The Lamorna Wink

“-precludes any possibility of your seeing a person’s true worth. All you’re doing is projecting your own fears on another person or situation. That’s what homophobia is, isn’t it? Projecting one’s own fear of partaking of other men’s needs and desires? That’s what phobia in general is, a fear of being the Other. Anyway, you didn’t know Tom Letts. I did, and I liked him very much.”

Agatha looked all around, as if the dread virus might have infiltrated Seabourne. The look made Melrose laugh; it was so much the look that would be called forth by the doors crashing open upon them. The Uninvited!

“I don’t see it’s anything to laugh about.”

Too bad. “As for your chosen homophobic-Mr. Pfinn, is it?-I don’t know how you come to that remarkable conclusion, since Mr. Pfinn engages in conversation only to be contradictory. He stays away from words.”

“Well, he didn’t with Esther and me. Of course, people do tend to confide in me, you’ve noticed.”

Melrose felt his eyes open as wide as any cartoon character. As did Mr. Pfinn, Melrose stayed away from words.

Agatha leaned forward, balancing a biscuit on her knee. “The man absolutely loathes homosexuals!”

“Mr. Pfinn loathes everyone. Loathing is not a criterion by which to judge Mr. Pfinn.”

42

Pfinn was living up to Melrose’s assessment of him (splenetic, peevish, and unaccommodating) that night in the Drowned Man by refusing to allow Brian Macalvie another drink in the saloon bar.

“Just you order another at dinner,” commanded Pfinn. “But get your skates on. Can’t keep the cook around all night, can I?”

Dinnertime thus determined, they had gone into the dining room, where Melrose was now picking another bone out of his turbot. This had been served by a humorless middle-aged lady he had never seen before. Johnny was not around. “You say the same gun killed both of them?”

“Yeah, but we already knew that. Smith and Wesson twenty-two.” Macalvie had stopped eating five minutes before and was smoking a cigarette, having considerately asked Melrose’s permission.

“We didn’t know anything. You apparently did.”

“Did you really think there were two shooters involved?”

“I-”

“There are too many similarities between the shootings to believe that.” Macalvie pierced a piece of aubergine and held it on the tine of his fork as if it were a little green world he needed to decipher. He gave his fish a poke, put his fork down again, and looked around for the waitress. “We’re the only ones in here, for God’s sakes, so why can’t we get service? I want another beer. Has it occurred to you, Plant, that everything significant in the background of these two cases-three if we count the little kids-happened four years ago, give a month, take a month? Listen: Sada Colthorp turns up here four years ago; the kids died September four years ago; Ramona Friel died in January four years ago.”

Melrose drank his wine, a Meursault at some outlandish price, but he felt he deserved it. Why, he wasn’t sure. “That bothers you?”

Macalvie’s head turned from the dining room search and cut Melrose a glance. “Doesn’t it disturb you? You don’t think it’s coincidence, do you?”

Actually, Melrose hadn’t worked out that there was a list of events to consider. He watched the waitress trudge grimly toward their table, thinking not about Macalvie’s list but about where Johnny was.

Macalvie told the woman what he wanted and she trudged grimly off again. “The night the little kids died, the housekeeper thought she heard a car, woke up, but went back to sleep again. Why did she do that?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You’re an elderly woman of a nervous disposition, alone with two little kids in an isolated house-”

“Turn of the Screw, as I said.”

“Uh-huh. A car drives up or drives off. Wouldn’t this keep you from going back to sleep? It would me, and I’ve got a gun. I’d be pumping adrenaline-unless, of course, the sound was familiar.”

“You mean one of the family cars?”

“There were three: Daniel’s sporty Jaguar, Karen’s BMW, Morris Bletchley’s Volvo.”

Melrose recalled his visit to Rodney Colthorp. “Or Simon Bolt’s. If she heard a familiar car, it didn’t have to be Dan Bletchley’s. Bolt had the same make; Dennis Colthorp tried to buy it, remember? The car would have to have been leaving, not arriving, because Mrs. Hayter went to investigate.”

“Right. That’s possible. Too bad Bolt’s not around to question. He died three years ago.” Macalvie paused. “So Daniel and Karen were out on the razz. Don’t give me that alibi look. Daniel’s fell apart pretty quickly. Karen’s lacks the essential watertightness we cops hate; her dinner companions said they actually hadn’t seen her every minute as they went on to a concert after dinner. Tickets were hard to get, so they had to sit apart. I only got this from them, mind you, when I questioned them again.”

“So they didn’t really know where she was for some time.”

“An hour and twenty minutes. They were vague. I went back and checked up on that particular event.”

“What you’re saying is that one of the Bletchleys came back?” Melrose’s scalp prickled.

Macalvie shrugged. “Not necessarily. I don’t know. Even so, it doesn’t mean one of them was responsible for the kids’ deaths.”

“And Mrs. Hayter only now mentions the car?”

Macalvie nodded. “She said, ‘It could never be Mr. Bletchley, as he was in Penzance with his business friend.’ ”

“How could she leave this out before?”

“People are funny about what they see and hear. If you ask a witness to describe a man, he might say, ‘He looked a lot like that gentleman over there, green eyes, dark blond hair, tall, classic looks, yes, like Melrose Plant. Wore those little gold-rimmed glasses, just like ’im.’ Given the possibility you, Plant, could actually have been there, then why not hit on the obvious? It wasn’t a man who looked like you, it was you.”

Melrose said nothing; he was trying to think up reasons why it couldn’t possibly have been Dan Bletchley. He didn’t somehow think Macalvie would go for the nice-guy defense. He pushed his plate aside and took out his Zippo and cigarettes and listened.

“They must’ve been careful. I had someone on Dan Bletchley’s tail for two months.” He nodded at Melrose’s look of surprise. “All we got was dinner with his wife once a week at the Ivy, then concerts, the theater. It must have been someone living near enough that he could see her and get back in an evening.”

“How about here in Bletchley? That’s near enough.” He lit a cigarette, rasping the flint. “Chris Wells.”

Rarely had he ever surprised Macalvie, but her name in this context certainly did. “Chris Wells? What makes you think that?”

“I’m inferring it from the way he talked about her. She was no passing acquaintance.”

Macalvie had forgotten his cigar. The coal end was dimming. “And she’s disappeared. Jesus.” He took the cigar from his mouth. “Another woman. Chris Wells. I knew it’d be something simple.”

“If you call that simple,” said Melrose, ruefully.

43

Johnny had stayed in all day and was staying in all night, too. Rarely did he call any of his various jobs to say he wasn’t coming in, but after last night, and falling over that stupid tree root, and the awful way he felt, he’d decided to stay in.

He was dividing his time between housecleaning and practicing magic. Up to then, he hadn’t done anything,