The Lamorna Wink

Megs looked struck dumb as she shifted the small tray she was carrying. “Well, Mum, I can’t say. I can’t say how it’d take her-Brenda, I mean.”

“I know,” said Agatha marshaling a tone one might use when speaking to the mentally challenged. “That’s why I say, ask the cook.”

But the girl was not yet ready to ask, not without giving a bit of the history of recipe requests. “Just last Easter I think it was someone wanted her recipe for Bunnykens-”

A recipe, Melrose reflected, he could easily do without.

“-and when Miss B wouldn’t give it, this person got quite shirty. Not much later, another lady wanted to know how to make the meringues-Miss C’s, that is, as they’re different from Miss B’s-”

Would they wander through the entire alphabet?

“-but she wouldn’t give that out, neither, nor would Miss C.” Megs shifted the tray again. “Then someone wanted-”

Agatha interrupted. “Good grief, girl! Get back to the kitchen! You can never tell when she might change her mind. She’s clearly quixotic.”

The pronunciation of which word Melrose filed away to use later.

“Oh, I can tell.”

At this point, Melrose was about to pull up a chair and have Megs join them.

“I’ve been working here five years and Miss B’s never given out a single recipe. There was even a duke in here once had the beef olives and you wouldn’t believe the fuss he made when she said, and very nicely she said it, she was sorry but she never gave out her recipes. Especially not the meringues. Nor does Miss C.” Megs flushed, realizing that Miss C might never again have a chance to. But she soldiered on. “They make them different, see; they put in secret ingredients. They don’t even know each other’s, so, you see, it’d hardly be like either Miss C or Miss B to give them out. There was one lady-”

Agatha flipped her hand at the girl, off with you, off with you, and Megs scooted away. Agatha returned her attention to the cake plate just as Johnny Wells pushed through the swinging door and met with the waitress going in from the dining room side. He was tying his apron, stopping at a table recently vacated, where he collected the plates and cups and stacked them on a tray. Paler than usual, thus more Byronic and handsomer. Women would kill for that skin, that hair.

Johnny looked over at Melrose and, seeing Agatha returned, actually smiled broadly. He walked over to their table, taking one or two requests from the patrons as he went.

“Hello, John,” said Melrose. “My aunt’s put poor Megs up to trying to get a recipe from the prop-I mean, from Miss B.” Proprietress sounded too much as if there were but one, so Melrose had cut that word short.

Johnny laughed. “Not a prayer, I’m afraid,” he said to Agatha.

To him she said, “Never hurts to try. Dear boy, I’m sorry to hear about your aunt. What are police doing? If anything, that is.”

Melrose’s voice fell on her like a brick wall. “On the contrary, they’re doing quite a lot.” He cast a baleful look around the room that sent the curious back to their tea and Sweet Ladies. “I know for a fact they’re doing everything they can. You met Commander Macalvie; I don’t think he’s ever failed to solve a case.”

Agatha put in some welcome news. “That doesn’t mean the person’s still alive once he’s solved it.” She poked her nose in the teapot.

“Thank you, Agatha, for that cheerful note.”

“Oh, she’ll turn up, never you mind,” said Agatha.

Johnny ignored this banal remark and said to Melrose, “Trouble is, police have enough on their plate to concentrate on a missing person who might not even be missing. There’s the Lamorna Cove business.”

All the patrons were listening now, not even bothering with their tea. Wasn’t this the biggest thing to hit Bletchley since Moe turned their stately home into a hospice?

“But that’s a good reason why they’d pay more attention to your aunt’s disappearance.”

“Well… yes, I see what you mean.” He turned, when another patron called to him, and left.

Melrose thought any bit of knowledge that might uncover the reasons for Chris Wells’s disappearance would be welcome to Johnny, stuck as he must feel in this limbo. That brought to mind the little girl, Cassie, and her mother, Maggie, and how not knowing was virtual hell. But it was Macalvie who had had to endure the real hell. He was the one left with the bad news.

Policemen were always cast as the messengers who bring the bad news. Melrose couldn’t imagine himself being able to fill this role. He wondered how Richard Jury stood it.

He supposed the answer was: Jury didn’t.

31

That evening, while the sheepdog in the doorway replaced one of the huskies, Melrose found himself sharing the Drowned Man’s saloon bar with two other guests, a woman in a brown suit who sat by the fire, reading as she drank her cocktail, and a man who looked to be in his mid-forties but could well be younger, age altered perhaps by serious drink, such as the one in front of him on the bar: a shot glass of whisky and a pint of beer. The whisky was downed in one blink, a long gulp of the beer in another.

“Evening,” said Melrose, feeling very much a Bletchleyite compared to this inn guest who was passing through, although it wasn’t much of an “onmy-way-to” sort of village. It wasn’t anywhere near a major artery. Since Melrose was ensconced in his own house now, he felt he was not flying under false colors to act as a resident. He added to his greeting-“Are you getting on with the dogs?”-nodding toward the doorway into which all five were now crowded.

The man laughed and said, “Looks like a lineup to me. Are we supposed to identify the guilty one?”

Melrose laughed too. “My name’s Melrose Plant.”

He moved a couple of seats down the bar to hold out his hand.

“Charlie Esterhazey. Glad to meet you.”

“Do you live in Bletchley? I don’t think I’ve seen you about.”

“No. Just visiting a relation. Johnny Wells. I think he works here.”

This, thought Melrose, was the uncle Johnny had mentioned but never referred to again. Alcoholic, maybe, but a very engaging one. “Then you’re related to Chris Wells.”

Charlie turned to his pint of beer, drank what was left of it, and said in a melancholy tone, “No, but I am to Johnny. It’s terrible, what happened. Chris is such a great person.” He drank again. “People are always leaving Johnny stranded. First his father died; then his mother took off; now this. I don’t mean, of course, that Chris did it deliberately.”

Why not?

The question sprang to mind. Always before, it had been asked and answered, as if no one could possibly imagine Chris Wells leaving deliberately. It would have been an awfully hurried departure, a drop-of-the-hat departure… But, why not? Everyone had called it an emergency, not really a “deliberate” leaving; it could only be leaving in answer to some serious occurrence. This notion hadn’t taken root because she hadn’t informed Johnny- and it looked less and less as if she’d left willingly, since she still hadn’t notified Johnny.

He felt he’d been sluggish in coming up with this alternative. And Brian Macalvie? A “sluggish” Commander Macalvie was a contradiction in terms. Yet since Chris Wells’s disappearance had brought back to mind that old horror of Cassie’s death and then the Bletchley children’s, even Macalvie’s usually clear and ordered mind could be clouded by what was on it.

“… a magician, good with cards, scarves, and pulling coins from behind your ear.”

Melrose had only half heard Charlie’s talk. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“Johnny. I was talking about his love of magic. He’s pretty good, actually. He’s put on a few shows at Bletchley Hall. The tricks are standard, but he performs with such panache he makes them new.”

Melrose was deep in own thoughts. “Could she have?”