The Lamorna Wink

think of ectoplasm. “I don’t know, do I, sweetheart? I may have to leave Bletchley, and that might mean taking you with me.”

He tried to hide his anxiety and was grateful for the time he’d spent in perfecting a poker face and the attention he’d paid to body language, his own and that of others. His own he had under control. And he had trained himself to notice the tiny “tells” that give people away. Others didn’t have themselves under control unless they were also in the business of not-giving-away-police, for instance. That detective, Macalvie, would have made a good magician.

“What are you thinking about?” Brenda frowned.

He didn’t answer immediately. Silence, Johnny had found, could be a formidable weapon. After a few more beats of it he said, simply, “Nothing.”

She smoked and watched him. “You’ve very cool, sweetheart. You know that, I guess. Quite amazing for someone your age. Quite stunning.”

He didn’t comment. She wanted him to ask questions. He could tell that in order for her to maintain her belief in her control over this little tableau, she needed him to appear the one without the answers. Thus, if he did ask a question, it would be innocuous. He would not ask her again about Chris. Whatever had happened to Chris, that was Brenda’s ace in the hole with him. It could be dangerous to thwart her, but he had to try every trick in the book to get himself out of this. He picked up the deck of cards he’d left on the table hours ago-a lifetime ago, a childhood ago. He held the deck up. “Mind?”

“Yes.” She picked up the gun.

He set the cards down. “Why?”

“Because you want to. I don’t trust you, sweetheart. You’re up to something.” Her smile seemed to snag on an unhappy memory.

Briefly, he laughed. “A pack of cards wouldn’t stop a gun.”

Surprisingly, she found that amusing and laughed, too.

Johnny wondered what she really thought of him right now. He knew how much she had always liked him, and he felt sad. Even now, and her over there with a gun she just might use, even now it saddened him. But this feeling he could box off until it was safe. That she did like him so much was in his favor because it left her more vulnerable.

She said, “Oh, go ahead,” and sighed as if he were an obstreperous child. “Show us a trick, why don’t you?”

He took up the deck, feeling for the slick card, shuffled it, fanned the cards out in a half-moon, swept them up again, shuffled again. None of that made the slightest bit of difference to a trick, but it gave him a few seconds to think. That was what he needed, time to think while appearing to be concentrating on the cards. He could do one slick card trick after another without thinking about the tricks themselves. He saw the pack of cigarettes she’d put down on the coffee table and looked around the room and spotted an ashtray he’d missed earlier. He said, “Mind if I get a cigarette?”

“I’ll get it.”

“And that ashtray over there?”

Holding the gun, she brought the ashtray and picked the cigarettes up with the same hand. The gun never faltered. “Just when did you start smoking?”

His answer was a smile. “Thanks.” Her eyes were on his movements as he took out a cigarette. “Match? Or there’s a lighter in that desk drawer. Charlie left it.”

Her smile was rueful. “Now why would you want me to go and get the lighter when there’s a book of matches right inside this.” She turned over the pack of cigarettes to show the matches nestled inside the cellophane.

It was a wonderful fact of human behavior and the mainstay of magic: distraction. Make them look at what is completely irrelevant and they’ll miss what’s right under their noses. It worked every time. Brenda thought she was being so careful-the cigarettes, the ashtray, the drawer, the “don’t-moves”-but she was missing the whole thing.

Johnny lit a cigarette, pulled the astray closer. It was quite heavy, he knew. “While you’re here, pick a card.” He held out the cards, the slick card as usual in the middle. He didn’t think she’d reach for one, not that it mattered, but she did. Then withdrew her hand before she’d taken one.

“I don’t think so.” She backed away and found the chair she’d been sitting in.

He squared the deck, tapped it a couple of times, and fanned out the cards again. His movements were so smooth you could have skated on them. That, of course, was what did it. The card, except to be turned over, had never really moved. It was dexterity, all dexterity.

Brenda had lighted one cigarette from another and stubbed out the first. “I’ve seen you do that a dozen times and still don’t see how.”

With the cards he took a few steps toward her. She snatched up the gun. “Uh-uh. Stay back. I told you. I don’t trust you.”

Back was where he wanted to be, which is why he’d moved forward. “Okay, something more elaborate. But I’ll have to get the props out of a drawer in that sideboard.” He started toward it.

“Johnny. I’m not stupid.” The gun gestured him back.

He stepped back into the alcove, this time a bit farther to the right. “Another card trick then. But I don’t know if you can see this from that distance.”

“I’ve got good eyes.”

“Watch.”

53

Sleep, he knew, would elude him, so he sat in the library and read one of Polly Praed’s thrillers. He didn’t like it at all but felt compelled to read a book written by a friend. The trouble was, Polly had published so many of them he could spend all his reading life trying to beat the detective to the denouement, which he never did, because he couldn’t sort out the puzzle, much less the solution. The one now in his hands had a plot that had lost him somewhere in a Wales wilderness, the mise-en-sce‘ne (one of Polly’s favorite phrases) having shifted from Aruba to Wales. Melrose imagined the only thing that could move one from Aruba to Swansea would be a gun at one’s back, as was the case here. He hoped the hero would be riddled, he was so boring. The hero should have sent him straightaway into the arms of Morpheus. But the hero didn’t, nor did the chase scene. Melrose set it aside and picked up his drink, hoping brandy and soda would have a more salubrious effect. It didn’t either.

So Melrose left the little library and climbed the stairs to the music room, where he could plunge himself into sadness, the sadness that had overcome him last night and whose source seemed to be the history of this house.

It was not difficult to plunge, given the black sky beyond the long windows and the implacable, repetitious drone of the waves. He thought of Daniel Bletchley’s wonderful, unself-conscious playing and how it had filled the room. His mind on this music, he was looking down, expecting, surely, Nature would indulge him and let the wind whip up a storm of water…

Something moved down there.

Because of the angle of the windows, part of the path was cut from his view. But someone, he was certain, was standing or walking down below.

When the figure came into partial view, he assumed it must be Karen Bletchley. It was a woman, but the hair was not light, not Karen’s; it was dark, the color of mahogany. And suddenly, she looked straight up and straight at him. It was the middle of the night, but the moon glowed like white fire.

The glass dropped from his hand, splashing brandy down the leg of the immaculate flannel and drowning the top of his shoe.

He would have known her anywhere.

Stella.