a hand for Melrose to judge. “They were holding hands.”
He stopped at this image, which was clearly disconcerting, as if he had no choice but to reenter the scene.
“So what had happened? Did they go down the stairs because they wanted to get into the boat? I didn’t believe that. Why did they, then? They must’ve been told to go down the stairs. Or been told-something. A trick? A treasure? No one in that house had any idea of what they were up to.
“Karen Bletchley got back to the house a half hour after I got there. There’d been trouble getting hold of her, the housekeeper told me, because the people she was having dinner with in St. Ives weren’t on the telephone. Hard to believe, in this day and age, with that kind of money. But maybe that’s what the well-heeled call roughing it. Daniel, the father, was purportedly in Penzance on business. He didn’t get home until an hour later.”
“Purportedly?”
“When a man goes out at nine o’clock at night, it might be for a beer or smokes, but I have trouble thinking it’s business. I also doubted it was business when he stalled on producing the name of this business associate. I assumed it was a woman but didn’t want to make a point of it then. He was too cut up, remorseful, and-as the Irish say-destroyed. The sort of man who blames himself because he lacks hindsight.”
“But later?”
“Did I pursue this line of inquiry?” Macalvie smiled and took another swallow. “Of course. Finally, he admitted it but refused to give the name of the woman. Bletchley’s stubborn, believe me. Even when I threatened him with obstruction, he refused. Anyway, Dan Bletchley was away when he was needed and the man probably never will get over it. To be gone when you know you were desperately needed: I know what that’s like. I felt sorry for him. All of his life he’s going to hold himself responsible.”
They sat, whiskies in hand, the main source of light and heat coming from the fireplace. They had drawn as close as they could to it.
“Karen Bletchley was hysterical at first. It took two WPCs to hold her back from the clifftop, to keep her from going down those stone steps. I told the ME to sedate her, just enough so I could talk to her.” He looked up when Melrose made a sound of disapproval. “You think cops are heartless? Give somebody twenty-four hours to think things over, and you won’t get a proper statement. Too much will be suppressed, not necessarily intentionally.”
Melrose said he was going to get refills. While he stood at the bar, waiting for the fresh drinks, he wondered if Karen Bletchley had told Macalvie the same things she’d told him.
“What did she tell you?” he asked when he’d returned to the table.
“After the initial questions had been answered about where she was”-Macalvie accepted his refilled glass from Melrose-“she asked did I believe in evil spirits? In hauntings? In premonitory occurrences? ‘It’s not what I believe, it’s what you do,’ I said. She said there was something wrong at Seabourne-which I was only too willing to believe, given what happened, but not that ghosts were responsible.” Macalvie paused for a drink of beer.
“She went on. ‘I thought at first I was simply too imaginative. Or reading into behavior things that didn’t exist. Furniture moved around in their school-room, for instance. When I asked them why’d they done it, they said, “We didn’t,” and tittered. Noah and Esme, are-were-very close.’ Then she said, ‘Every once in a while I’d see some new bit of clothing, like a handkerchief or a bracelet they claimed to have found in the woods. One day I was watching them and saw them talking to a strange man. At least I thought it was; I couldn’t see very well into the trees. I was rather frightened. It all seemed so-menacing. And one day I saw a figure in dark clothes and dark hair across the pond farther along. A woman was standing there. Were these people putting them up to their tricks? The children did silly little things, like putting a tiny tree frog in Mrs. Hayter’s apron pocket. The poor woman had a fit! But when I asked them, they just denied it and looked… sly. That’s the only way I can describe it-sly. It was almost like a campaign to make us uncomfortable.’ ”
Melrose studied his glass and thought about Karen Bletchley, there in the library, but did not interrupt.
“I asked what her husband’s response was to all of this. She didn’t answer for a moment, but finally said that Daniel brushed it aside as a series of childish pranks. ‘Good lord, Karen, a tree frog in someone’s pocket and you think we’re in the grip of evil spirits!’
“It’s Daniel Bletchley’s father, Morris Bletchley, who actually owns Seabourne. He went to live at the Hall-a kind of nursing home, which he also owns-not long after the death of the kids. They were his grandchildren. At the time it happened he was living with them. He’s used to controlling things. He’s apparently a hell of a good businessman, given the success he has with that chicken franchise.
“I’m mentioning this only because now he was confronted with an action-and its horrible consequences-that was out of his control. He said the least of any of them and seemed to be affected most. At least more than his daughter-in-law-despite the hysterics. Anyway, that was my impression.”
The proprietress was calling time.
Macalvie said, “You hardly ever hear that anymore, do you, what with the new licensing laws.”
Melrose gathered up their empty glasses. “Is it too late?”
“No, but I’m in the chair this round.”
Melrose made a face and took the glasses. The woman behind the bar pursed her lips but got the drinks. As he stood there, Melrose looked back at Macalvie and thought he look stranded in the room now emptying.
He went back and set the drinks down. “This case never closed for you, did it?”
Macalvie was lighting another cigarette. “They don’t, my cases.” He stared at the fire, smoked his cigarette.
“But this one, especially. You’ve been reporting conversations verbatim. How could you do that after four years?”
“My notes. I’ve read through them so often, trying to work out what I missed, you could see light through the seams of the pages they’re written on. That’s why.”
Melrose thought of the letter his mother had written. “Why do you think you missed something?”
Macalvie cut him a look. “Because it hasn’t been solved, so I must’ve.” Ash fell from the cigarette he wasn’t attending to. He said then, “Let me tell you something: I was a policeman in Glasgow for several years, started out as a PC but wanted to be a detective. That was my great dream, to be a detective.” He looked over at Melrose. “I bet you never thought I’d have a great dream, right?”
“You don’t strike me as a dreamer.”
Macalvie smiled and went on. “I got to be a DI pretty quickly, mostly because of a particular case I worked. Pretty big case, it was. In a shootout, the suspect’s daughter got caught in the crossfire. She was eleven or twelve. It wasn’t my gun that did it but he thought it was, and held me responsible because I was the one who’d been plaguing him all along.
“Anyway, I was transferred to Kirkcudbright. I guess to get the heat off. It was bad, the pressure. You can imagine there weren’t a hell of a lot of homicides in Kirkcudbright, which is a kind of artists’ haven; I guess artistic jealousy is about the top rung on their crime ladder.
“But I met someone. She was a painter and a beautiful woman. I moved in with her. She had a daughter, Cassie, who was six years old. Maggie, my girl, always used to tell me how much safer she felt with a copper in the house, how she could sleep easier. Then one night Cassie was taken right out of her bed and out of the house.”
“God, how awful!”
“We kept expecting a phone call, a ransom demand, some word. But there was no word. Nada. Nil. Nothing for two weeks. Maggie was nearly crazy, forced into this limbo of not knowing. So was I.
“Then I got a message slipped into the paper we had delivered. I was to go to an old cottage in the Fleet Valley. There was a map, a route I was to follow. Eventually I found the place. It was a derelict cottage, birds nesting in the thatch, windowpanes broken. The most intense silence; I’ve never known such silence. It smelled of death. I moved very slowly, had my gun ready. I thought it was a trap.
“There was a bowl of Wheetabix in front of her, half eaten.” Macalvie paused, looked at Melrose. “The body was warm, the milk still cold fresh.” Out of electric-blue eyes, he stared at Melrose. “See, they’d added that little detail, that coup-de-grace, in case I hadn’t suffered enough, making me think, If I’d only got there fifteen minutes
