“Macalvie told me about Simon Bolt.”
“In her younger days, Sada worked at the Woodbine, that’s the local tearoom owned by Chris Wells and Brenda Friel. They’re partners. Sada Colthorp reappeared four years ago in Bletchley for a visit.”
Jury had found the item, a brown envelope, and sat tapping it against his thumb, thinking.
Melrose wished he’d stop thinking and let him see whatever it was.
“There it is again.” Jury leaned forward to look at the table, at the little semicircle of stones he’d made.
“There what is again? And what’s in that envelope, the winning lottery ticket?”
“Four years ago. When, four years ago?”
“I’m not sure. Brenda Friel could tell you. She was the one who identified her. The people in Lamorna didn’t recognize the police photo.”
“Perhaps her appearance had altered, having lived the life of a viscountess for all those years.” Jury put another little stone near the one representing the deaths of the children.
“Some of those years, you mean. She was Viscountess Mead for less than two. Rodney Colthorp was clearly embarrassed about having married her. I put it down to the usual midlife crisis.”
Jury had opened the packet and drawn a photo out-two photos, one being the familiar scene-of-crime picture of Sada Colthorp. He handed them to Melrose.
“I see what you mean.” One photo was of Sada, or Sadie back then, during her years in Lamorna and Bletchley. The young woman in this earlier photo had quite pale hair, as opposed to the hard yellow of the more recent photo, the crime scene photo of her dead on the public footpath. The eyes were quite different too, but that would be owing to the generous application of cosmetics: eyeliner, shadow, mascara. But the most telling difference was that the rather plump face of the earlier photo had changed to one gaunt and angular, though not unattractive. The changes seemed to have been caused by something other than time.
“They look different, don’t they? If you know it’s the same person, you can see the resemblance even with the change of hairstyle and color, even with the meltdown from drugs. Clubs and Vice picked her up a couple of times in Shepherd Market for soliciting. Then again she was picked up in Soho for dealing drugs, charge later dropped.”
Melrose was shocked, not by Sada’s habits but by Jury’s knowing them. He’d been on this case for less than eight hours and he seemed to know more than Melrose himself. And now he was reading Melrose’s mind.
“Macalvie only just got this report, which is why you haven’t heard about it.”
Melrose decided to carp at police reporting. “It took all of this time? It took a week for police to send this?”
Jury nodded. “Sometimes it happens. Bureaucratic slowdown or maybe it was hard to get stuff on her. Who knows? Anyway, Sada had a big drug habit she couldn’t support on her negligible salary as hostess in a club in Shepherd’s Bush, so she had to supplement it, and prostitution and dealing were the most profitable means. Her habit meant big money. My guess is that was what she was here for. Just a guess, mind.”
“Blackmail?”
“That, or to sell something.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?” Melrose got up and took their glasses to the dry sink. “The only person I know of around here with what you call ‘big money’ is Morris Bletchley.”
“What about Daniel Bletchley, his son? Or his daughter-in-law-who would have access to it, even if she didn’t have a fortune of her own?”
Karen. Melrose thought about this. “She was here in the area at the time of the shooting. She came to see me. Or see the house.”
“Did she come back to Bletchley often? It must be painful.”
“Often? Oh, no. This was the first time in-”
Jury smiled. “Four years.”
“True.” Melrose took another look at the stone circle. There was something he was overlooking.
“Why Lamorna?”
“What?” asked Melrose absently.
“Why was she found in Lamorna?”
Melrose shrugged. “You’ve got me.” He said this a trifle testily, since it probably
“There’s a pub there?”
“The Lamorna Wink is what it’s called.”
“Come on.” Jury got up quickly.
“Damn it! People are always going somewhere and wanting me to go with ’em.” But he was not displeased. “To Lamorna? At
“ ‘This hour’ is only nine-fifty. Come on.”
“Can’t we solve the damned puzzle sitting here? Must we take
“Well, I don’t have your little gray cells; all I can do is plod plod plod plod plod.” Jury reached down and pulled Melrose from the sofa.
“You sound like Lear. I wonder how it would have sat with the audience if Cordelia’s death had him saying, ‘And she will come again, plod plod plod plod plod’ instead of ‘Never never never never never’?”
Johnny brought the cab to a stop, saw several lights in the downstairs windows, and Melrose Plant’s car. He ran up the steps and banged the brass knocker as hard as he could and waited. In another thirty seconds, he banged it again. And waited again.
Johnny found a pack of Trevor’s cigarettes in the glove compartment and sat in the cab and smoked, something he very rarely did. Smoking helped to calm him, made his head clearer. He could understand why it was such a hard habit to kick.
By a little after ten o’clock he’d stubbed out three cigarettes. He slid down in the front seat and tried to think, tried to work it out. But it was like hitting a brick wall.
The trouble was, he was afraid. He was afraid to try anything alone. Backup, that’s what police called it. He needed backup. He thought about Charlie, but Charlie was in Penzance.
For a few more minutes he sat in the cab before he gave up on Plant’s coming home. He was probably somewhere with that policeman, Commander Macalvie.
One more cigarette and then he started the car, let out the clutch, backed up, and, venting some of his frustration and fear, jammed his foot on the gas and nearly ricocheted down the drive.
Why were the cops always somewhere else when you needed them?
46
You’ll find them a close-mouthed crew,” said Melrose, crawling out of Jury’s hired Honda. “If you’re thinking of questioning them, that is.”
There was a sea fret covering the path, encasing their lower legs in mist so that they appeared to be walking footless to the door of the Lamorna Wink.
Melrose continued. “Macalvie says it’s blood out of stones.” He sighed. “I wish they had a takeaway window.”
It looked to Melrose, once they were inside, as if these were exactly the same people he and Macalvie had encountered. And why not? Where else was there to go? They pulled up to the bar and sat down between an old man in an oilskin and a heavy woman drinking pale beer. Sediment at the bottom of her glass suggested it was one of the local brews.
Perhaps it wasn’t fat that had her bulging over into Melrose’s allotted space; it might have been the layers of clothes she wore. Beneath a mustard-colored sweater was a plaid woolen shirt, its arms rolled up to show a grimy biscuit-colored flannel that might have been underclothing, but Melrose doubted it, for he saw something lumpy jut above the elbow, suggesting yet another garment beneath it.
Melrose was deciding on what conversational approach to take-she hadn’t turned to give him so much as a glance-and found he was listening to the old man on Jury’s left, apparently in fulsome answer to some question of
