marginally more welcoming than Mr. Pfinn’s had been. At least Wiggins was aware that a police investigation knew neither time nor tide. Mr. Pfinn, on the other hand, didn’t care if the three of them were pod people come to borrow his body. He needed his sleep, he said.
But Wiggins’s mood improved immensely when he saw Richard Jury was one of the three. He was all ready to have a long talk about Jury’s travels, while standing at the door in his pajamas.
“Ireland, nil; Scotland Yard, one,” said Macalvie, cutting into this reunion. “Get dressed.”
They were now in Seabourne. Melrose and Wiggins repaired to the kitchen to prepare some sort of meal; Jury and Macalvie stayed in the library.
“What are these stones? Avebury? Stonehenge? The Merry Maidens?” Macalvie inspected Jury’s little stone circle, or semicircle.
“Very funny. I was trying to get the sequence of what’s happened to whom in the last four years. In most cases, death has happened. I was trying to get straight in my mind the events of four years ago. Then the events of today-that is, recently.”
Jury picked up another stone. “We can now add Simon Bolt to the four-year-old section of the circle, setting him beside Sada Calthorp, who came back four years ago and who’d kept in touch with Bolt-well, she must’ve done, since she was in his films.”
Macalvie said, “And, according to Rodney Colthorp, Bolt visited the manor. Yes, they kept in touch.”
Jury set the two stones side by side.
“So what have you got here?”
“Beginning with the Bletchley children, with Simon Bolt and most likely Sada Colthorp involved in that, then the death of Brenda Friel’s girl, Ramona; that’s the four-year-old part. More recently, the disappearance of Chris Wells, the death of Sada Colthorp, and the death of Tom Letts.”
Macalvie slid a stick of chewing gum into his mouth and was silent, looking at the stone diagram. He hadn’t sat down, and he hadn’t taken off his coat.
“Why don’t you take your coat off?” Jury didn’t expect him to; he just couldn’t resist mentioning the coat.
Instead of taking it off, Macalvie shoved the sides back and put his hands in his trouser pockets. He chewed the gum, thinking. “Bastard was making snuff films.”
“That tape’s somewhere in or around that house.”
Macalvie was still gazing at the stone circle. “It’s with whoever murdered Sada Colthorp. I found part of it.”
Jury gave him an inquiring look. “Where?”
“Just a fragment of the black casing. It was lying near her body. At least, I expect it’s a safe assumption. The piece was definitely part of a videotape casing. Of course, that’s not the only copy. Four years ago, whoever got Bolt to do this, that person would have the original. Then of course Bolt would’ve kept a copy, at the same time claiming there wasn’t one. I’d say there are at least three copies. We went over his house with tweezers. Sada Colthorp had another copy. Or the same one Bolt had stashed; maybe she knew where it was. How else was she going to blackmail the person who wanted those little kids dead if she couldn’t produce a copy?”
“The film wouldn’t prove who this person was.”
“No,” said Macalvie. “But it certainly shows how it was done.” Macalvie walked over to the fireplace and leaned his forearm across its green marble mantel. “Bad enough the little kids died, but
Macalvie was always intense, thought Jury, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen him this emotionally involved. Not since the serial killings of children on Dartmoor and in Lyme Regis. Jury waited for him to go on.
He did. “I’d say Colthorp knew the motive, but even if she didn’t, whoever wanted that film made would not want a fresh investigation into the Bletchley business. Anyway, the film is the best theory we have; it’s a working hypothesis that explains a hell of a lot.”
Plant and Wiggins came through the door, bearing coffee, fresh bread, and cheese and cold ham. “Couldn’t find any eggs, so I didn’t make toast,” said Melrose, setting down the tray. Wiggins put down the coffeepot.
Jury set about making a sandwich. “Wouldn’t have any pickled onions around, would you?”
No.
Wiggins was turning over the coat he’d draped across the back of a chair and drawing something from an inside pocket that looked much like a soft leather jewelry case, the sort that folds and ties. He untied it, revealing several zippered compartments. From one of these he took a dung-colored pill and from another a couple of large white tablets. The tablets he dropped into a glass of water and watched it fizz with almost religious application.
So did the other three, chewing and watching the fizz until a fine scum of white powder showed on top.
Apparently waiting to catch it at the height of the fizz, Wiggins drank it down, leaving a little in the bottom to swallow with the brown pill. Jury wondered about the pill; it seemed new to the Wiggins pharmacopoeia. But he refused to ask what it was. He did not want to know about any new ailment or allergy.
“Chris Wells,” said Macalvie, holding his mug of coffee between both hands to warm them. “Look in your notes and tell me what you’ve got about Chris Wells,” he said to Wiggins.
Wiggins thumbed through the notebook; it looked as if he’d written absolute reams of notes (which was why Macalvie had wanted to stop at the Drowned Man and drag him out of bed). He mouthed a few words to himself, then read: “According to young Johnny, his Aunt Chris took over the care of him when he was seven. He thinks his mother was going to the States, but he doesn’t know. The maiden name was Wells, the father’s name Esterhazey, but Johnny changed his to Wells, same name as his aunt. The mother just took off and that’s the last he heard of her.”
Macalvie uttered a low imprecation, and Wiggins looked up. “Sir?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“Chris is Johnny’s only family, except for the uncle who lives in Penzance, Charlie Esterhazey. Unmarried, keeps a magic shop. You know,” Wiggins said to Jury, “sort of place that sells trick decks of cards and magic metal rings that look like they couldn’t fit together but do.” Wiggins stopped reading, seemed to be pondering.
“Don’t worry, Wiggins. We’re coppers. We’ll make him tell us.”
Wiggins shot Jury a grazing look and went on. “Getting down to the night in question, when young Johnny got in touch with police. Chris Wells disappeared sometime between eleven A.M., which is when she left the Woodbine and is the last time anyone saw her in Bletchley, and nine P.M., when John Wells actively started looking for her.”
“It could have been later,” said Jury. “I mean, she could have been in Bletchley, only Johnny didn’t see her.”
“Just wait a minute,” said Wiggins. “The cookies she was baking could have been done some time earlier. But meringues-well, that’s a different story. They were still in the oven. That’s what you do with them, you know. You leave them in to cool. Very slow cooling period. The oven was still slightly warm. Since it takes an hour to bake them at four hundred degrees, that would mean they went into the oven about seven-thirty. There are two different kinds of meringues served in the Woodbine, quite tasty too.”
“Thank you, Wiggins,” said Jury. “We’d like the recipes when we finish this case. If we do.”
Macalvie said, “Sada Colthorp, Wiggins.”
Wiggins read: “Murdered the night of September twelfth, ME says between seven P.M. and eleven P.M.”
“In other words, murdered during the time Chris Wells did her vanishing act,” said Melrose.
Macalvie had moved away from the fireplace and sat down on a narrow, uncomfortable-looking side chair. “The connection between Chris Wells and Sada Colthorp?”
Wiggins moved forward a few pages. “The person who knew about that was Brenda Friel. She said Sada was trying to get her hands on young Johnny, who’d have been no more than thirteen at the time. Apparently, Sada and Chris really had it out.”
Melrose said, “Johnny Wells looks older than he is, probably did when he was thirteen, too.”
Macalvie asked, “How did Brenda know this?”
“Chris Wells told her,” said Wiggins.
“Still, trying to seduce a kid is hardly a motive for murder, is it?” said Jury.
Wiggins said, “People don’t often behave as you’d expect them to, sir,” said Wiggins sententiously. Looking at his notes, he added, “And Brenda Friel told me Chris Wells threatened Sada Colthorp, said if she ever showed her face in the village again, she’d wish she hadn’t.”
