The Lamorna Wink

days. He had booked his first class seat on the Great Western from Paddington/London and felt mightily pleased with himself that he’d acted on impulse for once. “Something I seldom do,” he had said (smugly) to Marshall Trueblood as they sat drinking in Long Piddleton’s favorite pub-that is, in Long Piddleton’s only pub-the Jack and Hammer.

“You?” Trueblood inhaled his drink and started coughing. When he stopped he said, “That’s always what you do. You hardly do anything that isn’t impulsive.”

Melrose sat back, surprised. “Impulsive? Me?”

“Well, for God’s sake, it wasn’t I who suggested going to Venice that time when Viv-Viv had set the wedding date for marrying Dracula.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, that’s totally different, totally. That’s just-you know, like joking around. I’m talking about doing something suddenly, such as packing up and going to Ethiopia. Something one does with hardly a moment’s thought.”

“How much thought did you give to telling Vivian that Richard Jury was getting married and she’d better hotfoot it back home? All of ten seconds, if memory serves me.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. That was your story; you invented it.”

“No, I didn’t. Well, maybe I did. All right, then. How about the time you-?”

Melrose leaned across the table and clamped his hand around Trueblood’s Armani tie and tugged. “Marshall, what’s the point of this? What?”

“Nothing. There is no point.”

Melrose flicked the tie back against Trueblood’s pale yellow shirt. He looked, as always, sartorially perfect, a rainbow of rosy tints and amber shades.

“Except of course to point out you’re totally impetuous. The only reason you think of yourself as one who carefully plans his moves and maps things out beforehand is because you hardly ever do anything anyway-what, what?-there are the times you’ve helped out Superintendent R.J. Talk about impetuous! Ha ha! Whenever Jury drops the dime you’re off like a kid on skates.” Trueblood shot his hand out and made whoosh-ing noises. Then he asked, “Where is Jury, anyhow?”

“In Ireland.”

“North? South? Where?”

“Northern Ireland.”

“God, why?”

“He was sent there on a case.”

“Oh, how shabby.”

Melrose frowned, thinking. “What were we talking about? I mean before… Oh, yes. Cornwall.” Melrose took out a small notebook, black and spiral-bound at the top, the kind Jury carried. He leafed up some pages. “Bletchley. It’s near Mousehole. Ever hear of it?”

“No. And can’t imagine why I’d want to. Nor can I call up a picture of you there, either. You are not at all Cornwallian.”

“How would you know? You’ve never set foot in that county in your life. How do you know what is and what isn’t Cornwallian?”

“Well, for one thing, they’re completely unimpulsive. You wouldn’t last a week-Ow! ”

Back in the Woodbine Tearoom, Agatha asked, “What’s wrong with you, Melrose? You look a sight.”

Whatever that meant. He smiled and stirred his tea, dropping another lump of sugar into it, and thought of the dreadful train ride he’d just taken from London. He had been looking forward to it; he enjoyed the anonymity of a train-no one knowing who you are, where you’re going, anything.

Well, he could stuff the anonymity back in his sock drawer. No chance of that.

Melrose had not climbed aboard a train in some time. The first thing he asked of the conductor was the location of the dining car. The conductor had said, Oh, no, sir, no dining cars anymore. But someone’ll be round in a tic with sandwiches and tea. Thank you, sir.

One illusion shattered. No lolling about over your brandy and coffee and a cigar at a white-clothed table anymore. And the old compartments, where if one was lucky he might be the only passenger or, luckier, would meet a mysterious assortment of others. The outer aisle, where one could lean against the railing and watch the green countryside flash by. Sometimes he thought the only reason trains had been invented was for films. Murder on the Orient Express. It would be fabulous to be here in this insular, sinister, almost claustrophobic atmosphere when a murder was committed.

Or just observe those two youngish gentlemen, leaning toward one another, quietly talking. Scheming. Strangers on a Train. They could be exchanging murders.

Or that old gray-ringleted lady he had passed, knitting, he would soon see on a stretcher being borne from the train at a stop up the track-

The Lady Vanishes!

These days he was always waxing nostalgic-old films, old songs, old photographs. In this Hitchcockian reverie he did not see her coming, did not register her presence until he heard, “What on earth are you looking so squinty- eyed for, Melrose?”

He was yanked thus from his reverie with such a vengeance, he dropped his paper and his mouth fell open and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. “Agatha!”

Throw Momma From the Train!

If ever there was an antidote to nostalgia, it had just burst through the door of the Woodbine Tearoom.

It put him in mind of another old film he had seen on late-night TV called The Uninvited, the “uninvited” being a ghost who hurled back doors, laughed and sang, and presented its unseeable self to the horrified young heroine.

Unfortunately, his ghost was seeable.

For the last thirty-six hours she had accompanied him in his hired car round the bottom of the Cornwall coast. He had kept putting off the estate agent who was to show him the rental property, waiting for Agatha to find some entertainment other than himself that would keep her busy for half a day. He certainly did not want her around when he viewed the house, casting her accursed shadow over it. To say nothing of her endless carping. You won’t want this, Melrose. Look at that thatch; you’ll be needing a whole new roof. Whatever would you do with all of this rocky land? No, Melrose, it won’t suit. Et cetera, et cetera.

Fortunately, the young lad’s arrival with the tea broke into these morbid reflections. The boy held up one pot, asking “Regular tea?” and Melrose smiled as he tapped his own place mat. The waiter set the other by Agatha’s hand. Then he brought the tiered cake plate from the window embrasure and set that on their table also.

Melrose watched him stop at a neighboring table, say something, move to another table and another. The Woodbine was small, but it was crowded. He worked the room slick as any politician.

In a few moments, leaving Agatha to the scones and double cream, he rose and walked over to the cash register where the lad was ringing up bills. (He appeared to be both the serving end and the business end of this place.)

“I beg your pardon.”

The lad smiled broadly. “Tea okay?”

“Fine. I just wondered: Do you have any free time during the day? I’m asking because I need someone to do a bit of work for me. Wouldn’t take more than, say, three hours.” He held up a fifty-pound note he’d pulled from his billfold.

“For that I’d take a dive off Beachy Head.”

“It will be neither that heady an experience nor that dangerous. The lady I’m with, and don’t look at the table for I fear she reads minds, is also my aunt and sticks to me like Crazy Glue. I need to be rid of her for a few hours, and as you seem extremely resourceful, I thought you-”

“I could take her off your hands.” The boy shrugged, smiled. “I could do. When?”