The Lamorna Wink

there was always a seance. He wondered if real seances (or was that an oxymoron?) were like those portrayed in films: the medium’s voice turning deep and guttural, uttering the oracular words of one centuries dead; the candle flame flickering and dying; that clammy hand holding yours later discovered to be wearing a glove…

Melrose shuddered slightly. He was wracking his brain, or, rather un-wracking it, downloading his thoughts about the murder of Tom Letts and Daniel Bletchley’s visit into his glass of whisky.

The doorbell rang.

Again? Who the devil-?

He sighed, got up from his chair, and carried his drink with him. He got to the door, glad that at least it wouldn’t be Agatha, since it already had been, and, yanking it open, hoping it would be Stella making a magical appearance.

It was Richard Jury. Just standing there.

Melrose gaped. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. He’d like to appear to be just standing there too, with a drink in his hand and Jury’s cool. Instead, he knew he must look like a fish. Mouth open, closed, open, closed.

He found his voice, finally. “Is Ireland over?”

“It’s still there. It didn’t much want me around. I don’t take it personally. But I do take it personally that I’m standing out here on your stoop when I’d much rather be inside, sitting down, with one of whatever you’re drinking.” Jury smiled.

It was one of those smiles that didn’t end with the mouth. It seemed to radiate everywhere, as if his whole person were pitching in to help that smile along.

“Oh! Sorry.” Melrose threw the door wide.

Jury shrugged out of his coat and looked for an available coat rack or surface. Melrose took it and tossed it over the staircase banister. “Come on into the library. There’s a fire.”

Jury settled into the chair Daniel Bletchley had occupied earlier. With a strong sense of deja vu, Melrose handed him a drink. It was true; Dan Bletchley did have something in him that reminded Melrose of Richard Jury. No wonder he and Daniel had hit it off.

“This fellow who was murdered last night, Tom Letts, over at the nursing home in Bletchley.”

Melrose felt Jury hadn’t dropped a beat since the last time they’d seen each other. It was as if they’d been discussing this case all along. “But how do you know about him?”

“Because I’ve been three hours in Exeter talking to Brian Macalvie. Why was I in Exeter? Because the ferry from Cork goes into Wales. Why was I in Cork instead of Belfast? Because I had to go to Dublin at the last moment. Why was I in-”

“Look, I’ll leave, if you think the conversation would go better without me.”

Jury laughed. “Sorry. I was just saving you the trouble of asking a lot of inane questions.”

“Inane? Thanks. So Brian Macalvie filled you in.”

“At length. He seems to have taken this case pretty much to heart. But I don’t know why that should surprise me. He usually does take cases to heart.”

“Remember Dartmoor? That pub named Help the Poor Struggler? He put his foot through the jukebox when someone played a song-what was that song?”

“Molly something.” And Jury started to sing: “Oh, mahn dear, did’ja niver hear, o’ pretty Molly da da da.”

“Brannigan! That’s it, that’s it!” Then Melrose sang: “She’s gone away and-and- what?”

“And left, me, and-”

Then they sang together or, rather, apart:

“And left me, and I’ll niver be a mahn again!”

They laughed, but then Jury said, “Christ, why does love have to be so sad?” He rolled the cool glass across his forehead. “I’m lightheaded; I haven’t had any sleep in a couple of days.”

“You can sleep here, of course.”

“Thanks. That pub in the village didn’t much tempt me.”

“The Drowned Man. Sergeant Wiggins is staying there.”

Jury smiled. “When this case is closed, or even if it’s not, may I have him back?”

“Don’t blame me. It’s foot-through-the-jukebox Macalvie who insisted on getting him down from London.”

“He’s always liked having Wiggins about. Funny.” Jury looked around the softly lighted room. “Nice room, this. Nice house.”

“I’ve got it for three months. Look, since you’re here, give some thought to this business, will you? The only thing I have in common with Hamlet is that I’ve been thinking ‘too much on the event.’ ”

“I don’t believe it’s thinking too much; that’s just a symptom. What’s causing it? I know what’s causing it for Macalvie: the murder of those two kids. For four years, he’s been a little obsessed. Really, it reminds me of the whole Molly Brannigan thing. Molly Singer, I mean.”

But Melrose remembered that it hadn’t been Macalvie alone who’d been interested in Molly.

Jury had been looking over the silver-framed snapshots and now picked one up. “These are the children? What a tragedy. And what a puzzle. If Macalvie hasn’t solved it, who could? He can cut away everything extraneous to a situation. He’s like a laser.” Jury drank the last of his whisky. “I can’t do that. I get too muddied up by stuff. Anyway, he’s sent you a message.”

Melrose did not tell him that Macalvie could get muddied up and overinvolved himself.

Jury reached into the pocket of his shirt, under a heavy Aran sweater, and pulled out a folded paper. He spread this on the coffee table between them and smoothed it out. “It’s about Morris Bletchley and Tom Letts.” It was a diagram of the red drawing room. “Does this look accurate to you?”

Melrose put on his glasses. “Yes, absolutely.”

“What Macalvie says is that if he wanted a cleaner view of the target, he’d have picked windows two or three”-Jury pointed-“and not window number one.” Jury tapped the representation of the window through which the bullet had been fired. “There’s a lot of thick shrubbery around windows two and three; besides that, the ground is lower on that side. It’s possible for nearly anyone to see through one of those windows, but you’d have to be taller than we are to shoot through them.”

Melrose frowned. “So the shooter picked that window.” Melrose indicated the same window Jury had. “Window number one.”

“Right. But Macalvie’s point is this: How would you know this unless you reconnoitered? You can’t tell the ground’s lower unless you actually stand there, and if you do look through the other windows on this side, either one of them-”

Melrose finished the sentence for him. “You’d see who was in the wheelchair.” He stared at the diagram. “Tom Letts really was the target.”

“Looks that way,” said Jury.

45

On a heavy Empire table between the two chairs sat a Murano ashtray of deep blue and green, colors that shifted with the shifting firelight. In the bowl were small polished stones that Jury had used to mark the tragic events that had taken place in Bletchley and Lamorna. At the moment there were four stones forming the beginnings of a circle: the deaths of the two Bletchley children, the death of Ramona Friel, the murders of Sada Colthorp and Tom Letts.

“Sada Colthorp.” Jury started to say something, then paused, searching his pocket for some item.

Melrose said, “Ah, Sadie May, right. Both the ex-Mrs. Rodney Colthorp and Vicountess Mead. Vicountess Mead, redoutable star of blue movies. Funny old world. This Bolt fellow, producer of said films, turned up at the manor when she was still married to Colthorp. Dennis, the viscount’s son, threw him out. Not until after he’d valued Bolt’s Jaguar.”