm this. “We were thinking of the fifteenth. There has been some little problem with the invitations.” His smile was a trifle weak.
Sly said, “You’ll be living in Italy, I expect? How romantic.” Back on his stool after pouring himself-at Plant’s suggestion-another slug of cognac, he said, “And where is the reception to be?”
Melrose said, “Why not here, Mr. Sly? They could come by camel.”
Before the count could clarify their intention to live in Italy, Melrose said, “Not in Italy altogether, no. Much of the time they’ll be living right here!” He pounded the bar as if “right here” really did mean “right here.”
Unfortunately for him, the count had just taken a mouthful of Sly’s Cairo Flame and choked on it. The beer was hellish all by itself; coupled with the announcement that he would always have access to it by living “here”-that was hell indeed.
“So they’ll be in Italy only part of the year,” Melrose said. This was, actually, what Vivian had told them. The truth was so relaxing, he reflected. One didn’t have constantly to be keeping track; one could always revert to it with confidence and a clear conscience. Melrose raised his glass and Trueblood followed suit. “So drink up! Mr. Sly, bring on the Kibbi Bi-Saniyyi.”
“And another Cairo Flame for Franco, here!” Melrose clapped him again on the shoulder.
To her credit, Diane Demorney was not, for once, looking out for number one. She had no designs on Franco Giopinno. Had she at first been a little smitten, that went out the window with San Pellegrino. He was certainly handsome, but not really awfully amusing. Indeed he seemed a bit dry, a bit too literal, and (Diane was certain) a bit too poor.
It was plain as the nose on his well-chiseled face that the man was a fortune hunter, a type of which Diane could hardly disapprove, having been one herself for so long and having been amply rewarded for her troubles by her three wealthy ex-husbands.
Yes, she knew the signs because she knew herself: cool reserve, an excessive desire to please, masked by a certain hauteur (for one couldn’t be seen as a pushover, could one?), but more than anything else-tenacity. And God only knew, Giopinno was tenacious. No man could put up with the ambivalence of Vivian Rivington (who definitely needed to be taken in hand) unless he knew he would be rewarded handsomely.
It was the following morning and the two-Diane Demorney and Franco Giopinno-sat in the little café annexed to the library. Marshall Trueblood’s idea of introducing “Latte at the Library” had been a howling success and had saved the librarian’s goose. Otherwise, the place might just have been closed down for lack of custom, whereas now it was quite abuzz with the stuff.
Two tables away sat Plant and Trueblood; Diane had insisted (out of the count’s hearing, of course), “Leave, or sit by yourselves! Too many of us would look like harassment!” They sat at the corner table, pretending to read a couple of library books.
Diane had made small arrangements herself. One of these had just walked in: Theo Wrenn Browne, the owner of the local bookstore (who’d been behind trying to get rid of the library). When Diane had first settled in Long Piddleton, she’d found Theo Wrenn Browne rather amusing, with his conniving, acerbic temper and relentless attacks on other Piddletonians. But he had fast become rather a bore, for there was no acerbic wit to match the acerbic temperament.
Now, Theo stood in the doorway of the café, looking around in that self-important way of his, as if he couldn’t make out where Diane and Giopinno were sitting (although there were only six tables). Theo was waiting for her to see him. It helped his flailing ego to have her raise her hand and motion him over. She did, he went.
Theo had been told that the count was looking for a solid business investment and was especially interested in books. “A bookshop such as-oh, what is it-Waterstone’s? One of those discount stores.” The count had said this, he had said precisely this, with no further augmentation of the subject by way of his wanting to own a bookstore. They had been talking about reading. Diane avoided it and so (she thought) did he. That was because he talked about it so much. To quiet him, she brought up Henry James. She brought up The Portrait of a Lady. “You remember”-of course he didn’t-“that awful clash of cultures? How the sweet young heiress falls into the clutches of the corrupt Europeans?” Diane truly warmed to this subject. “And that absolutely dreadful husband of hers? They lived in Venice, coincidentally.”
This was the sum and substance of Diane’s knowledge of the Henry James novel. And of the entire James oeuvre. It was simply one of the bits of knowledge she gleaned from reading just a little so she’d never have to read a lot.
Oh! But Franco Giopinno had gone more than a little white when she’d brought that up! Indeed, she considered reading more of this author’s work; James just might be amusing if he could call up such a look of trepidation on Giopinno’s face.
Theo was at the counter getting himself a latte, and Diane called to him to get Count Giopinno another espresso. Looking disgruntled, Theo gave the order. Espresso (she thought) was probably the only thing the count had enjoyed in the last twelve or sixteen hours.
Theo set the little cup before the count; Diane performed the introductions, the count gave his little seated bow and a grazzi, and Theo started in immediately talking about his bookshop. Theo was about as soigné as a skunk, Diane thought, which was the reason for choosing him.
“So, Mr. Giopinno, excuse me, Signore Giopinno, you’re interested in books? I have, you know, the local bookshop called The Wrenn’s Nest-bit of a pun there, you know?-anyway, it’s done extremely well, had a gross of-oh, one hundred fifty thousand pounds this past year, looking to do even better by the end of this year…”
And on and on, with Giopinno looking-well, bemused, at best. He did, however, have silky manners and would never in the world have presented a bored countenance.
Diane, tuning Theo out, glanced at Melrose and Marshall, who had given up all pretense of reading and were leaning as far as they could toward her table, trying to hear. She made a lightning-quick run with her finger across her neck. Immediately they went back to their books. Marshall, she noticed, was reading his upside-down. God.
“… that the area could easily support one of your chain bookshops-not that I’m suggesting we get a Dillon’s, God, no; an independently run big bookstore, that’s the ticket!”
While Theo droned on, Diane waited for Agatha to appear. Diane had told Agatha that the count was interested in investing in real estate; she had suggested using Vivian’s house as an example.
“Why? Vivian’s living in it.”
“Oh, but of course she’ll want to sell it when she moves to Venice.”
Agatha now stood in the cafe’s doorway, and that woman was with her, that estate agent from Cornwall. All the better. Diane waved and smiled.
Theo Wrenn Browne excused himself and took his empty cup up for a refill. He detested Agatha except on the occasions she was useful to his cause. His biggest cause was getting rid of Miss Ada Crisp so he could expand his quaint little bookshop.
The two women hurried over to the table as if real estate deals were falling from the ceiling and were introduced to Franco Giopinno. Graciously, he rose and made a brief hand-kissing movement and sat down again, looking extremely unhappy.
“Well, now, Franco,” said Agatha, never the one to stand on ceremony or good manners. “You’ve got a marvelous property turnover here, and it’s wise to consider an investment. Vivian’s house, for instance, is better got rid of than kept. It’s high-end, not practical with all that thatch, which clearly needs re-thatching; in a little place like this-well, there’s not much call for such properties, and if one needs the money-”
A look at the count’s face made it clear one did.
“-the wise thing to do is sell up and put the money in other properties.”
“God!” exclaimed Theo Wrenn Browne, who’d returned with his fresh cup of cappuccino. “Property’s a hell of an investment these days. You don’t want property, count, you want-”
“I beg your pardon-Mr. Browne, is it? You own that sweet little bookshop?”
Theo fumed. “Sweet” and “little” was not the picture he was trying to get across. “I’m expanding, got to, what with all the custom-”
“To where?” asked Agatha, shaking with manufactured laughter. “You lost out on Ada Crisp’s place next door. Shouldn’t have started that lawsuit, it only made you look bad.”
Considering it was Agatha’s lawsuit, Diane reflected on the shortness of the memories and the division of the loyalties of some of these people.
Esther Laburnum picked up with what she’d been about to say to Theo. “You’re quite wrong to think real estate a poor investment; it never is. You just have to know what you’re doing.”
As with anything, thought Diane. Blowing a curl of smoke into the air, she saw the awful Withersby woman leaning up against the counter and talking the ear off little Alice Broadstairs. Mrs. Withersby charred here occasionally. She fit the cohort and property category to a T. Now if she could only fit the woman in.
Mrs. Withersby, doughty advocate of positioning herself wherever drink and smokes were being consumed, fit herself in. There was, after all, a new person sitting at that table who might be good for a glass or two.
As she approached, Agatha was saying, “What Vivian could do, once she sells up, is buy one or two of the almshouses where those Withersby people live.”
“Someone callin’ fer me?”
Yes, thought Diane. God is. She closed her eyes briefly and gave thanks to Saint Coincidence. She hadn’t set foot in a church in decades. The closest she’d got was that wine-tasting in the vestry of St. Rules. Now she wondered if judgment about the faith had been too hasty. “Mrs. Withersby!” She’d never said more than two words to the woman in her life. Now she was offering her cigarette case. “I’d like you to meet Count Franco Giopinno.”
Having helped herself to four of Diane’s cigarettes, she looked the count up and down. “Don’t know as you’d fancy me as a neighbor.”
Giopinno, his color having gone from white to whiter, rose and, bowing to the three women said, “If you will be so kind as to excuse me, I have an urgent call to make-my mother.” He mumbled something about his mother’s illness as he put on his coat; then he slipped away like smoke.
Diane excused herself and went to sit with Plant and Trueblood.
“Where’s he going? Is he gone?”
“I’d certainly imagine so. He went to call his mother, for God’s sake, mumbling something about her being ill. That, I suspect, is prelude to his having to leave suddenly.” She sighed and said, “Well, that’s sorted, then.”
She felt something akin to sadness, such as children feel when their favorite game is over and they have to go in to tea.
Brian Macalvie rose when Morris Bletchley-without his wheelchair-came into the blue room, which Macalvie had been sharing with an old lady dressed in dark blue, as if she meant her dress to match the silk upholstery of the chair she sat in. She had spoken to him only once, and that to ask him to turn her chair so that it faced the window. He had done so, and since then she had sat and stared out. Occasionally, her lips moved and she smiled.
“Commander Macalvie,” said Bletchley. They shook hands.
Macalvie said, “I wanted you to know what’s happened. We’ve got the person who shot Sara Colthorp and Tom Letts and Chris Wells in custody.”
“Constable Evans told me. I’m not much given to surprises, Mr. Macalvie, but that damned well did it. Brenda Friel.” He shook his head and motioned to a Queen Anne wing chair covered in heavy blue velvet. “Sit down, please.”
Seated across from Bletchley, Macalvie told him, not all but enough, about the three shootings.
Moe Bletchley said, “But the Friel woman apparently has no qualms about killing. Why not just kill Chris to begin with? Why go to the trouble of making it look as if she’d run off?”
“For one thing, when Chris Wells came back here, Brenda thought we’d finally take her in for the murder of Sada Colthorp. And for another-she didn’t want to have to. Chris Wells was her best friend. I know it sounds implausible that the woman could still think in those terms, but that’s how I see it.
“Still, Brenda couldn’t be sure Chris was a real danger to her. Chris knew Ramona died of an AIDS-RELATED problem. But Chris didn’t know who the father was because Brenda herself didn’t know until Tom Letts mentioned Putney. Brenda knew Ramona had been working in London but didn’t know she’d been working for you. Brenda thought Chris would work it out if Tom Letts were murdered.
“But what I think is that Chris wouldn’t have done anything. I think she was too good a friend to take her suspicions to the police. I think she was like that.”
Moe sat unhappily, looking down at the carpet at his feet. “Poor Johnny. The poor lad.”
“Yes.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and then Macalvie said, “There’s another thing, Mr. Bletchley, that I think you need to know.”
Tentatively, Moe raised his eyes to look into Macalvie’s. “You’re going to tell me something about Noah and Esmé. You found something else.” He said this as if new knowledge about the deaths of his grandchildren would fall on his head like an ax. He stiffened. “Go ahead.”
Macalvie, who had never thought of himself as a comforting person, searched for words. “That’s always been a mystery. It’s stuck with me. I never closed the case. I’m afraid that we’ll never be sure; still, I went over the file again and wondered if the medical examiner’s report was absolutely clear to you.”
Moe Bletchley look at Macalvie, his eyebrows raised in question.
“It’s the drowning. There were deep abrasions to Noah’s skull. What must have happened was Noah slipped and was knocked unconscious and Esmé, tried to pull him back and got pulled in herself. What I’m saying is that Noah wouldn’t have known anything and Esmé would have drowned very fast. And drowning definitely isn’t-if you have to die-the worst way to go.” What a lie, what a bloody lie, thought Macalvie, moving his eyes away from Bletchley’s, for he was sure the old man could read the lie in them.
Moe was perceptive, but he was being told something he wanted to believe, and no matter how sharp his mind, perception went out the window. “What you’re telling me is that they didn’t suffer much, that it was quick.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t know if that helps at all; I just think the worst of remembering is imagining the terror a little kid would go through.”
Moe had his face in his hands now and tears leaked through his fingers. All he could do by way of answer was to nod his head.
“And probably you-you and your son-have always felt responsible.” Macalvie leaned toward him and put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Mr. Bletchley, you weren’t responsible. Neither of you. It was a hideous accident.” Macalvie said it again.
“You weren’t responsible.”
Macalvie had never had any intention of letting Morris Bletchley see the tape; saying that he did was the only way to get Brenda Friel to give it up.
He stood on the cliff above the stone steps and looked out over water like steel and a sky the color of lead. He imagined how a visitor knowing nothing of its history would consider it an impressive, even a beautiful prospect. The bay, the sea beyond it, the ragged, precipitous cliffs had an almost calming effect on his mind. Whatever perilous events had taken place here, they had left no footprints.
Macalvie had never destroyed evidence before. He reasoned-yes, rationalized-that the tape would do little if anything for the prosecution’s case against Brenda Friel; the tape wouldn’t even work against Simon Bolt, had he been living, or Sada Colthorp. The only person who would be convicted on the basis of this film was the young woman who’d led the kids down the steps, and Macalvie marveled at her utter disregard for the danger this film would put her in. If she were found and indicted, she might possibly enter into a plea bargain and give up the other three, but two of them were dead and the case against Brenda Friel in the deaths of Tom Letts and Chris Wells was so strong that adding conspiracy to commit other murders would merely add one more life sentence to her time.
His concern was for the Bletchleys. Why should they suffer more than they already had just to see Brenda Friel get a third life sentence? This film was what the tabloids lived for. Some unwritten law should protect innocent survivors such as the Bletchleys. Such as Maggie.
He held one of the tapes as if weighing it, reached back, and flung it as far out as he could; then he did the same with the other, watching it flip and then hang there, defying gravity for a moment and then falling.
Time ticked by as he stood there, doing nothing but looking. Gray sky, gray sea, gray cliffs. It was a relief to look out on a scene that met the eye with such utter indifference, that was blanker than the blank faces of strangers. It was one of those Indian summer days, August in September, that comes along so seldom. It was late and he should have been at Camborne headquarters an hour ago. Still, he stood there, prospect impressed.
It was getting hot. Macalvie took off his coat.