Melrose liked the way she made Cornwall sound like the Outer Hebrides. But then, Cornwall did rather think of itself as separate from the rest of England. And “fancy” London was trickling to Cornwall more and more for their second homes, buying up decrepit fishermen’s cottages or great piles of stone set atop craggy cliffs, like Seabourne.
“This Mr. Slatterly, could you speak to him on my behalf?” My God, that was kingly enough.
She would be only too happy to do so.
He rose. “Well, thank you so much, Mrs. Hayter. And I’ll be seeing you then in two weeks?”
“Yes, you will.”
“Fine.” Melrose let his gaze rest on the J.M.W. Turner, the original of which was in the Tate; had he looked at the painting in the Tate five minutes longer, it would have burnt a hole in his retina, the light was so glorious.
28
Morris Bletchley really interested Melrose.
Anyone who could buy up a stately home (small, but still stately enough), home for generations to viscounts, barons, and baronets, and turn it around into a combination hospice and nursing home was worthy of interest. Especially when the someone was an American who’d made his fortune in fast-food eateries.
On this particular golden September afternoon, Melrose stood gaping at the land beyond the high windows of the old Sheepshanks-now Bletchley-Hall. Formerly the ancestral home of the Viscount Sheepshanks (or so the brochure told him), the grounds were simply magnificent, a blaze of marigolds and purple orchids blanketing much of the ground, but also arranged in knot gardens and parterres. The brochure had been given him by an overbearing, stout woman in a gray bombazine dress who had taken his request to see Mr. Morris Bletchley, as she no doubt took all requests. Her face did not change its expression of being put-upon, as this seemed to be her lot in life. She had gone off to fetch Mr. Bletchley, after directing Melrose to wait in this beautiful room in which he was standing, looking at an ornate fountain in which dolphins frolicked with bronze fish and cherubs; beyond this lay a gentle downward slope of lawn to the dip of a stream that bisected the land. Shallow steps led down to it, drifts of late- season grasses, and clumps of spotted orchids grew along its banks. Dahlias, cyclamen, and purple clematis grew on the downward-sloping lawn. About the grounds were situated white benches on which now sat one youngish woman, no doubt one of the inhabitants of Bletchley Hall, all diagnosed as terminal, a diagnosis Melrose sincerely hoped was not acting itself out as he watched.
Sharing this room with him was an old woman who had probably got here under her own steam, given the silver-headed cane her hand was still closed around, but who was now peacefully sleeping.
The idea behind the hospice movement was that one could die at home, in familiar surroundings. So in this regard it wasn’t a hospice; yet it was a happy combination of both hospice and nursing home-if “happy” was the word. Melrose thought that if one had to die away from one’s own home and kith and kin, one couldn’t do better than Bletchley Hall. Or even given the choice between home and Hall, one might choose Bletchley. This was one of the times when he thanked God he had money. To be old and infirm was bad enough; to be old and infirm and poor was unthinkable. Deathbed scenes (he’d always thought) were grossly exaggerated in their display of filial devotion, the melodrama of relations gathered round the bed, weeping copiously, a battalion of black figures. More likely it was several hundred quid to the mortician and take her away. Or the family would all be out watching a cricket match or tucking into a set tea while Gran or Mum was expiring in an upstairs bedroom. No, the actuality of the moment of death leaned more toward the absence of loved ones than toward their presence.
But at Bletchley Hall, one could be certain of one’s death being well-attended, the sheets white, the pillows plumped. Melrose could hardly wait for Sergeant Wiggins to see it.
The room in which Melrose waited was not especially large, but the ceiling vaulting above his head was resplendent with elaborately carved moldings; the room drank up sunlight as if pitchers of it were spilling across the huge oriental rug that shimmered like silk, and angels could have danced on the sun-beams. The old lady sitting in a big Jacobean chair that dwarfed her was so lit up she might have been called to a higher glory. Melrose hoped she slept. In a place like this, it did not pay to investigate.
The stout woman in gray returned to tell Melrose that Mr. Bletchley was on his way and then crossed the room to raise her voice to the old lady: “Mrs. Fry! Mrs. Fry! Time to wake up!”
Why? wondered Melrose. Surely, Mrs. Fry’s caravan had reached a stage in its slow journey when it wasn’t “time” to do any bloody thing at all. Time for her had gone completely out the window with the withdrawing light. Time was of no consequence.
And why was it necessary to yell at old people as if they were all deaf? A few more Mrs. Fry’s and Melrose was rising to assist when the old lady twitched awake. How could she help but wake with that voice barking in her ear? Now it told her it was “Time for your tea, dear.”
As the stout woman (labeled MATRON, she obviously functioned in some sort of managerial position) helped Mrs. Fry up and out, an elderly man in a wheelchair buzzed in and up to Melrose and held out his hand.
“Morris Bletchley. People call me Moe. You wanted to see me? You wouldn’t happen to have a fag, would you? As long as it’s not that mentholated crap.”
He gave Melrose a once-over, as if evaluating him for good-times possibilities. Melrose wished he’d stuck a flask in his back pocket.
“I do, yes.”
Moe Bletchley turned the chair and started toward the door with a “follow me” wave. As Melrose followed, Bletchley said over his shoulder, “Smoking room’s this way. Got to be careful here. Emphysema, emphysema. Wouldn’t want anyone with lung cancer watching me enjoying myself while I’m on the way to it.” Bletchley laughed, mostly through his nose. “You too.”
Melrose thanked him for that emphysemiac blessing as the two made their way down a long gallery, Melrose walking as fast as he could to keep pace with the wheelchair, which might have run down more of the Bletchley Hall patients than emphysema ever would. The walls of this gallery once were hung with Sheepshank family portraits no doubt carted off by the viscount; Melrose deduced this because the paintings now hanging there, romantic ones of cottages and shepherds, drovers with sheep and sheep-dogs, still lifes of pears and apples, did not fill up the vacated spaces and showed borders of fresher paint. Moe Bletchley whizzed through a shadowed dining room full of tapestry and velvet and a Waterford chandelier glowing as softly as stars on a summer’s night. He snatched a menu from one of the tables. Menus, even! The food here must be as good as the colored brochure pictured it.
On the farther end of the dining room was a set of French doors curtained on the other side with something filmy, which Melrose’s guide flung open, and they entered a room with glass on three sides, which had probably been added to the original structure. It appeared to be an orangery or sunroom. South-facing, the room was still lapping up remnants of the fractured light of the sun.
Morris Bletchley stopped his wheelchair, got out of it, stretched, and took one of the green wicker chairs. Motioning Melrose to sit down in another, he said, “I don’t need that thing”-he nodded toward the wheelchair-“I just think it must be pretty discouraging if you’re chained to a bed to have some old geezer waltz into your room on a pair of good working legs.”
From the sly glance Bletchley slid in his direction, Melrose decided this was only one reason for wheel-chairing it around Bletchley Hall, and that the chair was also there for fun. Melrose smiled. This was not to say that Morris Bletchley was short on compassion or charitable thoughts; after all, he’d started this place, hadn’t he?
And Bletchley was indeed a healthy-looking specimen, remarkably so if he was in his eighties. He was trim, with arms and legs that had not suffered too much bone and muscle loss; the only thing that hinted at old age were the cheeks, which turned cadaverous when he sucked in on the cigarette Melrose had given him and was now lighting. It was damned certain Morris Bletchley’s mind hadn’t suffered any ill effects of aging.
Orangery, solarium, sunroom, whichever it was called, the long glass-enclosed room was filled with green plants-ivy, aspidistra, potted palms-and as the sunlight touched the leaves and vines with a high gloss, waves of green seemed to shimmer on the tiled floor and turn the green-painted wicker furniture greener. At one end of the room sat two old men playing chess. At the other end, Melrose was surprised to see a bank of slot machines.
“So! What can I do for you?”
