The Lamorna Wink

would be no other than the true soul of Marshall Trueblood; the woman with the long sad face wearing a dusty brown jumper, Vivian Rivington to a T; the other woman, stout and squat with shreds of gray hair boiling about her forehead-well, actually, she wasn’t the inward self of Agatha, she was the outward incarnation.

Yes, as he and Wiggins stood at the bar waiting for their drinks, he thoroughly enjoyed his little scifi fantasy, his little ghostly dimension, and was also quite sure that everyone in here was delighted that he had something wonderful to chew over, something to get his teeth in. Murder! No longer would they have to pretend Lamorna was a village to excite the admiration of tourists. Now, it really was! The clay pipe, the black patch, the wooden leg, the rheumy eye, the oil lantern-these were now things to be reckoned with.

“I don’t know what I want,” said Wiggins, in a pedestrian way that jerked Melrose back from pirates’ gold and Jamaica Inn.

“What do you mean? It’s just another pub. Get what you usually do: horn of toad, eye of frog, whatever. Have a beer.”

Wiggins just gave him a look. Have a beer was not one of the Wiggins fallbacks in emergencies. He sighed. “A lemonade, maybe.” He was already getting out a small tubular glass bottle.

Bromo Seltzer. It was by now one of Wiggins’s staples. Melrose wondered how much of the damned stuff he’d consumed since that trip to Baltimore. Wiggins only remembered the city as the home of Bromo Seltzer. He’d taken a snapshot of the tall building with the logo.

“Finally got here,” said a voice at their backs. It was, of course, Brian Macalvie, for whom one can never arrive too early. He was always in a hurry, another reason for the coat’s staying on. He gave Wiggins’s shoulder an enthusiastic thump; he’d already seen him at police headquarters in Camborne.

The finally-got-here part of the greeting had been directed, apparently, at Melrose Plant, who-Melrose would like to remind him-was not on the payroll of either the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary or New Scotland Yard.

Macalvie looked at the options and said, “I don’t know what to have.”

“Is this the biggest decision you two have had to make today?” said Melrose. “Have what I’m having.” Melrose put down some coins that clinked together. “Or what he’s having. Whatever, with Bromo Seltzer.”

Macalvie ordered a Guinness, got it, and the three went to the same table that Melrose and Macalvie had shared before.

“Between me and my men and the local police, we’ve talked to everyone in this place”-he waved an arm to take in the Wink-“and found out sod-all, except a few who remembered Sadie May but don’t remember anything more about her.” Macalvie shook his head. “Can’t be coincidence. Two little kids die in peculiar circumstances; a woman disappears; another woman is murdered; the mother of the little kids turns up now after not having been back here for four years-” He shook his head again, lighted another cigarette, and said, “Daniel Bletchley…” His voice trailed off with the smoke from his cigarette.

“He’s still not given you the name of the woman?” said Wiggins.

“Zip,” said Macalvie.

Wiggins said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “Bletchley could have left and then come back, but what about this housekeeper? Wouldn’t he have been concerned that she would see him?”

“No reason to be. It is his house, after all,” Melrose said. “Maybe it’s simply because the idea is so repugnant. I just can’t believe it: a parent doing this to his own children.”

“Tell that to Medea,” said Macalvie.

Melrose looked around the pub, at the smoke that lifted up to the ceiling like cirrus clouds. “Morris Bletchley says you didn’t believe Karen’s story, the one she told about people in the woods.”

Macalvie brought out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “He’s right, I didn’t.”

“Neither do I. Seabourne is well stocked with wine and Henry James. Karen Bletchley’s story sounds suspiciously like The Turn of the Screw: two children, Miles and Flora; the woman across the pond as the governess; the strange man who talked to them, Peter Quint; there’s even the unimaginative and literal housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. I’d say Mrs. Hayter is the embodiment of that character.”

Macalvie was thoughtful. “That’s interesting.” He was silent, drinking his beer. “Anyway, she could’ve concocted the story to get herself out of the frame.”

“Or to direct your attention away from her husband?” suggested Melrose.

“If she thought there was any possibility that Daniel Bletchley had something to do with her kiddies’ death?” Wiggins suggested.

Melrose shook his head. “She wants the money. If the children predecease Daniel, he gets the whole Click’nKing fortune. But if he’s convicted of their murder, all that money goes elsewhere, not to the wife. Karen certainly couldn’t look forward to Morris Bletchley’s handing it over to her. He doesn’t like her; he doesn’t trust her. It’s the reason he made the fortune over to the children-with, I’m sure, adequate provision for a trust-to keep Karen from getting her fair white hands on it.”

They were silent for a moment.

“And Chris Wells?” said Melrose. “You think she’s dead, don’t you? Isn’t it the rule that every hour she goes missing points in that direction?”

“It points to her being missing one more hour.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not trying to be,” said Macalvie. “I go on the assumption there are no rules.”

Someone had slotted money into the jukebox. “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” is what came up. At the first baleful words of this old song, Melrose looked anxiously at Macalvie, but Macalvie was looking at nothing, the pint he had lifted frozen in air as if he were toasting the three of them. He put the glass down, rose and went over to the jukebox, and with the line The sunshine has gone from the hill, Maggie, he yanked the plug from the socket. To the protestations of the few who had been listening and now even the ones that hadn’t, he walked to the table where sat the man who had played the three songs and slapped a ten-pound note on the table. The customers there looked up, surprised.

Years ago, in an old pub on Dartmoor, Macalvie had put his foot through the jukebox.

He was improving.

35

In the kitchen of the Woodbine Tearoom, Johnny sat at the small desk Brenda used for doing her accounts. He was shuffling his deck of cards, fanning them out, scooping them up, and reshuffling. The only thing that could keep his mind off Chris was going through his repertoire of tricks.

Brenda was taking cookie sheets out of the oven. Like Chris, she did most of her baking at night. “I know it’s hard, sweetheart, and gets harder to believe she’ll be back, but she will, I know it. I know she will.”

He hadn’t been able to keep the anxiety out of his face. He’d never make much of a hand-is-quicker-than-the- eye fellow. “No, you don’t. You’re just trying to make me feel better.” When she turned from the oven to protest, he smiled and held up his hand. “It’s okay, Brenda; it’s okay.” He went back to laying out cards and she went back to the gingerbread men she was decorating with currants.

“Pick one.” Johnny held out the fan of cards.

Brenda ran the back of a floured hand over her temple to get the hair out of her eyes. “Is this that old trick? Haven’t I seen you do this a thousand times?”

“At least.” She took a card; she put it back. He shuffled, picked out her card.

“Surprise, surprise,” she said, pressing a currant into dough.

“You needn’t dismiss this trick, especially since you still don’t know how I do it.” He put the cards aside and looked at the things that covered the desk, the big checkbook, the envelopes, and on its top surface the pictures, the snapshots of Brenda’s dead daughter. He lowered his eyes; the daughter only made him think of Chris. How could she have disappeared so effectively when she’d done it so hurriedly, without time to really think? He asked Brenda.

She stopped and picked up her mug of coffee. “Maybe it’s not being able to see the forest for the trees, love.” She looked over at him. “Maybe it’s something really simple. What happened, I mean.”