The Lamorna Wink

atmosphere, Mr. Bleaney, Mr. Clancy, and Miss Livingston crowded in after them.

What Melrose liked about these people was their sporting nature, their smiling in the face of such adversity, and it set him to wondering about the chemistry among people for whom death was right around the corner. To use Tom’s metaphor, it must have been like this in war, at least it always was in war’s representations. As if at the front, he and Wiggins were passing amid battle-ravaged troops taking strength from one another. You depended, he thought, upon another man’s spirit to pull you through. And it was all overseen-the battle plan, the deployment of troops, and, at the end, the demobbing, the mustering-out, all of the cliche-ridden, unashamed, canting patriotism- by Morris Bletchley.

39

I heard what happened; I guess everyone has. It’s terrible. It’s worse than terrible if Tom got shot-by mistake. He was going to die anyway, and soon; that’s what people are saying. As if that made it all right. As far as I’m concerned, it makes it worse. It makes it ten times worse. Even the little he had to live, that’s gone now.”

Johnny stood in the open doorway of Seabourne and said this to Melrose before he’d even stepped inside. He stood turning his cabby’s cap in his hands and his eyes glazed with tears that didn’t spill.

“Come on in, Johnny. You’re right. It does make it worse. Come on back to the kitchen; I just made some coffee.” It was late morning and Melrose had just arisen, having had no sleep to speak of the night before.

Johnny followed him, talking about Tom all the while, talking nervously as if his license to talk might be revoked at any moment, so he’d better get it out fast. “I always talked to him when we went to the Hall. He was so- calming, somehow. You probably never noticed but I’m kind of tight-wound-”

Melrose smiled and nodded.

“-and it was actually relaxing to be around Tom.

It seems strange it should be, with his problems. You’d think he’d be bitter, getting AIDS when he wasn’t even gay, but he wasn’t bitter, not at all-”

“Tom wasn’t gay? But-”

Johnny was shaking his head. “He told me when we were talking about the chances of getting Alzheimer’s or esophageal cancer, you know, the various things the people at the Hall have. We started discussing AIDS and he said the chance of getting it with only one-uh-you know, contact-ranged anywhere from one in a thousand to three in a hundred. This relationship he had happened a long time ago and was very short-lived. Anyway-” Johnny shrugged. “But maybe a crisis is what shows you what you’re made of.” He finished this looking at the cup of coffee Melrose had placed before him, looking as if what he himself was made of must not be much.

“Tom’s crisis was in the past, Johnny; it was horribly painful but he’d lived with it for a long time. It was old. Yours is new.”

Johnny was quiet for a moment and then said, “Police think Chris shot this Sada Colthorp and then took off, don’t they?”

“No, that certainly hasn’t been my impression. Commander Macalvie hasn’t come to any conclusions about that murder.”

“Chris didn’t like her, though. I think they had a couple of fights.”

“A long way from fighting to murder, Johnny.”

Johnny shook the hair fallen across his forehead out of his face. “What in bloody hell is going on around here? Why would anyone want to kill Mr. Bletchley? He’s done nothing but good for this village.”

“That’s what I understand.”

He shoved his cup aside, slapped on his cap, adjusted it, and said, “I’m on call. I’ve got a ride to pick up and take to Mousehole. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Is your uncle still stopping with you?”

“Charlie? He went back to Penzance yesterday morning.”

“I had dinner with him night before last under Mr. Pfinn’s watchful eye. I thought him quite a good fellow.”

“He told me. He thought you were, too. ’Bye.”

The bell rang again and Melrose started to rise from the comfort of the fireplace and the book he was reading. He hesitated, thinking it might be Agatha already or, worse (since Agatha might have needed a ride), Agatha and her bosom buddy, Esther Laburnum.

He tiptoed. How ridiculous, he told himself, and straightened up as he walked the last twenty feet. Still, once there, he did not open the door immediately. Instead he took a furtive glance through one of the leaded-glass panels on both sides of the door to see a man standing there, a stranger in a lightweight wool suit. Good wool, too. At least the back was a stranger’s. He was quite tall and seemed to stand at ease, not with the stiff uncertainty some backs can muster if they’re on unfamiliar ground.

Then, disgusted with himself for keeping the poor fellow waiting, he yanked the door open.

The man turned. “Mr. Plant? Or Lord Ardry? Mrs. Laburnum didn’t seem sure what to call you.” He smiled. “I’m Daniel Bletchley.”

The serviceable stereotypes of composers Melrose had trusted and trotted through his mind-effete, absent- eyed, cloud-ridden-would have to go. The man’s sheer physical presence erased the stereotype. He was tall, though no taller than Melrose; yet he was more densely packed. He was not conventionally handsome, but then he didn’t need to be. His sexuality was something like Richard Jury’s only more so. (A lot of women would have been surprised that there was a “more so.”) Nothing in the expression of his unconventionally handsome face seemed held back, restrained, or secret.

This went through Melrose’s mind in the moment it took him to say, “Come in.”

40

Daniel Bletchley was happy to come in and stood in the foyer, shaking hands. His eyes, though, Melrose noticed, seemed to be following the sweep of the graceful staircase that he had once climbed so often to the upstairs rooms with which he was so familiar.

“You’re the musician,” said Melrose.

Dan turned his eyes from the staircase and laughed. “I don’t know if I’m the musician, but, yes, I’m one of them.” His expression and his tone grew more sober. “When I heard about what happened, I thought Dad could use some help. Tom.” Dan shook his head. “He was with Dad for a long time. A long time.” He brought this out on an expiration of breath, as if Time had been profligate with Tom Letts’s life, as if Tom should have been able to count on it for more. Then he added, “I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“You’re not bothering me in the least. My aunt is coming for tea at five, and you’ll want to be gone before that event horizon. But as for now, join me in the library. I’ve got a fire and whisky going.”

“Sounds great.” As Melrose led the way, a way with which Dan Bletchley was thoroughly-and sadly-familiar, Dan said, “ ‘Event horizon’? Sounds ominous.”

“It is. It’s my aunt, who, knowing I wanted to get away from Long Piddleton-my village in Northants, that is-and all things Piddletonian, just for a change, a damned change, followed me and has taken up residence at that B- and-B in the village.”

Daniel laughed. “Not to worry; she won’t last. No one can stand that place for more than a night or two.”

“Wrong. Wrong on that score. She’s been there for over a week.”

Melrose might not have recognized Daniel Bletchley with only the snapshots to go by. Sitting now in the wing chair beside them, and with a drink in his hand, he still might have escaped recognition. He was a man who was very alive, an aliveness not captured by a camera’s lens; He was apparently one of those people subdued by them; cameras didn’t “catch” him. Certainly, he was one who wasn’t tempted by them, for he was always looking away, or